[177] Latten is a mixed metal resembling brass. Pistol in Merry Wives of Windsor (I. i. 165) likens Slender to a ‘latten bilbo,’ that is, a sword made of the mixed metal. Cf. Anecdotes and Traditions, edited from L’Estrange’s MSS. by W. J. Thoms for the Camden Society, p. 2.
[179] This, or some synonym, is the conventional epithet applied at the date to Shakespeare and his work. Weever credited such characters of Shakespeare as Tarquin, Romeo, and Richard III with ‘sugred tongues’ in his Epigrams of 1595. In the Return from Parnassus (1601?) Shakespeare is apostrophised as ‘sweet Master Shakespeare.’ Milton did homage to the tradition by writing of ‘sweetest Shakespeare’ in L’Allegro.
[180] A hack-writer, Wentworth Smith, took a hand in producing thirteen plays, none of which are extant, for the theatrical manager, Philip Henslowe, between 1601 and 1603. The Hector of Germanie, an extant play ‘made by W. Smith’ and published ‘with new additions’ in 1615, was doubtless by Wentworth Smith, and is the only dramatic work by him that has survived. Neither internal nor external evidence confirms the theory that the above-mentioned six plays, which have been wrongly claimed for Shakespeare, were really by Wentworth Smith. The use of the initials ‘W.S.’ was not due to the publishers’ belief that Wentworth Smith was the author, but to their endeavour to delude their customers into a belief that the plays were by Shakespeare.
[181] Cf. p. 258 infra.
[182] There were twenty pieces in all. The five by Shakespeare are placed in the order i. ii. iii. v. xvi. Of the remainder, two—‘If music and sweet poetry agree’ (No. viii.) and ‘As it fell upon a day’ (No. xx.)—were borrowed from Barnfield’s Poems in divers Humours (1598). ‘Venus with Adonis sitting by her’ (No. xi.) is from Bartholomew Griffin’s Fidessa (1596); ‘My flocks feed not’ (No. xvii.) is adapted from Thomas Weelkes’s Madrigals (1597); ‘Live with me and be my love’ is by Marlowe; and the appended stanza, entitled ‘Love’s Answer,’ by Sir Walter Ralegh (No. xix.); ‘Crabbed age and youth cannot live together’ (No. xii.) is a popular song often quoted by the Elizabethan dramatists. Nothing has been ascertained of the origin and history of the remaining nine poems (iv. vi. vii. ix. x. xiii. xiv. xviii.)
[184] A unique copy of Chester’s Love’s Martyr is in Mr. Christie-Miller’s library at Britwell. Of a reissue of the original edition in 1611 with a new title, The Annals of Great Brittaine, a copy (also unique) is in the British Museum. A reprint of the original edition was prepared for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in his series of ‘Occasional Issues.’ It was also printed in the same year as one of the publications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser’s Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney’s obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phœnix, and eagle, in verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare’s account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester’s volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare’s poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon’s elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare’s concluding ‘Threnos’ is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in his Mad Lover in the song ‘The Lover’s Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.’
[187] Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 186.
[188a] There is an admirable discussion of the question involved in the poet’s heraldry in Herald and Genealogist, i. 510. Facsimiles of all the documents preserved in the College of Arms are given in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 2nd ser. 1886, i. 109. Halliwell-Phillipps prints imperfectly one of the 1596 draft-grants, and that of 1599 (Outlines, ii. 56, 60), but does not distinguish the character of the negotiation of the earlier year from that of the negotiation of the later year.
[188b] It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an applicant for a coat-of-arms who has a father alive that the application should be made in the father’s name, and the transaction conducted as if the father were the principal. It was doubtless on advice of this kind that Shakespeare was acting in the negotiations that are described below.
[189] In a manuscript in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 6140, f. 45) is a copy of the tricking of the arms of William ‘Shakspere,’ which is described ‘as a pattent per Will’m Dethike Garter, principale King of Armes;’ this is figured in French’s Shakespeareana Genealogica, p. 524.