FOOTNOTES.

Travel, foreign, Shakespeare’s ridicule of,42andn

‘Troilus and Cresseid,’227

Troilus and Cressida: allusion to the strife between adult and boy actors,217date of production,217225the quarto and folio editions,226227treatment of the theme,227228the endeavour to treat the play as the poet’s contribution to controversy between Jonson and Marston and Dekker,228nplot drawn from Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Cresseid and Lydgate’s ‘Troy Book,’227ForeditionsseeSection xix. (Bibliography),301-25

‘Troy Book,’ Lydgate’s,227

True Tragedie of Richard III,The, an anonymous play,63301

True Tragedie of Richard,Duke of Yorke,and the death of good King Henry the Sixt,as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants,The,59

Turbervile, George, use of the word ‘sonnet’ by,427n2

Twelfth Night: description of a betrothal,23nindebtedness to the story of ‘Apollonius and Silla,’53date of production,209allusion to the ‘new map,’209210n1produced at Middle Temple Hall,210Manningham’s description of,210probable source of the story,210ForeditionsseeSection xix. (Bibliography),301-25

Twiss, F.,364n

Two Gentlemen of Verona: allusion to Valentine travelling from Verona to Milan by sea,43date of production,52probably an adaptation,53source of the story,53farcical drollery,53first publication,53influence of Lyly,62satirical allusion to sonnetteering,107108resemblance of it toAll’s Well that Ends Well,163ForeditionsseeSection xix. (Bibliography),301-25

Two Noble Kinsmen,The: attributed to Fletcher and Shakespeare,259andnMassinger’s alleged share in its production,259plot drawn from Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale,’260

Twyne, Lawrence, the story of Pericles in the ‘Patterne of Painfull Adventures’ by,244

Tyler, Mr. Thomas, on the sonnets,129n406n415n

Ulrici, ‘Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art’ by,345

Variorum editions of Shakespeare,322323362

Vautrollier, Thomas, the London printer,32

Venesyon Comedy,The, produced by Henslowe at the Rose,69

‘Venus and Adonis:’ published in 1593,74dedicated to the Earl of Southampton,74126its imagery and general tone,75the influence of Ovid,75and of Lodges ‘Scillaes Metamorphosis,’75andn2the motto,75andn1eulogies bestowed upon it,7879early editions,79299300

Verdi, operas by,352

Vere, Lady Elizabeth,378

Vernon, Mistress Elizabeth,379

Versification, Shakespeare’s,49andn50

Vigny, Alfred de, version ofOthelloby,351

Villemain, recognition of the poet’s greatness by,350

Virginia Company,381

Visor, William, inHenry IV, member of a family at Woodmancote,168

Voltaire, strictures on the poet by,348349

Voss, J. H., German translation of Shakespeare by,344

Walden, Lord, Campion’s sonnet to,140

Wales, Henry, Prince of, the Earl of Nottingham’s company of players taken into the patronage of,231n

Walker, William, the poet’s godson,276

Walker, W. Sidney, on Shakespeare’s versification,49n

Walley, Henry, printer,226

Warburton, Bishop, revised version of Pope’s edition of Shakespeare by,318319

Ward, Dr. A. W.,365

Ward, Rev. John, on the poet’s annual expenditure,203on the visits of Drayton and Jonson to New Place before the poet’s death,271his account of the poet,361

Warner, Richard,364

Warner, William, the probable translator of theMenæchmi,54

Warren, John,300

Warwickshire: prevalence of the surname Shakespeare,12a position of the Arden family,6Queen Elizabeth’s progress on the way to Kenilworth,17

Watchmen in the poet’s plays,3162

Watkins, Richard, printer,393

Watson, Thomas,61the passage on Time in his ‘Passionate Centurie of Love’ elaborated in ‘Venus and Adonis,’77andn2his sonnets,83427n2428plagiarisation of Petrarch,101n4102foreign origin of his sonnets,103n1112his ‘Tears of Fancie,’113n1433

