parison between Biron and Southwell is that both are praising eyes." In A Twelfe Night Merriment, edited as Narcissus by Miss Lee in 1892, of date 1602, there are several Shakespearian reminiscences. Two or three recall Love's Labour's Lost. See notes at "keel the pot" (v. ii. 909); "salve in the mail" (III. i. 66); and "white and red" (I. ii. 86). From a letter by Sir Walter Cope (Ingleby, p. 62) addressed to Lord Cranbourne in 1604, we know that it was revived in that year: "Sir, I have sent and bene all this morning huntyng for players Juglers & Such kinde of creaturs, but fynde them harde to finde; wherfore leavinge notes for them to seeke me. Burbage ys come, & sayes ther ys no new playe that the quene [Anne of Denmark, the queen of James I.] hath not seene, but they have Revyved an olde one, cawled Loves Labore Lost, which for wytt & mirthe he sayes will please her excedingly. And thys ys apointed to be playd to morowe night at my Lord of Sowthamptons, unless yow send a wrytt to Remove the Corpus Cum Causa to your howse in Strande. Burbage ys my messenger ready attendyng your pleasure. Yours most humbly, WALTER COPE." As I write, it is 300 years since the above letter was penned. It is pleasant reading compared with modern criticism upon Love's Labour's Lost, and one's heart warms towards the builder of Holland House. As a set-off to Sir Walter Cope, the next reference is to John Dryden, 1672 (Ingleby, p. 351): “I suppose I need not name Pericles, Prince of Tyre, nor the Historical Plays of Shakespeare. Besides many of the rest, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment" (Dryden's Dramatic Works, ed. 1882, iv. 229). In the Introduction to this play in the Henry Irving Shakespeare occurs: "No mention of this play having been acted occurs in Henslowe's Diary, 1591-1609, nor in Pepys, nor in Genest, whose work embraces the period between 1660 and 1830. In October, 1839, under the management of Madame Vestris, Love's Labour's Lost was played at Covent Garden. It was also acted in 1853 at Sadlers Wells, under the management of Mr. Phelps, who himself took the part of Don Adriano [Armado]. I can find no instance of its representation in our time." Irving goes on: "It may be difficult to point out Shakespeare's best play, but there is little difficulty in pointing out his worst. Love's Labour's Lost, whether we consider it as a drama, or as a study of character, or as a poetical work, is certainly the least to be admired of all his plays." This is severe enough, and true perhaps, to a stage-manager. But few people will find Titus Andronicus, or any of the three parts of Henry VI., or several other plays, better reading than Love's Labour's Lost. SOURCES OF THE PLOT The story or plot of Love's Labour's Lost is of a very slight nature, with few incidents of any dramatic power. So far as it may be historical, as it appears to be, the origin of the plot is unknown, and we are fairly entitled to say it is Shakespeare's own invention. The most striking situation, the only striking one indeed, that of the reading of the love-letters (in IV. iii.) aloud, while the others listen in hiding, is very effectively carried out. The play hangs together, not through any interest in the working out of a plot, but entirely through the amusement derived from the exposure of the oddities, foibles and peculiarities of the characters. It was written in ridicule of the affectations of the time, like Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia's Revels and Poetaster, and like them it may receive Jonson's name, of a "Comical Satire." Hunter endeavoured to derive the plot from a historical event related in the chronicles of Montstrelet (translated by Johnes, i. 108) bearing date 1425, or nearly so, which deals with negotiations between the kings of France and Navarre at that date. With the exception of the name "king of Navarre," Charles, not Henry, and the sum mentioned, "two [not one] hundred thousand crowns," there seems to be nothing in common between the two, and any reference to this trifling passage in French history of a century and a half previously is scarcely probable. Moreover if the story had been directly taken from any French origin, there would be much more tangible matter in the play of, or belonging to, France. There is hardly a French touch in it excepting the names of the characters and the frequent use of the style "Monsieur." One may be cited in the use of the word "capon" for a loveletter (IV. i. 57). The allusions to games, concurrent circumstances (such as "Monarcho" and "Banks' horse," IV. i. 97 and I. ii. 51), and the whole tone and atmosphere of the play and characters completely outweigh these hints, and are purely English. Sidney Lee says that Hunter's "discovery" seems to have obscured subsequent investigation in French history. He goes on (Gentleman's Magazine, October, 1880, p.453)—I quote from Furness here: "The leading event of the comedy-the meeting of the King of Navarre with the Princess of France-lends itself as readily to a comparison with an actual occurrence of contemporary French history as do the heroes of the play to a comparison with those who played chief part in it. At the end of the year 1586 a very decided attempt had been made to settle the disputes between Navarre and the reigning king. The mediator was a Princess