similarity of style, observable in Daniel's acknowledged works and the general texture of 'Romeo and Juliet.' We limit our remark to the general texture; because there are many passages in it which are wholly foreign to the genius of Daniel, and which must be ascribed to a reviser. But the following, pointed out by Malone, Steevens, and, more recently, by Daniel, in his preface to 'The Tragical History,' are really parallels from 'Romeo and Juliet' (V. 3).

Oh! my love! my wife!

Death that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty,
Thou art not conquer'd beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
* * * * * Ah! dear Juliet,
Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
That unsubstantial death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here, in dark, to be his paramour?

* * * * * Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace; and lips, oh! you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.

And from Daniel's 'Complaint of Rosamond :

Ah! how methinks I see Death dallying seeks,
To entertain himself in Love's sweet place!

Decayed roses of discoloured cheeks

Do yet retain dear notes of former grace,
And ugly Death sits fair within her face.

And nought-respecting Death, the last of pains,
Placed his pale colours, th' ensign of his might,
Upon his new-got spoil..

...

Pitiful mouth, said he, that living gavest

The sweetest comfort that my soul could wish,
Oh! be it lawful now that dead thou havest
The sorrowful farewell of a dying kiss.

And you, fair eyes, containers of my bliss,
Motives of love born to be matchéd never,
Entombed in your sweet circles, sleep for ever.

We have nothing under Daniel's hand attacking the players; but, if we give effect to the opposition raised to the publication of the fourth 4to edition of Romeo and Juliet,' we may assume that he did write something against those "buckram gentlemen."

As regards the second of the "two more" we have only circumstantial evidence; but it seems to point very distinctly to THOMAS LODGE. He had been a dramatist and the collaborateur of Greene; and in 1589 he had emphatically renounced plays and players, as we showed in a quotation from 'Glaucus and Scylla,' in our first chapter; while 'As You Like It' (Love's Labour's

Р

Won)' is undoubtedly a dramatization of his novel of Rosalind.' It is not only the same plot or story, the following extract from a song in 'Rosalind' gives us the type of the love-sick swain, who hangs verses on the trees, in the play :

Turn I my looks unto the skies

Love, with his arrows, wounds my eyes;

If so I gaze upon the ground,

Love then in every flower is found;

Search I the shades to fly my pain,

Love meets me in the shade again. (Rosalind.)

In comparing Rosalind' with 'As You Like "It,' we compare a very silly novel and a very clever play; but the difference is due to the reviser, who has rewritten rather than revised; so that the comedy published for the first time in the folio of 1623 was practically another work than that mentioned by Meres in 1598.

CHAPTER XVII.

AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAYS, CONTINUED.

George Chapman-Macbeth and the Tempest.

BUT Greene's suggestion of authors is not yet exhausted. Beside those he addresses and the "two more " he might add, he refers to "other new-comers," whom he leaves to "the mercy of those painted monsters." No clue, however, presents itself, when we begin to enquire who those new-comers were; and though, in looking through Stowe's list of poets who flourished during Elizabeth's reign, our eye is naturally caught by such names as George Chapman, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Dekkar,-yet we see no reason for choosing any of them. They all knew Shakespeare, more or less, when Greene died; but so did many more who cannot be suspected of contributing to his drama. Our only guide, therefore, is similarity of style; and that points to Chapman as the

original author of Macbeth and the Tempest. And nothing in his character or circumstances is inconsistent with such a conclusion. He was, to be sure, a person of respectable habits, and all his known plays were produced by Henslowe and Alleyne; but he was a poor man and a successful dramatist, and they were facts a keen man of business, like Shakespeare, was not likely to overlook. The first we have already noticed (Chap. I.), and the second is no less certain. The Blind Beggar of Alexandria and Bussie d'Ambois had been immensely popular. Indeed, Nathaniel Field was as celebrated in the latter, as Richard Burbage was in Richard III. We do not, of course, suggest that Macbeth' and the Tempest' must already have been written when Greene died (1592). Nor is it necessary we should, since Greene's words imply, that he was looking forward, when he spoke of the "other new-comers. But their not having been printed until they made their appearance in the Folio of 1623 proves nothing; because neither the Comedy of Errors,' nor the

Two Gentlemen of Verona,' were printed any sooner, though Meres refers to them both in

1598.