much to do in suggesting the strange
misrepresentation.

And is this all?

No! It is not.

There is one play that, by its whole invention, lies nearest the reality,
which must be taken as habitually possessing the understandings of an
English--a London--audience, in the reign of Elizabeth. It is that one
comedy which haunts upon English ground--"The Merry Wives of Windsor." The
complexion and constitution of the play lay it in the bosom--the manners
are those--of MIDDLE English life.

Here are the persons:--Sir John Falstaff; Fenton, (he is Ann Page's lover,
the list of the names assigns him no rank. In conversation with mine host
of the Garter, however, he asserts his own quality; with "as I am a
gentleman;") Shallow, _a country justice_; Slender, _cousin to Shallow_;
Mr Ford, Mr Page, _two gentlemen_ dwelling at Windsor; William Page, a
boy, _son to Mr Page_; Sir Hugh Evans, _a Welsh parson_; Dr Caius, _a
French Physician; Host of the Garter Inn_; Bardolf, Pistol, Nym,
_followers_ of Falstaff; Robin, _page_ to Falstaff; Simple, _servant_ to
Slender; Rugby, _servant_ to Dr Caius.

There is no need of adding two wives and a daughter. Here is the _toning_
of that which we will take leave to call Shakspeare's _only unromantic and
unaristocratical_ comedy.

Was this written to please the "meaner sort" of people who frequented the
playhouses?

Dennis hands down the tradition--which he may have had from Dryden, who
may have had it from Sir W. Davenant--that "the comedy was written at the
command of Queen Elizabeth, and _by her direction_." At all events, and
whatsoever other tastes it courted and may have gratified, it won the
favour of the highest audience. The quarto edition of 1602, describes it
as having been "divers times acted by the right honourable my Lord
Chamberlaine's servants, both before her Maiestie, and else-where;" and
in the accounts of the _Revels at Court_, in the latter end of 1604, it
figures as performed on the Sunday following November first, "by his
Majestie's plaiers."

We have thus, in part explicitly and in part summarily, documented the
TONE, if it may be so called, of Shakspeare's Comic Theatre--being
impelled so to do, first of all, by the duty of contradicting, the most
injurious and utterly groundless characterization of a critic, whom we
cite with the highest esteem and applause; further, by the fear that the
positive and unqualified averment of a high and critical authority might