Chapter V: Variorum editions of Shakespeare, 322 323 362 (1)

Vautrollier, Thomas, the London printer, 32

_Venesyon Comedy_, _The_, produced by Henslowe at the Rose, 69

'Venus and Adonis:' published in 1593, 74
dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, 74 126
its imagery and general tone, 75
the influence of Ovid, 75
and of Lodges 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' 75 and _n_ 2
the motto, 75 and _n_ 1
eulogies bestowed upon it, 78 79
early editions, 79 299 300

Verdi, operas by, 352

Vere, Lady Elizabeth, 378

Vernon, Mistress Elizabeth, 379

Versification, Shakespeare's, 49 and _n_ 50

Vigny, Alfred de, version of _Othello_ by, 351

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

Virginia Company, 381

Visor, William, in _Henry IV_, member of a family at Woodmancote, 168

Voltaire, strictures on the poet by, 348 349

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

W

Walden, Lord, Campion's sonnet to, 140

Wales, Henry, Prince of, the Earl of Nottingham's company of players taken into the patronage of, 231 _n_

Walker, William, the poet's godson, 276

Walker, W. Sidney, on Shakespeare's versification, 49 _n_

Walley, Henry, printer, 226

Warburton, Bishop, revised version of Pope's edition of Shakespeare by, 318 319

Ward, Dr. A. W., 365

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

Warner, Richard, 364

Warner, William, the probable translator of the _Menaechmi_, 54

Warren, John, 300

Warwickshire: prevalence of the surname Shakespeare, 1 2
a position of the Arden family, 6
Queen Elizabeth's progress on the way to Kenilworth, 17

Watchmen in the poet's plays, 31 62

Watkins, Richard, printer, 393

Watson, Thomas, 61
the passage on Time in his 'Passionate Centurie of Love' elaborated
in 'Venus and Adonis,' 77 and _n_ 2
his sonnets, 83 427 _n_ 2 428
plagiarisation of Petrarch, 101 _n_ 4 102
foreign origin of his sonnets, 103 _n_ 1 112
his 'Tears of Fancie,' 113 _n_ 1 433

'Weak endings' in Shakespeare, 49 _n_

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

Webbe, Robert, buys the Snitterfield property from Shakespeare's mother, 12 and _n_

Webster, John, alludes in the _White Divel_ to Shakespeare's industry, 278 _n_

Weelkes, Thomas, 182 _n_

Weever, Thomas: his eulogy of the poet, 179 _n_ allusion in his 'Mirror of Martyrs' to Antony's speech at Caesar's funeral, 211

Welcombe, enclosure of common fields at, 269 270 and _n_

'Westward for Smelts' and the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, 172 and _n_ 3
story of Ginevra in, 249

Whateley, Anne, the assumed identification of her with Anne Hathaway, 23 24 and _n_

Wheler, R. B., 363

Whetstone, George, his _Promos and Cassandra_, 237

White, Mr. Richard Grant, 325

Whitehall, performances at, 81 82 234 235 and _n_ 241 254 _n_ 264

Wieland, Christopher Martin: his translation of Shakespeare, 343

Wilkins, George, his collaboration with Shakespeare in _Timon of Athens_ and _Pericles_, 242 243 his novel founded on the play of _Pericles_, 244

Wilks, Robert, actor, 335

Will, Shakespeare's, 203 271 273-276

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

'Willobie his Avisa,' 155-158

Wilmcote, house of Shakespeare's mother, 6 7
bequest to Mary Arden of the Asbies property at, 7
mortgage of the Asbies property at, 12 26
and 'Wincot' in _The Taming of the Shrew_, 166 167

Wilnecote. _See under_ Wincot

Wilson, Robert, author of _The Three Ladies of London_, 67

Wilson, Thomas, his manuscript version of 'Diana,' 53

Wilton, Shakespeare and his company at, 231 232 411 and _n_

'Wilton, Life of Jack,' by Nash, 385 and _n_ 1

Wincot (in _The Taming of the Shrew_), its identification, 165 166

'Windsucker,' Chapman's, 135 _n_

_Winter's Tale_, _A_: at the Globe in 1611, 251
acted at Court, 251 and _n_
based on Greene's _Pandosto_, 251
a few lines taken from the 'Decameron,' 251 and _n_
the presentation of country life, 251
_For_ editions _see_ Section xix. (Bibliography), 305-25

'Wire,' use of the word, for women's hair, 118 and _n_ 2

Wise, J. R., 363

Wither, George, 388 399 _n_ 2

'Wittes Pilgrimage,' Davies's, 441 _n_ 2

Women, excluded from Elizabethan stage, 38 and _n_ 2
in masques at Court, 38 _n_ 2
on the Restoration stage, 334

