Much Ado about Nothing is more likely than any other play to be identical with Love's Labour's Won. The internal evidence has been set forth by Mr. Brae; but there are points of external evidence also, that have been overlooked. It is very frequent, in old plays, to find days of the week and month mentioned; and when this is the case, they nearly always correspond to the almanac of the year in which the play was written. Now, in this play alone in Shakespeare is there such a mark of time; comparing i. 1. 285, and ii. 1. 375, we find that the 6th July came on a Monday; this suits the years 1590 and 1601, but none between; an indication that the original play was written in 1590. Unlike Love's Labour's Lost, it was almost recomposed at its reproduction, and this day-of-the-week mention is, I think, a relic of the original plot, and probably due, not to Shakespeare, but to some coadjutor. Again, Meres' list in his Palladis Tamia consists of the following plays:—Gentlemen of Verona (1595), Errors (1594), Love's Labour's Lost (1597), Love's Labour's Won (?), Midsummer-Night's Dream (1594-5), Merchant of Venice (1596-7), Richard II. (1595), Richard III. (1594), Henry IV. (1597), King John (1596), Titus Andronicus (1594), Romeo and Juliet (1595-6). The dates I have appended to these may in some instance be slightly erroneous; but I think no one will deny that the plays mentioned by Meres must have constituted the Shakespeare repertoire of the Chamberlain's men, and have been played by them between the dates of their constitution as a company in 1594, and the publication of Meres' book in 1598. But there is absolutely no other comedy of Shakespeare's that can be assigned to such a date. All's Well that Ends Well was certainly not played by his company so early. Again, Cowley and Kempe played the constables in this play; but Kempe had left the company by the summer of 1599. There is no argument against this conclusion yet produced. The main subject of the play had been dramatised before in Ariodante and Geneuora, acted at Court by the Merchant Tailors' boys in 1582-3. The old German play of Jacob Ayrer, The Beautiful Phœnicia (c. 1595, Cohn) also contains points of similarity with Shakespeare's play that are not found in the Bandello novel which Belleforest translated in 1594. Pedro and Leonato are the only names which Shakespeare retains from the novel; which Ayrer follows in this respect. When the title was altered is doubtful: the play was known as Benedick and Beatrice in 1613.
Henry V. was acted, with the choruses as we have them in the Folio, between 15th April and 28th September, while Essex was in Ireland; see chorus to Act v. That this was the final revision of the play, I am by no means convinced. The scene with the Scotch and Irish captains, iii. 2. 69 to end, I take to be an insertion for the Court performance, Christmas 1605, to please King James, who had been so annoyed that year by depreciation of the Scots on the stage. That the Quarto copy is printed from an abridged version made for acting purposes, is palpable. By omitting i. 1, and substituting one Bishop for two in i. 2 (two being retained in the stage direction) Ely is disposed of; by simple omission and transference of a speech in iv. 3 to Warwick, Westmoreland disappears; in a similar way Bedford gives place to Clarence; in iv. 3. 69 Salisbury is replaced by Gloster, and was evidently meant to be in l. 5-9 of the same scene; in iv. 1 Erpingham remains in the stage direction, but has been cut out in the text. That the version from which the Quarto was abridged was the 1599 copy, is a separate question to which I am inclined to say no. I rather hold that it was an earlier one without choruses, and following the Chronicle historians much more closely. I cannot otherwise account for the substitution of Gebon for Rambures in iii. 7, and iv. 5; and of Bourbon for Britany in iii. 5, and for Dolphin in iii. 7, iv. 5. Mr. Daniel's theory is that the Quarto was later than the Folio version, that is to say, that Shakespeare wrote a play historically incorrect, that his errors were corrected in a stage version before 1600, i.e., while he was still himself an actor; that the errors were afterwards restored, and have kept the stage ever since. I cannot think this. I believe that the Quarto is (as we have seen in other instances) a shortened version of a play written early in 1598 for the Curtain Theatre, and that the Folio (except such alterations as were made after James's accession) is a version enlarged and improved for the Globe Theatre later in the same year. With regard to this series of Falstaff plays, the following table may be of interest.
| NAMES OF "IRREGULAR HUMOURISTS" IN— | ||||||
| Famous Victories. | 1 Hen. IV. (original version). | 1 Hen. IV. (altered version). | 2 Hen. IV. (i. 1 to ii. 4 altered). | 2 Hen. IV. (ii. 4 to end unaltered). | Hen. V. (both versions). | Merry Wives. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gadshill. | Gadshill. | Gadshill. | ||||
| Ned. | Ned Poins. | Poins. | Poins. | |||
| Tom. | Harvey. | Peto. | Peto. | |||
| Russell. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | Bardolph. | |
| Oldcastle. | Oldcastle. | Falstaff. | Falstaff. | Falstaff. | F. in text. | Falstaff. |
| ? Hostess. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | Quickly. | |
| Doll. | Doll. | |||||
| Pistol. | Pistol. | Pistol. | ||||
| Nym. | Nym. | |||||
| Shallow. | Shallow. | |||||
According to my hypothesis, the original names Oldcastle, Ned Poins, Gadshill, &c., were chiefly taken from The Famous Victories of Henry V.; all these disappear from the series by ii. 4 of 2 Henry IV.: the later names, Bardolph, Falstaff, Nym, Pistol, Shallow, persist to the end of the series, but did not occur in the original forms of 1 and 2 Henry IV. The name Falstaff was no doubt taken from 1 Henry VI., in which Shakespeare had been writing on March 1592, and which we know from the Epilogue to Henry V. to have been revived by 1598 at latest.
