word to Pistol the pander and the most cowardly of cowards, such poor soldiers, too, that they have ten thousand slain while their enemies count only twenty-five. The poet had before his eyes Holinshed, who mentions the twenty-five dead, and adds: "But other writers of greater credit affirme that there were slaine above five or six hundred persons." The dramatist adopts the first figure, an impossible one, no doubt, but far more interesting in the eyes of his audience. He insists on the edifying character of the war undertaken against France; it is not through greed of conquest that Henry V. crosses the sea, but from love of justice; it is not his fault if he has a right to the crown of France; it would be a shirking of duty not to maintain that right. The king inquires with insistence of the Archbishop of Canterbury whether he can honestly, religiously, and genealogically wage that war :

And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,

That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading.
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

How you awake our sleeping sword of war;

We charge you in the name of God, take heed.

May I, with right and conscience, make this claim?

Without the slightest doubt, replies the archbishop, and he reassures the tender conscience of the future conqueror by supplying proofs of his right as questionable as they are abundant.2 The usurper's son who, having no right to the English crown, could scarcely have any to the French one, sets forth, therefore, with a mind at peace; his campaign will be both profitable and moral; he will display his humility and boast of it; if he boasts also of other things, the fault is not his :

Ed. of 1586-7 (the one followed by Shakespeare), vol. iii. p. 555.
"Henry V.," i. 2.

Yet forgive me God

That I do brag thus-this your air of France
Hath blown that vice in me.

He gives the victory to God, and like Elizabeth on the return of Drake, declares that the triumph, completed by a massacre of prisoners, has been obtained "auxilio divino":

And be it death proclaimed through our host

To boast of this, or take that praise from God
Which is His only.

Elizabeth having, it is said, desired to see Falstaff in love, Shakespeare wrote "The Merry Wives of Windsor." 2 It is, at once, a very pretty comedy of manners and a farcical play recalling Christmas pantomimes, or the story of "Monsieur Jourdain" when he was made "Mamamouchi." Whiffs of pure country air traverse the stage. Life in a small town, the manners of provincial folk, the vicinity of the castle, the proximity of the court, the stir caused by the passing of coaches, and the news of the arrival of a German duke, all this is rendered to perfection. Spices and English mustard, too strong for Southern taste, are not spared: abuse of caricatures and over-abundance of

"De froit sang, toute celle noblesse française fut illec décapitée et inhumainement détrenchie.”—Jean de Waurin, an eye witness, "Chroniques " (Rolls), ii. p. 217.

2 Acted about 1598-9; 1st ed., giving only a rough sketch of the play, perhaps a text hastily drawn up by Shakespeare to satisfy Elizabeth's orders (a tradition related by Dennis, who wrote an adaptation of Shakespeare's play 1702, and by Rowe, 1709): "A most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedie of Syr Iohn Falstaffe, and the merrie Wives of Windsor. Entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humours of Syr Hugh the Welch Knight, Iustice Shallow, and his wise cousin, M. Slender. With the swaggering vaine of Auncient Pistoll and Corporal Nym. By William Shakespeare. As it hath bene divers times Acted ... Both before her Maiestie and elsewhere," 1602; other separate ed. 1619, 1630, Ist complete text in the 1623 folio. Some of the incidents have been traced to English translations of various Italian novels (one by Straparola).

the grotesque, boobies surpassing "silly Gille" in silliness, stutterers using one word for another: Slender does it because he is a simpleton, Doctor Caius because he is French, parson Evans because he is Welsh, there is no reason to stop. But Falstaff is at his very best, more needy, more unscrupulous, fatter, untidier, and more comical, too, as prompt at repartee, as inexhaustible and of a good humour as communicative as ever.

The romantic dramas of this period are full of surprising adventures, of jokes, drolleries, tragic accidents, but all, without exception, ending happily for Shakespeare's favourites. Several of these plays bear marks of hasty composition; they are incoherent, badly put together, improbable, and, take up again old themes which had already served. In "Much Ado about Nothing," a new Friar Lawrence recommends to a new Juliet the old stratagem of a feigned death.2 In "Twelfth Night," 3

I

Performed about 1599; 1st and only separate edition. "Much adoe about Nothing. Written by William Shakespeare," 1000. Sources: partly a lost old play, "Historie of Ariodante and Ge evora,' acted at court 1582-3, itself founded on Ariosto, Orlando," v. (maidservant personating her mistress in a night scene on a balcony, to make believe that the latter has a lover; verse translation of this episode by P. Beverley, n. d., lic. 1565), and partly (story of the supposed death) the beautiful and touching novel xxii. in Bandello, French text in Belleforest. The plot of the novel is closely followed on several points, for example in the credulous hero's sudden change from love to hatred: "I fervente sincero amore che a Fenicia portava non solamente s'affredo, ma in crudel odio si converse." But there are some important alterations; the church scene is far more tragic in the story than in the play, the guilt of the traitor being discovered through his remorse, instead of by the exertions of the usual ridiculous constables. According to Holleck-Weithmann, Shakespeare may have followed also another lost English play, founded on the Italian novel, but with a comical element in it, hence the parts of Beatrice and Benedick, "Zur Quellenfrage von . . . 'Much Ado,'" Heidelberg, 1902. The Ariodante story supplied later the plot of the "Partiall Law," ab. 1615-30, ed. Dobell, 1908.

