Chapter M: Goursey (5)

_Love's Labour's Lost_ has the air of a young writer's effort to be original, and to dazzle by unflagging cleverness; whence at times a tedium of wit. Shakespeare seems to have resolved to owe his plot to no man, with the result that it is somewhat too much a prepared vehicle for the exposition of an idea. The little cloister of culture, where education is to be a fine art removed from nature, is invaded by woman, and with the entrance of woman enters nature, which has more of wisdom to impart than all the academies or schools. The denouement must be as original as the general design; death arrives in the midst of mirth; there shall be no weddings in the fifth act; love's labour is lost; or, if not lost, its reward is deferred a twelvemonth; the scholars turned lovers are still infected with something of unreality and affectation, exhaling their sentiment in Petrarchan ingenuities, and one of them, Biron, with his mocking humour, takes life too proudly and wilfully; the mad girls of France are at heart serious, and they will test their lovers by a year of genuine probation, then, and not till then, the marriage bells shall ring. The Spanish fantastico, Don Adriano, towering in stature, though not in wit, above his minion page, and the learned schoolmaster Holofernes, much admired of his companion pedant, the curate, resemble stock figures of Italian comedy. Affectations of language--the decorated dialect of fashion, the pedantries of scholarship not too profound--are also departures from nature, and must submit to the laughter of good sense. Nature may, indeed, be mended by art, for nature in its first rudiments, as seen in honest Costard and goodman Dull, is not wholly a thing of beauty and of joy, but the art which mends nature must be, as the wise Polixenes afterwards declared, an art that nature makes. _Love's Labour's Lost_--the _Precieuses ridicules_ of Shakespeare, but with men for the presenters of preciosity and women as the exponents of good sense--is a comedy of dialogue rather than of incident. The stage is kept alive with much tossing about of brains in wit-encounters, with maskings and disguisings, and with that marred show of the Nine Worthies, a heroi-comic forerunner of the tedious, brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, in which the hard-handed men of Athens appear before Duke Theseus.

_The Comedy of Errors_ is a comedy of incident. Here Shakespeare accepts his plot, his chief characters, and their adventures from Plautus. But the adventures are complicated by his addition of the two Dromios, which more than doubles the possibilities of ludicrous confusion. The fun cannot be too fast or furious; the unexpected always happens; the discovery is staved off to the fifth act with infinite skill; the nearer each brother approaches his fellow, the more impossible it becomes for them to meet. Nowhere has Shakespeare ravelled and unravelled the threads of an intrigue with such incomparable dexterity as in this early play. But Shakespeare's imagination could not rest satisfied with a farce, however laughable or however skilfully conducted. His vein of lyrical poetry breaks forth in the love-episode, for the sake of which he created Luciana. And he has set the entire comic business in a romantic and pathetic framework--the story of the afflicted old Ægeon and the Ephesian abbess, in whom he discovers his lost wife. The play opens with grief and the doom of death impending over an innocent life; it closes, after a cry of true pathos, with reconciling joy, and the interval is filled with laughter that peals to a climax. This is not the manner of Plautus; but laughter with Shakespeare would seem hard and barren--the crackling of thorns under a pot,--if it were wholly isolated from grief and love and joy.

Shakespeare did not again attempt the comedy of mere incident. In _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_ he struck into his favourite tune--the comedy of romance. Among its sources is the Spanish pastoral of Jorge de Montemayor, but the scene is Italy, the woman-country wooed in this play before it was wed by the imagination of its poet in _The Merchant of Venice_. The theme is love, its fidelity and its infidelity--love with its incalculable surprises, love with its unalterable constancy. The characters are lightly yet gracefully outlined; there are the grave and reverend seniors; the contrasted pairs of lovers; the waiting-woman; and the clownish men-servants, to whom the business of laughter is intrusted. The persons are somewhat mechanically set over, one against the other,--Valentine the loyal against the fickle Proteus, Silvia the sprightly against the tender Julia, Speed the professional wit against Launce the unconscious humourist, whose filial affections and amorous desires for the milkmaid, who has more qualities than a water-spaniel, are only secondary to his devotion to the cur Crab, a dog, indeed, to whose share some canine errors fall, but endowed with more qualities than a wilderness of milkmaids. The disguising of Julia in masculine attire anticipates many such disguisings in later comedies. It is no frolic masking like that of the girls of France, but part of the serious-playful romance of a woman's brave and gentle heart. The blank verse is sweet and regular rather than swift or powerful in dramatic movement; rhyme is less frequently used than heretofore; the prose of Launce's soliloquies has a homely directness and vigour.

In _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ comedy becomes lyrical. Character is subordinate to incident, but incident here has a dreamlike quality, which unites itself with the poetry of a fantastic world. It is a comedy of errors,--the errors of a night,--but the confusions are not external and material as in the adventures of the brothers Antipholus; they are inward and psychological; the bewilderment is one of passions, not of persons. The triumph of the poet lies before all else in the power which he shows of harmonizing materials seemingly the most incongruous. The magnificence of Theseus and his Amazonian bride,--power in the full tide of prosperity,--the crossed and wayward loves of youths and maidens, the minikin-mighty strifes of fairy-land and its roguish sports, the artistic pains and illustrious ineptitude of the crew of hempen homespuns--all these are wrought together in a dream which we accept with a tranquil and delighted wonder.

The power of the human will is, as it were, suspended in this play of elfland magic. Before _The Merchant of Venice_ was written, Shakespeare's feeling for dramatic action and passion had been deepened and invigorated by his progress in dealing with English history and probably by the creation of a great tragedy, _Romeo and Juliet_, the tragedy of love and youth and death. _The Merchant of Venice_ is Shakespeare's first, and perhaps his most remarkable, example of the comedy of character. Here we pass from the realm of caprice to that of human volition. A passive object, the merchant, is placed in the midst as a prize to be contended for by forces naturally adverse--the passion of concentrated revenge and the spirit of charity, armed with the brightest weapons of intelligence. The masculine and the feminine powers enter upon a single combat, and victory remains with mercy and love, the "Ewigweibliche." No such figure as that of Shylock had previously appeared upon the English stage. In his person Shakespeare not only lays bare the nerve and muscle of a wrestler in the game of life, but studies the darker and sadder features of a race. He is no incredible monster like the Barabas of Marlowe, but a man, whose origins and environment have made him what he is; whom, therefore, we understand and whom in his very pitilessness we are constrained to pity. Nor had the English stage hitherto seen any woman so complex in her various powers of intellect, emotions, will, so single in their harmonious coöperance, as the noble lady of Belmont. The same energy of resolve which makes her the armed champion of Antonio had lain hidden in her loyalty to the arduous conditions of her father's will. The dramatist in this play postulates our acceptance of certain external improbabilities; these concessions made, all things are wrought out in accordance with the laws of life. The spirit of tragedy here is neighbour to the comic spirit, yet observes the finest decorum. Two actions--that of the caskets and that of the pound of flesh--work into each other without a jar and become one. The characters are grouped with perfect freedom and with an exact, though unobtruded, ordonnance, for Shakespeare's art had now learnt to conceal itself. The fifth act of the play is a kind of lovely epilogue, where, after the strained anxiety of the trial-scene, joy is preserved from its own excess by the instinct of self-mockery.

