by Sir George Buc." Sir George Buc was Master of the Revels from October, 1610, until May, 1622 (Hist. Engl. Dram. Poetry, i. pp. 374. 420): he must, therefore, have licensed "The Winter's Tale" between October, 1610, when he was appointed to his office, and May, 1611, when Forman saw the play at the Globe.

It might have been composed by Shakespeare in the autumn and winter of 1610-11, with a view to its production on the Bankside, as soon as the usual performances by the King's players commenced there. Sir Henry Herbert informs us, that when he gave permission to revive "The Winter's Tale" in August, 1623, "the allowed book" (that to which Sir George Buc had appended his signature) "was missing." It had no doubt been destroyed, when the Globe Theatre was consumed by fire on 29th June, 1613.

"The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale" were both acted at Whitehall, and included in Sir George Buc's account of the expenses of the Revels from October, 1611, to October, 16123. How much older "The Tempest " might be than "The Winter's Tale," we have no means of determining; but there is a circumstance which shows that the composition of "The Tempest was anterior to that of "The Winter's Tale ;" and this brings us to speak of the novel upon which the latter is founded.

As early as the year 1588, Robert Greene printed a tract called "Pandosto: The Triumph of Time," better known as "The History of Dorastus and Fawnia," the title it bore in some of the later copies. As far as we now know, it was not reprinted until 1607, and a third impression appeared in 1609: it afterwards went through many editions'; but it seems not unlikely that Shakespeare was directed to it, as a proper subject for dramatic representation, by the third impression which came out the year

3 The circumstance that "The Tempest" and "The Winter's Tale" were both acted at court at this period, and that they might belong to nearly the same date of composition, seems to give great additional probability to the opinion, that Ben Jonson alluded to them in the following passage in the Induction to his "Bartholomew Fair," which was acted in 1614, while Shakespeare's two plays were still high in popular favour:-"If there be never a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he says? nor a nest of Anticks? He is loth to make nature afraid in his Playes, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries." The Italic type and the capitals are as they stand in the original edition in folio, 1631. Gifford (Ben Jonson's Works, Vol. iv. p. 370) could not be brought to acknowledge that the words "Servant-monster," "Anticks," "Tales," and "Tempests," applied to Shakespeare, but with our present information the fact seems hardly disputable.

How long it continued popular, may be judged from the fact that it was printed as a chap-book as recently as the year 1735, when it was called "The Fortunate Lovers; or the History of Dorastus, Prince of Sicily, and of Fawnia, only daughter and heir to the King of Bohemia," 12mo.

before we suppose him to have commenced writing his "Winter's Tale." In many respects our great dramatist follows Greene's story very closely, as may be seen by some of our notes in the course of the play, and by the recent republication of "Pandosto" from the unique copy of 1588, in "Shakespeare's Library." There is, however, one remarkable variation, which it is necessary to point out. Greene says:

"The guard left her" (the Queen) "in this perplexitie, and carried the child to the king, who, quite devoide of pity, commanded that without delay it should be put in the boat, having neither sail nor rudder to guide it, and so to be carried into the midst of the sea, and there left to the wind and wave, as the destinies please to appoint."

The child thus "left to the wind and wave" is the Perdita of Shakespeare, who describes the way in which the infant was exposed very differently, and probably for this reason:-that in "The Tempest" he had previously (perhaps not long before) represented Prospero and Miranda turned adrift at sea in the same manner as Greene had stated his heroine to have been disposed of. When, therefore, Shakespeare came to write "The Winter's Tale," instead of following Greene, as he had usually done in other minor circumstances, he varied from the original narrative, in order to avoid an objectionable similarity of incident in his two dramas. It is true, that in the conclusion Shakespeare has also made important and most judicious changes in the story; since nothing could well be more revolting than for Pandosto (who answers to Leontes) first to fall dotingly in love with his own daughter, and afterwards to commit suicide. The termination to which our great dramatist brings the incidents is at once striking, natural, and beautiful, and is an equal triumph of judgment and power.

It is, perhaps, singular that Malone, who observed upon the "involved parenthetical sentences" prevailing in "The Winter's Tale," did not in that very peculiarity find a proof that it must have been one of Shakespeare's later productions. In the Stationers' Registers there is no earlier entry of it than that of Nov. 8, 1623, when the publication of the first folio was contemplated by Blount and Jaggard: it originally appeared in that volume, where it is

In a note upon a passage in A. iii. sc. 2, a reason is assigned for thinking that Shakespeare did not employ the first edition of Greene's novel, but in all probability that of 1609, which had recently been published.

Here we have a singular illustration of the way in which words were, of old, not unfrequently misrepresented, in consequence of mishearing instead of "neither sail nor rudder to guide it," the oldest edition of the novel of .. Pandosto" has "neither sail nor other to guide it:" the compositor printed, or the scribe wrote, other instead of "rudder."

regularly divided into Acts and Scenes: the "Wynter's Nighte's Pastime," noticed in the registers under date of May 22, 1594, must have been a different work. If any proof of the kind were wanted, we learn from two lines in "Dido, Queen of Carthage," by Marlowe and Nash, 1594, 4to, that "a winter's tale" was a then current phrase:

"Who would not undergoe all kind of toyle

To be well stor❜d with such a winter's tale?" Sign. D 3 b.