‘Weak endings’ in Shakespeare,49n

Webbe, Alexander, makes John Shakespeare overseer of his will,11

Webbe, Robert, buys the Snitterfield property from Shakespeare’s mother,12andn

Webster, John, alludes in theWhite Divelto Shakespeare’s industry,278n

Weelkes, Thomas,182n

Weever, Thomas: his eulogy of the poet,179nallusion in his ‘Mirror of Martyrs’ to Antony’s speech at Cæsar’s funeral,211

Welcombe, enclosure of common fields at,269270andn

‘Westward for Smelts’ and theMerry Wives of Windsor,172andn3story of Ginevra in,249

Whateley, Anne, the assumed identification of her with Anne Hathaway,2324andn

Wheler, R. B.,363

Whetstone, George, hisPromos and Cassandra,237

White, Mr. Richard Grant,325

Whitehall, performances at,8182234235andn241254n264

Wieland, Christopher Martin: his translation of Shakespeare,343

Wilkins, George, his collaboration with Shakespeare inTimon of AthensandPericles,242243his novel founded on the play ofPericles,244

Wilks, Robert, actor,335

Will, Shakespeare’s,203271273-276

‘Will’ sonnets, the,117Elizabethan meanings of ‘will,’416Shakespeare’s uses of the word,417the poet’s puns on the word,418play upon ‘wish’ and ‘will,’419interpretation of the word in Sonnets cxxiv.-vi. and cxliii.,420-26

‘Willobie his Avisa,’155-158

Wilmcote, house of Shakespeare’s mother,67bequest to Mary Arden of the Asbies property at,7mortgage of the Asbies property at,1226and ‘Wincot’ inThe Taming of the Shrew,166167

Wilnecote.See underWincot

Wilson, Robert, author ofThe Three Ladies of London,67

Wilson, Thomas, his manuscript version of ‘Diana,’53

Wilton, Shakespeare and his company at,231232411andn

‘Wilton, Life of Jack,’ by Nash,385andn1

Wincot (inThe Taming of the Shrew), its identification,165166

‘Windsucker,’ Chapman’s,135n

Winter’s Tale,A: at the Globe in 1611,251acted at Court,251andnbased on Greene’sPandosto,251a few lines taken from the ‘Decameron,’251andnthe presentation of country life,251ForeditionsseeSection xix. (Bibliography),305-25

‘Wire,’ use of the word, for women’s hair,118andn2

Wise, J. R.,363

Wither, George,388399n2

‘Wittes Pilgrimage,’ Davies’s,441n2

Women, excluded from Elizabethan stage,38andn2in masques at Court,38n2on the Restoration stage,334

Women, addresses to, in sonnets,92117-20122n123124154

Woncot inHenry IVidentical with Woodmancote,168

Wood, Anthony à, on the Earl of Pembroke,414

Woodmancote.SeeWoncot

Worcester, Earl of, his company of actors at Stratford,1035under the patronage of Queen Anne of Denmark,231n

Worcester, registry of the diocese of,320

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on Shakespeare and the Bible,17n1

Wordsworth, William, the poet, on German and French æsthetic criticism,344349

Wotton, Sir Henry, on the burning of the Globe Theatre,260261n

Wright, Dr. Aldis,314n325

Wright, John, bookseller,90

Wriothesley, Lord,381

Wroxhall, the Shakespeares of,3

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, sonnetteering of,8395101n4427his translations of Petrarch’s sonnets,104n4

Wyman, W. H.,372

Wyndham, Mr. George, on the sonnets,91n110nonAntony and Cleopatra,245non Jacobean typography,419n

Yonge, Bartholomew, translation of ‘Diana’ by,53

Yorkshire Tragedy,The,180243313

Zepheria, a collection of sonnets called,435legal terminology in,32n2435the praise of Daniel’s ‘Delia’ in,431435436

[vii]Arnold wrote ‘spiritual,’ but the change of epithet is needful to render the dictum thoroughly pertinent to the topic under consideration.

