THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER The Decennial Publications SHAKESPEARE'S "LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" BY ALBERT H. TOLMAN The Decennial Piblications FIRST SERIES Two volumes of Reports and eight volumes of Investigations, the latter consisting of a collec- tion of articles representing the work of research of the several departments of the Univer- sity. Size, quarto. Volume I. The President's Report. A. Administration. Volume II. The President's Report. B. Publications of the Memliers of the University. Volume III. Part 1. — Systematic Theology. Church History. Practical Theology. Part 2. -Philosophy. Education. Volume IV. Political Economy. Political Science. History. Sociology. Volume V. Semitic Languages and Literatures, Biblical and Patristic Greek, Comparative Religion. Volume VI. Greek Language and Literature, Latin Language and Literature, Sanskrit and Tndo European Comparative Philology, Classical Archaeology. Volume VIT. Romance Languages and Literatures, Germanic Languages and Literatures English. Literature in English. Volume VIII. Astronomy and Astrophysics. Volume IX. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry. Geology. Volume X. Zooloiry. Anatomy. Physiology, Neurology. Botany. Pathology. Bacteriology. SECOND SEP IKS ties of volumes embodying original research, consisting of systematic treatises, unpublished documents, and the like. Size, octavo. The scries ns a whole tcili be issued goon dfter Jatuictry h 1903. The separate articles con- stituting the Investigations, however, and the vokimes of the Second Scries, trill be pub- lished its soon OOOCP No. 6onr r i Copyright 1902 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRINTED DECEMBER 1, 1902 L WHAT HAS BECOME OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAY "LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON"? Albert H. Tolman In 1598 a volume appeared which furnishes perhaps the most important single piece of evidence that we have concerning the reputation that Shakespeare's writings enjoyed among the men of his own day. This book, " Palladis Tamia. | WITS TREASVRY | Being the Second part | of Wits Common | wealth," * was written by Francis Meres, "Maister of Artes of both Universities." The portion which especially interests us is a sketch, or short treatise, which comes near the end of the work, and bears the title "A comparatiue discourse of our English Poets, with th.e,Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets." " Wytts Treasurye, " 2 as it is called in the Stationers'' Register, was entered at Stationers' Hall on the 7th of September, 1598. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks that the sketch that concerns us, the "comparatiue discourse," was surely written in the summer of 1598, since it contains a notice of the book of satires by Marston which was registered on the 27th of the preceding May as The Metamor- phosis of Pigmalions Image, and Satyres. 3 We cannot be entirely certain about this, however. Meres was so exceptionally well acquainted with the literary productions of his day that he mentions certain works which were not printed until some years after the appearance of his own book, and some others which are not known to have been printed at all. Indeed, one of his references to Shakespeare is to those " sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends" that were not published until eleven years later — and are not explained yet. The attention of scholars was first called to Meres's book by Thomas Tyrwhitt, in 1766. 4 In the elaborate sentences in which Meres sets Elizabethan over against ancient writers, Shakespeare is mentioned by name nine times. Also, when Meres speaks of "these declining and corrupt times, when there is nothing but rogery in villanous man," 6 he is certainly quoting Falstaff's utterance: "There is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man " (7 Henry IV., II, iv, 187, 138). We shall look now at i C. M. Ingleby, Shakspere Allusion-Books. Part I (Lon- 3 Halliwell-Phtllipps, Outlines, Vol. II, pp. 148, 149; don, 1874), p. 151. The peculiar form of this title involves an Aebeb, Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, Vol. Ill, allusion to a book entitled " Politeuphuia, Wits Common- p. 116. Wealth," 1597, described by Ingleby as " a compilation by , _. .. . _ . . „ _ t i. t> j v !i a Tiuiriji.- ••• 4 Observations and Conjectures upon Some Passages of John Bodennam." See Ingleby s Introduction, pp. nm, „. , ._ . , „.„, „_ ,„ „. ..... , . . . ' Sftafces/ieare (Oxford, 1766), pp. 15, 16. The writer is indebted to Miss Louise Prouty, of the Boston Public Library, for a 2 In Aebeb, Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, Vol. copy of the passage concerned. Ill, p. 125, the first word of the title is " Wyttes " ; but the facsimile of the entry in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines 5 Shakspere Allusion- Books, Part I, p. 159. of the Life of Shakespeare, 10th ed. (London, 1898), p. 149, shows the form here given. 159 Shakespeare's "Love's Laboue's Won" three of the passages which contain Shakespeare's name; the other six will be cited later. 6 As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to Hue in Pythagoras : so the sweete wittie soule of Oiiid hues in mellifluous & hony-tongued Shakespeare, 1 witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his priuate friends, &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines : so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witnes his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Loue labors lost, his Loue labours wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard the 3. Henry the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Iuliet. As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speake with Plautus tongue, if they would speak Latin : so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if they would speake English. It seems to be clear that Meres classifies all the dramas of Shakespeare as either comedies or tragedies. 8 Undoubtedly, also, any play is to him a tragedy in which an important character dies. Thus it happens that two plays, the first and second parts of Henry IV., which present at his best the greatest comic figure in all literature, Falstaff, are together referred to as a tragedy, '■'•Henry the 4." What play did Meres refer to as " Loue labours wonne " ? Of course, it is possible that this drama has been lost, though students of Shake- speare have not generally considered this a likely alternative. If Love's Labour 's Won 9 has not disappeared, the name must belong in some way to one of the plays now in our possession. The reference in Meres may represent one of two titles which were in use at the same time, and which were both applied to one of the plays that we now have, and to the form in which we have it. There are two dramas in the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays to which double titles are given in the table of contents and in the page-headings: Twelfe Night, or, What you will, and Othello, the Moore of Venice. The second of these is practically a double 6 The entire "comparatiue discourse," with several pre- "Clown. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in dark- ceding pages, is printed in Shakspere Allusion-Books, ness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will Part I, edited by C. M. Inqleby, published for the New allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dis- Shakspere Society (London,1874), pp. 151-67. Arber prints possess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well."— IV, the " comparatiue discourse " in full in his English Garner, ii, 54-65. Vol. II (Birmingham, 1879), pp. 94-106. Halliwell-Phil- It seems probable that the words of Meres helped to sug- lipps prints all the passages in which Shakespeare is men- gest tho passage in Shakospoaro. Walker thought that tioned by name: Outlines of the Life of Sh., 10th od. (Lon- the dramatist was hore drawing diroctly from Ovid. See don, 1898), Vol. II, pp. 149-51. Tho toxt of Ingleby has been note in Fdrness's edition of Twelfth Night, Philadelphia, carefully followed in this paper, except that only the mod- 1901. ern forms of s, th, and n have been used. sThe Shakespeare First Folio givos the name " Histo- i Professor J. M. Manly asks whether these words sng- ries " to the P la >' s named aftor tho En e lish Kings subse- gested to Shakespeare the following passage in Twelfth 1 uent to the Norman Conquest, and prints theso by Wight; themselves. Tho English historical dramas of the six- " Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concern- teenth and seventeenth centuries have recently been made ing wild fowl? tne subject of a careful study by Professor F. E. Schel- " Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply LIN0 < The English Chroniele Play, New York, 1902. inhabit a bird. 'The question of tho proper form and interpretation of "Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion? tho titles Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won " Malvolio. I think nobly of the soul, and no way will be considered in fuU under the discussion of Much approve his opinion, Ado about Nothing. See pp. 21-25 ft. 160 Albert H. Tolman title; the earliest known reference to the play (by Wurmsser von Vendenheym, in 1610) calls it "l'histoire du More de Venise." 10 On the opening page of each of five historical plays in the Folio, an elongated title appears, though not in the table of contents or in the ordinary page-headings. These full designations are: The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry Sirnamed Hot-spurre; The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Con- taining his Death: and the Coronation of King Henry the Fift; The second Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Good Duke Humfrey; The third Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Duke of Yorke; The Tragedy of Richard the Third: with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battell at Bosworth Field. 11 These long appellations may fairly be classed with double titles. Another possibility is that some play of Shakespeare now in existence represents the revised form of the earlier play known as Love's Labour's Won. In this case the probability would be that the present name was given to the new form at the time of the revision. It is so probable as to be almost certain that the play which appears in the page-headings of the First Folio as The second Part of Henry the Sixt received this name when the play took its present shape. The former title, The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, etc., appears on the title-page of the older version, first printed in 1591, out of which with many alterations and additions the play in the Folio was made. The play sometimes given in the page-headings of the Folio as The third Part of Henry the Sixt, sometimes as The third Part of King Henry the Sixt, bears a similar relation to the supposedly older play The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, etc., printed 1595. Whether in these two cases Shakespeare wrote any portion of the older plays is a question upon which scholars are not agreed. But this difference of opinion concerning the origin of two dramas in the Shakespearean canon is enough to suggest the possibility that some comedy of Shakespeare that we now have may have been known in an earlier version as Love's Labour's Won. It is also possible that Love's Labour's Won received a new name without under- going any change of form. If such were the case, we may presume that this new title commended itself as an improvement upon the old. Mr. H. P. Stokes thinks the evidence conclusive that the following plays of Shakespeare, in addition to Othello and Twelfth Night, were each "(generally or occasionally) known by [two] different names: " " the Merchant of Venice, or the 'Jew of Venice'; Merry Wives of Windsor, or 'Sir John Falstaff '; 1 Henry IV., or 'Hot- spur'; 12 Henry V., or 'Agincourt'; 2 and 3 Henry VI., or 'York and Lancaster,' &c; Henry VIII., or 'All is True'; Much Ado, &c, or 'Benedick and Beatrice'; Julius Cozsar, or 'Caesar's Tragedy.'" 13 These, then, would seem to be the possible explanations why no play has come io Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, 2d ed. (London, 12 Compare the elongated title given above. 1879), p. 93. 13 Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Plays (London, "The variations in the typography of these titles are 1878), p. 110, note, not reproduced. 