The Shakspeare Fabrications; Or, the Ms. Notes of the Perkins Folio Shown to Be of Recent Origin (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I. THE CHRONOLOGICAL TEST. Here comes the almanack of my true date. Comedy of Mrrors. When Mr. Collier's Notes and Emendations were first issued, in 1852, attempts were made to fix the date of the MS. notes by latent internal evidence. The obvious method was by selecting from the Perkins Notes a test-word (or test-phrase), and by proving the negative, that this expression was not in use till a given time, to demonstrate that the writer of that expression could not have written any of the marginal and interlinear notes, before a certain date. The proof of a negative is always slippery; especially so where the subject of the negative is an alleged archaism. In the case of the Rowley and Ireland Fabrications, the spelling alone ought to have settled the question; but, in the absence of a knowledge of old orthography, the frequent recurrence of yts and its ought still to have been con elusive against the genuineness of either forgery. And for this reason: that in respect of the use of its, a negative was susceptible of proof, and has since been proved. It is this: the first folio of Shakspeare (1623) is the earliest printed book in which the word its is found. Thus: --How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tendernesB, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms Winter's Tale, act i. sc. 2. Each following day Became the next day's master, till the last Made former wonders its. Sen. VIII. act i. sc. 1. Pemble, who died in that very year (1623), employs the word in his works, 1635, p. 171, "If faith alone by its own virtue and force," &c. Before 1623, all printed books employ his, tier, and occasionally it, in the sense of the more modern its. Now, in Vortigern and Rowena, its occurs four times, in Act I. alone, viz., "its master-piece," "its nou...