LOOK ABOUT YOU.
_EDITION.
A Pleasant Commodie called Looke About you. As it was lately played by the right honourable the Lord High Admirall his seruaunts. London, Printed for William Ferbrand, and are to be solde at his shop at the signe of the Crowne neere Guildhall gate_. 1600. 4°.
This drama is now first reprinted from the original edition, which has no division into acts and scenes. Mr Halliwell ("Dict. of Old Plays," 1860, p. 149) observes: "This is a diverting play, and the plot of it is founded on the English historians of the reign of Henry II."[451]
"Look About You" is not only a pleasant comedy, full of bustle and amusing episodes, and abundantly stored with illustrations of manners, but it is a piece which exhibits, on the part of the unknown writer, a considerable share of power and originality. The crazed Earl of Gloucester is not an ill-conceived character, and may have supplied a hint to Shakespeare; and the cross-purposes, stratagems, and deceptions, of which it is full, remind us of our great dramatist's own "Comedy of Errors," with which, however, it has nothing in common. It is by no means improbable, at the same time, that "Look About You," and not Shakespeare's play, was the piece performed at Gray's Inn in December 1594.[452]
Skink, who fills the part assigned to the vice in the earlier comedies, is a well-sustained and entertaining character, and the series of transformations which he and the rest undergo, even while they occasionally perplex us a little, as the plot thickens, and the figures on the stage multiply, can hardly fail to amuse.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE[453]
HENRY II., King of England.
PRINCE HENRY, the young usurped King.
PRINCE JOHN.
PRINCE RICHARD.
EARLS OF GLOUCESTER, LANCASTER, CHESTER, LEICESTER, and MORTON.
SIR RICHARD FAUCONBRIDGE.
ROBIN HOOD, Earl of Huntington.
SKINK, disguised as a hermit.
THE QUEEN.
LADY FAUCONBRIDGE.
BLOCK.
Warden of the Fleet.
REDCAP, a messenger.
Constable and Watch.
A Pursuivant.
A Drawer.
Music.