Women, addresses to, in sonnets, 92 117-20 122 _n_ 123 124 154

Woncot in _Henry IV_ identical with Woodmancote, 168

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

Woodmancote. _See_ Woncot

Worcester, Earl of, his company of actors at Stratford, 10 35
under the patronage of Queen Anne of Denmark, 231 _n_

Worcester, registry of the diocese of, 3 20

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on Shakespeare and the Bible, 17 _n_ 1

Wordsworth, William, the poet, on German and French aesthetic criticism, 344 349

Wotton, Sir Henry, on the burning of the Globe Theatre, 260 261 _n_

Wright, Dr. Aldis, 314 _n_ 325

Wright, John, bookseller, 90

Wriothesley, Lord, 381

Wroxhall, the Shakespeares of, 3

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, sonnetteering of, 83 95 101 _n_ 4 427
his translations of Petrarch's sonnets, 104 _n_ 4

Wyman, W. H., 372

Wyndham, Mr. George, on the sonnets, 91 _n_ 110 _n_
on _Antony and Cleopatra_, 245 _n_
on Jacobean typography, 419 _n_

Y

Yonge, Bartholomew, translation of 'Diana' by, 53

_Yorkshire Tragedy_, _The_, 180 243 313

Z

Zepheria, a collection of sonnets called, 435
legal terminology in, 32 _n_ 2 435
the praise of Daniel's 'Delia' in, 431 435 436

FOOTNOTES.

{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 the _Fortnightly Review_ (for February of this year) and in the _Cornhill 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. the _Register 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 in _Genealogical 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. 197 _n_). 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 his _Shakespeare's Tours_ (privately issued 1887), pp. 44-5. They do not appear in any edition of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's _Outlines_. Certified extracts appeared in _Notes and Queries_, 8th ser. xii. 463-4.

{6} French, _Genealogica Shakespeareana_, pp. 458 seq.; cf. p. 191 _infra_.

{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, in _Shakespeare_, _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's _Display 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 pounds in one document (Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 176) and 40 pounds 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 a _Grace et Latine_ edition. 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 the _Electra_ of Sophocles, which is akin in its leading motive to _Hamlet_, 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. In _Electra_, are the lines 1171-3:

[Greek text]

(_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'). In _Hamlet_ (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 persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness.

Cf. Sophocles's _OEdipus Coloneus_, 880: [Greek text] ('In a just cause the weak vanquishes the strong,' Jebb), and 2 _Henry VI_, iii. 233, 'Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.' Shakespeare's 'prophetic soul' in _Hamlet_ (I. v. 40) and the _Sonnets_ (cvii. I) may be matched by the [Greek text] of Euripides's _Andromache_, 1075; and Hamlet's 'sea of troubles' (III. i. 59) by the [Greek text] of AEschylus's _Persae_, 443. Among all the creations of Shakespearean and Greek drama, Lady Macbeth and AEschylus's Clytemnestra, who 'in man's counsels bore no woman's heart' ([Greek text], _Agamemnon_, II), most closely resemble each other. But a study of the points of resemblance attests no knowledge of AEschylus 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,' in _Shakespeare Studies_, 1894, pp. 147 seq.

{17a} Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in his _Shakespeare'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. 161 _infra_.

{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 compact
Seal'd in my [_i.e._ the priest's] function by my testimony.

In _Measure for Measure_ Claudio'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 married _her_ William 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 take
An 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 before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That 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 scholarly _Diary 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's _Sonnets_, 1593, and _Zepheria_, 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 to _As you like it_, '_If I were a woman_, I would kiss as many,' etc. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in _Antony and Cleopatra_, V. ii. 220 seq., laments:

the quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us . . . and I shall see
Some 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' in _Midsummer 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 in _Zur Kenntniss der altenglischen Buhne 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's _Visits 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's _Life 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 air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
_Banquo_. This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here. (_Macbeth_, 1. vi. 1-6).

{42a} Cf. Cohn, _Shakespeare in Germany_, 1865; Meissner, _Die englischen Comodianten zur Zeit Shakespeare's in Oesterreich_, Vienna, 1884; Jon Stefansson on 'Shakespeare at Elsinore' in _Contemporary Review_, January 1896; _Notes and Queries_, 5th ser. ix. 43, and xi. 520; and M. Jusserand's article in the _Nineteenth 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's _Lives_, ed. Andrew Clark, ii. 226.

