he or others mutilated Henslowe's Diary in such a
Mr. HamiltorC s Inquiry. 47
way, tliat some of tlic most valuable portions are now
entirely lost. Even the books, the title-pages of which
he decorated with the old autographs, had belonged to
Dulwich College ; for he contrived to persuade the
Master, Warden and Fellows, of that day, that Old
Plays and Old Poetry did not half so well become
their shelves, as the musty divinity, dull chronicles,
and other volumes of the same sort, which he substi-
tuted. Hence the bulk of his collection ; and he
must have chuckled amazingly at his success in
persuading unsuspecting people to make an ex-
change of works, which would sell for hundreds
of pounds, for others not worth as many shillings.
So of the Manuscripts : they seem to have allowed
Malone to carry away such as he pleased, to
keep them as long as he pleased, and to return
such as he pleased, in the state which he pleased.
Some that he did not return found their way
aaain to their old home after his death ; and it is
not very long since the College, most properly,
bought back a bundle of papers that must have
originally come out of its archives.
It was to all that remained, that I had, by the
kindness and confidence of the authorities, between
about the year 1825 and 1830, access in the first
instance, when I was completing my materials for
The History of English Dramatic Poetry and the
Stage. I cannot call to mind the precise date, but I
can well recollect the politeness and readiness of the
then Master to aid my researches. I had been intro-
duced to him personally by my learned and excel-
lent friend Mr. Amyot.
One of the first documents I looked at was, I
think, a letter from Mrs. Alleyn to her husband,
48 Mr. J. Payne Collier's Reply to
dated 3rd Oct., 1603, upon which has now been
founded the charge that I interpohited a passage not
met with in the originaL It was in one place in
so decayed and crumbling a condition from the
effects of damp and time, that I was obliged to
handle it with the utmost caution. I did not read
it nor examine it closely until afterwards, how long
I do not pretend to say, but a friend, now unfortu-
nately dead, was with me, and we then read as
follows, in the latter part of the letter.
" Aboute a weeke a goe came a youthe, who said
he was Mr. Frauncis Chaloner, who would have
borrowed x" to have bought things for * * *, and
said he was known unto you, and Mr. Shakespeare
of the globe, who came * * * said he knewe hym
not, onely he herde of hym that he was a roge, * * *
so he was glade we did not lend him the monney
* * *. Richard Johnes [went] to seeke and inquire
after the fellow, and said he had lent hym a horse.
I feare me he gulled hym, thoughe he gulled not us."
Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, 8vo. 1841, p. 63.
Now the question is, and the only question of the
slightest importance (though that is in truth of little
moment) whether the name of " Mr. Shakespeare of
the globe " occurred in the most rotten and frag-
mentary part of the letter at the time when I copied
it. Whether it did or did not is not of the smallest
interest, as regards the biography of our poet,
especially as there were two, if not three, other
Shakespeares " of the Globe " Theatre, then resident
in Southwark.* However, the charge is that from the
* One of these was an Edward Shakespeare, of whom nobody
had ever heard till I published his name in 1846 {Lives of Shake-
speare's Actors, Introd. p. xv.) from the Registers of Cripplegate
Mr. Hamilton's Inquiry. 49
mere love of deception (for I could have no other
motive) I imagined the part of the letter in which
the name of Shakespeare occurs, and corrupted the
inmiediately adjoining portions for the purpose of
giving my invention support.
It is indisputable that since I first saw and copied
the letter at Dulwich, portions of it have crumbled
away and entirely disappeared ; so that Mr. Hamil-
ton's account of the contents differs from mine : he
accuses me not only of inaccuracy, but of fraud and
wilful misrepresentation. I do not deny that it is
possible I misread some utterly unimportant letters
or words : the paper was in such a state of demolition
that it was extremely difficult to make any sense out
of the latter part of it ; but I did my best to give a
faithful transcript, and I am absolutely certain that
"Mr. Shakespeare of the globe" was spoken of in it,
and in the way I stated. Mr. Hamilton asserts that
" there is not the smallest trace of authority for any
allusion to Shakespeare : " this may be very true ;
he is speaking of Mrs. Alleyn's letter in its present
condition, but that is not the question : the question
is, whether, when I saw the letter, some thirty, or
even more years ago, the name of " Mr. Shakespeare
of the globe " was not to be traced. I maintain that
it was ; and had an intimate and excellent friend
been still alive, I could have substantiated it by
his evidence as well as by my own. Mr. Hamilton
insists that the name of Shakespeare never was to
be seen on any part of the paper which is now
Parish. I may here express my wonder that the MS. Department of
the British Museum has not contended that I invented and forged
most of the particulars I derived especially from the Southwark,
Cripplegate, and Shorcditch parochial records.
