{"For women fear too much even as they love",
"And women's fear and love hold quantity,"
{"And now behold"
"O Gertrard, Gertrard"—
are printed side by side, a sure mark of revision.
1604.
Measure for Measure was written, in my opinion, in rivalry to Marston's The Fawn, which was printed March 1606, but produced 1603-4. It was also subsequent to Chettle and Heywood's Like quits Like, 14th January 1603; v. 1. 416. All the allusions in it suit 1604. The avoidance of publicity by James I. (i. 1. 68-71; ii. 4. 27-30); the existing war and expected peace (i. 2. 4. 83); the stabbers—four out of ten prisoners—in iv. 3; the stuffed hose, to which Pompey's name is appropriate, all agree in this; peace was concluded in the autumn; the "Act of Stabbing" was passed in this year, the bombasted breeches revived with the new reign. But these are more valuable in showing what reliance can be placed on such allusions than in fixing the date of the play; for it was acted at Court, 26th December 1604. The title was probably taken from a line in 3 Henry VI., ii. 6. 55; the plot is like All's Well in the substitution of Mariana, Twelfth Night in the Duke's love declaration at the end. It is founded on Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra (1582). An order was made in 1603, that no new houses should be built in the suburbs of London. Compare i. 2. 104.
1604.
Othello was acted at Court 1st November 1604, being, no doubt, like Measure for Measure, 26th December, a new play that year. The Merry Wives, 4th November, and Henry V., 7th January, were revised for the same Revels. The Errors, 28th December, Loves Labour's Lost, between New Year and Twelfth Day, and The Merchant of Venice, January 10, 12, were also reproduced. The document in the Record Office containing these details is a modern forgery, but Malone possessed a transcript of the genuine entry in the Revels accounts. It was a bold thing for Shakespeare to have performed before James I. in two plays on unfounded jealousy, at a time when the King was so jealous of the relations of the Queen with Lord Southampton. The 1622 Quarto copy of this play is abridged for stage reasons; by whom we cannot say. The allusion to the "huge eclipse" (v. 2. 99), points to the total eclipse of 2d October 1605. Shakespeare had probably been reading Harvey's Discoursive Problem concerning Prophesies (1588), in which he speaks of "a huge fearful eclipse of the sun" as to happen on that day. The likeness of this play in small details to Measure for Measure indicates close contemporaneity of date, e.g., the name Angelo (i. 3. 16); the word "grange" (i. 1. 106), and "seeming" (iii. 3. 209). This play was again acted at Court in 1613. It was founded on Cinthio's novel Hecatomithi, Third Decad, Novel 3. The "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" (i. 3. 145) came from Raleigh's narrative of The Discovery of Guyana (1600). He was "resolved" of their credibility. In The Patient Man, by Dekker, S. R. 9th November 1604, there is a distinct reference to Othello—
"Thou kill'st her now again,