[1410] Fools appear in As You Like It (†1599), All’s Well that Ends Well (†1601), Twelfth Night (†1601), King Lear (†1605); cf. the allusion to Yorick, the king’s jester in Hamlet, v. 1. 198 (†1603). Kempe seems to have left the Shakespearian company in 1598 or 1599.
[1411] According to Fleay, Biog. Chron. i. 25, Armin’s Nest of Ninnies, of 1608 (ed. Shakes. Soc.), is a revision of his Fool upon Fool of 1605.
[1412] As You Like It, v. 4. 111. Cf. Lionel Johnson, The Fools of Shakespeare, in Noctes Shakespearianae (Winchester Sh. Soc.); J. Thümmel, Ueber Sh.’s Narren (Sh.-Jahrbuch, ix. 87).
[1413] Tille, Y. and C. 162; Sandys, 20. At Christmas, 1065, Edward the Confessor ‘curiam tenuit’ at London, and dedicated Westminster Abbey on Innocents’ day (Florence of Worcester, Chronicle, ed. Thorpe, i. 224).
[1414] Tille, Y. and C. 160; Ramsay, F. of E. ii. 43.
[1415] Sandys, 23; Ashton, 9.
[1416] Sandys, 53; Ashton, 14; Drake, 94.
[1417] Ashton, 26; Stubbes, i. 173. Cf. Vaughan’s Poems (Muses Library, i. 107):
‘Alas, my God! Thy birth now here
Must not be number’d in the year.’