CHAPTER III.

VIEW OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE—SHAKSPEARE'S ATTACHMENT TO AND USE OF ROMANCES, TALES, AND BALLADS.

That a considerable, and perhaps the greater, portion of Shakspeare's Library consisted of Romances and Tales, we have already mentioned as a conclusion fully warranted, from the extensive use which he has made of them in his dramatic works. What the precious tomes specifically were which covered his shelves, we have now no means of _positively_ ascertaining; but it is evident that we shall make a near approximation to the truth, if we can bring forward the _library of a contemporary collector_ of romantic literature, and at the same time _contemporary authority_ for the romances then most in vogue.

Now it fortunately happens, that we have not only a few curious descriptions, by the most unexceptionable authors of the reigns of Elizabeth and James, of the popular reading of their day, but we possess also a catalogue of the collection of one of the most enthusiastic hoarders of the sixteenth century, in the various branches of romantic lore; a document which may be considered, in fact, as placing within our view, a kind of _fac simile_ of this, the most copious, department of Shakspeare's book boudoir.

The interesting detail has been given us by Laneham, in his _Account of the Queen's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle_, 1575. The author is describing the Storial Show by a procession of the Coventry men, in celebration of Hock Tuesday, when he suddenly exclaims,—"But aware, keep bak, make room noow, heer they cum.

"And fyrst _Captain Cox_, an od man I promiz yoo; by profession a Mason, and that right skilfull; very cunning in fens, and hardy az _Gavin_; for hiz ton-sword hangs at hiz tablz eend; great oversight hath he in matters of storie: For az for _King Arthurz_ book, _Huon_ of _Burdeaus_, the foour sons of _Aymon_, _Bevys_ of _Hampton_, The _Squyre_ of lo degree, The _Knight_ of _Courtesy_, and the _Lady Faguell_, _Frederick_ of _Gene_, _Syr Eglamoour_, _Syr Tryamoour_, _Syr Lamwell_, _Syr Isenbras_, _Syr Gawyn_, _Olyver_ of the _Castl_, _Lucres_ and _Curialus_, _Virgil's Life_, the _Castl_ of _Ladiez_, the _Wido Edyth_, the _King_ and the _Tanner_, _Frier Rous_, _Howleglas_, _Gargantua_, _Robinhood_, _Adam Bel_, _Clim_ of the _Clough_ and _William_ of _Clondsley_, the _Churl_ and the _Burd_, the _Seven Wise Masters_, the _Wife_ lapt in a _Morels Skin_, the _Sak full of Nuez_, the _Seargeaunt_ that became a _Fryar_, _Skogan_, _Collyn Clout_, the _Fryar_ and the _Boy_, _Elynor Rumming_, and the _Nutbrooun Maid_, with many moe then I rehearz heere; I believe hee have them all at hiz fingers endz.

"Then in Philosophy, both morall and naturall, I think hee be az naturally overseen; beside _Poetrie_ and _Astronomie_, and oother hid _Sciencez_, az I may gesse by the omberty of his books; whearof part, az I remember, The _Shepherd'z Kalender_, The _Ship_ of _Foolz_, _Danielz Dreamz_, the _Booke_ of _Fortune_, _Stans puer ad Mensam_, The by way to the _Spitl-house_, _Julian_ of _Brainford's Testament_, the _Castle_ of _Love_, the _Booget_ of _Demaunds_, the _Hundred Mery Talez_, the _Book_ of _Riddels_, the _Seaven Sororz_ of _Wemen_, the _Prooud Wives Pater Noster_, the _Chapman_ of a _Peneworth_ of _Wit_: Beside hiz Auncient Playz, _Yooth_ and _Charitee_, _Hikskorner_, _Nugizee_, _Impacient Poverty_, and herewith _Doctor Boords Breviary_ of _Health_. What should I rehearz heer, what a bunch of Ballets and Songs, all auncient; as _Broom broom on Hill_, _So Wo iz me begon, troly lo_, _Over a Whinny Meg_, _Hey ding a ding_, _Bony lass upon a green_, _My hony on gave me a bek_, _By a bank as I lay_: and a hundred more he hath fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord. And az for Almanacks of Antiquitee (a point for Ephemeridees), I ween he can sheaw from _Jazper Laet_ of _Antwarp_ unto _Nostradam_ of _Frauns_, and thens untoo oour _John Securiz_ of _Salsbury_. To stay ye no longer heerin, I dare say hee hath az fair a Library for theez Sciencez, and az many goodly monuments both in prose and poetry, and at after noonz can talk az much with out book, az ony inholder betwixt _Brainford_ and _Bagshot_, what degree soever he be."[520:A]

Of the library of this military bibliomaniac, who is represented as "marching on valiantly before, clean trust and gartered above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap, flourishing with his _ton_ sword," Mr. Dibdin has appreciated the value when he declares, that he should have preferred it to the extensive collection of the once celebrated magician, Dr. Dee. "How many," he observes, "of Dee's magical books he had exchanged for the pleasanter magic of _Old Ballads_ and _Romances_, I will not take upon me to say: but that this said bibliomaniacal Captain had a library, which, even from Master Laneham's imperfect description of it, I should have preferred to the four thousand volumes of Dr. John Dee, is most unquestionable."

He then adds in a note, in reference to the "_Bunch of Ballads and Songs, all ancient!—fair wrapt up in parchment, and bound with a whip cord!_" "it is no wonder that Ritson, in the historical essay prefixed to his collection of _Scotish Songs_, should speak of some of these ballads with a zest, as if he would have sacrificed half his library to untie the said 'whip cord' packet. And equally joyous, I ween, would my friend Mr. R. H. Evans, of Pall-Mall, have been—during his editorial labors in publishing a new edition of his father's collection of Ballads—(an edition, by the bye, which gives us more of the genuine spirit of the COXEAN COLLECTION than any with which I am acquainted)—equally joyous would Mr. Evans have been, to have had the inspection of some of these 'bonny' songs. The late Duke of Roxburgh, of never-dying bibliomaniacal celebrity, would have parted with half the insignia of his order of the Garter, to have obtained _clean original copies_ of these fascinating effusions!"[520:B]

Though the Romances and Ballads in Captain Cox's Library are truly termed "ancient," yet it appears, from unquestionable contemporary authority, that these romances, either in their original dress or somewhat modernised, were still sung to the harp, in Shakspeare's days, as well in the halls of the nobility and gentry, as in the streets and ale-houses, for the recreation of the multitude: thus Puttenham, in his "Arte of English Poesie," published in 1589, speaking of historical poetry adapted to the voice, says, "we our selves who compiled this treatise have written for pleasure a little brief _Romance_ or historicall ditty in the English tong of the Isle of great _Britaine_ in short and long meetres, and by breaches or divisions to be more commodiously song to the harpe in places of assembly, where the company shal be desirous to heare of old adventures and reliaunces of noble knights in times past, as are those of king _Arthur_ and his knights of the round table, Sir _Bevys_ of _Southampton_, _Guy_ of _Warwicke_ and others like;" and he afterwards notices the "blind harpers or such like taverne minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat, their matter being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir _Topas_, the reportes of _Bevis_ of _Southampton_, _Guy_ of _Warwicke_, _Adam Bell_, and _Clymme_ of the _Clough_ and such other old Romances or historicall rimes, made purposely for recreation of the com̄on people at Christmasse diners and bride ales, and in tavernes and ale-houses and such other places of base resort."[521:A]

Bishop Hall, likewise, in his Satires printed in 1598, alluding to the tales that lay

"In chimney-corners smok'd with winter fires, To read and rock asleep our drowsy sires,"

exclaims,—

"No man his threshold better knowes, than I Brute's first arrival, and first victory; St. George's sorrel, or his crosse of blood, Arthur's round board, or Caledonian wood, Or holy battles of bold Charlemaine, What were his knights did Salem's siege maintaine: How the mad rival of faire Angelice Was physick'd from the new-found paradise!"[522:A]

and even so late as Burton, who finished his interesting work just previous to our great poet's decease, we have sufficient testimony that the major part of our gentry was employed in the perusal of these seductive narratives: "If they read a book at any time," remarks this eccentric writer, "'tis an English Chronicle, _Sr. Huon of Bordeaux_, Amadis de Gaul &c.;" and subsequently, in depicting the inamoratoes of the day, he accuses them of "reading nothing but play books, idle poems, jests, _Amadis de Gaul_, the _Knight of the Sun_, the _Seven Champions_, _Palmerin de Oliva_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, &c."[522:B]

These contemporary authorities prove, to a certain extent, what were considered the most popular romances in the reigns of Elizabeth and James; but it will be satisfactory to enquire a little more minutely into this branch of literature.

The origin of the metrical Romance may be traced to the fostering influence of our early Norman monarchs, who cultivated with great ardour the French language; and it was from the courts of these sovereigns that the French themselves derived the first romances in their own tongue.[522:C] The gratification resulting from the recital or chaunting of these metrical tales was then confined, and continued to be for some centuries, to the mansions of the great, owing to the vast expense of maintaining or rewarding the minstrels with whom, at that time, a knowledge of these splendid fictions exclusively rested. No sooner, however, was the art of printing discovered, than the wonders of romance were thrown open to the eager curiosity of the public, and the presses of Caxton and Winkin de Worde groaned under the production of prose versions from the romantic poesy of the Anglo-Norman bards.

So fascinating were the wild incidents and machinery of these volumes, and so rapid was their consequent circulation, that neither the varied learning nor the theological polemics of the succeeding age, availed to interrupt their progress; and it was not until towards the close of the seventeenth century, that the feats of the knight and the spells of the enchanter ceased to astonish and exhilarate the halls of our fathers.

In the whole course of this extensive career, from the era of the conquest to the age of Milton, a poet whose youth, as he himself tells us, was nourished "among those lofty fables and romances, which recount, in sublime cantos, the deeds of knighthood[523:A]," perhaps no period can be mentioned in which a greater love of romantic fiction existed, than that which marks the reign of Elizabeth; and this, too, notwithstanding the improvement of taste, and the progress of classical learning; for though the national credulity had been chastened by the gradual efforts of reason and science, yet was the daring imagery of romance still the favourite resource of the bard and the novelist, who, skilfully blending its potent magic with the colder but now fashionable fictions of pagan antiquity, flung increasing splendour over the union, and gave that permanency of attraction which only the peculiar and unfettered genius of the Elizabethan era could bestow.

Confining ourselves at present, however, chiefly to the consideration of the _prose_ romance, we may observe, that five distinct classes of it were prevalent in the age of Shakspeare, which we may designate by the appellations of _Anglo-Norman_, _Oriental_, _Italian_, _Spanish_, and _Pastoral_, Romance.

Under the first of these titles, the _Anglo-Norman_, we include all those productions which have been formed on the metrical romances of the feudal or Anglo-Norman period, and to which the terms _Gothic_ or _Chivalric_ have been commonly, though not exclusively, applied. These are blended not only with much classical fiction, but with a large portion of oriental fable, derived from our commerce with the East during the period of the Crusades, and are principally occupied either in relating the achievements of Arthur, Charlemagne, and the knights engaged in the holy wars, or in chivalarising, if we may use the word, the heroes of antiquity, or in expanding the wonders of oriental machinery.

The most popular prose romance of this class was undoubtedly _La Morte D'Arthur_, translated from various French romances by Sir Thomas Malory, and printed by Caxton in 1485, a work which includes in a condensed form the most celebrated achievements of the knights of the Round Table.[524:A] This "noble and joyous book," as it is termed by its venerable printer, was the delight of our ancestors until the age of Charles the First; and in no period more decidedly so than in the reign of Elizabeth, when probably there were few lordly mansions without a copy of this seducing tome, either in the great hall or in the ladies bower. Such were its fascinations, indeed, as to excite the apprehensions, and call forth the indignant, and somewhat puritanical, strictures of Ascham and Meres; the former in his _Schoole master_ 1571, when, reprobating the inordinate attachment to books of chivalry, instancing "as one for example, _Morte Arthur_, the whole pleasure of which booke," he says, "standeth in two specyall poyntes, in open mans slaghter and bolde bawdrie: in which booke, those be counted the noblest knights that doe kill most men without any quarrell, and commit fowlest adoultries by sutlest shifts: as, Syr Lancelote with the wife of King Arthure, his maister: Syr Tristram with the wife of King Marke, his uncle: Syr Lameroche with the wife of King Lote, that was his own aunte. This is good stuffe for wise men to laughe at, or honest men to take pleasure at. Yet I knowe when God's Bible was banished the court and Morte Arthure receaved into the princes chamber, what toyes the dayly reading of such a booke may worke in the will of a yong gentleman, or a yong maide, that liveth welthely and idlely, wise men can judge, and honest men do pittie[525:A];" and the latter declaring in his "Wits' Commonwealth," that "as the Lord de la Nonne in the sixe discourse of his politike and military discourses censureth of the bookes of Amadis de Gaule, which he saith are no less hurtfull to youth, than the workes of Machiavell, to age; so these bookes are accordingly to be censured of, whose names follow; Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwicke, _Arthur of the Round Table_," &c.[525:B]

That these strictures are too severe, and that the consequences apprehended by these ingenious scholars did not necessarily follow, we have the authority of Milton to prove; who, so far from deprecating the study of romances as dangerous to morality, declares "that even those books proved to me so many enticements to the love and stedfast observation of virtue[525:C];" a passage which appears to have kindled in the mind of a modern writer, a spirited defence of the utility of these productions, even at the present day. "There is yet a point of view," he remarks, "in which Romance may be regarded to advantage, even in the present age. The most interesting qualities in a chivalrous knight, are his high-toned enthusiasm, and disinterested spirit of adventure—qualities to which, when properly modified and directed, society owes its highest improvements. Such are the feelings of benevolent genius yearning to diffuse love and peace and happiness among the human race. The gorgeous visions of the imagination, familiar to the enthusiastic soul, purify the heart from selfish pollutions, and animate to great and beneficent action. Indeed, nothing great or eminently beneficial ever has been, or can be effected without enthusiasm—without feelings more exalted than the consideration of simple matter of fact can produce. That Romances have a tendency to excite the enthusiastic spirit, we have the evidence of fact in numerous instances. Hereafter, we shall hear the great Milton indirectly bearing his testimony of admiration and gratitude for their inspiring influence. It is of little consequence, comparatively speaking, whether all the impressions made, be founded in strict philosophical truth. If the imagination be awakened and the heart warmed, we need give ourselves little concern about the final result. The first object is to elicit power. Without power nothing can be accomplished. Should the heroic spirit chance to be excited by reading Romances, we have, alas! too much occasion for that spirit even in modern times, to wish to repress its generation. Since the Gallic hero has cast his malign aspect over the nations, it is become almost as necessary to social security, as during the barbarism of the feudal times. There is now little danger of its being directed to an _unintelligible_ purpose.

