so improbable that it may be called
impossible" (_Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_, 60). I have elsewhere
set down reasons for my own belief that Hanmer could have had nothing to
do with the composition of the essay, arguing on grounds of ideas,
attitudes, style, and other internal evidence ("Thomas Hanmer and the
Anonymous Essay on _Hamlet_," _MLN_61 [1934], 493-498). Without going
over the case again, I wish here merely to reaffirm my conviction that
Hanmer was not the author, and to say that it would seem that the
difference in styles and the attitude of Anonymous toward Pope and
Theobald are alone convincing proof that Hanmer had no part in the
_Remarks_. Hanmer's style is stiff, formal, pedantic; the style of the
essay is free, easy, direct, more in the Addison manner. Hanmer was a
disciple of Pope's, and in his Preface to his Shakespeare and in his
edition as a whole shows allegiance to Pope. Anonymous, on the contrary,
decisively, though urbanely, rejects Pope's edition in favor of
Theobald's text and notes. The fact that Theobald was at that time still
the king of dunces in the _Dunciad_, adds to the improbability that an
admirer of Pope's, as Hanmer certainly was, would pay Theobald such
honor.

Most careful scholars of our day go no further on the question of
authorship than to note that the essay has been "attributed" to Hanmer;
some, like Professor Stoll, seem to have dropped the idea that Hanmer
was in any way connected with it and safely speak of "the author" or
"the anonymous author"; I recall only one case in recent years of an
all-out, incautious assignment of the authorship to Hanmer ("Hamlet
among the Mechanists," _Shakespeare Association Bulletin_ 17 [July,
1942], 138). It would seem advisable to follow Stoll's lead and ignore
Hanmer entirely.

The anonymous essay has been of continued interest to students of
Shakespeare. Echoes of its ideas if not its words appear in such later
critics of the eighteenth century as Gentleman, Steevens, Richardson,
and Morgann; in 1790 Malone copied out some two pages of the best of it
for publication; and in 1864 the whole was reprinted, a not too usual
thing for an obscure eighteenth century pamphlet. Present-day students
of Shakespeare, among them D.N. Smith, Lounsbury, Babcock, Lawrence, and
Stoll have treated the essay with unvarying respect. Remarking that it
anticipates some of Johnson's arguments, Smith calls it in general a
"well-written, interesting book"