But this is one of those fond and over-subtle misapprehensions from which Shakespeare has suffered in not a few instances, even at the hands of critics of reputation. It suited Shakespeare's plot that the villain should be the bastard; that is all; and Lear's legitimate daughters Goneril and Regan are as base, as bad, and as cruelly ungrateful as Gloucester's illegitimate son. Shakespeare knew human nature too well, and handled it with too just and impartial a hand, to let the question of legitimacy influence him in one way or the other. In "King John" we have, on the contrary, the mean-souled Robert Faulconbridge and his gallant and chivalrous bastard brother Philip. About the same time, or if not in the same time, perhaps in the same year which saw the production of "King Lear," "Macbeth" was written. But its date is not certain within four or five years. It was surely written before 1610, in which year a contemporary diary records its performance on the 20th of April. The Cambridge editors, in their annotated edition of this play, in the "Clarendon Press" series, prefer the later date; but notwithstanding my great respect for their judgment, I hold to my conclusion for the earlier, for the reasons given in my own edition. The question has not in itself much pertinence to our present purpose, as there is no doubt that the tragedy was produced in this period, and its general style, both of thought and versification, is that of Shakespeare in its fullest development and vigor. But with the question of date there is involved another of great interest to the thoughtful reader--that of mixed authorship. In the introductory essay to my edition of this play (published in 1861) attention was directed to the internal evidence that it was hastily written and left unfinished.[H] Subsequent editors and critics, notably the Cambridge editors and the Rev. F. G. Fleay, in his "Shakespearian Manual," starting from this view, have gone so far as to say that "Macbeth," as we have it, is not all Shakespeare's, but in part the work of Thomas Middleton, a second or third-rate playwright contemporary with Shakespeare, who wrote a play, called "The Witch," which is plainly an imitation of the supernatural scenes in this tragedy. The Cambridge editors believe that Middleton was permitted to supply certain scenes at the time of the writing of Macbeth: Mr. Fleay, that Middleton cut down and patched up Shakespeare's perfected work, adding much inferior matter of his own, and that he did this being engaged to alter the play for stage purposes. The latter opinion I must reject, notwithstanding Mr. Fleay's minute, elaborate, and often specious argument; but the opinion of the Cambridge editors seems to me to a certain extent sound. I cannot, however, go to the length which they do in rejecting parts of this play as not being Shakespeare's work. This study of Shakespeare's style and of what is not his work at a certain period of his life being directly to our purpose,