celebrated in some of the sonnets, be a court lady of the name of Mary Fitton, or the hostess by whom Shakespeare is said to have become the father of the poet Davenant (and one of the critics has dared admit that he spent fifteen years in research and meditation on this point alone), or the French wife of the printer Field, or finally a conventional and imaginary personage of Elizabethan sonneteering, which was based upon the manner of Petrarch. And in the same way as with the _Sonnets,_ there have been conjectures of the most varied sorts as to Shakespeare's marriage, his relations with his wife, the incidents of his family and of his profession. Passing to the plays, there are and have been discussions without apparent end, as to whether _Titus Andronicus_ be an original work, or has been patched up by him; as to whether _Henry VI_ be all of it his, or only a part, or revised and enlarged by him; as to which portions of _Henry VIII_ and of _Pericles_ are his and which Fletcher's, or whether by other hands; as to whether _Timon_ be a sketch finished by others or a sketch by others finished by Shakespeare; whether and to what extent there persists in _Hamlet_ a previous _Hamlet_ by Kyd or by another author; whether certain of the so-called "apocryphas," such as _Arden of Feversham_ and _Edward III,_ are on the contrary to be held to be authentic. In like manner, the difficulties connected with the chronology are great and conjectures numerous. The _Dream,_ for instance, is by some placed in the year 1590, by others in 1595, _Julius Caesar_ now in 1606, now in 1599, _Cymbeline_ in 1605 and 1611, _Troilus and Cressida,_ by some in 1599, by others in 1603, by others still in 1609, by yet others resolved into three parts or strata, form 1592 to 1606, and 1607, with additions by other hands. For the majority, the _Tempest_ belongs to the year 1611, but is by others dated earlier, and as regards _Hamlet_ again, in its first form, there are some who believe that it was composed, not by any means in 1602, but between 1592 and 1594. And so on, without advantage being taken of the few sure aids offered by stylistic or metrical measurements, as one may prefer to call them. Now conjectures are of use as heuristic instruments, only in so far as it is hoped to convert them into certainties, by means of the documents of which they aid in the search and the interpretation. But when this is not possible, they are altogether vain and vacuous, and consequently, were they convertible into certainties, would not give the solution or the criterion of solution of the critical problems relating to the poetry of Shakespeare. When they are not to be so converted and remain mere vague imagining, they do not even supply the practical and biographical history, which others delude themselves with the belief that they can construct piecemeal by means of them. Hence it has happened that careful writers, who have wished to give the character and life of