E
50 Mr. J. Payne Collier's Reply to
rotted away ; but liow can lie tell wlietlier it did or
did not exist there, when he cannot deny that much
of what was originally written on that part of the
paper has been utterly annihilated ? Excepting as
it impeaches me, the whole is really a lana caprina
matter, valuable, perhaps, to Mr. Hamilton and to
his coadjutors in the distress of their case, but utterly
worthless to anybody else.
Here allow me to ask this question i If I had
purposely misstated the import and contents of the
letter, adding that it was in a state of ruinous decay,
what would have been the natural course for me to
have pursued ? would it not have been to have left
the letter as it was, in the hope that when it was next
seen and consulted, as much of it might have disap-
peared as possible? Instead of doing so — instead
of leaving it still exposed to the action of air and
accident, I carefully inclosed it in paper, and either
I or my friend wrote on the outside, that within was
a document of value, which should not be roughly
handled. I have also a faint recollection that I
especially directed the attention of the Master of
the College, or of the Librarian, to it : at all events,
I diligently wrapped it up, as if to make sure that
the next person who opened the paper should see
that I had been guilty of fraud. If, indeed, I had so
misrepresented the contents of the crumbling relic,
what was to prevent my rubbing away a little more
of the old paper, and who then would have been able
to detect the trick I had played ? I have never, I think,
seen the letter from the day I copied it until this
moment ; but I understand that the envelope, on
which my caution was written, is still in existence,
though it did not suit the purpose of my adversaries
Mr. Hamilton s Inquiry. 51
to mention the care I had taken, if I were guilty, to
preserve the evidence of my guilt,*
Such is the way in which these accusations have
been prepared ; I will not say manufactured. The
passage I have quoted from Malone's Inquiry.^ shows
that he knew from the documents before him, that is
to say, from documents derived from Dulwich College,
that Shakespeare was in all human probability living
in South wark during twelve successive years.
Mrs. Alleyn's letter proves that "Mr. Shakespeare
of the globe" was seen in South wark in October, 1603,
and this was doubtless one of Malone's reasons for
concluding that our great dramatist had a residence
in Southwark from 1596 to 1608.
Malone, nevertheless, was unquestionably in error
as to the latter year ; for it is certain that it should
be 1609 ; because the assessment to the poor for the
liberty of the Clink, in which the names of Shake-
speare, Henslowe and Alleyn appear, as giving a
weekly contribution of 6fl?., is dated 8th April, 1609:
1608 ended on 25th March, so that the year 1609
* See the Athenatum of 25th Feb. last, p. 269. The Editor
seems to have been incredulous upon the point whether I did
actually leave Mrs. Alleyn's letter so carefully inclosed, but he
found it in an envelope inscribed thus : " Important document
— not to be handled until bound, and repaired, the lower part
being rotten." " Would any man in his senses (asks the Editor)
sedulously guard from harm a document which he had consciously
misread ? Would any rogue guilty of foisting in a paragraph
into a public paper, take pains to call instant and incessant atten-
tion to the very document which would witness to his crime ? No
one out of Bedlam." How happens it, I may be allowed to ask,
that Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton says not one syllable of the pains
I had volunteered to take that the letter should not receive
farther injury ? Does not this trifling fact tend to prove the
animus with which I am pursued ?
52 Mr. J. Payne Collier's Reply to
had then commenced exactly a fortnight, for which
Malone did not allow. In my letter in the AthenoRum,
of 18th Feb., 1859, I hastily supposed (writing in a
hurry for immediate publication) that Mr. Hamilton
referred to this assessment : I was mistaken.* There
is no doubt that it was in existence when Malone
published his Inquiry in 1796, and that he had seen
it. I was then only seven years old, and of course
merely a probationer in " pothooks and hangers," so
that Mr. Hamilton will hardly contend that at that
early age I could be a proficient in forgery.
