FOOTNOTES.

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’). 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 persèver In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness.

Cf. Sophocles’s Œdipus Coloneus, 880: Τοις τοι δικαίοις χα’ βραχυς νικα μέγαν (‘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 προμαντις θυμος of Euripides’s Andromache, 1075; and Hamlet’s ‘sea of troubles’ (III. i. 59) by the κακων πέλαγος of Æschylus’s Persæ, 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.

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).

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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).

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).

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

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 Œuvres et Meslanges Poétiques, 1574.

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.

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 giouentù, con beltà 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).

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).

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 protégé, and read his fine translation of Montaigne’s Essays with delight. He quotes from it in The Tempest: see p. 253.

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 più: 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.”’)

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds.

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’Idée,’ left the reader in no doubt of his intent by concluding one poem thus:

Là, ô mon âme, au plus hault ciel guidée, Tu y pourras recognoistre l’Idée De la beauté qu’en ce monde j’adore.

(Du Bellay’s Olive, No. cxiii., published in 1568.)

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 è d’amor piena; Ogni animal d’amar si riconsiglia, Ma per me, lasso, tornano i più 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 Œuvres choisies de J.-A. de Baïf, passim, and Œuvres 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 Retranchées in Œuvres, edited by Blanchemain, ii. 392-4.) Cf. Barnes’s Parthenophe and Parthenophil, lxxxiii. cv.

Il ne falloit, maistresse, autres tablettes Pour vous graver que celles de mon cœur Où de sa main Amour, nostre vainqueur, Vous a gravée et vos grâces parfaites.

Now by her means it purchased hath that bliss Which all diseases quickly can remove.

Similarly Shakespeare in Sonnet cliv. not merely states that the ‘cool well’ into which Cupid’s torch had fallen ‘from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,’ but also that it grew ‘a bath and healthful remedy for men diseased.’

C’est un travail de bon-heur Chanter les hommes louables, Et leur bastir un honneur Seul vainqueur des ans muables. Le marbre ou l’airain vestu D’un labeur vif par l’enclume N’animent tant la vertu Que les Muses par la plume. . .

Les neuf divines pucelles Gardent ta gloire chez elles; Et mon luth, qu’ell’ont fait estre De leurs secrets le grand prestre, Par cest hymne solennel Respandra dessus ta race Je ne sçay quoy de sa grace Qui te doit faire eternel.

(Œuvres de Ronsard, ed. Blanchemain, ii. 58, 62.)

I quote two other instances from Ronsard on p. 116, note 1. Desportes was also prone to indulge in the same conceit; cf. his Cleonice, sonnet 62, which Daniel appropriated bodily in his Delia Sonnet xxvi.) Desportes warns his mistress that she will live in his verse like the phœnix in fire.

Plus dur que fer j’ay fini mon ouvrage, Que ‘an, dispos à demener les pas, Que l’eau, le vent ou le brulant orage, L’injuriant, ne ru’ront point à bas. Quand ce viendra que le dernier trespas M’assoupira d’un somme dur, à l’heure, Sous le tombeau tout Ronsard n’ira pas, Restant de luy la part meilleure. . . Sus donque, Muse, emporte au ciel la gloire Que j’ay gaignée, annonçant la victoire Dont à bon droit je me voy jouissant. . .

Cf. also Ronsard’s Sonnet lxxii. in Amours (livre i.), where he declares that his mistress’s name

Victorieux des peuples et des rois S’en voleroit sus l’aile de ma ryme.

But Shakespeare, like Ronsard, knew Horace’s far-famed Ode (bk. iii. 30)

Exegi monumentum ære perennius Regalique situ pyramidum altius, Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis Annorum series, et fuga temporum.

Nor can there be any doubt that Shakespeare wrote with a direct reference to the concluding nine lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (xv. 871-9):

Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira nec ignes, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas. Cum volet illa dies, quæ nil nisi corporis hujus Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat ævi; Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.

This passage was familiar to Shakespeare in one of his favourite books—Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses. Golding’s rendering opens:

Now have I brought a worke to end which neither Jove’s fierce wrath Nor sword nor fire nor fretting age, with all the force it hath Are able to abolish quite, &c.