1599.
As You Like It was "stayed" on the 4th August 1600, and was written after "Diana in the fountain" (iv. 1. 154) was set up in Cheapside in 1598 (Stow). In iii. 5. 83 a line is quoted from Hero and Leander, published in 1598; the only instance in which Shakespeare directly refers to a contemporary poet. The date may, I think, be still more exactly fixed from i. 2. 94, "the little wit that fools have was silenced," which alludes probably to the burning of satirical books by public authority 1st June 1599. Every indication points to the latter part of 1599 as the date of production. This play is a rival to the Robin Hood plays acted at the Rose in 1598; Jaques, "the traveller," seems to have been the origin of Jonson's Amorphus in Cynthia's Revels, and Touchstone of Cos the whetstone in the same play; compare i. 2. 56. The female characters differed considerably in height, as in Much Ado and The Dream. The remarks of Touchstone on quarrels and lies in v. 4 should be compared with Love's Labour's Lost, i. 2 to end; Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4. 26, &c. The comparison of the world to a stage in ii. 7 suggests a date subsequent to the building of the Globe, with its motto of Totus mundus agit histrionem; and the introduction of a fool proper, in place of a comic clown such as is found in all the anterior comedies, confirms this: the "fools" only occur in plays subsequent to Kempe's leaving the company. The title is taken from Lodge's address prefixed to his Rosalynde, on which the play is founded—"if you like it, so," says Lodge—and it is alluded to in the Epilogue (which, like that to 2 Henry IV., is spoken by a female character), and again by Jonson in the Epilogue to Cynthia's Revels, which play has much more connection with the present than is usually supposed. There is a tradition that Shakespeare took the part of Adam.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, as we have it in the Folio, was probably made for the Court performance in February 1600; in i. 4, the "King's English" does not imply that James, not Elizabeth, was on the throne; but that the time of action is under a king, Henry IV. It was written after Henry V.; perhaps, according to the old tradition, in obedience to the Queen's command, who wished to see Falstaff in love, Shakespeare not having fulfilled his promise in the Epilogue to 2 Henry IV. to introduce him in the Henry V. play; a failure probably caused by the defection at this date of the actor who had taken this part—Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant having quitted the King's men between the production of 2 Henry IV. and that of this play. The title, The Merry Wives of Windsor, suggests approximation in subject with The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1597), and so does the great likeness in the characteristics in the Hosts of these plays; while the plot of the Anne Page story is identical with that of Wily Beguiled (1597), Fenton corresponding to Sophos, Caius to Churms, Simple to Plodall, Evans to R. Goodfellow. It appears from the Quarto edition that Ford's assumed name was originally Brook, not Broome. This was probably altered because Brook was the name of the Lord Cobham, who took offence at the production of Oldcastle on the stage. The song of Marlowe's sung by Evans in iii. 1 was published as Shakespeare's in the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599; not necessarily by any means in consequence of its previous introduction in this play. Mr. P. A. Daniel has rightly pointed out that iii. 5 is really composed of two scenes, one between Falstaff and Quickly, the other between Falstaff and Ford; and that the latter ought to begin the fourth Act: he has also shown that in various places the Folio has inconsistencies not explicable without the aid of the Quarto. But all this does not prove any "degradation" of the play at "managerial" hands; it rather indicates hurried and careless production, such as we might expect in a play ordered to be produced in a fortnight, according to the old tradition. Another internal proof of such hurry, both in this play and in Much Ado about Nothing, lies in the fact that they are almost entirely in prose; which is not the case in any other play by Shakespeare. And this brings us to the question of the nature of the Quarto version. It has been held to be merely a first sketch of the play: this theory is untenable. Mr. P. A. Daniel holds it to be a stolen version made up by a literary hack from shorthand notes obtained at a representation. This hypothesis gives no explanation of the "cousin-Garmombles" of iii. 5, nor does it enable us to understand how no better a representation of the play was issued, nor how whole scenes (that of the fairies for example) appear in quite a different version from the Folio. My own opinion is that the case is parallel to that of Romeo and Juliet; that the Quarto is printed from a partly revised prompter's copy of the older version of the play, which became useless when Shakespeare had made his final version. I believe also that this older version was produced soon after the visit of the Count of Mümplegart (Garmombles) to Windsor in August 1592; that it was probably the Jealous Comedy, acted as a new play by Shakespeare's company 5th January 1593; that when Shakespeare revived this old play, he accommodated the characters to Henry IV. as best he could. Mr. Daniel's argument that The Merry Wives was a later play than Henry V., because Nym would otherwise have had no title to special mention in the title-page of the Quarto, has not much weight. This Quarto was printed three years after Henry V. was produced, and Nym's reputation from either play was three years old, according to Mr. Daniel himself. Why then should he not be mentioned?