It may be that the humbler humorous scenes of the English historical plays on which he was now engaged drew down the imagination of Shakespeare as a writer of comedy from romance to realism, and made him content to work for a little while in rougher material. _The Taming of the Shrew_, whatever its chronological place may be, is only a spirited adaptation of an older play, and is chiefly interesting as an example of Shakespeare's art in transposing, developing, enriching with detail, the ideas of a predecessor, and as a demonstration of the temper with which he could kindle a predecessor's _allegro_ into an _allegro con brio_. With old Sly's son of Burton heath, the village sot, he was upon his native soil, and he could heighten his original with low-life reminiscences of Warwickshire taverns. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ is a direct offshoot from the greater comedy of Falstaff which is incorporated in the historical plays. The tradition that it was hastily written by command of Queen Elizabeth, who desired to see "Falstaff in love," relieves us from the necessity of supposing that Shakespeare voluntarily degraded his indomitable jester into the flouting-stock of a bourgeois fabliau, "Well I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; ... ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me; use me as you will." That Shakespeare should throw himself with spirit into his task was a crime for which he earns our forgiveness by its successful issue. The merry wives are honest buxom dames, without a grain of real malice in them. The French physician and the Welsh parson murder the Queen's English with as happy a valiance as that of Fluellen and the Princess Katharine in _King Henry V._ Slender is the most delightfully incompetent of wooers--a Romeo _manqué_ of Windsor, whose amorous passion waits upon his cousin Shallow's promptings and whose wit is mislaid with his Book of Riddles. The buck-basket and the old woman of Brentford are very palpable jokes, which the crassest gentleman-usher or emptiest-headed maid-in-waiting could not miss. There are the proper topical allusions to call forth an interchange of smiling mutual intelligence. Altogether _The Merry Wives_ was a comedy delicate enough for a queen. For such a play the proper medium was prose; verse is reserved for the slender love-episode of Fenton and Anne Page, and for the scenes connected with the fairy disguising.

As the pressure of the English historical plays lightened, Shakespeare could turn again to Italy and to romance. In _The Merry Wives_ he had grouped his characters in a circle around a gross old self-lover, whom it was their business to delude and mock. Perhaps the same device could be refined upon and turned to romantic uses. Falstaff had professed love and had been convicted of sordid self-interest. What it a pair of high-spirited persons, touched with the egotism of self-sufficingness and wilful wit, and professing a superiority to the toys of lovers, could be ensnared into that deep mutual passion which was in truth written for them in the book of fate? But there must be something deeper here than a jest; such brave union of hearts must be cemented by a common effort to confront the sorrow of the world. At this time, perhaps, Shakespeare was concerned with his revision of _Love's Labour's Lost_. Might not Biron and Rosaline be reincarnated, and in place of that crude test of a twelve months' visitation of the speechless sick decreed for Biron, might not an immediate test of valiant manhood be discovered, and the newer Biron come to the happy ending of love's labour's won? In Beatrice and Benedick a brilliant centre was found for the play of _Much Ado about Nothing_. The high spirits, which gave life to _The Shrew_ and _The Merry Wives_ are here refined by gallantry and beauty, wit and grace, and by the presence of injury and pain. The other _dramatis personæ_ gather around the hero and heroine to beguile them into love; the passion begotten of a jest is brought forth in sorrow, and sorrow at the close is converted into joy. With so much of quick and lambent dialogue as Beatrice and Benedick have to utter, we want no outstanding jester here; his speech would be an impertinence; but we need a counterfoil to wit in the unconscious humour of a Dogberry and a Verges; and these worthies assist effectively in the action of the play; Fate, the sphinx, assumes an ironic smile; the dulness of a blundering watchman unties a knot which has foiled the dexterity of the wise.

The comedy which followed _Much Ado about Nothing_ is one of sunshine and dappled shadow under the greenwood of Arden. Landseer's companion pictures, "War" and "Peace," find a parallel in Shakespeare's _King Henry V._ and _As You Like It_, which probably belong to the same year; and the scene of both the history and the comedy is laid in France. He would have left untouched a favourite theme of the Renaissance if he had wholly neglected the pastoral; but Shakespeare felt that the conventional pastoral alone, with its cruel shepherdess and sighing swain, however suitable for a piece of poetical tapestry, could not furnish the life and body and movement demanded by the stage. His Silvius and Phœbe, Arcadians of the mode and rhetoricians in verse, are presented with a certain reserved irony; the veritable rustics are William, whose pretty wit chiefly manifests itself in monosyllabic answers, and the wench Audrey, whom the gods did not make poetical. Touchstone, a clown among courtiers, is a courtier among clowns. The other persons of the comedy are of the high-bred class, in the midst of which the dramatist's imagination moved with most pleasure, but here they are transported into a delightful open-air environment, which breathes a freshness and sweetness into their spirits. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and especially of such adversity as that of Rosalind, which enables her, in her disguise as Ganymede, to assist in her own wooing and to play the part of a benevolent goddess of destiny for several pairs of lovers including Orlando and herself. We learn from a play of Ben Jonson's of the same date that melancholy was a genteel fashion of the day. Shakespeare, on the suggestion of a current affectation, created in Jaques a character which was wholly original. Humourist, sentimentalist, critic, and cynic, he is the self-conscious seeker for new experiences, the dilettante collector of curiosities to be labelled in his museum as states of a human soul.

The midsummer of Shakespeare's comedy is reached in _Twelfth Night_. Was it his effort to resist the invasion of sadder thought which raised its mirth to the reeling heights of Sir Toby's Illyrian bacchanals? We dare not venture such a surmise, for the light and warmth are at flood-tide. The voluptuous love-languors of the Duke and Olivia's luxury of grief fatten the idle soil for the blossoming of the rose. The disease of overmuch prosperity in the palaces of Illyria seems set over against the sanity of adversity in the forest of Arden. Viola, in her disguises as Cesario, has a harder task than the banished Rosalind; for instead of assisting at her own wooing, she is required to plead as an envoy of love against herself. In place of the dilettante egotist Jaques, who would range through all experiences, we have here the solemn self-lover, Malvolio, pinnacled in his own sense of importance and his code of formal propriety, yet toppling from his heights to so grotesque a fall. Had Shakespeare encountered some starched Elizabethan Puritan, who looked sourly on the theatre, and thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and ale, and did the dramatist read a humorous lesson to his time on an error more deep-seated in the human heart than the excesses of a joyous temper? Was the comic spirit here a swordsman armed with the blade of reason and good sense? If such was the case, Shakespeare was assuredly no partisan, and Sir Toby Belch is hardly his ideal representative of a liberal humanism.

