Three-quarters of a century has elapsed since the mediæval epic literature of France first attracted the attention of scholars. This interval has been marked by an uninterrupted succession of texts discovered and edited. The value of these texts to the student of language is great; their value to the historian of politics and society is considerable; but their literary bearing has not been sufficiently emphasized. To this day the general public has but a vague idea of the character and significance of that national epic of which the Chanson de Roland is the highest expression and which Léon Gautier strove so bravely to render popular. The mediæval literature of France has not yet completely recovered from the reputation of vulgarity given to it by the Renaissance.

This tragedy was presented before Queen Elizabeth by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple in 1567–8. In its original shape it remained in ms. until published a few years ago in Brandl's Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England; but a recast by Robert Wilmot was printed in 1591 under the title Tancred and Gismunda and included in Dodsley's Collection of Old English Plays. From the initials appended to each act in this later version it has been concluded that Henry Noel wrote Act II, Christopher Hatton Act IV, and Robert Wilmot Act V; the authors of Act I (Rod. Staf.) and Act III (G. Al.) are as yet unidentified. Before examining the play it will be well to glance at the literary and dramatic influences under which it was produced. A notable beginning in English classical tragedy had been made at the Grand Christmas of the Inner Temple in 1561–2 by the performance of Gorboduc, which was repeated before the Queen at Whitehall a few weeks later: an unauthorized edition of the play was printed in 1565. In 1564 the Queen saw at King's College, Cambridge, “a Tragedie named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus,” and “an English play called Ezechias, made by Mr. Udall.” At Christmas, 1564, a tragedy by Richard Edwards (probably Damon and Pythias) was acted at Whitehall, and in 1566 his Palamon and Arcyte was presented before the Queen in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, as well as a Latin play, called Marcus Geminus. At Gray's Inn the same year Gascoigne's Supposes (translated from Ariosto) and the Jocasta were performed: the last purported to be taken from Euripides, but was really a translation of Lodovico Dolce's adaptation, itself made probably not from the Greek but from the Latin. Dolce adhered in the main to the model of Seneca, whose tragedies he had translated: English translations of eight out of the ten had also been published during the ten years before 1566, so that Elizabethan tragedy came under Senecan influence at first, second, and third hand. The learned dramatists of the Inner Temple no doubt had recourse to the original text, but like their fellows of Gray's Inn of a year or two before, they turned to Dolce as their immediate model, and they made an important step in advance by taking their plot from Boccaccio. It is true that Arthur Brooke in the preface to The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562) said that he had seen the same argument “lately set foorth on stage,” but the play referred to is now to be found only at second-hand in a Dutch version, Romeo en Juliette, written about 1630. Gismond of Salerne is the earliest extant English tragedy founded upon an Italian novel.

Within certain limits the date of composition of Shakspere's tragedy of King Lear is well defined. It must have been written no earlier than 1603, when Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures was published, and no later than December, 1606, when the play was presented before “the kinges maiestie at Whitehall.”

The question as to how many days Chaucer conceived his Canterbury pilgrimage as occupying is of interest for a number of reasons. The consideration of it takes us more familiarly into the time and place where we may behold

It is now thirty years ago that three stories, more or less closely related to the Prioresses Tale, were printed in the Chaucer Society's Originals and Analogues. Since that time but little new light has been thrown on the source used by Chaucer for this Tale. The general opinion has been that Chaucer followed some version of the legend not now known, though Professor Skeat in his most recent discussion of the subject takes the view that the Prioresses Tale is the result of a combination, probably by Chaucer himself, of two miracles of Our Lady related by Gautier de Coincy: that of the boy killed by the Jew, and that of the wicked cleric in whose mouth after death a miraculous flower was found.