Meres, after his mention of Shakespeare’s sonnets in his Palladis Tamia (1598), quotes parts of both passages from Horace and Ovid, and gives a Latin paraphrase of his own, which, he says, would fit the lips of our contemporary poets besides Shakespeare. The introduction of the name Mars into Meres’s paraphrase as well as into line 7 of Shakespeare’s Sonnet lv. led Mr. Tyler (on what are in any case very trivial grounds) to the assumption that Shakespeare was borrowing from his admiring critic, and was therefore writing after 1598, when Meres’s book was published. In Golding’s translation reference is made to Mars by name (the Latin here calls the god Gradivus) a few lines above the passage already quoted, and the word caught Shakespeare’s eye there. Shakespeare owed nothing to Meres’s paraphrase, but Meres probably owed much to passages in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

O paradox! Black is the badge of hell, The hue of dungeons and the scowl of night. (Love’s Labour’s Lost, IV. iii. 254-5). To look like her are chimney-sweepers black, And since her time are colliers counted bright, And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack. Dark needs no candle now, for dark is light (ib. 266-9).

Combien de fois mes vers ont-ils doré Ces cheueux noirs dignes d’vne Meduse? Combien de fois ce teint noir qui m’amuse, Ay-ie de lis et roses coloré? Combien ce front de rides labouré Ay-ie applani? et quel a fait ma Muse Le gros sourcil, où folle elle s’abuse, Ayant sur luy l’arc d’Amour figuré? Quel ay-ie fait son œil se renfonçant? Quel ay-ie fait son grand nez rougissant? Quelle sa bouche et ses noires dents quelles Quel ay-ie fait le reste de ce corps? Qui, me sentant endurer mille morts, Viuoit heureux de mes peines mortelles.

(Jodelle’s Œuvres, 1597, pp. 91-94.)

With this should be compared Shakespeare’s sonnets cxxxvii., cxlviii., and cl. Jodelle’s feigned remorse for having lauded the black hair and complexion of his mistress is one of the most singular of several strange coincidences. In No. vi. of his Contr’ Amours Jodelle, after reproaching his ‘traitres vers’ with having untruthfully described his siren as a beauty, concludes:

‘Ja si long temps faisant d’un Diable vn Ange Vous m’ouurez l’œil en l’iniuste louange, Et m’aueuglez en l’iniuste tourment.

With this should be compared Shakespeare’s Sonnet cxliv., lines 9-10.

And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell.

A conventional sonnet or extravagant vituperation, which Drummond of Hawthornden translated from Marino (Rime, 1602, pt. i. p. 76), is introduced with grotesque inappropriateness into Drummond’s collection of ‘sugared’ sonnets (see pt. i. No. xxxv: Drummond’s Poems, ed. W. C. Ward, i. 69, 217).

To love my lord I do knight’s service owe, And therefore now he hath my wit in ward; But while it [i.e. the poet’s wit] is in his tuition so Methinks he doth intreat [i.e. treat] it passing hard . . . But why should love after minority (When I have passed the one and twentieth year) Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty, And make it still the yoke of wardship bear? I fear he [i.e. my lord] hath another title [i.e. right to my wit] got And holds my wit now for an idiot.

Oh, hopeful love, my object and invention, Oh, true desire, the spur of my conceit, Oh, worthiest spirit, my mind’s impulsion, Oh, eyes transparent, my affection’s bait; Oh, princely form, my fancy’s adamant, Divine conceit, my pain’s acceptance, Oh, all in one! Oh, heaven on earth transparent! The seat of joy and love’s abundance!

(Cf. Cynthia, a fragment in Poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p. 33.) When Ralegh leaves Elizabeth’s presence he tell us his ‘forsaken heart’ and his ‘withered mind’ were ‘widowed of all the joys’ they ‘once possessed.’ Only some 500 lines (the twenty-first book and a fragment of another book) survive of Ralegh’s poem Cynthia, the whole of which was designed to prove his loyalty to the Queen, and all the extant lines are in the same vein as those I quote. The complete poem extended to twenty-two books, and the lines exceeded 10,000, or five times as many as in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Richard Barnfield in his like-named poem of Cynthia, 1595, and Fulke Greville in sonnets addressed to Cynthia, also extravagantly described the Queen’s beauty and graces. In 1599 Sir John Davies, poet and lawyer, apostrophised Elizabeth, who was then sixty-six years old, thus:

Fair soul, since to the fairest body knit You give such lively life, such quickening power, Such sweet celestial influences to it As keeps it still in youth’s immortal flower . . . O many, many years may you remain A happy angel to this happy land (Nosce Teipsum, dedication).