of France-Catherine de Medici― who had virtually ruled France for nearly thirty years, and who now acted in behalf of her son, decrepit in mind and body, in much the same way as the Princess in Love's Labour's Lost represents her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father. The historical meeting was a very brilliant one. Navarre, however, parted with Catherine and her sirens without bringing their negotiations to a satisfactory decision. . . . There is much probability that the meeting of Navarre and the Princess on the Elizabethan stage was suggested by the well-known interview at Saint Bris. That Shakespeare attempted to depict in the Princess the lineaments of Catherine, we do not for a moment assert." The discrepancies between the above sketch and the meeting in the play are more striking than the resemblances: but when we couple this event with the fact that two of the King of Navarre's most important supporters bore the names of Biron and Longaville, and the familiarity of English people at this time with Henry's history, and the sympathy afforded by this country, the evidence is all in favour of its having influenced Shakespeare. A little later (1605), so well known was Biron in England, that he was the hero of two of Chapman's plays-and it has been suggested that as that character became more prominent, so also are his speeches superior, possibly pointing to their having been worked up in the revised and augmented play. The civil war in France was in progress between 1589 and 1594. This, though a patchwork origin, and difficult to harmonise with our dates, is the best that has yet been offered. In his Life of Shakespeare (1899, pp. 51-52) Lee has accepted it, and dwelt upon these details as the undoubted source. It will be seen presently that I do not altogether coincide. See, however, note at IV. iii. 376. It is therefore hardly possible to place Love's Labour's Lost before September, 1589, at the earliest, when London's attention must have been strongly fixed upon the affairs of Henry of Navarre. For at that date we find in Stow (Abridgment of the English Chronicle, 1618, p. 381): "In the moneth of September the citizens of London furnished 1000 men to be sent over into France, to the aiding of Henry late king of Navarre, then challenging the Crowne of France." A little later (pp. 384, 385) Stow continues: "The said King Henry the third was also slaine by a Frier. This Henry the third was the last of the house of Valois. And presently upon his death, Henry of Burbon, King of Navarre laid just claime to the crowne, who with great difficultie, and almost eight yeares sharpe warres with the Leagers, he got peacable possession of the whole kingdom. But at the first, the Leagers drove him into divers extremities and forced him to flie into Deepe, where he was ready to have embarked for England, if the Queene had not speedily sent a resolute Armie unto him, under command of the Lord Willowby. And from that time the Queene ayded him with divers Armies, under the command of the Earle of Essex, General Norris, Sir Roger Williams, and many others, besides incessant supplies, upon sudden occasions from London, Kent, Essex, Suffolke, Surrey, Suffer and Hampshire, both of horse, men and munition." The date of Ivry was 14th March, 1590. It is a pleasing coincidence with Stow's words, "Navarre, then challenging the Crowne of France," to read lines 793-799 (v. ii.), when the Princess of France says to Navarre : Then, at the expiration of the year, Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts, I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut My woeful self up in a mourning house, For the remembrance of my father's death. France, "raining the tears of lamentation in a woeful house," is a suggestive idea, in connection with those times of horrors. Furnivall takes up the identification of characters in the Introduction to this play in The Old Spelling Shakespeare (1904), as follows: "In the play, then, King Ferdinand represents Henri IV. of Navarre, Berowne, Marshal de Biron, under whom the English contingent of 1589 generally served; Longaville, the Duke de Longueville, an officer in Henry's army; while Dumaine, the Duke de Mayenne, was Henry's chief opponent, and did not submit to him till 1595 or 1596" [those horrid dates!]; "and the boy Moth may be called after the French ambassador, La Mothe or La Motte." I do not accept the idea that Moth has any connection with, or is a remembrancer of Monsieur La Motte (or Monsieur Motte as Middleton calls him), the French ambassador of some ten years earlier. La Motte was at Kenilworth in 1572, to move the marriage of Francis, Duke of Alençon with Queen Elizabeth (Nichols' Progresses, i. 321). He left England in 1583. The name is merely Moth for a Tom Thumb page. But perhaps we may pursue these personifications a step further, and let the Princess of France stand for France itself, challenged as we see for himself by Henry of Navarre. She is more French than anything in the play. Her griefs are double (V. ii. 741), fighting for and against her heir. The Gallicism "capon" (IV. i. 57) for a letter, mentioned just above, is given to the Princess. See, too, my note at "dances and masks" (IV. iii. 376). As France the Princess compares her maiden honour to the "unsullied lily" (v. ii. 352), the flower-de |