Prince, Leonato, Claudio, and Jack Wilson." In the third act, when the two inimitable guardians of the night first descend upon the solid earth in Messina, to move mortals for ever after with unextinguishable laughter, they speak to us in their well-known names of Dogberry and Verges; but in the fourth act we find the names of mere human actors prefixed to what they say: Dogberry becomes Kempe, and Verges Cowley. Here, then, we have a piece of the prompter's book before us. Balthazar, with his "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," is identified with Jack Wilson; and Kempe and Cowley have come down to posterity in honourable association with the two illustrious "compartners of the watch." We could almost believe that the player-editors of the folio in 1623 purposely left these anomalous entries as an historical tribute to the memory of their fellows. Kempe, we know, had been dead some years before the publication of the folio; and probably Cowley and Jack Wilson had also gone where the voice of their merriment and their minstrelsy was heard no more.

The chronology of this comedy is sufficiently fixed by the circumstance of its publication in 1600, coupled with the fact that it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. Chalmers has a notion that the return of the prince and his companions from "the wars" conveys a temporary allusion to the Irish campaign of Essex in 1599. When Beatrice says "Yes; you had musty victuals, and he hath holp to eat it," Chalmers detects a sarcasm upon the badness of the provisions furnished to Essex's army, which, according to Camden and other historical authorities, were not of the daintiest. We have little faith, as our readers know, in this species of evidence.

SUPPOSED SOURCE OF THE PLOT.

"THE story is taken from Ariosto," says Pope. To Ariosto then we turn; and we are repaid for our labour by the pleasure of reading that long but by no means tedious story of Genevra, which occupies the whole of the fifth book, and part of the sixth, of the Orlando Furioso. "The tale is a pretty comical matter," as Harrington quaintly pronounces it. The famous town of St. Andrew's forms its scene; and here was enacted something like that piece of villainy by which the Claudio of Shakspere was deceived, and his Hero" done to death, by slanderous tongues." In Harrington's good old translation of the Orlando there are six-and-forty pictures, as there are sixand-forty books; and, says the translator, "they are all cut in brass, and most of them by the best workmen in that kind that have been in this land this many years; yet I will not praise them too much because I gave direction for their making." The witty godson of Queen Elizabeth"that merry poet my godson"—adds, "the use of the picture is evident, which is that having read over the book you may read it as it were again in the very picture." He might have said, you may read it as it were before; and if we had copied this picture,-in which the whole action of the book is exhibited at once in a bird's-eye view, and where yet, as he who gave "direction for its making" truly says, "the personages of men, the shapes of horses, and such like, are made large at the bottom and lesser upward," '—our readers would have seen at a glance how far "the story is taken from Ariosto." For here we have, "large at the bottom," a fair one at a window, looking lovingly upon a man who is ascending a ladder of ropes, whilst at the foot of the said ladder an unhappy wight is about to fall upon his sword, from which fate he is with difficulty arrested by one who is struggling with him. We here see at once the resemblance between the story in Ariosto and the incident in Much Ado about Nothing upon which both the tragic and comic interest of the play hinges. But here the resemblance ceases. As we ascend the picture, we see the King of Scotland seated upon a royal throne,-but no Dogberry; his disconsolate daughter is placed by his side,-but there is no veiled Hero; King, and Princess, and courtiers, and people, are looking upon a tilting-ground, where there is a fierce and deadly encounter of two mailed knights, but there is no Beatrice and no Benedick. The truth is, that Ariosto found the incident of a lady betrayed to suspicion and danger by the personation of her own waiting-woman amongst the popular traditions of the south of Europe-this story has been traced to Spain; and he interwove it with the adventures of his Rinaldo as an integral part of his chivalrous romance. The lady Genevra, so falsely accused, was doomed to die unless a true knight came within a month

to do battle for her honour. Her lover, Ariodant, had fled, and was reported to have perished. The wicked duke, Polinesso, who had betrayed Genevra, appears secure in his treachery. But the misguided woman, Dalinda, who had been the instrument of his crime, flying from her paramour, meets with Rinaldo, and declares the truth; and then comes the combat, in which the guilty duke is slain by the champion of innocence, and the lover reappears to be made happy with his spotless princess. We have selected from Harrington's translation such portions of the narrative of Dalinda as may show the resemblance which led Pope mistakingly to say "the story is taken from Ariosto:"— "Intending by some vile and subtle train

To part Genevra from her faithful lover,

And plant so great mislike between them twain,
Yet with so cunning show the same to cover,
That her good name he will so foul distain,
Alive nor dead she never shall recover.

"To please my fond conceit this very night,

I pray thee, dear, to do as I direct:

When fair Genevra to her bed is gone,

Take thou the clothes she ware and put them on.

"And so went Ariodant into his place,
And undiscover'd closely there did lie,
Till having looked there a little space,
The crafty duke to come he might descry,
That meant the chaste Genevra to deface,
Who having made to me his wonted signs,
I let him down the ladder made of lines.

"The gown I ware was white, and richly set

With aglets, pearl, and lace of gold well garnish'd;

My stately tresses cover'd with a net

Of beaten gold most pure and brightly varnish'd;

Not thus content, the veil aloft I set,

Which only princes wear; thus stately harnish'd,

And under Cupid's banner bent to fight,
All unawares I stood in all their sight.

"But Ariodant that stood so far aloof

Was more deceiv'd by distance of the place,
And straight believ'd, against his own behoof,
Seeing her clothes, that he had seen her face."

