verses from Skialethia or a Shadow of Truth, printed in 1598, in which Opinion is called

"The Proteus, Robin-good-fellow of change."

No other allusion of the kind which has been adduced in illustration of the play (except one in Tarleton's Newes out of Purgatorie, which will be particularly noticed hereafter) was made before its publication.* But to these I am able to add another of yet earlier date than either, though its seniority is but little. In Guazzo's Civile Conversation, a translation from the Italian, first published in 1581, three years before the appearance of Scot's book, there is this sentence: "And thereof wee may gather the great wrong that fathers, mothers, and nurces doe to young children when they will make it a sport to put their children in feare with tales of Robin goodfellow, and such like, whereby they offend God, and make their children feareful and dastardlie." We see by this passage, not only that the fashions of the nursery have changed but little in three centuries, but that Robin Goodfellow was something more than a mischievous "merry wanderer of the night," stories about whom would rather amuse children than make them fearful and dastardly, and that Shakespeare has shorn him of some horrors which it is safe to say were incongruous with the typical traits of his nature. This use of his name to awaken fear is quite consistent with a wood-cut representation of him which

* Sir Francis Madden has pointed out a story in a Latin MS. of the thirteenth century, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, of which, as some "writers well qualified to judge" have thought that it introduces Robin Goodfellow, Mr. Halliwell has thought it worth while to give the following translation:"Once Robinet was in a certain house in which soldiers were resting for the night, and after having made a great clamour during the better part of the night, to their no small annoyance, he was suddenly quiet. Then said the soldiers to each other, 'Let us now sleep, for Robinet himself is asleep.' To which Robinet made reply, 'I am not asleep, but am resting me, in order to shout louder after.' And the soldiers said, 'It seems, then, we shall have no sleep to-night.' So sinners sometimes abstain for a while from their wicked ways, in order that they may sin the more vigorously afterwards. The soldiers are the angels about Christ's body; Robin is the devil or sinner."

† As I have not access to the Italian original of this book, I cannot determine how far this passage conforms to that of which it professes to be a translation. Probably, however, it is rather a paraphrase; for it was quite common with our early translators to substitute allusions to their own time and country for the national traits of such foreign books as they undertook to introduce to English readers. This passage will be found on fol. 159 b. of the sec ond edition of Guazzo. 4to. 1586. I do not possess that of 1581.

accompanied the little pamphlet, before alluded to, entitled Robin Goodfellow, his mad Prankes and merry Jests, &c., the earliest known copy of which was printed in 1628. The artist has there represented him with a beard, horns, long ears, the shaggy thighs and the hoofs of a satyr, carrying in one hand a candle, and over his shoulder a broom: in brief, he appears to differ nothing in outward semblance from the popular notions of him whom Burns calls "Horny, Satan, Nick, or Clootie."

This same spirit is described as performing the very tricks which are attributed to him by Scot and Shakespeare, in Nashe's Terrors of the Night, published in 1594, the year when this comedy was probably written,* and also in a passage quoted by Warton from Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, &c. But as Harsnet's book was not published until 1603, three years after Shakespeare's play was printed, and nine after it was written, it is possible, if not probable, that the bishop was indebted to the playwright; while it is certain that the playwright owed nothing to the bishop in this matter, whatever may have been his obligations to his lordship for the goblin nomenclature of another play. There is a fairy scene in The Maydes Metamorphosis, an anonymous play attributed to John Lilly; but this was not published until 1600; and whoever chooses can read the scene in Halliwell's Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, and see how palpably and how weakly it imitates A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and the last Scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor. These are all the allusions to the domestic fairy and to Robin Goodfellow which have been discovered in literature antecedent to the production of this comedy, or strictly contemporaneous with it. It has been conjectured, however, that Robin Goodfellow, his mad Prankes, &c., had been published many

"The Robin Goodfellowes, elves, fairies, hobgoblins of our latter age, which idolatrous former daies, and the phantastical world of Greece, ycleped fawnes, satyres, dryades, and hamadryades, did most of their merry prankes in the night. Then ground they malt, and had hempen shirts for their labours, daunst in greene meadows, pincht maids in their sleep that swept not their houses cleane, and led poor travellers out of their way notoriously."

"And if that the bowl of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Good-fellow, the frier, and Sisse the dairy-maid, why then either the pottage was burnt-to next day in the pot, or the cheeses would not curdle, or the butter would not come, or the ale in the fat never would have good head." Chapter xx. p. 134.

The names of the spirits spoken of by Edgar in King Lear are found in Harsnet's Declaration. See the Introduction to that tragedy.

years before the date of the earliest copy now known - 1628; and Mr. Collier, who, in his Introduction to this play published in 1843, said "there is little doubt that it came out forty years earlier," in an introductory note to The Devil and the Scold, one of the ballads in his very interesting Roxburghe Collection, which was published four years afterward, uses more decided language, to wit, that the " Mad Pranks' had been published

before 1588." Mr. Collier's reasons for this decision, which has not been questioned hitherto, are to be found only in the following passage in his Introduction to the edition of the Mad Pranks, published by the Percy Society : —

"There is no doubt that Robin Goodfellow his mad Prankes and merry Jests' was first printed before 1588. Tarlton, the celebrated comic actor, died late in that year, and just after his decease (as is abundantly established by internal evidence, though the work has no date) came out in [sic] a tract called Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie, &c., Published by an old companion of his Robin Goodfellow;' and on sign. A 3 we find it asserted that Robin Goodfellow was famozed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merrye prankes,' as if at that time the incidents detailed in the succeeding pages were all known, and had been frequently related. Four years earlier, Robin Goodfellow had been mentioned by Anthony Munday in his comedy of The Two Italian Gentlemen,' printed in 1584, and there his other familiar name of Hobgoblin is also assigned to him."