"Romances, then, not only merit attention, as enabling us to enter into the feelings and sentiments of our ancestors,—a circumstance in itself curious, and even necessary to a complete knowledge of the history of past ages; they may still be successfully employed to awaken the mind—to inspire genius: and when this effect is produced, the power thus created may be easily made to bear on any point desired."[526:A]

The demand for _Morte Arthur_, which continued for nearly two centuries, produced of course several re-impressions: the _second_ issued from the press of Winkin de Worde in 1498, the colophon of which, as specified by Herbert, is singularly curious. "Here is the ende of the hoole boke of kynge Arthur, and of his noble knygtes of the rounde table. That whane they were hoole togyder, there was ever an C. and XL. And here is the ende of the deth of Arthur. I praye you all gentylmen and gentylwymmen that rede thys boke of Arthur and his knyghtes from the beginnynge to the endynge praye for me whyle I am a lyue, that, God send me good utterance. And when I am deed, I pray you all pray for my soule: for the translacion of this boke was fynisshed the IX. yere of the regne of kyng Edwarde the fourth, by syr Thomas Maleore knyght, as Jhesu helpe him for his grete myghte, as he is the servaunt of Jhesu bothe day and nyghte. Emprynted fyrst by William Caxton, on whose soul God have mercy."[527:A]

The re-impression of De Worde was followed by the editions of _Copland_, _East_, and _William Stansby_, this last being dated 1634. Of the elder copies East's was probably the one most generally used in the reign of Elizabeth, and it differs only in a few unessential phrases from the edition of Caxton.

La Morte D'Arthur, which, by its frequent republication, kept alive a taste for romantic fiction, may be considered as giving us, with a few exceptions as to costume, a very pleasing though somewhat polished picture of the chivalric romance of the Anglo-Norman period. It has the merit also of furnishing an excellent specimen of purity and simplicity in style and diction; qualities which have stamped upon many of its otherwise extravagant details the most decided features of sublimity and pathos. A passage in the twenty-second chapter of the second book, for example, furnishes a noble instance of the former, and the speech of Sir Bohort, over the dead body of Sir Launcelot, towards the close of the work, is as admirable a specimen of the latter. These, as short, peculiarly interesting, and characteristic of the work, we shall venture to transcribe.

The description of, and the effect arising from, so simple a circumstance as that of blowing a horn, are thus painted:—

"So hee rode forth, and within three days hee came by a cross, and thereon was letters of gold written, that said, It is not for a knight alone to ride toward this castle. Then saw hee an old hoar gentleman coming toward him, that said, Balin le Savage, thou passest thy bounds this way, therefore turn againe and it will availe thee. And hee vanished away anon; and so hee heard an horne blow as it had been the death of a beast. That blast, said Balin, is blown for mee; for I am the prize, and yet am I not dead."

Sir Ector de Maris, the brother of Sir Launcelot, after having sought him in vain through Britain for seven years, has at length the melancholy satisfaction of recognising the body of the hero, who had just breathed his last.

"And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helme, from him. And when hee beheld Sir Launcelot's visage, hee fell downe in a sowne. And when hee awaked, it were hard for any tongue to tell the dolefull complaints that he made for his brother. Ah Sir Launcelot, said hee, thou were head of all christian knights, and now I dare say, said Sir Bors, that Sir Launcelot, there thou liest thou were never matched of none earthly knight's hands. And thou were the curtiest knight that ever beare shield. And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrod horse, and thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou were the kindest man that ever stroke with sword. And thou were the goodliest parson that ever came among presse of knights. And thou were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever eate in hall among ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall foe that ever put speare in the rest."[528:A]

We have taken the more notice of this work, not only as it affords a pretty correct idea of what the old chivalric metrical romance consisted, but as it was in Shakspeare's time the favourite book in this branch of literature, and furnished Spenser with many incidents for his "Faerie Queene."[529:A] It constitutes, in fact, an exemplar and abridgment of the marvels of the Round Table, such as were dispersed through a variety of metrical tales, and can only be found condensed in this production, and of which the popularity may be considered as an indubitable mark of the taste of the age in which it was so much admired and cherished.

If it be objected, that, though _Morte Arthur_ was very popular, it did not originate during our period, it may be answered, that many prose imitations of the Anglo-Norman romance, the undoubted offspring of the Elizabethan era, might, if necessary, be mentioned; but one will suffice, and this has been selected from its having maintained an influence over the public mind nearly as long as the Death of Arthur.

We allude to the well-known romance entitled _The Seven Champions of Christendome_, written in the age of Elizabeth by Richard Johnson, the author of various other productions during this and the subsequent reign. In what year the first part of the _Seven Champions_ made its appearance is not known; but the second was published with the following title and date:—"The Second Part of the famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendome. Likewise shewing the princely Prowesse of Saint George's three Sonnes, the lively Sparke of Nobilitie. With many memoriall atchieuements worthy the Golden Spurres of Knighthood. Lond. Printed for Cuthbert Burbie, &c. 1597." 4to. Black letter.[529:B] If Mr. Warton's opinion be correct, that Spenser was indebted to this work for some incidents in the conduct of his Faerie Queene, the first part must have been printed before 1590; and Mr. Todd, indeed, seems to think that the second part "was published some time after the first[529:C];" a supposition which is corroborated by the address to the reader prefixed to the second part, in which, after mentioning "_the great acceptance of HIS First Part_," he nevertheless deprecates the severity of criticism to which it had been exposed: "thy courtesy," he says, "must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they cannot mend, censuring all things, doing nothing, but, monkey-like, make apish jests at any thing they see in print: and nothing pleaseth them, except it savour of a scoffing or invective spirit;" passages which indicate that the first part of this romance had been for some length of time before the public. We may also add, that Johnson is known to have been a popular writer in 1592, having published in that year his "Nine Worthies of London."

If we except La Morte D'Arthur, and one or two Spanish romances, which will be afterwards mentioned, the _Seven Champions_ appears to have been the most popular book of its class. It has accumulated in a small compass the most remarkable adventures of the ancient metrical romances, and has related them in a rich and figurative, though somewhat turgid style. Justice has been done to this compilation, once so high in repute, both by Percy and Warton: the former speaks of its "strong Gothic painting," and of its adherence to the old poetical legends[530:A]; and the latter declares it to contain "some of the most capital fictions of the old Arabian romance," and instances the adventure of the ENCHANTED FOUNTAIN.[530:B]

The various editions of this once celebrated compilation attest the longevity of its fame; and though now no longer the amusement of the learned and the great, yet is it far from being a stranger to the literature of our juvenile libraries. A London impression appeared in 1755, and it has lately been reprinted in a pocket-edition of the British Classics.

Having thus brought forward _La Morte D'Arthur_ and the _Seven Champions_ as the most popular _prose_ compilations in Shakspeare's time from the _Anglo-Norman_ metrical romances, we shall proceed to notice two collections which were more immediately built on an ORIENTAL foundation, and which have enjoyed, both at the epoch of their first translation into English in the sixteenth century, and subsequently to a very modern date, an almost unrivalled circulation.

A little anterior to the birth of our great poet, W. Copland printed, without date, a romance entitled _The Seven Wise Masters_, a direct version from the Latin of a book published in Germany, soon after the discovery of the art of printing, under the appellation of _Historia Septem Sapientum_. This interesting series of tales has been traced by Mr. Douce[531:A] to an _Indian_ prototype; to "The Book of the Seven Counsellors, or Parables of SENDEBAR or SANDABAR," an Indian philosopher, who is supposed to have lived about a century before the Christian æra. The work of this sage, it appears, had been early translated into Persic, Syriac, Arabic, and, from this latter, into Hebrew by Rabbi Joel, under the title of _Mischle Sandabar_, a version which is conjectured to have been made about the middle of the fourteenth century, and is believed to be the only oriental manuscript of these Parables which has been subjected to the press; having been printed at Constantinople in 1517, and at Venice in 1544 and 1608. A MS. of this Hebrew Sandabar is in the British Museum (Harleian MSS., No. 5449.), but no English version of it has been hitherto attempted.

The romance of our Indian fabulist made its next appearance, though with some alterations in the incidents and names, in _Greek_, under the title of _Syntipas_, of which many MSS. exist, the greater number professing to be translated from the Syriac; but in the British Museum is preserved a copy from the Persic, of so late a date as 1667.

The first _Latin_ version is said to have proceeded from the pen of Jean de Hauteselve, a native of Lorraine, but the existence of such a copy is now only known, from its having been translated into _French_ verse, by an ecclesiastic of the name of Herbers, who died 1226, and who, in the opening of his poem, to which he has given the singular title of _Dolopatos_, confesses to have taken it from the "_bel Latin_" of Hauteselve.

Another _French_ version, however, of greater importance, as it makes a nearer approach to the remote original, and has been the source of numerous imitations, is preserved in the French National Library, and numbered 7595. It is a MS. in verse, of the 13th century, and was first noticed by Mr. Ellis, through a communication from Mr. Douce, who believes it to be not only the immediate original of many imitations in French prose, but the source whence an old English metrical romance in the Cotton Library (Galba, E. 9.) has been taken.

This poem, a large fragment of which exists in the Auchinleck MS., is entire in the Cotton Library, and is written in lines of eight syllables. It is entitled "The Proces of the Sevyn Sages," and Mr. Ellis refers its composition to a period not later than 1330.[532:A]

The copy, however, which has given rise to the greatest number of translations, is that already mentioned under the title of "Historia Septem Sapientum," the first edition of which, with a date, was published by John Hoelhoff at Cologne in 1490. This was very rapidly transfused into the German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, English, and Scotch languages.

Of the _Scotch_ version, which is metrical, and was undertaken by the translator "at the request of his _Ant Cait_ (Aunt Kate) in Tanstelloun Castle, during the siege of Leith," 1560, the first edition was printed at Edinburgh in 1578, with the following title:—"THE SEVIN SEAGES, TRANSLATIT OUT OF PROIS IN SCOTTIS METER, BE JOHNE ROLLAND, IN DALKEITH; with ane Moralitie after everie Doctouris tale, and siclike after the Emprice tale, togidder with ane loving and laude to everie Doctour after his awin tale, and ane exclamation and outcrying when the Empreouris wife after hir fals construsit tale. Imprentit at Edinburgh be John Ros, for Henry Charteries."[533:A]

The prose translation by Copland, which made its appearance between the years 1550 and 1567, under the title of "The Seven Wise Masters," was one of the most popular books of the sixteenth century. It has undergone a variety of re-impressions, and when no longer occupying its former place in the hall of the Baron and the Squire, descending to a less ambitious station, it became the most delectable volume in the collection of the School-boy. This change in the field of its influence seems to have taken place in little better than a century after its introduction into the English language; for in 1674, Francis Kirkman, publishing a version from the Italian copy of this romance, which he entitles the "History of Prince Erastus, son to the emperor Diocletian, and those famous philosophers called The Seven Wise Masters of Rome," informs us, in his preface, "that the book of 'The Seven Wise Masters' is in such estimation in Ireland, that it was always put into the hands of young children immediately after the horn-book."[533:B]

The "Book of the Seven Counsellors," in short, appears to have been familiarised in the language of every civilised nation in Asia and Europe, and though often interpolated and disguised by the admixture of fables from other oriental collections, and especially from the fables of Pilpay, it has still preserved, through every transfusion, a resemblance of its Indian type. Its admission into English literature contributed to cherish and keep alive the taste for Eastern romance, which had been generated during the period of the Crusades, and adopted by the Anglo-Norman minstrels.

If the collection of oriental apologues, to which we have alluded under the name of Pilpay, had been as early naturalised amongst us, the effect in favour of oriental fable would probably have been greater; but it was the fate of this work, though superior in merit perhaps, and of equal antiquity and similar origin with the Parables of Sandabar, and alike popular in the East, not to have acquired an English dress until the eighteenth century. The Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma, the undoubted source of Pilpay's stories, we, at length, possess, in a correct state, forming certainly the most interesting series of fables extant.[534:A]

There is another set of tales, however, in their complection almost entirely oriental, which not only co-operated in their effect, but also in their period of introduction, with the "Seven Wise Masters," from the press of Copland.

In 1577 Richard Robinson, a voluminous author who lived by his pen, published "A record of ancyent historyes intituled in Latin _Gesta Romanorum_;" and in a catalogue of his productions, written by himself, and preserved in the British Museum, he says of this work that it was "translated (auctore ut supponitur Iohane Leylando antiquario) by mee perused corrected and bettered."[534:B]

This is a partial version of one of two distinct works entitled, _Gesta Romanorum_, collections of tales in the Latin language which, there is reason to suppose, originated in the fourteenth century, and certainly once enjoyed the highest popularity.

Of the _first_, or what may be called the _Continental Gesta_, Mr. Warton has given us a very elaborate and pleasing analysis. No manuscript of this primary collection is known to exist, but it was printed about 1473; the first six editions of it are in folio without dates; three containing 152 chapters or gests each, and three 181 each, and of those printed with dates, in folio, quarto, octavo, and duodecimo, a list, amounting to twenty-eight, has been published by Mr. Douce, from the year 1480 to 1555 inclusive. A Dutch translation appeared in 1481; a German translation in 1489; the first French translation with a date in 1521; but no English translation until 1703, when only forty-five histories or gests were published, the translator, either from want of encouragement, or from some other cause, having only printed volume the first of his intended version.

The _second_ or _English Gesta_ must be considered as the discovery of Mr. Douce, for Warton, not perceiving its frequent discrepancy, had confounded it with the original work. It is likewise remarkable, that the circumstances attending its circulation are diametrically different from those accompanying the prior collection; for while numerous MSS. of the English Gesta exist in this country, not one copy in the original Latin has been printed.

It appears from the researches of Mr. Douce, that this compilation very soon followed the original Gesta, and that the first manuscript may with great probability be ascribed to a period as early as the reign of Richard the Second; most of the MSS. however, none of which have ever been found upon the continent, are of the age of fifth and sixth Henries, and of these twenty-five are yet remaining preserved in the British Museum, at Oxford, and in other collections.

As the English Gesta was intended as an imitation of the _Continental_ collection, many of its stories have, of course, been retained; but these have undergone such alterations in language, and sometimes in incident, together with new moralizations, and new names, as to give it, with the addition of forty tales not found in its prototype, the air of an original work.[535:A] It is not, however, so extensive as the foreign compilation, the most complete manuscripts containing only one hundred and two stories; yet as the sources from which it has drawn its materials are, with a few exceptions, correspondent, in respect to their oriental origin, with the continental copy, the character which Mr. Warton has given of the primary, will apply to the secondary, series.

"This work," he observes, "is compiled from the obsolete Latin chronicles of the later Roman or rather German story, heightened by romantic inventions, from Legends of the Saints, oriental apologues, and many of the shorter fictitious narratives which came into Europe with the Arabian literature, and were familiar in the ages of ignorance and imagination. The classics are sometimes cited for authorities; but these are of the lower order, such as Valerius Maximus, Macrobius, Aulus Gellius, Seneca, Pliny, and Boethius. To every tale a _Moralization_ is subjoined, reducing it into a christian or moral lesson.

"Most of the oriental apologues are taken from the CLERICALIS DISCIPLINA, or a Latin Dialogue between an Arabian Philosopher and Edric[536:A] his son, never printed[536:B], written by Peter Alphonsus, a baptized Jew, at the beginning of the twelfth century, and collected from Arabian fables, apothegms, and examples.[536:C] Some are also borrowed from an old Latin translation of the CALILAH U DAMNAH, a celebrated set of eastern fables, to which Alphonsus was indebted.