{44a} Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 121; Mrs. Stopes in _Jahrbuck 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's _Defence of Cony-Catching_, 1592, 'if you sold them not _Orlando Furioso_ for twenty nobles [_i.e._ about 7 pounds], 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 of _Patient Grissell_ by Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton to abandon the publication of it by offering him a bribe of 2 pounds. The publication was suspended till 1603 (cf. Henslowe's _Diary_, 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 his _Shakespeare's Versification_, 1854, and Charles Bathurst in his _Difference 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' in _New Shakspere Society's Transactions_ (1874), vol. i., is of great value. Mr. Fleay's metrical tables, which first appeared in the same society's _Transactions_ (1874), and have been reissued by Dr. Furnivall in a somewhat revised form in his introduction to Gervinus's _Commentaries_ and in his _Leopold 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 Biron_ and _The Tragedy of Biron_, which were both produced in 1605). The name of the Lord Dumain in _Love's Labour's Lost_ is 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 after _Love's Labour's Lost_ was written. In Chapman's _An 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 his _Blurt_, _Master Constable_, act ii. scene ii. line 215, wrote:

Ho God! Ho God! thus did I revel it
When 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 called _Fantasticall Monarcho's Epitaph_, and mention is made of him in Reginald Scott's _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, 1584, p. 54. The name Armado was doubtless suggested by the expedition of 1588. Braggardino in Chapman's _Blind 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's _Travels_, 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, in _Gent. Mag_, Oct. 1880; and _Transactions 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).

{53} Cf. Fleay, _Life_, pp. 188 seq.

{55a} The story, which has been traced back to the Greek romance _Anthia and Abrocomas_ by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the second century, seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 1470 by Masuccio in his _Novellino_ (No. xxxiii.: cf. Mr. Waters's translation, ii. 155-65). It was adapted from Masuccio by Luigi da Porto in his novel, _La Giulietta_, 1535, and by Bandello in his _Novelle_, 1554, pt. ii., No. ix. Bandello's version became classical; it was translated in the _Histoires Tragiques_ of Francoisde Belleforest (Paris, 1559) by Pierre Boaistuau de Launay, an occasional collaborator with Belleforest. At the same time as Shakespeare was writing _Romeo and Juliet_, Lope de Vega was dramatising the tale in his Spanish play called _Castelvines y Monteses_ (_i.e._ Capulets and Montagus). For an analysis of Lope's play, which ends happily, see _Variorum Shakespeare_, 1821, xxi. 451-60.

{55b} Cf. _Originals and Analogues_, pt. i. ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society.

{56} Cf. _Parallel Texts_, ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society; Fleay, _Life_, pp. 191 seq.

{60} Cf. Fleay, _Life_, pp. 235 seq.; _Trans. New Shakspere Soc_., 1876, pt. ii. by Miss Jane Lee; Swinburne, _Study_, pp. 51 seq.

{62} In later life Shakespeare, in _Hamlet_, borrows from Lyly's _Euphues_ Polonius's advice to Laertes; but, however he may have regarded the moral sentiment of that didactic romance, he had no respect for the affectations of its prose style, which he ridiculed in a familiar passage in I _Henry IV_, II. iv. 445: 'For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.'

{65} Henslowe, p. 24.

{66a} Cf. Cohn, _Shakespeare in Germany_, pp. 155 et seq.

{66b} Arber, ii. 644.

{66c} Cf. W. G. Waters's translation of _Il Pecorone_, pp. 44-60 (fourth day, novel 1). The collection was not published till 1558, and the story followed by Shakespeare was not accessible in his day in any language but the original Italian.

{68} Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the Earl of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip II's persecution, whom Essex and his associates brought to England in order to stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. Don Antonio (as the refugee was popularly called) proved querulous and exacting. A quarrel between Lopez and Essex followed. Spanish agents in London offered Lopez a bribe to poison Antonio and the Queen. The evidence that he assented to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was convicted of treason, and, although the Queen long delayed signing his death-warrant, he was hanged at Tyburn on June 7, 1594. His trial and execution evoked a marked display of anti-Semitism on the part of the London populace. Very few Jews were domiciled in England at the time. That a Christian named Antonio should be the cause of the ruin alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious confirmation of the theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shylock. Cf. the article on Roderigo Lopez in the _Dictionary of National Biography_; 'The Original of Shylock,' by the present writer, in _Gent. Mag._ February 1880; Dr. H. Graetz, _Shylock in den Sagen_, _in den Dramen and in der Geschichte_, Krotoschin, 1880; _New Shakspere Soc. Trans._ 1887-92, pt. ii. pp. 158-92; 'The Conspiracy of Dr. Lopez,' by the Rev. Arthur Dimock, in _English Historical Review_ (1894), ix. 440 seq.

