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.
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