[263] François Duc de Montmorency (circa 1530-1579) was Ambassador to England in 1572, when Shakespeare was still a child.—T.
[264] Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron (circa 1562-1602), was Ambassador from Henry IV. to Elizabeth at the close of the sixteenth century. He was beheaded, 31 July 1602, at the Bastille, for conspiring against the King.—T.
[265] Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1560-1641), Henry IV.'s great minister.—T.
[266] Elizabeth, Queen of England (1533-1603), reigned from 1558 to 1603, and the plays produced by Shakespeare during her reign include Love's Labours Lost, the Comedy of Errors, King Henry VI., the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Midsummer Alight's Dream, the Life and Death of King Richard III., Romeo and Juliet, the Life and Death of King Richard II., King John, the Merchant of Venice, King Henry IV., King Henry V., the Taming of the Shrew, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, Julius Cæsar, All's Well that Ends Well, and Hamlet Prince of Denmark.—T.
[267] James I. King of England and VI. of Scotland (1566-1625). In his reign were produced Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, the Moor of Venice, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, the Tempest, the Winters Tale, and King Henry VIII.—T.
[268] Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) flourished exactly three centuries before Shakespeare.—T.
[269] Bulstrode Whitelock (1605-1675), a prominent member of the Long Parliament, and author of the Memorials of the English Affairs, in which mention is made of the fact that the Swedish Ambassador complains, in 1656, of the delay caused in the translation of certain articles into Latin through their being entrusted to a blind man.—T.
[270] Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), known as Molière, played the principal part in his own comedies. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, one of the most farcical of these, was produced in 1669.—T.
[271] Tob. xiii. 15.—T.
[272] An Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet William Shakespeare, 1-2.—T.