[5]. the best conversations, etc. Rowe here controverts the opinion expressed by Dryden in his Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age: “I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Johnson; and his genius lay not so much that way as to make an improvement by it. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free, as now it is” (Essays, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 175).
A fair Vestal. Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1, 158. In the original Rowe adds to his quotations from Shakespeare the page references to his own edition.
The Merry Wives. The tradition that the Merry Wives was written at the command of Elizabeth had been recorded already by Dennis in the preface to his version of the play,—The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaffe (1702): “This Comedy was written at her command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted, that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as Tradition tells us, very well pleas'd at the Representation.” Cf. Dennis's Defence of a Regulated Stage: “she not only commanded [pg 305] Shakespear to write the comedy of the Merry Wives, and to write it in ten day's time,” etc. (Original Letters, 1721, i., p. 232).
this part of Falstaff. Rowe is here indebted apparently to the account of John Fastolfe in Fuller's Worthies of England (1662). But neither in it, nor in the similar passage on Oldcastle in the Church History of Britain (1655, Bk. iv., Cent, xv., p. 168), does Fuller say that the name was altered at the command of the queen, on objection being made by Oldcastle's descendants. This may have been a tradition at Rowe's time, as there was then apparently no printed authority for it, but, as Halliwell-Phillips showed in his Character of Sir John Falstaff, 1841, it is confirmed by a manuscript of about 1625, preserved in the Bodleian. Cf. also Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1886, ii., pp. 351, etc.; Richard James's Iter Lancastrense (Chetham Society, 1845, p. lxv.); and Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, 1879, pp. 164-5.
name of Oldcastle. Pope added in a footnote, “See the Epilogue to Henry 4th.”
[6]. Venus and Adonis. The portion of the sentence following this title was omitted by Pope because it is inaccurate. The Rape of Lucrece also was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The error is alluded to in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725.
Eunuchs. Pope reads “Singers.”
The passage dealing with Spenser (p. [6], l. 34, to p. [7], l. 36) was omitted by Pope. But it is interesting to know Dryden's opinion, even though it is probably erroneous. Willy has not yet been identified.
[8]. After this they were professed friends, etc. This description of Ben Jonson, down to the words “with infinite labour and study could but hardly attain to,” was omitted by Pope, for reasons which appear in his Preface. See pp. [54], [55].
Ben was naturally proud and insolent, etc. Rowe here paraphrases and expands Dryden's description in his Discourse concerning Satire of Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare,—“an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric” (ed. W. P. Ker, ii., p. 18).