Item 102 - Letter from William Wells to W. W. Greg

Town Mill House, West End, Bruton, Bath, Somerset.—Offers evidence for Kyd’s authorship of King Leir and a version of Hamlet.

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Transcript

Town Mill House, West End,
Bruton, Bath, Somerset.
Mar. 11, ’40.

Dear Sir,

There is not even a moderate likelihood that the Times Lit Sup. would care to insert any letter I chose to send them, though it is a bare possibility that they might forward to you such a missive. I therefore take the liberty, I hope forgiven, upon me to communicate directly with you {1} on the subject broached in the issue of Mar. 9 {2}.

In J. M. Robertson’s Introduction to the Study of the Sh. Canon—a book you must know, since your name appears in it to some purpose—the first of your Leir parallels is noted on p. 387. The inference Robertson drew from it is that Kyd was in part responsible for both Leir & Hamlet, a deduction with which I entirely agree. I carry this conviction farther than Robertson. I believe that the Hamlet First Quarto is almost entirely Kyd’s work. For the play echoes not only the Spanish Tragedy, but others—e.g. Leir, 1 Jeronimo, and Selimus—in which Kyd can be seen to have taken a hand. Simple evidence, in fact, exists for the theory, founded on Nashe’s ‘innuendo’, that Kyd wrote a pre-Shakespearian Hamlet, some of which is embodied in the present play. Did you know, by the way, that “sea-gown”, once-used in Hamlet, is also in Leir?

I have made a close study of Kyd for the past ten years, & the outcome of this is the knowledge that Kyd is a far greater poet & much more prolific than he is generally held to be. I can produce, not one, but hundreds of his lines of which “Shakespeare” afterwards availed himself. You will find some of them at the end of the accompanying reprint from Notes & Queries {3}, in which I have tried to throw light upon Leir’s authorship. I originally intended to include the Hamlet parallel in the list, but rejected it because it did not come up to my standard of consonance. But I think you will agree that it does tend to support the theory of Kyd’s authorship of both Hamlet & Leir.

I see no reason to believe that Shakespeare’s Lear postdates the publication of the old Leir. I am much more inclined to the view that the latter was brought out (although, of course, written some years earlier) on the morrow of the production of Shakespeare’s master-piece, & that its issue was a crude attempt to foist on the public a spurious offspring for a true one. King Leir is surely the play with that name that was entered on S.R. on May 14th, 1594, & of this there may have been earlier editions than the one that has come down to us. That Shakespeare read the old Leir in manuscript is highly probable: it is tolerably certain, if we can assume that the play found its way from the Queen’s to the Chamberlain’s by purchase.

May I end by apologising for the recital of these trifles? for such they must appear to one with so vast and profound knowledge of Shakespearian studies.

Faithfully yours
W. Wells

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{1} Followed by a superfluous full stop, the succeeding words of the sentence having evidently been added as an afterthought.

{2} In a letter by Greg printed in this issue (p. 124) he pointed out that two passages in the old chronicle play King Leir appear to be echoed in Hamlet, and solicited the views of others on the matter.

{3} ‘The Authorship of King Leir’, Notes & Queries, 6 Dec. 1939, pp. 434–8. See also the same writer’s ‘Thomas Kyd and the Chronicle-History’, ibid., 30 Mar. 1940, pp. 218-24, and 6 Apr. 1940, pp. 238-43, and ‘Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany’, ibid., 28 Sept. 1940, pp. 218-23, and 5 Oct. 1940, pp. 236-40.