Its parent,
notwithstanding this perhaps venial indiscretion, was apparently an
honest and modest gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous
theorist was fain, with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be
permitted to foist on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not
without such minor merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on
examination of the theory which seeks to confer on it the factitious and
artificial attraction of a spurious and adventitious interest.
"The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times plaied
about the Citie of London," was published in 1596, and ran through two or
three anonymous editions before the date of the generation was out which
first produced it. Having thus run to the end of its natural tether, it
fell as naturally into the oblivion which has devoured, and has not again
disgorged, so many a more precious production of its period. In 1760 it
was reprinted in the "Prolusions" of Edward Capell, whose text is now
before me. This editor was the first mortal to suggest that his newly
unearthed treasure might possibly be a windfall from the topless tree of
Shakespeare.
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