—Bullen’s Marlowe.
28 Titus Andronicus was published in 1594; Romeo and Juliet, 1597; Richard II, 1597; Richard III, 1597. No name of author was on their title pages.
—Fleay’s Life and Character of Shakespere.
Halliwell-Phillipps Outlines chap. “Life
Time Editions.”
29 The first published drama bearing Shakespere’s name was Love’s Labor Lost, 1598. “Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere,” were the words on the title page.
—Fleay’s Life and Character of Shakespere.—Outlines,
chapter “Life Time Editions.”
30 “Like Sir Walter Raleigh, and a few less memorable men of the same generation, he was attacked in his own time, not merely as a free-thinker, but as a propagandist or apostle of atheism; nor was the irregularity of his life thought worthier of animadversion than the uncertainty of his livelihood.”
—Article “Marlowe,” Encyclopedia Britannica.
31 This accusation is among the Harleian MSS., 6853, fol. 320, and is entitled “A note containing the opinion of one Christopher Marlye, concerning his damnable opinions and judgment of relygion and scorne of God’s worde.” On it is also a memorandum that within three days after its delivery, Marlowe “came to a soden and fearfull end of his life.” It is endorsed “Copy of Marlowes blasphenyes as sent to her Highness.” A great portion of it is too abominable to be printed.
—Dyce’s Marlowe.
—Bullen’s Marlowe.
32 There are only five known signatures of Wm. Shakespere, and no other written words or manuscript known to be by his hand. The scrawls are scarcely decipherable and strongly at variance with the statement made by Heminge and Condell in the First Folio Edition of the Plays: “His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he wrote with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.”