[1007] See English Fairy Tales, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243, 245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where, it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.
[1008] English Fairy Tales, p. 104. This theme of the Thankful Dead is extremely common. It is found in an old English romance, Sir Amadace, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig's Archiv, Vol. LXXXI, p. 141.
[1009] Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer's Golden Bough.
[1010] Annals of Stage, etc., III. 197.
[1011] Eng. Dram. Lit. I. 372.
[1012] Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that both poets went to folk-lore for their materials. Childe Rowland is the probable source.
[1013] It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock, April 16, 1595, the owlde wifes tale. Cf. "an olde wives tale," Greene, Groatsw. (Grosart XII. 119).—Gen. Ed.
[1014] G. P. Untersuchungen, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.
[1015] Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD., London, 1806, p. 398.
[1016] Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele, in the Archiv fur das Studium d. neueren Spracben, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.