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SECTION IV.
THE CHRONOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

It is of the greatest importance, in investigating the chronological succession of an author's works, that we should start from a definite and certain date. The neglect of this point, especially in so difficult an instance as the present, involves us too often in thorny discussions at the very onset. Such an epoch is presented us at once by the publication of Shakespeare's earliest poem. I begin therefore at this point.

Venus and Adonis was entered on S. R. 18th April 1593 by Richard Field, printer, son of Henry Field, tanner, of Stratford-on-Avon, who parted with his copyright to Mr. Harrison, senior, 25th June 1594. There were editions in 1593, 1594 (R. Field); 1596 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1599 and 1602, bis (W. Leake); 1617 (W. Barrett); and 1620 (J. Parker). Harrison had assigned his copyright to Leake 25th June 1596. It was transferred to W. Barrett 16th February 1616-17; and again to J. Parker 8th March 1620. This was "the first heir of my invention," which means – the first production in which I have had no co-labourer. Compare Ford's expression "the first-fruits of my leisure" applied to 'Tis pity she's &c., although he had certainly at that time written plays in connection with Dekker and others.

Lucrece. Entered on 9th May 1594 in S. R. by Mr. Harrison, senior. Editions 1594 (R. Field for J. Harrison); 1598 (P. S. for J. Harrison); 1600 (J. H. for J. Harrison); 1607 (N. O. for J. Harrison); 1616 (T. G. for R. Jackson). This poem is a pendant to the former; the one exhibiting woman's chastity, the other her lust. Such opposition of subject in successive productions is very characteristic of Shakespeare.

A Lover's Complaint, published with the Sonnets 1609, written probably 1593-4, between the Venus and Lucrece.

Sonnets, entered on S. R. 20th May 1609 for T. Thorpe. I have on pp. 25, 120 already stated my opinion that these were written during 1594-8.

Titus Andronicus was a new play in 1594, acted for the first time by Sussex' men at the Rose on 23d January.

Richard III. was no doubt acted this same year by the Chamberlain's men; just before the old play which had been acted by the Queen's players was published (S. R. 19th June 1594). A Richard is alluded to in John Weever's Epigrams, published 1599, when the author was twenty-three, but written when he was not twenty; they must therefore date at latest in 1596 (not 1595 as usually stated). Weever mentions Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, Romeo, and Richard as the issue of honey-tongued Shakespeare. We shall see that Romeo, as referred to here, was acted in 1595-6, and I believe the Richard referred to is the Richard II. of 1595. Edward III. I have shown in p. 118 to be an alteration of an old play of Marlowe's written in 1590, revived in 1594 about the autumn, after Lucrece was published. It will be most convenient to defer the consideration of authorship of the preceding plays till I have to treat of Henry VI.; the dates of editions of all the plays will be exhibited in tabular form further on, which will save much repetition and interruption of argument. We now come to an unquestionable date; and it is from this, the first recorded date in connection with an undoubted play, that I wish the reader to regard our investigation of play dates as beginning.