"On the whole, this is the collection in which a curious enquirer might expect to find the original of Chaucer's Cambuscan:—

"Or,——if aught else great bards beside In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of turneys and of trophies hung, Of forests and inchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear."[537:A]

Of the translations of the _English_ Gesta, which, owing to the Latin original not being known upon the continent, are solely confined to the English language, three only have been noticed; and of these, the first is a manuscript in the Harleian collection, No. 7,333, of the age of Henry the Sixth, containing but seventy stories, and which Mr. Douce conjectures to have been produced either by Lydgate, Gower, or Occleve, as the English Gesta appears familiar to them, and this version possesses not only several pieces by Lydgate, but some tales from the _Confessio Amantis_ of Gower.[537:B]

The first printed translation is said to have issued from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, though without a date, and this edition has been mentioned and referred to, both by Mr. Warton[537:C] and Dr. Farmer.[537:D] Neither Herbert, however, nor Mr. Dibdin, has been fortunate enough to detect its existence, and if it really had, or has, a being, it is probably either the manuscript version of the reign of Henry the Sixth, or the translation to which Robinson alludes as the work of Leland the antiquary.

We must, therefore, look to Robinson's Translation of 1577, as the only one which has met with a general and undisputed circulation; and this was so popular, that in 1601 it had been printed six times by Thomas Easte.[537:E] The most enlarged edition, however, of Robinson's version, contains but forty-four stories, and it is, therefore, much to be regretted, that the Harleian manuscript is not committed to the press.

As this was then the only English translation accessible to the public, of a collection of tales which in the original Latin, and under the same name, had amused the learned and the curious for some centuries, both on the continent, and for nearly the same space of time on our own island, we shall not be surprised if we find, in a subsequent page, that Shakspeare has availed himself of a portion of its contents, especially as its subjects, and the mode of treating them, coincided with his track of reading.

The popularity of Robinson's work seems to have extended to the eighteenth century; for the last edition, which we can now recollect, is dated 1703, and there is reason to think it the fifteenth, while the edition immediately preceding was published in 1689, but fourteen years anteriorly.

If Ascham thought he had reason to complain of the popularity of _Morte Arthur_, and its associates, he found tenfold cause of complaint in the daily increasing circulation of ITALIAN ROMANCES AND TALES; "ten _La Morte d'Arthures_," he exclaims, "doe not the tenth parte so much harme, as one of these bookes made in _Italie_, and translated in _Englande_."[538:A]

The frequent communication indeed with Italy, which took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, had not only induced an indiscriminate imitation of Italian manners, but had rendered the literature of the Italians so fashionable, that, together with their poetry, was imported into this island a multiplicity of their _prose_ fictions and tales, a species of composition that had been cultivated in Italy with incredible ardour from the period of Sacchetti and Boccacio.

These tales, by blending with the romantic fiction of the Normans and Orientals the scenes of domestic life and manners; by introducing greater complexity and skill in the arrangement of fable and greater probability in the nature and construction of incident; by intermingling more frequent and more interesting traits of the softer passions, and by exciting more powerfully the emotions of pity and compassion, presented to the public a new and poignant source of gratification, and furnished the dramatic poets and the caterers for the then universal appetite for story-telling with innumerable bases for plays, tales, and ballads.[539:A]

It may be asserted, we believe, with a close approach to accuracy, that in the space which elapsed between the middle of the sixteenth century, and the accession of James the First, nearly all the most striking fictions of the Italian novellists had found their way to the English press; either immediately translated from the original Italian, or through the medium of Latin, French, or Spanish versions.

Of these curious collections of prose narrative, real or imaginary, comic or tragic, it will be thought necessary that we should notice a few of the most valuable, and especially those to which our great poet has been most indebted.

One of the earliest of these works and mentioned by Laneham in 1575, as an article in Captain Cox's library, was entitled _The Hundred Merry Tales_. This series of stories, though existing in English so late as 1659[539:B], is now unfortunately lost; the probability, however, is, that it was a translation from _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, printed at Paris before the year 1500, and compiled from Italian writers. The English copy, says Warton, was licensed to be printed by John Waly, in 1557, under the title of "A Hundreth mery tales," together with _The freere and the boye, stans puer ad mensam, and youthe, charite, and humylite_.[540:A] It is again noticed in the register of the Stationers' Company for 1581, by Ames, under the article for James Roberts, and in the following manner in a black-letter pamphlet of 1586:—"Wee want not also pleasant mad headed knaves that bee properly learned and well reade in diverse pleasant bookes and good authors. As Sir Guy of Warwicke, the Foure Sons of Aymon, the Ship of Fooles, the Budget of Demandes, _the Hundredth merry Tales_, the Booke of Ryddles, and many other excellent writers both witty and pleasaunt."[540:B] It is alluded to by Shakspeare, in his _Much Ado about Nothing_, written about 1600, where Beatrice complains of Benedict having declared, that she had "her good wit out of the _Hundred Merry Tales_."[540:C] That this collection was justly entitled to the epithet _merry_ has been proved by Mr. Douce, from a reference to the supposed original, in which only five stories out of the hundred are of a tragic cast, and where the title, in the old editions, gives further propriety to the appellation, by terming these tales _Comptes plaisans et recreatiz pour deviser en toutes compaignies, et Moult plaisans á raconter par maniere de joyeuseté_.[540:D] It should not be forgotten, however, that the work entitled _Cento novelle antiche_ was in existence at this period, though no translation of it is known to have been made, either before or during Shakspeare's age; nor is it improbable that the term _A hundred merry tales_, might have become a kind of cant expression for an attack of personal satire; for Nashe, as Mr. Douce has observed, "in his _Pappe with an hatchet_, speaks of a book then coming out under the title of _A hundred merrie tales_, in which Martin Marprelate, i. e. John Penry, and his friends, were to be satirized."[541:A]

Though no complete translation of the Decameron of Boccacio was executed before 1620, the greater part of his novels was given to the public in 1566, by _William Paynter_, in his once popular collection, entitled "_The Pallace of Pleasure_." This entertaining work occupies two volumes, 4to.; of which, the first, dedicated to Lord Warwick, appeared in the year above-mentioned, "containing _sixty_ novels out of Boccacio," and the second followed in 1567, including thirty-four novels, principally from Bandello, and dedicated to Sir George Howard. It appears to have been the intention of the compiler to have added a third part; for at the close of the second volume, he tells us, "Bicause sodeynly, contrary to expectation, this volume is risen to greater heape of leaves, I doe omit for this present time _Sundry Novels_ of mery devize, reserving the same to be joyned with the rest of an other part, wherein shall succeede the remnant of _Bandello_, specially sutch, suffrable, as the learned French man _François de Belleforrest_ hath selected, and the choysest done in the Italian. Some also out of _Erizzo_, _Ser Giouanni Florentino_, _Parabosco_, _Cynthio_, _Straparole_, _Sansovino_, and the best liked out of the _Queene of Nauarre_, and others;" a passage which is important, as showing, in a small compass, the nature and extent of his resources.

What motive prevented the continuance of the work, is unascertained; it certainly could not be want of encouragement, for a second edition of the first volume, and a third of the second, were published together in 4to. in 1575, and, as the author informs us in his title, "eftsones perused, corrected, and augmented" by him. The conjecture of Warton, that Painter, "in compliance with the prevailing mode of publication, and for the accommodation of universal readers, was afterward persuaded to print his _sundry novels_ in the perishable form of separate pamphlets," is not improbable.

The _Palace of Pleasure_ is, without doubt, not only one of the earliest, but one of the most valuable selections of tales which appeared during the reign of Elizabeth; and that it formed one of the ornaments of Shakspeare's library, and one to which he was in the habit of referring, the industry of his commentators has sufficiently established.[542:A]

In the same year with the second volume of Painter's Palace, appeared "_Certaine Tragicall Discourses_" by _Geffray Fenton_, in one volume 4to. bl. letter. This _passing pleasant booke_, as Turberville terms it, consists of stories principally from Italian writers, and, in the dedication to Lady Mary Sydney, the author expresses his high opinion of their merit, by declaring, "neyther do I thinke that oure Englishe recordes are hable to yelde at this daye a _Romant_ more delicat and chaste, treatynge of the veraye theame and effectes of love, than theis _Hystories_;" an estimate of the value of his collection in which he is borne out by his friend Turberville, who, in one of the recommendatory poems prefixed to the book, says—

"The learned stories erste, and sugred tales that laye Removde from simple common sence, this writer doth displaye: Nowe men of meanest skill, what Bandel wrought may vew, And tell the tale in Englishe well, that erst they never knewe: Discourse of sundrye strange, and tragicall affaires, Of lovynge ladyes hepless haps, theyr deathes, and deadly cares."

Mr. Warton is of opinion that Fenton's compilation "in point of selection and size" is "perhaps the most capital miscellany of this kind."[542:B] In size, however, it is certainly inferior to Painter's work, and from a survey of its contents with which we have been indulged, exhibits, in our conception, no superiority to its predecessor even with regard to selection; it merits, however, the same honour which is now paying to its rival, that of a re-print.

In 1571 a series of tales, somewhat similar to Fenton's, was published under the title of "_The Forest_ or collection of Historyes no lesse profitable, than pleasant and necessary, doone out of Frenche into English by _Thomas Fortescue_." This production, which forms a quarto in black letter, and underwent a second, and a third edition, in 1576 and 1596, includes many stories manifestly of Italian birth and structure, though the work is said to have been originally written in the Spanish language.

On the authority of Bishop Tanner, as reported by Warton[543:A], we have to ascribe to the year 1580, a prose version of the _Novelle_ of _Bandello_, next to Boccacio the most celebrated, at that period, among the Italian novellists; and more chaste perhaps than any of them in his sentiments, and more easy and natural in the construction of his incidents. The translation is said to be by W. W. initials which Mr. Warton is inclined to appropriate, either to William Warner or William Webbe.

Another collection of tales, several of which are from Giraldi Cinthio and other Italian fabulists, was given to the public by _George Whetstone_, in 1582, under the appellation of _Heptameron_, a term which had been rendered fashionable by the popularity of a suite of tales published at Paris in 1560, and entitled, "Heptameron des Nouvelles de la Royne de Navarre." Whetstone possessed no inconsiderable reputation in his day; he has been praised as a poet by Meres and Webbe, and his _Heptameron_, though written in prose, with only the occasional interspersion of poetry, had its share of contemporary fame, and the still greater celebrity of furnishing some portion of a plot to our great dramatic bard.[543:B]

The first volume of a large collection of Italian tales made its appearance at Paris in 1583, under the title of _Cent Histoires Tragiques_. This work, the compilation of _Francis de Belleforrest_ and _Boisteau_, was ultimately extended to seven volumes, and a part of it, if not the whole, appears, on the authority of the Stationers' Register, to have been translated into English, in 1596.[544:A] The edition, however, to which Warton alludes, must have been posthumous; for Belleforrest died on January 1st, 1583, and that he had printed selections from the Italian novellists long anterior, is evident from Painter's reference to them in the second volume of his Palace of Pleasure, dated 1567. Probably what the historian terms the "_grand repository_" commenced with the copy of 1583.[544:B]

Independent of these large prose collections of Italian tales, a vast variety of separate stories was in circulation from the same source; and many of our poets, such as Gascoigne, Turberville, &c.[544:C] amused themselves by giving them a metrical and sometimes a semi-metrical, form. By these means the more rugged features of the Anglo-Norman romance, were softened down, and a style of fiction introduced more varied and more consonant to nature.

The taste, however, for the wild beauties of Gothic fabling, though polished and refined by the elegant imagination of the Italians, was still cultivated with ardour, and, towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, was further stimulated, by a fresh infusion of similar imagery, through the medium of the _Spanish and Portuguese Romances_.

These elaborate, and sometimes very interesting productions, are evidently constructed on the model of the Anglo-Norman romance, though with greater unity of design, and with more attention to morality. There is reason to believe, with Mr. Tyrwhitt, that neither Spain nor Portugal can produce a romance of this species older than the era of printing[545:A]; for the manuscript of _Amadis of Gaul_, which has been satisfactorily proved by Mr. Southey to have been the production of Vasco Lobeira, and written in the Portuguese language, during the close of the fourteenth century[545:B], was never printed, and is supposed to be no longer in existence; while the Spanish version of Garciordonez de Montalvo, the oldest extant, and which has, in general, passed for the original, did not issue from the press before the year 1510, the date of its publication at Salamanca.

This romance, beyond all doubt the most interesting of its [545:C]class, is well known as one of the very few in Don Quixote's library which escaped the merciless fury of the Licentiate and the Barber. "The first that master Nicholas put into his hands was Amadis de Gaul in four parts; and the priest said, 'There seems to be some mystery in this; for, as I have heard say, this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and all the rest have had their foundation and rise from it; and, therefore, I think, as head of so pernicious a sect, we ought to condemn him to the fire without mercy.'—'Not so, sir,' said the barber; 'for I have heard also, that it is the best of all the books of this kind; and therefore, as being singular in his art, he ought to be spared.'—'It is true,' said the priest, 'and for that reason his life is granted him.'"[546:A] Nor is the description which Sir Philip Sidney has given of the effects of Amadis on its readers less important than the encomium of Cervantes on its literary merit; "Truly," says the knight, "I have known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaul, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage."[546:B]

The introduction of Amadis into the English language took place in the year 1592, when the first four or five books were translated from the French version and printed by Wolfe.[546:C] It experienced the same popularity here which had attended its naturalisation in France, Italy, and Spain, and seems to have been in the zenith of its reputation among us at the close of the Shakspearean era; for Fynes Moryson, who published his Itinerary in 1617, in his directions to a traveller how to acquire languages, says, "I think no book better for his discourse than _Amadis of Gaul_; for the knights errant, and the ladies of courts, doe therein exchange courtly speeches, and these books are in all languages translated by the masters of eloquence;" and Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, written about the same period, mentions _Amadis_ along with Huon of Bourdeaux, as one of the most fashionable volumes of his day. Such, indeed, is the merit of this romance, that the lapse of four hundred years has not greatly diminished its attractions, and the admirable version of Mr. Southey, which, by rejecting or veiling the occasional indelicacy of the original, has removed the weightiest objections of Ascham, most deservedly finds admirers even in the nineteenth century.

Another specimen of this class of romances of nearly equal popularity with the preceding, though inferior in point of merit, may be instanced in the once celebrated _Palmerin of England_, which, like Amadis of Gaul, safely passed the ordeal of the Curate of Don Quixote's village:—"Let Palmerin of England," says the Licentiate, "be preserved, and kept as a singular piece: and let such another case be made for it, as that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, and appropriated to preserve the works of the poet Homer.—Therefore, Master Nicholas, saving your better judgment, let this and Amadis de Gaul be exempted from the fire, and let all the rest perish without any further enquiry."[547:A]

Palmerin of England, like its prototype, Amadis de Gaul, is supposed to have originated in Portugal. Mr. Southey, indeed, confidently attributes it to the pen of Francis de Moraes; an ascription which is in direct opposition to the authority of Cervantes, who asserts it to have been written by a King of Portugal. It has shared the like fate, too, in this country, with regard to its translator; Anthony Munday having been the first to usher Palmerin, as well as Amadis, to an English public; in fact, though in its original garb it appeared a century and a half later than the romance of Lobeira, it claims priority with regard to its English dress, having been licensed to Charlewood, and printed in 1580.

The multiplicity and rapid succession of extraordinary events in Palmerin of England, are such as to distract the most steady attention, and if it really deserved the encomium which the curate bestowed upon it in comparison with the rest of the worthy knight's library, little surprise can be excited at the mental hallucinations which the study of such a collection might ultimately produce.

