: logue but it is no more unhandsome, than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true, that good wine needs no bush 20, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue: Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play? I am not furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me: my way is, to conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women (as I perceive, by your simpering, none of you hates them), that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman 21, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not: and I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curt'sy, bid me farewell. [Exeunt. 20 It was formerly the general custom in England, as it is still in France and the Netherlands, to hang a bush of ivy at the door of a vintner: there was a classical propriety in this; ivy being sacred to Bacchus. So in Summer's last Will and Testament, 1600:"Green ivy-bushes at the vintners' doors." Again in The Rival Friends, 1632: 66 ""Tis like the ivy-bush unto a tavern." The custom is still observed in Warwickshire and the adjoining counties at statute-hirings, wakes, &c. by people who sell ale at no other time. The manner in which they were decorated appears from a passage in Florio's Italian Dictionary, in voce Tremola : gold foile or thin leaves of gold or silver, namely, thinne plate, as our vintners adorn their bushes with." Nash, in his Lenten Stuffe, describes "A London vintner's signe thicke jagged and fringed round with theaming arsadine, i. e. glittering foil or orsedew, and not a yellow pigment as Mr. Gifford has supposed.”—v. Ben son's Works, vol. iv. p. 405. The parts of women were performed by men or boys in espeare's time. * HERE is an old anonymous play extant with the same title, first printed in 1594, which (as in the case of King John and Henry V.) Shakespeare rewrote, "adopting the order of the scenes, and inserting little more than a few lines which he thought worth preserving, or was in too much haste to alter." Malone, with great probability, suspects the old play to have been the production of George Peele or Robert Greene. Pope ascribed it to Shakespeare, and his opinion was current for many years, until a more exact examination of the original piece (which is of extreme rarity) undeceived those who were better versed in the literature of the time of Elizabeth than the poet. It is remarkable that the Induction, as it is called, has not been continued by Shakespeare so as to complete the story of Sly, or at least it has not come down to us; and Pope therefore supplied the deficiencies in this play from the elder performance; they have been degraded from their station in the text, as in some places incompatible with the fable and Dramatis Persona of Shakespeare; the reader will, however, be pleased to find them subjoined to the notes. The origin of this amusing fiction may probably be traced to the sleeper awakened of the Arabian Nights; but similar stories are told of Philip the good Duke of Burgundy, and of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. The Spaniard Jo. Lud. Vives relates it in a letter to the Duc de Beiar, printed in a rare and interesting volume of his letters published at Antwerp in 1556, which contains also some curious particulars relating to the divorce of Queen Katherine by King Henry VIII. Marco Polo relates some-thing similar of the Ismaelian Prince Alo-eddin, or chief of the mountainous region, whom he calls, in common with other writers There was a second edition of the anonymous play in 1596, and a third in 1607; the curious reader may consult it, in "Six old Plays upon which Shakespeare founded, &c." published by Steevens in 1779. of his time," the old man of the mountain." Warton refers to a collection of short comic stories in prose, set forth by maister Richard Edwards, master of her majesties revels in 1570 (which he had seen in the collection of Collins the poet), for the immediate source of the fable of the old drama. The incidents related by Heuterus in his Rerum Burgund. lib. iv. are also to be found in Goulart's Admirable and Memorable Histories, translated by E. Grimeston, 4to. 1607. The story of Charles V. is related by Sir Richard Barckley, in A Discourse on the Felicitie of Man, printed in 1598; but the frolic, as Mr. Holt White observes, seems better suited to the gaiety of the gallant Francis, or the revelry of our own boisterous Henry. Of the story of the Taming of the Shrew no immediate English source has been pointed out. Mr. Douce has referred to a novel in the Piacevoli Notti of Straparola, notte 8, fav. 2, and to El Conde Lucanor, by Don Juan Manuel, Prince of Castile, who died in 1362, as containing similar stories. He observes that the character of Petruchio bears some resemblance to that of Pisardo in Straparola's novel, notte 8, fav. 7. Schlegel remarks that this play "has the air of an Italian comedy;" and indeed the love intrigue of Lucentio is derived from the Suppositi of Ariosto, through the translation of George Gascoigne. Johnson has observed the skilful combination of the two plots, by which such a variety and succession of comic incident is ensured without running into perplexity. Petruchio is a bold and happy sketch of a humorist, in which Schlegel thinks the character and peculiarities of an Englishman are visible. It affords another example of Shakespeare's deep insight into human character, that in the last scene the meek and mild Bianca shows she is not without a spice of self will. The play inculcates a fine moral lesson, which is not always taken as it should be. Every one, who has a true relish for genuine humour, must regret that we are deprived of Shakespeare's continuation of this Interlude of Sly, "who is indeed of kin to Sancho Panza." We think with a late elegant writer, "the character of Sly, and the remarks with which he accompanies the play, as good as the play itself." It appears to have been one of Shakespeare's early productions, and is supposed by Malone to have been produced in 1594; but from the silence of Meres, in his enumeration of Shakespeare's dramas, in 1598, it was probably not written before that year. It was first printed in the folio of 1623. |