Several works published in the year 1594, contain passages parallel to some in this play : (1) "And thou, thrice-crowned queen of night, survey With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above," &c. (iii., 2, 3, 4.) Compare the following lines, from one of Chapman's Hymns "Nature's bright eye-sight, and the Night's fair soul, (2) "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." (ii., 7, 166.) Compare the following lines from Garnier's Henriade (1594): 66 Sans pieds, sans mains, sans nez, sans oreilles, sans yeux, Meurtri de toutes parts." (3) The name Celia may be due to some Sonnets to the Fairest Celia, by W. Percy (1594). The same character in Lodge is called "Alinda." (4) The allusion to Gargantua, in ii. 2, 238, may be due to "a booke entitled the Historie of Gargantua,” entered in the Stationers' Register in 1594. (There is a somewhat similar entry in 1592; and an English translation of Rabelais's work had appeared in 1575.) (5) "And so, from hour to hour, ripe and ripe ; And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, may be a parody on the following lines in T. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (published 1594): "At last it grew and grew, and bore and bore, Till at length it grew a gallows." Some of these allusions are due to Mr. J. O. HalliwellPhillipps. Mr. W. W. Lloyd (Critical Essays, &c., p. 112) thinks that the contemporaneity of The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It is suggested by Portia's remarks to Nerissa on their intended disguise (iii. 4, 60—76); especially as "the scheme of impersonation is so different to that really carried out." The contiguity of the two plays in the folio edition may also be noticed. Chalmers sees one or two imaginary historical allusions in the play, and points out that it is imitated by Drayton in The Owl, 1604. The various metrical tests (for example, the rhyme-test and the double-ending test) relatively confirm the assignment of this play to the last year of the sixteenth century; and, as Mr. Hallam remarks, "in no other play do we find the bright imagination and fascinating grace of Shakespeare's youth so mingled with the thoughtfulness of his maturer age." Following up another remark of the same writer's, the Rev. C. E. Moberly (Rugby Edition of this play) thinks that "As You Like It was one of the earliest attempts of the poet to control the dark spirit of melancholy in himself, by a process which a great writer [Johnson (Boswell, 1776)] has described as hopeless, that of thinking it away;" but surely the general impression received by perusing this delightful play (which Professor Wilson has termed The Romance of the Forest) is anything but sad or sorrowful; Adversity here is not a Fury, she is a fourth Grace [see Guesses at Truth], and if it be Jacques, upon whom the hypothesis is built, better would it be to clothe him, as Ulrici does, in motley, than to miss for one moment the graceful charm of Rosalind ("who after Portia is the most gifted of Shakespeare's heroines," and "who, in the true spirit of comedy, is rightly made the centre-piece" of the drama), or to lose for one second the delightful freshness of those Arden glades, of which Gray doubtless thought when he wrote among his lines on Shakespeare in his Ode on the Progress of Poesy: G "This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Professor Dowden (ut supra, p. 76) says:"Shakspere, when he had completed his English historical plays, needed rest for his imagination; and in such a mood, craving refreshment and recreation, he wrote his play of As You Like It. To understand the spirit of this play, we must bear in mind that it was written immediately after Shakspere's great series of histories, ending with Henry V. (1599), and before he began the great series of tragedies. Shakspere turned with a sense of relief, and a long easeful sigh, from the oppressive subjects of history, so great, so real, so massive, and found rest," &c., in this comedy. [An attempt will, however, be made in the Appendix on 66 Classical allusions," to show that As You Like It preceded Henry V.] HENRY V. "True nobility is exempt from fear."-2 Henry VI. The date of this play can be fixed by the striking historical allusion in the chorus to Act v. ; it has indeed been asserted by Pope, Warburton, Chalmers, and others, that the choruses and some other parts of the drama were inserted at a later period; this conclusion they ground on the omissions in the quartos, and on supposed historical references (see Chalmers's Supplemental Apology, vol. ii., pp. 334—343); but let any one consider the important relation which these choruses bear to the rest of the play (a point which Garrick felt when, in his production of the drama, he himself recited them), and notice the intimate connection between them and the body of the work [could any one, for instance, suppose that the chorus to Act iii. can be separated from the spirited scene which opens that act?], and the conclusion must surely be that the whole was written at the same time. At any rate, the allusion above referred to was penned in the summer of 1599; it is this: "Were now the general of our gracious empress, To welcome him!"-Act v. Prologue, 1. 30-34. Camden (Kennet, vol. ii., p. 614) tells us that "about the end of March [1599] the Earl of Essex set forward for Ireland, and was accompanied out of London with a fine appearance of nobility, and gentry, and the most cheerful huzzas of the common people." Chalmers points out, too, as a proof of the popular applause with which the allusion would be received, that the Queen at the same time issued a Proclamation" declaring her princely resolution, in sending over of her army into the realm of Ireland," and ordered a Public Prayer "for the good success of her Majesty's forces" there. Essex returned, disappointed and disgraced, in the following September. The play [which, by the by, is not mentioned by Meres in 1598] had indeed been promised in the Epilogue of 2 Henry IV.; but a comparison of the plan there laid down and of the details here presented will show that some considerable period must have elapsed between the production of these two plays. On consulting the Stationers' Register, we find, August 4th [1600], the entry "Henry the Ffift, a book," with the injunction that this and the two others are "to be staied;" again under August 14th, 1600, we have "Thos. Paryer] The Historye of Henrye the Vth. with the Battel of Agencourt." In the same year (1600), T. Creede printed, for T. Millington and T. Busbie, a quarto edition of Henry V.; and, in 1602, the same printer produced another quarto, which was published by T. Pavier; a third appeared in 1608. These, however, are all mangled editions, and it may be added, in support of the argument mentioned above, that the author's name does not appear upon the title-page. In writing the play, Shakespeare made use of Holinshed's Chronicle, and an old play called The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth; this, as Collier states (in his Six Old Plays, &c.), was acted prior to 1588, was probably published in 1594, and was certainly printed in 1598: he notes, too, that a Henry the Fifth is entered in Henslowe's Diary, Nov. 25th, 1595. In the prologue to Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour [the play was written in 1598, but the prologue was not added till after 1601], there seems to be an allusion to Henry V.; the lines are: "He rather prays, you will be pleased to see Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas," &c. Again, in the same dramatist's Poetaster, 1601, some passages in our play seem to be ridiculed (see p. 177). Chalmers, in endeavouring to antedate the drama by a year or two, refers :— (1) The Archbishop of Canterbury's speech concerning the Bill about Church property (i. 1, 1—19), to the two Church Property Bills submitted to Parliament in November, 1597. (2) Certain remarks about the French and Scots, to events which happened in the same year and (3) Falstaff's dying remark about "devils incarnate," (ii. 3, 33, 34), to Lodge's Devils Incarnate, which appeared in 1596. At the beginning of the section upon this play, attention was drawn to the striking and peculiar adoption of the chorus in the drama, and the point will be again referred to |
