Page 75.—William Painter. He was born in England about 1537, and died about 1594. He studied at Cambridge in 1554, and in 1561 was made clerk of the ordnance in the Tower of London. In 1566 he published the first volume of The Palace of Pleasure, containing sixty tales from Latin, French, and Italian authors. The second volume (1567) contained thirty-four tales. In later editions six more were added, making a hundred in all. The collection is the source from which Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists drew many of their plots.
Page 76.—Giletta of Narbonne. The story dramatized by Shakespeare in All's Well that Ends Well.
Page 77.—The "Gesta Romanorum." A popular collection of stories in Latin, compiled late in the 13th or early in the 14th century, and often reprinted and translated. The two stories (of the caskets and of the bond) combined in the Merchant of Venice are found in it; and also the story of Theodosius and his daughters, which is like that of Lear, though Shakespeare did not take the plot of that tragedy directly from it.
Page 78.—The trumpet to the morn. The trumpeter that announces the coming of day. Trumpet in this sense occurs several times in Shakespeare; as in Henry V. iv. 2. 61: "I will the banner from a trumpet take," etc.
Extravagant and erring. Both words are used in their etymological sense of wandering. Extravagant is, literally, wandering beyond (its proper confine, or limit).
Arden. There was a Forest of Arden in Warwickshire as well as on the Continent in the northeastern part of France. Drayton, in his Matilda (1594), speaks of "Sweet Arden's nightingales," etc.
The ringlets of their dance. The "fairy rings," so called, which were supposed to be made by their dancing on the grass. In The Tempest (v. 1. 37) Prospero refers to them thus, in his apostrophe to the various classes of spirits over whom he has control:—
"You demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make