1594

December 28. Shakespeare's only farcical comedy of Errors was acted at Gray's Inn at night: the same players had acted before the Queen at Greenwich on that day, very likely in the same comedy. In April 1595 the English agent in Edinburgh wrote to Burghley, how ill King James took it that the comedians in London should scorn the king and people of Scotland in their plays. The barrenness of Scotland is mentioned in iii. 2. Neither would James approve of a play in which witchcraft and exorcising is so constantly ridiculed. The opening scene is very like in method to that of Midsummer-Night's Dream; and the reiterated allusions by either Dromio to being transformed to an ass (ii. 2. 201; iii. 1. 15; iv. 4. 28; iii. 2. 77) remind us so strongly of that play as almost to infer contemporaneity of production; especially as in iii. 1. 47 the same quibble, an ass and ace, occurs as in Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 1. 317. Now in 1593, in his Pierce's Supererogation, and in 1592 in his Four Letters, Gabriel Harvey had rung the changes on an ass and a Nash even to wearisomeness; just as Shakespeare in this play puns on an ell and a Nell (iii. 2. 112). This may seem very forced; but I must remind the reader, that s and sh were not distinguished in pronunciation except by pedants at the end of the sixteenth century. It seems then most likely that in dwelling on this transformation, Shakespeare meant to recall to his audience the dyslogistic name inflicted on his old enemy Nash by Gabriel Harvey. All this points to a production of the play in 1594, by the Chamberlain's men; but there are also indications of its having been altered from an earlier version. In the stage directions there are traces of the name Juliana¹² for Luciana: in the text Dowsabel occurs instead of Nell, and in v. 1, the prefix Fat. (Father) has been clearly replaced by Mar. (Merchant) in a revision; note especially v. 1. 195, where both prefixes have by a common printer's error been inserted at once. The older form, again, had Antipholus Sereptus for A. of Syracuse, and Erotes or Erratis for A. of Ephesus; and it had twenty-five years of separation between the parents for thirty-three in the later version. This last difference occurs in i. 1, which is throughout written in a more mechanical and antique style of metre than the rest of the play; and indeed seems to be one of the earliest specimens left us of Shakespeare's attempts to bombast out a blank verse. There is also the name Menaphon (v. 1. 368), which is likely to have been adopted from Greene's Menaphon (1589), who again took it from Marlowe's Tamberlaine (1587-8). The Adam "that goes in the calf-skin," surely alludes to the Adam in the Looking-glass for London (1590), whose "calf-skin jests" were even after seven years an object of ridicule to the playwrights. For all these reasons I believe that a version of this play was acted c. 1590, perhaps in the winter of that year. It does not follow that that version was entirely by Shakespeare, as the present play is; he may have replaced a coadjutor's work of 1590 by his own of 1594. The plot, with its time-unity, is not likely to be of his arranging. As to the pun on the war made by France against her heir (iii. 2. 126), which is usually relied on for the date of production, it merely gives as limits August 1589, when the war of succession began, and 27th February 1594, when Henri IV. was crowned. It does, however, enable us to say positively that the first performance of the play was before the formation of the Chamberlain's company, who only revived it, no doubt in an amended shape, on 28th December 1594, most likely for the sake of the Court performance. The original plot was probably suggested by Plautus' Menæchmi and Amphitryo; and perhaps more directly by the History of Error performed by the Chapel children in 1576, which, by the bye, has nothing to do with the Ferrar of the Earl of Sussex' men in 1582. But we cannot assume in these early plays that Shakespeare was the plotter. It is certain, however, that he did afterwards adopt the likeness of twins in Twelfth Night as a means of introducing "errors" on the stage.

