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’s fanciful description (II. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower called ‘Love-in-idleness’ that he bids Puck fetch for him, has been interpreted as a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants with which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575. The whole play is in the airiest and most graceful vein of comedy. Hints for the story can be traced to a variety of sources—to Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale,’ to Plutarch’s ‘Life of Theseus,’ to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ (bk. iv.), and to the story of Oberon, the fairy-king, in the French mediæval romance of ‘Huon of Bordeaux,’ of which an English translation by Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influence of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in which both mortals and immortals indulge. In the humorous presentation of the play of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ by the ‘rude mechanicals’ of Athens, Shakespeare improved upon a theme which he had already employed in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’ But the final scheme of the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is of the author’s freshest invention, and by endowing—practically for the first time in literature—the phantoms of the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have conquered a new realm for art.

‘All’s Well.’

More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy of ‘All’s Well that Ends Well,’ which may be tentatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to Shakespeare a piece called ‘Love’s Labour’s Won.’ This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to ‘All’s Well.’ ‘The Taming of The Shrew,’ which has also been identified with ‘Love’s Labour’s Won,’ has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of ‘All’s Well,’ like that of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ was drawn from Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’ (No. xxxviii.) The original source is Boccaccio’s ‘Decamerone’ (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shakespeare, after his wont, grafted on the touching story of Helena’s love for the unworthy Bertram the comic characters of the braggart Parolles, the pompous Lafeu, and a clown (Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another original creation, Bertram’s mother, Countess of Roussillon, is a charming portrait of old age. In frequency of rhyme and other metrical characteristics the piece closely resembles ‘The Two Gentlemen,’ but the characterisation betrays far greater power, and there are fewer conceits or crudities of style. The pathetic element predominates. The heroine Helena, whose ‘pangs of despised love’ are expressed with touching tenderness, ranks with the greatest of Shakespeare’s female creations.

‘Taming of the Shrew.’

‘The Taming of The Shrew’—which, like ‘All’s Well,’ was first printed in the folio—was probably composed soon after the completion of that solemn comedy. It is a revision of an old play on lines somewhat differing from those which Shakespeare had followed previously. From ‘The Taming of A Shrew,’ a comedy first published in 1594, Shakespeare drew the Induction and the scenes in which the hero Petruchio conquers Catherine the Shrew. He first infused into them the genuine spirit of comedy. But while following the old play in its general outlines, Shakespeare’s revised version added an entirely new underplot—the story of Bianca and her lovers, which owes something to the ‘Supposes’ of George Gascoigne, an adaptation of Ariosto’s comedy called ‘I Suppositi.’ Evidence of style—the liberal introduction of tags of Latin and the exceptional beat of the doggerel—makes it difficult to allot the Bianca scenes to Shakespeare; those scenes were probably due to a coadjutor.

Stratford allusions in the Induction.

The Induction to ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ has a direct bearing on Shakespeare’s biography, for the poet admits into it a number of literal references to Stratford and his native county. Such personalities are rare in Shakespeare’s plays, and can only be paralleled in two of slightly later date—the ‘Second Part of Henry IV’ and the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor.’ All these local allusions may well be