After the play of _Twelfth Night_ we become aware of the first ebb of summer. It has been suggested that the events shadowed forth in the _Sonnets_ took some of the joy out of Shakespeare's heart. It has been suggested that the fall of Essex, involving the disgrace of the poet's patron Southampton, tended to embitter his spirit. These are conjectures that cannot be verified. What is certain is, that he turned toward tragedy, and that his temper in comedy indicates a gathering of the clouds. The spirit of _All's Well that Ends Well_ is as courageous as is the title of the play; and there is a need for courage, not of the gay and sportive kind, but serious and steadfast. The hero is no gallant Orlando or high-spirited Benedick. He has in him, we must suppose, the possibilities of noble manhood, but these are obscured by the errors and the vices of youth. The heroine is no glad-hearted girl like Rosalind, no scatterer of coruscating jests like Beatrice, but a woman, clear-sighted, strong-willed, and bent on achieving her purpose. She, the poor daughter of a physician, is a healer in a world that stands in need of healing. The bright-winged Cupid of nods and becks and wreathed smiles has been transformed into Love, the physician. Helena, honoured and cherished by all who know her aright, is rejected by the one man on whom her heart is fixed, and whom she rescues from his baser self with something of that maternal protectiveness, which in certain instances constitutes the nucleus of wifely love. The Countess is Shakespeare's creation, and nowhere has he made age more beautiful. The comic business lies chiefly in the unmasking of the pretender, Parolles. It is required both by the action and the ethics of the play, but there is little to afford us pleasure in the humiliation of so paltry a _miles gloriosus_.

The atmosphere darkens in _Measure for Measure_. In the city of Vienna corruption boils and bubbles. From the Duke's deputy to the lowest drudge of vice, society is infected with the festering evil. To deal with the subtleties of sin, virtue itself must learn crafty ways; mines must be opposed by countermines. In Claudio the passions of youth, snatching too eagerly at unlicensed satisfaction, are brought into the presence of death; and to life, tender and florid, the vast regions of the grave are full of obscurity and uncertain horror. It is hardly a scene for the joy of love, though to two strong hearts love may come in the end as the sequel of a common struggle for justice and moral reformation. Rather is it a place for the trials and the victory of virgin chastity. The Duke moves through subterranean passages, guided by the dark lantern of moral prudence. Isabella illuminates the gloom with the light of an indignant saintliness. Here it is no pompous formalist who is humiliated; no common pretender who is detected and delivered over to laughter; the deadliest ambushes of evil are attacked; the heart, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," is laid bare. Angelo, the self-deceiver, is exposed not merely to others, but to himself; he gazes down appalled into the abyss discovered in his own soul. We have travelled far from the fresh wild-wood paths of Arden and from the glowing gardens of Illyria.

No problems connected with the plays of Shakespeare are more difficult of solution than those offered by the satiric drama, in which matter from the story of Troy is handled in so enigmatic a fashion. Shall we place _Troilus and Cressida_ hard by _Measure for Measure_, or date it some six years later, regarding it as a successor in comedy to the tragic study of the misanthrope in _Timon of Athens_? The evidence inclines in favour of the earlier date. Is some of the wood, hay, and stubble of the lost _Troilus and Cressida_ of Dekker and Chettle imbedded in Shakespeare's play? Is it a satire of humanity or of contemporary individuals? Was this the "purge" which Shakespeare administered to Ben Jonson, and, with Jonson disguised as Ajax, and Marston as Thersites, was the play one of those alarums and excursions connected with the war of the theatres, in which Marston, Dekker, and Jonson were the principal combatants?[1949] Is Cressida a malicious portrait of the deceitful enchantress of the _Sonnets_, and was a satirical presentment of the heroes of Homer a retort upon the rival poet, conjectured to be Chapman, the translator of Homer, who had stolen away the favour of Shakespeare's young friend and patron. These questions remain unanswered. We can only say that the spirit of this comedy of disillusion is alien to that of genuine comedy as conceived by Shakespeare in his happier days. The young love of Troilus is betrayed by the courtesan born. Achilles is a dull-brained fellow, barren of wit, who sulks or wantons in his tent; Ajax is a clumsy elephant; Thersites lives on garbage, and spews his filth; Pandar is a lecher, incapable except by proxy; to fight on account of Helen is to set the world at odds for an harlot, yet on her behalf it is that Hector, knowing the folly of it, dies. Troilus is indeed a gallant youth, but his passion is a greenhorn's infatuation: let him be cured of it by surgical incision, however cruel! Shall we say that _Troilus and Cressida_ and _Measure for Measure_ are connected by a certain contrast and resemblance? In each the world is bubbling with corruption. The mighty persons of the earth in the one play are as ignoble as the mean persons of the other; the confraternity of Mistress Overdone includes the champions of the world and their renowned lady-loves; the worldly wisdom of the Duke is lowered and broadened into the all-embracing but wholly mundane experience of Ulysses; and in this sorry society it is from worldly wisdom alone that we can hope for any rescue or deliverance, for here we find no saintly Isabella, but a Cressida, offering her lips to every solicitor of the Grecian tents.

The spirit of mirth withdrew itself for a time from Shakespeare's art. He could still write comic scenes, but they were used to deepen the effects of tragedy. The grave-diggers of _Hamlet_, the porter turning the key of hell-gate on the night of murder in _Macbeth_, Lear's poor fool jesting across the storm upon the heath, the clown whose basket of figs conceals the worm of Nilus--these are humorous figures created in the service of pity and terror. Shakespeare did not return to comedy until his perception of the world and human life had been purified by the tragic _katharsis_. With every faculty of his mind labouring at its highest, he had pursued a long dramatic inquisition of the evil that is in the world and in the heart of man. He had not retreated into any facile creed of pleasant optimism, but boldly explored the face of night, and night had brought out the stars. Such love as that of Cordelia, such loyalty as that of Kent, could be fully revealed only in and through the darkness. Man pleased Shakespeare and woman also, when he wrote his tragedies, else the players would have had lenten entertainment; for a drama founded upon misanthropy would have been unendurable. In _Timon of Athens_ the poet exhibits misanthropy as the evasion of weakness from the ruins of a self-indulgent optimism, and we may say that in _Timon of Athens_ he bade farewell to gloom.

