The theory that in Book II of the Fairie Queene Spenser represents Mary Stuart allegorically in the character of Acrasia has never been presented with sufficient evidence to raise it above a level of general probability, and although the further cumulation of proof that I have gathered together here hardly seems enough to establish it as a fact of literary history, it may help to recapture some of the mental associations of his original readers and the figurative medium in which they were expressed. It is my purpose here to show that when the Faerie Queene was published Elizabethan courtiers had for a considerable time looked upon Mary Stuart as the epitome of intemperance and had characterized her as a Circean enchantress, a rather striking parallel to Book II with its political study of temperance and its major evil character—the Circean witch Acrasia.

The story of the deposition and death of Mac Con is told in The Battle of Mag Mucrama, §§59–77 of Stokes' edition, RC 13, 460–467, and there is an account of his death in the “historical” tract in Laud 610, edited by Meyer, Fianaigecht 28 (RIA Todd Lecture Series xvi, 1910). There is an independent story in YBL, which is here edited for the first time, and may represent one of the sources upon which the author of The Battle of Mag Mucrama has drawn. He did not merely copy it, for his text varies considerably in vocabulary, and by omission and addition. Yet the two texts are closely related, and Stokes' edition, referred to in the notes as L, has been of great value to me in reading and interpreting the text presented here. According to this text Mac Con was king of Ireland for thirty years, and this is also the tradition of the tract in Laud. In L he reigns for seven years (§59), but the alternative tradition is recorded in §77. In the LL text of the Battle of Crinna the period is twenty-seven years, LL fcs. 328 f 16 (O'Grady, Silva Gadelicaii, 491). The Annals of Tigernach say: Ailii aiunt Lugaid Mac Con post hoc bellum regnase [annis xviii] uel xxx ut alii aiunt, RC 17, 11. The source of the words in square brackets in Stokes' edition is not stated. It would be necessary to examine unpublished historical poems, genealogies, and regnal lists in order to trace the origin of these conflicting numbers. Confusion often arises from the use of Roman numerals in manuscripts.

This paper is written on the assumption that Alice Chaucer was the granddaughter of the poet. That she was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer is easily proved and, despite skillful arguments to the contrary, the weight of evidence seems to the present writer to confirm the belief that Thomas was the son of Geoffrey. This paper is also written because of the assumption of Alice's relation to Geoffrey; her connection with the poet has been the chief reason for this study of her life. But such need not have been the case. Chaucer had no personal influence upon his granddaughter, unless by way of heredity, for their lives did not overlap. She was born four years after the poet's death. On the other hand, she lived to be the wife and widow of three successive men, two of whom were of great military and political prominence in English history; she was the friend and confidante of royalty; she became the mother-in-law of a king's sister. She was, in truth, a figure of sufficient social and political importance in the life of her time to merit consideration on her own account.

Richard the third has long been one of the most popular of Shakespeare's plays. In its own day six quarto editions appeared before the Folio, and two more quartos before 1635. While our record of its early history in the theatre is not so clear as that of its printing, numerous contemporary references testify to its popularity. In the later seventeenth century it temporarily disappeared from the stage, but in July, 1700, it was revived with certain changes by Colley Cibber, and was later played by Garrick, Kemble, Kean, J. B. Booth, Edwin Booth, Macready, Sir Henry Irving, Richard Mansfield, and John Barrymore. No one to-day would acclaim Richard as a great tragedy rather than a melodrama, but historically it has probably led all other dramas of Shakespeare in frequency of presentation, and is still an effective stage play. Critics generally unite in dating its composition about 1593, two or three years before Romeo and Juliet. In this paper I propose to analyze anew certain aspects of its relation to its source material, and to show that its composition resembles that of Romeo. Thereby it is possible, I believe, to learn something about Shakespeare's method of writing at least two earlier plays.

Recent publications have suggested a considerable number of sources of the cosmological and cosmographical material in John Rastell's Interlude of the Four Elements. M. E. Borish maintains that the source of Rastell's “cosmology, natural history, and geography is Gergor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica.” Elizabeth M. Nugent affirms that Rastell garnered his material not only from Reisch but also from Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum, Caxton's Mirrour of the World, Sacrobosco's Textus de Sphaera, and Martin Waldseemüller's Cosmographiae Introductio (to which was appended Amerigo Vespucci's Quattuor navigationes and Waldseemüller's huge world map of 1507). I wish to add to this list of sources a number of pertinent texts which have been overlooked.