[ix]I have already published portions of the papers on Shakespeare’s relations with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton in theFortnightly Review(for February of this year) and in theCornhill Magazine(for April of this year), and I have to thank the proprietors of those periodicals for permission to reproduce my material in this volume.

[x]For an account of its history see p. 295.

[xi]See pp. 309 and 311.

[1a]Camden,Remaines, ed. 1605, p. III; Verstegan,Restitution, 1605.

[1b]Plac. Cor.7 Edw. I, Kanc.; cf.Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xi.122.

[1c]Cf. theRegister of the Guild of St. Anne at Knowle, ed. Bickley, 1894.

[2]See p. 189.

[3a]Cf.Times, October 14, 1895;Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 501; articles by Mrs. Stopes inGenealogical Magazine, 1897.

[3b]Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps,Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1887, ii. 207.

[3c]The purchasing power of money was then eight times what it is now, and this and other sums mentioned should be multiplied by eight in comparing them with modern currency (see p. 197n). The letters of administration in regard to Richard Shakespeare’s estate are in the district registry of the Probate Court at Worcester, and were printed in full by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in hisShakespeare’s Tours(privately issued 1887), pp. 44-5. They do not appear in any edition of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps’sOutlines. Certified extracts appeared inNotes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 463-4.

[6]French,Genealogica Shakespeareana, pp. 458 seq.; cf. p. 191infra.

[7]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 179.

[8]Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letter to Elze, 1888.

[9]Cf. Documents and Sketches in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 377-99.

[10]The Rev. Thomas Carter, inShakespeare,Puritan and Recusant, 1897, has endeavoured to show that John Shakespeare was a puritan in religious matters, inclining to nonconformity. He deduces this inference from the fact that, at the period of his prominent association with the municipal government of Stratford, the corporation ordered images to be defaced (1562-3) and ecclesiastical vestments to be sold (1571). These entries merely prove that the aldermen and councillors of Stratford strictly conformed to the new religion as by law established in the first years of Elizabeth’s reign. Nothing can be deduced from them in regard to the private religious opinions of John Shakespeare. The circumstance that he was the first bailiff to encourage actors to visit Stratford is, on the other hand, conclusive proof that his religion was not that of the contemporary puritan, whose hostility to all forms of dramatic representations was one of his most persistent characteristics. The Elizabethan puritans, too, according to Guillim’sDisplay of Heraldrie(1610), regarded coat-armour with abhorrence, yet John Shakespeare with his son made persistent application to the College of Arms for a grant of arms. (Cf.infra, p. 187 seq.)

[12a]The sum is stated to be £4 in one document (Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 176) and £40 in another (ib.p. 179); the latter is more likely to be correct.

[12b]Ib.ii. 238.

[12c]Efforts recently made to assign the embarrassments of Shakespeare’s father to another John Shakespeare of Stratford deserve little attention. The second John Shakespeare or Shakspere (as his name is usually spelt) came to Stratford as a young man in 1584, and was for ten years a well-to-do shoemaker in Bridge Street, filling the office of Master of the Shoemakers’ Company in 1592—a certain sign of pecuniary stability. He left Stratford in 1594 (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, 137-40).

[13]James Russell Lowell, who noticed some close parallels between expressions of Shakespeare and those of the Greek tragedians, hazarded the suggestion that Shakespeare may have studied the ancient drama in aGracè et Latinèedition. I believe Lowell’s parallelisms to be no more than curious accidents—proofs of consanguinity of spirit, not of any indebtedness on Shakespeare’s part. In theElectraof Sophocles, which is akin in its leading motive toHamlet, the Chorus consoles Electra for the supposed death of Orestes with the same commonplace argument as that with which Hamlet’s mother and uncle seek to console him. InElectra, are the lines 1171-3:

Θνητου πέφυκας πατρος, Ήλέκτρα, φρονει·Θνητος δ’ Ορέστης ωστε μη λίαν στένε.Πασιν γαρ ημιν τουτ’ οφείλεται παθειν

(i.e.‘Remember, Electra, your father whence you sprang is mortal. Mortal, too, is Orestes. Wherefore grieve not overmuch, for by all of us has this debt of suffering to be paid’). InHamlet(I. ii. 72 sq.) are the familiar sentences:

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die.But you must know, your father lost a father;That father lost, lost his . . . But to persèverIn obstinate condolement is a courseOf impious stubbornness.