161 6 Shakespeaee's "Love's Labour's Won" down to us with the title Love's Labour's Won: first, the play so designated is no longer extant ; second, it once bore a double title, and the name by which we now know it is only a portion of its former full appellation ; third, the change of the name Love's Labour's Won to that which now designates some one of the comedies that we know was connected in some way with a revision of the play; fourth, the title was changed for some other reason, presumably to secure one that was more appropriate. Let us assume that Love's Labour's Won has come down to us in some form ; and let us bear in mind the fact that no positive evidence connects this title with any particular comedy of Shakespeare. What conditions, then, ought one of the come- dies to satisfy, and what characteristics ought it to possess, if it is to establish as good a claim as possible, in the absence of definite external evidence, to be identified with Meres's "Loue labours wonne"? A first requirement seems to be that the comedy selected shall not appear by name in Meres's list. Strangely enough, two of the solutions that have been proposed identify Love's Labour's Won respectively with Love's Labour's Lost and A Mid- summer-Night' 's Dream, though both of these plays are mentioned by Meres. There is an evident presumption against these views. A second requirement is, of course, that no comedy can be considered to represent Love's Labour's Won unless it can be shown that the play either was, or at least may have been, in existence in some form as early as 1598. In the absence of definite external testimony, a great variety of evidence bearing upon the probable date of a particular play may need to be considered. That the title Love's Labour's Won should aptly designate the course of the action in the play which we suppose to have been thus named, seems to be a third reasonable requirement. It is not entirely clear, however, that we have a right to expect that the name in question shall apply with peculiar fitness. The companion play, Lovers Labour's Lost, is not very happily named. Tieck recognized this by giving to the German translation the title Liebes Leid und Lust. It may seem prob- able, just for this reason, that the other of the two parallel designations was peculiarly apt. But even if we were to accept this inconclusive argument as sound, we should not be greatly helped, since the phrase Love's Labour's Won is almost a formula for the action of a romantic comedy. We may almost exalt it to a class name, and speak of the love's-labour's-won comedies. Few good English comedies would fail to be included in this class. Says Furness: Under Love labours wonne, I suppose he [Meres] may have had in mind any one of several Comedies, wherein the labours of love were successful, as they generally are in all Comedies." The similarity of the names Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won leads us to expect parallelisms and correspondences between the plays themselves. Considerations of this nature may be of some service in testing the claim of any comedy to be accepted as having once borne the second of these designations. We 1* Preface to Variorum edition of Much Ado About Nothing (Philadelphia, 1899), p. xiv. 162 Albert H. Tolman should expect the two companion plays to be similar in style and versification. Es- pecially should we expect them to agree in tone, in spirit and mental attitude, in the mood which produced them and the mood which they produce. About the same proportion of jest and earnest would probably appear in each. Just how far the two plays may fairly be expected to correspond in structure it is hard to say. The dramatist is so dependent upon the nature of his material that a very high degree of structural agreement, or similarity, even between two companion pieces, is hardly to be looked for. Still, some correspondence of action to action, feature to feature, and character to character, would be probable. We may look upon agreement with Lovers Labour's Lost in style and versification, agreement in tone, and correspondence in dramatic structure, as three more points to be considered in connection with any play that is proposed as a claimant for the title Lovers Labour's Won. It seems probable, also, that the play referred to by Meres, if compared with Love's Labour's Lost, would show many detailed similarities of thought and expres- sion. We have thus mentioned seven criteria, of various degrees of cogency, by which we may test the proposal to accept any particular comedy of Shakespeare as Love's Labour's Won under another name. To summarize these seven points in a few words, we may call them: absence from Meres's list, date, aptness of Meres's title, similarity to Love's Labour's Lost in style and versification, in tone, in structure, in details of thought and language. In treating each separate theory that we take up, it will usually be sufficient to refer to only those topics, or tests, among the seven just men- tioned, under which definite evidence is presented. The various theories which have been advanced concerning Love's Labour's Won will be considered in the following order: I. That Love's Labour's Won has been lost. II. That it is to be identified with Love's Labour's Lost. III. With A Midsummer- Night' 's Dream. IV. With The Tempest. V. With All's Well That Ends Well. VI. With Much Ado About Nothing. VII. With The Taming of the Shrew. It will be useful to have before us also the chronological order in which these theories were made public. So far as the writer can determine, the above views were put forth in the following succession : 15 1. AWs Well; proposed by Farmer in 1767. 2. The Tempest; by Hunter, 1839. 3. Love's Laborer's Lost; by a writer in The Quarterly Review, 1840. 4. That Lovers Labour's Won has been lost; proposed by the same Quarterly Reviewer as an alternative solution, 1840. 15 References will be given later under the separate theories. 163 U 8 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" 5. The Taming of the Shrew ; by Craik, 1857. 6. Much Ado About Nothing ; by Brae, 1860. 7. A Midsummer -Night's Dream; by von Westenholz, 1902. As might be expected in view of the variety of opinions just indicated, there have not been wanting those who have either suggested or affirmed that the question will never admit of any fairly decisive settlement unless new evidence bearing upon it shall come to light. This inability to form any decided opinion may perhaps be said to constitute an eighth answer to the problem ; but it has seemed best not to classify and treat this together with the seven more positive theories. The statements of some who hold this opinion against opinions, or incline toward it, will be noted at the close of the paper. I. THE VIEW THAT THE PLAY CALLED "LOVE'S LABOUR'S WON" HAS BEEN LOST A writer in the Quarterly Review is the sole representative of the theory con- cerning Love's Labour's Won which is to be discussed in the next division of this paper. As an alternative to that theory, however, he considers the view that the play in question has been lost, to have much probability. In opposing Hunter's advocacy of The Tempest as the play sought for, he says: Why should Mr. Hunter think it improbable that a play of Shakespeare's should be lost ? Surely, in the troubled times of the fanatical and anti-theatrical generation which succeeded him, it was much more probable that, unless published immediately after his death, any work of our immortal dramatist's should be destroyed than preserved. 16 Halliwell-Phillipps is strongly inclined to the view that our play has entirely disappeared. His words are: Love Labours Won, a production which is nowhere else alluded to, is one of the numerous works of that time which have long since perished, unless its graceful appellation be the original or a secondary title of some other comedy. 17 In his recent Introduction to Shakespeare Professor Dowden puts the matter thus : The Love's Labour's Won which Meres names may be a lost play of Shakespeare, or pos- sibly, as has been conjectured, All's Well that Ends Well in an earner form may have borne this title. 18 The fact that Fletcher's comedy The Wild-Goose Chase had been "long lost" when the folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher appeared in 1647 might be thought to support the hypothesis now before us concerning Love's Labour's Won. But the publisher in his address to the readers lamented the absence of The Wild-Goose Chase as the only omission in his volume. Moreover, the play was soon recovered, and was published in 1652. We should note, however, that there is no early mention of AlFs Well that Ends Well,or allusion to it; 19 also that the only supposed early reference to Measure for Meas- 16 Quarterly Review, Vol. LXV (1840), p. 481. ments in tho next paragraph concerning The Wild-Ooose 17 Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 10th ed. (London, Chase, see Ward > a History of English Dramatic Liter- 1898) Vol. I p. 172. ature. Vol. II, 2d ed. (London, 1899), p. 707. is London and New York, n. d., p. 30.-For the state- ioHebford, Eversley Sh., Vol. ID, p. 111. 164 Albert H. Tolman 9 ure is one that we could not possibly recognize if we did not possess the text. 20 It is not impossible that an early comedy of Shakespeare should so far disappear from men's knowledge that the only trace to reach us should be the mention of the title by a single writer. We cannot be sure that no early and relatively unimportant play of Shake- speare had disappeared, simply because the editors of the Folio said nothing about any such loss. ii. "love's labour's lost" The Quarterly Reviewer whose article has been noticed in the previous section, offers also the following suggestion: May not Love's Labours Won be the second part of the title of Love's Labours Lost f The passage in Meres, where the names immediately follow each other, would seem to countenance such a conjecture; and the story of the comedy would fully bear it out. In it Love's Labours — comic labours — are both lost and won: lost, because they led to a year of penance; and won, because, at the end of that year, they were to receive their reward. 21 The fact, already referred to, that Tieck gave the title Liebes Leid und Lust to the German translation of this play, is an interesting recognition of the truth of the last sentence quoted. When one reads the passage from Meres that furnishes the basis of our whole discussion, it seems perfectly clear that he mentions by name six different tragedies and six different comedies, all by Shakespeare. Dowden makes the natural comment: " It will be noticed that Meres mentions six plays of each kind, preserving a balanced sym- metry which he affects." Dowden then adds: "Possibly he made omissions, possibly he pressed into his list the doubtful Titus, with the object of equalising the number of tragedies and comedies named by him." 22 How far does Meres " affect a balanced symmetry" in the sketch where occurs the passage that we are seeking to interpret? It is impossible for us to reprint the entire essay ; but, as the six remaining references to Shakespeare fairly represent the style of the disquisition, and as they have an independent interest for students of the great dramatist, they are given here: As the Greeke tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripedes, Aeschilus, Sophocles, Pindarus, Phocylides, and Aristophanes ; and the Latine tongue by Virgill, Ouid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ansonius and Claudianus; so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeouslie inuested in rare ornaments and resplendent abili- ments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow and Chapman. ^F* T' ^T* H* T* ^ -f^ "I* 't* t* As Ouid saith of his worke; Iamque opus exegi, quod nee Iouis ira, nee ignis, Nee poterit ferrum, nee edax abolere vetustas. And as Horace saith of his; Exegi monumentum aere perennius ; Regalique situ pyrami- dumaltius; Quod nonimber edax; Non Aquilo impotens possit diruere ; aut innumerabilis Mlbid., p. 231. MShakspere Primer (New York, 1879), p. 34. 21 Quarterly Review, Vol. LXV (1840), p. 482. 165 10 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" annorum series & fuga temporum : so say I severally of sir Philip Sidneys, Spencers, Daniels, Draytons, Shakespeares, and Warners workes; Non Iouis ira ; imbres : Mars ; ferrum ; flamma, senectus, Hoc opus unda ; lues : turbo .• venena ruent. Et quanquam ad pulcherrimum hoc opus euerlendum ires illi Dij conspirabunt, Cronus, Vulcanus, & pater ipse gentis; Non tamen annorum series, non flamma, nee ensis, Aeternum potuit hoc abolere Decus. As Pindarus, Anacreon and Callimachus among the Greekes; and Horace and Catullus among the Latines are the best Lyrick Poets : so in this faculty the best among our Poets are Spencer who excelleth in all kinds) Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Bretton. As these Tragicke Poets nourished in Greece, Aeschylus, Euripedes, Sophocles, Alexander Aetolus, Achaeus Erithriaeus, Astydamas Atheneinsis, Apollodorus Tarsensis, Nicomachus Phrygius, Thespis Atticus, and Timon Apolloniates ; und these among the Latines, Accius, M. Attilius, Pomponius Secundus and Seneca ; so these are our best for Tragedie, the Lord Buck- hurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxforde, maister Edward Ferris, the Authour of the Mirrour for Magistrates, Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker and Beniamin Iohnson. The best Poets for Comedy among the Greeks are these, Menander, Aristophanes, Eupolis Atheniensis, Alexis Terius, Nicostratus, Amipsias Atheniensis, Anaxandrides Rhodius, Aristonymus, Archippus Atheniensis and Callias Atheniensis; and among the Latines, Plau- tus, Terence, Naeuius, Sext. Turpilius, Licinius Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanics : so the best for Comedy amongst vs bee, Edward Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Maister Rowley once a rare Scholler of learned Pembrooke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes one of her Maiesties Chappell, eloquent and wittie Iohn Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle. As these are famous among the Greeks for Elegie, Melanthus, Mymnerus Colophonius, Olympius Mysius, Parthenius 23 Nicaeus, Philetas Cous, Theogenes Megarensis and Pigres Halicamassaeus ; and these among the Latines, Maecenas, Ouid, Tibullus, Propertius, T. Valgius, Cassius Seuerus & Clodius Sabinus; so these are the most passionate among vs to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Loue, Henrie Howard Earle of Surrey, sir Thomas Wyat the elder, sir Francis Brian, sir Philip Sidney, sir Walter Raivley, sir Edward Dyer, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoyne, Samuell Page sometines fel- lowe of Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford, Churchyard, Bretton. 