Life of William Shakespeare local squire Thomas Lucy, and that he then wrote a scurrilous ballad about Lucy. It is also reported, according to a note added by Samuel Johnson to the 1765 edition of "Rowe's Life", that Shakespeare minded the horses for theatre patrons in London. Johnson adds that the story had been told to Alexander Pope by Rowe. In his "Brief Lives", written 1669–96, John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a "schoolmaster in the country" on the authority of William Beeston, son of Christopher Beeston, who had acted with Shakespeare in "Every Man in His Humour" (1598) as a fellow member
The Plays of William Shakespeare his own edition of Shakespeare's plays that was "designed to transcend Johnson's in proceeding further towards a sound text", but it lacked the benefit of Johnson's critical notes. The two worked together to create a revised edition of Shakespeare's plays in ten volumes, published in 1773 with additional corrections in 1778. Steevens provided most of the textual work, with Johnson contributing an additional eighty notes. After Johnson was forced to back down from producing his edition of Shakespeare in 1746, his rival editor William Warburton praised Johnson's "Miscellaneous Observations" as "some critical notes on "Macbeth", given as a specimen of