The "list of players," which Mr. Hamilton
charges as a modern addition to a genuine document,
I saw and quoted with the other papers ; and if the
names were forged, I can only say that they must
have been upon the instrument when it was seen by
Malone before 1796, although he did not extract it,
reserving it, perhaps, (as I said in my Memoirs of
Edward Alleyn) for his Life of Shakespeare. My
materials for those Memoirs were in great part col-
lected while I was engaged on my History of English
Dramatic Poetry and the Stage; and I can most
distinctly aver that the " list of players " was then
extant, and that it was seen by Mr. Amyot, who
accompanied me in one of my earlier expeditions to
Dulwich. I myself state {Me7n. of Alleyn, p. 67)
that the " list " itself is " in a different hand and in
different ink," which I need not have mentioned,
if I had not wished to produce all the circumstances
* The reader will be so good as to observe that I emphatically
acknowledge my error. I call attention to it, lest Mr. Hamilton
should be disposed to argue that I purposely drew attention to one
document, that I might lead people's minds away from another.
My case as to that other is still stronger.
Mr. Hamilton's Inquiry. 53
regarding it, that would enable a correct judgment
to be formed of its authenticity. Moreover, to set
this matter completely at rest, I have now before
me Malone's copy of his Inquiry (8vo, 1796), as
annotated by him for a second edition : it is full
of scribbled scraps and notes with information, not
contained in the first edition, and on the back of
a letter addressed to " Mr. Malone, Queen Anne
Street, East," is the very list of players in question.
Therefore, whether it were or were not an addition
subsequent to the date of the original document to
which it is appended, it is certain that it was seen by
Malone very many years before I was at Dulwich.*
If any of the documents returned to Dulwich
College after Malone's death appear to have been
tampered with, I most distinctly acquit him of any
such misconduct. Whatever I may be, in the
opinion of my adversaries, I feel sure that he was a
man of honour and principle ; and supposing, only for
a moment, that we were on a par in that respect, it
must be admitted that Malone, with all the docu-
ments in his private room for years, had infinitely
* This book I bought some years after I had printed my
Memoirs of Alley n in 1841. As a bibliographical note, and as
it may serve hereafter as a means of identifying the book (though
Malone's writing, print-like or current, is to be found in hundreds
of places in it), I quote the following particulars from the fly-
leaf: Mr. Hamilton is fond of fly-leaves and their water-marks,
and he may like to know that " 1795 " is distinctly to be seen in
the substance of the paper. Malone's note is this: — ^^ For a
second edition. Begun to be written about the 10th of January.
Begun to be printed about the 20th of January; finished at the
press, Monday, March 28: published March 31st, 1796. — 500 copies
sold on that day and the next." So that it took Malone less than
three months to write and print an 8vo. vol. of 424 pages.
54 Mr. J. Payne Collier^s Reply to
the advantage over me, as far as the commission of
fraud and forgery is concerned. At Dulwich I was
never, at that period, anywhere but in a public
library-room, always open, not only to the fellows
and the servants of the College, but to individuals
in the neighbourhood, who were well known.
What opportunity I had for committing any of
these elaborate offences, my antagonists have not
attempted to show : I do not mean to say that I
was not often alone, and for some time, but never
without the constant danger of being interrupted
and detected in my imputed practices.
With reference to the Player's Challenge., be-
ginning, " Sweete Nedde, no we wynne an other
wager," which Mr. Hamilton declares a "forgery
from beginning to end, although executed with sin-
gular dexterity,'' I may remark that Mr. Halliwell
quotes it in his Life of Shakespeare^ 8vo. 1848, p.
329, after having " collated it with the original ;" and
he does not drop the remotest hint that he thought
it a forgery. I have no particular recollection of the
manner in which it is written, but, contrary to what
Mr. Hamilton says, that it is " executed with singular
dexterity," it now seems to me that the reduplication
of consonants, and other points of orthography in it,
might possibly raise suspicion.
What surpi'ises me, in reference to the Dulwich
Manuscripts, is that Mr. Hamilton should have con-
fined his objections to such paltry points, when in
the course of the Memoirs of Alley n., I have for the
first time printed so many papers of importance
that are passed by without a word of notice. What
does he say, for instance, to Ben Jonson's translation
from Martial, to Sir W. Alexander's copy of verses,
Mr. Hamilton's Inquiry. 55
to Dekker's and Field's Letters, and to nearly the
wliole of Alleyn's part in R. Greene's Orlando Fu-
rioso^ 1594, with various other curious original do-
cuments? All these receive no comment — and with
very good reason, I can well believe.