2 * In the first of the above passages, eight Greek and eight Roman writers are mated with eight Elizabethans. In the second passage, there is no " balanced symmetry." In each of the four remaining quotations there seems to be some attempt to make the number of classical writers mentioned equal to the number of Englishmen ; but under 23 Ingloby and Arbor have no comma here; Ilalliwoll- nius and Nicaeus : Witts Academy, a Treasurie of Goulilcn Phillipps has one. According to Suidas, Parthenius the Sentences, etc byFr:M (London, 1636), Part elegiac writer was a Nicaian; and the word Nicaeus cannot 2, p. 628.— Ancient critical essays upon Eyiglish Poets and here be explained in any other way. Miss Louise Prouty, Polsy, ed. by J. Haslewood, 1815. of the Boston Public Library, states that the two following 2*Shakspcre Allusion-Books, Part I, edited by C. M. reprints of this passage show no comma between Parthe- Inqleby (London, 1874), pp. 157, 160-62. 166 Albert H. Tolman 11 the elegiac poets, according to the punctuation of Ingleby and Arber, fifteen English writers are set over against seven Greeks and seven Romans. The symmetry of the passage concerning "Poets for Comedy "is imperfect in all three of the reprints acces- sible to the writer ; ten Greek and six Roman writers are balanced by seventeen Elizabethans. The suggestion of the Quarterly Reviewer is, practically, that Meres pressed into service the double title of a single comedy in order to secure a merely formal sym- metry, and thus make the titles of five comedies balance those of six tragedies. Since a similar explanation is brought forward more distinctly by von Westenholz in the next division of this paper, the discussion of the question will be deferred until then. The natural presumption is against this method of meeting the difficulty. III. "a midsummer-night's dream" The view just examined makes Love's Labour's Won another name for the play Love's Labour's Lost. But there is about the same grammatical and prima facie basis for another suggestion, namely, that Love's Labour's Won is the first title, or the first half of the title, of the comedy which follows it in Meres's list, A Midsummer- Night' 's Dream. However, this view seems to have been first put forward in the present year (1902) in an acute and gracefully worded article by a German scholar, Professor von Westenholz. 20 If we disregard for the moment the manifest objection that Meres seems to men- tion six different comedies to balance six tragedies, it is really surprking how much von Westenholz finds in support of his conjecture. He insists that in a play which is to be identified with Love's Labour's Won, we must expect to find a parallelism with Love's Labour's Lost corresponding to the intentional parallelism in the titles. Agreement in the general tone, and marked correspondences in the action and the characters, are to be looked for. Von Westenholz finds only two comedies in all those of Shakespeare which in general plan and in tone (nach Anlage und Tonart) can be accepted as mentally and spiritually related (geistig verwandt) to Love's Labour's Lost. These are As You Like It and A Midsummer-Night' s Dream; and in the former of these the other correspondences desired are wanting. This critic considers that the Duke, Lysander, and Demetrius, in A Midsummer- Night's Dream, correspond to three of the lovers in Love's Labour's Lost, the King, Longaville, and Dumain. He even finds the agreement in the initials of the courtiers' names to be significant, since the Elizabethans did "something affect the letter." Biron as a lover has no analogue in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, but as humorist and interpreter of the action we find a counterpart in Puck. It is Biron and Puck who express the contrast in the outcome of the two plays in contrasted 25 "Shakespeares 'Gewonnene Liebesmah,' " in the Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, January 14, 1902, pp. 77-9. 167 12 Shakespeare's "Love's Laboub's Won" passages, which remind us at once of the titles Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won: Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill. — L. L. Lost, V, ii, 884, 885. Jack shall have Jill ; Nought shall go ill. —A M.-N. Dream, III, ii, 461, 462. The daring suggestion is made that perhaps Puck is called Kobin because that name contains the same letters that are in Biron. We may add that the strange iden- tification of the dainty Puck with Kobin Goodfellow [A. M.-N. D., II, i, 34), the toiling "lubber fiend" of Milton's L' Allegro, is thus given a still stranger explanation. Von Westenholz sets over against each other the play, or procession, of the Nine Worthies, in one comedy, and the foolish characters who produce it, and, in the other, the play of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the craftsmen-actors. This is in many ways a striking parallel. The correspondence which is noted between Armado's lofty wooing of Jaquenetta and Titania's infatuation for Bottom is less marked. The fact that Bottom jests with each of the other servants of Titania but not with Moth (A M.-N. D., Ill, i; IV, i), von Westenholz explains by the bold supposition that Moth was a character added after the completion of the play, solely for the pur- pose of reminding us of the little page bearing that name in Love's Labour's Lost. It is suggested by von Westenholz that Love's Labour's Lost failed to keep the stage because of its weakness as an acting play; that this setting aside of its com- panion-piece took away the special significance of the title Love's Labour's Won ; and that the play which had borne this last name came to be known later as A Midsummer- Night's Dream. This new appellation should be interpreted as a fanciful sugges- tion concerning the origin of the play ; thus we escape the difficulty that the action closes on the evening of May Day. Meres is supposed to have used the double title both for the sake of greater clearness, the play having borne each name in turn, and especially that he might preserve a superficial balance between the two parts of his list. The Taming of the Shrew, which is believed to have been in existence, was perhaps excluded because of its excessive borrowing from its source, the comedy called The Taming of a Shrew (wegen der allzu engen Anlehnung an die Vorlage), or for other reasons. To say that Meres put in a double title for one comedy in order to preserve an outward equality between the two divisions of his catalogue, skilfully turns the flank of those who have relied upon the symmetry and balance of the "comparatiue dis- course" as proving that each half of the list contains six plays. According to von Westenholz, Meres was indeed so fond of outward symmetry that he was content to balance six titles representing five comedies against 6ix titles representing six tragedies. In saying this, von Westenholz is really supporting the theory of the Quarterly 168 Albert H. Tolman 13 Keviewer concerning Love's Labour's Lost, examined in the previous section, just as much as his own. One cannot help feeling that it would have been more natural for Francis Meres to drop one of the tragedies from his catalogue, naming only five dramas of each kind, than to set over against an actual play a mere cipher, a dummy title. Von Westenholz might well have called attention to the fact known to all that the Folio and the early quartos show us not a single play of "Henry the 4.", as cited by Meres, but two plays, The First Part of King Henry the Fourth and The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth. Even if we admit that Meres felt his title "Henry the 4." to represent two closely related dramas and not one long drama, this method of reducing or compressing seven titles to six in the list of tragedies offers little support to the conjecture that five real titles were extended to six apparent ones in the list of comedies. The First Folio, as is well known, prints the plays of Shakespeare in three sepa- rate divisions, called in the preliminary "Catalogue," or table of contents, "Comedies, Histories, Tragedies"; and the "Histories," the plays named from English kings sub- sequent to the Norman Conquest, are given in their historical order. Von Westenholz argues from these facts that it is very probable that the order in which the plays are printed in the two other divisions of the Folio is based upon some real principle or principles, although the existing arrangement has not seemed to show any distinct plan. He finds it significant that Love's Labour's Lost is followed immediately in the Folio by what he believes to be its companion play, A Midsummer-Nighf s Dream. Meres names these two plays together and in the same order, if we admit that A Midsummer- Nighf s Dream is first designated by a former title Love's Labour's Won. It is a striking fact, which the present writer has not seen noted, that the comedies named by Meres, disregarding the uncertain Love's Labour's Won, are printed in the Folio in the order in which he names ihem, though not consecutively. This is made clear in the following table : Folio Order Order in Meres The Tempest The Two Gentlemen of Verona Gentlemen of Verona The Merry Wives of Windsor Measure for Measure The Comedy of Errors Errors Much Ado about Nothing Love's Labour's Lost Lone labors lost Loue labours wonne A Midsummer-Night's Dream Midsummers night dreame The Merchant of Venice Merchant of Venice As You Like It The Taming of the Shrew All's Well that Ends Well Twelfth Night; or, What You Will The Winter's Tale 169 14 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" How shall we account for this strange agreement in the order of the Folio and of Meres? Can it be that the editors of the Folio were acquainted with the passage in the " comparatiue discourse," and consciously or unconsciously made their arrangement agree therewith ? If the list of Meres is to conform throughout to the order of the Folio, as it does in the case of the five known comedies which it contains, then we are limited, apparently, to the three theories concerning Love's Labour's Won that have now been presented, namely : Love's Labour's Won has been lost ; the name is a second title for Love's Labour 's Lost ; the name is a first title for A Midsummer-Night's Dream. The acuteness and skill with which von Westenholz has worked out and presented his theory almost blind one to to its fundamental difficulty. Some of his arguments have undeniable force. IV. "THE TEMPEST" Much attention has been given during the past thirty years to the question of the chronological order in which Shakespeare's plays were written. In other words, men have studied more carefully than ever before the progressive development of Shake- speare's mind and art. Every student of the subject knows that, as one result of this inquiry, The Tempest has come to be accepted as one of the latest plays of its great author. The comedy shows in a high degree those peculiarities of versification, style, and spirit which have been found to mark the closing period of Shakespeare's writing. It seems really impossible that the play can have been in existence at the time when Meres wrote his " comparatiue discourse." We shall therefore give but little space to the theory of Rev. Joseph Hunter that Love's Labour's Won is a name that was once given to The Tempest. This view was published in a separate Disquisition in 1839, and Hunter enlarged and fortified his statement of it in his New Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1845. 26 In what way is it [asks Hunter] that Prospero makes trial of the love of Ferdinand for Miranda? How, but by imposing upon him certain labours? The particular kind of labour is the placing in a pile logs of firewood. He serves in this as Jacob did for Rachel, winning his bride from her austere father by them. In other words he proves the sincerity of his affection to the satisfaction of Prospero by the faithfulness with which he performs these labours, and thus his love labours win the consent of Prospero to their union. 27 Concerning Hunter's fundamental contention that Love's Labour's Won is a fit- ting designation for The Tempest, Knight observes: Our belief in the significancy of Shakspere's titles would be at an end if even a " main incident " was to suggest a name, instead of the general course of the thought or action. 28 Says Furness upon the same point: For us who are not convinced by Hunter's arguments, it is sufficient to remember that Prospero's object in subjecting the young Prince to his power was gained as much after the first 26 Vol. I, Part II, pp. 123-89. Abundant extracts are ™ Edition Shakspere, 2d ed. (London, 1812) , Introduc- given in Furness's Variorum edition of The Tempest tion to AWs Well, Vol. I, p. 335. (Philadelphia, 1892), pp. 284-94. Instead of the full title of an edition of the complete VNew Illustrations, Vol. I, Part II (London, 1845), p. works of the dramatist, the abbreviation "Ed. Shake- 133. speare " (Shakspore, etc.) will sometimes be used. 170 Albert H. Tolman 15 [log] had been carried, as after the thousandth, and that the labour in itself amounted to noth- ing, and could really win nothing; Miranda's hand was not set as the price of it, and in fact Prospero had adopted Ferdinand as his future son-in-law before he was shipwrecked, so that it could not have been any labours of Ferdinand that won Miranda. 