Davies published in the same year twenty-six ‘Hymnes of Astrea’ on Elizabeth’s beauty and graces; each poem forms an acrostic on the words ‘Elizabetha Regina,’ and the language of love is simulated on almost every page.

Show me your image in some antique book . . . Oh sure I am the wits of former days To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

O how I faint when I of you do write.—(lxxx. 1.) Finding thy worth a limit past my praise.—(lxxxii. 6.)

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within,

adopts expressions in Barnes’s vituperative sonnet (No xlix.), where, after denouncing his mistress as a ‘siren,’ the poet incoherently ejaculates:

From my love’s limbeck [sc. have I] still [di]stilled tears!

Almost every note in the scale of sadness or self-reproach is sounded from time to time in Petrarch’s sonnets. Tasso in Scelta delle Rime, 1582, p. ii. p. 26, has a sonnet (beginning ‘Vinca fortuna homai, se sotto il peso’) which adumbrates Shakespeare’s Sonnets xxix. (‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes’) and lxvi. (‘Tired with all these, for restful death I cry’). Drummond of Hawthornden translated Tasso’s sonnet in his sonnet (part i. No. xxxiii.); while Drummond’s Sonnets xxv. (‘What cruel star into this world was brought’) and xxxii. (‘If crost with all mishaps be my poor life’) are pitched in the identical key.

An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still . . . Thus am I still provoked to every evil By this good-wicked spirit, sweet Angel-Devil.

But Shakespeare entirely alters the point of the lines by contrasting the influence exerted on him by the woman with that exerted on him by a man.

‘[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in paper. xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne]

[A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon xv. or xvj. years past.

That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance [500 li.]

That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent. of worship.]’

Cotta’s become a player most men know, And will no longer take such toyling paines; For here’s the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow And brings them damnable excessive gaines: That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs, Since Greene’s Tu Quoque and those Garlicke Jigs.

Greens Tu Quoque was a popular comedy that had once been performed at Court by the Queen’s players, and ‘Garlicke Jigs’ alluded derisively to drolling entertainments, interspersed with dances, which won much esteem from patrons of the smaller playhouses.

‘Y’ faith, my lord, noveltie carries it away, For the principal publike audience that Came to them are turned to private playes And to the humours of children.’

‘Private playes’ were plays acted by amateurs, with whom the ‘Children’ might well be classed.

‘Now for the players ’tis true I tax’d them And yet but some, and those so sparingly As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned, Had they but had the wit or conscience To think well of themselves. But impotent they Thought each man’s vice belonged to their whole tribe; And much good do it them. What they have done against me I am not moved with, if it gave them meat Or got them clothes, ’tis well; that was their end, Only amongst them I am sorry for Some better natures by the rest so drawn To run in that vile line.’

Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied

(III. i. 47-8). The rhythm and sense seem to require the reinsertion after the word ‘wrong’ of the phrase ‘but with just cause,’ which Jonson needlessly reprobated. Leonard Digges (1588-1635), one of Shakespeare’s admiring critics, emphasises the superior popularity of Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar in the theatre to Ben Jonson’s Roman play of Catiline, in his eulogistic lines on Shakespeare (published after Digges’s death in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s Poems):

So have I seen when Cæsar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were Brutus and Cassius—oh, how the audience Were ravish’d, with what wonder they went thence When some new day they would not brook a line Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline.

At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber for various (detached) years in the early part of James I’s reign. These documents show that Shakespeare’s company acted at Court on November 1 and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 and 8, February 2 and 3, and the evenings of the following Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday, 1605.

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done To thee particularly and to all the Volsces, Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may My surname, Coriolanus . . . to do thee service.

