Thus the impish Steevens baited his hook. The sport which followed must have exceeded his expectations. Any one familiar with the bare outline of Elizabethan literary history should have perceived that a trap had been set. The letter was assigned to the year 1600. Shakespeare's play of _Hamlet_, to the performance of which it unconcernedly refers, was not produced before 1602; at that date George Peele had lain full four years in his grave. Peele could never have passed the portals of the theatre called the "Globe"; for it was not built until 1599. No historic tavern of the name is known. The surname of the 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.