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2. Founded on Holinshed's Chronicle, and The Famous Victories of King Henry the Fifth, containing the honourable Battle of Agincourt, 1594.

3. Entered 25 February, 1597-8. Written in 1596 (Drake), or more probably 1597 (the general opinion).

4. The period comprised in this play is about ten months, from 14 September, 1402 (Holyrood Day), to 21 July, 1403 (Eve of St. Mary Magdalen). In this and the succeeding plays Shakespeare reaches his highest point in comedy in the character of Falstaff. Prose appears here for the first time as an essential part of the drama in his historical plays.

XIII. -2 HENRY IV.

1. Certainly Shakespeare's.

2. Same as preceding.

3. Dated by Drake, 1596; Chalmers, 1597; Malone, 1598, I think rightly.

In Act iv. 4, 118, Clarence says:

"The incessant care and labour of his mind

Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in,

So thin, that life looks through and will break out."

In Daniel's Civil Warres, 1. iii. st. 116 (entered October 1594, published 1595,) we find :

"Wearing the wall so thin that now the mind
Might well look thorough and his frailty find."

In Act v. :

"Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,"

alludes to Mahomet's strangling his brothers on his succeeding to his father, Amurath III., in February 1596.

Pistol's distich, "Si fortuna me tormenta," &c., appeared in Wits, Fits, and Fancies, entered at Stationers' Hall in 1595. Justice Shallow is alluded to by name in Every Man in His Humour, acted 1598, hence the date is fixed to 1596, 1597, or 1598.

4. The period comprised is nine years, 1403—1412.

XIV.-MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

1. Certainly Shakespeare's.

2. Founded on The Lovers of Pisa, a tale in Tarleton's News out of Purgatorie (1589); printed in the Variorum Shakspeare (1821).

3. Said to have been written at the desire of Queen Elizabeth, to show Falstaff in love. Certainly written after Henry IV.; possibly after Henry V. This play does not form one of the Henry IV. and V. series, and consistency with them is not to be looked for in it. Malone and Drake date it 1601. I prefer 1598 for the first sketch, as in QI. The revised form of it, Q2, is said to have been written about 1605, because "king" is substituted for "council" in Act i. 1, 113. "These knights will hack," iii. 1, 79, is supposed to allude to the 237 knights made by James I. before May 1603. So "When the court lay at Windsor," Act ii. Sc. 2, 1. 63, means probably July 1603 : it was held usually at Greenwich in the summer. "Coach after coach," Act ii. Sc. 2, 1. 66, could not be much before 1605, when coaches came into general use (Howe's Continuation of Stowe's Chronicle). "Outrun on Cotsale," Act i. Sc. I, 1. 92, alludes to the Cotswold games instituted by Robert Dover about 1603.

4. The surreptitious copy of the first form of this play was the only one published before the First Folio, the MS. of the improved form being in the hands of the proprietors of the Globe Theatre.

The title Sir, given to priests, is a translation of Dominus; it was restrained to Sir Knight, Sir Priest, Sir Graduate, and Sir Esquire. See A Decacordon of Ten Quodlibeticall Questions, &c., 1602.

1. Undoubted.

LIBRARY

XV.-HENRY V. UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA.

2. Same as Henry IV.

3. Written while the Earl of Essex was in Ireland (see Act. v., Chorus,) between April and September 1599, as promised in Epilogue of 2 Henry IV.

The allusion in the prologue to Every Man in His Humour is of no use to fix the date, not being written till 1601.

4. The early Quartos of this play are not first sketches, but surreptitious copies grossly mutilated. The period comprised is from the first to the eighth year of Henry V. The allusions to Oldcastle (1 Henry IV., i. 2, 48, 2 Henry IV., Epilogue,) refer not to the play of Sir John Oldcastle, wrongly attributed to Shakespeare, but to the character who takes Falstaff's place in the worthless old play of The Famous Victories. The French scene, Act iii. Sc. 4, is quite exceptional. I hope it is not Shakespeare's, and believe it to be Lodge's.

