a picture has gotten a dint, the best method of cure is by new lining.”
From love his lordship flies off to dramatic business. Shakspeare, he says, is an unanswerable excuse for everything.
“Many thanks for your kind and persevering attention in supplying my literary wants. The number of my last volume in small quarto is thirty-three; in the larger size, twenty-nine. The Morocco volume contains:—Hamlet (no date), Henry V. (1608), Henry VI. (no date), Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600), Merchant of Venice (1600), Merry Wives of Windsor (1619), King Lear (1608). What others of my Shakspeares have you got, and what have you been able to procure?” Another letter relates to Italian writers. One also to Mrs. Hogarth, which has been previously noticed. A fourth coincides in almost every point with Malone’s dissertation, which he had now perused, on the parts of Henry VI.
To the inquiry of his friend as to the first theatrical performances in Dublin, his lordship says no satisfactory information could be given. Mr. Cooper Walker, well known in the literary circles of Dublin, had done all he could. The records were few and scanty; but the result, such as it was, is, for the information of the curious reader, transferred to a note.[1]
- ↑ He can find nothing in the Auditor-general’s office relative to plays acted at the Castle. The most ancient theatre of Dublin appears to have been a booth erected in Hoggin Green, now College Green, where mysteries principally were acted, to which the Lords Lieutenant were frequently invited. A theatre in Werburgh Street succeeded to this, which was open till 1641, and the last play there exhibited was Landegartha, a tragi-comedy, by Henry Burnell, an Irish gentleman. Respecting the
