Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/304

[ 288 ] ty, has been thought to allude to the death of Spener, is not inconitent with the early appearance of this comedy; for it might have been inerted between the time of the poet’s death, and the year 1600, when the play was publihed. And indeed, if the alluion was intended, the paSS undefinedage mut have been added in that interval; for A Midummer Night’s Dream was certainly written in, or before, 1598, and Spener, we are told by Sir James Ware, (whoe tetimony with repect to this controverted point mut have great weight) did not die till 1599: “ others, (he adds) have it wrongly, 1598 .” So careful a earcher into antiquity, who lived o near the time, is not likely to have been mitaken in a fact, concerning which he appears to have made particular enquiries.

It has been already oberved, that our author, in his early plays appears to have been much addicted to rhyming; a practice from which he gradually departed, though he never wholly deerted it. In this piece more rhymes, I believe, are found, than in any other of his plays. Love’s Labour Lost and A Midummer Night’s Dream only excepted. This circumtance, the tory on which it is founded, o likely to captivate a young poet, the imperfect form in which it ori-