speare, however, carefully differentiates the pedantry of the New Learning, as exemplified by Holofernes; the fantastic extravagance of the Newer Learning, as exemplified by Armado; and the refined charm, the fascination, as well as the dangers, of the poetic diction of the age, as exemplified by Biron,-Shakespeare's own mouthpiece when he forswears his

"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical."

Shakespeare may well be identified with his favorite character, and Biron's plea may well be taken as the poet's

own:

"Yet have I a trick

Of the old rage;-bear with me, I am sick;
I'll leave it by degrees."

It is noteworthy that even "the fanatical phantasm" Armado was drawn from the life; he was a well-known character of the time, and Thomas Churchyard commemorated his death in a poem entitled "The Phantasticall Monarchoes Epitaph."

Certain critics have discovered in Holofernes a caricature of Florio, but there is no reason for supposing that Shakespeare wished to hold up to ridicule a distinguished scholar, to whose work he was indebted. The name Holofernes was possibly derived from Rabelais; Tubal Holophernes taught Gargantua his A B C: in his general characteristics he resembles Rombus, the Schoolmaster, in Sydney's The Lady of the May.

The close of the play suggests that Shakespeare had been reading Chaucer's Parlement of Foules. Perhaps even the song at the end may justly remind one of the fact that in Chaucer's poem also the birds sing their song as they disperse, though Shakespeare's song, as far as its form is concerned, is a medieval "debate." "The debate and strife between summer and winter" was imprinted by Laurence Andrews. "The pageant of the Nine Worthies" was a

frequent subject of exhibition by the "base mechanicals" of country towns. "Divers play Alexander in the villages," observes Williams in his Discourse of Warre, 1590, "but few or none in the field."

DURATION OF ACTION

The action of the play lasts probably two days. Acts I and II cover the first day, Acts III and IV the second (cp. P. A. Daniel's "Time Analysis of Shakespeare's Plays," New Shakespeare Society, 1877-9).

INTRODUCTION

By HENRY NORMAN HUDSON, A.M.

Love's Labor's Lost was first published in a quarto pamphlet of thirty-eight leaves in 1598, the title-page reading as follows: "A pleasant-conceited Comedy called Love's Labor's Lost: As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas: Newly corrected and augmented: By W. Shakespeare. Imprinted at London by W. W. for Cuthbert Burby: 1598." There was no other known edition of the play till the folio of 1623, where it is the seventh in the division of Comedies. From the repetition of certain errors of the press, it is quite probable that the second copy was reprinted from the first; while, on the other hand, there are certain differences that look as if another authority had in some points been consulted: the editors of the folio probably taking the quarto as their standard, and occasionally having recourse to a play-house manuscript. In the quarto neither scenes nor acts are distinguished; in the folio only the latter; and even here, as may easily be seen, the division into acts is very unequal and inartificial: yet no modern edition has ventured upon any change in this respect.

In the Accounts of the Revels at Court, under the date of January, 1605, occurs the following entry: "Between New-years Day and Twelfth Day, a play of Love's Labor's Lost." As success on the public stage was generally at that time the main reason of a play's being selected for performance at court, we may infer that this play continued popular after many better ones had been written. The play was also entered in the Stationers' Books, January 22, 1607, the right of it being passed over from Burby

to Ling, probably because the latter contemplated a new edition. The design, however, if any such there were, seems to have been given up, as no impression of that date has come down to us.

Love's Labor's Lost is mentioned in the list of Shakespeare's plays given by Francis Meres in 1598. The same year one Robert Tofte put forth a poem entitled "Alba, the Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover," wherein the play is thus referred to:

"Love's Labor Lost! I once did see a play

Ycleped so, so called to my paine,

Which I to heare to my small joy did stay,
Giving attendance on my froward dame:
My misgiving mind presaging to me ill,
Yet was I drawn to see it 'gainst my will.

This play no play, but plague, was unto me,
For there I lost the love I liked most;
And what to others seemde a jest to be,
I that in earnest found unto my cost.
To every one, save me, 'twas comicall,
While tragic-like to me it did befall.

Each actor plaid in cunning wise his part,

But chiefly those entrapt in Cupid's snare;
Yet all was fained, 'twas not from the hart,

They seeme to grieve, but yet they felt no care;
"Twas I that grief indeed did beare in brest;
The others did but make a shew in jest."

These are all the contemporary notices of the play that have reached us. That this play was among the earliest scarce admits of question, from the character of the thing itself. Though it be apparently designed as a satire upon book-men in general, yet it displays in almost every part, and a good deal more than any other of the Poet's dramas, just such a preponderance of book-knowledge as were to be looked for in one fresh from school. Moreover, after the first writing a considerable time must naturally have passed before it was "newly corrected and augmented," as stated in the title-page of the quarto. There

are conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love, and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty kings with a sort of seriocomic interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the noble's or prince's court contained the only theater of a domain or principality."

We have already remarked upon the higher characters of this play as appearing to have been drawn rather from books than from life. They have little of the close compacting of living power, which so marks the Poet's delineations generally, and which naturally results in dis

tinctive features and characteristic traits. We can scarce distinguish and remember them as individuals: they run together, as it were, in our thoughts, as being rather personified whimsicalities and affectations than affected and whimsical persons; are not fully cut out and rounded into severalty; but appear somehow too much like the same thing under several variations: in short, they affect us more as ingeniously-wrought figures and images of men and women, than as real men and women themselves; though we must confess that something of a determinate and specific individuality is given to Biron and Rosaline, so that we take up a more distinct impression and carry away a much clearer remembrance of them. Thus they differ from Shakespeare's other representations very much as a portrait taken from the life differs from a mere copy; which a practised eye will readily distinguish, without being told the facts. So that the play thus far almost reverses the Poet's general rule; the characters existing rather for the sake of the plot, than the plot for the sake of the characters; these being indeed mainly used as a sort of ground for the projecting and carrying on of a dramatic device. Thus the thing, at least in this part, is not so much a play as a show. Hence, perhaps, the comparatively little interest that readers generally take in it: for a mere story or show is interesting only while it is new; whereas a work of