Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: At what time foever he became acquainted with the theatre, we may prefume that he had not compofed his firft play long be- fere it tvat afltd; for being early encumbered with a young family, and not in very affluent circumftances, it is improbable that he ibould have foffered it to lie in his clofet, without endeavouring to derive from it fome profit; and in the miferable ftate of the drama in thofe days, the meaneft of his genuine plays mud have been a valuable acquisition, and would hardly have been refufed by any of the managers of our ancient theatres. ' Titus Andranicui appears to have been afted before any other play attributed to Shakfpeare: and, therefore, as it hath been admitted into all the editions of his works, whoever might have been the writer of it, it is entitled to the firft place in this general lift of his dramas. From Ben Jonfon's induction to Bar- thtkmfuj Fair 1614, we learn that /indronicus had been exhibited twenty-five or thirty years before; that is, at the loweft computation, in 1589: or, taking a middle period (which is perhaps more juft), in 1587. In our Author's dedication of Venus and ddenis to lord Southampton, in 1593, ne te"s us as Mr. S tee verts hath obferved, that that poem was " the firft Heir efbis Invention," and if we were fure that it was publiihed immediately, or foon after it was written, it would at once prove litiu /fndronicus not to be the production of Shakfpeare, and nearly afcertain flie time when he commenced a dramatic writer. But we do not know what interval might have elapfed between the compofition and the publication of that poem. There u indeed a paflage in the dedication already mentioned; which, if there were not fuch decifive evidence on the other fide, might induce us to think that 'he h: J not written in 1593 any ...