Abbreviations, except a few of the most familiar, have been avoided in the Notes, as in other parts of the book. The references to act, scene, and line in the quotations from Shakespeare are added for the convenience of the reader or student, who may sometimes wish to refer to the context. The line-numbers are those of the "Globe" edition, which vary from those of my edition only in scenes that are wholly or partly in prose.
The numbers appended to names of authors (as in the note on [page 22], for example) are the dates of their birth and death. An interrogation-mark after a date (as in the note on [page 114]) indicates that it is uncertain. I have not thought it necessary to insert biographical notes concerning well-known authors, like Spenser, Milton, etc.
NOTES
Page 3.—Michael Drayton. He was born in Warwickshire in 1563. Of his personal history very little is known. His most famous work, the Poly-Olbion (or Polyolbion, as it is often printed), is a poem of about 30,000 lines, the subject of which, as he himself states it, is "a chorographical description of all the tracts, rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britain; with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, etc., of the same." His Ballad of Agincourt (see Tales from English History, p. 39) has been called "the most perfect and patriotic of English ballads." Drayton was made poet-laureate in 1626. He died in 1631, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Page 4.—Her Bear. The badge of the Earls of Warwick.
Wilmcote. A small village about three miles from Stratford-on-Avon. The name is also written Wilmecote, and Wilnecote; and in old documents, Wilmcott, Wincott, etc. It is probably the Wincot of The Taming of the Shrew (ind. 2. 23) and the Woncot of 2 Henry IV. (v. 1. 42).
Dugdale. Sir William Dugdale (1605–1686), one of the most learned of English antiquaries. His Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) is said to have been the result of twenty years' laborious research.