In representing Bohemia to be a maritime country, Shakespeare adopted the popular notion, as it had been encouraged since 1588 by Greene's "Pandosto." With regard to the prevailing ignorance of geography, the subsequent passage from John Taylor's "Travels to Prague in Bohemia," a journey performed by him in 1620, shows that the satirical writer did not consider it strange that an alderman of London was not aware that a fleet of ships could not arrive at a port of Bohemia:-" I am no sooner eased of him, but Gregory Gandergoose, an Alderman of Gotham, catches me by the goll, demanding if Bohemia be a great town, and whether there be any meat in it, and whether the last fleet of ships be arrived there." It is to be observed, that Shakespeare reverses the scene of "Pandosto," and represents, as passing in Sicily, what Greene had made to occur in Bohemia. In several places he more verbally followed Greene in this play, than he did even Lodge in "As You Like It;" but the general variations are greater from "Pandosto" than from "Rosalynde." Shakespeare does not adopt one of the appellations given by Greene; and it may be noticed that, just anterior to the time of our poet, the name he assigns to the Queen of Leontes had been employed as that of a male character: in "The rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune," acted at court in 1581-2, and printed in 1589, Hermione is the lover of the heroine".

"The idea of this delightful drama" (says Coleridge in his Lit. Rem. vol. ii. p. 250) "is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of Othello,' which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of temper, having certain well known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Othello:--such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to snatch at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of

It was reprinted (with four other very rare, if not unique dramas) by the Roxburghe Club in 1851.

shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of the passion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to understand what is said to them; in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness."

In his lectures in 1818, Coleridge dwelt on the "not easily jealous" frame of Othello's mind, and on the art of the great poet in working upon his generous and unsuspecting nature: he contrasted the characters of Othello and Leontes in this respect, the latter from predisposition requiring no such malignant instigator as Iago.

We subjoin a ballad written by Thomas Jordan, and inserted in his "Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie," 8vo, 1664, the foundation of which is Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale." Some circumstances are varied, and the scene transferred to Padua and Parma, and the whole serves to show how much at that date the incidents of Shakespeare's drama had gone out of popular recollection.

"The jealous Duke, and the injured Dutchess: a story.

"Tune, 'The Dream.'

"Or all the wedlock plagues that be
None are so fierce as jealousie,
As you shall see drawn to the life

Between a Duke and's vertuous Wife.

He was a Duke of Parma in Italy;

His lady, great with childe,

Was wronged by his jealousie :

He sends her unto prison, guiltless of crime
And in that sickly season,

When as she was near her time.

"Where afterward it came to pass
She of a childe delivered was,
A lovely daughter, which they took
And brought it to the jealous Duke;
Who in fury did protest, as before,
The infant was a bastard

And its mother was a whore.
The noble Lady, that did bring it, did cry,
The vertuous Dutchess suffer'd

Onely for his jealousie.

"The Lady being much revil'd,
She goes away, and leaves the childe.

He straight by oath enjoyns a lord,

Who made a conscience of his word,

Then, quoth the Duke, you must perform my command, Take shipping strait, and bear this brat into a foreign land. Leave it in any wilderness you can finde,

And let it there be nourished

Onely by the rain and winde.

"The Nobleman is griev'd to do't,
But that his oath enjoyns him to't.
The Dutchess hearing, that her childe

Was sent away to countreys wilde,

Falls in a swound (her spirits all being fled).

The word was brought unto the Duke

His wife was newly dead;

And that her last words were (her eyes waxing dim),

• Commend me to the Duke:

I ne're knew any man but him.'

"Her dying words the Duke believes ;

And now, alack! too late he grieves,

For now the lord (by his command)

Is in the Duke of Padua's land;

Where he the pretty infant layes down (as he

Had sworn to the Duke) and now returns again to sea:

But (by good fate) a shepherd that lost a sheep

Was searching up and down that way,

And heard the infant weep.

"The mantle which the childe did hold
Was rich embroidered cloth of gold;
But when it was undrest, he found
The value of two thousand pound,

Besides a paper where was writ down the name.

This treasure made the shepherd straight

To grow in wealth and fame.

He bred the childe as decently as he cou'd,

But in its disposition one

Might find the parents' bloud.

"At sixteen years of age she was

The prettiest Nimph that trod the grass.

Once on a day, when she did keep

(As she suppos'd) her father's sheep,

A Gentleman, which her fair face lookt upon,

Was strucken straight in love,

And 'twas the Duke of Padua's son;

Who from that hour would every day come to see
His mistress whom he lov'd like life,"

Though of a low degree.