“Walter Shakespeare, of Tachbrooke, in the county of Warwicke, laborer, aged forty yeares or thereabouts, being sworne and examined, deposeth as follows:

“To the fourth interrogatory this deponent saith that the cure of the parish has been neglected by the complainant, and in particular this deponent’s wife was put by being churched, there being no Divine Service at Tachbrooke one Sunday since the complainant’s institucion and induction; and this deponent further says that notice was given that his wife was to be churched that Sunday, and that this deponent was then and now is an inhabitant of the parish of Tachbrooke.”—Record Office, 41st Report, p. 555, 7 George I. Warwick and Stafford Exchequer.

SUPPLEMENT.

See p. 22.—Ante “Anthony Sherley and no other was he who wrote these plays.”

Since I wrote the first portion of this pamphlet so much matter has turned up, showing beyond reasonable doubt that I am right in my conjecture as to Anthony Sherley, that I am encouraged to bring it also before the public. “Magna est veritas,” and in due time the leaven will work its way.

I had called attention (p. 20) to the Sonnets 135, 136, 105.

Sonnet CV.

Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idle show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confin’d,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one.

CXXXV.

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
And will to boot, and will in over-plus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will
One will of mine, to make thy large will more!
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill.
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

and the enigmatical allusions in them to Sherley’s motto “only one.” He could not write “only one,” as it would have betrayed the author of the plays, but he shaves as near the wind as he dare, and as he says, Sonnet lxxvi., which I mentioned (p. 19):

Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?

And so it does, when we look behind the scenes. They were written in the hope that some one like myself would arise, a light in a dark place, to give honour to whom honour was due, and pluck the jay’s false feathers from off the crow. The instant you begin to look for it, you will observe how strangely any-how and oft, in all times and places, in season and out of season, this word “one” is wrought into the text of the plays, sometimes in connection with “all’s one”; (he would not write “only one” straight off, else it would have led, as I said before, to detection, and so he uses the plural “all” instead of singular “only,” see Sonnet lxxvi.), and in a much more important position boldly puts it forward (in Quarto 1608, with the name of Shakespeare) “All’s one or one of the four plaies in one,” called “A Yorkshire Tragedy.” Now this play with Anthony Sherley’s motto is nothing more nor less than the story of the ruin of his house; it is hardly disguised under the flimsy title of “A Yorkshire Tragedy.” It is important to note that of all the plays this has no stage names to it, simply “Husband and wife.” Strange! passing strange! Why should Shakespeare care to represent on the stage the history of the Sherley family and ruin? This same company, mark, had played it under the name openly of “The Three English Brothers,” prologue, “Clothing our truth within an argument, fitting the stage and your attention, yet not so hid but that she may appear to be herself, even Truth.” This would also fit the “Yorkshire Tragedy.” What is the substance of the play? It tells the story in blank verse, which we have almost word for word in prose in “The Sherley Brothers,” viz. that of Sir Thomas Sherley the elder gambling away his extensive property. “Elizabeth had seized and sold everything belonging to him except (Wiston), his wife’s dowry.” “Wife: If you suspect a plot in me to keep my dowry . . . you are a gentleman of many bloods; think on the state of these three lovely boys (the leash of brothers old Fuller calls them) . . . Your lands mortgaged, yourself wound into debts.”—“Wife: I see how ruin with a palsy hand begins to shake this ancient seat to dust . . . beggary of the soul and of the body, as if some vexed spirit had got his form upon him.” His wife had interest enough to get him the offer of a place at Court, etc.