Of the versions of honest Anthony, one of the most indefatigable translators of romance in the reign of Elizabeth, not much can be said, either in point of style or fidelity. Labouring for those who possessed an eager and indiscriminating appetite for the marvellous, he was not greatly solicitous about the preservation of the manners and costume of his original, but rather strove to accommodate his authors to the taste of the majority of his readers. To enumerate the various romances which he attempted to naturalise, would be tedious and unprofitable; the two that we have already noticed, together with "Palmerin D'Oliva," and "The honorable, pleasant, and rare conceited Historie of Palmendo[548:A]," were among the most popular, and will be sufficient to impart an idea of what, among the peninsular works of fiction, were most in vogue, when romances were as much read as novels are in the present age.

The last species of romance, which we shall notice as fashionable in Elizabeth's reign, may be termed the _Pastoral_. Of this class the most celebrated specimen that we can mention, is the _Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney, a book well known to Shakspeare, which continued highly popular for near a century, and reached an eighth edition as early as 1633, independent of impressions in Scotland, of which one occurs before the year 1600.[548:B]

The Arcadia appears to have been commenced by its author for the sole amusement of himself and his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, during his residence at Wilton, in 1580, and though prosecuted at various periods was left incomplete at his death in 1586. The affection of the Countess, however, to whose care and protection the scattered manuscripts had been assigned, induced her to publish an impression of it in the year 1590, revised under her own immediate direction; since which period fourteen editions have borne testimony to the merits of the work, and to the correctness of the editor's judgment.

To the publication of this far-famed romance, which is in many respects truly beautiful, and in every respect highly moral, we may attribute an important revolution in the annals of fictitious writing. It appears to have been suggested to the mind of Sir Philip, by two models of very different ages, and to have been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic History of Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and the Arcadia of Sannazaro, productions as widely separated as the fourth and the sixteenth centuries. Their connection, however, will be more readily explained, when we recollect, that a translation of Heliodorus into English had been published only three years before the commencement of Sidney's Arcadia. This was the work of Thomas Underdowne, who printed a version of the ten entire books in 1577, dedicating them to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.[549:A] That the _English_ Heliodorus was chiefly instrumental in giving this peculiar direction to the genius of Sidney, was the opinion of Warton; but we must likewise recollect, that the Arcadia of Sannazaro, with which Sir Philip, as an excellent Italian scholar, must have been well acquainted[549:B], presented him with the model for his shepherds, for their costume, diction, and sentiment, and that, like the English work, it is a mingled composition of poetry and prose.

Dismissing many of the paraphernalia of the ancient chivalric romance, its magicians, enchanted castles, dragons, and giants, but retaining its high-toned spirit of gallantry, heroism, and courtesy, combined with the utmost purity in morals, and with all the traditionary simplicity and innocence of rural life, the pastoral romance of Sidney exhibited a species of composition more reconcilable to probability than the adventures of Arthur and Amadis, but less natural and familiar than the tales of the Italians. In these last, however, virtue and decency are too often sacrificed at the shrine of licentiousness, whilst in the Arcadia of our countryman not a sentiment occurs which can excite a blush on the cheek of the most delicate modesty. To this moral tendency of Sidney's fictions, the muse of Cowper has borne testimony in the following pleasing lines:—

"Would I had fall'n upon those happier days, That poets celebrate; those golden times, And those Arcadian scenes, that Maro sings, And _Sidney, warbler of poetic prose_. Nymphs were Dianas then, and swains had hearts. That felt their virtues: innocence, it seems, From courts dismissed, found shelter in the groves; The footsteps of simplicity, impress'd Upon the yielding herbage, (so they sing) Then were not all effac'd: then speech profane, And manners profligate, were rarely found; Observed as prodigies, and soon reclaim'd."[550:A]

Had the disciples of Sir Philip adhered to the model which he constructed; had they, rejecting merely his unfortunate attempt to introduce the Roman metres into modern poetry, preserved his strength and animation in description, his beauty and propriety of sentiment, his variety and discrimination of character, the school of Sidney might have existed at the present hour. On the contrary, whatever was objectionable and overstrained in their prototype, they found out the art to aggravate; and by a monstrous and monotonous overcharge of character, by a bloated tenuity of style, by a vein of sentiment so quaintly exalted as to have nothing of human sympathy about it, and by an indefinite prolixity of fable, they contrived to outrage nature nearly as much as had been effected by the wonders of necromancy and the achievements of chivalry; and this, too, without producing a scintillation of those splendid traits of fancy which illumine, and even atone for, the wild fictions of the Anglo-Norman romance. The Astrea of D'Urfé, written about twenty years after Sidney's work, though sufficiently tedious, and frequently unnatural, makes the nearest approach to the pastoral beauty of the Arcadia; but what longevity can attach to, or what patience shall endure, the numerous and prodigious tomes of Madame Scuderi?[551:A]

The shades of oblivion seem gathering fast even over the beautiful reveries of Sidney, a fate most undoubtedly hastened by the prolix and perverted labours of his successors; and what was the fashion and delight of the seventeenth century has generally ceased to charm. So great, indeed, was once the popularity of the Arcadia, that its effects became an object of consideration to the satirist and the historian. In 1631, we find the former thus admonishing the ladies:—"Insteade of songes and musicke let them learn cookerie and launderie. And instead of reading _Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia_, let them reade the groundes of good huswifery."[551:B] But the grave annalist and antiquary, Fuller, has, with more good sense, vindicated the study of this moral romance:—"I confess," says he, "I have heard some of modern pretended wits cavil at the _Arcadia_, because they made it not themselves: such who say that his book is the occasion that many precious hours are otherwise spent no better, must acknowledge it also the cause that many idle hours are otherwise spent no worse than in reading thereof."[551:C] There is no work, in short, in the department of _prose-fiction_ which contains more apothegmatic wisdom than the Arcadia of Sidney; and it is to be regretted that the volume which had charmed a Shakspeare, a Milton, and a Waller[551:D], and which has been praised by Temple[552:A], by Heylin[552:B], and by Cowper, should be suffered, in any deference to the opinion of Lord Orford[552:C], to slumber on the shelf.

It is with pleasure, however, that we find a very modern critic not only passing a just and animated eulogium on the Arcadia, but asserting on his own personal knowledge, that, even in the general classes of society, it has still its readers and admirers. "Nobody, it has been said, reads the Arcadia. We have known very many persons who have read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one who read it without deep interest and admiration at the genius of the writer, great in proportion as they were capable of appreciating it. The verses are very bad, not that he was a bad poet, (on the contrary, much of his poetry is of high merit,) but because he was then versifying upon an impracticable system. Let the reader pass over all the eclogues, as dull interludes unconnected with the drama, and if he do not delight in the story itself, in the skill with which the incidents are woven together and unravelled, and in the Shakespearean power and character of language, with which they are painted; let him be assured the fault is in himself and not in the book."[552:D]

After this brief survey of the state of romantic literature, and of the various romances which were most popular, in the days of Shakspeare, it will be a proper appendage, if we add a few observations on the yet lingering relics of chivalric costume. That gorgeous spectacle, the Tournament, in which numerous knights engaged together on either side, fighting with the sword and truncheon, was latterly superseded by the joust or tilting-match, consisting of a succession of combats between two knights at one time, and in which the spear was the only weapon used. The dexterous management of this military amusement depended upon striking the front of the opponent's helmet, in such a manner as either to beat him backward from his horse, or break the spear in the contest. Jousting or tilting, which was usually celebrated in honour of the ladies, by whom the prizes were always awarded and distributed, continued to be a favourite diversion with Elizabeth to the close of her reign; she was attached to the gallantry which constituted the soul of these games, and to the splendour which accompanied their exhibition, and her nobles were not backward in encouraging and gratifying her romantic taste. Of this a remarkable instance may be adduced, in the person of Sir Henry Lee, Knight of the Garter, who vowed that he would annually, while health and strength permitted, enter the tilt-yard as his sovereign's knight. The completion of this vow led to annual contentions in the lists, and twenty-five personages of the first rank, among whom are to be found Lord Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, &c. agreed to establish a society of arms for this purpose. The presidency of the association was resigned by Sir Henry, on the plea of infirmity, in 1590, when he formally invested the Earl of Cumberland with his dignity, one of the most envied at that time, in the court of Elizabeth.[553:A]

It was usual at these chivalric exhibitions, which ceased on the demise of their regal patroness, for the combatants, and even the men of fashion who attended as spectators, to wear a lady's favour on their arm; and when a knight had tilted with peculiar grace and spirit, the ladies were wont to fling a scarf or glove upon him as he passed; a custom which Shakspeare has attributed, as is frequent with him, to an age long anterior to chivalric usage, for he represents Coriolanus, on his way to the capitol, as thus honoured:

—————— "The matrons flung their gloves, Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs, Upon him as he pass'd."[554:A]

It appears also, from a passage in the second part of _King Henry the Fourth_, that an oath derived from a singular observance in the days of chivalry, was common in the days of Shakspeare; for Shallow, persuading Sir John Falstaff to remain with him as his visitor, exclaims, "By _cock and pye_, Sir, you shall not away to night[554:B];" an adjuration which Steevens and Ridley refer to a corruption of the sacred name, and to a service-book of the Romish church, called in this country, previous to the Reformation, _a pie_; but Mr. Douce has, with more probability, advanced the origin to which we allude. "It will, no doubt, be recollected," he observes, "that in the days of ancient chivalry it was the practice to make solemn vows or engagements for the performance of some considerable enterprize. This ceremony was usually performed during some grand feast or entertainment, at which a roasted peacock or pheasant, being served up by ladies in a dish of gold or silver, was thus presented to each knight, who then made the particular vow which he had chosen, with great solemnity. When this custom had fallen into disuse, the peacock nevertheless continued to be a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a _pie_, the head, with gilded beak, being proudly elevated above the crust, and the splendid tail expanded. Other birds of smaller value were introduced in the same manner, and the recollection of the old peacock vows might occasion the less serious, or even burlesque, imitation of swearing not only by the bird itself, but also by the _pie_; and hence probably the oath _by cock and pie_."[554:C]

As all persons beneath the rank of an esquire were precluded, by the laws of chivalry, from taking any part in the celebration of justs and tournaments, while at the same time, a strong desire of _imitation_ was excited in the public mind, by the attractive nature of these diversions, it soon became an object with the commonality to establish something which might bear a striking resemblance to the favourite amusements of their superiors. Hence the origin of tilting at the quintain, which we have already noticed in the chapter on Rural Diversions, and of tilting at the ring and on the water; sports, of which even the Queen herself condescended not unfrequently to be a spectator.

Tilting at the ring was considered as the most respectable of the three amusements, and was generally practised as a preparatory exercise to the knightly feat of jousting. The ring was suspended at a fixed height, in a sheath, by the contrivance of two springs, and the object of the tilter was, while riding at full speed, to thrust the point of his lance through the ring, drawing it, by the strength of his stroke, from its sheath, and bearing it away on the summit of his lance. In this pastime, the horses, as well as the men, required constant training and practice, and, on the day of contest, the palm of victory was adjudged to him who in three courses, for this number was allowed to each candidate, carried the point of his lance the oftenest through the ring.

Of these games the most vulgar, but the most productive of merriment, was that of tilting on the water, in which the combatants, standing in the centre of their respective boats, were armed with a lance and shield, and he was esteemed the conqueror, who, by a dexterous management of his weapon, contrived to strike his adversary in such a manner as to overturn him in the water, while he himself remained firm and stationary. With this curious exhibition it would appear that the Queen was highly gratified, on her visit to Sandwich, "where certain wallounds that could well swym, had prepared two boates, and in the middle of each boate was placed a borde, upon which borde there stood a man, and so they met together, with either of them a staff and a shield of wood; and one of them did overthrow another, at which the Queene had good sport."[556:A]

To jousting, and to tilting at the ring, some of the most remarkable relics of expiring chivalry, and of which the latter had attained to almost scientific precision at the commencement of the seventeenth century, Shakspeare has several allusions in the course of his dramas.[556:B] The most striking of these refers to an accident which not unfrequently occurred, when a knight, unable to manage his horse with due skill, suffered it to deviate sideways in its career, the consequence of which was, that instead of breaking his lance in a direct line against his adversary's helmet, it was broken _across_ his breast, a circumstance deemed highly dishonourable, as the result either of timidity or want of dexterity:—"O, that's a brave man!" says Celia, speaking of Orlando, in _As You Like It_, "he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose."[556:C]

It was about this period too, the close of the sixteenth century, that another remnant of romantic usage became nearly extinct. We allude to the profession of the _Minstrel_, which, until the year 1597, had been cherished or tolerated in this country, from an era as ancient as the conquest.

During the reign of Elizabeth, indeed, the character of the _Minstrel_, combining the offices of the poet, the singer, and the musician, and that of the _Jestour_, or mere reciter of tales and gestes, gradually lost their importance and respectability, and were no longer protected by the noble and the opulent. On the accession of the Queen, however, and for about twenty years afterwards, instances may be adduced where the Minstrel appears to have acted in his genuine capacity, that is, as the sole depository of the poems which he chaunted, and not, as was subsequently the case, the fabricator of songs and ballads merely for the press. The latest specimens of what may be termed the old Minstrelsy, Dr. Percy assigns to the years 1569 and 1572, when the ballads entitled "_The Rising in the North_," and "_Northumberland betrayed by Douglas_," were produced.[557:A] Between the Minstrel-ballads and those written merely for the press, a marked difference was usually perceptible, the former exhibiting greater rudeness of language, with a more northern cast in their structure; greater irregularity in metre, and incidents more romantic, wild, and chivalric; while the latter presented altogether a southern dialect, more correct versification, incidents, though occasionally pathetic, comparatively tame and insipid, and a costume more modern and familiar. Of this last kind, were the numerous ballads of the reign of James the First, frequently collected together, and published under the appellation of _Garlands_.

There is reason to suppose, notwithstanding the declining state of the minstrel tribe, that some attention was yet paid to their appearance and dress; that their ancient distinguishing costume was well known, and sometimes imitated, and that, especially in the prior half of the Elizabethan era, a peculiar garb was still attached to their office. We are warranted in these inferences by contemporary authority: Laneham, in his description of Elizabeth's entertainment at Killingworth Castle, in 1575, mentions his having been in company with a person who was to have performed the character of an _ancient Minstrel_ before the Queen, "if meete time and place had been foound for it." This man, who was probably a member of the profession, entertained some worshipful friends, of which Laneham was one, with a representation of the part which he should have enacted at the Earl of Leicester's; and it is remarkable that this assumed minstrel is styled, "_a squire minstrel of Middilsex, that travaild the cuntree THYS soomer season unto fayrz and woorshipfull menz houzez_;" a strong proof that the character, in all its full costume, was not considered as sufficiently bizarre and obsolete to render such an assertion improbable. "A person very meete seemed he for the purpose; (we here drop the author's absurd orthography;) of a XLV years old, apparelled partly as he would himself. His cap off, his head seemly rounded tonster-wise; fair kembed, that with a sponge daintily dipt in a little capon's grease, was finely smoothed to make it shine like a mallard's wing; his beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt after the new trink, with ruffs fair-starched, sleeked, and glistering like a pair of new shoes: marshalled in good order: with a stetting stick, and stout that every ruff stood up like a wafer. A side gown of Kendal green, after the freshness of the year now; gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily for heat to undo when he list: seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging a to side (one on each side): out of his bosom drawn forth a lappet of his napkin, edged with a blue lace, and marked with a true love, a heart, and a D. for _Damian_; for he was but a batchelor yet.