Cf. Sophocles’sŒdipus Coloneus, 880: Τοις τοι δικαίοις χα’ βραχυς νικα μέγαν (‘In a just cause the weak vanquishes the strong,’ Jebb), and 2Henry VI, iii. 233, ‘Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.’ Shakespeare’s ‘prophetic soul’ inHamlet(I. v. 40) and theSonnets(cvii. I) may be matched by the προμαντις θυμος of Euripides’sAndromache, 1075; and Hamlet’s ‘sea of troubles’ (III. i. 59) by the κακων πέλαγος of Æschylus’sPersæ, 443. Among all the creations of Shakespearean and Greek drama, Lady Macbeth and Æschylus’s Clytemnestra, who ‘in man’s counsels bore no woman’s heart’ (γυναικος ανδροβουλον ελπίζον κέαρ,Agamemnon, II), most closely resemble each other. But a study of the points of resemblance attests no knowledge of Æschylus on Shakespeare’s part, but merely the close community of tragic genius that subsisted between the two poets.

[15]Macray,Annals of the Bodleian Library, 1890, pp. 379 seq.

[16]Cf. Spencer Baynes, ‘What Shakespeare learnt at School,’ inShakespeare Studies, 1894, pp. 147 seq.

[17a]Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in hisShakespeare’s Knowledge and Use of the Bible(4th edit. 1892), gives a long list of passages for which Shakespeare may have been indebted to the Bible. But the Bishop’s deductions as to the strength of Shakespeare’s piety are strained.

[17b]See p. 161infra.

[18]Notes of John Dowdall, a tourist in Warwickshire in 1693 (published in 1838).

[21]These conclusions are drawn from an examination of like documents in the Worcester diocesan registry. Many formal declarations of consent on the part of parents to their children’s marriages are also extant there among the sixteenth-century archives.

[23]Twelfth Night, act v. sc. i. ll. 160-4:

A contract of eternal bond of love,Confirm’d by mutual joinder of your hands,Attested by the holy close of lips,Strengthen’d by interchangement of your rings;And all the ceremony of this compactSeal’d in my [i.e.the priest’s] function by my testimony.

InMeasure for MeasureClaudio’s offence is intimacy with the Lady Julia after the contract of betrothal and before the formality of marriage (cf. act i. sc. ii. l. 155, act iv. sc. i. l. 73).

[24]No marriage registers of the period are extant at Temple Grafton to inform us whether Anne Whately actually marriedherWilliam Shakespeare or who precisely the parties were. A Whateley family resided in Stratford, but there is nothing to show that Anne of Temple Grafton was connected with it. The chief argument against the conclusion that the marriage license and the marriage bond concerned different couples lies in the apparent improbability that two persons, both named William Shakespeare, should on two successive days not only be arranging with the Bishop of Worcester’s official to marry, but should be involving themselves, whether on their own initiative or on that of their friends, in more elaborate and expensive forms of procedure than were habitual to the humbler ranks of contemporary society. But the Worcester diocese covered a very wide area, and was honeycombed with Shakespeare families of all degrees of gentility. The William Shakespeare whom Anne Whately was licensed to marry may have been of a superior station, to which marriage by license was deemed appropriate. On the unwarranted assumption of the identity of the William Shakespeare of the marriage bond with the William Shakespeare of the marriage license, a romantic theory has been based to the effect that ‘Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton,’ believing herself to have a just claim to the poet’s hand, secured the license on hearing of the proposed action of Anne Hathaway’s friends, and hoped, by moving in the matter a day before the Shottery husbandmen, to insure Shakespeare’s fidelity to his alleged pledges.

