Few of the stories in the “Arabian Nights” which charmed our marvelling boyhood were greater favourites than this one, under the title of “Abou Hassan; or, the Sleeper Awakened.” What recked we in those days whence it was derived?—the story—the story was the thing! As Sir R. F. Burton observes in his first note, this is “the only one of the eleven added by Galland, whose original has been discovered in Arabic;”[[484]] and it is probable that Galland heard it recited in a coffee-house during his residence in Constantinople. The plot of the Introduction to Shakspeare’s comedy of “The Taming of the Shrew” is similar to the adventure of Abú al-Hasan the Wag, and is generally believed to have been adapted from a story entitled “The Waking Man’s Fortune” in Edward’s collection of comic tales, 1570, which were retold somewhat differently in Goulart’s “Admirable and Memorable Histories,” 1607; both versions are reprinted in Mr. Hazlitt’s “Shakspeare Library,” vol. iv., part 1, pp. 403–414. In Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” we find the adventure told in a ballad entitled “The Frolicksome Duke; or, the Tinker’s Good Fortune,” from the Pepys collection: “whether it may be thought to have suggested the hint to Shakspeare or is not rather of later date,” says Percy, “the reader must determine”:
Now as fame does report, a young duke keeps a court,
One that pleases his fancy with frolicksome sport:
But amongst all the rest, here is one, I protest,
Which will make you to smile when you hear the true jest:
A poor tinker he found lying drunk on the ground,
As secure in a sleep as if laid in a swownd.
The duke said to his men, William, Richard, and Ben,
Take him home to my palace, we’ll sport with him then.
O’er a horse he was laid, and with care soon convey’d