1595

January 26 was the date of the marriage of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, at Greenwich. Such events were usually celebrated with the accompaniment of plays or interludes, masques written specially for the occasion not having yet become fashionable. The company of players employed at these nuptials would certainly be the Chamberlain's, who had, so lately as the year before, been in the employ of the Earl's brother Ferdinand. No play known to us is so fit for the purpose as Midsummer-Night's Dream, which in its present form is certainly of this date. About the same time Edward Russel, Earl of Bedford, married Lucy Harrington. Both marriages may have been enlivened by this performance. This is rendered more probable by the identity of the Oberon story with that of Drayton's Nymphidia, whose special patroness at this time was the newly married Countess of Bedford. That poem contains an allusion to Don Quixote, which could not well have been written till 1612, and certainly not till 1605; but Drayton is known to have constantly altered his poems by way of addition and omission, and no date of original production can in his case be fixed by allusions of this kind. The date of the play here given is again confirmed by the description of the weather in ii. 2. In 1594, and in that year only, is there on record such an inversion of the seasons as is there spoken of. Chute's Cephalus and Procris was entered on S. R., 28th September 1593; Marlowe's Hero and Leander, 22d October 1593; Marlowe and Nash's Dido was printed in 1594. All these stories are alluded to in the play. The date of the Court performance must be in the winter of 1594-5. But the traces of the play having been altered from a version for the stage are numerous. There is a double ending. Robin's final speech is palpably a stage epilogue, while what precedes from "Enter Puck" to "break of day —Exeunt" is very appropriate for a marriage entertainment, but scarcely suited to the stage. In Acts iv. and v., again, we find in the speech-prefixes Duke, Duchess, Clown for Theseus, Hippolita, Bottom: such variations are nearly always marks of alteration, the unnamed characters being anterior in date. In the prose scenes speeches are several times assigned to wrong speakers, another common mark of alteration. In the Fairies the character of Moth (Mote) has been excised in the text, though he still remains among the dramatis personæ. It is not, I think, possible to say which parts of the play were added for the Court performance; but a careful examination has convinced me that wherever Robin occurs in the stage-directions or speech-prefixes scarcely any, if any, alteration has been made; Puck, on the contrary, indicates change. The date of the stage play may, I think, be put in the winter of 1592; and if so it was acted, not at the Rose, but where Lord Strange's company were travelling. For the allusion in v. 1. 52, "The thrice three Muses mourning for the death of Learning, late deceased in beggary," to Spenser's Tears of the Muses (1591), or Greene's death, 3d September 1592, could not, in either interpretation, be much later than the autumn of 1592; and the lines in ii. 1. 156 —

 
"I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state,
And I do love thee" —
 

are so closely like those in Nash's Summer's Last Will, where Summer says —

 
"Died I had indeed unto the earth,
But that Eliza, England's beauteous Queen,
On whom all seasons prosperously attend,
Forbad the execution of my fate
Until her joyful progress was expired" —
 

that I think they are alluded to by Shakespeare. The singularly fine summer of 1592 is attributed to the influence of Elizabeth, the Fairy Queen. Nash's play was performed at the Archbishop's palace at Croydon in Michaelmas term of the same year by a "number of hammer-handed clowns (for so it pleaseth them in modesty to name themselves);" but I believe the company originally satirised in Shakespeare's play was the Earl of Sussex', Bottom, the chief clown, being intended for Robert Greene. Thus much for date of production. For the title of the play, compare the conclusion of The Taming of a Shrew and Peele's Old Wife's Tale, the latter of which is performed in a dream, and the former is supposed by Sly to be so; the interpretation that it means a play performed at midsummer is quite inconsistent with iv. 1. 190, &c., and other passages. The names of the personages are interesting, because they show us what books Shakespeare was reading at this time: from North's Plutarch, Life of Theseus, the first in the book, he got Periginia (Perigouna), Aegles, Ariadne, Antiope, and Hippolita; from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, also the first in the printed editions, which he afterwards dramatised, Philostrate; from Greene's James IV. Oberon. This last name, with Titania's, also occurs in the Queen's Entertainment at Lord Hertford's, 1591. The time-analysis of this play has probably been disturbed by omissions in producing the Court version. I. 1. 128-251 ought to form, and probably did, in the original play, a separate scene; it certainly does not take place in the palace. To the same cause must be attributed the confusion as to the moon's age; cf. i. 1. 209 with the opening lines: the new moon was an afterthought, and evidently derived from a form of the story in which the first day of the month and the new moon were coincident after the Greek time-reckoning. It is worth notice that not only is the title of Preston's Cambyses parodied in the Pyramus interlude, but his pension of sixpence a day is ridiculed in iv. 2. Nor must we quite pass over the fact, which confirms the 1595 date, that on 30th August 1594, at the baptism of Prince Henry (of Scotland), the tame lion which was to have been brought in in the triumph was replaced by a Moor, "because his presence might have brought some fear." The play is nearly as much an error play (iii. 2. 368) as the Errors itself, and, like it, has no known immediate source for the plot. The Pyramus interlude is clearly based on C. Robinson's Handfull of Pleasant Delights (1584); and some of the fairy story may have been suggested by Montemayor's Diana. The line ii. 2. 104, is from Peele's Edward I. (near end), "how nature strove in them to show her art," and I think the man who dares not come in the moon because it is in snuff may allude to the offence given at Court by Lyly's Endymion in 1588. An absolute downward limit of date is given by a line imitated in Doctor Doddypol, a play alluded to in 1596 by Nash, and spoiled in the imitation —

 
"Hanging on every leaf an orient pearl,
Which shook together by the silken wind
Of their loose mantles made a silver chime."
 

