scure literary performances that have come down to us from past ages," others regard it with enthusiasm as "informed with a bright poetical spirit, and possessing a pastoral charm which may occasionally be compared with the best parts of Sidney's Arcadia." Certainly in many places the elaborate euphuistic prose serves as a quaint framework for some dainty "Sonetto," "Eglog," or "Song"; the xvith lyric in the Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics may at least vindicate the novel from the attacks of its too harsh critics.

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

(i) It is an interesting point that the original of these words, "Totus mundus agit histrionem," was inscribed over the entrance to the Globe Theater; as the theater was probably opened at the end of 1599, the play containing the elaboration of the idea may have been among the first plays produced there. According to a doubtful tradition the motto called forth epigrams from Jonson and Shakespeare. Oldys has preserved for us the following lines:

JONSON.

"If, but stage actors, all the world displays, Where shall we find spectators of their plays?" SHAKESPEARE.-"Little, or much, of what we see, we do; We're all both actors and spectators too."

The motto is said to be derived from one of the fragments of Petronius, where the words are "quod fere totus mundus exerceat histrioniam." 1 The idea, however, was common in Elizabethan literature, e. g. "Pythagoras said, that this world was like a stage, whereon many play their parts" (from the old play of Damon and Pythias); Shakespeare had himself already used the idea in The Merchant of Venice (I, i):-"I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part."

(ii) It should be noted that Jaques' moralizing is but an enlargement of the text given out to him by the Duke:

1 The reading is variously given as histrionem and histrioniam.

"Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in."

Now "this wide and universal theater" reminds one strongly of a famous book which Shakespeare may very well have known, viz., Boissard's Theatrum Vita Humana (published at Metz, 1596), the opening chapter of which is embellished with a remarkable emblem representing a huge pageant of universal misery, headed with the lines:"Vita Humanæ est tanquam

Theatrum omnium miseriarum";

beneath the picture are words to the same effect:

"Vita hominis tanquam circus vel grande theatrum."

(iii) The division of the life of man into fourteen, ten, or seven periods is found in Hebrew, Greek, and Roman literature (cp. Archæologia, Vol. XXXV, 167-189; Löw's Die Lebensalter in der Jüdischen Literatur; cp. also Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, iv, 12). In the fifteenth century the representation of the "seven ages" was a common theme in literature and art; e. g. (i) in Arnold's Chronicle, a famous book of the period, there is a chapter entitled "the vij ages of man living in the world"; (ii) a block-print in the British Museum gives seven figures "Infans," "Pueritia," "Adolescentia," "Juventus," "Virilitas," "Senectus," "Decrepitas," which practically, in several cases, illustrate the words of Jaques; (iii) the allegorical mosaics on the pavement of the Cathedral at Siena picture forth the same seven acts of life's drama.

There should be somewhere a Moral Play based on Jaques' theme of life's progress: it might perhaps be said that the spirit of the dying Drama of Allegory lived on in the person of "Monsieur Melancholy"; he may well be likened to the Presenter of some old "Enterlude of Youth, Manhood, and Age"; Romantic Comedy was not for him;

1 Cp. Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers, by H. Green, 1870.

Everyman, Lusty Juventus, Mundus et Infans, and such like endless moralizings on the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, were more to his taste.

THE SCENE OF ACTION

The locality of the play is "the Forest of Arden," i. e. "Ardennes," in the north-east of France, "between the Meuse et Moselle," but Shakespeare could hardly help thinking of his own Warwickshire Arden, and there can be little doubt that his contemporaries took it in the same way. There is a beautiful description of this English Forest in Drayton's Polyolbion (Song xiii), where the poet apostrophizes Warwickshire as his own "native country which so brave spirits hast bred." The whole passage, as Mr. Furness admirably points out, probably serves to show "the deep impression on him which his friend Shakespeare's As You Like It had made." Elsewhere Drayton refers to "Sweet Arden's Nightingales," e. g. in his Matilda and in the Idea:

"Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing
Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers."

THE TITLE OF THE PLAY

The title As You Like It, was evidently suggested by a passage in Lodge's Address to the Gentlemen Readers:"To be brief, gentlemen, room for a soldier and a sailor, that gives you the fruits of his labors that he wrote in the

ocean, where every line was wet with the surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with a storm. If you like it so; and yet I will be yours in duty, if you be mine in favor." It was formerly believed (by Tieck and others) that the title alluded to the concluding lines of Ben Jonson's Cynthia's Revels:

"I'll only speak what I have heard him say,
'By 'tis good, and if you like 't you may.""

But Shakespeare's play must have preceded Jonson's dramatic satire, which was first acted in 1600.

DURATION OF ACTION

The time of the play, according to Mr. Daniel's Analysis (Trans. of New Shakespere Soc., 1877-79), may be taken as ten day's represented on the stage, with necessary intervals:

Day 1. Act I, i.

Day 2. Act I, ii and iii, and Act II, i. [Act II, iii.] Day 3. Act II, ii [Act III, i]. An interval of a few days. The journey to Arden.

Day 4. Act II, iv.

Day 5. Act II, v, vi, and vii. An interval of a few days.

Day 6. Act III, ii. An interval.

Day 7. Act III, iii.

Day 8. Act III, iv and v; Act IV, i, ii, and iii; and Act V, i.

Day 9. Act V, ii and iii.

Day 10. Act V, iv.

The scenes in brackets are out of their actual order. "The author seems to have gone back to resume these threads of the story which were dropped while other parts of the plot were in hand."

INTRODUCTION

By HENRY NORMAN HUDSON, A.M.

As You Like It, along with two other of Shakespeare's plays and one of Ben Jonson's, was entered in the Stationers' Register August 4, 1600, and that opposite the entry was an order "to be stayed." In regard to the other two the stay appears to have been soon removed, as both were entered again, one on the fourteenth, the other on the twenty-third, of the same month, and were published in the course of that year. Touching As You Like It, the stay seems to have been kept up, perhaps because its continued success on the stage made the company unwilling to part with their interest in it. The play was never printed, so far as we know, till in the folio of 1623, where it stands the tenth in the division of Comedies, with the acts and scenes regularly marked.

This is the only contemporary notice of As You Like It that has been discovered. The play is not mentioned by Meres, which perhaps warrants the inference that it had not been heard of at the date of his list. And in Act V, sc. iii, is a line quoted from Marlowe's version of Hero and Leander, which was first printed in 1598. So that we may perhaps safely conclude that the play was written in the latter part of 1598, or in the course of the next year.

One thing more there is, that ought not to be passed by in this connection. Gilbert Shakespeare, a brother of the Poet, lived till after the Restoration; and Oldys tells of "the faint, general, and almost lost ideas" the old man had of having once seen the Poet act a part in one of his own comedies, "wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping,