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how closely the sonnetteering movement in France adumbrated that in England. The collective edition in 1584 of the works of Ronsard, the master of the ‘Pléiade,’ contains more than nine hundred separate sonnets arranged under such titles as ‘Amours de Cassandre,’ ‘Amours de Marie,’ ‘Amours pour Astrée,’ ‘Amours pour Hélène;’ besides ‘Amours Divers’ and ‘Sonnets Divers,’ complimentary addresses to friends and patrons. Du Bellay’s ‘Olive,’ a collection of love sonnets, first published in 1549, reached a total of a hundred and fifteen. ‘Les Regrets,’ Du Bellay’s sonnets on general topics, some of which Edmund Spenser first translated into English, numbered in the edition of 1565 a hundred and eighty-three. De Baïf published two long series of sonnets, entitled respectively ‘Les Amours de Meline’ (1552) and ‘Les Amours de Francine’ (1555). Amadis Jamyn was responsible for ‘Les Amours d’Oriane,’ ‘Les Amours de Callirée,’ and ‘Les Amours d’Artemis’ (1575). Desportes’s ‘Premieres Œuvres’ (1575), a very popular book in England, included more than three hundred sonnets—a hundred and fifty being addressed to Diane, eighty-six to Hippolyte, and ninety-one to Cleonice. Ponthus de Thyard produced between 1549 and 1555 three series of his ‘Erreurs Amoureuses,’ sonnets addressed to Pasithée, and Belleau brought out a volume of ‘Amours’ in 1576.

Minor collections of French sonnets published between 1553 and 1605.

Among other collections of sonnets published by less known writers of the period, and arranged here according to date of first publication, were those of Guillaume des Autels, ‘Amoureux Repos’ (1553); Olivier de Magny, ‘Amours, Soupirs,’ &c. (1553, 1559); Louise Labé, ‘Œuvres’ (1555); Jacques Tahureau, ‘Odes, Sonnets,’ &c. (1554, 1574); Claude de Billet, ‘Amalthée,’ a hundred and twenty-eight love sonnets (1561); Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, ‘Foresteries’ (1555 et annis seq.); Jacques Grévin, ‘Olympe’ (1561); Nicolas Ellain, ‘Sonnets’ (1561); Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, ‘Œuvres Françaises’ (1569, 1579); Estienne de la Boétie, ‘Œuvres’ (1572), and twenty-nine sonnets published with Montaigne’s ‘Essais’ (1580); Jean et Jacques de la Taille, ‘Œuvres’ (1573); Jacques de Billy, ‘Sonnets Spirituels’ (first series 1573, second series 1578); Estienne Jodelle ‘Œuvres Poétiques’ (1574); Claude de Pontoux, ‘Sonnets de l’Idée’ (1579); Les Dames des Roches, ‘Œuvres’ (1579, 1584); Pierre de Brach, ‘Amours d’Aymée’ (circa 1580); Gilles Durant, ‘Poésies’—sonnets to Charlotte and Camille (1587, 1594); Jean Passerat, ‘Vers . . . d’Amours’ (1597); and Anne de Marquet, who died in 1588, ‘Sonnets Spirituels’ (1605).

SHAKESPEARE'S LOST YEARS IN LONDON by Arthur Acheson

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

APPENDIX

I

II

III

IV

V

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The most interesting and important fifteen years in the records of English dramatic literature are undoubtedly those between 1588 and 1603, within which limit all of Shakespeare's poems and the majority of his plays were written; yet no exhaustive English history, intelligently co-ordinating the social, literary, and political life of this period, has ever been written.

Froude, the keynote of whose historical work is contained in his assertion that "the Reformation was the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe," recognising a logical and dramatic climax for his argument in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, ends his history in that year; while Gardiner, whose historical interest was as much absorbed by the Puritan Revolution as was Froude's by the Reformation, finds a fitting beginning for his subject in the accession of James I. in 1603. Thus an historical hiatus is left which has never been exhaustively examined. To the resulting lack of a clearly defined historical background for those years on the part of Shakespearean critics and compilers—who are not as a rule also students of original sources of history—may be imputed much of the haziness which