Note 184 — XI—THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER

A unique copy of Chester’s Love’s Martyr is in Mr. Christie-Miller’s library at Britwell. Of a reissue of the original edition in 1611 with a new title, The Annals of Great Brittaine, a copy (also unique) is in the British Museum. A reprint of the original edition was prepared for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in his series of ‘Occasional Issues.’ It was also printed in the same year as one of the publications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon in his elegy on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser’s Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney’s obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phœnix, and eagle, in verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare’s account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester’s volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare’s poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon’s elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare’s concluding ‘Threnos’ is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in his Mad Lover in the song ‘The Lover’s Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.’