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WIVES OF WINDSOR. However, at all events, though an ingenious, it is but a hasty sketch. 2nd. THE ACCUSATION OF PARIS. 3rd. THE BIRTH OF MERLIN. 4th. EDWARD THE THIRD. 5th. THE FAIR EMMA. 6th. MUCEDORUS. 7th. ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM. I have never seen any of these, and cannot therefore say anything respecting them. From the passages cited, I am led to conjecture that the subject of MUCEDORUS is the popular story of Valentine and Orson; a beautiful subject which Lope de Vega has also taken for a play. ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM is said to be a tragedy on the story of a man, from whom the poet was descended by the mother's side. If the quality of the piece is not too directly at variance with this claim, the circumstance would afford an additional probability in its favour. For such motives were not foreign to Shakespeare: he treated Henry the Seventh, who bestowed lands on his forefathers for services performed by them, with a visible partiality.

'Whoever takes from Shakespeare a play early ascribed to him, and confessedly belonging to his time, is unquestionably bound to answer, with some degree of probability, this question: who has then written it? Shakespeare's competitors in the dramatic walk are pretty well known, and if those of them who have even acquired a considerable name, a Lilly, a Marlow, a Heywood, are still so very far below him, we can hardly imagine that the author of a work, which rises so high beyond theirs, would have remained unknown'--

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