Shakespeare's latest comedies--_Pericles_(as far as it is his), _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, _The Tempest_--form a group, which is distinguished by a special character. The atmosphere is light and pellucid, like that which follows a thunder-storm. There is a great and wide serenity abroad; the heavens seem more spacious, and they bend down to embrace the margins of the land. The healing influences of nature are felt in the country lanes where Autolycus sings his tirra-lirra, and the meadows where Perdita follows her sheep, on the seacoast of Tarsus where Marina bears her basket of flowers, among the wild Welsh mountains with the gallant sons of Cymbeline, on the enchanted island full of "sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not." The life of cities and courts had lost much of its attraction for one who perhaps was now finding repose and restoration among the Warwickshire fields. But Shakespeare did not plead, in the manner of Rousseau, for a reversion to the primitive conditions of humanity; he could smile at Gonzalo's imaginary commonwealth, where property has no existence; he saw in Caliban the rudimentary man not half informed with soul; he had faith in an art which mends nature, while yet it is an art which nature makes. And nature itself, with all of human life, seems to hang, dreamlike and yet real, in the encompassing power of something that is above nature and that means well, however little we can trace its ways. Dian appears to Pericles in a vision, guiding him to her temple where joy awaits him; the innocence of Hermione is vindicated by the oracle of Apollo; Posthumus in prison is visited by Jupiter, giving him assurance of divine succour--"whom best I love I cross"; Prospero is aided in his beneficent designs by ministering elemental spirits. The growing resources of the Jacobean stage assisted the dramatist in scenic effects, to which he imparted a beautiful significance. The temper of these latest plays is a temper of reconciliation; the wrongs of life are present, but for those who can transcend the baser passions they work for good. Injuries are felt but are forgiven; broken bonds of affection are reunited; the lost are restored to hearts that have loved and suffered. "The oldest hath borne most," says Albany in the closing lines of _King Lear_. The old are seen in these last romances of Shakespeare as experienced in suffering, caused by the offence of others or by the errors of their own hearts; but they have learnt through suffering a certain detachment from the greed of personal gain, and they lean over the joy of young hearts, still immersed in the innocent egoism of youth, with a fond protectiveness. Cymbeline and his recovered sons, Pericles and Marina, Hermione and Perdita, Prospero and Miranda--it is the same sentiment, varied and repeated, in each of its exemplars. Certain indications that Shakespeare was loosening his connection with the theatre are present in these plays. He could, as in the instance of _Pericles_ and perhaps in those of _King Henry VIII._ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ contribute fragments to a drama in which, as a whole, he took little interest. In plays of which he is the sole author, his dramatic energy flags at times, to be renewed where the subject moved his feelings or charmed his imagination. The versification is breeze-like in its freedom, but sometimes the breeze falls away and sometimes it wanders with too vague an aim. The treatment of time passes from the extreme of romantic license, as in _The Winter's Tale_, to the strictest observation of the rule of unity in _The Tempest_. In _Pericles_, the earliest of these romances, Shakespeare cared only for certain scenes and situations. In _Cymbeline_, wherever Imogen, the loveliest figure in his gallery of portraits of women appears, we are certain to receive his finest workmanship. Hermione and Perdita wholly possessed his imagination, while a crude sketch sufficed for the jealousy of Leontes. _The Tempest_, if we set aside the laborious jesting of Antonio and Sebastian (designed to express the barren brain that often accompanies a callous heart), is wrought with equal power from the first scene to the last.

Perhaps the conjecture is well founded that _The Tempest_, with its masque of wedding blessings, was written for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick, Elector Palatine, in February, 1613. Perhaps it was Shakespeare's latest play. And it may not be altogether an idle notion of the poet Campbell, that in Prospero's breaking his magic staff and dismissing his airy spirits we have the farewell to the stage of the great enchanter who had summoned Prospero into being.

Shakespeare found poetic comedy in its rudiments; he left it fully formed. He brought together its various elements and organized them to fulfil the functions of a single living spirit. He made laughter wise, and taught seriousness how to be winning and gracious. Through no ascetic doctrine but by virtue of the spirit of life and beauty he purified the drama from the dulness of what is gross, and kept its temper above the seductions of sentimental morals and a nerveless lubricity. Wit, fancy, grace, constructive dexterity, are found among his successors. Shakespeare's sane outlook upon life as a whole, his gentleness of strength in dealing with the passions, his reserve of power, his moral wisdom, were lost to English comedy when Prospero abjured his magic and retired to the duties of his Stratford lordship of the soil.

EDWARD DOWDEN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1949] On this subject, see _The War of the Theatres_, by Mr. J. H. Penniman, 1897, and _The Stage-Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters_ by R. A. Small (Breslau, 1899).

INDEX OF HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL MATERIALS

ABERDEEN, Records of, xxxviii.

_Acolastus_, the, by Gnapheus (W. Fullonius), transl. by Palsgrave, lxx, lxxi, lxxxi.

Acting and actors: in churches, xiii, xv, xix, xxi; in schools, xiv, lxix; in churchyards, xii; by crafts, xviii, xx, xxxiii; the councils against mimi, xix, xl; actors of Wakefield, xxv; mummers, xl; English actors in Germany, xlv; acting at Cambridge, lxxi, 197; Udall and school actors, 98; Lyly and boy actors, 265–268, 270, 279; Greene and the companies, 399, 403, 408, 411, 418; Porter and the companies, 515, 516, 519–522, 524, 526–527.

Admiral's men, the, (_i.e._ under patronage of Lord Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, 1585–1603) and Greene, 403, 408, 410; and Porter, 515–517, 520–528, _et passim_.

_Agamemnon_, Dekker and Chettle's, 523.

Agrippa, Henry Cornelius (von Nettesheim), 281.

Alberti, his _Philodoxeos_, lxvii.

_Albyon Knight_, lxxxvi.

_Alcmæon_, the play of, 268.

_Alda_, Latin play by William of Blois, xvii.

Aldrich, Robert, and Udall, 92.

Alençon, the _duc d'_, and _Endymion_, 268.

_Alexander, the Life of_ by Plutarch, 269, 283, _et seq._

_Alexander and Campaspe_, by Lyly, edition of, with essay, by Professor Baker, 263–333; dates, sources, literary estimate, etc., 268–276.

_Alexander and Lodowick_, by Martin Slater, 523, 526.

Alexandrine, the Middle English, 189.

Allegory, and the drama, xxxvii, xl, lxxxi, xcii, 267.

Alleyn, Edward, and Greene's plays, 408, 410; catalogue of his MSS. at Dulwich, 515; acquaintance with Porter, 524.

Alleyn, Richard, an actor in the Admiral's company, 524.

_All for Money_, Lupton's, xlviii, li, lxxxvi.

Allott, his _England's Parnassus_, 421.

_All's Well that Ends Well_, Shakespeare's, 191, 656.

_Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany_, by Chapman, attributed to Peele, 336.

_Alphonsus, King of Arragon, Comicall Historie_ of, by Greene, 389, 403–405, 407, 410, 411, 421.

_Andria_, of Terence, the English translation of, lxviii, lxxi, 107.

Antichrist legend, Protestant version of the, lxxv.

_Apius and Virginia, The tragical comedy of_, by R. B., lxxxvi, 141, 336, 341.

Apollodorus Tarsensis, compared with Peele, 337.

Apuleius, Adlington's translation of his _Metamorphoses of the Golden Ass_, a possible source of Peele's 'Meroe,' 346, 383.

Arber, Professor E., his _English Garner_, 89; his reprint of _Roister Doister_, 90, 104, 194; his _Transcripts of the Stationers' Registers_, 97, 197, 347, _et passim_.

_Archæologia_, on Udall, 93.

_Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen_, on Peele, 348.

Aretino, his _Poliscene_, lxvii.

Ariosto, his _I Suppositi_, lxviii; Gascoigne's translation of, lxxv, lxxxiv; compared with Peele, 337; his _Orlando Furioso_, 389.

Argumentative plays, _debats_, and controversial morals, lxv, lxvi, lxxv, xci; Heywood's, 10.

_Arraignment of Paris, The_, by Peele, 336, 341.

_Ascension, The_, Wakefield play of, xxvi, xxvii.

Ascham, Roger, referred to, 135.

_Asotus_, the, by Macropedius, lxx.

Ass, Feast of the, xx, xxi.

_As You Like It_, by Shakespeare, lxv, 275, 645, 654, 655.

