To bind this friendship and confirme this league."

_Six Old Plays_, p. 204.

A short account of the process by which I came to a conclusion which,
if established, must overthrow so many ingenious theories, will not,
I trust, be uninteresting to your readers. In the relationship between
these two plays there always seemed to be something which needed
explanation. It was the only instance among the works of Shakspeare in
which a direct copy, even to matters of detail, appeared to have been
made; and, in spite of all attempts to gloss over and palliate, it
was impossible to deny that an unblushing act of mere piracy seemed
to have been committed, of which I never could bring myself to believe
that Shakspeare had been guilty. The readiness to impute this act to
him was to me but an instance of the unworthy manner in which he had
almost universally been treated; and, without at the time having any
suspicion of what I now take to be the fact, {346} I determined, if
possible, to find it out. The first question I put to myself was, Had
Shakspeare himself any concern in the older play? A second glance
at the work sufficed for an answer in the negative. I next asked
myself on what authority we called it an "older" play. The answer I
found myself obliged to give was, greatly to my own surprise, On no
authority whatever! But there was still a difficulty in conceiving
how, with Shakspeare's work before him, so unscrupulous an imitator
should have made so poor an imitation. I should not have felt this
difficulty had I then recollected that the play in question was not
published; but, as the case stood, I carefully examined the two plays
together, especially those passages which were identical, or nearly
so, in both, and noted, in these cases, the minutest variations. The
result was, that I satisfied myself that the original conception was