In presenting the results of several years of preparation, the writer desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to the large body of investigators, from Malone to HalliwellPhillipps, who have ransacked libraries and garrets for new light upon the subject of this sketch. To many of these something is owing, and frequent mention of authorities has been made in the text. But since it is clearly impracticable to trace, in every case, the source from which a suggestion has been received, this general acknowledgment is made, with the hope that no reference of importance has been omitted. In the matter of accepting the statements of writers on this subject, it has been found necessary to exercise caution; a single instance will serve as an illustration. The present writer has insisted that Shakespeare's death attracted little attention; a point of 1915 MAIN 328438 some importance, as it testifies to the insignificance of the man. As to this matter, we find the ingenuous Sir Sidney Lee, a modern pillar of the Stratfordian theory, with a different purpose in mind, making the following remarkable statement: * * * "When Shakespeare lay dead in the spring of 1616 the flood of panegyrical lamentation poured forth in a new flood. One of the earliest of the elegies was a sonnet by William Basse * This fine sentiment found many a splendid echo. It resounded in Ben Jonson's noble lines prefixed to the First Folio of 1623 * * Milton qualified the conceit a few years later, in 1630 * * Such was the invariable temper in which literary men gave vent to their grief on learning the death of the 'beloved author,' &c." -Great Englishmen of the XVIth Century, pp 279-81. Here is a very flagrant instance of the method of the suggestio falsi. The casual reader will accept the statement that a flood of lamentation poured forth in "the spring of 1616," when literary men "learned the death of the beloved author," without noting that actually the flood of 1616 consisted of a sonnet by Basse, which did not appear before 1622, of the introductory matter to the folio of 1623, of which more will be said later, and of Milton's verses, in 1630, when he learned of the death of the "beloved author." However, we can forgive Lee for this sort of work, in consideration of his unwearying research, which produced, for example, his identification of the "Mr. W. H." of the dedication to the Sonnets with one William Hall. Except in the arrangement and interpretation of the data which are the common property of all, there is nothing new in the following pages. Against the Hathaway marriage, the vital absence of any mention of it in the records of Stratford church, and the remarriage of Mrs. Shakespeare after |