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- 5 Oct. 1911 (Creation)
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1 single sheet
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The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon.—Thanks him for the volumes of reprints, and points out a borrowing by Weever from Love’s Labour’s Lost.
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Transcript
The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon
5.X.1911.
My dear McKerrow,
Very many thanks for the books. Weever is a difficult writer: I wonder if his contemporaries could understand him.
The most interesting thing about his epigrams is his bagging from Love’s Labour’s Lost. See p. 57
“A withered Hermite five-score winters worne
Might shake off fiftie, seeing her beforne”
You might have mentioned that this is clean out of L.L.L., IV. iii. 238–9:—
“A wither’d hermit, five score winters worne
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye”
If only a few copies have gone out you might insert a slip.
The Greene’s News & the Funeralls I shall read tonight.
I feel that I ought to have subscribed for these books: I hope you’ll cover your expenses.
Yours always
A. H. Bullen
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Formerly inserted in McKerrow’s copy of his own edition of John Weever’s Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 1599 (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 81). On p. 125 of the book is pasted a cutting of the article mentioned below.
{1} McKerrow’s editions of Weever (see above) and Greenes Newes both from Heauen and Hell, 1593, and Greenes Funeralls, 1594 (two texts in one volume), also published in 1911.
{2} McKerrow announced Bullen’s discovery in Notes and Queries on 11 November (pp. 384–5) and pointed out a few more borrowings from the same scene.
{3} The printed text has ‘fiue-score’.