example, the Constable in Measure for Measure with Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing.

It is to be noted that this is the earliest comedy and, except Richard II., the earliest play in which the unity of time is altogether neglected in defiance of Sir Philip Sidney. That of place had also been given up in Richard II.

The plots of many of these early plays are built up of the same or very similar materials. The following table may be useful as showing the characters to be compared in some of them, and in the tales from which this play is taken :

Some of the weaknesses of the play arise from an exaggerated carrying out of the main idea, which is certainly that of friendship; first broken then restored; the corresponding play is the Merchant of Venice. Antonio is the contrast to Proteus; Launce and Lucetta are clearly germs of Launcelot and Nerissa.

VII.-RICHARD III.

1. Halliwell thinks that the turbulent character of this play as we now have it is due to an older one. I have no doubt that it was originally written by G. Peele, left unfinished by him, completed and partly corrected by Shakespeare as we have it in the Quartos, and that Shakespeare afterwards altered it into the shape in which it was printed in the Folio. No other hypothesis can, I think, account for its similarity to much of Henry VI. which is not Shakespearian, and also for the unparalleled differences between the Folio and Quarto. (See my essay in Macmillan's Magazine for November, 1875, on Henry VI.)

2. Founded on Holinshed's Chronicle and a preceding play on the same subject produced by the Queen's Company in 1594.

3. Date of first production probably 1595.

4. Period involved, eight years: 1477-85. This, like the Taming of the Shrew, has always been a favourite acting piece.

VIII.-1 HENRY VI.

1. Condemned by nearly all critics; and assigned in various divisions to Marlowe, Greene, &c. I have little doubt that Marlowe wrote i. I, i. 3, iii. I, iv. I, v. I; Lodge wrote i. 2-6, ii. 1-3, iii. 2, 3, [? iv. 2—7, v. 2]; Shakespeare wrote ii. 4, and perhaps ii. 5; and possibly he in his very early time, but more likely Lodge, wrote iv. 2-7 and v. 2. Some fourth and unknown hand certainly wrote iv. 4, v. 1, v. 5, which are quite different from the rest of the play.

2. Founded on Holinshed; but not following him so closely as the histories by Shakespeare do.

3. Certainly before 1592, when it was acted by L. Strange's men at the Rose. The Chamberlain's Company had it before 1599. See Epilogue to Henry V.

4. This play is independent of 2 Henry VI. and 3 Henry VI. It was tacked to them by the writer of the last scene after 1600. It probably passed to the Chamberlain's Company when L. Strange's men joined them in 1594.

IX.-JOHN.

1. Certainly Shakespeare's.

2. Founded on The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, with the Discoverie of King Richard Cordelion's base Son, vulgarly named the Bastard Fawconbridge; also the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. 1591. Falsely attributed to Shakespeare in titlepage of 1622 and to W. Sh. in that of 1611.

3. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died in August 1596. Constance's lament for Arthur's loss (Act iii. Sc. 4) would appear to be written soon before this event.

"A braver choice of dauntless spirits

Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er,

Did never float upon the swelling tide

To do offense and scathe to Christendom," (Act ii. Sc. 1,) was probably suggested by the great fleet then preparing to be sent against Spain in 1596. It sailed on 3 June, the great armada was destroyed, Cadiz sacked, and the fleet returned by 8 August, four days before Hamnet died.

The Spanish Tragedy, Solyman and Perseda, and Captain Thomas Stukely are quoted or alluded to; but they do not help to fix the date, which Drake and Chalmers place in 1598. Malone and Delius in 1596. I prefer 1595.

4. The action extends through the whole of John's reign from 1199 to 1216. It is the first historical play, properly so called, among Shakespeare's works.

X.-ROMEO And Juliet.

1. Boswell has conjectured that in the first Quarto (1597) there are embodied remains of an older play on which Shakespeare founded his. I believe that G. Peele wrote the early play about 1593; that Shakespeare in 1596 corrected this up to the point where there is a change of type in Q I (to end of Act ii. Sc. 3), and in 1597 completed his corrections as in Q 2.

