Note 164 — XI—THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER

All these details are of Shakespeare’s invention, and do not figure in the old play. But in the crude induction in the old play the nondescript drunkard is named without prefix ‘Slie.’ That surname, although it was very common at Stratford and in the neighbourhood, was borne by residents in many other parts of the country, and its appearance in the old play is not in itself, as has been suggested, sufficient to prove that the old play was written by a Warwickshire man. There are no other names or references in the old play that can be associated with Warwickshire.