"His gown had side sleeves down to midleg, slit from the shoulder to the hand, and lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted: upon them a pair of poynets of tawny chamblet, laced along the wrist with blue threaden joints; a wealt toward the hand of fustian anapes: a pair of red neather stocks: a pair of pumps on his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for cornes; not new, indeed, yet cleanly blacked with soot, and shining as a shoeing horn. About his neck, a red ribband suitable to his girdle: his harp in good grace dependent before him: his wrest[558:A] tied to a green lace, and hanging by. Under the gorget of his gown a fair flagon chain of pewter (for silver); as a _squire minstrel_ of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season, unto fairs and worshipful mens houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon, with metal and colour, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of Islington.—After three lowly courtsies, 'he' cleared his voice with a hem and reach, and spat out withal; wiped his lips with the hollow of his hand for filing his napkin, tempered a string or two with his wrest, and after a little warbling on his harp for a prelude, came forth with a solemn song, warranted for story out of _King Arthur's acts_."[559:A]

In 1592, Henry Chettle, describing _Anthony Now-Now_, an aged and celebrated minstrel of his own time, represents him as "an od old fellow; low of stature, his head covered with a _round cap_, his body with a _tawney coate_, his legs and feete truste uppe in _leather buskins_, his gray haires and furrowed face witnessed his age, his _treble viol_ in his hande[559:B];" from which it would appear that even to the last the members of this tuneful tribe were distinguished by some peculiarity of dress.

In the mean time, however, they were becoming, through the dissoluteness of their manners, obnoxious to government, and contemptible in the public estimation. Stubbes, in the first edition of his Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, terms them a parcel of drunken sockets, and baudy parasites, that "raunge the countries," he observes, "riming and singing of unclean, corrupt, and filthy songs in tavernes, ale-houses, innes, and other publike assemblies.—There is no ship," he exclaims, "so laden with merchandize, as their heads are pestred with al kinds of baudy songs, filthy ballades, and scurvy rymes, serving for every purpose, and for every company. For proof whereof," he subjoins, "who bee baudier knaves than they? who uncleaner than they? who more licentious, and looser minded than they? and brieflie, who more inclined to all kind of insolency and leudness than they?—I think that al good minstrels, sober and chast musitions, may dance the wild Moris through a needles eye." He subsequently adds that, notwithstanding their immorality, "every toune, citie, and countrey, is full of these minstrelles to pipe up a daunce to the devill."

That this description is not much exaggerated by the puritanical severity of its author, is evident from the language of Puttenham, a courtier and polite writer, who calls this degraded race "_cantabanqui_," singers "upon benches and barrels heads—minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat—in taverns and ale-houses, and such other places of base resort[560:A];" a picture corroborated by the authority of Bishop Hall, who a few years afterwards, speaking of the exhilarating effect of his own satirical poetry, says it is

"Much better than a Paris-garden beare, Or prating poppet on a theater, _Or Mimœ's whistling to his tabouret, Selling a laughter for a cold meal's meat_."[560:B]

The character which Shakspeare attributes to the minstrel race of this period, is in accordance with the preceding passages. In the original edition of his _Rape of Lucrece_, which appeared in 1594, he draws his heroine exclaiming,

"_Feast-finding_ minstrels, tuning my defame, Will tie the hearers to attend each line."[560:C]

The epithet in _Italics_ very distinctly points out the vagrant life of these attendants on merriment and good cheer. They were accustomed to travel the country, in search of bride-ales, Christmas dinners, fairs, &c., and wherever they could get access to the halls of the gentry and nobility.

It is in the _Winter's Tale_, however, that the minstrel of our poet's age is but too faithfully depicted. In the person of Autolycus, whom we have already noticed, when describing the country wake, is to be found, in colours faithful to nature, the very object of Stubbe's satire, a composition very curiously blending the various functions of the minstrel, the pedlar, and the rogue.

No harshness therefore can be attributed to the act of Queen Elizabeth, which in 1597 nearly annihilated an occupation so vilely associated and degraded. In the fourth chapter of this statute the law enacts that "all fencers, bearwards, common players of enterludes, and MINSTRELLS, wandering abroad; all juglers, tinkers, pedlars, &c. shall be adjudged and deemed _rogues_, _vagabonds_, and _sturdy beggers_;" a clause which, very deservedly, put an end to a profession which, though once highly respectable and interesting, no longer had a claim to public support; a clause which enabled Dr. Bull to say, with much truth,

"Beggars they are with one consent, And Rogues, by Act of Parliament."[561:A]

Of the use which Shakspeare made of the various romances, tales, and ballads which undoubtedly occupied a large portion of his library, an accurate estimate may be formed from a close inspection of his dramas. It will be found, that, with the exception of the Historical plays, derived either from English chronicles or translations of classic story, the residue of his dramatic productions may be traced to sources exclusively existing within the regions of romantic literature. As we shall have occasion, however, hereafter to notice the origin of each drama, as it passes before us in chronological succession, it will merely be necessary in this place, in order to afford some proof of his familiarity with these fictions, to select a few specimens of his allusion to them from the body of his plays.

That our poet was well acquainted with the celebrated Romance, entitled _Mort d'Arthure_, the most popular of its class, would have been readily admitted from the known course of his studies, even if he had not once alluded to it in the course of his works. In the _Second Part_, however, of _King Henry the Fourth_, he makes _Shallow_, vaunting of his youthful feats to Falstaffe, say, "I was then _Sir Dagonet_ in _Arthur's show_[562:A];" a line upon which Mr. Douce observes, "Whatever part Sir Dagonet took in this show would doubtless be borrowed from Mallory's romance of the _Mort Arture_, which had been compiled in the reign of Henry VII. What there occurs relating to Sir Dagonet was extracted from the excellent and ancient story of _Tristan de Leonnois_, in which Dagonet is represented as the fool of king Arthur[562:B];" a character certainly well adapted to the powers of the worthy justice.

It should, however, be remarked, that the _Arthur's show_ in this passage was not, what it might at first be supposed, an exact representation of the ancient chivalric costume of that romantic Prince and his knights, but principally an exhibition of _Archery_ by a toxophilite society, of which Richard Robinson, the translator of the English Gesta, has given us an account under the title of "_The Auncient Order Societie, and Unitie Laudable, of Prince Arthure and his knightly Armory of the Round Table. With a Threefold Assertion friendly in favour and furtherance of English Archery at this day_." 1583. 4to.[562:C]

These city-worthies, to the number of fifty-eight, it would seem, had for some time assumed the arms and the names of the knights of the Round Table, and Robinson, who the year before had published a translation of Leland's _Assertio Arthvrii_, thought proper to dedicate his _Ancient Order_ to M. Thomas Smith, Esq., the then Prince Arthur of this fellowship, and compliments him by deducing his society from the establishment of the round table in the reign of Edward the First. "But touching your famous order and fellowship of knights in shooting, though in K. E. I. his time (ann. 1279) a valiant Knight and manly Mortimer at Kenelworth appointed a knightly game, which was called the Round Table of 100 knights and so manie Ladies (nameth not expressely shooting to be one) yet for exercise of armes thither came many warlike knightes of divers kingdomes. And the most famous and victorious king E. 3. builded at Winchester (ann. 1344) an house called the Round Table of an exceeding compasse, to the exercise of like or farre greater Chevalry therin:—So the most famous, prudent, politike and grave prince K. Henry the 7 was the first Phenix in chusing out a number of chiefe Archers to give daily attendance upon his person, whom he named his Garde. But the high and mighty renowned prince his son, K. H. 8. (ann. 1509) not onely with great prowes and praise proceeded in that which his father had begon; but also added greater dignity unto the same, like a most roial renowned David, enacting a good and godly statute (ann. 33. H. 8. cap. 9.) for the use and exercise of shooting in every degree. And furthermore for the maintenance of the same laudable exercise in this honourable city of London by his gratious charter confirmed unto the worshipful citizens of the same, this your now famous order of Knights of Prince Arthures Round Table or Society: like as in his life time when he sawe a good Archer indeede, he chose him and ordained such a one for a knight of the same order."[563:A]

As this "_friendly and franke fellowship_ of Prince Arthur's Knightes," as Mulcaster terms it in his Positions[563:B], bore little resemblance to its celebrated archetype in any point of chivalric observance, beyond the name; and as archery had ceased to be an object with government in a military light, and was considered indeed, in the reign of James I., as a mere pastime, the society, though respectable in the days of Robinson and Mulcaster, soon dwindled into contempt, an idle mockery of an institution which had originally been great and imposing.

In MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, our author very distinctly refers to another of Captain Cox's romances, _Huon of Bourdeaux_, a production of equal popularity with Morte Arthure, and which was translated into English by Lord Berners, in the reign of Henry the Eighth[564:A], under the title of _Sir Hugh of Bourdeaux_. Benedict being informed of the approach of Beatrice, addresses Don Pedro in the following terms:—"Will your grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes, that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; _fetch you a hair of the great Cham's beard_; do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three word's conference with this harpy."[564:B] The passage in Italics, together with the spirit of the context, will be discovered in the subsequent command and achievement.

"Thou must goe to the citie of Babylon to the Admiral Gaudisse, to bring me thy hand full of the heare of his beard, and foure of his greatest teeth. Alas, my lord, (quoth the Barrons,) we see well you desire greatly his death, when you charge him with such a message."[564:C]

"He opened his mouth, and tooke out his foure great teeth, and then cut off his beard, and tooke thereof as much as pleased him."[564:D]

This version of Lord Berners furnished Shakspeare with the name, though not with the character, of _Oberon_.

The SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH supplies us with a reference to the ancient romance of _Sir Bevis of Southampton_. In the combat between Horner and his servant Peter, the former exclaims—"Peter, have at thee with a downright blow, _as Bevis of Southampton fell upon_ Ascapart."[565:A]

This romance, which forms the fourth article in the Coventry Library, was once highly popular, though possessing little merit. It was printed by Pynson, and issued twice from the press of Copland, and once from that of East. It has been since frequently republished, in various forms, for the amusement of the juvenile part of the community.

Of the hero of the tale, Selden has left us the following notice in his notes on the Polyolbion:—"About the Norman invasion was Bevis famous with the title of Earl of Southampton; Duncton in Wiltshire known for his residence.—His sword is kept as a relique in Arundel Castle; not equalling in length (as it is now worn) that of Edward 3, at Westminster."[565:B]

Shakspeare has done further honour to this legend, by putting two lines of it into the mouth of Edgar. Bevis, being confined in a dungeon, was allowed neither meat nor corn, but

"Rattes and myce and such smal dere Was his meate that seven yere;"

a distich which the supposed madman in Lear has thus, almost verbally, adopted:—

"But mice, and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year."[566:A]

Dr. Percy has observed that Shakspeare had doubtless often heard this metrical romance sung to the harp[566:B]; the popularity of these legends, indeed, was such that, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, most of them were converted into prose, a degradation which befel Sir Bevis, Sir Guy of Warwick, and many others of equal celebrity. To this last romance Shakspeare has an allusion in his _King John_, where the bastard speaks of

"Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man,"[566:C]

the defeat of this Danish Goliah, in single combat, by Sir Guy, being one of the leading features of the story.

It is highly probable, that the achievement ascribed to King Richard, in this play, of tearing out the lion's heart[566:D], was immediately derived from a copy of the old metrical romance in the poet's library. It is true that the chronicles of Fabian and Rastall have detailed this fiction, and there is no doubt, from the same authority; but the metrical legend of Richard Cœur de Lion being one of the most popular of the Anglo-Norman romances, and having been thrice printed, twice by W. De Worde, and once by Will. Copland, there is much reason to conclude that an acknowledged lover, and collector, of this branch of literature would prefer taking his imagery from the poem itself, more especially if it rested upon his shelves.

It appears from this romance, that Richard not only tore out the heart of the lion, but, dipping it in salt, eat it before the eyes of the astonished king of Almain, a feat which instantly drew from His Majesty the peculiar appellation which designates the tale:—

"Yevis, as I understand can, This is a devil, and no man, That has my strong lion y-slawe, The heart out of his body drawe, And has it eaten with good will! He may be called, by right skill, King y-christened of most renown, Strong _Richard Cœur de Lion_!"[567:A]

The play of _Henry the Fifth_ furnishes a reference to the fifth article in Laneham's catalogue of the Coxean collection. Fluellen compelling Pistol to eat his leek, tells him,—"You called me yesterday, mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a _squire of low degree_."[567:B]

This romance, which was licensed to John Kynge on the tenth of June 1560[567:C], and printed by William Copland before 1570[567:D], was one of the most popular of the sixteenth century, and possesses some striking traits of manners, and several very curious poetical sketches. It is twice alluded to by Spenser[567:E] in his Faerie Queene, and has been supposed, though probably without sufficient foundation, to have existed in manuscript anterior to the age of Chaucer.[567:F]

There are some scenes in Shakspeare which appear to have been originally derived from _Oriental_ fable. Thus, in _Twelfth Night_, the leading ideas of Malvolio's soliloquy (act ii. sc. 5.), bear a strong resemblance, as Mr. Tyrrwhitt observes, to those of Alnaschar, in _The Arabian Nights Entertainments_; an observation which has drawn from Mr. Steevens the following curious and pertinent note:—

"Many Arabian fictions had found their way into obscure Latin and French books, and from thence into English ones, long before any professed version of _The Arabian Nights Entertainments_ had appeared. I meet with a story similar to that of Alnaschar, in _The Dialoge of Creatures Moralysed_, bl. l. no date, but probably printed abroad: 'It is but foly to hope to moche of vanyteys. Whereof it is told in fablis that a lady uppon a tyme delyuered to her mayden a galon of mylke to sell at a cite. And by the waye as she sate and restid her by a dyche side, she began to thinke y{t} with ye money of the mylke she wolde bye an henne, the which shulde bring forth chekyns, and when they were grownyn to hennys she wolde sell them and by piggis, and eschaunge them into shepe, and the shepe into oxen; and so whan she was come to richnesse she sholde be married right worshipfully unto some worthy man, and thus she rejoycid. And when she was thus marvelously comfortid, and ravished inwardely in her secrete solace thinkynge with howe great joye she shuld be ledde towarde the churche with her husbond on horsebacke, she sayde to her self, Goo wee, goo wee, sodaynelye she smote the grounde with her fote, myndynge to spurre the horse; but her fote slypped and she fell in the dyche, and there laye all her mylke; and so she was farre from her purpose, and never had that she hopid to have. Dial. 100, LL. ij b."[568:A]

We may also refer the _Induction_ to the _Taming of the Shrew_ to the same source, to _The Sleeper awakened_, in the Arabian Nights, a tale which seems to have crept from its oriental fountain through every modern European language. Its earliest appearance in English that can now be traced, is derived from the information of Mr. Warton, who informs us that his friend Mr. Collins, the celebrated lyric poet, had in his possession a collection of short comic stories in prose, "sett forth by maister Richard Edwards, mayster of her Majesties revels," and with the date of 1570. This book, which was printed in the black letter, contained the story of the _Induction_, and was, there is little doubt, the source whence Shakspeare and the author of the elder _Taming of the Shrew_ drew their outline.[569:A] A similar tale is the subject of a ballad in the Pepysian collection, which has been published by Percy[569:B], and it is to be found also in Sir Richard Barckley's _Discourse on the Felicitie of Man_, 1598, in Goulart's _Admirable and Memorable Histories_, translated by E. Grimstone, 1607; in Burton's _Anatomie of Melancholy_, 1615; in _The Apothegms of King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester_, &c. 1658, and in Winstanley's _Historical Rarities_, 1684.[569:C] Some of the Arabian Tales and some of the Fables of Pilpay may be traced in _The Seven Wise Masters_, and in the English _Gesta Romanorum_.

