[187] I find even Mr. Appleton Morgan creating a needless difficulty on this head. In his Shakspere in Fact and Criticism, already cited, he writes (p. 316): "I find him ... living and dying so utterly unsuspicious that he had done anything of which his children might care to hear, that he never even troubled himself to preserve the manuscript of or the literary property in a single one of the plays which had raised him to affluence." As I have already pointed out, there is no reason to suppose that Shakspere could retain the ownership of his plays any more than did the other writers who supplied his theatre. They belonged to the partnership. Besides, he could not possibly have published as his the existing mass, so largely made up of other men's work. His fellow-players did so without scruple after his death, being simply bent on making money.
[188] Sonnet 110. Compare the next.
[189] B. ii, Chap. 10.
[190] B. i, Chap. 38.
[191] This may be presumed to have been written between 1603 and 1609, the date of the publication of the Sonnets. As Mr. Minto argues, "the only sonnet of really indisputable date is the 107th, containing the reference to the death of Elizabeth" (Characteristics, as cited, p. 220). As the first 126 sonnets make a series, it is reasonable to take those remaining as of later date.
[192] It more particularly echoes, however, two passages in the nineteenth essay: "There is no evil in life for him that hath well conceived, how the privation of life is no evil. To know how to die, doth free us from all subjection and constraint." "No man did ever prepare himself to quit the world more simply and fully ... than I am fully assured I shall do. The deadest deaths are the best"
[193] ii, 12.
[194] iii, 11.
[195] iii, 4.
[196] In all probability this character existed in the previous play, the name being originally, as was suggested last century by Dr. Farmer, a mere variant of "Canibal."