Adequate attention has never been paid to the fifteenth-century lying-song which advises us to trust women when nettles bear roses and other wild impossibilities come to pass. There are three manuscript versions:

• A. Bodl. 29734 (Eng. poet. e. 1—second half XV cent.), f. 43b;

• B. Balliol Oxf. 354 (Hill's Commonplace Book—first half XVI cent.), f. 250b;

• C. BM Printed Book IB 55242 (MS. notes in Trevisa's Bartholomeus Anglicus, de Worde, 1495), ff. 477b–478b.

Most editors and commentators writing about Macbeth or Richard the Third notice a resemblance between the two plays, but seldom does the comparison go beyond this eighteenth century comment: “Both Macbeth and Richard are soldiers, both usurpers; both attain the throne by the same means, by treason and murder; and both lose it too in the same manner, in battle against the person claiming it as lawful heir.” A few parallel passages have been pointed out, but there are many parallels that as far as I have been able to determine have not been noticed in the commentaries. It is my intention, therefore, to examine closely the resemblance between the two plays, calling attention to parallels, which may be so many and of such a sort as to require an explanation other than coincidence.

II Allusions to, and imitations of, the non-lyric poets of greece

Numerous allusions to Homer and to the other non-lyric poets of Hellas are to be found throughout the works of Du Bellay.

In his Illustrations of Shakespeare Francis Douce maintains that Adlington's translation of Apuleius' Golden Ass is a book that Shakespeare certainly used. Admittedly, Douce supports this repeated assertion with very slight evidence; and no other scholar, so far as I know, has hitherto seriously urged the dramatist's knowledge of this popular book. Yet the chances are many that any reputable author in the sixteenth century would have known the writings of Apuleius, in the original, or, after 1566, in translation, or in both.

Il existe une tradition theologique—peu connue aujourd'hui—d'après laquelle la lune est un des symboles de l'Eglise Catholique. Nous nous proposons de faire appel à cette tradition pour expliquer certains textes du XVIe siècle qui sont restés généralement obscurs ou qui le sont devenus, car il est probable que les allusions qui s'y trouvent étaient facilement comprises des contemporains.

In “To the great Variety of Readers” in the First Folio of Shakespeare, Heminge and Condell wrote:

Smollett, like all great writers, is forgiven his failures; it is for his successes he is condemned. Ferdinand Fathom and Launcelot Greaves neither add to nor detract much from his reputation, but certain aspects of Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker have won him a critical thrashing as sound as any cudgeling he described. Because these qualities appear with least relief in Peregrine Pickle that novel has been the one most abused. Critics assert that there more than elsewhere Smollett showed himself unable to distinguish between brutality and humor, between a ruffian and a hero. But the most serious charge is the complaint that the novel is completely formless, that the loose picaresque structure, in a measure characteristic of Smollett, is especially offensive here. These commonplaces of Smollett criticism are founded on misconceptions which ignore the nature and purpose of this novel. It will not be difficult to show that Peregrine Pickle, far from being a haphazard collection of episodes, was composed according to a plan that accounts for most of the aspects to which critics object. In particular, Smollett's modification of the picaresque form has not been explicitly stated. When the purpose and the essential structure of Peregrine Pickle are understood, it becomes apparent that the real cause of Smollett's inferiority to the greatest English novelists is neither carelessness regarding form nor inability to tell a blackguard from a hero, but other more important intellectual and spiritual limitations as a satiric novelist.

While Bacon's Essays have enjoyed popularity for centuries, it does not appear that Essay xliii, “of Beauty,” has received the attention it deserves, to determine, if possible, its proper interpretation. The aim of this paper is to clarify its meaning through close examination of the sources.

The Essay, “Of Beauty,” was not contained in the first version of the Essays published in 1597, and it appeared originally in the second, of 1612; the third and final English edition of 1625 included several important additions which will be discussed below. After the publication of 1612, spurious editions by Jaggard in 1612, 1613, and 1624 included “Of Beauty,” while the Italian translations of 1618 and 1621, the French of 1619 and 1621, made it available to continental readers before the Rawley Latin publication of 1638. Although Rawley's edition omitted two of the Essays, De Pulchritudine was number xli in that issue.

It has long been recognized that Spenser made numerous borrowings from the Revelation of St. John in Book i of the Faerie Queene. The Variorum edition conveniently lists those observed by Upton and other commentators. In a recent study, Mrs. Josephine Waters Bennett has suggested that the Revelation not only furnished Spenser with particular passages but largely determined the structure of Book I. Her important contribution is not the discovery of new borrowings, though she observes several, but her exposition of the Revelation from the Protestant point of view. From several English commentaries and from glosses in the Geneva Bible, she shows that the latter half of the Revelation was interpreted in the sixteenth century as an allegory of the Protestant conflict with the Roman church, and concludes that this fact has an important bearing on Book I, which is now generally believed to involve a similar allegory.