BABIO, a Latin elegiac comedy, xviii.

Baker, D. E. (with Reed and Jones), his _Biographia Dramatica_, 200, 348.

Baker, Professor G. P., _Critical Essay on Lyly_, his life and place in comedy, with special reference to _Alexander and Campaspe_, 263–277; edition of _A. and C._, with notes, 278–333.

Bale, Bishop, his _Catalogus_, xviii, 89, 93; translation of _Pammachius_, lxx, lxxi; his _Kyng Johan_, lxxii, lxxv.

Ballad plays, xli.

Bandello, 645.

Barclay, Alexander, and fool-literature, lii, liii.

Bardani, xli.

Barry, Lodowick, the song of "Three merrie men" in his _Ram Alley_, 352.

_Bartholomew Fayre_, by Ben Jonson, _Induction to_, 410.

_Basoche, clercs de la_, lxvi.

_Battle of Alcazar, The_, by Peele, 335, 337, 341.

_Baucis_, a Latin elegiac comedy, xviii.

Bayne, on Henry Porter in _Dict. Nat. Biog._, 519.

Beaumont and Fletcher, and the play within a play, 343.

_Beaux Stratagem, The_, by Farquhar, referred to, 429.

Bernhardi, his _R. Greene's Leben u. Schritten_, 397, 411.

_Bewick and Grahame_, the ballad, referred to, 366.

Bibbiena, Cardinal de, bis _Calandria_, lxviii.

Biblical miracles, xiii–xxxvii; _genre_ drama, idyllic or heroic miracle, lxxvi.

_Bien-Avisé et Mal-Avisé_, a French _moralité_, liii, lxxii.

Birde, William, and Henry Porter, 516.

_Blacke Battman of the North_, Porter's relation to the play, 515, 521, 522.

Blank Verse, Peele's, 339, 340; Greene's, 404, 407, 414, 417; on the rhetorical quality of dramatic; examination of Greene's practice, and a few general conclusions, 503–513.

_Bloody Brother, The_, by Fletcher, Jonson, _et al._, parodies "Three merry men," 352.

Blount, Edward, publisher of Lyly's plays, 269, 276.

_Blyssyd Sacrament, The_, Croxton play of, xxxix.

Boase and Clark, _Register of Univ. Oxford_, and the two Henry Porters, 518.

_Boccaccio, G._, 645.

Bodel, Jean, his play of _St. Nicholas_, xvi.

Bojardo, his _Timone_, lxviii.

Bower, his _Scotichronicon_, on Robin Hood, xli.

Bower, the R. B. of _Apius and Virginia_ (Fleay's conjecture), lxxxvi, 336.

Boy Bishop, the election of the, xx, xxi.

Bradley, Henry, mentioned, lxxii; his _Critical Essay on Gammer Gurton's Nedle_, 197–204; date of _Gammer Gurton's Nedle_, and its authorship, by Wm. Stevenson, 197; place of _G. G. N._ in the history of comedy, 202; dialect, 203; previous editions and the present text, 204; edition of _G. G. N._, 205–257; appendix, 259.

Brand, the Rev. John, his _Popular Antiquities_, 127, 192.

Brandl, Professor A., his _Quellen u. Forschungen d. weltlichen Dramas in England_, referred to, lx, lxxiii, lxxiv, lxxx, lxxxii, lxxxvii.

Brandt, Sebastian, his _Narrenschiff_, lii, liii.

Brasenose, the College Register of, and Henry Porter, 520.

Bridges, Dr. John, and _Gammer Gurton's Nedle_, 199; his _Defence of the Government of the Church_, 200.

Briggs, the Rev. Thomas, his copy of _Roister Doister_, 97.

Broome, William, and _Alex. and Camp._, 276.

Brotherhood in Arms, Scott on the institution, 366.

Brown, Professor J. M., on Greene (_An Early Rival of Shakespeare_, Auckland, 1877), 402, 405, 410, 415, 417.

_Brute Grenshillde_, and Henslowe, 523.

Bücher, K., _Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, referred to, on songs of labour, 384.

_Buffeting, The_, Wakefield play of, xxvii, xxviii.

_Bugbears, The_, a comedy of intrigue, lxxxviii.

Bulæus, on the _Ludus de S. Katharina_, xiv.

Bullen, Mr. A. H., his edition of Peele, 346, 348; see, also, notes to Gummere's edition of _O. W. T._; on Henry Porter, 519.

Burby, Cuthbert, publisher, and Greene's plays, 418, etc.

Burlesque in church and festival plays, xix–xxi; in miracle cycles, xxiv, xxix, xxxvi; in farces, lxv, lxvi; in school plays, lxxi–lxxii, lxxv.

CADMAN, Thos., and Lyly's plays, 276.

_Cain_, the York play of, xxv.

_Calandria_, the, by Bibbiena, lxviii.

_Calisto and Melibœa_, by Cota and de Rojas, lxviii; the English play, lxxii.

_Cambyses, King of Percia_, etc., by Thomas Preston, lii, liii, lxxxvi, 342.

Camden's _Proverbs_, 108, 194, _et passim_.

_Campaspe_, by Lyly, 263–333.

_Cante-fable_, reminiscences of the, 356, 375.

_Carde of Fancie, The_, by Greene, the _Dedication to_, 403.

_Carle off Carlile_, the poem, 127.

_Carmina Burana_, referred to, 191.

Carpenter, Professor F. I., his edition of Wager's _Marie Magdalene_ (University of Chicago Press), xciv.

_Castell of Perseverance, The_, play of, xlvii, xlviii, l, li, lviii.

Caxton, William, his translation of the _Legenda Aurea_, xxxi, xliv; his _Prol. Eneydos_, 115.

Chaderton, William, his play and _Gammer Gurton_, 198.

_Challenge for Beauty, A_, by T. Heywood, 521.

Chalmers, Alexander, his _English Poets_, 191.

Chapman, George, lxxxviii; and Lyly, 275; and Porter, 517, 524, 533; his _Humerous Dayes Mirth_, 527; and Shakespeare, 658.

Chappell's _Popular Music of the Olden Time_ and the song of "Three merrie men," 352.

Character, portrayal of in miracles, xxxi, xxxiii; in marvels, etc., xxxix, xli; in morals, lii–liv, lxii–lxiii; in other plays, lxix, lxxxvii, xcii; and see under _Authors_ and _Comedies_.

Chaucer, xix; the episode after his style, lxv, lxvi; and Heywood, 10–13; referred to, 127, 398, 426; and see notes to _R. D._; on "hunting the letter," 374.

_Chester Cycle, The_, of miracle plays, xxiii, xxiv, xxix.

Chettle, Henry, his relations with Greene: his _Kind Hart's Dreame_, 419; his _Robert Greene to Pierce Pennilesse_, 422; and the 'Groatsworth Group,' 423, 424; his relations with Porter, 515–517, 522, 524; his _Troilus and Cressida_, 657.

Child, Professor, on Robin Hood plays, xl; on St. George plays, xliii, 176.

_Childe Maurice_, reference to, 359.

_Childe Rowland_, a possible reference to, in _O. W. T._, 345, 354, 356.

