perished,--when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few, and
therefore for the greater part more or less known to each other,--when
we know that the plays of Shakspeare, both during and after his life,
were the property of the stage, and published by the players, doubtless
according to their notions of acceptability with the visitants of the
theatre,--in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an allusion
or reference to any drama or poem in the publication of a contemporary
be received as conclusive evidence, that such drama or poem had at that
time been published? Or, further, can the priority of publication itself
prove any thing in favour of actually prior composition.

We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and Adonis, and the
Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest poems, and though not printed
until 1593, in the twenty ninth year of his age, yet there can be little
doubt that they had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr.
Malone has made it highly probable, that he had commenced a writer for
the stage in 1591, when he was twenty seven years old, and Shakspeare
himself assures us that the Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his
invention.[1]

Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction from outward
documents, we may easily stand excused if we turn our researches towards
the internal evidences furnished by the writings themselves, with no
other positive 'data' than the known facts, that the Venus and Adonis
was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594, and that the Romeo and
Juliet had appeared in 1595,--and with no other presumptions than that
the poems, his very first productions, were written many years
earlier,--(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained to
his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting poetic composition
of any kind?)--and that between these and Romeo and Juliet there had