tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[ix]  I have also included in the Appendix (Sections IX. and X.) a survey of the voluminous sonnet-literature of the Elizabethan poets between 1591 and 1597, with which Shakespeare’s sonnetteering efforts were very closely allied, as well as a bibliographical note on a corresponding feature of French and Italian literature between 1550 and 1600.

Since the publication of the article on Shakespeare in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ I have received from correspondents many criticisms and suggestions which have enabled me to correct some errors.  But a few of my correspondents have exhibited so ingenuous a faith in those forged

documents relating to Shakespeare and forged references to his works, which were promulgated chiefly by John Payne Collier more than half a century ago, that I have attached a list of the misleading records to my chapter on ‘The Sources of Biographical Information’ in the Appendix (Section I.)  I believe the list to be fuller than any to be met with elsewhere.

The six illustrations which appear in this volume have been chosen on grounds of practical utility rather than of artistic merit.  My reasons for selecting as the frontispiece the newly discovered ‘Droeshout’ painting of Shakespeare (now in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon) can be gathered from the history of the painting and of its discovery which I give on pages 288-90.  I have to thank Mr. Edgar Flower and the other members of the Council of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford for permission to reproduce the picture.  The portrait of Southampton in early life is now at Welbeck Abbey, and the Duke of Portland not only permitted the portrait to be engraved for this volume, but lent me the negative from which the plate has been prepared.  The Committee of the Garrick Club gave permission to photograph the interesting bust of Shakespeare in their possession, [x] but, owing to the fact that it is moulded in black terra-cotta no satisfactory negative could be obtained; the

engraving I have used is from a photograph of a white plaster cast of the original bust, now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford.  The five autographs of Shakespeare’s signature—all that exist of unquestioned authenticity—appear in the three remaining plates.  The three signatures on the will have been photographed from the original document at Somerset House, by permission of Sir Francis Jenne, President of the Probate Court; the autograph on the deed of purchase by Shakespeare in 1613 of the house in Blackfriars has been photographed from the original document in the Guildhall Library, by permission of the Library Committee of the City of London; and the autograph on the deed of mortgage relating to the same property, also dated in 1613, has been photographed from the original document in the British Museum, by permission of the Trustees.  Shakespeare’s coat-of-arms and motto, which are stamped on the cover of this volume, are copied from the trickings in the margin of the draft-grants of arms now in the Heralds’ College.

The Baroness Burdett-Coutts has kindly given me ample opportunities of examining the two peculiarly interesting and valuable copies of the First Folio [xi] in her possession.  Mr. Richard Savage, of Stratford-on-Avon, the Secretary of the Birthplace Trustees, and Mr. W. Salt Brassington, the Librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford, have courteously replied