This solidification of the dewdrops does not occur in the Shakespeare parallel, ii. 1. 15. Mr. Halliwell's fancy that Spenser's line in Fairy Queen, vi. – "Through hills and dales, through bushes and through briers" must have been imitated by Shakespeare in ii. 1. 2, is very flimsy; hill and dale, bush and brier, are commonplaces of the time. Nor is there any proof that this song could not have been transmitted to Ireland in 1593 or 1594.

1595

Richard II. cannot be definitely dated by external evidence, but all competent critics agree that it is the earliest of Shakespeare's historical plays; the question of authorship, &c., of Richard III. being reserved for the present. It is a tragedy like Marlowe's Edward II., not a "life and death" history. The Civil Wars of Daniel, from which Shakespeare seems to have derived a few hints, was entered on S. R. 11th October 1594. The play probably was produced after this date, and before the publication of the Pope's bull in 1596, inciting the Queen's subjects to depose her. In consequence of this bull the abdication scene was omitted in representation, and in the editions during Elizabeth's lifetime. In like manner, Hayward was imprisoned for publishing in 1599 his History of the First Year of Henry IV., which is simply the story of Richard's abdication. The omitted scene was restored in 1608 under James I. as "new additions." Such new additions on title-pages are often restorations of omitted passages. The Folio copy omits a few other speeches, the play having been evidently found too long in representation; but it contains the abdication scene. This being the first play of Shakespeare's that passed the press was carelessly corrected, whence much apparently unShakespearian and halting metre, which is easily set right. The source of the plot is Holinshed's Chronicle; "the earlier play on Richard II. lately printed" (says Mr. Stokes in 1878) "I have not seen; but it concludes with the murder of the Duke of Gloster." The play seen at the Globe by Forman in 1611 began with the rebellion of Wat Tyler. It was not Shakespeare's. There is no prose in this play, in John, or the Comedy of Errors; a sign of early work.

