English public. 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. 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 into the error of numbering him, although an enemy of Navarre, 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. Again, Armado, 'the fantastical Spaniard' who haunts Navarre's Court in the play, and is dubbed by another courtier 'a phantasm, a Monarcho,' is a caricature of a halfcrazed 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. The name Armado was doubtless suggested by the Spanish 'Armada' of 1588. 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 in 1584, by ladies at Elizabeth's Court, of Russian ambassadors who came to London to seek a wife among the ladies of the English nobility for the Tsar. Elsewhere the piece satirises with good humour contemporary projects of academies for disciplining young men ; fashions of speech and dress current in fashionable circles; the inefficiency of" rural constables and the pedantry of village schoolmasters and curates. The play was revised in 1597, probably for a performance at Court. It was first published next year by Cuthbert Burbie, a liveryman of the Stationers' Company with a shop in Cornhill adjoining the Royal Exchange, and on the title-page, which described the piece as 'newly corrected and augmented,' Shakespeare's name first appeared in print as that of author of a play.

15-93

Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the same Two date, 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which dramatises a Gentleromantic story of love and friendship. There is every likeli- Verona.' hood that it was an adaptation — amounting to a re-formation - of a lost 'History of Felix and Philomena,' which had been acted at Court in 1584. The story is the same as

men of

'Comedy of Errors.'

that of 'The Shepardess Felismena' in the Spanish pastoral romance of 'Diana' by George de Montemayor, which long enjoyed popularity in England. No complete English translation of 'Diana' was published before that of Bartholomew Yonge in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas Wilson, which was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in 1596, was possibly circulated far earlier. Some verses from 'Diana' were translated by Sir Philip Sidney and were printed with his poems as early as 1591. Barnabe Rich's story of 'Apollonius and Silla' (from Cinthio's 'Hecatommithi'), which Shakespeare employed again in 'Twelfth Night,' also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the 'Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed- the precursors of a long line of whimsical serving-men- overflow with farcical drollery. The Two Gentlemen' was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, undergone some revision.

Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the 'Comedy of Errors' (commonly known at the time as 'Errors '), at boisterous farce. It also was first published in 1623. Again, as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' allusion was made to the civil war in France. France was described as 'making war against her heir' (III. ii. 125). Shakespeare's farcical comedy, which is by far the shortest of all his dramas, may have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called 'The Historie of Error,' which was acted in 1576 at Hampton Court. In subject-matter it resembles the 'Menæchmi' of Plautus, and treats of mistakes of identity arising from the likeness of twin-born children. The scene (act III. sc. i.) in which Antipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, while his brother and wife are at dinner within, recalls one in the 'Amphitruo' of Plautus. Shakespeare doubtless had direct recourse to Plautus as well as to the old play, and he may have read Plautus in English. The earliest translation of the 'Menæchmi' was not licensed for publication before June 10, 1594, and was not published until the following year. No translation of any other play of Plautus appeared before. But it was stated in the preface to this first published translation of the 'Menæchmi' that the translator, W. W., doubtless William Warner, a veteran of the Elizabethan world of letters, had some time previously 'Eng

lished' that and 'divers' others of Plautus's comedies, and had circulated them in manuscript 'for the use of and delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus's own words, are not able to understand them.'

Such plays as these, although each gave promise of a 'Romeo dramatic capacity out of the common way, cannot be with and Juliet.' certainty pronounced to be beyond the ability of other men, It was in 'Romeo and Juliet,' Shakespeare's first tragedy, that he proved himself the possessor of a poetic and dramatic instinct of unprecedented quality. In 'Romeo and Juliet he turned to account a tragic romance in great vogue_in Italy, and popular throughout Europe. The story has been traced back to the Greek romance of 'Anthia and Abrocomas' by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the second century, but it seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 1470 by the Italian novelist Masuccio in his 'Novellino' (No. xxxiii.). It was adapted from Masuccio by Bandello in his 'Novelle' (1554, pt. ii., No. ix.) and ← Bandello's version became classical. It was through Bandello that the tale reached France, Spain, and England. His version was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau de Launay, an occasional collaborator in the 'Histoires Tragiques' of François de Belleforest (Paris, 1559), and it was in process of dramatisation by both French and Spanish writers about the same time that Shakespeare was writing 'Romeo and Juliet.' Arthur Broke rendered into English verse the Italian version of Bandello in 1562, and William Painter published it in English prose in his 'Palace of Pleasure' in 1567. Shakespeare made acquaintance with the tale in Broke's verse. He introduced little change in the plot, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the humour of Mercutio, and by investing with an entirely new and comic significance the character of the Nurse. The ecstasy of youthful passion is portrayed by Shakespeare in language of the highest lyric beauty, and although a predilection for quibbles and conceits occasionally passes beyond the author's control, his 'Romeo and Juliet,' as a tragic poem on the theme of love, has no rival in any literature. If the Nurse's remark, "Tis since the earthquake now eleven years' (1. iii. 23), be taken literally, the composition of the play must be referred to 1591, ← for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was experienced

D

'Henry VI.'

in England after 1580. There are a few parallelisms with Daniel's 'Complaint of Rosamond,' published in 1592, and it is probable that Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. The piece probably underwent revision after its first production. The tragedy was issued in quarto in 1597 anonymously and surreptitiously—'as it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right honourable the L[ord] of Hunsdon his servants.' The printer and publisher of the work was John Danter, a very notorious trader in books, with a shop in Hosier Lane, near Holborn Conduit; as 'Danter the printer,' a trafficker in the licentious products of academic youth, he figured without disguise of name in the dramatis persona of the academic play of 'The Returne from Parnassus' (1600?). A second quarto of 'Romeo and Juliet'-'newly corrected, augmented, and amended as it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted by the right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants' was published, from an authentic version, in 1599, by a stationer of higher reputation, Cuthbert Burbie of Cornhill.

Of the original representation on the stage of three other pieces of the period we have more explicit information. These reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly as an adapter of plays by other hands. Though they lack the interest attaching to his unaided work, they throw invaluable light on some of his early methods of composition and his early relations with other dramatists.

On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called 'Henry VI,' was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's men. It was no doubt the play which was subsequently known as Shakespeare's 'The First Part of Henry VI.' On its first performance it won a popular triumph. "How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),' wrote Nash in his 'Pierce Pennilesse' (1592, licensed August 8), in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot's death (Iv. vi. and vii.), 'to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!' There is no categorical record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but such a play quickly followed; for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry

VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in the following autumn.

Greene's

The applause attending the completion of this historical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that their popularity was endangered by the young stranger who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on September 3, 1592, wrote on his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled 'A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.' Addressing three brother dramatists Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge · he bade them beware attack. of puppets 'that speak from our mouths,' and of 'antics garnished in our colours.' 'There is,' he continued, 'an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie. Never more acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.' The 'only Shake-scene' is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The italicised quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of Shakespeare's 'Henry VI':

Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.

The tirade was probably inspired by an established author's resentment at the energy of a young actor · the theatre's factotum in revising the dramatic work of his seniors with such masterly effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem of manager and playgoer. But Shakespeare's amiability Chettle's of character and versatile ability had already won him apology. admirers, and his successes excited the sympathetic regard of colleagues more kindly than Greene. In December 1592 Greene's publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for Greene's attack on the young actor to his 'Kind Hartes Dreame,' a tract reflecting on phases of contemporary social life. 'I am as sory,' Chettle wrote, 'as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his [i.e. Shakespeare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have