XVI.-MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

1. Certainly Shakespeare's.

2. Taken indirectly from a novel of Belleforest's after Bandello. There is a similar story in Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Book v., in the Geneura of Turbervil.

and

3. Written in 1599 or 1600.

4. The characters of Benedick and Betteris are founded on those of Berowne and Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost. The old tale. "It is Not So," is given in the Variorum Shakspeare, 1821.

29 66

XVII.-JULIUS CÆSAR.

1. Hitherto undoubted. I have, however, given reasons for supposing that Jonson either revised the play or superintended its revision. Antony is throughout it spelled without an h, as Jonson spells it. Shakespeare elsewhere always uses the h. There are phrases, such as "bear me hard," "I will come home to you (to your house)," quality and kind," &c., which are used by Jonson, not elsewhere by Shakespeare. The play is singularly free from the words of Shakespeare's coinage that abound in his other plays ; it is shorter than the average of plays of similar character by 1,000 lines; the metre shows clear traces of having been abridged like the surreptitious copies of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. The passage quoted by Jonson as ridiculous, "Cæsar did never wrong but with just cause," does not occur in it, but has been altered into "Know Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause will he be satisfied" (see Jonson's Discoveries). Compare the Induction to the Staple of News, "Cry you mercy! You never did wrong but with just cause.

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2. Founded on North's translation of Plutarch's Lives of Julius Cæsar, Marcus Brutus, and Marcus Antonius.

3. Assigned by Drake, Chalmers, and Malone to 1607; by Halliwell to 1600-1; by Delius to a time before 1604. I think it was produced in 1600, again in 1607, and in the abridged form we now have it after 1613.

Malone argues for 1607 being the date of original production on the ground that Lord Sterling's play was written then or not long before; and he "would not have been daring enough to enter the lists with Shakespeare." The inference is stretched too far; it is only fair to conclude from the printing of Sterling's Julius Cæsar, and also of the second edition of the Tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, or Cæsar's Revenge, in 1607, that a production or revival of Shakespeare's piece took place that year. A much stronger argument would have been the probability that all the Roman plays were produced in successive years, like the groups of the great tragedies, or the historical plays. The internal evidence for an early date is,

however, overwhelming (especially in metre), and Mr. Halliwell has found an allusion to this play of the date of 1601.

4. Shakespeare makes Cæsar be killed in the Capitol, though Plutarch expressly says in Pompey's portico; he was probably continuing the tradition of the earlier poems and plays. Compare Hamlet, iii. 2, 108, &c. (also in Q 1), and Chaucer. The quarrelling scene in The Maid's Tragedy (? 1609) is imitated from that between Brutus and Cassius. This confirms the guess that the play was represented in 1607. It was called also Cæsar's Tragedy (1613), probably in its altered form. Gosson mentions a History of Cæsar and Pompey in 1579. The time included in the play is nearly three years. The real hero of the tragedy is Marcus Brutus. The treatment is more like that in Henry IV. and V. than that of the other Roman plays, and forms a connecting link between the histories and tragedies. See Part II. on this play.

1. Undoubted.

XVIII.-AS YOU LIKE IT.

2. Founded on Lodge's novel of Rosalynd, or Euphues' Golden Legacy (1590). The characters of Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey are entirely Shakespeare's. For Lodge's novel, see Collier's Shakespeare's Library.

3. "Staied," in the Stationers' books, 4 August (year not given, but either 1600, 1601, or 1602, and almost certainly 1600), along with Henry V., which was entered again 14 August and published in the same year; Much Ado About Nothing, which was entered 23 August and published the same year; and Every Man in His Humour, published 1601.

Rosalind says:

"I will weep like Diana in the fountain."-iv. I, 145.

Stowe mentions this image of Diana as set up in 1598 and decayed in 1603. The date of the play is fixed then between 1598 and 1600. Malone says 1599.

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