2 No such friar in Bandello, nor, much less, in Ariosto, who causes his heroine to be justified by her champion in single combat. Shakespeare borrows the idea of his friar from his own play of "Romeo."

3 Performed about 1601, acted at the Middle Temple, February 2, 160[2]; one of the audience, the barrister Manningham (“Diary,” Camden Society,

the "Comedy of Errors" begins over again; the comic element is of the broadest, obtained by means of sheer mystifications which the personages inflict upon one another, and of simpletons, fools and gulls, of clowns, stutterers, and ridiculous constables: so

many wellknown types. With all its "errors," its young girl disguised as a eunuch, who is taken for a page, confounded with her brother, whom a lady wants to marry, who finally marries the duke, with all its romantic adventures, "Twelfth Night" is chiefly filled-with filling: jokes played on the simple-minded steward Malvolio, fooleries of ridiculous knights, clowneries of the professional fool; 1868, p. 18), has left a description of it: “At our feast, wee had a play called 'Twelve Night, or What you Will,' much like the Commedy of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni." There were two such Italian plays, one by Gonzaga and one by Secchi, but, as J. Hunter has shown, Manningham must have rather meant Gl' Ingannati' ("New Illustrations of . . . Shakespeare," London, 1845. i. p. 396).

"Gl' Ingannati," written by the members of the Sienese Academy of the "Intronati" (Boobies), had been acted as the title records "ne i giuochi del Carnevale in Siena, l'anno 1531." It is a comedy in prose, with a spirited, talkative, unscrupulous nurse, a clever play, but full of the grossest indecencies; its name was given it "perche," says the Prologue, "poche persone intervengono nella favola che nel compimento non si trovano ingannati" (fooled). It had great success, and was translated into French by Ch. Estienne as "La Comédie du Sacrifice," 1543, so called from the title of the Induction, and later as 66 Les Abusez, comédie faite à la mode des anciens comiques," 1548; long and curious dedication to the Dauphin, in which the play is ranked even above "Pathelin avecq' sa Guillemette et son Drapier." Shakespeare probably knew this translation, as mention is made in the French Prologue of the "Nuict des Roys," and, in a note, of the "Jour des Roys," and he is more likely to have known that this was the equivalent of Twelfth Night, the title he chose for his play, than to have understood the purport of the corresponding Italian words: "Notte di Beffana" (which night is simply mentioned as one when another play by the same Intronati" had given offence to ladies). The name of Malvolio was probably derived from that of Agnol Malevolti, one of the personages in the Induction.

The same story is in Bandello; it was translated into French by Belleforest, and adapted from the French, with many changes, by Riche in his "Farewell to militarie Profession," 1581. Riche makes it begin with a shipwreck which was not in his models, and which Shakespeare borrowed from him.

the whole as different as possible from French taste, but highly relished, for its merriment, by London audiences 1; the play had, precisely on account of those practical jokes and caricatures, a success which endures still.

2

In "All's well that ends well," the character of the clown is a postiche one, and might be inserted, to say about the same things, into any other play; the plot is a series of improbabilities; the hero is chastised and put to shame at the beginning, when he is in the right, and rewarded at the end, when he has proved himself a libertine, liar, and calumniator. But the surprises offered by the old tale of Gilette de Narbonne, the revenge taken on her tyrant by a Griselda as virtuous, but less resigned than the other; the rascalities, boastings, cowardice, and obscenities of the wretched Parolles (a personage added by Shakespeare to the original plot, and a variety of the scoundrel type which had already met with favour on the stage), were so many elements of success.

In all the romantic dramas of that period, beginning with "Twelfth Night," woman reigns, plays the principal part, ties and unties the intrigue. By her wit, her wisdom, her virtues, her ingenuity, she dazzles all the representatives of the masculine sex: fools, simpletons, heroes, philosophers,

'Nothing better shows this difference than the English judgments on that comedy. Manningham notes in his diary, as particularly memorable, the practical jokes played on Malvolio, "making him believe they tooke him to be mad." This play, Halliwell-Phillipps does not hesitate to write, is “the perfection of English comedy," and "the most fascinating drama in the language" ("Outlines,” vol. i. p. 200), which is certainly going very far.

* Performed about 1601-2 (Furnivall), 1595 (Lee); 1st ed. the folio of 1623; source: the old story of Gilette de Narbonne, a French fabliau of which Boccaccio made the 9th novel of his third day, the which novel was translated into English by Paynter, "Palace of Pleasure," 1566-7. If this play is the one that Meres calls "Love Labours Wonne," it must have been acted, perhaps under a different form, before 1598. Note that if Helena repeats often in the play that "all's well that ends well," she says too:

Will you be mine now you are doubly won? (v. 4).