. B. Rye's _England as seen by Foreigners_, pp.
117-124).

{234} At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original
accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber for
various (detached) years in the early part of James I's reign. These
documents show that Shakespeare's company acted at Court on November 1
and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 and 8, February 2 and
3, and the evenings of the following Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and
Shrove Tuesday, 1605.

{235} These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at
Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone's manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic
documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somerset
House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record Office,
whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since Malone's death.
Peter Cunningham professed to print the original document in his accounts
of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 1842, pp. 203 _et seq._),
but there is no doubt that he forged his so-called transcript, and that
the additions which he made to Malone's memorandum were the outcome of
his fancy. Collier's assertion in his _New Particulars_, p. 57, that
_Othello_ was first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton's residence at Harefield
on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a document among the Earl of
Ellesmere's MSS. at Bridgwater House, which purported to be a
contemporary account by the clerk, Sir Arthur Maynwaring, of Sir Thomas
Egerton's household expenses. This document, which Collier reprinted in
his _Egerton Papers_ (Camden Soc.), p. 343, was authoritatively
pronounced by experts in 1860 to be 'a shameful forgery' (cf. Ingleby's
_Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy_, 1861, pp. 261-5).

{237} Dr. Garnett's _Italian Literature_, 1898, p. 227.

{239} Cf. Letter by Mrs. Stopes in _Athenaeum_, July 25, 1896.

{240} Cf. _Macbeth_, ed. Clark and Wright, Clarendon Press Series.

{241a} This fact is stated on the title-page of the quartos.

{241b} Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled 'The pitiful state
and story of the Paphlagonian unkind king and his blind son; first
related by the son, then by his blind father' (bk. ii. chap. 10, ed. 1590
4to; pp. 132-3, ed. 1674, fol.)

{242} It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who
owned the manuscript.

{245} Mr. George Wyndham