{70} _Gesta Grayorum_, printed in 1688 from a contemporary manuscript. A second performance of the _Comedy of Errors_ was given at Gray's Inn Hall by the Elizabethan Stage Society on Dec. 6, 1895.

{72a} Cf. Swinburne, _Study of Shakspere_, pp. 231-74.

{72b} See p. 89.

{73} Cf. Dodsley's _Old Plays_, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874, vii. 236-8.

{74} See Appendix, sections iii. and iv.

{75a} See Ovid's _Amores_, liber i. elegy xv. ll. 35-6. Ovid's _Amores_, or Elegies of Love, were translated by Marlowe about 1589, and were first printed without a date on the title-page, probably about 1597. Marlowe's version had probably been accessible in manuscript in the eight years' interval. Marlowe rendered the lines quoted by Shakespeare thus:

Let base conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs!

{75b} _Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis_, by James P. Reardon, in 'Shakespeare Society's Papers,' iii. 143-6. Cf. Lodge's description of Venus's discovery of the wounded Adonis:

Her daintie hand addrest to dawe her deere,
Her roseall lip alied to his pale cheeke,
Her sighs and then her lookes and heavie cheere,
Her bitter threates, and then her passions meeke;
How on his senseles corpse she lay a-crying,
As if the boy were then but new a-dying.

In the minute description in Shakespeare's poem of the chase of the hare (ll. 673-708) there are curious resemblances to the _Ode de la Chasse_ (on a stag hunt) by the French dramatist, Estienne Jodelle, in his _OEuvres et Meslanges Poetiques_, 1574.

{77a} Rosamond, in Daniel's poem, muses thus when King Henry challenges her honour:

But what? he is my King and may constraine me;
Whether I yeeld or not, I live defamed.
The World will thinke Authoritie did gaine me,
I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed;
We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed,
And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame.
If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same.

{77b} Watson makes this comment on his poem or passion on Time, (No. lxxvii.): 'The chiefe contentes of this Passion are taken out of Seraphine [_i.e._ Serafino], Sonnet 132:

Col tempo passa[n] gli anni, i mesi, e l'hore,
Col tempo le richeze, imperio, e regno,
Col tempo fama, honor, fortezza, e ingegno,
Col tempo giouentu, con belta more, &c.'

Watson adds that he has inverted Serafino's order for 'rimes sake,' or 'upon some other more allowable consideration.' Shakespeare was also doubtless acquainted with Giles Fletcher's similar handling of the theme in Sonnet xxviii. of his collection of sonnets called _Licia_ (1593).

{79} 'Excellencie of the English Tongue' in Camden's _Remaines_, p. 43.

{80} All these and all that els the Comick Stage With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, By which mans life in his likest image Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced . . . And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate, With kindly counter under mimick shade, Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late; With whom all joy and jolly meriment Is also deaded and in dolour drent.--(ll. 199-210).

{81a} A note to this effect, in a genuine early seventeenth-century hand, was discovered by Halliwell-Phillipps in a copy of the 1611 edition of Spenser's _Works_ (cf. _Outlines_, ii. 394-5).

{81b}

But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen
Large streames of bonnie and sweete nectar flowe,
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell (ll. 217-22).

{83} Section IX. of the Appendix to this volume gives a sketch of each of the numerous collections of sonnets which bore witness to the unexampled vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet between 1591 and 1597.

{84} Minto, _Characteristics of English Poetry_, 1885, pp. 371, 382. The sonnet, headed 'Phaeton to his friend Florio,' runs:

Sweet friend whose name agrees with thy increase
How fit arrival art thou of the Spring!
For when each branch hath left his flourishing,
And green-locked Summer's shady pleasures cease:
She makes the Winter's storms repose in peace,
And spends her franchise on each living thing:
The daisies sprout, the little birds do sing,
Herbs, gums, and plants do vaunt of their release.
So when that all our English Wits lay dead,
(Except the laurel that is ever green)
Thou with thy Fruit our barrenness o'erspread,
And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen.
Such fruits, such flow'rets of morality,
Were ne'er before brought out of Italy.

Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet xcviii. beginning:

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

But like descriptions of Spring and Summer formed a topic that was common to all the sonnets of the period. Much has been written of Shakespeare's alleged acquaintance with Florio. Farmer and Warburton argue that Shakespeare ridiculed Florio in Holofernes in _Love's Labour's Lost_. They chiefly rely on Florio's bombastic prefaces to his _Worlde of Wordes_ and his translation of Montaigne's _Essays_ (1603). There is nothing there to justify the suggestion. Florio writes more in the vein of Armado than of Holofernes, and, beyond the fact that he was a teacher of languages to noblemen, he bears no resemblance to Holofernes, a village schoolmaster. Shakespeare doubtless knew Florio as Southampton's _protege_, and read his fine translation of Montaigne's _Essays_ with delight. He quotes from it in _The Tempest_: see p. 253.