[25a]Twelfth Night, act ii. sc. iv. l. 29:

Let still the woman takeAn elder than herself; so wears she to him,So sways she level in her husband’s heart.

[25b]Tempest, act iv. sc. i. ll. 15-22:

If thou dost break her virgin knot beforeAll sanctimonious ceremonies mayWith full and holy rite be minister’d,No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fallTo make this contract grow; but barren hate,Sour-ey’d disdain, and discord, shall bestrewThe union of your bed with weeds so loathlyThat you shall hate it both.

[26]Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 11-13.

[27]Cf. Ellacombe,Shakespeare as an Angler, 1883; J. E. Harting,Ornithology of Shakespeare, 1872. The best account of Shakespeare’s knowledge of sport is given by the Right Hon. D. H. Madden in his entertaining and at the same time scholarlyDiary of Master William Silence:a Study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport, 1897.

[28]Cf. C. Holte Bracebridge,Shakespeare no Deerstealer, 1862; Lockhart,Life of Scott, vii. 123.

[30]Cf. W. J. Thoms,Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 1865, pp. 16 seq.

[31a]Cf. Hales,Notes on Shakespeare, 1884, pp. 1-24.

[31b]The common assumption that Richard Burbage, the chief actor with whom Shakespeare was associated, was a native of Stratford is wholly erroneous. Richard was born in Shoreditch, and his father came from Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare’s actor-friends who has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reasonable doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Thomas Greene, a popular comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth century, is conjectured to have belonged to Stratford on no grounds that deserve attention; Shakespeare was in no way associated with him.

[32a]Blades,Shakspere and Typography, 1872.

[32b]Cf. Lord Campbell,Shakespeare’s Legal Acquirements, 1859. Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period, e.g. Barnabe Barnes’sSonnets, 1593, andZepheria, 1594 (see Appendix IX.)

[32c]Commonly assigned to Theophilus Cibber, but written by Robert Shiels and other hack-writers under Cibber’s editorship.

[38a]The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied by the offices of the ‘Times’ newspaper in Queen Victoria Street, E.C.

[38b]Cf.Exchequer Lay Subsidies City of London, 146/369, Public Record Office;Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 418.

[38c]Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women’s parts when he makes Rosalind say laughingly to the men of the audience in the epilogue toAs you like it, ‘If I were a woman, I would kiss as many,’ etc. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall inAntony and Cleopatra, V. ii. 220 seq., laments:

the quick comediansExtemporally will stage us . . . and I shall seeSome squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness.

Men taking women’s parts seem to have worn masks. Flute is bidden by Quince play Thisbe ‘in a mask’ inMidsummer Night’s Dream(I. ii. 53). In French and Italian theatres of the time women seem to have acted publicly, but until the Restoration public opinion in England deemed the appearance of a woman on a public stage to be an act of shamelessness on which the most disreputable of her sex would hardly venture. With a curious inconsistency ladies of rank were encouraged at Queen Elizabeth’s Court, and still more frequently at the Courts of James I and Charles I, to take part in private and amateur representations of masques and short dramatic pageants. During the reign of James I scenic decoration, usually designed by Inigo Jones, accompanied the production of masques in the royal palaces, but until the Restoration the public stages were bare of any scenic contrivance except a front curtain opening in the middle and a balcony or upper platform resting on pillars at the back of the stage, from which portions of the dialogue were sometimes spoken, although occasionally the balcony seems to have been occupied by spectators (cf. a sketch made by a Dutch visitor to London in 1596 of the stage of the Swan Theatre inZur Kenntniss der altenglischen Bühne von Karl Theodor Gaedertz.Mit der ersten authentischen innern Ansicht der Schwans Theater in London, Bremen, 1888). Sir Philip Sidney humorously described the spectator’s difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse, where, owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a rocky coast, a cave, and a battlefield (Apologie for Poetrie, p. 52). Three flourishes on a trumpet announced the beginning of the performance, but a band of fiddlers played music between the acts. The scenes of each act were played without interruption.