29 Hunter was never able to gain adherents to his view, and the later developments of Shakespearean study have deprived this theory both of probability and interest. The further arguments for and against it are accessible in Furness's edition of The Tempest, and need not be detailed here. v. "all's well that ends well" We have noted that Tyrwhitt first called attention to Meres's book in 1766. Farmer, in his essay On the Learning of Shakespeare, 1767, was the first to offer a suggestion as to the meaning of the enigmatical title found in Meres. He speaks of "All's Well that Ends Well, or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, Love's Labour Wonne." 30 Farmer's conjecture was probably suggested by the fitness of the title Love's Labour's Won, considered by itself, to serve as a designation for AIVs Well. Malone in 1778, in the first edition of his essay, An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in which the Plays of Shakspeare Were Written, accepted Farmer's conjecture, and gave to AIVs Well the date 1598, the very year when we are to suppose that it is mentioned by Meres under another name. "No other of our authour's plays," Malone declared, " could have borne that title [Love's Labour's Won] with so much propriety." 81 Nevertheless, the mature style of certain portions caused Malone later to assign 1606 as a more probable date for the writing of this comedy. 32 The difficulty which compelled this scholar to abandon his first opinion would probably have prevented a general acceptance of Farmer's conjecture, had not another peculiarity of AIVs Well made it seem entirely feasible to combine in one theory all that was essential in both of Malone's opinions, apparently contradictory though they were. According to Collier, Coleridge expressed the opinion "in 1811, and again in 1818, though it is not found in his ' Literary Remains,' that ' All's Well that Ends Well,' as it has come down to us, was written at two different, and rather distant periods of the poet's life. He pointed out very clearly two distinct styles, not only of thought, but of expression." 33 In his Lectures on Shakspere, as now collected and published, Coleridge speaks of AIVs Well as having been "originally intended as the counterpart of 'Love's La- bour's Lost.' " 34 It is clear, therefore, that he accepted also the suggestion of Farmer. Two facts already indicated — the prima facie fitness of the title Love's Labour's Won to designate the play of All's Well, and the apparent existence in the play side by 29 Variorum ed. of The Tempest, p. 288. 32 Variorum Shakespeare of 1821, edited by Boswell 30 The Boswell-Malone Variorum edition of Shake- AND Malone, Vol. II, p. 406. speare (London, 1821), Vol. I, p. 314. 33 Ed. Shakespeare, J. P. Colliee, 2d ed. (London, 31 Edition Shakspeare (London, 1790), Vol. I, Part I, 1858 >- VoL n > P- 529 - p. 319. 3i London, 1885 (1883) , p. 249. 171 16 Shakespeabe's ''Love's Laboub's Won" side of two widely dissimilar styles of writing — have led perhaps the majority of Shake- spearean students at the same time to accept the identification proposed by Farmer, and to admit that portions of AIVs Well are later than 1598. While no two of these critics would express themselves in just the same way, Collier's statement of the matter is a fairly representative one : My notion is that " All's Well that Ends Well " was in the first instance, and prior to 1598, called " Love's Labour's Won," and that it had a clear reference to " Love's Labour's Lost," of which it might be considered the counterpart. It was then, perhaps, laid by for some years, and revived by its author, with alterations and additions, about 1605 or 1606, when the new title of "All's Well that Ends Well" was given to it. 85 The "theory that in the title Loue labours ivonne Meres refers to an earlier form of the play AIVs Well that Ends Well has been held by Coleridge (as already indicated), Tieck, Collier (already cited), Lloyd, Verplanck, Dyce, White, Gervinus, von Friesen, Ward, Elze, Fleay (first opinion), Furnivall, Stokes, Hudson, Boyle, Brandes, and Herford. 36 Those scholars who believe that AIVs Well existed in its present form as early as 1598 are able to identify that play with Love's Labour's Won without any reference to the question whether or not it ever underwent a revision. This is in general the position of Farmer (already cited), of Drake (who was perhaps ignorant of Coleridge's opinion), of Ulrici, Knight, Staunton, Delius, W. Konig, Kreyssig, and Sidney Lee. 37 The critics just named attach no importance to the suggestion that AIVs Well experienced revision. Knight, to be sure, speaks of the possibility that the comedy may have been first produced "in an imperfect form." 88 W. Konig thinks that a later revision, if it took place at all, cannot have been of any importance. Delius finds no grounds for the view that AIVs Well was composed at different periods. He gives the date as 1598, on account of the supposed reference in Meres, but says that the style of the play would suggest a later period. 35 Ed. Shakespeare, 1858, Vol. II, p. 530. p. 336; Fleay, Shakespeare Manual (London, 1876 [1874]), „._, , ,, , ... . . pp. 224-6; Furnivall, Intro, to Leopold Shakspere (Lon 36The names of the above critics are given approxi- *, no-nii i ■ ™ • i ^_j mately in chronological order. A date added in brack- ets in the next paragraph represents either the year of the original edition of the work cited, or the date at which the opinion in question is believed to have been made public, though the present writer cannot be sure what is in a book that he has not seen don, 1881 [1877]), p. lxi; Stokes, Chronological Order of Sh.'s Plays (London, 1878), pp. 110-13; Hudson, Harvard Shakespeare (Boston, 1880-1), Vol. IV, pp. 3-6; Boyle, "AU's Well that Ends Well and Love's Labour's Won," Englische Studien, Vol. XIV (1890), pp. 408-21; Beandes, William Shakespeare (ono-volumo edition of English translation), _,, ., , , , .. ., .. .„ (New York, 1899), pp. 47-9, 393, 399; Heeford, Eversley Sh. The authors named have been consulted in the follow- , T , „' 1: , L TX ' ' ' ' * .... mi .. j • tr _ i csu i (London, 1899), Vol. Ill, pp. 111-18. ing editions: Tieck, quoted in Knight a ed. Shakspere (London, 1842 [1841]), Vol. I, pp. 337, 338 (the sets of Tieck 37 Drake, Shakspeare and His Times (London, 1817), consulted seem not to contain all of his writings on Shake- Vol. n - PP- 422 > i23 < Ulbici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art peare) ; Lloyd, Critical Essays on the Plays of Sh. (London, (London, no date [published 1839, translated 1876]), Vol. I, 1894 [in Singer's 2d ed. of Sh., 1856]), p. 141; Veeplanck, PP- 8*, 9° J Knight, od. Shakspere, 2d ed. (London, 1S42 quoted by White (see below). Vol. V, p. 9; Dyce, The Works [W41])i Vol. I, pp. 329-38; Staunton, The Works of Sh., ofSh., 5th ed. (London, 1886(1857]), Vol. Ill, p. 195; White, mns - b y Gilbert (London, 1881 [1857]), Vol. VI, p. 125; The Works of Sh., Vol. V (Boston, 1857), pp. 7-10; Gervinus, Delius, Shaksperes Werke, neue Ausg. (Elberfeld, 1864), Shakespeare Commentaries, trans, by Bunnett, 5th od. Einloitung zu A IV s Well; W. Konig, Jahrbuchd. dcutschen (London, 1892 [3d Gorman ed., 1862]), pp. 173, 174; VON Sh.-Qesellschaft, Vol. X (1875), p. 215; Kreyssig, Vorle- FRlEaBX,JahrbuchdcrdeutschenShakespeare-Gesellschaft, sungcnilber Sh., 3to|Aufl. (Berlin, 1877 [1862]), Vol. II, p. Vol. II (1867), pp. 48-54 ; Ward, History of English Dramatic m ; S. Lee, A Life of William Sh. (Now York and London, Literature, Vol. II, 2d ed. (London, 1899 [1875]), pp. 117-19; 1898 )« P- 162, Elze, William Sh., trans, by Schmitz (London, 1888 [1876]), 38 Edition citod, Vol. I, pp. xliv, 338. -72 Albert H, Tolman 17 Some of those who uphold the view of Coleridge are very positive in asserting that AIVs Well contains passages written at widely separated dates. White and Verplanck state that they formed this opinion before learning that it had been held by Coleridge. Hudson and Boyle think that the contrast between the two styles, "the Poet's rawest and ripest styles " (Hudson), is pronounced. Furnivall declares that " no intelligent person can read the play without being struck by the contrast of early and late work in it." Boyle has probably presented more fully and carefully than any one else the evi- dence for the view that AIVs Well has been revised from an earlier version; 39 while Hertzberg, who does not accept the identification with Love's Labour's Won, has given the only detailed argument known to the present writer in support of the opinion of Delius that AIVs Well was written at one burst (aus einem Guss).* This controversy must be briefly outlined here. The following passage is a speci- men of those parts of AIVs Well that are considered to be of early date: Helena. The great'st grace lending grace, Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring, Ere twice in murk and occidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quench 'd his sleepy lamp, Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, Health shall live free, and sickness freely die. — II, i, 163-71. The Marlowe-like rhetoric and the youthful formalism of these lines are noticeable. Other portions of the play that seem to show Shakespeare's early style are: Helena's rhymed soliloquy at the close of the first scene — I, i, 231-44; and the indelicate con- versation a little earlier between Helena and Parolles — I, i, 121-78. The hiatus at 1. 179 seems to indicate that parts have been carelessly patched together. Shakespeare's earlier versification seems to mark portions of AIVs Well. All passages in which rhymes are abundant have been called early by some, irrespective of deeper considerations. Herford has carefully discriminated and summarized the evi- dence from the rhyme. 41 Some rhymed passages are plainly of an early type. Hertz- berg points out the number and quality of the run-on lines (enjambements) in the last speech of the first scene, as a proof that it cannot be early ; but the fact that such lines as the following are found in one hundred consecutive lines of Love's Labour's Lost seems to show that he has made too much of this: V, ii, 326, 327, 343, 351, 355, 367, 376, 408, 416. Note for example: (Biron) This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice M Englische Studien, Vol. XTV (1890), pp. 408-21. Sh.-Gesellschaft, 2te Aufl. 1897 (lte, 1871), Berlin; Einlei- «o Shakespeare's dramatische Werke, nach der TJeber- tTm S ro Ende S^t, Alles gut, Vol. XI, pp. 345-62. setzung von .... Schlegel und .... Tieck .... nnter *' The Eversley Sh., Vol. Ill, pp. 111-13. Redaction von H. Ulrici, heiaosgegeben durch die doutscho 173 18 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" In honorable terms : nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and in ushering Mend him who can. — V, ii, 325-9. Arguments for the early date of portions of AIVs Well have been found in the colorless personality of the clown and his lack of connection with the action ; 42 in the fact that Parolles seems a first sketch for Falstaff (Tieck) ; in the indelicate conversa- tions; in the agreements of thought between the dialogue of Helena and Parolles already referred to (I, i, 121-78) and the first seventeen of the Sonnets (these dwell upon the duty of having offspring) ; and in the inconsistencies in the portrayal of Helena and Parolles. 43 A few features suggest a special connection of All's Well with Love's Labour's Lost. The First and Second Lords in one play and one of the four suitors in the other have the same name, Dumain. Certain similarities exist between the characters Parolles and Armado." The tone of the indecorous jesting in the two plays is very similar. No better example can be given of the mature manner that marks portions of All's Well than the farewell words of the Countess to Bertram. This advice reminds us of that given by Polonius to Laertes, but surpasses that both in brevity and depth. Countess. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape ! thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birthright ! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none : be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down, Fall on thy head ! — I, i, 70-79. Other passages showing Shakespeare's riper style are: Helena's soliloquy express- ing her love for Bertram — I, i, 90-109 ; and her decision to leave Rousillon — III, ii, 102-32. Some of the maturer passages in All's Well have parallels in Hamlet and Meas- ure/or Measure.'* One connection with Hamlet has just been pointed out. The disagreements between the dates assigned to this play by reputable critics seem to demand some such explanation as that afforded by the theory that an early play or fragment was afterward revised or completed. The dates of Knight, 46 1589-93, and Ulrici, 47 1591-92, are in marked contrast with that of Malone, 48 1606. Such a difference of opinion as this can hardly be paralleled in the case of another of Shake- speare's plays. *a Von Frtesen, Jahrbuch, Vol. II, p. 52. «« Ed. Shakspere, 2d ed., Vol. I, p. xlvi. Judging from « Boyle, Eng. Studien, Vol. XIV, pp. 416-18. statements in other writers, Knight has somewhere given the date as lu90. « Brandes, William Sh., one-vol. ed., p. 49. 