e person, to whom the letter was pretended to have been
addressed, is suspicious. "Marle" was one way of spelling "Marlowe" at
a period when forms of surnames varied with the caprice of the writer.
The great dramatist, _Christopher_ Marle, or Marloe, or Marlowe, had
died in 1593. "Henrie Marle" is counterfeit coinage of no doubtful
stamp.

The language and the style of the letter are undeserving of serious
examination. They are of a far later period than the Elizabethan age.
They cannot be dated earlier than 1763. Safely might the heaviest odds
be laid that in no year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth "did friende
Marle promyse G. Peel his syster that he would send hyr watche and the
cookerie book by the man," or that "Ned Alleyn made pleasante
affirmation to G. Peel of friend Will's theft of the speech in
_Hamlet_ concerning an actor's excellencye."

From top to toe the imposture is obvious. But the general reader of
the eighteenth century was confiding, unsuspicious, greedy of novel
information. The description of the source of the document seemed to
him precise enough to silence doubt.

III

The _Theatrical Review_ of 1763 succeeded in launching the fraud on a
quite triumphal progress. Again and again, as the century advanced,
was G. Peel's declaration to "friende Marle" paraded, without hint of
its falsity, before snappers-up of Shakespearean trifles. Seven years
after its first publication, the epistle found admission in a slightly
altered setting to so reputable a periodical as the _Annual Register_.
Burke was still directing that useful publication, and whatever
information the _Register_ shielded, was reckoned to be of veracity.
"G. Peel" and "friende Marle" were there, in the year 1770, suffered
to exchange their confidences in the most honourable environment.

Another seven years passed, and in 1777 there appeared an ambitious
work of reference, entitled _Biographia Literaria, or a Biographical
History of Literature_, which gave its author, John Berkenhout, a
free-thinking physician, his chief claim to remembrance. Steevens was
a friend of Berkenhout, and helped him in the preparation of the book.
Into his account of Shakespeare, the credulous physician introduced
quite honestly the fourteen-year-old forgery. The reputed date of
1600, which the supposititious justice of the peace had given it in
the _Theatrical Review_, was now suppressed. Berkenhout confined his
comment to the halting reminiscence: "Whe