[40a]Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps’sVisits of Shakespeare’s Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England(privately printed, 1887). From the information there given, occasionally supplemented from other sources, the following imperfect itinerary is deduced:

1593. Bristol and Shrewsbury.

1594. Marlborough.

1597. Faversham, Bath, Rye, Bristol, Dover and Marlborough.

1603. Richmond (Surrey), Bath, Coventry, Shrewsbury, Mortlake, Wilton House.

1604. Oxford.

1605. Barnstaple and Oxford.

1606. Leicester, Saffron Walden, Marlborough, Oxford, Dover and Maidstone.

1607. Oxford.

1608. Coventry and Marlborough.

1609. Hythe, New Romney and Shrewsbury.

1610. Dover, Oxford and Shrewsbury.

1612. New Romney.

1613. Folkestone, Oxford and Shrewsbury.

1614. Coventry.

[40b]Cf. Knight’sLife of Shakespeare(1843), p. 41; Fleay,Stage, pp. 135-6.

[41a]The favour bestowed by James VI on these English actors was so marked as to excite the resentment of the leaders of the Kirk. The English agent, George Nicolson, in a (hitherto unpublished) despatch dated from Edinburgh on November 12, 1599, wrote: ‘The four Sessions of this Town (without touch by name of our English players, Fletcher and Mertyn [i.e.Martyn], with their company), and not knowing the King’s ordinances for them to play and be heard, enacted [that] their flocks [were] to forbear and not to come to or haunt profane games, sports, or plays.’ Thereupon the King summoned the Sessions before him in Council and threatened them with the full rigour of the law. Obdurate at first, the ministers subsequently agreed to moderate their hostile references to the actors. Finally, Nicolson adds, ‘the King this day by proclamation with sound of trumpet hath commanded the players liberty to play, and forbidden their hinder or impeachment therein.’MS. State Papers, Dom. Scotland, P. R. O. vol. lxv. No. 64.

[41b]Fleay,Stage, pp. 126-44.

[41c]Cf. Duncan’s speech (on arriving at Macbeth’s castle of Inverness):

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the airNimbly and sweetly recommends itselfUnto our gentle senses.Banquo. This guest of summer,The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,By his lov’d mansionry, that the heaven’s breathSmells wooingly here. (Macbeth, 1. vi. 1-6).

[42a]Cf. Cohn,Shakespeare in Germany, 1865; Meissner,Die englischen Comödianten zur Zeit Shakespeare’s in Oesterreich, Vienna, 1884; Jon Stefansson on ‘Shakespeare at Elsinore’ inContemporary Review, January 1896;Notes and Queries, 5th ser. ix. 43, and xi. 520; and M. Jusserand’s article in theNineteenth Century, April 1898, on English actors in France.

[42b]Cf.As you like it, IV. i. 22-40.

[43a]Cf. Elze,Essays, 1874, pp. 254 seq.

[43b]‘Quality’ in Elizabethan English was the technical term for the ‘actor’s profession.’

[43c]Aubrey’sLives, ed. Andrew Clark, ii. 226.

[44a]Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 121; Mrs. Stopes inJahrbuck der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq.

[44b]Scourge of Folly, 1610, epigr. 159.

[47]One of the many crimes laid to the charge of the dramatist Robert Greene was that of fraudulently disposing of the same play to two companies. ‘Ask the Queen’s players,’ his accuser bade him in Cuthbert Cony-Catcher’sDefence of Cony-Catching, 1592, ‘if you sold them notOrlando Furiosofor twenty nobles [i.e.about £7], and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord Admiral’s men for as many more.’