North’s translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms Coriolanus’s speech on the occasion. It opens: ‘I am Caius Martius, who hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of Coriolanus that I bear.’ Similarly Volumnia’s stirring appeal to her son and her son’s proffer of submission, in act V. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce with equal literalness North’s rendering of Plutarch. ‘If we held our peace, my son,’ Volumnia begins in North, ‘the state of our raiment would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself,’ and so on. The first sentence of Shakespeare’s speech runs:

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment And state of bodies would bewray what life We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . .

Ye ayres and windes, ye elves of hills, ye brookes and woods alone.

Maria. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.

Sir Andrew. O! if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.

Sir Toby. What, for being a puritan? thy exquisite reason, dear knight.

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for ‘t, but I have reason good enough.

In Winter’s Tale (IV. iii. 46) the Clown, after making contemptuous references to the character of the shearers, remarks that there is ‘but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.’ Cf. the allusions to ‘grace’ and ‘election’ in Cymbeline, p. 250, note 1.

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows, But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes; If any man ask, who lies in this tomb? Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.

Rowe’s version opens somewhat differently:

Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav’d. ’Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav’d.

The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in Shakespeare’s lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in Rowe’s version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608, and again in Camden’s Remaines, 1614. The whole first appeared in Richard Brathwaite’s Remains in 1618 under the heading: ‘Upon one John Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon a Tombe that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time.’

[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument.

‘Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo! Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore, Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua. Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget, Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet.’

How shall this bisson multitude digest The senate’s courtesy?—(Coriolanus, III. i. 131-2.)

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.

For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter Giant.

See Warners Catalogue of Dulwich MSS. pp. 24-6.

Comes South- Hamp- toniæ. Post hunc (i.e. Earl of Essex) insequitur clarâ de stirpe Dynasta Iure suo diues quem South-Hamptonia magnum Vendicat heroem; quo non formosior alter Affuit, ant doctâ iuuenis præstantior arte; Ora licet tenerâ vix dum lanugine vernent.

Of all those sweet and fair flowers, The pride of chaste Cynthia’s [i.e. Queen Elizabeth’s] rich crown.

Pardon, sweete flower of matchles poetrye, And fairest bud the red rose euer bare, Although my muse, devorst from deeper care, Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitye For painting forth the things that hidden are, Since all men act what I in speeche declare, Onlie inducèd with varietie. Complaints and praises, every one can write, And passion out their pangs in statlie rimes; But of loues pleasures none did euer write, That have succeeded in theis latter times.

Accept of it, deare Lord, in gentle parte, And better lines, ere long shall honor thee.

The poem follows in about three hundred lines, and the manuscript ends with a second sonnet addressed by Nash to his patron:

Thus hath my penne presum’d to please my friend. Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo’s eye. No, Honor brookes no such impietie, Yet Ovid’s wanton muse did not offend. He is the fountaine whence my streames do flowe— Forgive me if I speak as I was taught; Alike to women, utter all I knowe, As longing to unlade so bad a fraught. My mynde once purg’d of such lascivious witt, With purifièd words and hallowed verse, Thy praises in large volumes shall rehearse. That better maie thy grauer view befitt. Meanwhile ytt rests, you smile at what I write Or for attempting banish me your sight.

Tho. Nash.

Welcome to shore, unhappy-happy Lord, From the deep seas of danger and distress. There like thou wast to be thrown overboard In every storm of discontentedness.

‘But women will have their own wills, Alas, why then should I complain?’

Why did rich Nature graces grant to thee, Since thou art such a niggard of thy grace? O how can graces in thy body be? Where neither they nor pity find a place! . . . Grant me some grace! For thou with grace art wealthy And kindly may’st afford some gracious thing.

Cf. Lear, IV. vi. 279, ‘O undistinguish’d space of woman’s will;’ i.e. ‘O boundless range of woman’s lust.’

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind (cv. 5). Beyond all date, even to eternity (cxxii. 4). Who art as black as hell, as dark as night (cxlvii. 14).

In all these instances the second half of the line merely repeats the first half with a slight intensification.

All her looks gracious, yet no grace do bring To me, poor wretch! Yet be the Graces there.

Since what she lists her heart fulfils.

Mine heart bound martyr to thy wills.