47 sh.'s Dramatic Art, Vol. II, p. 410. « Boyle, p. 416; Brandes, pp. 393 ff. «sThe Boswell-Malone Variorum, 1821, Vol. n, p. 406. 174 Albert H. Tolman 19 A direct reference to the supposed former title of the comedy has been seen by some in one line of All's Well, and a possible reference to its two names in another line: {Helena) Will you be mine, now you are doubly won? —V, hi, 315. {King) All is well ended, if this suit be won, That you express content. — V, hi, 336-7 {Epilogue). Boyle has pointed out some inadvertences and inconsistencies which seem to him to support the view that the play experienced revision, but they hardly prove anything more than carelessness. The different conjectures as to when and why the supposed former title of this play was replaced by the present one are of interest. The usual view is the one already expressed by Collier, namely, that the comedy once existed in an earlier form, which was known as Love's Labour's Won, that when it was revised into its present condition it received for that reason its new name. The frequent refer- ences to the proverbial title, All's Well that Ends Well, occur in passages showing the later style (IV, iv, 35; V, i, 25; V, iii, 333, 336), and are usually looked upon as intentional references to the new name that was already selected. Malone, in stating his first opinion, conjectured that it was the presence of the pro- verb in the text that brought about the change of name. 49 Staunton thinks that the play " was originally intituled ' Love's Labour's Won ; or, All's Well that End's Well.' " 60 Ulrici 51 and Kreyssig H suggest that the change was made in order to avoid inappropriate comparisons between this play and Love's Labour's Lost. The consciousness of having a large majority of Shakespearean scholars with them has led some of the later advocates of All's Well to speak with unwarranted confi- dence. Brandes goes so far as to say: Since it is scarcely conceivable that a play of Shakespeare's, once acted, should have been entirely lost, the only question is, which of the extant comedies originally bore that title [Love's Labour's Won]. But in reality there is no question at all : the play is All's Well that Ends Well — not, of course, as we now possess it, in a form and style belonging to a quite mature period of the poet's life, but as it stood before the searching revision, of which it shows evident traces. 53 In spite of the popularity of the view that All's Well was referred to by Meres as Love's Labour's Won, and in spite of the arguments in its favor, there are grave objections. All's Well has, indeed, certain characteristics that seem to favor its claim, but it has also fundamental deficiencies. In the first place, no close connection between this comedy and its supposed brother-play has been pointed out. The marked correspondences and parallelisms between the two pieces which we properly expect to find, do not exist. The titles Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won seem intended to designate companion-plays. All's Well is not a good companion-piece to Love's Labour's Lost, and it seems safe to say that it never was. «Ed. Shakspeare (London, 1790), Vol. I, Part I, p. 319. « Vorlesungen fiber Sh., 3te Aufl. (Berlin, 1877), Vol. II, to Ed. Shakespeare (London, 1881 [1857]), Vol. VI, p. 125. P- m - USh.'s Dramatic Art, Vol. II, p. 90. 63 William Sh., one-vol. edition (New York, 1899), p. 47. 175 20 Shakespeabe's "Love's Laboub's Won" In the second place, there is a marked contrast in tone, in mood, between these two plays that are supposed to have been thus closely associated ; and this contrast can hardly have been preceded in an earlier version of All's Well by any genuine and deep-seated agreement. The central situation of All's Well, the desperate venture of the indomitable Helena, would be intolerable if treated in the tone of easy banter that distinguishes Love's Labour's Lost. A Helena who was not fundamentally serious would be nothing — yes, worse than nothing. AIVs Well satisfies some of the conditions, then, that must be met by a play that is a candidate for the title Love's Labour's Won; what may fairly be termed the more fundamental conditions it does not satisfy. Kenny uttered some plain truth on this subject nearly forty years ago, when he said: Coleridge believed that " All's Well that Ends Well " was originally intended as the coun- terpart of " Love's Labour's Lost." But we can discover no indication of any such intention, and there is, we think, as little resemblance between the two works as between any other two come- dies of their author. 54 Ingleby tells us: Love\s] Labours Wonne .... has not been satisfactorily identified with any of the plays in our collection. For one thing, we do not think it likely to be All's well that ends well, as Farmer conjectured, which, in our opinion, offers no sufficient resemblance or contrast to serve as a pendant to Loves Labours Lost.™ With the following well-considered words of von Westenholz we close this division of the subject: Aber selbst wenn die Handlung von " Ende gut, alles gut " mehr als die eines anderen Lustspiels den Titel " Gewonnene Liebesmuh " rechtfertigen sollte, so ist doch noch ein sehr wichtiger Umstand dabei unberiicksichtigt geblieben. Jener Titel karn dem Stucke, das ihn trug, gewissermassen nicht, oder doch nicht in erster Linie, urn seiner selbst willen zu, vielmehr erhielt es denselben offenbar in gewollter Gegenuberstellung zu der bereits vorhandenen " Ver- lorenen Liebesmuh." Derselbe Parallelismus aber, der zwischen den beiden Titeln bestand, musste naturgemass auch zwischen den beiden Stiicken selbst zutage treten und zwar in Bezug auf die Vorgange, auf die Personen und vor allem auf den Charakter oder anders ausgedruckt, auf die Stimmung, in welche die Handlung gewissermassen getaucht erscheint. Namentlich in letzterer Hinsicht aber diirfte es schwer sein, in der Reihe der Shakespeare- 'schen Komodien zwei zu finden, welche weniger zu einander passen. Hier, bei fast volliger Abwesenheit dramatischer Handlung, auf halb romantischem Hintergrund ein anmuthiges Tandeln mit Worten, ein spriihendes Feuerwerk des Witzes, dort in schwerer, nicht selten derber Sprache ein ernster, mehr schau- als lustspielmassiger Stoff, dessen herbe, peinlich beruhrende Seiten die Kunst Shakespeares nur zu mildern, nicht zu unterdriicken vermochte. 56 M The Life and Genius of Sh. (London, 1864), p. 202. 56 Beilage zur Allegemcinen Zcitung, January 14, 1902, ttShakspere Allusion-Books, Part I (London, 1874), P. 78. General Intro., p. xxiv. 176 Albert H. Tolman 21 VI. In the year 1860, in an anonymous book, Mr. A. E. Brae argued that Much Ado should be accepted as the true Love's Labour's Won. bl The date of 1599 is usually given to Much Ado, because it seems to be omitted from Meres's list of 1598, while it was published in quarto form in 1600. Since the title-page of this first edition tells us that " it hath been sundrie] times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants," 58 Brae argues very plausibly that there is no grave difficulty about the date. Furness points out also that the two other comedies which were published in 1600, A Midsummer -Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, are found in Meres. 59 Brae would apply the title Love's Labour's Won to the story of Benedict and Beatrice. The name Much Ado about Nothing plainly applies to the action of Claudio and Hero. The reference to a play "called Benedicte and Betteris" in an item in the Lord-Treasurer Stanhope's Accounts for May 20, 1613, suggests " that the present title was not always adhered to." 60 Halliwell-Phillipps says, also, "that Charles the First, in his copy of the Second Folio, preserved in Windsor Castle, has added the names 'Benedick and Beatrice,' as a second title." 61 Before we examine Brae's interpretation of the titles Love's Labour's Lost and Love's Labour's Won, let us see what authority we have for the exact form in which they are usually given. We have noted that the two designations appear in Meres as Loue labors lost and Loue labours wonne. " Loues labors lost " is the form on the title-page of the first quarto of the play. The head-line of each right-hand page throughout the book is Loues Labor's lost. In the quarto the apostrophe frequently marks the abbreviation 's for is, but seems not to be used before an -s that denotes a possessive case, a plural of a noun, or the third singular indicative of a verb. It seems clear, therefore, as Furnivall points out, 62 that Labor's is meant as a contraction for Labor is. The First Folio has Loues Labour lost in the preliminary " Catalogue," or table of contents, and Loues Labour's lost as the heading for each page of the text. The proper form of the title in modern spelling would therefore seem to be Love's Labo(u)r's Lost. The corresponding title would naturally be Love's Labo(u)r's Won. Hertzberg feels, however, that in the case of Love's Labour's Won, the Labour's must be interpreted as an abbreviation for Labour has, since one does not win labour, though he may lose labour.^ Probably this difficulty will not seem important to one 67 Collier, Coleridge, and Shakespeare, by the author of *l The quotation is from Fueness, Much Ado, p. xxii. Literary Cookery (London, 1860), chap, vi, pp. 131-48. The He cites " Halliwell, Outlines, etc., p. 262," as his author- present writer used the copy in the Boston Public Library. ity. The writer of this article has not found the statement The extracts in Fueness'8 Variorum ed. of Much Ado in his copy of the 10th ed. of the Outlines. (Phila., 1899), pp. 367-71, are ample. 62 G eiggs, Facsimile of the First Quarto of Love's La- 58 See Fubnes8's Variorum Much Ado, p. xiii. hour's Lost, n. to p. iii of Forewords. 'Fueness'8 Much Ado, p. xiv. 63 STi.'s dramatische Werke, nach der Uebersetznng von .... Schlegel uud .... Tieck . . . . 2te Aufl. (Berlin, 60/6td, pp. xii, 368. 1897), Vol.XLEinleitung zu Ende gut, Alles gut, p. 345, note. 177 22 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" whose native tongue is English. It seems easy to interpret labour as put by metonymy for the object of the labour, the desired result. Then Love's Labour's Won would mean "the desired result of the labor is won, has been obtained." This explanation would also apply to the companion title, if desired. Hertzberg could find no example in Shakespeare of the use of 's as an abbreviation for has; but a difficult expression in The Tempest is thought by many to be an example of this contraction: "For he's a spirit of persuasion" (II, i, 235). It does not seem probable, however, that this abbreviation can be found in an early play, least of all in the title. Frequent and bold abbreviations of common words and combinations, apparently taken from colloquial usage, are a distinct mark of Shakespeare's latest style. But we are not yet through with the labor — whether of love or aversion — which falls to those who would fully consider the question of the significance of these trouble- some titles. Brae offers an interpretation of his own: It seems to have escaped notice on all hands that the mythological sense of Love's Labour would be much more consonant with the age in which Shakespeare wrote, than the sentimental sense. That is, that Love's Labours in the dramatic writing of that time, would be much more likely to be understood as the gests or exploits of the deity Love, in the same sense as the fabled Labours of Hercules. That such is really the intention of the title in the case of Love's Labour's Lost, must become apparent to any one who will attentively read the play with that previous notion. He will then perceive abundant evidence, all through, that it is the mythical exploits of the blind god that are alluded to: — in overcoming the apparently insurmountable difficulties opposed to him ; in setting at nought the vows of the king and his courtiers ; and in bringing to the feet of the princess and her ladies the very men who had forsworn all women. After scattering human resolves to the winds, and reducing to subjection the hearts that had presumed to set him at defiance, Love at length succumbs to a still more absolute deity than himself. Death steps in to frustrate his designs, at the very instant of fruition, and so his labour becomes Labour Lost. The mythological allusions are unmistakeable. Biron exclaims, when the King enters love-stricken, " Proceed, siveet Cupid : thou hast thumped him ivith thy bird-bolt under the left pap " [IV, iii, 22-4]. In another place, " Love " is " a Hercules, still climbing trees in the Hes- perides " [IV, iii, 340, 341], a direct reference to the mythological labours of Hercules ! And when the whole " mess of fools " yield themselves, rescue or no rescue, the King personifies Love and invokes him as his patron, — " Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!" [IV, iii, 366]. Now, according to the interpretation the title of this play has hitherto received at the hands of Shakespeare's editors, the mythological sense is ignored. The love's labour which, according to them, is lost, is not Love's labour, but that of the King and his fellows, " in their endeavours," as Mr. Knight explains, " to ingratiate themselves ivith their mistresses." But surely such an explanation excludes the most prominent labour of all, the conquest of the men themselves! They, so far from being partakers in the labour, are unwilling victims, — each ashamed to acknowledge his defeat to his fellows. This was the triumph, this was the exploit, — and, being attributable to Love alone, it is of itself