lumped his receipts together having a share in both. April 6th is dated 1593 and the following night, April 7th is dated 1594, for the first time in that year the rectification of the dating is made. So that from January 1st to April 7th the year according to our reckoning, is dated wrongly. During this time Titus Andronicus' was produced as a new play on the 22nd of January 1593 as dated, which means January 22nd 1594. This makes it still more improbable that it was Shakspeare's Tragedy.

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Malone supposes the play brought out at Henslowe's Theatre to be the same as that included in Shakspeare's Works as Titus Andronicus.' No doubt the play is the same but it is simply inconceivable that it should have been a new work of our Poet's brought out at a rival theatre in 1594. The play was probably founded on the older Titus and Vespasian' of the same theatre but, as Hallam judges, it is not Shakspeare's in any sense. It seems to me that Ben Jonson's sneer at it is good evidence that the play of which he speaks was not Shakspeare's. Also, he may have classed it with the old Jeronimo' on account of its quality without implying that both were of the same date. My conviction is that the play was mapped out and partly written by Marlowe who was the great poet at Henslowe's Theatre. His Jew of Malta,' and the Titus Andronicus' were running there alternately and to judge by Henslowe's receipts the latter play was a success. Marlowe's death in June 1593 would prevent his finishing the play and be the chief cause why his name slipped out of sight. It was entered in the Stationers' Registers 1593 but not completed for performance till early in the next year. And whose was the hand that finished the play? Whose should it be but Nash's? he who was united with Marlowe in the production of 'Queen Dido.' It appears to me that no great amount of insight is necessary to discover the same workmanship in both plays. The Drama may have been removed to

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A MISTAKE RECTIFIED.

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Shakspeare's Theatre on account of Nash's part in it and because both Nash and Marlowe were under the patronage of Shakspeare's friend, Southampton, in whose interest the play may have been completed and at whose request it may have been adopted by the Blackfriars Company. It was published without a name in 1594. And if our Poet made a copy in his own hand-writing that may have misled the Editors of the first folio. As for Meres, it is far easier to believe that he made one mistake in his list of an unpublished literature than it is to accept Titus Andronicus' as Shakspeare's work in any sense.

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APPENDIX E.

'EYSELL.'

SONNET 111.

'EYSELL' is Vinegar, says Steevens, and he quotes a colourable illustration from 'A mery Geste of the Frere and the Boye.'

"God that dyed for us all

And drank both eysell and gall.'

Vinegar, says Malone, is esteemed very efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague and other contagious distempers, which is quite true and yet not applicable; for the lover in the sonnet has no contagious distemper, his infection was not physical, he did not require to be fumigated; his stomach was not literally a sick chamber; and our Social Science, as yet, has failed to show that vinegar can contend successfully with immoral influences. I cannot rest satisfied that the Eysell of the old ballad was not more than an equivalent for vinegar; I suspect it of a much more subtle meaning. In the Salisbury Primer (1555), the eighth prayer of the Fifteen O's begins thus:-O Blessed Jesu! sweetness of heart and ghostly pleasure of souls, I beseech thee, for the bitterness of the Eysell and gall that thou tasted and suffered for me in thy passion, &c.,' which seems to imply more than is expressed by vinegar. No doubt we have interpreted the old Eysell' as vinegar, but that is not the

'EYSELL MEANS MORE THAN VINEGAR.

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question. My feeling is that when the word was used to express the potion drunk by the Son of God on the cross, it signified far more than vinegar. I do not think Shakspeare could have chosen vinegar as the express juice of all bitterness, seeing that bitterness is not only not its dominant character; it is not even a characteristic ; neither could it apply to a moral infection. Surely the lady would have looked to see if her lover were 'sniggering,' had he offered to swallow draughts of vinegar before he ventured to kiss her? And surely 'Eysell' was used because it had some moral signification? My query is whether Eysell' may not have been a word in the vulgar tongue, the exact meaning of which is now lost to the Etymologists? May not it have once signified tears, tears of sorrow, tears of repentance, tears of such preciousness and power, that the sight of the eye is as it were, bartered for bitterness, its life and strength sold to produce them; thus, in brief, Eysell' would be the life. and 'precious seeing' of the eye sold in tears? And the lover would offer to drink potions of this, as the extract of all bitterness, a water of the most potent efficacy in washing a soul white, and cleansing it from moral impurity. Strange things were drunk, and strange offers made by the lovers of the time, in amorous bravado. But this lover was intensely in earnest, and the word is chosen for some transcendant worth. There was no bitterness to be expressed beyond it, and so he has to follow it with No bitterness that I will bitter think.' Now vinegar is altogether inadequate for the purpose, either in Shakspeare's or the popular imagination.

There is, I think, some slight authority for my conjecture in the sense our Poet has of the virtue of tears, and the way in which he speaks of drinking them.

In sonnet 34 the speaker says:

Ah! but those tears are pearl, which thy love sheds,
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds,'

Here is the equivalent of Eysell' as regards the preciousness of the tears, only translated more gaily. In the 'Venus and Adonis,' Venus asks Death, 'Dost thou drink tears, that thou provokest such weeping?' In part iii. of King Henry VI. we have 'for every word I speak, ye see I drink the water of mine eyes!' And in sonnet 119

"What potions have I drunk of siren tears!'

Here the speaker has drunk potions of tears of the wrong sort. Moreover he pleads that in coming back to his Mistress, he has brought water for his stain. I doubt if 'Vinegar' n be traced etymologically to 'Eyesell.' On the other hand, 'Eh-scen,' or 'Eœh-sen,' is semi-Saxon for eye-sight. Also we have the eye-water, Euphrasy, to brighten and make clear. Why not the eye-water, Eysell,' or Eye-sell, which is so precious a thing morally when wept in bitterness of soul, as to be considered of incomparable virtue in cleansing, and potent against infection ?