Here is even a greater misapprehension than Mr. Collier has before exhibited, of the significance of the interesting contributions which his industry, his enthusiasm, and his good fortune have en abled him to make to Shakespearian letters. The assertion in the Newes out of Purgatorie, that Robin Goodfellow and his tricks were told of in every old wife's chronicle, certainly does show that the incidents related in the Merry Pranks were, at least in a measure, “known, and had been frequently related" previous to the appearance of the former publication; but it neither establishes any sort of connection between the two works, nor has the slightest bearing upon the question of the order in which they were written. To conclude that the latter preceded the former because they both allude to the mad pranks of Robin Goodfellow is to beg the very point in question; and to suppose that the old wives derived their stories of Robin from the author of the Mad Pranks, is just to reverse that order of events which results from the very nature of things: it is the author who records and puts into shape the old wives' stories. That

the occurrence of the phrase "mad merry prankes" in the Newes out of Purgatorie had any influence in producing the *judgment that the Mad Pranks had preceded it, it is difficult to believe; for the word 'mad' was of old the accepted and almost stereotyped expression of the idea for which we now use 'wild' - as, for instance, in Shakespeare's own works, "Do you hear, my mad wenches?" (Love's Labour's Lost, Act II. Sc. 1,) "Farewell, mad wenches," (Ib., Act V. Sc. 2,) "Away, away, mad ass!" (Taming of the Shrew, Act V. Sc. 1,) "How now, mad wag!" (1 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 2;) and pranks' was and is used no less generally in the sense which it has in both the cases in question. Beside, if the occurrence of the words in the two publications establish any relation between them, (which it does not,) it can only be that the words were copied from the book of the earlier into that of the later date. Nor is there warrant in Anthony Munday's lines for the assertion that Hobgoblin was Robin Goodfellow's "other familiar name," or even that they assigned it to him. The lines are, as quoted by Mr. Collier; –

"Ottomanus, Sophye, Turke and the great Cham,

Robin-goodfellow, Hobgoblin, the devill and his dam." Now, we have here but a succession of names of different personages, natural and supernatural; and it might as well be supposed that Munday calls Ottomanus the Sophy of Persia, the Turke the Cham of Tartary, or Robin Goodfellow the Devil and his dam, as that he calls Robin Hobgoblin. The truth is, that Shakespeare was the first to name Robin either Puck or Hobgoblin, as we shall soon see.

There is, then, no reason for believing that the Merry Pranks is an older composition than the Newes out of Purgatorie, but there are reasons which lead to the conclusion that it was written after A Midsummer-Night's Dream. We learn from the testimony of Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, that the comedy was well known before 1598; and certain passages in it were quite surely written in 1594—the play having most probably been produced some years before, and at that time augmented and partly rewritten. Now, the style of the Merry Pranks is not that of a time previous to the latter date. Its simplicity and directness, and its comparative freedom from the multitude of compound prepositions and adverbs which deform the sentences and abscure the thoughts of earlier writers, point to a period not antecedent to that of the translation of our Bible for its production,

and show, indeed, that it was probably written by a man young enough to have escaped almost entirely the influences of an antiquated phraseology, traits of which are not wanting in the work of the mature scholars to whom that task was committed. Let any one familiar with English books published before 1594 say whether a work, the style of which is fairly represented by such sentences as the following, was written then :

"After Robin had travailed a good dayes journey from his master's house, hee sat downe, and being weary hee fell asleepc. No sooner had slumber tooken full possession of him and closed his long opened eye-lids but hee thought he saw many goodly proper personages in anticke measures tripping about him, and withall he heard such musicke, as he thought that Orpheus, that famous Greek fidler (had he beene alive), compared to any one of these had beene as infamous as a Welsh-harper that playes for cheese and onions."

Save for the occurrence of 'tooken' and withall,' words which continued in use among the best writers during the seventeenth century, this might have been written yesterday by any one who has command of a pure and simple idiomatic English style. Compare it with the following extracts, fair representatives of the style of a translation of Huon of Bourdeaux, published in 1601. The translation was first published between 1570 and 1575, it having been in 1601 "the third time imprinted, and the rude English corrected and amended" - this edition being

the earliest now known.*

"Then the ancient man lifted up his eyes and beheld Huon, and had great marvaile, for of a long season before he had seen no man that spake of God. Then he beheld Huon in the face, and began sore to weep, and stepping unto Huon, tooke him by the leg and kissed it more then twentie times."

66

and when I was borne, there were with my mother many ladies of the fairye, and by them I had many gifts, and among other there was one that gave mee the gift to be such a one as you see I am; whereof I am sory, but I cannot be none otherwise, for when I came to the age of three yeeres I grew no

more.

This translation is particularly useful for our present purpose, because it shows that between 1575 and 1600 there was so great a change in style that at the latter date it was thought necessary

* See Halliwell's Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, p. 91.