Read it through once

The identity of the "Anonymous" of _Some Remarks on Hamlet Prince of Denmark_ has never been established. The tradition that Hanmer wrote the essay had its highly dubious origin in a single unsupported statement by Sir Henry Bunbury, made over one hundred years after the work was written, in his _Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, with a Memoir of His Life_ (London, 1838), to the effect that he had reason to believe that Hanmer was the author. The evidence against this bare surmise is such, however, as to compel assent to Professor Lounsbury's judgment that Hanmer's authorship "is so improbable that it may be called impossible" (_Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_, 60). I have elsewhere set down reasons for my own belief that Hanmer could have had nothing to do with the composition of the essay, arguing on grounds of ideas, attitudes, style, and other internal evidence ("Thomas Hanmer and the Anonymous Essay on _Hamlet_," _MLN_61 [1934], 493-498). Without going over the case again, I wish here merely to reaffirm my conviction that Hanmer was not the author, and to say that it would seem that the difference in styles and the attitude of Anonymous toward Pope and Theobald are alone convincing proof that Hanmer had no part in the _Remarks_. Hanmer's style is stiff, formal, pedantic; the style of the essay is free, easy, direct, more in the Addison manner. Hanmer was a disciple of Pope's, and in his Preface to his Shakespeare and in his edition as a whole shows allegiance to Pope. Anonymous, on the contrary, decisively, though urbanely, rejects Pope's edition in favor of Theobald's text and notes. The fact that Theobald was at that time still the king of dunces in the _Dunciad_, adds to the improbability that an admirer of Pope's, as Hanmer certainly was, would pay Theobald such honor.