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tween 1597, (when the ſtatute alluded to,—39 Eliz. ch. 4—was enacted) and that year.
Hamlet[1] Sadler was one of the witneſſes to Shakſpeare’s Will. He was probably born ſoon after the firſt exhibition of this play; and, according to this date, was twenty years old at the time of his atteſtation.
If this tragedy had not appeared till ſome years after the date here aſſigned, he would not have been at the time of Shakſpeare’s death above ſixteen or ſeventeen years old; at which age he ſcarcely would have been choſen as a witneſs to ſo ſolemn an act.
The following paſſage, in An Epiſtle to the Gentlemen Students of the Two Univerſities by Thomas Naſhe, prefixed to Greene’s Arcadia, (which has no date) has been thought to allude to this play.—“ I will turn back to my firſt text of
ſtudies of delight, and talk a little in friendſhip with a few of our trivial tranſlators. It is a common practice now adays, among a ſort of ſhifting companions, that runne through every art, and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and buſie themſelves with the endevors of art, that could ſcarcely latinize their neckverſe if they ſhould have neede; yet Engliſh Seneca, read by candle light, yeelds many good ſentences, as Bloud is a beggar, and ſo forth: and if you intreat him faire in a froſty morning he will affoord you whole hamlets, I ſhould ſay, handfuls of tragical ſpeeches. But O grief! Tempus edax rerum—what is that will laſt always? The ſea exhaled by drops will in continuance be drie; and Seneca, let bloud line by line and page by page, at length muſt needes die to our ſtage.”
This paſſage does not, in my apprehenſion, deciſively prove that our author’s Hamlet was written ſo early as 1591; (in which year[2] Dr. Farmer, on good grounds, conjectures
- ↑ It has been obſerved to me, that there are other inſtances of this being uſed as a chriſtian name; it is certainly very uncommon; and may be fairly ſuppoſed, in this caſe, to have taken its riſe from the play.—After all, however, it is not quite clear that this was his name. The name ſubſcribed to Shakſpeare’s original Will (which I have ſeen) ſeems to be Hamnet: but in the body of the Will, he is called Hamlet Sadler.
- ↑ Mr. Oldys, in his Mſ. Additions to Langbaine’s Lives of the Dramatick Poets, ſays, on I know not what authority, that Greene’s