{86} Shakespeare writes in his Sonnets:

My glass shall not persuade me I am old (xxii. 1.).
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity (lxii. 9-10).
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang (lxxiii. 1-2).
My days are past the best (cxxxviii. 6).

Daniel in _Delia_ (xxiii.) in 1591, when twenty-nine years old, exclaimed:

My years draw on my everlasting night,
. . . My days are done.

Richard Barnfield, at the age of twenty, bade the boy Ganymede, to whom he addressed his _Affectionate Shepherd_ and a sequence of sonnets in 1594 (ed. Arber, p. 23):

Behold my gray head, full of silver hairs,
My wrinkled skin, deep furrows in my face.

Similarly Drayton in a sonnet (_Idea_, xiv.) published in 1594, when he was barely thirty-one, wrote:

Looking into the glass of my youth's miseries,
I see the ugly face of my deformed cares
With withered brows all wrinkled with despairs;

and a little later (No. xliii. of the 1599 edition) he repeated how

Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face.

All these lines are echoes of Petrarch, and Shakespeare and Drayton followed the Italian master's words more closely than their contemporaries. Cf. Petrarch's Sonnet cxliii. (to Laura alive), or Sonnet lxxxi. (to Laura after death); the latter begins:

Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio,
L'animo stanco e la cangiata scorza
E la scemata mia destrezza e forza:
Non ti nasconder piu: tu se' pur veglio.

(_i.e._ 'My faithful glass, my weary spirit and my wrinkled skin, and my decaying wit and strength repeatedly tell me: "It cannot longer be hidden from you, you are old."')

{88} The Sonnets of Sidney, Watson, Daniel, and Constable long circulated in manuscript, and suffered much the same fate as Shakespeare's at the hands of piratical publishers. After circulating many years in manuscript, Sidney's Sonnets were published in 1591 by an irresponsible trader, Thomas Newman, who in his self-advertising dedication wrote of the collection that it had been widely 'spread abroad in written copies,' and had 'gathered much corruption by ill writers' [i.e. copyists]. Constable produced in 1592 a collection of twenty sonnets in a volume which he entitled 'Diana.' This was an authorised publication. But in 1594 a printer and a publisher, without Constable's knowledge or sanction, reprinted these sonnets and scattered them through a volume of nearly eighty miscellaneous sonnets by Sidney and many other hands; the adventurous publishers bestowed on their medley the title of 'Diana,' which Constable had distinctively attached to his own collection. Daniel suffered in much the same way. See Appendix IX. for further notes on the subject. Proofs of the commonness of the habit of circulating literature in manuscript abound. Fulke Greville, writing to Sidney's father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham, in 1587, expressed regret that uncorrected manuscript copies of the then unprinted _Arcadia_ were 'so common.' In 1591 Gabriel Cawood, the publisher of Robert Southwell's _Mary Magdalen's Funeral Tears_, wrote that manuscript copies of the work had long flown about 'fast and false.' Nash, in the preface to his _Terrors of the Night_, 1594, described how a copy of that essay, which a friend had 'wrested' from him, had 'progressed [without his authority] from one scrivener's shop to another, and at length grew so common that it was ready to be hung out for one of their figures [_i.e._ shop-signs], like a pair of indentures.'

{89a} Cf. Sonnet lxix. 12:

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds.

{89b} For other instances of the application of this epithet to Shakespeare's work, see p. 179, note 1.

{90} The actor Alleyn paid fivepence for a copy in that month (cf. Warner's _Dulwich MSS._ p. 92).

{91} The chief editions of the sonnets that have appeared, with critical apparatus, of late years are those of Professor Dowden (1875, reissued 1896), Mr. Thomas Tyler (1890), and Mr. George Wyndham, M.P. (1898). Mr. Gerald Massey's _Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets_--the text of the poems with a full discussion--appeared in a second revised edition in 1888. I regret to find myself in more or less complete disagreement with all these writers, although I am at one with Mr. Massey in identifying the young man to whom many of the sonnets were addressed with the Earl of Southampton. A short bibliography of the works advocating the theory that the sonnets were addressed to William, third Earl of Pembroke, is given in Appendix VI., 'Mr. William Herbert,' note 1.