1595

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a striking instance of the difficulties in which we are involved if we attempt to assign a single date for the production of every play, and neglect the fact that alterations were and are continually made by authors in their works. Drake and Chalmers date this play in 1595; Gervinus, Delius, and Stokes 1591. Malone at different times adopted both dates. I believe that all these opinions are reconcilable, that the play was produced in 1591, with work by a second hand in it, which was cut out and replaced by Shakespeare's own in 1595. For a date after 1593 is distinctly indicated in the play as we have it by the allusions to Hero and Leander in i. 1. 21, iii. 1. 119; and to the pestilence in ii. 1. 20; a still closer approximation is shown to the Merchant of Venice, by the mistake of Padua for Milan in ii. 5. 2. If Shakespeare had not, at the time when he finally produced the Two Gentlemen, begun his study for the Venetian story, whence this name? It only occurs there, once in Much Ado, and in the non-Shakespearian parts of The Taming of the Shrew. In like manner the mistake of Verona for Milan in iii. 4. 81, v. 4. 129, indicates that he had been preparing Romeo and Juliet. That our play lies between the Errors and the Dream on one hand and The Merchant on the other, becomes pretty clear by comparing the development of character in the Dromios, Launce and Speed, Lancelot Gobbo; in Lucetta and Nerissa; in Demetrius and Lysander, Valentine and Proteus. Nor are marks of the twofold date wanting. In the first two acts we find Valentine at the Emperor's court, no Duke mentioned; in the last three at the Duke's, no Emperor mentioned. The turning-point is in ii. 4, where, though "Emperor" occurs in the text, "Duke" is used in the stage directions. In i. 1. 32, "If haply won perhaps a hapless gain; if lost, why then a grievous labour won," there is surely an allusion to Love's Labour's Won, and Love's Labour's Lost; we shall see hereafter that in 1591 these were quite recent plays. The Eglamour of Verona mentioned in i. 2. 9 is not the Eglamour of Milan who appears in iv. 3, v. 1. Style and metre require an early date for i. ii. 1-3 and parts of iii. 1; but in any argument of an internal nature, Johnson's weighty remark should be remembered – "From mere inequality, in works of imagination, nothing can with exactness be inferred." The immediate origin of the plot is unknown; parts of the story are identical with those of The Shepherdess Filismena in Montemayor's Diana, translated in MS. by Young, c. 1583, and of Bandello's Apollonius and Sylla in Rich's Farewell to Military Profession (1581). Felix and Philiomena had been dramatised and acted at Court by the Queen's players, 1584-5. That the revision of The Two Gentlemen was hurriedly performed is clear from the unusually large number of Exits and Entrances that are not marked. This hurry accounts, in some degree, for the weakness of the play, which induces so many critics to insist on an early date for it as a whole. Yet the special blemish they discover, v. 4. 83, the yielding up of Silvia by Valentine, is paralleled in the Dream, where (iii. 2. 163) Lysander says, "With all my heart, in Hermia's love I yield you up my part: " and that Shakespeare felt the unreality of this part of the plot is clear from Two Gentlemen, v. 4. 25, which to me seems a manifest reminiscence of his last play, "How like a dream is this I see and hear!" (cf. Midsummer-Night's Dream, iv. 1. 190, "It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream"). He had been reading Chaucer, as we know, and from him had adopted this method of presenting stories in a dream. A slighter reminiscence of Chaucer's Knight's Tale occurs in the mention of Theseus, iv. 4. 173.

1595-6

Romeo and Juliet was surreptitiously printed by J. Danter in 1597; "as it hath been often with great applause played (publicly), by the Rt. Hon. the L. of Hunsdon, his servants." This edition must have been printed in 1596 (old reckoning), for the players would have been called the Chamberlain's servants except during the tenure of that office by W. Brooke, Lord Cobham, from 23d July 1596 to 5th March 1597. That it was on the stage as well as Richard II. in 1595-6, appears from Weever's Epigrams. A correct edition of Romeo appeared in 1599. The relation of these two versions of the play presents a difficult problem. The 1599 Quarto Q₂ is unquestionably the play of 1595-6, as acted by the then Chamberlain's players at the Theater; for it does not follow, as Mr. Halliwell supposes, that because they continued to act it when called Lord Hunsdon's players, they had not ever acted it before. Such reasoning would compel us to assign all plays published as "acted by the King's players" to a date subsequent to 1602 —Hamlet, for example, and Troylus and Cressida. Nor does it follow that because it was acted at the Curtain, where Marston mentions it in his Scourge of Villany (S. R. 8th September 1598), that it was produced at that same theatre. Mr. P.A. Daniel has shown, in his Parallel Text Edition, that the 1597 Quarto Q₁ is a shortened version of the play, no doubt for stage purposes (compare the Quartos in i. 1; i. 3; iii. 1). He has also with great ingenuity conclusively proved that Q₂ is a revised copy made on a text in many places identical with Q₁ (see i. 1. 122; i. 4. 62; ii. 3. 1-4; iii. 2. 85; iii. 3. 38-45; iii. 5. 177-181; iv. 1. 95-98, 110; v. 3. 102, 107). But his conclusion that Q₁ is partly made up from notes taken during the performance, is not borne out by any evidence. There are no "mistakes of the ear" in this play, nor is this conclusion consistent with his own theory that Q₂ was a revision made on the text of Q₁. I owe what I believe to be the real solution to a hint from my son, a boy of thirteen. When a play was written and licensed, at least three copies would be made of it. One, with the Master of the Revels' endorsement (which I will call R), would be kept in the archives of the theatre intact; one would be made for the manager (M), which would have occasional notes of stage direction, &c., inserted; and one, an acting copy, for the prompter (P), usually much abridged from the original and always altered: this would contain stage directions, &c., in full, but in the unaltered passages would be identical with M. Now Q₁ shows evident signs of being printed from a shortened copy P; Q₂ is manifestly a revision of a full copy M. The genealogy of the Quartos then stands thus: —

