The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found his Father is a Jacobean play, written in 1622. It was originally performed at the Curtain playhouse in Shoreditch. It contains a comic depiction of the birth of the fully-grown Merlin to a country girl, and also features figures from Arthurian legend, including Uther Pendragon, Vortigern and Aurelius Ambrosius.
The play was published in 1662, the year after Francis Kirkman had attributed it to William Shakespeare and William Rowley. However, Shakespeare was dead in 1622, and most scholars believe the play is generally Rowley's, perhaps with a different collaborator such as Thomas Middleton or Thomas Dekker. The play is fun and very stageworthy, but most readers see its style as merely a clumsy imitation of Shakespeare. It has occasionally been revived in the modern era, for example at Theatre Clwyd .