almost sufficient to establish the true mean- ing of the title. Mr. Brae now seeks to win from his interpretation of this title an argument for his contention that Much Ado is the desired Love's Labour's Won: 178 Albert H. Tolman 23 In mythological language, a labour was an achievement of great and supernatural diffi- culty, to be undertaken only by the Gods and Heroes ; from the analogy, then, of the assumed meaning of that word in Love's Labour's Lost, something of the same character must naturally be looked for in whatever play may have borne the companion title of Love's Labour's Won ; and it is now to be shown that in no other available play is there so much of that character as in Much Ado About Nothing. In it, the same difficulty is encotmtered in bringing together sworn enemies to Love, who profess to set him at defiance; the same forced subjection of unwilling victims who are confi- dently boasting of their freedom. So completely is this recognized as a labour, that Don Pedro, the match maker, who must meddle with everybody's love affairs, and fancy them his own doing, exclaims: — " I will .... undertake one of Hercules' labours ; which is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection the one with the other " [II, i, 379-83]. Here, then, in Love's Labour's Won (?), is the same literal reference to the Labours of Hercules as that before noted in Love's Labour's Lost ! But it is in the numerous allusions to the deity Love, and to his exploits, that the most conclusive similitude exists ; — " Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly" [I, i, 273, 274]. Beatrice, in the very opening, says of Benedick: — " He set up his bills here in Messina, and challenged Cupid at the flight ; and my uncle's fool, read- ing the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt " [I, i, 39-42]. Cupid's bird-bolt! see the parallel phrase quoted above. Then, again, where Don Pedro is pluming himself upon his clever stratagem to lime Benedick, he exclaims: — " If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer : his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods " [II, i, 400-402]. But, as if in contrast to this foolish assumption, Hero, who plays off the same trick upon Beatrice, takes no part of the credit to herself: — she is one of the initiated; she has herself felt the power of the bird-bolt and knows well who sent it: — " Of this matter is little Cupid's crafty arrow made, that only wounds by hearsay" [III, i, 21-3]. And again: — "Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps " [III, i, 106]. One more of these allusions need only be added, and that principally for the sake of explaining an expression which has been much misunderstood. In the opening [the second] Scene of the third Act, Don Pedro says of Benedick : — "He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid's bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him" [III, ii, 10-12]. Here "hangman" , . . . plainly means slaughterer! a very appropriate epithet for Cupid Thus the epithet, " little hangman " designating, as it does when properly explained, Love as the slaughterer of hearts, directly corroborates the general hypothesis, that " Love's Labour," in the titles of these two plays, has mythological reference to the exploits of the god. 64 It will perhaps help us in estimating the plausibility of Brae's contention if we note that the name Cupid occurs ten times in Love's Labour's Lost, nine times in Much Ado, eight times in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and not more than twice in any other one of the plays printed as comedies in the First Folio. None of the refer- ences in A Midsummer -Night's Dream seem significant. Three of them concern Cupid's lost labor in trying to wound the " fair vestal throned by the west " (II, i, 157-65). In another, " Dian's bud " breaks the spell that had been wrought by " Cupid's flower " (IV, i, 78-79). The remaining passages in which the name of the love-god appears do not suggest that A Midsummer -Night' s Dream is the much sought for Love's Labour's Won (I, i, 169, 235; III, ii, 103, 440). «*Fueness's Variorum ed. of Much Ado (Philadelphia, 1899), pp. 369-71. 179 24 Shakespeare's "Love's Laboub's Won" Of the ten passages in Love's Labour's Lost which mention the name of Cupid, three seem not to be significant (I, ii, 67; II, i, 254; IV, iii, 58). The others follow, so far as they have not been already cited: (Armado) .... Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules' club; and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard's rapier " [I, ii, 181-3). Biron. And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip ; A very beadle to a humorous sigh ; A critic, nay, a night-watch constable ; A domineering pedant o'er the boy ; Than whom no mortal so magnificent ! This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy ; This senior- junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid ; Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator and great general Of trotting 'paritors : — O my little heart! — And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop 1 What, I ! I love ! I sue ! I seek a wife ! ******* And I to sigh for her ! to watch for her ! To pray for her ! Go to ; it is a plague That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. — Ill, 1,175-191,202-5. Rosaline. Madam, came nothing else along with that? Princess, Nothing but this ! yes, as much love in rhyme As would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper, Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name. —V, ii, 5-9. Boyet. Prepare, madam, prepare ! Arm, wenches, arm ! encounters mounted are Against your peace : Love doth approach disguised, Armed in arguments ; you'll be surprised : Muster your wits ; stand in your own defence ; Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence. Princess. Saint Denis to Saint Cupid ! What are they That charge their breath against us? say, scout, say. —V, ii, 81-88. One of the mentions of Cupid in Much Ado is non-significant (I, i, 186); but one of those already cited has especial force if we note the entire context. This context contains, also, another mention of the love-god by name: Don Pedro. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love. Benedick. With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord, not with love: prove that 180 Albert H. Tolman 25 ever I lose more blood with love than I will get again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker's pen and hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of blind Cupid. Don Pedro. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt prove a notable argument. ********** Don Pedro. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou wilt quake for this shortly. Benedick. I look for an earthquake, too, then. [I, i, 249-58, 273-5.] It seems to the writer that Brae has made out a good case for his explanation of the words Love's Labour's Lost. The interpretation which he gives is natural and unforced. Still, the same may be said for the usual understanding of the title. Brae makes much of the similarity of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado to Biron and Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost: So striking is the resemblance of design and treatment in both pairs, that without any view to the present question, they have long been spoken of as first sketch and finished portrait. But by the present hypothesis, which assumes that these two plays were designed for companion pictures, under titles differing only in denouement, the judgement is at once relieved from the necessity of regarding them as repetitions, or of supposing that the inexhaustible Shakespeare would recur to his old materials for re-working in another form. 65 The last sentence is unfortunate in view of the fact that Shakespeare was con- stantly repeating his characters and situations in other forms. The amount of dra- matic material in The Winter's Tale that had been used in previous plays is really astonishing to one who examines the comedy carefully with this in mind. Did Shakespeare abandon the device of having a heroine disguise herself as a young man, after employing it once? But there is also apparent design [says Brae] in the contrasts, as well as in the similitudes presented by these two plays. In one the prevailing feature is rhyme, in the other prose; in one the phraseology is obscure and euphuistic, in the other remarkably plain and colloquial. 66 " In short," in the words of Mr. Sludge, the Medium, " a hit proves much, a miss proves more." Really, these last points count heavily against Brae's hypothesis. Parallel passages are cited " for the purpose of showing that the two plays were probably written about the same time," but these are not numerous enough to have much force. The ingenuity and plausibility of Brae's argument caused Fleay to abandon the view of Coleridge, which, as already noted, he had supported in 1874 and 1876. In 1877, he declared that Brae had shown that Much Ado "is almost certainly the same as Love's Labour's Won.'''' In 1886, he was less positive. In 1891, he thought Much Ado "probably a rewritten version of Love's Labour's Won" 61 The additional arguments by which Fleay attempted in 1886 to strengthen Brae's view are ingenious but not valuable. However, the fine sarcasm with which Furness refutes one of these is so delicious that it cannot be said to have lived in vain. 68 65 Furness's Much Ado, p. 368. Shakespeare (London, 1886), pp. 204,205. A Biographical 66J6td. Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559-1642, 2 Vols. (London, w Introduction to Shakespearian Study (London and ' Glasgow,1877), pp 23, 25. The Life and Work of William 68 Variorum ed. of Much Ado, pp. xviii, xix. 181 26 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" vii. " the taming of the shbew" The view that is now to engage our attention was put forward by Craik in 1857. Omitting most of what he says concerning a manuscript emendation in the Collier folio, his argument runs as follows: May not the true Love's Labour's Won be what we now call The Taming of the Shrew * That Play is founded upon an older one called The Taming of a Shrew; it is therefore in the highest degree improbable that it was originally produced under its present name. The designation by which it is now known, in all likelihood, was only given to it after its predecessor had been driven from the stage, and had come to be generally forgotten. Have we not that which it previously bore indicated in one of the restorations of Mr. Collier's MS. annotator, who directs us, in the last line but one of the Second Act, instead of " in this case of wooing " to read " in this case of winning " . . . . The Play is, besides, full of other repetitions of the same key-note. Thus, in the second Scene of Act I, when Hortensio informs Gremio that he had promised Petrucio, if he would become suitor to Katharine, that they " would be contributors, And bear his charge of wooing, whatsoe'er," Gremio answers, " And so we will, provided that he win her" [I, ii, 215-17]. In the fifth Scene of Act IV, when the resolute Veronese has brought the shrew to a complete submission, Hortensio's congratulation is, " Petrucio, go thy ways ; the field is won" [IV, v, 23]. So in the concluding scene the lady's father exclaims, " Now, fair befall thee, good Petrucio ! The wager thou hast won;" to which the latter replies, "Nay, I will win my wager better yet " [V, ii, 111, 112, 116]. And his last words in passing from the stage, as if in pointed allusion to our supposed title of the piece, are — " 'Twas I won the wager, though you [Lucentio] hit the white; And, being a winner, God give you good night !" [V, ii, 186, 187.] The title of Love's Labour's Won, it may be added, might also comprehend the underplot of Lucentio and Bianca, and even that of Hortensio and the Widow, though in the case of the latter it might rather be supposed to be the lady who should be deemed the winning party." *' Hertzberg tells us that Emil Palleske and E. W. Sievers preceded himself in Germany in identifying Love's Labour's Won with The Taming of the Shrew.' In the case of Palleske no reference is given, and it has been impossible to find at Harvard University or the Boston Public Library the book or article concerned. The argument of Sievers will be given later. Hertzberg points out in favor of the theory before us that The Taming of the Shrew is not in Meres's list by its own name, although it is among the most youthful productions of Shakespeare; that Petruchio has an abundance of labor in winning the desired result ; and that, though the title Love's Labour's Won does not apply perfectly and for all the suitors, the companion title Lore's Labour's Lost is by no means an entirely happy description of the action of that comedy." Boas inclines to the view of Hertzberg, both in his argument against All's Well and in that favoring The Taming of the Shrew, "while admitting that the question has not been quite conclusively settled." ' 2 69 George L. Craik, The English of Shakespeare 71 Einleitung zu Ende gut, AUes gut. as already cited, (London, 1857), pp. 8, 9, note. The passage is omitted from p. 355. the American edition. KShakspere and His Predecessors (New York, 1896). i°Sh.'s Dramutische Werke, nach der Uebersetznng von p. 345, note. Schlegel und Tieck 2te Aufl. (Berlin, 1897, [1871]), Vol. XI, Einleituug zu Ende gut, AUes gut, p. 355. 