APPENDIX I.

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SHAKESPEARE'S

PLAYS. 1

Pericles...

1590

Second Part of Henry VI....... 1591

Third Part of Henry VI.

1591

2 See Collier's Hist. of English Dram. Poet. i. 327.

3 I agree with Malone in thinking that the passage of Othello (act iii. sc. iv.),

"the hearts of old gave hands,

But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts,"

does not contain the slightest allusion to the institution of the order of Baronets in 1611: see his Life of Shakespeare, p. 402. (Shak. by Boswell, ii.)

APPENDIX II.

SHAKESPEARE'S WILL,

FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE OFFICE OF THE PREROGATIVE COURT OF CANTERBURY.

Vicesimo quinto die Martii,1 Anno Regni Domini nostri Jacobi nunc Regis Angliæ, &c. decimo quarto, et Scotia quadragesimo nono. Anno Domini 1616.

In the name of God, Amen. I William Shakspeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwick, gent. in perfect health and memory, (God be praised!) do make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form following; that is to say:

First, I commend my soul into the hands of God my creator, hoping, and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth whereof it is made.

Item, I give and bequeath unto my daughter Judith, one hundred and fifty pounds of lawful

1 Our poet's will appears to have been drawn up in February, though not executed till the following month; for February was first written, and afterwards struck out, and March written over it. MALONE.

English money, to be paid unto her in manner and form following; that is to say, one hundred pounds in discharge of her marriage portion within one year after my decease, with consideration after the rate of two shillings in the pound for so long time as the same shall be unpaid unto her after my decease; and the fifty pounds residue thereof, upon her surrendering of, or giving of such sufficient security as the overseers of this my will shall like of, to surrender or grant, all her estate and right that shall descend or come unto her after my decease, or that she now hath, of, in, or to, one copyhold tenement, with the appurtenances, lying and being in Stratford-upon-Avon aforesaid, in the said county of Warwick, being parcel or holden of the manor of Rowington, unto my daughter Susannah Hall, and her heirs for ever.

Item, I give and bequeath unto my said daughter Judith one hundred and fifty pounds more, if she, or any issue of her body, be living at the end of three years next ensuing the day of the date of this my will, during which time my executors to pay her consideration from my decease according to the rate aforesaid: and if she die within the said term without issue of her body, then my will is, and I do give and bequeath one hundred pounds thereof to my niece Elizabeth Hall, and the fifty

2

to my niece-] Elizabeth Hall was our poet's grandaughter. So, in Othello, Act 1. sc. i. Iago says to

g

perhaps, Shakespeare's "lovely youth" was merely the creature of imagination, and had no more existence than those fair ones, whom various writers have so perseveringly wooed in verse.79 I have long felt convinced, after repeated perusals of the Sonnets, that the greater number of them was composed in an assumed character, on different subjects, and at different times, for the amusement, and probably at the suggestion, of the author's intimate associates.80 While, therefore, I contend that allusions scattered through these pieces should not be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakespeare, I am willing to grant that one or two Sonnets have an individual application to the poet, as for instance, the cxth and the cxith, in which he expresses his sense of the degradation that accompanies the profession of the stage. Augustus Schlegel is of opinion, that sufficient use has not been made of them, as important materials for Shakespeare's biography; but, even if we regard them all as transcripts of his genuine feelings, what a feeble

79 Dost thou think the poets, who every one of 'em celebrate the praises of some lady or other, had all real mistresses?...No, no, never think it; for I dare assure thee, the greatest part of 'em were nothing but the mere imaginations of the poets, for a ground-work to exercise their wits upon, and give to the world occasion to look on the authors as men of an amorous and gallant disposition.” Don Quixote (translated by several hands) i. 225. ed. 1749.

90 Meres calls them "his sugred Sonnets among his private friends:" see p. xlviii.