I do not perceive in his Inquiry that Mr. Hamilton
speaks, as he did in his letters in The Times of July
last, of paint, pigment, and manufactured inks ; * but
I know, and he knows, that any ink, however old,
may be removed if proper methods be applied ; and
the scientific department of the British Museum
cannot be wanting in skill in this particular. The
late Thomas Rodd, the bookseller, undertook for me,
and accomplished it, to abolish the slightest appear-
ance of ink-stain from scribbled title-pages ; and I
myself have taken envelopes sent from different hemi-
spheres, east and west, and have obliterated the ad-
dresses by the simplest application. In trutli, as
most people are aware, no test of the genuine or
the spurious can be more uncertain; and if the
Trustees of the British Museum would give me leave,
I could promise, with no other means, to expunge
every vestige of the famous signature, " Willm Sliak-
spere,'' in the Montaigne's Essays by Florio, 1603,
for which alone Sir F. Madden paid out of the public
purse no less a sum than £130. I, am sure that he
would not let it stand the test even of a sponge and
* In my Prefaces to Notes and Emendations I have myself
not omitted to state that " the ink in the Perkins folio was of
various shades, differing sometimes on the same page," and in
the body of the book I have in several places, and with reference
to particular emendations, pointed out the same peculiarity. I
did so in order to enable people to form a just estimate upon the
question of authenticity, as applied to the whole volume ; and if I
omitted any information of the kind, it was quite unintentionally.
56 Mr. J. Payne Colliers Reply to
water ; aud yet ]\Ir. Maskelyne and Mr. Hamilton
licked over the Perkins folio ad libitum^ and were
delighted to find that they could manage to get off
some of the supposed colouring matter. They do
not tell us how much of the soft surface of the old
paper they destroyed in this process.
I am now glad to arrive at the last count in the
indictment against me ; it amounts to the very grave
charge, that I was guilty of manufacturing and forging
a State paper — a document deposited in the National
Archives, and still existing there.
Many years were employed by me in collecting
materials for my History of English Dramatic
Poetry and the Stage: it was published twenty -nine
years ago, aud I think it took more than a year to
print it, for it was a work requiring more accuracy
than despatch : it was certainly not ready for press
until 1829 or 1830, and it bears date in 1831. I
cannot speak positively upon the point, but I think
it must be about thirty -three or thirty-four years ago,
that I first obtained admission into the State Paper
Office that I might copy documents that bore upon
my subject.
That always willing and zealous friend, Mr.
Amyot, then Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries,
gave me a personal introduction to Mr. Lemon, the
father of the gentleman who is now so deservedly
high in the Department. Mr. Lemon, senior, was at
that date in a post of great trust and confidence, and
at my earnest request he promised to look out for
me certain muniments relating to plays and theatres.
I believe that, as he took a lively interest in my
pursuits, he bestowed a good deal of pains on
searching out relics that would contribute to my
Mr. Hamilton's Inquiry. 57
purpose — and calling iu Great George Street, where
tlie State Papers were then kept l^efore their removal
to their present abode, I found, much to my satisfac-
tion, that he had instituted so active an inquiry,
that he had discovered foi- me five or six papers of
great novelty and curiosity.
My belief is that the office hours did not extend
beyond three in the day ; and as it was late before I
arrived, I expressed my fears that I should not be
able to copy all the documents that morning. One
of them, I well remember, was a Memorial from
some of the principal inhabitants of the precinct of
Blackfriars against the continuance of a theatre there,
on the ground that it was a nuisance, — that it at-
tracted disorderly crowds, and that, as it was about
to be repaired and enlarged by the players, the an-
noyance would be increased. Another document
was in the form of a Petition from the players against
that Memorial ; and this last Mr. Lemon very kindly
undertook either to copy, or to get copied for me:
he took it away for the purpose, and by the time I
had made some extracts from the Memorial, he re-
turned into the room where I was sitting, with the
Petition and the transcript of it in his hand. He
was good enough to aid me in the collation of the
two, and when we had finished, he took away the
Petition itself (which I never saw again, but the
authenticity of which I never for a moment doubted)
and left me the copy, which I used for my book,
sending the very same sheet to the printer of my
History.