{93} It has been wrongly inferred that Shakespeare asserts in Sonnets cxxxv-vi. and cxliii. that the young friend to whom he addressed some of the sonnets bore his own christian name of Will (see for a full examination of these sonnets Appendix VIII.) Further, it has been fantastically suggested that the line (xx. 7) describing the youth as 'A man in hue, all hues in his controlling' (_i.e._ a man in colour or complexion whose charms are so varied as to appear to give his countenance control of, or enable it to assume, all manner of fascinating hues or complexions), and other applications to the youth of the ordinary word 'hue,' imply that his surname was Hughes. There is no other pretence of argument for the conclusion, which a few critics have hazarded in all seriousness, that the friend's name was William Hughes. There was a contemporary musician called William Hughes, but no known contemporary of the name, either in age or position in life, bears any resemblance to the young man who is addressed by Shakespeare in his sonnets.

{94} See Appendix VI., 'Mr. William Herbert;' and VII., 'Shakespeare and the Earl of Pembroke.'

{95a} The full results of my researches into Thorpe's history, his methods of business, and the significance of his dedicatory addresses, of which four are extant besides that prefixed to the volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets in 1609, are given in Appendix V., 'The True History of Thomas Thorpe and "Mr. W. H."'

{95b} The form of fourteen-line stanza adopted by Shakespeare is in no way peculiar to himself. It is the type recognised by Elizabethan writers on metre as correct and customary in England long before he wrote. George Gascoigne, in his _Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or Ryme in English_ (published in Gascoigne's _Posies_, 1575), defined sonnets thus: 'Fouretene lynes, every lyne conteyning tenne syllables. The first twelve to ryme in staves of foure lynes by cross metre and the last two ryming togither, do conclude the whole.' In twenty-one of the 108 sonnets of which Sidney's collection entitled _Astrophel and Stella_ consists, the rhymes are on the foreign model and the final couplet is avoided. But these are exceptional. As is not uncommon in Elizabethan sonnet-collections, one of Shakespeare's sonnets (xcix.) has fifteen lines; another (cxxvi.) has only twelve lines, and those in rhymed couplets (cf. Lodge's _Phillis_, Nos. viii. and xxvi.) and a third (cxlv.) is in octosyllabics. But it is very doubtful whether the second and third of these sonnets rightly belong to Shakespeare's collection. They were probably written as independent lyrics: see p. 97, note 1.

{96} If the critical ingenuity which has detected a continuous thread of narrative in the order that Thorpe printed Shakespeare's sonnets were applied to the booksellers' miscellany of sonnets called _Diana_ (1594), that volume, which rakes together sonnets on all kinds of amorous subjects from all quarters and numbers them consecutively, could be made to reveal the sequence of an individual lover's moods quite as readily, and, if no external evidence were admitted, quite as convincingly, as Thorpe's collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Almost all Elizabethan sonnets are not merely in the like metre, but are pitched in what sounds superficially to be the same key of pleading or yearning. Thus almost every collection gives at a first perusal a specious and delusive impression of homogeneity.

{97} Shakespeare merely warns his 'lovely boy' that, though he be now the 'minion' of Nature's 'pleasure,' he will not succeed in defying Time's inexorable law. Sidney addresses in a lighter vein Cupid--'blind hitting boy,' he calls him--in his _Astrophel_ (No. xlvi.) Cupid is similarly invoked in three of Drayton's sonnets (No. xxvi. in the edition of 1594, and Nos. xxxiii. and xxxiv. in that of 1605), and in six in Fulke Greville's collection entitled _Coelica_ (cf. lxxxiv., beginning 'Farewell, sweet boy, complain not of my truth'). Lyly, in his _Sapho and Phao_, 1584, and in his _Mother Bombie_, 1598, has songs of like temper addressed in the one case to 'O Cruel love!' and in the other to 'O Cupid! monarch over kings.' A similar theme to that of Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxvi. is treated by John Ford in the song, 'Love is ever dying,' in his tragedy of the _Broken Heart_, 1633.

{98} See p. 113, note 2.

{101a} 1547-1604. Cf. De Brach, _OEuvres Poetiques_, edited by Reinhold Dezeimeris, 1861, i. pp. 59-60.

{101b} See Appendix IX.

{101c} Section X. of the Appendix to this volume supplies a bibliographical note on the sonnet in France between 1550 and 1600, with a list of the sixteenth-century sonnetteers of Italy.

