The epithet in Italics very distinctly points out the vagrant life of these attendants on merriment and good cheer. They were accustomed to travel the country, in search of bride-ales, Christmas dinners, fairs, &c., and wherever they could get access to the halls of the gentry and nobility.
It is in the Winter's Tale, however, that the minstrel of our poet's age is but too faithfully depicted. In the person of Autolycus, whom
we have already noticed, when describing the country wake, is to be found, in colours faithful to nature, the very object of Stubbe's satire, a composition very curiously blending the various functions of the minstrel, the pedlar, and the rogue.
No harshness therefore can be attributed to the act of Queen Elizabeth, which in 1597 nearly annihilated an occupation so vilely associated and degraded. In the fourth chapter of this statute the law enacts that "all fencers, bearwards, common players of enterludes, and MINSTRELLS, wandering abroad; all juglers, tinkers, pedlars, &c. shall be adjudged and deemed rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggers;" a clause which, very deservedly, put an end to a profession which, though once highly respectable and interesting, no longer had a claim to public support; a clause which enabled Dr. Bull to say, with much truth,
"Beggars they are with one consent,
And Rogues, by Act of Parliament."[561:A]
Of the use which Shakspeare made of the various romances, tales, and ballads which undoubtedly occupied a large portion of his library, an accurate estimate may be formed from a close inspection of his dramas. It will be found, that, with the exception of the Historical plays, derived either from English chronicles or translations of classic story, the residue of his dramatic productions may be traced to sources exclusively existing within the regions of romantic literature. As we shall have occasion, however, hereafter to notice the origin of each drama, as it passes before us in chronological succession, it will merely be necessary in this place, in order to afford some proof of his familiarity with these fictions, to select a few specimens of his allusion to them from the body of his plays.
That our poet was well acquainted with the celebrated Romance, entitled Mort d'Arthure, the most popular of its class, would have been readily admitted from the known course of his studies, even if he had not once alluded to it in the course of his works. In the Second Part, however, of King Henry the Fourth, he makes Shallow, vaunting of his youthful feats to Falstaffe, say, "I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show[562:A];" a line upon which Mr. Douce observes, "Whatever part Sir Dagonet took in this show would doubtless be borrowed from Mallory's romance of the Mort Arture, which had been compiled in the reign of Henry VII. What there occurs relating to Sir Dagonet was extracted from the excellent and ancient story of Tristan de Leonnois, in which Dagonet is represented as the fool of king Arthur[562:B];" a character certainly well adapted to the powers of the worthy justice.
It should, however, be remarked, that the Arthur's show in this passage was not, what it might at first be supposed, an exact representation of the ancient chivalric costume of that romantic Prince and his knights, but principally an exhibition of Archery by a toxophilite society, of which Richard Robinson, the translator of the English Gesta, has given us an account under the title of "The Auncient Order Societie, and Unitie Laudable, of Prince Arthure and his knightly Armory of the Round Table. With a Threefold Assertion friendly in favour and furtherance of English Archery at this day." 1583. 4to.[562:C]
These city-worthies, to the number of fifty-eight, it would seem, had for some time assumed the arms and the names of the knights of the Round Table, and Robinson, who the year before had published a translation of Leland's Assertio Arthvrii, thought proper to dedicate his Ancient Order to M. Thomas Smith, Esq., the then Prince Arthur of this fellowship, and compliments him by deducing his society