Children as players, 14, 98, 266, 267, 270, 275, 276.

_Christ led up to Calvary_, the York miracle of, xxvii.

Chronicle play, The English, lxxvi, Lyly and, 270.

Cicero, Lyly's indebtedness to, 267.

Cinthio, Giraldi, Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 645.

Clergy, the, and miracle plays, xiii, xviii–xx.

Clown, the, xlvii, xlviii, li, lii, liv, 388, 430, 644–646, 649, 651, 655.

_Coliphizatio_, one of the Wakefield plays, see _Buffeting_.

Collier, J. Payne, references to his _History of Dramatic Poetry and Annals of the English Stage_, _Illustrations of Old English Literature_, _Henslowe's Diary_, _Memoirs of Alleyn_, etc., xiv, xx, xl, xlii, xlix, lvi, lviii, lxxiv, lxxvii, lxxix, lxxxvii, lxxxviii, lxxxix, 97, 346, 409, 417, 515, 517, 518, 523, _et passim_; his _Old Ballads_, 167.

Colman, George, the elder, his _Jealous Wife_, 530.

Colwell, Thomas, publisher of _Gammer Gurton_, 197, 199, 201, and of the _Disobedient Child_.

_Comedy in England, Beginnings of_, by C. M. Gayley, xiii–xcii; liturgical fragments, early saints' plays and parodies, xiii; comedy of ridicule, xx; the miracle cycles in their relation to comedy, xxi; dramatic value of the English miracle plays, xxxi; the contribution of later "marvels" and early secular plays, xxxvii–xxxviii; the Devil and the Vice, xlvi; the indebtedness of comedy to the Vice, liii–liv; the relation between miracle, moral, and interlude, liv; the older morals in their relation to comedy, lvii; the dramatic contribution of the older morals, lxii; period of transition, farce and romantic interlude, lxiv; period of transition, school of interlude and controversial moral, 'Christian Terence' and _comedia sacra_, lxix; polytypic, or fusion, plays, lxxvii; survivals of the moral interlude, lxxxv; the movement toward romantic comedy, lxxxvii; conclusion regarding the requisites of comedy, xci; comedy compared with tragedy, xxxi, xxxvii–xxxviii, lxi–lxiv, 639; elements, kinds, and relation to society, xci, 635, 648; pastoral, 4, 268; in miniature, 10; emancipation from miracle and moral, 15; _Commedia dell' arte_, lxviii; see also under _Allegory_, _Romantic_, _Manners_, _Humours_, _Latin_, _Woman_, _Prose_, _Plot_, _Character_.

_Comedy of Errors, The_, by Shakespeare, 648, 650.

_Common Conditions_, the play of, lxxxiii, lxxxviii, 336, 341, 342.

_Comodey of Umers, The_, 526, 528, 533.

_Complaynt of Scotland, The_, folk-tale in, 345.

_Comus, The_, of Milton, and _Old Wives' Tale_, 348, 364, 378.

_Conflict of Conscience, The_, by Nathaniel Woodes, xlix, li, lxxxvi, 426.

Congreve, William, the character of 'Prue' in his _Love for Love_, 536.

_Conny-Catching_, Greene's pamphlets on, 398, 418; _The Defence of_, 408.

_Conscious Lovers, The_, by Steele, 'Lucinda' in, 429.

_Conspiracy, The_, York and Wakefield, plays of, xxv, xxvi, xlvi.

_Contes_, the French, xvii, lxv.

_Conversion of St. Paul, The_, Digby play of, xxx, l, lxxxi.

Cooper, W. D., his _Extracts from the Corpus Christi Register_, 89; his edition of _Roister Doister_, 104, 191, 194, and frequently in notes to _R. D._

Copland, publisher of Robin Hood plays, xl.

_Cornish Plays, The_, xxiii, xxiv, xlvii.

Corpus Christi, Feast of, xiv, xx.

Cotgrave's _Dictionary_, 108, 194, _et passim_.

_Council of the Jews, The_, Coventry play of, l.

Council of Treves, The, xi.

Courthope, Mr. W. J., his _History of English Poetry_, xxxvii, lxiii, lxiv.

Courtney, Bishop, _vs._ Feast of Fools, xxi.

_Coventry Gild Plays, The_, xxiii; and see under _N-town_.

Coventry, The Old Leet Book of, xlvi.

_Coventry Plays, The_, so-called, of Corpus Christi, xxiii, xxiv, xxix, xlviii, lviii, lxxvii.

Crafts, in the religious drama, xviii, xxxi, etc.

Cranmer, Archbishop, on prayers for the dead, 193.

Creede, Thomas, publisher of some of Greene's plays, 403–405, 415, 420.

Creizenach, Professor Wilhelm, his _Geschichte d. neueren Dramas, Bae. I, II_, mentioned, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, xxxvi, xlv, lxx, lxxiv.

Crocus, his play of _Joseph_, lxx.

Croxton Play, The, of the _Sacrament_, xxxix.

_Crucifixion, The_, play of, xxii, xxvii.

Cushman, Professor L. W., his _Devil and Vice in English Dram. Lit._, xlvii–xlix, liii.

Cycles, the English miracle, xviii, xxi, xxxi, etc.

_Cymbeline_, Shakespeare's, 645, 659, 660; the song, "Hark, hark, the Lark" suggested by one of Lyly's, 322.

DAMON AND PITHIAS, by Richard Edwardes, lxxviii, lxxxiv, lxxxvii, xcii, 268, 269.

_Daniel, The History of_, by Hilarius, xv.

_Daryus, King_, xlix, lxxvi, lxxxvi.

_David and Bethsabe_ (_The Love of King David_, etc.), by Peele, 335, 336, 341.

Davidson, Professor Charles, his _English Mystery Plays_, xxxviii.

Day, John, his intimacy with Porter, 524.

_Débats_, Dramatic, lxv.

Dekker, Thomas, lxxiii; his _Satiro-Mastix_, 191; and Lyly, 274; "Three merrie men" in _Westward Hoe_, 352; his _Knight's Conjuring_ and the 'Groatsworth' group of poets, 423; relations with Porter and Drayton, 522; with Chettle, 523; and the 'war of the theatres,' 657, 658.

_Descensus Astrææ_, by Peele, 416.

_Despencers, The_, by Porter and Chettle, 523

'Devil,' The, and the 'Vice,' xlvi–liv, lvi, lxxiii, 499.

_Devil is an Ass, The_, by Ben Jonson, xlviii, li, liii.

_Devil is in It, The_, (_If this be not a Good Play_, etc.), by Dekker, xlviii.

_Dido, The_, by the Master of St. Paul's, lxxi.

_Digby Plays, The_, edited by Dr. Furnivall, xv; references to, xxix, xxx, xxxi, xlvii, xlviii, l, lv.

Diogenes Laertius, his _Lives of the Philosophers_, 269, 280; and elsewhere in notes to _Campaspe_.

Disguisings, xl.

_Disobedient Child, The_, by Thomas Ingeland, xlvii, li, liii, lv, lxxxii, lxxv.

Disputations, lxv.

