We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address

Transcribed from the 1891 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk



CITATION AND EXAMINATION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
EUSEBY TREEN JOSEPH CARNABY AND SILAS GOUGH CLERK
BEFORE THE WORSHIPFUL
SIR THOMAS LUCY KNIGHT
TOUCHING DEER-STEELING
On the Nineteenth Day of September in the Year of Grace 1582
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM ORIGINAL PAPERS




EDITOR’S PREFACE.



“It was an ancestor of my husband who brought out the famousShakspeare.”

These words were really spoken, and were repeated in conversation asmost ridiculous.  Certainly such was very far from the lady’sintention; and who knows to what extent they are true?


The frolic of Shakspeare in deer-stealing was the cause of his Hegira;and his connection with players in London was the cause of his writingplays.  Had he remained in his native town, his ambition had neverbeen excited by the applause of the intellectual, the popular, and thepowerful, which, after all, was hardly sufficient to excite it. He wrote from the same motive as he acted, - to earn his daily bread. He felt his own powers; but he cared little for making them felt byothers more than served his wants.

The malignant may doubt, or pretend to doubt, the authenticity of theExamination here published.  Let us, who are not malignant,be cautious of adding anything to the noisome mass of incredulity thatsurrounds us; let us avoid the crying sin of our age, in which the “Memoirsof a Parish Clerk,” edited as they were by a pious and learneddignitary of the Established Church, are questioned in regard to theirgenuineness; and even the privileges of Parliament are inadequate tocover from the foulest imputation - the imputation of having exercisedhis inventive faculties - the elegant and accomplished editor of EugeneAram’s apprehension, trial, and defence.

Indeed, there is little of real history, excepting in romances. Some of these are strictly true to nature; while histories in generalgive a distorted view of her, and rarely a faithful record either ofmomentous or of common events.

Examinations taken from the mouth are surely the most trustworthy. Whoever doubts it may be convinced by Ephraim Barnett.

The Editor is confident he can give no offence to any person who mayhappen to bear the name of Lucy.  The family of Sir Thomas becameextinct nearly half a century ago, and the estates descended to theRev. Mr. John Hammond, of Jesus College, in Oxford, a respectable Welshcurate, between whom and him there existed at his birth eighteen priorclaimants.  He took the name of Lucy.

The reader will form to himself, from this “Examination of Shakspeare,”more favourable opinion of Sir Thomas than is left upon his mind bythe dramatist in the character of Justice Shallow.  The knight,indeed, is here exhibited in all his pride of birth and station, inall his pride of theologian and poet; he is led by the nose, while hebelieves that nobody can move him, and shows some other weaknesses,which the least attentive observer will discover; but he is not withouta little kindness at the bottom of the heart, - a heart too contractedto hold much, or to let what it holds ebulliate very freely.  But,upon the whole, we neither can utterly hate nor utterly despise him. Ungainly as he is. -


Circum præcordia ludit.


The author of the “Imaginary Conversations” seems, in his“Boccacio and Petrarca,” to have taken his idea of SirMagnus from this manuscript.  He, however, has adapted thatcharacter to the times; and in Sir Magnus the coward rises tothe courageous, the unskilful in arms becomes the skilful, and war isto him a teacher of humanity.  With much superstition, theologynever molests him; scholarship and poetry are no affairs of his. He doubts of himself and others, and is as suspicious in his ignoranceas Sir Thomas is confident.

With these wide diversities, there are family features, such as arelikely to display themselves in different times and circumstances, andsome so generically prevalent as never to lie quite dormant in the breed. In both of them there is parsimony, there is arrogance, there is contemptof inferiors, there is abject awe of power, there is irresolution, thereis imbecility.  But Sir Magnus has no knowledge, and no respectfor it.  Sir Thomas would almost go thirty miles, even to Oxford,