To romances of _Italian_ origin and structure, such as were exhibited in English versions often mutilated and incorrect, our author's obligations are so numerous, particularly with regard to the formation of plot, that, referring to a future consideration of each play for further illustration on these subjects, we shall only remark in this place, that many of the faults which have been ascribed to Shakspeare's want of judgment in the conduct of his dramas, are attributable to the necessity he was under, either from want of power or want of time, of applying to versions and imitations in lieu of the originals; a species of accommodation which frequently led him to adopt the mistakes of a wretched translation, when a reference to the Italian would immediately have induced a better choice. This will account for many of the charges which Mrs. Lennox has brought against the poet, in respect to deficiency of skill in the arrangement of his incidents.[569:D]

The _First Part of King Henry the Fourth_ presents us with an allusion to one of those _Spanish_ romances which became so popular towards the close of Elizabeth's reign. Falstaff, in answer to the Prince, who had told him, that he saw no reason why he should "be so superfluous to demand the time of the day," replies, "Indeed, you come near me now, Hal: for we, that take purses, go by the moon and seven stars; and not by Phœbus,—he, _that wandering knight so fair_."[570:A]

The romance to which this passage stands indebted, is entitled, in the best and most complete edition, "_Espeio de Principes, y Cavalleros. En el qual se cuentan los immortales hechos de CAVALLERO DEL FEBO_," &c. &c., four parts, folio, and is the subject of the Barber's eulogium in Don Quixote. "He (the Don) had frequent disputes with the priest of his village, who was a learned person, and had taken his degrees in Ciguenza, which of the two was the better knight, Palmerin of England, or Amadis de Gaul. But master Nicholas, barber-surgeon of the same town, affirmed, that none ever came up to the _Knight of the Sun_."[570:B]

This production, the first part of which was translated into English, under the title of _The Myrrour of Knighthood_, was well known in Shakspeare's time; the second part of the first book having been printed in the black letter, by Thomas Este, in 1585.[570:C] The whole occupies three volumes in 4to., and in it the Knight of the Sun is represented not only as "most excellently _faire_," but as a prodigious _wanderer_; so that Falstaff, who, by an easy association, digresses from Phœbus to this solar knight-errant, has very compendiously combined his characteristics.

It is probable that the celebrated passage in Hamlet's soliloquy, where the prince speaks of

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,"[571:A]

may have been founded on a similar idea in the Spanish romance entitled _Palmerin d'Oliva_. The translation of Palmerin was first printed in 1588, and in Part II. chap. 3. the reader must be struck with the following words,—"before he took his journey wherein no creature returneth agaie." Now, as Hamlet, according to the chronological arrangement of Mr. Malone, was not written until 1596, and Palmerin d'Oliva may certainly be reckoned among the most fashionable romances of its day, the conjecture is entitled to attention. It is necessary, however, to add, that we are altogether indebted for it to a learned and ingenious correspondent in the British Bibliographer, whose initial signature is W. and whose acquaintance with romantic lore appears to be equally accurate and profound.[571:B]

To this gentleman we are under further obligation for the confirmation of a supposition made by Mr. Douce, who, commenting on this part of Hamlet's soliloquy, refers it to a passage in the _History of Valentine and Orson_, and adds,—"It is probable that there was an edition of Valentine and Orson in Shakspeare's time, though none such is supposed now to remain."[571:C]

Such an edition, it appears, is in the possession of the correspondent of Sir Egerton Brydges, who has given us a description of it, together with the following title, as drawn from the colophon:—"_The historie of the two valyante brethren Valentyne and Orson, sônes vn to the Emperour of Græce. Imprinted at London over a gaynst St. Margaretes Churche in Lothbery be William Coplande._" Small 4to. b. l. sig. I. i. 5. wood-cuts.[572:A] The antiquity of this copy, though without date, is ascertained by the circumstance, that Will. Copland, the printer, died between the years 1568 and 1569; and there is even reason to suppose, that this is but a re-impression, for, after the table of contents, a short note states, "Here endeth the table _newly correcte_."[572:B]

The reference of Mr. Douce is to page 63 of the edition of 1694, in which occurs a sentence which undoubtedly bears a striking resemblance to the lines of Shakspeare:—"I shall send some of you here present _into such a country, that you shall scarcely ever return again_ to bring tydings of your valour."[572:C]

That our great poet was as well versed in the pages of Valentine and Orson, as have been the school-boys of this country for the last century, is our firm belief. "It would be difficult," says the possessor of Copland's edition, "to find a reader of the present day, who had not in the hour of childhood voted a portion of his scanty stipend to the purchase of 'Valentine and Orson,' and withdrawn for a few hours from more laborious exercises, or amusements, to peruse its fascinating pages;" and equally difficult would it have been, in Shakspeare's days, to have found a person of liberal education, who had not devoted a portion of his leisure to the perusal of this simple but energetic romance.

From the numerous corresponding passages, however, cited by our author's commentators, from the period of Catullus to the seventeenth century, it would seem that the idea, and even the terms in which it has been expressed, may be considered as a kind of common property, and consequently rather a mark of coincidence than imitation.

Of the _Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney, the best _pastoral_ romance, and one of the most popular books of its age, we cannot be surprised that Shakspeare should have been an ardent admirer, and that occasionally he should have been indebted to it for an incident or an image. The first scene of the fourth act, in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, in which Valentine accepts the captainship of a band of outlaws, appears to be founded on that part of the Arcadia where Pyrocles, released from prison by the Helots, consents to be their leader and captain.[573:A]

More certainly is the episode of Gloster and his sons, in King Lear, derived from the same work, the first edition of which, published in 1590, being divided into chapters, exhibits one with this title:—"The pitifull state and storie of the Paphlagonian unkinde king, and his kinde sonne: first related by the sonne, then by the blind father." The subsequent editions omit the divisions into chapters, and in the copy before us, which is the seventh impression, the story commences at page 132, being part of the second book. As no other source for this narrative than the _Arcadia_, has hitherto been traced, and as the similarity of incident is considerable, there can be little doubt but that this portion of _King Lear_ must confess its obligation to the romance.

The appellation, also, given to Cupid, in a passage in _Much Ado about Nothing_, is evidently to be referred to a line in the _Arcadia_. Don Pedro, speaking of Benedict, says, "he hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little _hangman_ dare not shoot at him."[573:B] It has been conjectured, that the word in Italics should be _hench-man_, a page or attendant; but to decide the question it is only necessary to quote the words of Sidney:—

"Millions of yeares this old drivell Cupid lives; While still more wretch, more wicked he doth prove: Till now at length that Jove him office gives, At Juno's suite, who much did Argus love, In this our world a _hangman_ for to be Of all those fooles that will have all they see."[573:C]

If, from this catalogue of allusions, our author's intimacy with the romances of his age, may be considered as proved, his familiarity with the _ballads_ and _songs_ of the same period will not be deemed less extensive, or less admitting of demonstration. Throughout his dramas, indeed, a peculiar partiality for these popular little pieces is very manifest; he delights to quote them, wherever he can find a place for their introduction, and his own efforts in this line of poetry are often of the utmost simplicity and beauty.

How strongly he felt this predilection for the strains of our elder minstrelsy, and how exquisitely he has expressed his attachment to them, must be in the recollection of all who have ever read, or seen performed, his admirable comedy of the _Twelfth Night_, in which the Duke exclaims,—

"Give me some musick:—but that piece of song, That old and antique song we heard last night, Methought it did relieve my passion much; More than light airs and recollected terms, Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times:— Mark it, Cæsario; it is old, and plain: The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids, that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age."[574:A]

Before we notice, however, the ballads which Shakspeare has quoted, or to which he has alluded, it will be satisfactory, if, to the articles specified in Captain Cox's "Bunch of Ballets and Songs," we add a few more of similar popularity, and from a source equally rare and authentic. In the _British Bibliographer_, Mr. Haslewood has given us a description of the fragment of a tract in his possession, entitled THE WORLD'S FOLLY, printed, as he concludes, from the type, before 1600, and from which, "as every allusion," he justly observes, "to our early ballads is interesting," he has obliged his readers with some very curious quotations. "The author," he remarks, "appears to describe the purgatory of Folly. He wanders from room to room, and to each new character assigns a ballad, that may be presumed was distinguished for popularity. A man, whose credit had decayed by trusting servants, and had commenced botcher, 'had standing by him, for meate and drinke, a pot of strong ale, which was often at his nose, that it kept his face in so good a colour, and his braine in so kinde a heate, as forgetting part of his forepassed pride, in the good humour of grieving patience, made him with a hemming sigh, ilfavourdly singe the ballad of _Whilom I was_: to the tune of _Tom Tinker_.' An old man, shaking with palsy, who, 'having beene a man of some possessions, and with too fat feeding of horses, too high keeping of hawkes, and too much delighting in banquetinges, through lacke of husbandrie, was forced to leave himself without lande; . . . after many a deepe sighe, with a hollow voice, in a solemne tune, with a heavie hearte fell to sing the song of _Oken leaves began wither_: to the tune of _Heavilie, heavilie_.' A dapper fellow that in his youth had spent more than he got on his person, 'fell to singe the ballad of the _blinde beggar_: to the tune of _Heigh ho_.' The general lover, having no further credit with beauty, 'howled out the dittie of _When I was faire and young_: to the tune of _Fortune_. The next is whimsically described as 'one that was once a virgin, had beene a little while a mayde, knew the name of a wife, fell to be a widdow,' and finally a procuress; 'she would sing the _Lamentation of a sinner_: to the tune of _Welladaye_.' A decayed prostitute, who had become laundress to the house, 'stood singing the ballet of _All a greene willowe_: to the famous tune of _Ding Dong_.' A man with good personage, with a froward wife, 'hummed out the balled of _the breeches_: to the tune of _Never, never_.' His termagant spouse drewe from her pocket 'a ballad of _the tinker's wife that beate her husbande_.' To the last character in the fragment is also given Raleigh's ballad. He was 'one that had beene in love, sat looking on his mistresse picture, making such a legge to it, writing such verses in honour to it, and committing such idolatrie with it, that poore man, I pittied him: and in his behalfe sorrowed to see how the Foole did handle him: but there sat he, hanging his head, lifting up the eyes, and with a deepe sigh, singing the ballad of _Come live with me and be my love_: to the tune of _adieu my deere_.'"[576:A]

It is, notwithstanding, to the dramas of our poet, that we must look for more copious intimations relative to the ballad-poetry of the sixteenth century, and of the first ten years of the reign of James the First. The list which we shall collect from his works, in the order in which they are usually published, will sufficiently evince his love for these productions, and, at the same time, afford a pretty accurate enumeration of those which were esteemed the most popular of his age.

Yet, in forming this catalogue of Shakspearean ballads and songs, it may be necessary to premise, that it is not our intention to comment on the original pieces of our author in this branch of poetry, which will fall under consideration in a subsequent chapter; but merely to confine our notices to his quotations from and allusions to the minstrel strains of others. We commence, therefore, with the ballad of _Queen Dido_, which the poet had no doubt in view, when he represents Gonzalo in the _Tempest_ so familiar with her name and history.[576:B] That this was a favourite song with the common people appears from a passage in a scarce pamphlet quoted by Mr. Ritson, and published in 1604. "O you ale-knights, you that devoure the marrow of the mault, and drinke whole ale-tubs into consumptions; that sing _Queen Dido_ over a cupp, and tell strange newes over an ale-pot."[576:C] Dr. Percy, who has published a correct copy of this old ballad from his folio MS. collated with two different printed copies, both in black letter, in the Pepysian collection, terms it "_excellent_;" an epithet justly merited, for, though blended with the manners of a Gothic age, it is certainly both pathetic and interesting.

Mrs. Ford, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, speaking of Falstaff's proposals, says, that his disposition and his words "do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundredth psalm to the tune of _Green Sleeves_."[577:A] This seems to have been a very popular song about 1580, for it is licensed several times during this year, and entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, under the titles of "A newe northerne dittye of the Lady _Green Sleeves_," and "A new Northern Song of _Green Sleeves_, beginning

"The bonniest lass in all the land."

It is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher in _The Loyal Subject_, but is supposed to be now no longer extant.

In the same play, Falstaff alludes to another old song, which was entitled _Fortune my foe_[577:B], enumerating all the misfortunes incident to mankind through the instability of fortune. Of this ballad, which is mentioned by Brewer in his _Lingua_[577:C], twice by Beaumont and Fletcher[577:D], and by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy[577:E], the tune is said to be the identical air now known by the song of "Death and the Lady;" and the first stanza, observes Mr. Malone, was as follows:—

"_Fortune, my foe_, why dost thou frown on me? And will my fortune never better be? Wilt thou, I say, for ever breed my pain, And wilt thou not restore my joys again?"[577:F]

Sir Hugh Evans, in the first scene of the third act of this[577:G] play, quotes, though from his trepidation very inaccurately, four lines from two of the most popular little madrigals at the close of the sixteenth century, entitled _The Passionate Shepherd to His Love_, and _The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd_; the first written by Christopher Marlow, and the second by Sir Walter Raleigh. These had been attributed, however, to Shakspeare, in consequence of their being included in a copy of his smaller poems printed by William Jaggard in 1599. This edition being published during the life-time of the poet, gave currency to the ascription; but in the year following Marlow's poem appeared in _England's Helicon_, with his name annexed, and Raleigh's with his usual signature of _Ignoto_[578:A]; and Isaac Walton, in the first edition of his _Compleat Angler_, printed in 1653, has attributed these pieces to the same authors, describing them as "that smooth song, which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago; and—an Answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days—old fashioned poetry," he adds, "but choicely good; I think much better then the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age."[578:B] Had Marlow written nothing but this beautiful song, he would yet have descended to posterity as an excellent poet; the imitations of it have been numerous.

The _Twelfth Night_ presents us with a variety of fragments of ballads, songs, and catches; Sir Andrew Ague-cheek calls for the catch of _Thou Knave_, of which the words and musical notes are given by Sir J. Hawkins[578:C]; Sir Toby compares Olivia to _Peg-a Ramsay_, a licentious song mentioned by Nash among several other ballads, such as _Rogero_, _Basilino_, _Turkelony_, _All the Flowers of the Broom_, _Pepper is black_, _Green Sleeves_, _Peggie Ramsie_; and immediately afterwards this jovial knight quotes several detached lines from as many separate ballads, for instance, _Three merry men be we_; _There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady_; _O the twelfth day of December_; _Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone_.[579:A] Of these the first was a burden common to many ancient songs, and is called in _The Old Wives Tale_, by George Peele, 1595, an _Old Proverb_, and is thus given:—

"Three merrie men, and three merrie men, And three merrie men be wee; I in the wood, and thou on the ground, And Jack sleepes in the tree:"[579:B]

an association which acquired such notoriety as to become the frequent sign of an ale-house, under the appellation of _The Three Merry Boys_. The second is the first line and the burden of a ballad which was licensed by T. Colwell, in 1562, under the title of _The goodly and constant Wyfe Susanna_. It is preserved in the Pepysian collection, and the first stanza of it has been quoted by Dr. Percy in his _Reliques_[579:C]; the burden _lady, lady_, is again alluded to by Mercutio in _Romeo and Juliet_, act ii. sc. 4. The third has not been traced to its source, but the fourth, and the subsequent lines, are taken, with a little variation, from _Corydon's Farewell To Phillis_, published in a little black letter miscellany, called "The Golden Garland of Princely Delights," and reprinted entire by Dr. Percy.[579:D]

In act iv. sc. 2. the clown is introduced singing part of the first two stanzas of a song which has been discovered among the ancient MSS. of Dr. Harrington of Bath, and there ascribed, though perhaps not correctly, to Sir Thomas Wyat. It is evident that Shakspeare trusted to his memory in the quotation of these popular pieces, for most of them deviate, in some degree, from the originals; in the present instance, the first two lines, as given by the clown,

"Hey Robin, jolly Robin, Tell me how thy lady does,"

are substituted for the opening stanza of the old song:—

"A Robyn, Jolly Robyn, Tell me how thy leman doeth, And thou shalt knowe of myn."[580:A]

The commencement of a madrigal, the composition of William Elderton, is sung by Benedict, in _Much Ado about Nothing_.