_Doctor Faustus_, by Marlowe, the relation of _Friar Bacon_ to it, 389, 413, 414.

Dodsley, Robert, his collection of _Old English Plays_, reëdited by W. Carew Hazlitt, xx, 194, 430, _et passim_.

Don Quixote, an English:--'Ralph' of the _Burning Pestle_; foreshadowed by 'Huanebango,' 343.

Douce, Francis, his _Illustrations of Shakespeare_, xxi, xlix, lii, 128; on Porter, 518, 534.

Dowden, Professor, A Monograph on William Shakespeare as a Comic Dramatist, 635–661.

Downton [Dowton, Dunton, or Dutton], Thomas, an actor in the Admiral's Company in Porter's time, 515, 516, 517, 524.

Drayton, Michael, relations with Porter, Dekker, etc., 522.

_Dream of Pilate's Wife_, the York play of _The_, xxv.

_Dublin, the History of the City of_, by Whitelaw and Walsh, xxxviii.

Du Méril, E., _Poés. Pop. lat. antiq._ 191.

Dunbar, William, his _Will of Maister Andrew Kennedy_, 192.

Durandus, _Rationale_, 192.

Dyce, Alexander, his edition of Skelton, 259; of Peele, 346, 348, and see notes to Gummere's edition of _O. W. T._, _et passim_; of Greene, 402, 415, 420, 430, and notes to _Friar Bacon_; of Porter's _2 A. W. A._, 515, 517, 518, 535, 544, and frequently in notes to the present edition.

EBBSWORTH, _Roxburghe Ballads_, and "O man in desperation," 351.

Ebert, Professor Adolf, his article on _Die englischen Mysterien in the Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur_, xxxii; on the "ambiguous letter," 150.

_Edward I_, by Peele, 335, 337, 383.

_Edward III_, anonymous, and Greene's _Orlando_ and _Never Too Late_, 410.

Edward VI, Injunctions under, on prayers for the dead, 193; Statute of 1547 on vagrancy, 193.

Edwardes, Richard, and _Godly Queen Hester_, lxxxiii; his _Damon and Pithias_, lxxxiv; and Lyly, 271.

Elizabeth, and Edwardes' _Palamon and Arcite_, lxxxiv; prayers for the dead, under, and her relation to the later edition of _Roister Doister_, 193; and Lyly, 266, 269; and Greene, 408, 409, 416, 502.

Ellis, Mr. Havelock, his edition of Porter's _2 A. W. A._, 515, 519, 531, 535, 554, and frequently in the notes to the present edition.

Ellis, his _Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men_, 89, 91.

Elze, Dr. Karl, on a verse in _Friar Bacon_, 510.

_Encomium Lauri_, by Gabriel Harvey, a line in, ridiculed by Peele, 373.

_Endimion_, by Lyly (edited by Professor Baker), 265, 267, 269, 272, 291.

_Enfants de Maintenant, Les_, a French _moralité_, lxxxii.

_Enfants sans souci_, their _sotties_, lxvi.

_Englands Mourninge Gowne and Mourning Garment_, 412.

_England's Parnassus_, by Allott, 420.

Eton, Udall at, 90.

_Euphues_ and Euphuism, 265, 267, 297, 337, 646.

Eusebius, xxxviii.

_Everyman_, the _Moralle Play of_, l, liii, lv, lvi, lviii.

_Every Man in his Humour_, by Ben Jonson, its relation to Porter's work, 524, 530, 533.

_Ezekias_, by Udall, 93.

FABLIAUX, xvii, lxv.

_Faire Em_ and Greene's _Friar Bacon_, 411, 412, 418, 427.

Fairholt, F. W., his edition of Lyly's dramatic works, 276; see also notes to _Alexander and Campaspe_.

Farce, and farce interlude, xviii, xxxvii, lxiv, lxvii; French, lxv, 15.

_Farewell to Follie_, one of Greene's pamphlets, 398, 411, 412.

_Farewell to the Famous and Fortunate Generals_, poem by Peele, 403.

Ferbrand, William, publisher of Porter's _2 A. W. A._, 534.

Festival Plays, etc., xxxvii–xlvi.

_Fflagellacio, The_, Wakefield miracle of, xxvi–xxviii.

_Fidei Defensor_, use of the title, 184.

Fitzstephen, William, on saints' plays, xiv, xv.

Fleay, Mr. F. G., his _Chronicle History of the English Stage, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_, and _Life of Shakespeare_, lxxxii, lxxxiii, lxxxvi, lxxxviii, lxxxix, xci, 336, 339, 347, 360, 383, 399, 403, 404, 406, 410, 412, 415, 418, 421, 424, 426, 521, 523, 527, 528, and other references.

Fletcher, John, his _Bloody Brother_, 352; and Shakespeare, 660.

_Fleury Plays_, the, of St. Nicholas, xvi.

Floegel, _Geschichte d. grotesk-komischen, neuarbeitet von Ebeling_, xlv.

Flügel, Professor Ewald, _Critical Essay on Udall_, 89–104; edition of _Roister Doister_, 105–189; appendix to _R. D._, 189–194; also lxxviii; his _Lesebuch_, 69, 91, 194.

Folk-lore, the background of, in _O. W. T._, 345–346.

_Folk Lore Journal_, specimens from, xliii.

Fool, literature of the, lii; relation to the Vice, xlvii–liv, lxxxii; in _Roister Doister_, 100, 101; in Greene, 393, 430; in Shakespeare, 644–646, etc.

Fools, The Feast of, xx, lxvi.

_Four Elements, The_, interlude by John Rastell, lxi, lxxi–lxxiv; referred to, 109.

_Four Kynges_, 523.

_Foure P.P._, the play called _The_, by John Heywood, 9, 10.

Foster's _Alumni Oxonienses_, 518.

Frazer, J. G., _The Golden Bough_, on the "death-index," cf. _O. W. T._, 345.

_Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (The Famous Historie of Frier Bacon)_ by R. Greene, edition of, with essay and notes, by C. M. Gayley, 433–503; appendix on the versification of, 503; mention of, xlviii, li, liv, 338, 389, 410, 413, 426.

"Friar Rush," 231.

_Fulk Fitz Warine, The Story of_, 127.

Fuller's _Worthies_, cited, 65.

Furnivall, Dr., his edition of the _Digby Plays_, xxiii, xxx, xlvii, lv; his _Polit. Rel. and Love Songs_, 191.

_Furnivall Miscellany, The_, xix.

GALLATHEA, by John Lyly, 268.

_Gammer Gurton's Nedle_, by William Stevenson, edition of, with essay on the authorship, date and qualities of the play, by Mr. Henry Bradley, 195–259; other mention of, lxxiii, lxxviii, lxx–lxxii, xcii, 99, 121, 338, 342, 533.

Gayley, Professor C. M., Preface to this volume, iii; An _Historical View of the Beginnings of English Comedy_, xiii–xcii; regarding _Roister Doister_, 97, 104; regarding _Gammer Gurton_, 198; on the title of _Old Wives' Tale_, 347; _Critical Essay on Greene's Life and the Order of his Works_, 397–431; edition of _Frier Bacon_, 433–502; appendix on Greene's versification, 503–511: _Critical Essay on Henry Porter's Life and his Place in English Drama_, 513–536; edition of _Two Angry Women_, 537–633.

