them; while in his hand was his burning match and his musquet-rest; and when he had discharged his piece, he had to draw his sword in order to defend himself. Hence it became a question for a long time, even among military men, whether the bow did not deserve a preference over the musquet." 14 SCENE VI.-" John Drum's entertainment." There is an old interlude, printed in 1601, called 'Jack Drum's Entertainment;' and it appears that this species of hospitality to which Jack Drum, or John Drum, or Tom Drum (for he is called by each name), was subjected, consisted in abuse and beating. Holinshed, speaking of the hospitality of the Mayor of Dublin in 1551, says, "No guest had ever a cold or forbidding look from any part of his family; so that his jester or any other officer durst not, for both his ears, give the simplest man that resorted to his house Tom Drum his entertainment, which is, to hale a man in by the head, and thrust him out by both the shoulders." ACT IV. 15 SCENE IV.-"Our waggon is prepar'd." IN 'Love's Labour's Lost,' unquestionably an early play, Shakspere has used the term coach: "No drop but as a coach doth carry thee." In The Merry Wives of Windsor,' Mrs. Quickly tells us that "there has been knights, and lords and gentlemen, with their coachescoach after coach, I warrant you." The probability therefore is, that, in using the term waggon in the text, our poet meant a public vehicle. Certainly the early coaches were not much unlike waggons. Mr. Markland, in his interesting paper in the Archæologia,' 'On the early Use of Carriages in England' (vol. xx.), has given us a representation from an Ancient Flemish Chronicle of the fifteenth century, in the British Museum (Royal MSS. 16 F. III.), representing Emergard, the wife of Salvard, Lord of Rousillon, driven in a covered cart or ACT V. 16 SCENE I.-" Enter a gentle Astringer." AN astringer is a falconer. "They be called VOL. 1. ostringers," says Markham, the great authority on hawking, "which are the keepers of gosshawks or tercells." A "gentle astringer" pro X bably meant the head of the king's hawking | rank in his household. The grand falconer of establishment-not a menial, but an officer of England is a noble. THE Costume of this play, for anything that appears to the contrary, might be either of the age of Boccaccio or of Shakspere. The Florentines and the Siennois were continually at strife during the middle ages, and the mention of a "Duke of Austria" would, strictly, place its date anterior to 1457, Ladislaus, the last Duke of Austria, having died King of Hungary and Bohemia in that year; whilst the allusion to Austria, as a power per se would drive the period of action still farther back amongst the dukes and margraves of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is our opinion, however, that in all cases where there is no positive violence committed against history-where the foundation of the plot is either fanciful or legendary-the nearest possible period to that of the writing of the play should be fixed upon as that of its action, as by so doing the best illus tration is obtained of the author's ideas and the manners of the age which he depicted. With this view we should place the date of 'All's Well that Ends Well' just previous to 1557, in which year, on the 3rd of July, Sienna was given to Cosmo de Medicis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Philip of Spain, who had been invested with its sovereignty by his father Charles V. The last war between the Florentines and the Siennois, and in which the former were supported by the troops of the emperor, |