182 Albebt H. Tolman 27 9 The question of the date of The Taming of the Shrew need not detain us long, since Shakespearean scholars are pretty well agreed that the play was in existence when Meres's list was written. It is generally accepted also that only the shrew story itself in this comedy is by Shakespeare, and that the under-plot is not his. 73 The supposed allusions in the play and to the play by means of which attempts have been made to determine the date of The Taming of the Shrew are entirely inconclusive. 74 Remembering the " inveterate skepticism " of Delius concerning most of the allusions used to establish the dates of plays, 75 and the exposure which Furness has recently made of their untrustworthiness in the case of Twelfth Night™ let us look for better evidence. The fact that the comedy called Tlie Taming of a Shrew was published in 1594 does not help very directly in determining the date of our play. The Shrew and A Shrew (as it will be convenient to call the two plays) are closely related. The taming story is the same in both, and there are also remarkable agreements in language, extend- ing even to insignificant phrases. The under-plots of the two comedies are decidedly different. The usual view is that Shakespeare took not only his main plot from A Shrew, but also the language, where that is common to the two plays. But this view has not been proved. The testimony of the versification would place Shakespeare's part of The Shrew very early in his career as a writer, Konig 77 finds the play to have a smaller percentage of run-on lines (enjambements) than any other. Moreover, in those parts of the play which are accepted as Shakespeare's, the run-on lines are less numerous than elsewhere. Of all the so-called metrical tests, this one of the frequency of run-on lines, " the stopt-line test," seems to be the most important. This importance is due both to its organic character, its close relation to the changing thought and style of the poet, and also to the large number of lines concerned in determining the percentage for each play. The small amount of rhyme in Shakespeare's part of The Shrew 78 speaks against giving to the play so early a date as "the stopt-line test" would indicate; but the metrical evidence as a whole is plainly in favor of a date before 1598. The links which Furnivall points out between The Shrew and the other dramas, concern plays that are in Meres's list, especially The Comedy of Errors.' 9 The accepted opinion that Tlie Shrew was in existence when Meres's book was written seems therefore to be well founded. A struggle for supremacy between a wife and husband was a favorite theme in mediaeval story. The Wife of Bath and the Merchant's Wife, in Chaucer, are examples '3 Collier and White stated in general terms the view '5 Preface to the Leopold Shakspere, London, now generally accepted as to what portions of the play were 76 p ref ace to Variorum ed . of Twelfth Night (Phi i ade i. written by Shakespeare. The details have been discussed vhin 1901) dd vii-xi by Fleay, Furnivall, and the present writer. See the writer's article, " Shakespeare's Part in ' The Taming of " Der Vers in Shaksperes Dramen (Strassburg, 1888), the Shrew,' " Publications of the Modern Lang. Association, P- 133- Vol. V (1890), pp, 252-77. 78p M & s . Modern Lang. Assoc.,Vol. V, pp. 269, 270. '♦See the article just named, pp. 211-13. ?9 Intro, to Leopold Shakspeare, p. xliv. 183 28 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" of assertive shrews. The half-morality Tom Tyler and His Wife,* which gives an amusing account of an attempt to tame a shrew, was probably printed in 1578. 81 The Taming of the Shrew is usually said to have appeared in print for the first time in the folio of 1623. It was also printed in quarto form in 1631. Some years ago Mr. Quaritch, the London bookseller, offered for sale a quarto copy of this play which did not contain the leaf bearing the date, but which he believed to have been printed before the First Folio. 82 The Taming of a Shrew was printed in 1591, 1596, and 1607. Since the taming story is substantially the same in both plays, all of these impressions may be reckoned together as showing the popularity of this story. This play was the only comedy of Shakespeare to call out a dramatic retort after his death ; and the existence of this companion piece, Fletcher's Tlie Woman's Prize, or, The Tamer Tamed, of itself makes it certain that our play had been a favorite. In 1633 Shakespeare's comedy was performed at court on the night of November 26, and Fletcher's on November 28. 83 Fletcher's piece seems to have been generally called by its second name, The Tamer Tamed, undoubtedly, as Weber observes, in order " to approximate the title to that of Shakespeare's play." s3 The Taming of the Shrew was revived at the Restoration. The Dutch version of 1651 is " the earliest extant transla- tion of any Shakespearean play." 84 In Germany this comedy has been many times refashioned. Whatever may have been the form of the play spoken of in 1658 as " Die wunderbare Heurath Petruvio, mit der bosen Catharine," 85 an adaptation of Shakespeare's play called " Kunst fiber alle Kunste, ein bos Weib gut zu machen," appeared in 1672, and is " the earliest impression of a German version of an entire Shakespearian piece." 86 Later adaptations are: "Christian Weise's Diebose Katha- rina, 1705; Schink's Die besdhmte Wiederbellerin, 1781, and Holbein's Liebe kann Alles, 1822; finally the now current version by Deinhardstein." 87 In Germany at the present day this comedy enjoys a surpassing popularity. From the annual statistics given in the Jahrbucher of the German Shakespeare Society we learn that, during the four years 1885-88, The Taming of the Shrew was played 297 times in the usual version, and 153 times in the Holbein adaptation, Liebe kann Alles, a total of 450 times. No other play of Shakespeare was so popular. Othello and Hamlet come next with 411 and 347 performances in the same period. In 1895, Othello was presented 114 times and The Taming of the Shrew 104 times, out of a total of 774 Shakespearean performances. In the same year Liebe kann Alles was acted "about 30 times." In 1900, out of a total of 713 performances for all the plays of Shakespeare, Othello was acted 96 times ; Hamlet and Borneo and Juliet, each 83 80 Reprinted by F. E. Schelling from the 2d ed., 1661, Bolte, Jahrbuch der deutschen Sh.-Oesellschaft, Vol. in the Publications of the Modern Lang. Assoc., Vol. XV, XXVI, pp. 78, 79. pp. <25d-89. 85 introduction to KOhler's edition of Kunst Uber alle 81 Schelling, Intro., pp. 254-7. KUnste, etc. (Berlin, 1861), p. is. 82 Bankside Shakespeare, Vol. II (New York, 1888), p. 4. 86Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany (London, 1865), p. 83 The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, ed. by A. DTCE (Boston, 1854), Vol. II, p. 178. 87Heefoed, The Evertley Sh., Vol. II (London, 1899), 8« "De dollo Bruyloft" is the title. See article by J. 181 pp. 11, 12. Albert H. Tolman 29 times; The Taming of the Shrew, 78 times. No account was kept of the presen- tation of Liebe kann Alles. In the United States The Taming of the Shrew has always enjoyed a good degree of public favor, but not the abounding measure bestowed upon it in Germany. Various comedies of the age of Elizabeth and James besides those already men- tioned deal with the general topic of shrewish and unmanageable wives; and a number of more modern plays have either been adapted from The Taming of the Shrew or suggested by it. 88 The accepted early date of The Taming of the Shrew, and its extraordinary and continuous popularity, force us to ask the question: How could such a play be omitted from Meres's list ? The only purpose of the list was to establish the claim that Shakespeare was " most excellent in both kinds [tragedy and comedy] for the stage." How could Meres omit this play with its mastery of comic technique? — this play which goes off with such captivating vigor on the stage, which has such an abund- ance of broad and even farcical comedy for the crowd, and also suggestions of deeper truth for the thoughtful? "No other play of Shakespeare," says Herford, "has come home like the The Taming of the Shrew to the business and bosoms of average men and husbands." 89 Must we believe that this comedy was omitted by Meres? Herford thinks that Meres's failure to include The Shrew is indecisive as to the date "in the case of a play so largely not Shakespeare's." 90 Von Westenholz takes the same line of explanation, when he says: Die Zahl der Shakespeare'schen Lustspiele aber diirfte im Jahre 1598 das halbe Dutzend thatsachlich kaum erreicht, jedenfalls nicht Iiberschritten haben, zumal wenn Meres die " Zah- mung der Widerspenstigen," die wir ja allerdings als ein Jugendprodukt anzusehen pflegen, wegen der allzu engen Anlehnung an die Vorlage oder aus anderen Grtinden von seiner Liste ausschliessen wollte. 91 It is impossible to argue against unknown " andere Grrttnde " ; and it is hard to see why The Shrew should be omitted by Meres. This is especially true as against the view of von Westenholz, who claims that Meres really mentions only five comedies in a list which calls for and appears to contain the titles of six. Are we to believe that the agreements between A Shrew and The Shrew are due to the fact that Shakespeare borrows freely from the already existing play, A Shrew ? If so, it is just the most successful and the most intensely Shakespearean parts of The Shrew which are taken from the other play; and this borrowing marks not only the plot but also the language. The especial difficulty concerns the language ; for it seems absurd to think of Shakespeare as following another writer in the minute and unimportant phrases that are common to the two plays. 92 There is no difficulty really like this in all Shakespearean study. King John follows very closely the action and 88 See Talcott Williams's "Bibliography of 'The ^Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, January 14, 1902, Taming of the Shrew,' " Shakespeariana, Vol. V, pp. 445-56, p. 79. 497-513. 92 See Publications of the Mod. Lang. Assoc, Vol. V, pp. 89 Eversley Sh., Vol. H, p. 10. 247-9. so Ibid., p. i.oEversle 185 30 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" general plan of the older play, The Troublesome Reign of King John, but not the language. Parts II and III of Henry VI. freely appropriate passages from the two older plays on which they are based ; but many Shakespearean scholars believe that in doing this the dramatist, on the whole, only took again what he had himself contrib- uted to the earlier plays. But the minute verbal agreements between The Shrew and A Shrew have been generally explained by supposing that Shakespeare appropriated freely the language of another, even unimportant bits of prose. Every student of Shakespeare knows how easily he transformed the materials which he took for his own use ; and it is hard to think of him as appropriating the ordinary prose phrases of another in this wholesale fashion. The true explanation must be that in some way another man borrowed the language of Shakespeare. More than twenty years ago Professor Bernhard ten Brink expressed the opinion that The Shrew is the revision of a youthful work of Shakespeare, and that A Shrew was based directly on this youthful piece. This would make the writer of A Shrew, and not Shakespeare, the borrower. Ten Brink's exact words are : The Taming of a Shrew .... halte ich weder fur ein Jugendwerk Shakespeare's noch fur das Original, welches dieser benutzt hat, noch endlich fur eine Bearbeitung der Shakespeare'schen Komodie, die uns in der Folio tiberliefert ist. Meiner Ansicht nach beruhen Taming of a Shrew und das beinah gleichnamige Stuck der Folio auf einer gemeinsamen Quelle ; diese Quelle aber war eine Jugendarbeit Shakespeares, die sich von der spatern Fassung namentlich auch dadurch unterschied, dass das aus den Siq)poses entlehnte Motiv ihrer einfachern Intrigue noch abging [was still wanting to its simpler intrigue]. Fur eine Begriindung dieser Hypothese ist hier kein Raum. Einstweilen moge es ihr zur Empfehlung gereichen, dass sie zwischen den alteren Ansichten vermittelt, diese gewissermassen in sich vereinigt und den Bedenken, welche gegen jede derselben geltend gemacht worden sind, nicht unterliegt. 93 If we assume for the moment that the hypothesis of ten Brink is true, it is natural to suggest that this youthful work of Shakespeare bore the name of Love's Labour's Won, that then an unauthorized adaptation of this early piece became popular under the name The Taming of a Shrew, and that later Shakespeare's play was revised to meet this competition and received its present title. This new name, The Taming of the Shrew, involved, we may suppose, a claim to the rightful ownership of the common material. Ten Brink's hypothesis is highly speculative, and can probably never be really proved. Yet it would explain many difficulties; and among these the following may be mentioned: 1. The agreements between the language of The Shrew and A Shrew. 2. The remarkable borrowings from Marlowe and imitations of him which abound in A Shrew. 91 The borrower takes freely from both the great dramatists. 3. The early date given to Shakespeare's part of The Shrew by the stopt-line test. 4. The remarkable excellence of A Shrew, its author being called by Swinburne "of all the pre-Shakespeareans incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful and original humourist." 95 93"Ueber den Sommornachtstraum," Jahrbuch der 95 Cited by Bullen, The Works of Marlotoe (Boston, deutschen Sh.