Note 284 — Chapter V

For a detailed discussion of the evidence I must refer the reader to the Introduction to my reprint of the play in the Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas (vol. xi, 1905). The following summary may be quoted. '(i) There is no ground for supposing that there ever existed more of the Sad Shepherd than we at present possess. (ii) The theory of the substantial identity of the Sad Shepherd and the May Lord must be rejected, there being no reason to suppose that the latter was dramatic at all. (iii) The two works may, however, have been to some extent connected in subject, and fragments of the one may survive embedded in the other. (iv) The May Lord was most probably written in the autumn of 1613. (v) The date of the Sad Shepherd cannot be fixed with certainty; but there is no definite evidence to oppose to the first line of the prologue and the allusion in Falkland's elegy [in Jonsonus Virbius], which agree in placing it in the few years preceding Jonson's death.'