with his ponderous and ludicrous affectation of wisdom, contrasted with the mischievous Moth, is a fruitful source of merriment.

The name of Biron is spelled Berowne in the two quartos of the play and in the First Folio. The accent falls on the second syllable of that name, and that syllable is pronounced "roon." The change from Berowne to Biron was made in the second folio, 1632,-nobody knows by whom. The name Boyét is accented on the second syllable. Moth is a synonyme of Mote. The last syllable of Rosaline is spoken correctly when spoken as rhyming with wine, vine, sign, etc. Rosaline is a dark beauty, and should be so "made-up" by the actress who represents her. The reader of the original play, First Folio text, will observe that in Act IV., sc. 3, lines 296-317 are, substantially, repeated in lines 318-354; and that in Act V., sc. 2, lines 827-832 are, substantially, made to recur in lines 833-879. Those discrepancies are believed to have happened, by inadvertence, when the play was "altered" by the author from its first form. It is one of the many obstacles which usefully obstruct the pernicious industry of those foolish persons who assert the existence of secret cipher-writing in the First Folio text of Shakespeare's plays, for cipherwriting is vitally dependent on a perfectly accurate text.

THE TITLE AND THE TEXT.

The title of the play as printed in the first quarto is "Loues Labors Lost"; in the First Folio it is "Loues Labour's Lost." Some later editions give it as "Love's Labour Lost"; others prefer “Love's Labour's Lost." Knight remarks that "The modes in which the genitive case and the contractions of is after a substantive are printed in the titles of other plays in the First Folio and in the earlier copies lead us to believe that the author intended to call his play 'Love's Labour Is Lost.'

The text of the First Folio, following, substantially, that of the first quarto, has been, in modern editions, judiciously rectified of obvious errors and typographical mistakes. The accumulated researches and conscientious labors of many commentators show that the actual, literal, original text of Shakespeare's plays does not exist in perfect condition, as finally sanctioned by him. Heminge and Condell, the compilers and presumptive editors of the Folio, in their Preface to that volume say: "We have scarce received from him [Shakespeare] a blot in his papers"; but their statement should not be accepted in its literal They may have possessed, in a much worn condition, some of Shakespeare's manuscripts or some copies of them, and they may have used as

sense.

"copy" some of the prompt-books of Shakespeare's plays, from the theatre,-books which survived the destructive fire at the Globe, in 1613,-together with several of the early quartos. No one knows what became of Shakespeare's "papers," or, indeed, of the papers of almost all the authors who were his contemporaries. Some of the early quartos exist, but no prompt-book has been found, nor any piece of manuscript. It is likely that the printer's "copy" which was used in setting up the Folio was heedlessly dispersed and destroyed in the printing-office, after the completion of that work. In those days no care was taken as to matters of this sort.

EARLY PRESENTATIONS.-BRITISH STAGE.

When Shakespeare first went to London, 1585-'86, there were two playhouses in the city,-"The Theatre," so called, and "The Curtain." They were situated near each other, in the region called Shoreditch. The former, built in 1576, by James Burbage, and managed by him, was the first public theatre ever established in London. A few private theatres existed. When James Burbage died, 1597, his property, “The Theatre," was inherited by his sons Richard and Cuthbert, who demolished the building and with the materials of which it had been composed built the

Globe Theatre, in Southwark, on the south side of the Thames. Shakespeare had obtained employment at "The Theatre," under the management of James Burbage, and there his career as an actor and a dramatist began, and after the death of that manager he continued to be associated with his sons. Most of his plays were produced at the Globe. The first performance of "Love's Labor's Lost,"-meaning the performance of it in its first form, before it was "newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespeare," for publication, in 1598,-seems to have been given at "The Theatre." Nothing is recorded about the acting of it.

"Love's Labor's Lost" was acted, at Whitehall, London, before Queen Elizabeth and her Court, in the Christmas season of 1597. It probably had been current and was known, because it was not customary to present an untried play before the Sovereign. No record has been found signifying whether it obtained popularity or not. Halliwell-Phillipps and Sidney Lee certify that it did, but without citing authority. Its pertinence as a piquant satire on local, contemporary persons, fashions, and foibles might have commended it to public favor. The public, while it has generally disliked satire and satirists, has always, for a time, followed and favored them. The droll scene of the discovery that all the self-dedicated

male celibates are in love, and the subsequent sprightly colloquies of raillery in which those Spanish wooers are chaffed by the merry maidens of France, would have pleased any audience at any time, and doubtless those merits were appreciated by the gallants of Queen Elizabeth's Court. The play seems soon to have vanished from the stage, and not at any later time to have been much read. The second quarto of it did not follow the first until after an interval of thirty-three years (1631). It was, however, included in the Folio of 1623, with all its textual errors,-which remained uncorrected till the day of Nicholas Rowe, whose edition of Shakespeare's Plays, in which many blunders were rectified, appeared in 1709.

AN OLD ALTERATION.

Genest, in his instructive account of the English Stage, devotes a chapter to "Plays Printed but Not Acted, Between 1660 and 1830," and therein makes the following note on an old alteration of this comedy:

"STUDENTS, 1762. This is professedly 'Love's Labor's Lost,' adapted to the stage, but it does not seem to have been ever acted. The maker of the alteration, as is usual in these cases, has left out too much of Shakespeare and