[P. 14.] Lear is founded. Shakespeare’s actual sources were probably Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain” (c. 1130) and Holinshed’s “Chronicle.”
Othello on an Italian novel, from the “Hecatommithi” of Giraldi Cinthio (1565).
Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition. The story of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the “Histoires Tragiques” of Belleforest. “Macbeth” was based on Holinshed’s “Chronicle of Scottish History.”
[P. 15.] those bodiless creations. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 138.
Your face. “Macbeth,” i, 5, 63.
Tyrrell and Forrest, persons hired by Richard III to murder the young princes in the Tower. See “Richard III,” iv, 2-3.
thick and slab. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 32.
snatched a [wild and] fearful joy. Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”
[P. 16.] Fletcher the poet. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the plague in 1625.
The course of true love. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” i, 1, 34.