The motive which influences the Polinesso of Ariosto is the hope that by vilifying the character of Genevra he may get rid of his rival in her love. Spenser has told a similar story in the "Faerie Queene" (Book II., Canto IV.), in which Phedon describes the like treachery of his false friend Philemon. The motive here was not very unlike that of Don John in Much Ado about Nothing :

"He, either envying my toward good,
Or of himself to treason ill dispos'd,
One day unto me came in friendly mood,
And told, for secret, how he understood
That lady, whom I had to me assign'd,
Had both distain'd her honourable blood,

And eke the faith which she to me did bind;
And therefore wish'd me stay till I more truth should find."

The story as told by Spenser is a purely tragical one; and its moral is the mischief of "
perance:"-

"This graceless man, for furtherance of his guile,
Did court the handmaid of my lady dear,
Who, glad t'embosom his affection vile,
Did all she might more pleasing to appear.
One day, to work her to his will more near,
He woo'd her thus: Pryené (so she hight),
What great despite doth fortune to thee bear,
Thus lowly to abase thy beauty bright,
That it should not deface all others' lesser light?

intem

"But if she had her least help to thee lent,

T' adorn thy form according thy desart,

Their blaying pride thou wouldest soon have blent,
And stain'd their praises with thy least good part;
Ne should fair Claribell with all her art,
Though she thy lady be, approach thee near:
For proof thereof, this evening, as thou art,

Array thyself in her most gorgeous gear,

That I may more delight in thy embracement dear.

"The maiden, proud through praise and mad through love,

Him hearken'd to, and soon herself array'd;

The whiles to me the treachour did remove

His crafty engine; and, as he had said,

Me leading, in a secret corner laid,

The sad spectator of my tragedy:

Where left, he went, and his own false part play'd,

Disguised like that groom of base degree,

Whom he had feign'd th' abuser of my love to be.

Eftsoons he came unto th' appointed place,
And with him brought Pryené, rich array'd
In Claribella's clothes: Her proper face

I not discerned in that darksome shade,

But ween'd it was my love with whom he play'd.

Ah, God! what horror and tormenting grief

My heart, my hands, mine eyes, and all assay'd!
Me liefer were ten thousand deathës prief,

Than wound of jealous worm, and shame of such reprief.

"I home returning, fraught with foul despite,

And chawing vengeance all the way I went,
Soon as my loathed love appear'd in sight,
With wrathful hand I slew her innocent;
That after soon I dearly did lament:

For, when the cause of that outrageous deed
Demanded I made plain and evident,

Her faulty handmaid, which that bale did breed,

Confess'd how Philemon her wrought to change her weed."

The European story, which Ariosto and Spenser have thus adopted, has formed also the groundwork of one of Bandello's Italian novels. And here the wronged lady has neither her honour vindicated in battle, as in Ariosto; nor is slain by her furious lover, as in Spenser; but she is rejected, believed to be dead, and finally married in disguise, as in Much Ado about Nothing. Skottowe has given a brief analysis of this novel, which we copy :

Mr.

"Fenicia, the daughter of Lionato, a gentleman of Messina, is betrothed to Timbreo de Cardona. Girondo, a disappointed lover of the young lady, resolves, if possible, to prevent the marriage. He insinuates to Timbreo that his mistress is disloyal, and offers to show him a stranger scaling her chamber-window. Timbreo accepts the invitation, and witnesses the hired servant of Girondo, in the dress of a gentleman, ascending a ladder and entering the house of Lionato. Stung with rage and jealousy, Timbreo the next morning accuses his innocent mistress to her father, and rejects the alliance. Fenicia sinks into a swoon; a dangerous illness succeeds; and to stifle all reports injurious to her fame, Lionato proclaims that she is dead. Her funeral rights are performed in Messina, while in truth she lies concealed in the obscurity of a country residence.

"The thought of having occasioned the death of an innocent and lovely female strikes Girondo with horror; in the agony of remorse he confesses his villainy to Timbreo, and they both throw themselves on the mercy, and ask forgiveness, of the insulted family of Fenicia. On Timbreo is imposed only the penance of espousing a lady whose face he should not see previous to his marriage: instead of a new bride, whom he expected, he is presented, at the nuptial altar, with his injured and beloved Fenicia."

Ariosto made this story a tale of chivalry; Spenser a lesson of high and solemn morality; Bandello an interesting love-romance. It was for Shakspere to surround the main incident with those accessories which he could nowhere borrow, and to make of it such a comedy as no other man has made—a comedy not of manners or of sentiment, but of life viewed under its profoundest aspects, whether of the grave or the ludicrous.

COSTUME.

We have already stated it to be our opinion that, in affixing by the costume a particular period to any of Shakspere's plays which are not historical, care should be had to select one as near as possible to the time at which it was written. The comedy of Much Ado about Nothing commences with the return of certain Italian and Spanish noblemen to Sicily after the wars. Now the last war in which the Italians under Spanish dominion were concerned previous to the production of this comedy was terminated by the peace of Cambray, called "La Paix des Dames," in consequence of its being signed (August 3rd, 1529) by Margaret of Austria in the name of the Emperor Charles V., and the Duchess d'Angoulême in that of her son Francis I. This peace secured to Charles the crown of Naples and Sicily; and, after vanquishing the Saracens at Tunis, he made triumphal entries into Palermo and Messina in the autumn of 1535. Of the costume of this period we have given a detailed description and several pictorial illustrations in our First Number, containing The Two Gentlemen of Verona, to which we must refer the reader.