28.  Timon of Athens, a Tragedy; the plot from Lucian’s Dialogues.

29.  Julius Caesar, a Tragedy.

30.  The Tragedy of Macbeth; the plot from Buchanan, and other Scotch writers.

31.  Hamlet Prince of Denmark, a Tragedy.

32.  King Lear, a Tragedy; for the plot see Leland, Monmouth.

33.  Othello the Moor of Venice, a Tragedy; the plot from Cynthio’s Novels.

34.  Anthony and Cleopatra; the story from Plutarch.

35.  Cymbeline, a Tragedy; the plot from Boccace’s Novels.

36.  Pericles Prince of Tyre, an historical play.

37.  The London Prodigal, a Comedy.

38.  The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, the favourite of King Henry VIII.

39.  The History of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham, a Tragedy.  See Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

40.  The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling-street, a Comedy.

41.  A Yorkshire Tragedy; this is rather an Interlude than a Tragedy, being very short, and not divided into Acts.

42.  The Tragedy of Locrine, the eldest son of King Brutus.  See the story in Milton’s History of England.

Our age, which demonstrates its taste in nothing so truly and justly as in the admiration it pays to the works of Shakespear, has had the honour of raising a monument for him in Westminster Abbey; to effect which, the Tragedy of Julius Caesar was acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, April 28, 1738, and the profits arising from it deposited in the hands of the earl of Burlington, Mr. Pope, Dr. Mead, and others, in order to be laid out upon the said monument.  A new Prologue and Epilogue were spoken on that occasion; the Prologue was written by Benjamin Martyn esquire; the Epilogue by the hon.  James Noel esquire, and spoke by Mrs. Porter.  On Shakespear’s monument there is a noble epitaph, taken from his own Tempest, and is excellently appropriated to him; with this let us close his life, only with this observation, that his works will never be forgot, ’till that epitaph is fulfilled.—­When

  The cloud capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
  The solemn temples, the great globe itself
  And all which it inherit shall dissolve,
  And like the baseless fabric of a vision
  Leave not a wreck behind.

[Footnote 1:  Preface to Shakespear]

[Footnote 2:  Alluding to the sea voyage of Fletcher.]

* * * * *

JOSHUA SYLVESTER,

The translator of the famous Du Bartas’s Weeks and Works; was cotemporary with George Chapman, and flourished in the end of Elizabeth and King James’s reign; he was called by the poets in his time, the silver-tongu’d Sylvester, but it is doubtful whether he received any academical education.  In his early years he is reported to have been a merchant adventurer.[1] Queen Elizabeth is said to have had