-Gescllschaft, Vol. XIII, p. 94. 1885 )< Vo1 - h P- lxxvl - 9* Publications of Modern Lang. Assoc, Vol. V, pp. 239-47. 186 Albert H. Tolman 31 5. The view of Pope, Capell, and Frey, the Bankside editor, that Shakespeare wrote A Shrew. 6. The use made of The Supposes, a play translated by Gascoigne from the Italian of Ariosto, and played in 1566. As the present writer has shown elsewhere, 96 the underplot of The Shrew is decidedly superior to that of A Shrew, and appropriates much more material from The Supposes. It seems very unlikely that Shakespeare's play in its present form was before the writer of A Shrew. Ten Brink and Herford 97 seem to be in error in thinking that A Shrew takes nothing from The Supposes. The excellence of the Cade scenes in II Henry VI. makes it probable that Shakespeare wrote admirable comedy of a vigorous type very early in his career. Without trying to insist upon all of the points in the hypothesis of ten Brink, we may suppose that Love's Labour's Won became at a later day The Taming of the Shrew, whether or not a change in the form of the play accompanied this change of name. The new title may well express the claim of the comedy to be the authorita- tive version of the shrew story. This theory concerning Love's Labour's Won offers, therefore, a definite reason for the giving up of that title. The strange similarity in the titles of The Taming of A Shrew and The Taming of THE Shrew receives thus a natural explanation, and becomes significant. Herford objects to the suggestion that The Taming of the Shrew can be connected with the title Love's Labour's Won because in this comedy " it is marital authority that labours and wins, not love." 98 But surely there is no reason to believe that Petruchio carries through his taming without any real affection for his Kate. The action begins unfortunately with a mercenary and emphatic choice of Katharine by Petruchio before he has seen her; at this point A Shrew is the better play. Still, we are undoubtedly intended to see that Kate needs to be tamed for her own perma- nent happiness; and it is only fair and natural to believe that below the pretense of Petruchio "That all is done in reverend care of her" (IV, i, 217) lies the deeper fact that a real affection is winning a wise victory. It makes the play needlessly offensive not to admit that it is love's labour that is at last won. We have already noted those passages in The Shrew which seem to Craik to refer distinctly to its supposed earlier title. The expressions concerned, while not at all conclusive, certainly fit well with his interpretation. It must be frankly admitted that the correspondences and agreements in dramatic details which we fairly expect to find between two plays with such parallel titles do not exist between Love's Labour's Lost and our proposed Love's Labour's Won, TJie Shrew. The claims of Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer-Night's Dream are much better supported at this point. However, the tone of the two plays is distinctly similar. There is in each about the same mixture of jest and earnest. Also, the fundamental thought, the theme, in each play may be said to be a humorous presentation of what is normal and what abnormal in the relations between the sexes, considered apart from 96 Publications of Modern Lang. Assoc. ,Vol. V, pp. 215-27. 98 Intro, to AIVs Well, Eversley Sh., Vol. Ill, p. 114. VEversley Sfc., Vol. II, pp. 6, 7. 187 32 Shakespeaee's "Love's Labour's Won" any question of vice. From this point of view these two plays may be said to be a group by themselves among the dramas of Shakespeare. If we subdivide the fourteen plays that are printed in the First Folio as comedies, perhaps a classification that is as significant as any is that which separates them into what may be called tragi-comedies, romantic comedies, and pure comedies. The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure fall together as tragi-comedies, plays in which the action, after threatening for a time to end fatally, reaches a happy con- clusion. After these come the romantic comedies, those which have a principal action that is in the main dignified and earnest, while the humorous element is especially prominent in connection with subordinate characters, or even in a separate subordinate action. This is Shakespeare's favorite type of comedy, and at least eight of our fourteen plays belong most naturally in this class. If we apply the term pure comedies to plays in which the central action is filled with humor, the four remaining plays will fall here. These are: Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and The Comedy of Errors. It may be best to make a fourth class for The Comedy of Errors, and call it a farce. This would be both because the play puts impossibilities in the very foreground in order to excite laughter, and because its comedy of misunderstandings is almost entirely independent of the characters of those concerned, and often becomes the mere boisterous fun of unexpected beating or scold- ing. If we thus set this play by itself, three dramas remain in our class of pure comedies. One of these, The Merry Wives, is generally believed not to have been in existence at the time when Meres wrote; though some think otherwise. The story that this play was written at the command of Queen Elizabeth is given both by Dennis and Howe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It may well go back to contem- porary authority, and has been widely accepted. Rowe says: "She [Elizabeth] was so well pleas'd with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him [Shakespeare] to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing the Merry Wives of Windsor." " If we do not question this account, then we have in Love's Labour's Lost and The Taming of the Shreio the only pure comedies which Shake- speare wrote of his own accord, and probably the only ones that were in existence when Meres's list was penned. A very recent treatise in English upon the theory of the drama is that by Miss Woodbridge. She makes much of the division of comedy into judicial, or satiric comedy, on the one hand, and non-judicial, or sympathetic comedy, on the other. 100 This distinction applies properly only to the comic elements in the plays. Jonson, as a comedian, is judicial, satiric, reformatory ; Shakespeare is prevailingly non-judicial, sympathetic, genial. What fools we mortals be! This thought may be taken as the motto for Shakespeare's work as a humorous dramatist. Among the fourteen "come- 9'Cited in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, etc., 10th i<"> The Drama, Its Law, and Its Technique (Boston, 1898), ed. (London, 1898), Vol. II, p. 74. pp. 62-6, 162-74. 188 Albebt H. Tolman 33 dies" of the First Folio, the following may be said to show in their humorous portions some approach to the judicial, satiric spirit: Lovers Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives, AIVs Well (the story of Parolles), Twelfth Night (the story of Malvolio), and The Tempest (the conspiracy of Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo). Of these six plays, the first two were almost certainly in existence when Meres wrote, and probably only the first two. Here once more we find Love's Labour's Lost and The Shrew associated. The above argument had been completed in the form given, before the writer was able to get access to the work of E. W. Sievers, in which, in 1866, he advocated the identification of The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labour's Won. His words sup- plement and enforce in a most effective way what has already been said: Wir kommen zu zwei Komodien des Dichters, die einer wesentlich andern Richtung seines Geisteslebens entsprungen sind, " Verlorne Liebesmiih " und " Die gezahmte Widerspenstige." In diesen beiden Stiicken nahert sich die Shakspeare'sche Komodie dem, was man gewohnlich unter Lustspiel versteht, und in der That sind es hier nun einzelne Verkehrtheiten und Schwachen der Menschen, die der Dichter geisselt. Der Mensch, wie er hier vor uns tritt, erscheint nicht mehr als das Product der mit Notwendigkeit wirkenden Factoren seiner Natur, sondern als ein freies Wesen, der Dichter sucht ihn in der Sphare seiner Freiheit auf, und deren erste und allgemeinste Grenzen zu ziehen, ihm den Weg zu ihr zu zeigen, ist das Interesse, das ihn erfiillt. Er [der Dichter] erscheint daher in diesen Stiicken in der Eigenschaft des Padago- gen, des Lehrers und Mahners der Menschheit, und so voll des genialsten Uebermuthes sie sind, der tiefe sittliche Ernst steht doch immer im Hintergrunde, ja er verdrangt sogar in beiden Stiicken zuletzt die harmlos heitre Stimmung und hebt auch sie damit wieder iiber das Niveau des gewOhnlichen Lustspiels hinaus. Wir haben iibrigens hier nur ihren allgemeinen Charakter bezeichnen wollen, nicht den asthetischen Werth, den sie in Anspruch nehmen diirfen. In letztrer Beziehung steht " Die gezahmte Widerspenstige " tief unter alien andern Werken des Dichters und kann namentlich dem heutigen Menschen nur noch durch die fast verschwen- derische Entfaltung des zwar derben, darum aber nicht minder glanzenden Witzes interessiren. Was die Zeit ihrer Entstehung angeht, so schliessen sich beide Stucke aller Wahrschein- lichkeit nach sehr eng an die beiden Veroneser und die Komodie der Irrungen an ; sowohl Sprache und Versbau wie der ganze Charakter der Stucke fiihren darauf hin, dass sie bereits vor dem Jahre 1594, also vor dem Sommernachtstraum entstanden sind, der sie namentlich an technischer Vollendung der Composition weit iiberragt So sehr nun auch die Fabel [von " Ende gut, Alles gut "] die Bezeichnung der gewon- nenen Liebesmiih rechtfertigen mochte, so ist dennoch die Farmer'sche Vermuthung vOllig unhaltbar. Das Werk des Meres erschien im Jahre 1598 und alle sowohl aussere wie innere Merkmale, Sprache und Versbau nicht weniger wie der in " Ende gut, Alles gut " hervortretende gedrangte und gedankenvolle Tiefsinn, dazu die kiinstlerische Tendenz des Stiickes, die mit der verlornen Liebesmiih nicht das Mindeste gemein hat, Alles fiihrt darauf hin, wie die Vertreter dieser Ansicht selbst offen bekennen, dass dieses Stiick in einer spatern Zeit entstanden sein muss und folglich unter jener Bezeichnung nicht kann gemeint gewesen sein. Was also liegt naher, als auf " Die gezahmte Widerspenstige " zu schliessen, zumal da Meres gerade dieses Stiick in seiner Aufzahlung der Shakspeare'schen Dramen unerwahnt lasst? Dass es wie schon bemerkt, ziemlich gleichzeitig mit " Verlorne Liebesmiih " entstanden ist, gibt dieser Annahme noch eine neue Stiitze. 101 loi E. W. Sievebs, William Shakspeare, Sein Leben und recently of the Boston Public Library, for a copy of the Dichten (Gotha, 1866), Vol. I, pp. 329-31. passages from Sievers. The writer is under obligation to Miss H. B. Keller L.oFC. 189 34 Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Won" conclusion If we recur to the various criteria suggested in our introduction for testing the claim of any particular comedy of Shakespeare to be accepted as Love's Labour's Won under another name, it is clear that no one of the plays proposed satisfies them all in any convincing fashion. No one who has followed the foregoing discussion will wonder, therefore, that some scholars consider this problem to be insoluble. As we have already seen, Dowden, in 1895, expressed himself in a very hesitating manner, saying that " Love's Labour's Won .... may be a lost play of Shakespeare, or pos- sibly, as has been conjectured, All's Well that Ends Well in an earlier form may have borne this title." 102 Wendell puts the plain truth in a plain way when he says: "The question can never be definitely settled." 103 Unless some new evidence shall be dis- covered, this statement is just. In trying to estimate briefly the comparative claims of the various views that have now been presented, it is extremely difficult to measure the force which should be given to the agreement between the order of the comedies as named by Meres and that in the First Folio. This coincidence was pointed out at the close of the discus- sion of A Midsummer-Night's Dream. 10 * If we look upon the coincidence in question as having great significance, then we shall be almost compelled to accept one of the first three views that have been presented ; and among these the first one, which holds that Love's Labour's Won has disappeared, seems to be decidedly the most probable. The present writer, however, is constitutionally indisposed to judge Shake- spearean questions on the evidence of cryptograms and mystic coincidences. In the few words which remain, therefore, this strange agreement will be disregarded. Of the four views which hold that the play has come down to us under another name, the favorite theory, that which connects Love's Labour's Won with All's Well, seems to the present writer to be decidedly improbable. In spite of the considerations in favor of A Midsummer-Night s Dream, which von Westenholz has ably presented, the fundamental difficulty of supposing that Meres names only five comedies in his list, makes that view inadmissible. On the whole, if we are to find Love's Labour's Won among the plays that we now possess, the choice appears to lie between Much Ado about Nothing and Hie Taming of the Shrew. The considerations in favor of Tlie Taming of the Shrew are strong, and the attempt has here been made to present them with some fullness. 102 Introduction to Sh. (London and New York, n. d.), ios William Shakspere (Now York, 1894), p. 246. P- 80- 104 See in this article p. 13. 190 190?