"The god of love, That sits above," &c.[580:B]

and a song beginning in a similar manner, is mentioned by Mr. Ritson, to be in _Bacchus' Bountie_, 4to. bl. l. 1593; Elderton's production was parodied by a puritan of the name of Birch, under the title of "The Complaint of a Sinner."[580:C]

In _Love's Labours Lost_, a sweet air, as Armado terms it, commencing with the word _Concolinel_, is sung by Moth[580:D], but no further intimation is given; and in another part of the same comedy, the burden of an ancient ditty is chaunted by Roseline and Boyet.[580:E] In _As You Like It_ Touchstone quotes a stanza from a ballad of which the first line is _O sweet Oliver_, and which appears to be the same with the ballad of

"O sweete Olyver Leave me not behinde thee,"

entered by Richard Jones, on the books of the Stationers' Company, August 6th, 1584[580:F]; and in the subsequent act, Orlando alludes to a madrigal under the title of _Wit whither wilt_.[580:G]

_All's Well that Ends Well_ affords but two passages from the minstrel poesy of the day, which are put into the mouth of the clown; one of these is evidently taken from a ballad on the _Sacking of Troy_, and the other seems to have been the chorus of a song on courtship or marriage.[581:A]

From the _Taming of the Shrew_ we collect the initial lines of two apparently very popular ballads; the first beginning _Where is the life that late I led_[581:B], which is likewise quoted by Ancient Pistol[581:C], and referred to in _A gorgious Gallery of gallant Inventions_, 4to. 1578; there is also a song or sonnet with this title, observes Mr. Malone, in _a handeful of pleasant Delites, containing sundrie new Sonets_, &c. 1584, where we read of "Dame Beautie's replie to the _lover late at libertie_, and now complaineth himselfe to be her captive, intituled, _Where is the life that late I led_:

"The life that erst thou led'st, my friend, Was pleasant to thine eyes," &c.[581:D]

The second fragment with which Petruchio has favoured us, commencing

"It was the friar of orders grey, As he forth walked on his way,"[581:E]

has given rise to one of the most pleasing and pathetic of modern ballads, founded on a professed introduction of as many of our poet's ballad fragments as could consistently be adapted. "Dispersed through Shakspeare's plays," says the ingenious associator, "are innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads, the entire copies of which could not be recovered. Many of these being of the most beautiful and pathetic simplicity, the editor was tempted to select some of them, and with a few supplemental stanzas to connect them together, and form them into a little Tale."[582:A] That much taste and poetic spirit, together with a very successful effort in combination, have been exhibited in this little piece, the public approbation has unequivocally decided.

To the character of Autolycus, in the _Winter's Tale_, a very humorous exemplar of the fallen state of the minstrel tribe, we are indebted for some illustration of the prevalency of ballad-writing at the commencement of the reign of James the First. Most of the songs attributed to this adroit rogue, are, there is reason to think, the composition of Shakspeare, with the exception of the catch beginning _Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way_[582:B]; but, in his capacity of ballad-vender, he throws considerable light on the subjects to which these motley strains were devoted. He is represented as having ballads of all descriptions, and "the prettiest love-songs for maids"—"and where some stretch-mouth'd rascal would, as it were, mean mischief, and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the maid to answer, _Whoop, do me no harm, good man_; puts him off, slights him, with _Whoop, do me_ no harm, good man."[582:C] Accordingly at the Fair he is applied to for these precious wares:—

"_Clo._ What hast here? ballads?

_Mop._ Pray now, buy some: I love a ballad in print, a'-life: for then we are sure they are true.

_Aut._ Here's one to a very doleful tune, How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how she longed to eat adder's heads, and toads carbonadoed.

_Mop._ Is it true, think you?

_Aut._ Very true; and but a month old.

_Dor._ Bless me from marrying a usurer!

_Aut._ Here's the midwife's name to't, one mistress Taleporter; and five or six honest wives that were present: Why should I carry lies abroad?

_Mop._ 'Pray you now, buy it.

_Clo._ Come on, lay it by: And let's first see more ballads; we'll buy the other things anon.

_Aut._ Here's another ballad, Of a fish, that appeared upon the coast, on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her: The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.

_Dor._ Is it true, think you?

_Aut._ Five justices' hands at it; and witnesses, more than my pack will hold.

_Clo._ Lay it by too: Another.

_Aut._ This is a merry ballad; but a very pretty one.

_Mop._ Let's have some merry ones.

_Aut._ Why, this is a passing merry one; and goes to the tune of, _Two maids wooing a man_: there's scarce a maid westward, but she sings it; 'tis in request, I can tell you."[584:A]

The request, in fact, for these popular pieces of poetry was then infinitely greater than has since obtained in more modern times; not a murder, or an execution, not a battle or a tempest, not a wonderful event or a laughable adventure, could occur, but what was immediately thrown into the form of a ballad, and the muse supplied what humble prose now details to us among the miscellaneous articles of a news-paper; a statement which is fully confirmed by the observation of another character in this very play, who tells us that "such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour, that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it."[584:B]

In the _Second Part of King Henry the Fourth_ Falstaff enters a room, in the Boar's Head Tavern, singing the first two lines of a ballad which Dr. Percy has reprinted under the title of _Sir Lancelot Du Lake_.[585:A] This, which is merely a metrical version of three chapters from the first part of _Morte Arthur_, is quoted imperfectly by the knight, owing to the interruptions attending his situation; the opening lines of the ballad are,

"When Arthur first in court began, And was approved king,"

which Falstaff mutilates and alters, by omitting the last word of the first line, and converting _approved_ into _worthy_[585:B]; the version and quotation, it may be remarked, are strong proofs of the popularity of the romance.

To the admirably drawn character of _Silence_ in this play, we are indebted for several valuable fragments of popular poesy. This curious personage, who, when sober, has not a word to say, is no sooner exhilarated by the circling glass, than he chaunts forth an abundance of unconnected stanzas from the minstrelsy of his times. Having nothing original in his ideas, no fund of his own on which to draw, he marks his festivity by the vociferous repetition of scraps of catches, songs, and glees. We may, therefore, conceive the poet to have appropriated to this simple justice in his cups, the most generally known and, of course, the favourite, convivial songs of the age. They are of such a character, indeed, as to warrant the belief, that there was not a hall in Shakspeare's days but what had echoed to these jovial strains; a conclusion which almost imperatively calls for the admission of a few, as specimens of the vocal hilarity of our ancestors, when warmed, according to Shallow's confession, by "too much sack at supper."[585:C]

"_Sil._ Do nothing but eat and make good cheer, (Singing.) And praise heaven for the merry year; When flesh is cheap and females dear,[586:A] And lusty lads roam here and there, So merrily, And ever among so merrily.

_Fal._ There's a merry heart!—Good master Silence, I'll give you a health for that anon.—

_Sil._ Be merry, be merry, my wife's as all;[586:B] For women are shrews, both short and tall: 'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, And welcome merry shrove-tide. Be merry, be merry, &c.

_Fal._ I did not think, master Silence had been a man of this mettle.

_Sil._ A cup of wine, that's brisk and fine, And drink unto the leman mine; And a merry heart lives long-a.

_Fal._ Well said, master Silence.

_Sil._ And we shall be merry;—now comes in the sweet of the night.

_Fal._ Health and long life to you, master Silence.

_Sil._ Fill the cup and let it come; I'll pledge you a mile to the bottom."[586:C]

After drinking another bumper, and singing another song, allusive to the rights of pledging, _Do me right, And dub me knight_[586:D]; and quoting the old ballad of _Robin Hood_, and the _Pindar of Wakefield_[586:E], master Silence is carried to bed, fully saturated with sack and good cheer.

A character equally versed in minstrel lore, and equally prodigal of his stock, though wanting the excuse of inebriation, has been drawn by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the person of _Old Merrythought_ in their _Knight of the Burning Pestle_[586:F]; but, in point of nature and humour, it is a picture which falls infinitely short of Shakspeare's sketch.

Many of the old songs, or rather the fragments of them, which are scattered through the dramas of our poet, either proceed from the professed clown or fool of the play, or are given as the wild and desultory recollections of derangement, real or feigned; the ebullitions of a broken heart, and the unconnected sallies of a disordered mind.

Shakspeare's fools may be considered, in fact, as exact copies of the living manners and costume of these singular personages, who, in his era, formed a necessary part of the household establishment of the great. To the due execution of their functions, a lively fancy, and a copious fund of wit and sarcasm, together with an unlimited licence of uttering what imagination and the occasion prompted, were essential; but it was likewise required, that bitterness of allusion, and asperity of remark, should be softened by the constant assumption of a playful and unintentional manner. For this purpose, the indirect method of quotation, and generally from ludicrous songs and ballads, is resorted to, with the evident intention of covering what would otherwise have been too naked and too severely felt. Thus, in an old play, entitled _A very mery and pythie Comedy, called, The longer thou livest the more Foole thou art_, printed about 1580, the appearance of a character of this description is prefaced by the following stage-note:—"Entreth _Moros_, counterfaiting a vaine gesture and a foolish countenance, _synging the foote of many songs, as fools were wont_."[587:A]

The simple yet sarcastic drollery of the fool, and the wild ravings of the madman, have been alike employed by Shakspeare, to deepen the gloom of distress. In the tragedy of _Lear_ it is difficult to ascertain whether the horrors of the scene are more heightened by the seeming thoughtless levity of the former, or by the delirious imagery of the latter. The greater part of the bitterly sportive metres, attributed to the fool, in this drama, appears evidently to have been written for the character; and as the reliques drawn from more ancient minstrelsy, seem rather the foot or burden of each song, than the commencement, and are at the same time of little poetical value, we shall forbear enumerating them. The fragments, however, allotted to Edgar are both characteristic, and apparently initial; the line which Mr. Steevens asserts to have seen in an old ballad,

"Through the sharp hawthown blows the cold wind,"[588:A]

is so impressive as absolutely to chill the blood; and the legendary pieces beginning

"Saint Withold footed thrice the wold,"[588:B]

and

"Child Rowland to the dark tower came,"[588:C]

are reliques which well accord with the dreadful peculiarity of his situation. The two subsequent quotations are from pastoral songs, of which the first,

"Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me,"[588:D]

as Mr. Malone observes, has a marked propriety, alluding to an association then common; for in a description of beggars, published in 1607, one class of these vagabonds is represented as counterfeiting madness;

———————— "they were so frantique They knew not what they did, but every day Make sport with stick and flowers like an antique;— _One calls herself poor Besse, the other Tom_."[588:E]

The second seems to have been suggested to the mind of Edgar by some connection, however distant and obscure, with the business of the scene. Lear fancies he is trying his daughters; and the lines of Edgar, who is appointed one of the commission, allude to a trespass which takes place in consequence of the folly of a shepherd in neglecting his charge,—the lines appear to be the opening stanza of a lyric pastoral. "A shepherd," remarks Dr. Johnson, "is desired to pipe, and the request is enforced by a promise, that though his sheep be in the corn, _i. e._ committing a trespass by his negligence—yet a single tune upon his pipe shall secure them from the pound.

"Sleepest, or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? Thy sheep be in the corn; And for one blast of thy minikin mouth, Thy sheep shall take no harm."[589:A]

If the assumed madness of Edgar is heightened by the casual repetition of these artless strains, how is the real distraction of the heart-broken Ophelia augmented in its pathos by a similar appeal! The interesting fragments which she sings, certainly do not produce their effect, as Sir Joshua Reynolds imagined, by marking an "utter insensibility to her own misfortunes[589:B];" for they manifestly refer both to her father's death, and to her own unfortunate attachment, their influence over the heart being felt as the consequence of this indirect allusion.

Of the first three fragments, which appear to be parts of the same ballad, and, as the king observes, are a "conceit upon her father," the two prior have been beautifully incorporated by Dr. Percy in his _Friar of Orders Gray_:

"How should I your true love know, From another one? By his cockle hat and staff, And his sandal shoon."

"He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone."[589:C]

The first line of the third,

"White his shroud as the mountain snow,"

has been parodied by Chatterton, in the Mynstrelle's Songe in Œlla,

"Whyte his rode as the sommer snowe."

The subsequent songs, beginning

"Good morrow, 'tis Saint Valentine's day,"

and

"By Gis, and by Saint Charity,"[590:A]

were, there is little doubt, suggested to the fair sufferer's mind, by an obscure and distant association with the issue of her unfortunate amour, a connection, however, which is soon dissipated by reverting to the fate of her father, the scene closing with two fragments exquisitely adapted to unfold the workings of her mind on this melancholy event.

"They bore him barefac'd on the bier— And in his grave rain'd many a tear."[590:B]

"And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death-bed, He never will come again, &c."[590:C]

passages of which Dr. Percy has admirably availed himself in his _Friar of Orders Gray_, and to which the Mynstrelle's song in Œlla is indebted for its pathetic burden:

"_Mie love ys dedde, Gonne to his deathe-bedde_, Alle underre the wyllowe tree."[590:D]

The vacillation of poor Ophelia amid her heavy afflictions is rendered strikingly apparent by the insertion of two ballad lines between the stanzas last quoted, which again manifestly allude to her lover:—

"_Oph._ You must sing, _Down a-down, an you call him adown-a_. O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter.——"[591:A]

"For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy."[591:B]

We may remark that the expression, "_O, how the wheel becomes it!_" is meant to imply the popularity of the song, that

"The _spinsters_ and the knitters in the sun Do use to _chaunt_ it,"

a custom which, as exercised in the winter, is beautifully exemplified by Mr. Malone, in a passage from Sir Thomas Overbury's characters, 1614:—"She makes her hands hard with labour, and her head soft with pittie; and when winter evenings fall early, sitting at her merry _wheele_, she sings a defiance to the giddy wheele of fortune."[591:C]

In the church-yard scene of this play, one of the grave-diggers, after amusing himself and his companion by queries, which, as Mr. Steevens observes, "perhaps composed the chief festivity of our ancestors by an evening fire[591:D];" sings three stanzas, though somewhat corrupted either by design or accident, of "A dyttie or sonet made by the lord Vaus, in the time of the noble quene Marye, representing the image of death."[591:E] This poem was originally published in Tottel's edition of Surrey and Wyat, and the Poems of Uncertain Authors; the earliest poetical miscellany in our language, and first printed in 1557 under the title of "Songes and sonettes by the right honourable Henry Howard, late earl of Surrey, and other." To this very popular collection, which underwent many editions during the sixteenth century[592:A], Slender alludes, in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, where he exclaims, "I had rather than forty shillings, I had my book of _Songs and Sonnets_ here[592:B];" from which we may conclude that this was the fashionable manual for lovers in the age of Elizabeth. Lord Vaux's lines have been reprinted by Dr. Percy, who remarks on the apparent corruptions of Shakspeare's transcript, that they were "perhaps so designed by the poet himself, the better to suit the character of an illiterate clown."[592:C]

No fragment of our minstrel poetry has been introduced by Shakspeare with greater beauty and effect, than the melancholy ditty which he represents Desdemona as singing, under a presentiment of her approaching fate:

"_Des._ My mother had a maid call'd—Barbara; She was in love; and he, she lov'd, prov'd mad, And did forsake her: she had a song of—willow, An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune, And she died singing it: That song to-night, Will not go from my mind; I have much to do, But to go hang my head all at one side, And sing it like poor Barbara."[592:D]

Of this song of willow, ushered in with such a powerful appeal to the heart, Dr. Percy has given us a copy in his Reliques[592:E]; it is in two parts, and proves that the poet has not only materially altered the few lines which he quotes, but has changed also the sex of its subject; for in the original in the Pepys collection, it is entitled "A Lover's Complaint, being forsaken of _his_ Love."