Q₂ is, according to this theory, a revised version made on a complete copy of an early version of the play, while Q₁ is printed from the prompter's copy of the same early version. When the revision took place this copy would be thrown aside as worthless; and any dishonest employé of the theatre could sell it to an equally dishonest publisher, who would publish it as the play now acted. If this solution be correct, and it is the only one yet proposed that meets all the difficulties of the case, Q₁ is specially interesting as being the earliest extant play (as acted) in which Shakespeare had a share. For it is clear that some passages in it, especially ii. 6, the laments in iv. 5, and Paris' dirge in v. 3, are not only unlike the corresponding passages in Q₂, but unlike anything we have from Shakespeare's hand. The date of the early form of the play was 1591, eleven years after the earthquake of 1580 (i. 3. 23, 30). As confirmatory of the conclusion that Q₂ was revised from an early play note that in i. 1 the servants are nameless in Q₁, but have names in the stage directions in Q₂; that in 1. 3 the servant is called clown in Q₁; that in iii. 5 in Q₂, where the prefixes vary between Lady and Mother, it is in the unaltered parts that Mother is used as in Q₁, but Lady always where enough alteration has taken place to require a completely fresh transcript; that in v. 3 there is a double entry marked for the Capulets (a sure sign); that in ii. 3. 1-4, v. 3. 108-111, duplicate versions occur. On the other hand, the printing of the Nurse's speeches in italics in both Quartos is conclusive for identity of origin in that scene. Other points worth noting are that "Queen Mab, what's she?" i. 4. 55 in Q₁ are omitted in Q₂: Mab had become well known in 1595, probably through Drayton's Nymphidia. In ii. 2. 144, "I am afraid all this is but a dream," reminds us of similar passages in Errors, ii. 2. 184; Two Gentlemen, v. 4. 26; and Dream, iv. 1. 199, &c. W. Kempe acted the part of Peter (see entry in iv. 5); Balthazar is proparoxyton in v. 1. The line in iii. 2, 75, "O serpent heart hid with a flowering face" (where Q₁ has "serpent's hate"), is very like the often-quoted "O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide" (3 Henry VI. i. 4. 137). The play is founded on Arthur Brooke's poem, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, containing a rare example of true constancy. Constancy in love is its main subject. He took the Italian form of the name Romeo, and the time of Juliet's sleep forty-two hours ("forty at least" in the novel) from Rhomeo and Julietta in Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Much unnecessary writing has been expended on this forty-two hours; the plot requires forty-eight. Daniel, in his Rosamund (S. R. February 1591-2), and the author of Doctor Doddypol (c. October 1594), have passages very like some in this play. A ballad founded on the play was entered S. R. 15th August 1596. On the mention of "the first and second cause" in ii. 4. 26 and (in Q₁ only) in iii. 1, some critics base the conclusion that this play must be subsequent to Saviolo's Book of Honour, &c. (S. R. 19th November 1594). I believe that the book referred to is The Book of Honor and Arms, wherein is discussed the CAUSES of quarrel,&c. (S. R. 13th December 1589). The same expression occurs in Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2. 184; in any case it probably belongs to the revised version of this last named play. The alteration in ii. 4 from "to-morrow morning" to "this afternoon," shows that in the revision Shakespeare attended to details in the time of action.

