p. 233. tained, doubtless, on the supposition, of which it is the very origin, that Nerissa must refer to the ring, and here give it to Gratiano. What meaning has in lieu of this' here? In lieu of the ring? But Nerissa was talking of the rights of her husband, not of those of the ring, if it must be supposed to have any. And besides, such an assertion would not have been true; for she had had the ring on her finger ever since she got it from Gratiano on the evening of that very last night' to which she refers; and this he knew; and although she had not been to bed, she knew that he supposed she had. As to the ring, in no sense would Gratiano be annoyed by the admission of the Doctor's clerk to its place or all its privileges; but quite the contrary if that youth had taken his. "In Summer, where the ways," &c. :- Capell suggested, but did not adopt, "when the ways," &c.; and the same reading was found in Mr. Collier's folio of 1632. It is very plausible, but not necessary. As You Like It occupies twenty-three pages in the folio of 1623, viz., from p. 185 to p. 207, inclusive, in the division of Comedies. It is there divided into Acts and Scenes; but is without a list of Dramatis Personæ, which was first given by Rowe. AS YOU LIKE IT. INTRODUCTION. TH HOMAS LODGE, a scholar, a gentleman, at least by birth, a lawyer, a soldier, and a player, published in 1590 a tale, called Rosalind.* It would long ago have passed forever into the limbo of forgotten things, had not Shakespeare made it the foundation of As You Like It - using the plot as a sculptor uses the straddling wire on which he models an Apollo. Lodge found somewhat more than the germ of his story in the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn, which was for a long time attributed to Chaucer, but of which Tyrwhitt says, it "is not to be found in any of the MSS. of the first authority; and the manner, style, and versification, all prove it to have been the work of an author much inferior to Chaucer." Where the author of the Tale of Game† lyn found his part of it, we do not know; nor is knowledge on that point of any moment to the reader of Shakespeare; for the story has its conditions in such a state of society that it cannot be of very great antiquity. Its elemental incidents have not that simple relation to man as man, which indicates, for instance, the primitive origin of the stories of King Lear and The Merchant of Venice, the main interest of which depends upon events that are possible wherever the human race is found, and that might have happened as well before the Flood as after. Shakespeare's *Rosalynde. Euphues Golden Legacie, found after his Death in his Cell at Silexedra. Bequeathed to Philautus Sonnes, nursed up with their Father in England. Fetched from the Canaries by T. L. Gent. London. Printed by Abel Jeffes for T. G. and John Busbie. 4to. 1592. Mr. Collier has reprinted this edition in his Shakespeare's Library. No copy of the cdition of 1590 is known to exist. †This tale will be found in Wright's excellent edition of Chaucer's Works, published by the Percy Society. |