This story, and it would appear this very ballad, is alluded to by Shakespeare and others of the dramatists.
Thus, the 13th verse is partly quoted in Romeo and Juliet, A. ii. sc. 1:
"Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim,
When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid."
Again in Love's Labour's Lost, (printed in 1598,) A. i. sc. 2.
Arm. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?
Moth. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since, but, I think, now 'tis not to be found.
See also Henry Fourth, P. ii. A. v. sc. 3, Richard Second, A. v. sc. 3, and Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, A. iii. sc. 4,—all these cited by Percy.
In A Collection of Old Ballads, i. 138, is a rifacimento of this piece, in a different stanza, but following the story closely and preserving much of the diction. It is also printed in Evans's Old Ballads, ii. 361.
I read that once in Affrica
A prince that there did raine,
Who had to name Cophetua,
As poets they did faine.
From natures workes he did incline,5
For sure he was not of my minde,
He cared not for women-kind,
But did them all disdain.
But marke what happen'd by the way;
As he out of his window lay,10
He saw a beggar all in grey,
Which did increase his paine.