Gascoigne, George, his _Supposes_, lxxviii, lxxxiv, 517; his _Glasse of Government_, lxxiv.

_Gentylnes and Nobylyte_, the dialogue of, 8.

Geoffrey, Abbot of St. Alban's, and the _Ludus de S. Katharina_, xiv, xvi.

_George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield_, 338, 392, 401, 533; date and authorship, 418–420.

_Germanic Philology, Journal of_, 336.

_Giant and the King's Daughter_, the tale of the, in _O. W. T._ 354.

Gillette's _Because She Loved Him So_, mentioned, 529.

Giraldus Cambrensis, referred to, 426.

_Glasse of Government, The_, by Gascoigne, lxxiv.

Gnapheus (W. Fullonius), his _Acolastus_, lxx, lxxi, lxxxi.

_Godly Queene Hester_, a moral play, xxxiv, lxxvi, lxxviii, lxxxiii.

Godwin's _Lives of the Necromancers_, 281.

_Golden Legend, The, of the Lives of the Saints_, translated by Caxton, a source for plays, xv, xxxi, xxxvii, xliv.

Gosche's _Jahrbuch_, names of the Devil, 190.

Gosson, his _Ephemerides of Phialo_, 249; on dramatic attractions, 341.

Gower, John, and 'Titivillus,' 190, and _physique_, 398.

Graf, Herman, _Der Miles Gloriosus im englischen Drama_, 190.

Greban, A., his play of the _Passion_, xxxvi.

Greene, Robert, Monograph on his place in English Comedy, by Professor Woodberry, 387–394; Critical Essay on his life and the order of his plays, with edition of his _Frier Bacon_, and appendix on his versification, by Professor Gayley, 395–511; life, 397; authorities on, 397; misapprehensions concerning his career, 398; development as dramatist and order of plays, 402; plays conjecturally assigned to him, 418; 'Young juvenall' and the comedie 'lastly writ,' 422; _Frier Bacon_, composition, 411; stage history and materials, 425; dramatic construction, 427; previous editions and the present text, 430; Other mention, lxxxii, lxxxv, lxxxvii, xc; and Lyly, 266; and Peele, 338–339; and Porter, 517; and Shakespeare, 645, 647; his _Menaphon_, 337; dates of his _Perimedes_, _Pandosto_, _Menaphon_, _Ciceronis Amor_, _Philomela_, 398; _Arbasto_, _Morando_, _Planetomachia_, printed, 400.

_Greene's Vision_, 400.

Gregory IX, against clerical participation in miracle plays, xix.

_Grim, the Collier of Croydon_, xlviii.

Grimm, J., _Mythologie_, cited, 373.

Grindal, Archbishop, 192, 400.

Gringoire, his _l'Homme Obstiné_, xlix.

_Griselda_, play of, mentioned, lxxi.

'Groatsworth' group of poets, the, 422–423.

_Groatsworth of Wit, A_, by Greene, 397, 398, 400, 402.

Grosart, Dr. A. B., his edition of Nashe's works, 337, 351; of Harvey's, 359; of Greene's works, 387, 397, 403, 410, 415, 416, 430; article in _Englische Studien_, 418; his edition of _Selimus_, 420; on the authorship of _A Knack_, 424.

Guevara, Antonia de, his _Dial of Princes_, used by Lyly, 267, 337.

Gummere, Professor F. B., edition of Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_ with _Critical Essay_ on the author and the play, notes and appendix, 333–384.

_Guy of Warwick_, cited, 115.

HACKETT, Thomas, licensed to print _Roister Doister_, 97.

Hales, Professor J. W., on the date of _Roister Doister, Englische Studien_, 95.

Halle, Adam de la, his opera of _Robin et Marion_, xli.

Halliwell (and Wright), collection of _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, 191.

Halliwell-Phillipps, Mr. J. O., xli–xliii, xlv, liii, 171, 194, 528.

_Hamlet_, the early play attributed to Thomas Kyd, 427; Shakespeare's, 534, 658.

Harrison's _Description of England_, 117, 167.

Hartmann's _Iwein_, a similarity in, to _O. W. T._, 373.

Harvester's song, the, in _O. W. T._, proposed restoration of, 383.

Harvey, Gabriel, and Lyly, 266, 348; and Peele, 337, 340, 343; and Nashe, in the _Trimming of Thomas Nashe_, 359; and 'Huanebango,' 343, 345, 358–359, 373, 383; and Greene, 398, 402, 423.

Haslewood, Joseph, his _Ancient Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy_, 337.

Hathaway, R., and Porter, 517.

Haughton, W., and Porter, 524.

Hawkins, Thomas, his _Origin of the English Drama_, lxxvi, 24.

Hazlitt, W. C., his edition of Dodsley's _Old Plays_, 104, 194, 204, 535, _et passim_.

Heber, Richard (_Bibliotheca Heberiana_ in British Museum), on Porter, 517.

_Henno_, a play by Reuchlin, lxix.

_Henry IV., Parts I and II_, Shakespeare's, lxxxix, 534, 646.

_Henry V._, Shakespeare's, 653.

_Henry VI., Parts I and II_, 418, 427.

_Henry VIII._, Shakespeare's, 660.

Henry VIII., the usury statutes under, 95–97; his song of "Pastime," 132.

Henslowe, Philip, his _Diary_, and Greene, 405, 408, 411, 415, 418; and Porter, 515, 517, 518, 520, 522, 526–528.

Herford, Professor C. H., his _Literary Relations of England and Germany,_ lxx, lxxiv, lxxvi, lxxxii, lxxxv, 90.

_Herod_, the Wakefield play of, xxvii.

Heywood, John, Critical Essay on his life and place in English comedy, with editions of his _Play of the Wether_, and his _Johan_, by Mr. A. W. Pollard, 19–85; life, 3; Heywood and Sir Thomas More, 5; dramatic development and literary estimate, 6–12; his _Foure PP., Wether, Wit and Folly, Love_, 6–11; _Pardoner_ and _Johan_, 6, assigned to him, 11; _Wether_, early editions and the present text, 16; his two achievements, 16; _Johan_, previous editions and the present text, 61; Other mention of H., xvii, xlix, lvi, lix, lxi, lxvl–xviii, lxxviii, lxxxii, 89, 95, 96; his _Proverbes_, 110, 191, 194, 275.

Heywood, Thomas, and Henry Porter, 517, 521, 524, 526.

Hilarius, his plays, xiv–xvi.

Hippe, Max, on the "Thankful Dead" theme, in Herrig's _Archiv_, 345.

_Historia Histrionica_, lxxxi.

_Histrio-Mastix_ (attributed to Marston), xlviii.

Hohlfeld, Professor, _Die altenglischen Kollectivmisterien_, in _Anglia_, Bd. XIX, xxv.

Hoker's _Piscator_, lxxi.

Holinshed, R., _Chronicles_, on the dearth of corn in 1523, 40, 117.

Holland's _Translation of Pliny_, 279 _et seq._