My notion was that Mr. Lemon's son, the present
head of the family, had copied the paper for me; but
I have since understood that such was not the case.
58 Mr. J. Payne Collier's Reply to
Even now, after tlie lapse of so many years, if it had
been of any conseiiuence, I might have been able to
decide the point, had I not, when I quitted London
in the spring of 1850, for the sake of putting every-
thing into as small a compass as I could, sent away
or destroyed all my proof-sheets, and the manuscript
belonging to them. Until then it had been my con-
stant habit to tie in bundles the proofs and " copy"
of every separate work in which I had been con-
cerned from 1820 to 1850. A large parcel of old,
useless letters, shared the same fate, as I could not
caiTy them with me into the country, and as the
Pantechnicon would have charged heavily for the
space they would have occupied.
That this Petition existed in the State Paper
Office before I knew where that office was, is quite
clear. It was found for, and pointed out to me, by
Mr. Lemon, senior. Mr. Lemon, junior, still in that
department, bears w^itness that it ivas known, both
to himself and to his father, before I had been ad-
mitted into the State Paper Office : of this fact there
exists the best possible evidence ; for the Editor of
the AthencBum, having learned that such was the
case, very recently wrote the subsequent note to
Mr. Lemon, making the inquiry whether what he
had heard were true : —
"Athenaeum Office, Feb. 13, 1860.
" The Editor of the Atlienceum presents his compHments
to Mr. Lemon, and referring to the Petition of the Players —
contained in the bundle of papers in the State Paper Office
marked ' Bundle No. 222, Elizabeth, 1596,' a copy of which
lias been printed in text by Mr. Collier, and in fac-simile by
Mr. Halliwell, takes the liberty of inquiring whether, within
Mr. Lemon's knowledge, that Petition of the Players was in
Ml'. Hamilton^ s Inquiry. 59
the State Paper Office before Mr. Collier began bis researches
in that office? An early answer will oblige."
The inquiry was, of course, very material; not
merely Avitli reference to the authenticity of the Peti-
tion, but with reference to the impossibility of my
being concerned in "the surreptitious mtroduction
of it," to use Mr. Hamilton's words. The answer,
forwarded by return of post, was entirely satisfactory,
and in these terms : —
" State Paper Office, Feb. 14, 1860,
" Dear Sir,
" In reply to your question, I beg to state that the
Petition of the Players of the Blackfriars Theatre, alluded
to in your note, was well known to my father and myself,
before Mr. Payne Collier began his researches in this office.
I am pretty confident that my father himself brought it under
the notice of Mr. Collier, in whose researches he took great
interest.
" I am very faithfully yours,
" R. Lemon.
" The Editor of the Athenseum."
I am not aware, therefore, that it is necessary for
me to say more upon this part of the subject. Mr.
Lemon, senior, undoubtedly did bring the Players'
Petition under my notice, and very much obliged to
him I was, that he took so much trouble to assist me
in my literary investigations. The genuineness of
the Memorial, to which the Petition is obviously an
answer, has, I believe, not been questioned; and as
it is dated 1596, it may be said to ascertain that the
Petition, which has no date, was of the same period.
The following quotation from the Loseley Manu-
scripts (edited by the late A. J. Kempe, Esq.), 8vo.,
1835, p. 496, proves in what way the Players at the
60 Mr. J. Payne Collier's Reply to
BJackfriars, at about this period, intended to enlarge
their theatre, viz. by taking in part of the house of
Sir Wilham More.
" Lord Hunsdon to Sir William More. Wishes
to take a house of him in the Blackfriars. Hears
he has already parted with a portion of his own house
to some that mean to make a playhouse of it. So-
merset House, Jan. 9, 1595."
At that time, " Jan. 9, 1595," was in fact Jan. 9,
1596, which tallies with the date of the Memorial
and consequent Petition. We know besides, that, in
May, 1596, it was directed that the Players should
not be disturbed. These, however, are only points of
history, rendering it probable that the Players did
present such a Petition ; for it cannot now be disputed
that I was not the discoverer of the document, but that
having been found by the late Mr. Lemon, he brought
it to my knowledge, and kindly procured it to be
copied for me, in order to expedite me in my under-
taking.
I consider myself much more than fortunate to be
able to procure this important and indisputable piece
of evidence; for, had the present Mr. Lemon died
between about 1828 and 1860, how might not my