Note 1298 — Chapter XV

Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, or Wit’s Treasury, 1598, has a passage of some value in determining the age of Shakspeare’s plays, both by what it contains, and by what it omits. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakspeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love’s Labour Lost, his Love’s Labour Won [the original appellation of All’s Well that Ends Well], his Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy his Richard II., his Richard III., Henry IV., King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. Drake, ii. 287.