[48]The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in the belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts of the theatre. A very small proportion of plays acted in Elizabeth’s and James I’s reign consequently reached the printing press, and most of them are now lost. But in the absence of any law of copyright publishers often defied the wishes of the owner of manuscripts. Many copies of a popular play were made for the actors, and if one of these copies chanced to fall into a publisher’s hands, it was habitually issued without any endeavour to obtain either author’s or manager’s sanction. In March 1599 the theatrical manager Philip Henslowe endeavoured to induce a publisher who had secured a playhouse copy of the comedy ofPatient Grissellby Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton to abandon the publication of it by offering him a bribe of £2. The publication was suspended till 1603 (cf. Henslowe’sDiary, p. 167). As late as 1633 Thomas Heywood wrote of ‘some actors who think it against their peculiar profit to have them [i.e.plays] come into print.’ (English Traveller, pref.)

[49]W. S. Walker in hisShakespeare’s Versification, 1854, and Charles Bathurst in hisDifference in Shakespeare’s Versification at different Periods of his Life, 1857, were the first to point out the general facts. Dr. Ingram’s paper on ‘The Weak Endings’ inNew Shakspere Society’s Transactions(1874), vol. i., is of great value. Mr. Fleay’s metrical tables, which first appeared in the same society’sTransactions(1874), and have been reissued by Dr. Furnivall in a somewhat revised form in his introduction to Gervinus’sCommentariesand in hisLeopold Shakspere, give all the information possible.

[51]The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose dominions the scene is laid. The two chief lords in attendance on him in the play, Biron and Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most strenuous supporters of the real King of Navarre (Biron’s later career subsequently formed the subject of two plays by Chapman,The Conspiracie of Duke BironandThe Tragedy of Biron, which were both produced in 1605). The name of the Lord Dumain inLove’s Labour’s Lostis a common anglicised version of that Duc de Maine or Mayenne whose name was so frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs in connection with Navarre’s movements that Shakespeare was led to number him also among his supporters. Mothe or La Mothe, the name of the pretty, ingenious page, was that of a French ambassador who was long popular in London; and, though he left England in 1583, he lived in the memory of playgoers and playwrights long afterLove’s Labour’s Lostwas written. In Chapman’sAn Humourous Day’s Mirth, 1599, M. Le Mot, a sprightly courtier in attendance on the King of France, is drawn from the same original, and his name, as in Shakespeare’s play, suggests much punning on the word ‘mote.’ As late as 1602 Middleton, in hisBlurt,Master Constable, act ii. scene ii. line 215, wrote:

Ho God! Ho God! thus did I revel itWhen Monsieur Motte lay here ambassador.

Armado, ‘the fantastical Spaniard’ who haunts Navarre’s Court, and is dubbed by another courtier ‘a phantasm, a Monarcho,’ is a caricature of a half-crazed Spaniard known as ‘fantastical Monarcho’ who for many years hung about Elizabeth’s Court, and was under the delusion that he owned the ships arriving in the port of London. On his death Thomas Churchyard wrote a poem calledFantasticall Monarcho’s Epitaph, and mention is made of him in Reginald Scott’sDiscoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 54. The name Armado was doubtless suggested by the expedition of 1588. Braggardino in Chapman’sBlind Beggar of Alexandria, 1598, is drawn on the same lines. The scene (Love’s Labour’s Lost, V. ii. 158 sqq.) in which the princess’s lovers press their suit in the disguise of Russians follows a description of the reception by ladies of Elizabeth’s Court in 1584 of Russian ambassadors who came to London to seek a wife among the ladies of the English nobility for the Tsar (cf. Horsey’sTravels, ed. E. A. Bond, Hakluyt Soc.) For further indications of topics of the day treated in the play, see A New Study of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,”’ by the present writer, inGent. Mag, Oct. 1880; andTransactions of the New Shakspere Society, pt. iii. p. 80*. The attempt to detect in the schoolmaster Holofernes a caricature of the Italian teacher and lexicographer, John Florio, seems unjustified (see p. 85 n).

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