Transcribed from the 1888 Henry Gray edition ,
His Epitaph Unearthed,
AND THE
Author of the Plays run to Ground.
WITH SUPPLEMENT.
BY
SCOTT SURTEES.
LONDON:
HENRY GRAY, 47, LEICESTERSQUARE.
1888.
Price in Cloth, 2s. By Post,2s. 2d.
Shakespere’s Early Home.
Shakespere’s Chairs.
Strange Form ofMarriage Licence.
Shakespere’s Later Home at NewPlace.
Who WroteShakespeare’s Plays? AGuess at the Truth.
Mr. Donnellyand the Cryptogram, with Supplement and Notes on VariousSubjects.
BY
REV. SCOTT SURTEES,
OF
Dinsdale-on-Tees.
There is one point above all others which bears stronglyagainst the theory that William Shakspere, of Stratford-on-Avon,was the author of the so-called Shakespeare’s Plays, andthat is the audacious doggerel which has been fathered on hismemory. William Shakspere, after a disreputable youth,marrying at 17 or 18 a woman many years older than himself, whosechild was soon after born, the son of a father who could notwrite his name, and in debt and difficulty, and who himself(père) had been within the clutches of the law, found hisnative place too hot to hold him, and if the universal traditionon the subject is worth anything, having a warrant out againsthim for poaching, “flitted” to London, became astage-player, went in for speculation in building a theatre, laidout his modest earnings judiciously, bought a house in his nativeplace, another in London “within the precinct of the lateBlack Fryers,” retired to New Place, died, and was buriedin the church of that dirty town, in p. 61616, in the chancel, and his epitaphinscribed at his request upon his tomb. He appears to havebeen in the habit of writing or quoting such, and got the creditfor this sort of poetry from his companions. It is plainfrom the evidence I produce (p. 7) that in and about those yearsit was the custom in London churches to put verses ofquestionable merit on monuments and tombs, that it was usual to“crib” or copy them from some one else, and use themas their own. The instances I give (and their name islegion) shows this clearly to have been an every-daypractice. The play-actor, with a memory sharpened “bylearning his parts,” had no doubt seen them on the walls ofchurches during his residence in London, and was in the habit ofrepeating and passing off as h