Chapter XXI: Epilogue

It is an epilogue or discourse to make plain some obscure
precedence.
III, I, 76.

MASKS. REVELS.

Revels, dances, masks and merry hours
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
IV, 3, 379.

The latter quotation is interesting on account of its having been quoted in an extremely valuable anthology in the last year of the sixteenth century. This publication being of such extreme interest I shall transcribe the title page in full.

ENGLANDS

PARNASSUS

OR

The choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets with their Poetical
comparisons, Descriptions of Beauties, Personages, Castles,
Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, Springs, Rivers, &c.

Whereunto are annexed other various discourses, both pleasant and
profitable.

(Printer’s Device)

Imprinted for N. L. C. B.
and T. H. 1600.

The initials N. L. stand for Nicholas Ling, one of the publishers of the famous piratical “Hamlet” quarto, 1603, also the corrected editions of 1604 and 1605.

There are 2,350 quotations in this Anthology, of which 95 are taken from Shakespeare, 30 from the plays and 65 from the poems. The above is numbered 1,292, under the heading:

PLEASURE

Revels, dances, masks and merry howers,
Forerun faire love strowing her way with flowers.

W. Sha.

Although not a rare book, it is of priceless value to the Elizabethan student. Extracts from extant plays being assigned to their proper authors, notwithstanding that the plays in which they appeared were printed anonymously.

Sometimes the editor goes astray and assigns the wrong name to an author; in this work there are 130 such attributions. This important book has been splendidly edited in recent years by Mr. Charles Crawford, who must have spent laborious hours in tracing the different extracts and allotting them to their rightful owners. Every lover of Elizabethan poetry should possess this book, which can be purchased for quite a moderate sum. I should mention that in a dedication to Sir Thomas Mounson the writer signs himself “R. A.” Farmer, the Shakesperean scholar of the eighteenth century, saw a copy with the name Robert Allot printed at length, and ever since, this author has always been considered the editor of this Anthology.

PLAY.

I will play three myself (three characters).
V, 1, 150.

Our wrong doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill.
V, 2, 884.

A twelvemonth and a day, and then ’twill end,
That’s too long for a play.
V, 2, 883.