1596

King John was founded on the old play acted by the Queen's men, called The Troublesome Reign of King John. The lines ii. 1. 455-460 are imitated in Captain Stukeley by Dekker and others, acted at the Rose, 11th December 1596; iii. 1. 176-179 refer manifestly to the Pope's bull in 1596, inciting the English to depose Elizabeth; Chatillon's speech ii. 1. 71-75 is most applicable to the great fleet sent against Spain in the same year; Constance's lamentations have been reasonably referred to the death of Hamnet Shakespeare (buried 11th August); the Iron Age is alluded to in iv. 1. 60, and never elsewhere in Shakespeare. Now, Heywood's play of that name was on the stage from June 23 to July 16 under the title of Troy. The summer of 1596 is thus undoubtedly the date of Shakespeare's play. There are some indications of the play having been shortened; Act ii. in the Folio has only seventy-four lines, and Essex has a part of only three lines, although in the older John he appears in five scenes. I think he was meant to be entirely cut out c. 1601 after Essex' execution, and these three lines should be given to Salisbury. The rival play of Stukeley was shortened in the same way; a whole act was expunged before its publication in 1605. In i. 2 (Folio) the Citizen on the walls is called Hubert; this indicates that the same actor represented both characters.

1596-7

The Merchant of Venice, or Jew of Venice, was no doubt founded on an old play called The Jew of Venice, by Dekker. It seems, from the title of the German version of this play, that the Jew's name was Joseph. The name Fauconbridge in i. 2 (where Portia's suitors are enumerated, compare Two Gentlemen, i. 2) points to a date soon after John; and the "merry devil" of ii. 3. 2, a phrase never elsewhere used in Shakespeare, indicates contemporaneity with The Merry Devil of Edmonton produced in the winter of 1596. Again, the manifest imitations of this play in Wily Beguiled, which I show elsewhere to date in the summer of 1597, give a posterior limit, which must be decisive. This play has no sign whatever of having been altered; the Clarendon Press guesses, founded on the discrepancy of the number of suitors (iv. for vi.) are as worthless as Mr. Hales' proof, referred to by Mr. Halliwell (Outlines, p. 251), of the date of Wily Beguiled. The conclusive evidence of imitation in this play is the conjunction of the "In such a night" lines in scene 16, with the "My money, my daughter" iterations of Gripe in scene 8 of the same play. On 22d July 1598, J. Roberts entered The Merchant or Jew of Venice on S. R., but had to get the Lord Chamberlain's license before printing. On 28th October 1600, he consented to the entry of the play for T. Hayes; nevertheless, he issued copies of his own imprint independently.

1597

The First Part of Henry IV. was entered on S. R. 25th February 1598; a genuine and authorised imprint. The publication of this play was hurried in order to refute the charge of attacking the Cobham family in the person of Sir John Oldcastle, the original name of the character afterwards called Falstaff (cf. "my old lad of the castle," i. 2. 48). Moreover, in i. 2. 182, we find in the text the names Harvey and Russel instead of Peto and Bardolph. The name Russel for Bardolph again occurs in a stage direction in 2 Henry IV. ii. 2. These were evidently originally the names of the characters, and were changed at the same time as that of Oldcastle: Russel was the family name of the Bedford Earls, and Harvey that of the third husband of Lord Southampton's mother. The new names were picked up from the second part; in which Lord Bardolph and Peto (a distinct personage from the "humourist" of Part I.) were serious characters. The play was produced in the spring; the only mentions of June in Shakespeare's plays are in ii. 4. 397 (sun F.); iii. 2. 75; and Anthony, iii. 10. 14. In ii. 4. 425, Preston's Cambyses is ridiculed (cf. Dream). There is an imitation of iii. 2. 52 in Lust's Dominion (the Spanish Moor's Tragedy, by Dekker, Haughton, and Day, February 1600, absurdly quoted by Stokes as Marlowe's). For the "abuses of the time" i. 2. 174; iv. 3. 81; see under Sir T. More, 1596. This play, as well as 2 Henry IV. and Henry V., is founded on The Famous Victories of Henry V., an old play produced by the Queen's company; from which the name Oldcastle was taken.