2. Luigi da Porto's novel, Hystoria di dui nobili Amanti (Venice, 1535), followed by Bandello's novel (Lucca, 1554), was the origin of Boisteau's. From Boisteau, Painter took his Rhomeo and Julietta (Palace of Pleasure, 1567), and Arthur Brooke his poem of The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, containing a Rare Example of True Constancie, &c. (1562, 2nd Edition, 1587). Shakespeare copied the poem, using the novel occasionally, as is clear from the following table :

3. Dated by Chalmers, 1592; Drake, 1593 (rightly for George Peele's share); Delius, 1591; Malone, 1596 (rightly for Shakespeare's corrected edition). Malone's argument is this :—Shakespeare, Burbage, and others, "the Lord Chamberlain's men," on the death of Henry Lord Hunsdon the Lord Chamberlain (22 July, 1596), were protected and sanctioned by George Lord Hunsdon. In August 1596 William Brooke, Lord Cobham, was appointed Chamberlain, who died 5 March, 1596–7; on 17 April George Lord Hunsdon succeeded him. The company could therefore only be called Lord Hunsdon's men (as they are in title-page of Quarto, 1597,) between July 1596 and April 1597. [But this only shows that the piece was produced in that interval, not that the original play was then written.]

In Act iii. Sc. I, Q I, the "first and second causes are mentioned: that passage (not the whole play) was therefore written after Saviolo's Book on Honour and Honourable Quarrels had been published (1594); see Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 2. This fixes the earliest date for the play, say some critics; but Peele may have known this book in the original language,

There are passages in Act v. very like some in Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond (entered February 1591-2).

The comedy of Doctor Doddipell, which appeared, Malone says, before 1596, imitates (?) this play; compare Act iii. Sc. 2, line 22, &c., Q2, with

"The glorious parts of fair Lucilia,

Take them and join them in the heavenly spheres,

And fix them there as an eternal light

For lovers to adore and wonder at."

In v. 2, 9, QI, the practice of sealing up the doors of plagueinfected houses is alluded to. This may refer to the plague of 1593.

In Act i. Sc. 3, line 23, Q 1, the nurse's speech probably alludes to the earthquake in 1580 as Juliet's weaning day; and as Juliet is nearly fourteen years old, this brings us to 1593. The nurse's miscalculation, that fourteen less one makes eleven, adds to the humour of the passage.

Weever's Epigrams (published before 1595) allude to this play. See page 15.

4. This is certainly Shakespeare's earliest tragedy. It was probably meant as a companion to Troylus and Cressida, the love-story in which is, I think, of the date 1594. Faithful Juliet is the contrast to faithless Cressid. The only other instances of similar titles of paired names are Benedick and Betteris (Much Ado About Nothing) and Antony and Cleopatra. The play was acted at the Curtain Theatre; it is rather to be classed with the other early ones as a love play than with the great tragedies, which form a group by themselves. Mercutio is like Valentine (Two Gentlemen of Verona) before he meets with Silvia. Romeo in his inconstancy is like Proteus; also like the Count in Twelfth Night. The time occupied in the play is five days.

1. Undoubted.

XI. MERCHANT OF VENICE.

2. The main plot is from the Pecorene of San Giovanni Fiorentino ; Fourth day, first novel, Gianetta (1378). The casket story from an old translation of the Gesta Romanorum (1577). Both stories are condensed in the Variorum Shakspeare (1821). Gosson (1579) mentions The Jew shown at the Bull, representing the greediness of worldly choosers (casket-scene)" and the bloody minds of usurers (Shylock).

3. Malone identifies this play with The Venesyan Comedy, acted at the Rose, 1594. But Shakespeare's plays were not at any date acted there. Drake and Chalmers date it, nearly rightly, 1597. I prefer 1596.