-

few corruptions. The most remarkable error in the original text is that which occurs in Act II., Sc. 5, where Speed, being in Milan, pids Launce "welcome to Padua," a place with which the plot has no relations whatever. Mr. Halliwell suggests that the name is perhaps a relic of some old Italian story, upon which the play may have been founded. This is not impossible; but mistakes as great occur sometimes even in the present day; and this one can hardly be received even as cumulative evidence that the play is constructed upon an undiscoverable, forgotten story. Some similarity has been noticed between a scene and some of the incidents in this play, and certain passages of the story of the Shepherdess Felismena in the Diana of George de Montemajor. Such arethe refusal of the mistress to receive a letter brought by her maid, with the final success of the latter in obtaining a hearing for the lover, the departure of the lover to a foreign court, where he loves another lady, the determination of his old mistress to follow him in boy's clothes, and her reception into his service as page, after having, in company with her host, heard him serenade his new love, and his choice of her as his confidant and messenger in his suit. These incidents, however, are not uncommon in the many romances with which Shakespeare must have been familiar; and their similarity to some passages in Twelfth Night will at once occur to the reader. In that play, the likeness to this story of Felismena is yet greater; for in the latter the scornful lady falls in love with the forlorn damsel, who, in a page's dress, woos her for another. But the companionship — that of her hostin which Felismena hears her false lover's serenade, and her statement, in the course of her story, that some officious person persuaded her lover's father that he should be sent to Court because "it was not meete that a yoong gentleman, and of so noble a house as he was, should spende his youth idly at home, where nothing could be learned but examples of vice, whereof the verie same idlenes (he said) was the onely mistresse," these trivial points of likeness to Julia's adventures, and to the opinions uttered by Valentine, Act I., Sc. 1, and Panthino, Act I., Sc. 3, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, tell more of imitation on Shakespeare's part, than the similarity of any of the more important incidents in play and novel.

The Diana was first translated into English by B. Yonge, and was not published until 1598, before which, as we have seen, The

Two Gentlemen of Verona had obtained an established reputation. But it should be remarked that, in his preface, Yonge informs us that the translation had lain by him "finished, Horace's ten, and six years more"; and it is possible that Shakespeare, if he did not read Spanish, might have become acquainted with the story in its English dress during these sixteen years. In any case, his debt was so small that we need not be solicitous about acknowledging it for him. The likeness is of the same nature, and almost as insignificant as that which some have found between the play and an episode in Sidney's Arcadia; to wit, that in both the hero becomes the leader of a band of outlaws; - the outlaws in the Arcadia being revolted Helots!

The comparatively timid style and unskilful structure of The Two Gentlemen of Verona show that it was the work of Shakespeare's earliest years as a dramatic writer. Malone attributes it to 1591. This is Malone's judgment on probabilities; but when we consider that in 1598, at which time Shakespeare was only thirty-four years old, he was the author of sixteen successful plays (the thirteen enumerated by Meres, with Pericles and the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI.,) of Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece, besides many of his Sonnets, and that he was an actor and had become a prominent theatrical manager and proprietor, may we not, with reason, place the production of his first three or four plays, of which this is undoubtedly one, earlier than 1591, his twenty-seventh year? It is worthy of notice, that no evidence has come down to us of the performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the lifetime of the author.

The period of the action of this comedy is indeterminable, except from Panthino's remark that Valentine, who is at Milan, "attends the Emperor in his royal court," which, as Mr. Knight has suggested, points to a time when Charles V. was undisputed master in that city and before the dukedom passed into the imperial family; that is, between the year 1529, when Francis I. signed the treaty of Cambray, by which he resigned all pretensions beyond the Alps, and 1535, when Sforza, the last of the Dukes of Milan, died. The costume of the play is then, of course, the court dress of Northern Italy at that period.

JULIA, a Lady of Verona, in love with Proteus.
SILVIA, the Duke's Daughter, beloved of Valentine.
LUCETTA, Waiting-woman to Julia.

Servants, Musicians.

SCENE: sometimes in Verona; sometimes in Milan, and in a

Forest near it.

(104)

YEASE to persuade, my loving Proteus:

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Were't not, affection chains thy tender days To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love, I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardiz'd at home,

Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

But since thou lov'st, love still, and thrive therein, Even as I would, when I to love begin.

Proteus. Wilt thou begone? Sweet Valentine,

adieu.

Think on thy Proteus, when thou, haply, seest
Some rare note-worthy object in thy travel:

Wish me partaker in thy happiness,

When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger, (If ever danger do environ thee,)

Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,

For I will be thy beads-man, Valentine.

?

Val. And on a love-book pray for my success
Pro. Upon some book I love, I'll pray for thee.
Val. That's on some shallow story of deep love,
How
young Leander cross'd the Hellespont.

Pro. That's a deep story of a deeper love;
For he was more than over shoes in love.

Val. 'Tis true; for you are over boots in love,
And yet you never swam the Hellespont.

Pro. Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots.
Val. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.
Pro.

What?

Val. To be in love, where scorn is bought with

groans;

Coy looks, with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's

mirth,

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights:

If haply won, perhaps, a hapless gain;

If lost, why then a grievous labour won:
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.

Pro. So, by your circumstance you call me fool.
Val. So, by your circumstance, I fear, you'll prove.
Pro. 'Tis love you cavil at: I am not Love.
Val. Love is your master, for he masters you;
And he that is so yoked by a fool,

Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

Pro. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Val. And writers say, as the most forward bud