From the ample, we may almost say complete, enumeration, which we have now given, of the fragments selected by Shakspeare from the minstrel-poetry of his country, together with the accompanying remarks, may be formed, not only a tolerably accurate estimate of the most popular songs of this period, but a clear idea of the use to which Shakspeare has applied them.[593:A] They will be found, in fact, with scarcely any exceptions, either elucidatory of the business of the scene, illustrative of the progress of the passions, or powerfully assistant in developing the features and the shades of character.

It will appear also, from the view which has been taken of romantic literature, as comprehending all the branches noticed in this chapter, that its influence, in the age of our poet, was great and universally diffused; that he was himself, perhaps more than any other individual, if we except Spenser, addicted to its study and partial to its fictions; and that, if we take into consideration, what will hereafter be mentioned, the bases of his various plays, he may be affirmed to have availed himself of its stores often with great skill, and with as much frequency as the nature of the province which he cultivated, would admit.

FOOTNOTES:

[520:A] Nichols's Progresses, vol. i. Laneham's Letter, p. 34-36.

[520:B] Dibdin's Bibliographical Romance, p. 349, 350, and note.

[521:A] Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, p. 33, 69.

[522:A] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 283. col. 2.

[522:B] Anatomy of Melancholy, folio. 8th edit. p. 84. col. 2. p. 177. col. 2.

[522:C] See Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. i. Introduction, p. 38.; and the Abbé de la Rue's Dissertations on the Anglo-Norman poets, Archæologia, vol. xii. and xiii.

[523:A] See Toland's Life of Milton, p. 35.

[524:A] The title of this first edition, as gathered from the prologue and colophon, has been thus given by Mr. Dibdin:—

"A BOOK OF THE NOBLE HYSTORYES OF KYNGE ARTHUR, and of certeyn of his knyghtes. Whiche book was reduced in to englyshe by syr Thomas Malory knyght _and by me devyded into XXI bookes chapytred and enprynted, and fynysshed in th abbey Westmestre the last day of Juyl the yere of our lord M.CCCC._ lxxxv. FOLIO."—Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. i. p. 241.

[525:A] Ascham's Works, Bennet's edit. p. 254.

[525:B] Vide p. 268.

[525:C] Toland's Life of Milton, p. 35.

[526:A] Burnet's Specimens of English Prose Writers, vol. i. p. 287-289.

[527:A] Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 81, 82.

[528:A] Book III. chap. 176.

[529:A] Vide Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene, and Todd's edition of Spenser's Works, vol. ii. p. lxviii.

[529:B] Vide Bibliotheca Reediana, No. 2670, and Todd's Spenser, vol. ii. p. lxvii. note _k_.

[529:C] Todd's Spenser, vol. ii. p. lxvii. note.

[530:A] Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 217.

[530:B] Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 230. note.

[531:A] Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 4. et seq.

[532:A] Beloe's Anecdotes, vol. ii. p. 223.

[533:A] This short summary has been drawn up from the larger account detailed by Mr. Ellis in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 1-22.

[533:B] Ellis's Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 17.

[534:A] The common version of Pilpay was published in 1747. It should be remarked, however, that a translation from the Italian of Doni, containing many of the fables of Pilpay, and professedly rendered by Doni, from the Directorium Humanæ Vitæ, vel Parabole Antiquorum Sapientum, was given in English by Sir Thomas North, 4to. 1570, and 1601, under the title of the "Moral Philosophy of Doni." From this source, therefore, Shakspeare and his contemporaries may have been partially acquainted with this collection of tales.

[534:B] Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 424.

[535:A] Two of these tales, chap. 31. and 32. are immediately taken from _The Seven Wise Masters_, and may be found also in the Arabian Nights and Pilpay's Fables.

[536:A] "_Edric_ was the name of _Enoch_ among the Arabians, to whom they attribute many fabulous compositions. Herbelot, in V.—Lydgate's _Chorle_ and _The Bird_ is taken from the _Clericalis Disciplina_."

[536:B] MSS. Harl. 3861, and in many other libraries. It occurs in old French verse, MSS. Digb. 86. membrar. "_Le Romaune de Peres Aunfour coment il aprist et chastia son fils belement._"

[536:C] "See Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, vol. iv. p. 325. seq."

[537:A] Milton's "Il Penseroso." Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. Dissertation on the Gesta Romanorum, p. v. vi.

[537:B] Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 422.

[537:C] History of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 18. vol. iii. p. lxxxiii.

[537:D] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 229.

[537:E] According to his own assertion, in the MS. catalogue of his works in the British Museum, to which he has given the title of _Eupolemia_. See Douce's Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 423. 425.

[538:A] Ascham's Schole Master, Bennet's edit. 4to. p. 255.

[539:A] A writer, whose work has just fallen into my hands, closes a long and accurate analysis of the Italian Tales, with the following just observations:—"The larger works of fiction," he remarks, "resemble those productions of a country which are consumed within itself, while tales, like the more delicate and precious articles of traffic, which are exported from their native soil, have gladdened and delighted every land. They are the ingredients from which Shakspeare, and other enchanters of his day, have distilled those magical drops which tend so much to sweeten the lot of humanity, by occasionally withdrawing the mind, from the cold and naked realities of life, to visionary scenes and visionary bliss."—Dunlop's History of Fiction, vol. ii. p. 409.

[539:B] "In The London Chaunticleres, 1659, this work, among others," remarks Mr. Steevens, "is cried for sale by a ballad-man; The Seven Wise Men of Gotham; a _Hundred merry Tales_; Scoggin's Jests," &c.—See Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 42.

[540:A] History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 475.

[540:B] The English Courtier and the Cuntrey Gentleman, sig. H. 4. See Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 43. note.

[540:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 42. Act ii. sc. 1.

[540:D] Illustrations, vol. i. p. 166.

[541:A] Illustrations, vol. i. p. 168.

[542:A] The Roxburghe copy of the Palace of Pleasure produced the sum of 42_l._

[542:B] History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 478.

[543:A] History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 473.

[543:B] Ritson thinks that Whetstone's Heptameron was republished in 1593, under the title of "Aurelia." In the Roxburghe Library, No. 6392, this romance is termed "The Paragon of Pleasure, or the Christmas Pleasures of Queene Aurelia," 4to. 1593.

[544:A] Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 487.

[544:B] Of the Italian tales it may be useful to enumerate the best and most celebrated of those which were written during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; as, in some shape or other, most of them became familiar to English readers before the death of Shakspeare.

1. _Cento Novelle Antike._ The earliest collection of Italian novels.

2. _Boccacio il Decamerone._ Venet. Valdarfer. 1471. This, which is the first edition, was purchased at the Roxburghe sale, by the Marquis of Blandford, for 2260_l._!

3. _Novelle di Sacchetti._ Sacchetti died in 1408.

4. _Masuccio_, _Il Novellino_, nel quale si contengono _cinquanta_ Novelle.—Best edition that of 1484, folio.

5. _Sabadino_, _Porretane_, dove si narra Novelle _settanta una_.

6. _Sansovino_, _Cento Novelle_ scelte da più nobili Scrittori.

7. _Giovanni Fiorentino_, _il Pecorone_, nel quale si contengono _cinquanta_ Novelle antiche. First and best edition, 1559.

8. _Novelle del Bandello_, 3 vols. 4to. 1554.

9. _Straparola_, _le piacevoli Notte_. 2 vols. 1557.

10. _Giraldi Cinthio_, _gli Hecatomithi_, (Cento Novelle.) 4 vols.

11. _Erizzo_, _le Sei Giornate_, (trenta cinque Novelle) Edizione prim. 4to. Ven. 1567.

12. Parabosco, i Diporti, o varo Novelle, Venet. 1558.

13. _Granucci_, _la piacivol Notte, et lieto Giorno_ (undici Novelle), Venet. 1574.

14. Novelle di Ascanio de Mori. 4to. 1585.

15. Malespini, Ducento Novelle, 4to.

[544:C] Vide Gascoigne's Tale of Ferdinando Jeronimi, from the Italian riding tales of Bartello, in his "Weedes," and Turberville's "Tragical Tales, translated out of sundrie Italians," 1587.

[545:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 221.

[545:B] Vide Aikin's General Biography, vol. vi. article Lobeira.

[545:C] "Amadis of Gaul," remarks Mr. Southey, "is among prose, what Orlando Furioso is among metrical Romances, not the oldest of its kind, but the best."—Preliminary Essay to his Translation, 4 vols. 1803.

"This" (Amadis de Gaul), says Mr. Burnet, "is perhaps one of the most beautiful books that ever was written."—Specimens of English Prose Writers, vol. i. p. 289. note.

[546:A] Jervis's Translation of Don Quixote, vol. i. chap. 6.

[546:B] Sir Philip Sidney's Works, fol. edit. of 1629. p. 551.

[546:C] This version, which was reprinted in 1618, is by Anthony Munday.

[547:A] Jervis's Don Quixote, vol. i. chap.

[548:A] The first edition of Palmerin D'Oliva, translated by Anthony Munday, was published by Charlewood in 1588. Vide Bibliotheca Reediana, No. 2665; and his version of Palmendos, was printed by J. C. for Simon Watersonne (1589), 4to. bl. l.

[548:B] In a letter from Mr. Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, dated September 1599, it is said, that "the Arcadia is now printed in Scotland, according to the best edition, which will make them good cheap, but is very hurtful to Ponsonbie, who held them at a very high rate: he must sell as others doe, or they will lye upon his hands."—Vide Zouch's Memoirs of Sir Philip Sidney, p. 361.

[549:A] A second edition of Underdowne's Heliodorus was printed in 1587, and a third in 1605.

[549:B] A complete edition of Sannazaro's Arcadia appeared in 1505.

[550:A] Task, book iv.

[551:A] Among the bulky romances of this prolific lady, who died June 2. 1701, aged 94, it may be worth while to enumerate a few, merely as instances of her uncommon fecundity, viz. Artamene, ou le Grand Cyrus, 10 vols. 8vo.; Clelie, 10 vols. 8vo.; Almahide ou l'Esclave Reine, 8 vols. 8vo.; Ibrahim ou l'Illustre Bassa, 4 vols. 8vo.

[551:B] Tom of All Trades, or the plaine Pathway to Preferment, &c. By Thomas Powell. Lond. 1631. 4to. pp. 47, 48.—Vide Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 425, and 426.

[551:C] Fuller's Worthies, 1662, part ii. p. 75.

[551:D] See his Verses on Saccharissa, the Lady Dorothy Sidney.

[552:A] In his Essay on Poetry.

[552:B] In his Description of Arcadia in Greece, where he tells us that the Arcadia, "besides its excellent language, rare contrivances, and delectable stories, hath in it all the strains of poesy, comprehendeth the universal art of speaking, and to them who can discern and will observe, affordeth notable rules for demeanor both private and public."

[552:C] Park's edition of Royal and Noble Authors, vol. ii. p. 221. An excellent defence of the Arcadia against the decision of Lord Orford, who terms it "a tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance," may be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1767, p. 57. See also Sir Egerton Brydges's edition of Phillip's Theatrum Poetarum, p. 134, et seq., and Zouch's Memoirs of Sidney, p. 155.

[552:D] Aikin's Annual Review, vol. iv. p. 547.

[553:A] Pennant's London, p. 103.

[554:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xvi. p. 84., and Malone's note.

[554:B] Ibid. vol. xii. p. 213. Act v. sc. 1.

[554:C] Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 472.

[556:A] Nichols's Progresses, vol. i. p. 56., the year 1573.

[556:B] See Comedy of Errors, act iv. sc. 2. Henry IV. Part I. act ii. sc. 3. Romeo and Juliet, act iii. sc. 1. Love's Labour's Lost, act v. sc. 2. Taming of the Shrew, act i. sc. 1.

[556:C] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. viii. pp. 124, 125. Act iii. sc. 4.

[557:A] Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. pp. liv. 285. 295.

[558:A] _Wrest_—the key with which the harp is tuned.

[559:A] Nichols's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i.

[559:B] Kind Harts Dreame, sig. B. 2.

[560:A] Arte of English Poesie, reprint, p. 69.

[560:B] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v. p. 273. col. 1. Book iv. sat. 1.

[560:C] Malone's Supplement to Shakspeare's Plays, vol. i. p. 521.

[561:A] See Ritson's Ancient Engleish Metrical Romanceës, vol. i. Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, p. ccxxiv.

[562:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xii. p. 144. Act iii. sc. 2.

[562:B] Douce's Illustrations, vol. i. p. 465.

[562:C] British Bibliographer, No. II. p. 125.

[563:A] British Bibliographer, No. II. p. 126, 127.

[563:B] _Positions concerning the training up of Children_, London, 1581 and 1587. 4to. chap. xxvi.

[564:A] The original, the _Histoire de Huon de Bordeaux_, was ushered into the world at the Fair of Troyes in Champagne, in the first century of printing.

[564:B] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. vi. p. 51. Act ii. sc. 1.

[564:C] Huon of Bourdeaux, chap. xvii.

[564:D] Chap. xlvi. edit. of 1601. Lord Berners's translation underwent three editions. The original has had the honour of giving birth to the Chef d'Oeuvre of _Wieland_—"the child of his genius," observe the Monthly Reviewers, "in moments of its purest converse with the all-beauteous forms of ideal excellence;—the darling of his fancy, born in the sweetest of her excursions amid the ambrosial bowers of fairy-land;—the OBERON,—an epic poem, popular beyond example, yet as dear to the philosopher as to the multitude; which, during the author's lifetime, has attained in its native country all the honours of a sacred book; and to the evolution of the beauties of which, a Professor in a distinguished university has repeatedly consecrated an entire course of patronized lectures." New Series, vol. xxiii. p. 576.

The beauties of Oberon are now accessible to the mere English scholar, through the medium of Mr. Sotheby's version, which, though strictly faithful to the German, has the spirit and harmony of an original poem.

[565:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. xiii. p. 249. Act ii. sc. 3.

[565:B] Chalmers's English Poets, vol. iv. p. 189. col. 1.—Polyolbion,