Leon. Peace! I will stop your mouth'.

D. Pedro. How dost thou, Benedick, the married

man?

Bene. I'll tell thee what, prince; a college of witcrackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think, I care for a satire, or an epigram? No: if a man will be beaten with brains, a' shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it, for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.-For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but, in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and love my cousin.

Claud. I had well hoped, thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might have cudgelled thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double dealer; which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee.

Bene. Come, come, we are friends.-Let's have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts, and our wives' heels.

Leon. We'll have dancing afterward.

Bene. First, of my word; therefore, play, music!Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.

Enter a Messenger.

Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight, And brought with armed men back to Messina. Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow: I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.-Strike up, pipers. [Dance.

9 Leon. Peace! I will stop your mouth.] Modern editors assign this line to Benedick; but all the old copies give it to Leonato. It may be very well also, as a piece of stage effect, to make Benedick kiss Beatrice at this juncture, but there is no warrant for it in any old stage-direction.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

"A pleasant Conceited Comedie called, Loues labors lost. As it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespere. Imprinted at London by W. W. for Cutbert Burby. 1598." 4to, 38 leaves.

In the folio, 1623, "Love's Labour's Lost" occupies 23 pages, in the division of "Comedies," viz., from p. 122 to p. 144, inclusive. It was reprinted in 1631, 4to, "by W. S., for John Smethwicke;" and the title-page states that it was published "as it was acted by his Majesties Seruants at the Blacke-Friers and the Globe." It is merely a copy from the folio, 1623, with the addition of some errors of the press.

INTRODUCTION.

THERE is a general concurrence of opinion that "Love's Labour's Lost" was one of Shakespeare's earliest productions for the stage. In his course of Lectures delivered in 1818, Coleridge was so convinced upon this point, that he said, "the internal evidence was indisputable ;" and in his "Literary Remains," II. 102, we find him using these expressions :- "The characters in this play are either impersonated out of Shakespeare's own multiformity, by imaginative selfposition, or out of such as a country town and a school-boy's observation might supply'." The only objection to this theory is, that at the time "Love's Labour's Lost was composed, the author seems to have been acquainted in some degree with the nature of the Italian comic performances; but this acquaintance he might have acquired comparatively early in life. The character of Armado is that of a Spanish braggart, very much such a personage as was common on the Italian stage, and figures in Gl' Ingannati, (which, as the Rev. Joseph Hunter was the first to point out, Shakespeare saw before he wrote his "Twelfth Night,") under the name of Giglio: in the same comedy we have M. Piero Pedante, a not unusual character in pieces of that description. Holofernes is repeatedly called "the Pedant " in the old copies of "Love's Labour's Lost," while Armado is more frequently

1 Farther on this great psychological critic observes :-" If this juvenile drama had been the only one extant of our Shakespeare, and we possessed the tradition only of his riper works, or accounts of them in writers who had not even mentioned this play, how many of Shakespeare's characteristic features might we not still have discovered in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' though as in a portrait taken of him in his boyhood! I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity of thought throughout the whole of the first scene of the play, rendered natural, as it is, by the choice of the characters and the whimsical determination on which the drama is founded-a whimsical determination certainly, yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their Courts of Love, and all that lighter drapery of chivalry, which engaged even mighty kings, with a sort of serio-comic interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more completely the smaller princes, at a time when the noble's or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain or principality."

2 It was asserted by Warburton, that in the character of Holofernes Shakespeare intended to ridicule Florio, and that our great poet here condescended to per

introduced as "the Braggart" than by his name. Steevens, after stating that he had not been able to discover any novel from which this comedy had been derived, adds that "the story has most of the features of an ancient romance;" but it is not at all impossible that Shakespeare found some corresponding incidents in an Italian play. However, after a long search, I have not met with any such production, although, if used by Shakespeare, it most likely came into this country in a printed form.

The question whether Shakespeare visited Italy, and at what period of his life, cannot properly be considered here; but it is a very important point in relation both to his biography and works. It was certainly a very general custom for our poets to travel thither towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, and various instances of the kind are on record. Robert Greene tells us in his "Repentance,” 1592, that he had been in Italy and Spain: Thomas Nash, about the same date, mentions what he had seen in France and Italy; and Daniel has several early sonnets on his "going into Italy," and on his residence there. Some of our most celebrated actors of that time also made journeys across the Alps; and Mr. Halliwell, in the notes to his “Coventry Mysteries," printed for the Shakespeare Society, has shown that Kemp, the comedian, who, as we have seen, performed Dogberry in "Much Ado about Nothing," was in Rome in 1601.

It is vain to attempt to fix with any degree of precision the date when "Love's Labour's Lost" came from the author's pen. It is very certain that Biron and Rosaline are early sketches of two characters to which Shakespeare subsequently gave greater force and effect-Benedick and Beatrice; but this only shows, what cannot be doubted, that "Love's Labour's Lost" was anterior in composition to "Much Ado about Nothing." "Love's Labour's Lost" was first printed, as far as we now know, in 1598, 4to, and then it professed on the title-page to have been "newly corrected and augmented:" we are likewise there told that it was presented before Queen Elizabeth" this last Christmas." It was not uncommon for dramatists to revise and add to their plays when they were selected for exhibition at court, and such may have been the case with "Love's Labour's Lost." "This last Christmas" probably meant Christmas, 1598; for the year at this period did not end until 25th March. It seems likely that the comedy had been written six or even eight years before, that it was revived in 1598, with certain corrections and augmentations for performance before the Queen; and this circumstance may have led to its publication immediately afterwards.

sonal satire. The only apparent offence by Florio was a passage in his “Second Fruits," 1591, where he complained of the want of decorum in English dramatic representations. The provocation was evidently insufficient, and we may safely dismiss the whole conjecture as unfounded.