{101d} Gabriel Harvey, in his _Pierces Supererogation_ (1593, p. 61), after enthusiastic commendation of Petrarch's sonnets ('Petrarch's invention is pure love itself; Petrarch's elocution pure beauty itself'), justifies the common English practice of imitating them on the ground that 'all the noblest Italian, French, and Spanish poets have in their several veins Petrarchized; and it is no dishonour for the daintiest or divinest Muse to be his scholar, whom the amiablest invention and beautifullest elocution acknowledge their master.' Both French and English sonnetteers habitually admit that they are open to the charge of plagiarising Petrarch's sonnets to Laura (cf. Du Bellay's _Les Amours_, ed. Becq de Fouquieres, 1876, p. 186, and Daniel's _Delia_, Sonnet xxxviii.) The dependent relations in which both English and French sonnetteers stood to Petrarch may be best realised by comparing such a popular sonnet of the Italian master as No. ciii. (or in some editions lxxxviii.) in _Sonetti in Vita di M. Laura_, beginning 'S' amor non e, che dunque e quel ch' i' sento?' with a rendering of it into French like that of De Baif in his _Amours de Francine_ (ed. Becq de Fouquieres, p. 121), beginning, 'Si ce n'est pas Amour, que sent donques mon coeur?' or with a rendering of the same sonnet into English like that by Watson in his _Passionate Century_, No. v., beginning, 'If 't bee not love I feele, what is it then?' Imitation of Petrarch is a constant characteristic of the English sonnet throughout the sixteenth century from the date of the earliest efforts of Surrey and Wyatt. It is interesting to compare the skill of the early and late sonnetteers in rendering the Italian master. Petrarch's sonnet _In vita di M. Laura_ (No. lxxx. or lxxxi., beginning 'Cesare, poi che 'l traditor d' Egitto') was independently translated both by Sir Thomas Wyatt, about 1530 (ed. Bell, p. 60), and by Francis Davison in his _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602, ed. Bullen, i. 90). Petrarch's sonnet (No. xcv. or cxiii.) was also rendered independently both by Wyatt (cf. Puttenham's _Arte of English Poesie_, ed. Arber, p. 23) and by Drummond of Hawthornden (ed. Ward, i. 100, 221).

{103a} Eight of Watson's sonnets are, according to his own account, renderings from Petrarch; twelve are from Serafino dell' Aquila (1466-1500); four each come from Strozza, an Italian poet, and from Ronsard; three from the Italian poet Agnolo Firenzuola (1493-1548); two each from the French poet, Etienne Forcadel, known as Forcatulus (1514?-1573), the Italian Girolamo Parabosco (_fl._ 1548), and AEneas Sylvius; while many are based on passages from such authors as (among the Greeks) Sophocles, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes (author of the epic 'Argonautica'); or (among the Latins) Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace, Propertius, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Martial, and Valerius Flaccus; or (among other modern Italians) Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) and Baptista Mantuanus (1448-1516); or (among other modern Frenchmen) Gervasius Sepinus of Saumur, writer of eclogues after the manner of Virgil and Mantuanus.

{103b} No importance can be attached to Drayton's pretensions to greater originality than his neighbours. The very line in which he makes the claim ('I am no pick-purse of another's wit') is a verbatim theft from a sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney.

{103c} Lodge's _Margarite_, p. 79. See Appendix IX. for the text of Desportes's sonnet (_Diane_, livre ii. No. iii.) and Lodge's translation in _Phillis_. Lodge gave two other translations of the same sonnet of Desportes--in his romance of _Rosalind_ (Hunterian Society's reprint, p. 74), and in his volume of poems called _Scillaes Metamorphosis_ (p. 44). Sonnet xxxiii. of Lodge's _Phillis_ is rendered with equal literalness from Ronsard. But Desportes was Lodge's special master,

{104a} See Drummond's _Poems_, ed. W. C. Ward, in Muses' Library, 1894, i. 207 seq.

{104b} Seve's _Delie_ was first published at Lyons in 1544.

{104c} 1530-1579.

{105} In two of his century of sonnets (Nos. xiii. and xxiv. in 1594 edition, renumbered xxxii. and liii. in 1619 edition) Drayton hints that his 'fair Idea' embodied traits of an identifiable lady of his acquaintance, and he repeats the hint in two other short poems; but the fundamental principles of his sonnetteering exploits are defined explicitly in Sonnet xviii. in 1594 edition.

Some, when in rhyme, they of their loves do tell, . . .
Only I call [_i.e._ I call only] on my divine Idea.

Joachim du Bellay, one of the French poets who anticipated Drayton in addressing sonnets to 'L'Idee,' left the reader in no doubt of his intent by concluding one poem thus:

La, o mon ame, au plus hault ciel guidee,
Tu y pourras recognoistre l'Idee
De la beaute qu'en ce monde j'adore.

(Du Bellay's _Olive_, No. cxiii., published in 1568.)

{106a} Ben Jonson pointedly noticed the artifice inherent in the metrical principles of the sonnet when he told Drummond of Hawthornden that 'he cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.' (Jonson's _Conversation_, p. 4).

{106b} See p. 121 _infra_.

{107a} They were first printed by Dr. Grosart for the Chetham Society in 1873 in his edition of 'the Dr. Farmer MS.,' a sixteenth and seventeenth century commonplace book preserved in the Chetham Library at Manchester, pt. i. pp. 76-81. Dr. Grosart also included the poems in his edition of Sir John Davies's _Works_, 1876, ii. 53-62.

{107b} Davies's Sonnet viii. is printed in Appendix IX.

{107c} See p. 127 _infra_.

{108} _Romeo and Juliet_, II. iv. 41-4.

{110} Mr. Fleay in his _Biographical Chronicle of the English Stage_, ii. 226 seq., gives a striking list of parallels between Shakespeare's and Drayton's sonnets which any reader of the two collections in conjunction could easily increase. Mr. Wyndham in his valuable edition of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, p. 255, argues that Drayton was the plagiarist of Shakespeare, chiefly on bibliographical grounds, which he does not state quite accurately. One hundred sonnets belonging to Drayton's _Idea_ series are extant, but they were not all published by him at one time. Fifty-three were alone included in his first and only separate edition of 1594; six more appeared in a reprint of _Idea_ appended to the _Heroical Epistles_ in 1599; twenty-four of these were gradually dropped and thirty-four new ones substituted in reissues appended to volumes of his writings issued respectively in 1600, 1602, 1603, and 1605. To the collection thus re-formed a further addition of twelve sonnets and a withdrawal of some twelve old sonnets were made in the final edition of Drayton's works in 1619. There the sonnets number sixty-three. Mr. Wyndham insists that Drayton's latest published sonnets have alone an obvious resemblance to Shakespeare's sonnets, and that they all more or less reflect Shakespeare's sonnets as printed by Thorpe in 1609. But the whole of Drayton's century of sonnets except twelve were in print long before 1609, and it could easily be shown that the earliest fifty-three published in 1594 supply as close parallels with Shakespeare's sonnets as any of the forty-seven published subsequently. Internal evidence suggests that all but one or two of Drayton's sonnets were written by him in 1594, in the full tide of the sonnetteering craze. Almost all were doubtless in circulation in manuscript then, although only fifty-three were published in 1594. Shakespeare would have had ready means of access to Drayton's manuscript collection. Mr. Collier reprinted all the sonnets that Drayton published between 1594 and 1619 in his edition of Drayton's poems for the Roxburghe Club, 1856. Other editions of Drayton's sonnets of this and the last century reprint exclusively the collection of sixty-three appended to the edition of his works in 1619.

{111} Almost all sixteenth-century sonnets on spring in the absence of the poet's love (cf. Shakespeare's Sonnets xcviii., xcix.) are variations on the sentiment and phraseology of Petrarch's well-known sonnet xlii., 'In morte di M. Laura,' beginning:

Zefiro torna e 'l bel tempo rimena,
E i fiori e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia,
E garrir Progne e pianger Filomena,
E primavera candida e vermiglia.
Ridono i prati, e 'l ciel si rasserena;
Giove s'allegra di mirar sua figlia;
L'aria e l'acqua e la terra e d'amor piena;
Ogni animal d'amar si riconsiglia,
Ma per me, lasso, tornano i piu gravi
Sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge, &c.

See a translation by William Drummond of Hawthornden in Sonnets, pt. ii. No. ix. Similar sonnets and odes on April, spring, and summer abound in French and English (cf. Becq de Fouquiere's _OEuvres choisies de J.-A. de Baif_, passim, and _OEuvres choisies des Contemporains de Ronsard_, p. 108 (by Remy Belleau), p. 129 (by Amadis Jamyn) et passim). For descriptions of night and sleep see especially Ronsard's _Amours_ (livre i. clxxxvi., livre ii. xxii.; _Odes_, livre iv. No. iv., and his _Odes Retranchees_ in _OEuvres_, edited by Blanchemain, ii. 392-4.) Cf. Barnes's _Parthenophe and Parthenophil_, lxxxiii. cv.

{112a} Cf. Ronsard's _Amours_, livre iv. clxxviii.; _Amours pour Astree_, vi. The latter opens:

Il ne falloit, maistresse, autres tablettes
Pour vous graver que celles de mon coeur
Ou de sa main Amour, nostre vainqueur,
Vous a gravee et vos graces parfaites.

{112b} Cf. Spenser, lv.; Barnes's _Parthenophe and Parthenophil_, No. lxxvii.; Fulke Greville's _Coelica_, No. vii.