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 illustration 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,

'THE TAMING OF THE SHREW' was first printed in the folio collection of Shakspere's Plays in 1623. In 1594' A plesant conceited Historie called the Taming of a Shrew' was printed. This play, it is thought, preceded Shakspere's 'Taming of the Shrew.' This comedy of some unknown author opens with an Induction, the characters of which are a Lord, Slie, a Tapster, Page, Players, and Huntsmen. The incidents are precisely the same as those of the play which we call Shakspere's. The scene of The Taming of a Shrew' is laid at Athens; that of Shakspere's at Padua. The Athens of the one and the Padua of the other are resorts of learning. Alfonso, a merchant of Athens (the Baptista of Shakspere), has three daughters, Kate, Emelia, and Phylema. Aurelius, son of the Duke of Cestus (Sestos), is enamoured of one, Polidor of another, and Ferando (the Petrucio of Shakspere) of Kate, the Shrew. The merchant hath sworn, before he will allow his two younger daughters to be addressed by suitors, that

"His eldest daughter first shall be espous'd." The wooing of Kate by Ferando is exactly in the same spirit as the wooing by Petrucio; so is the marriage; so the lenten entertainment of the bride in Ferando's country-house; so the scene with the Tailor and Haberdasher; so the prostrate obedience of the tamed Shrew. The under-plot, however, is different. But all parties are ultimately happy and pleased; and the comedy ends with a wager, as in Shakspere, about the obedience of the several wives. This un. doubted resemblance involves some necessity for conjecture, with very little guide from evidence. The first and most obvious hypothesis is, that The Taming of a Shrew' was an older play than Shakspere's; and that he borrowed from that comedy. But we propose another theory. Was there not an older play than 'The Taming of a Shrew,' which furnished the main plot, some of the characters, and a small part of the dialogue, both to the author of The Taming of a Shrew' and the author of 'The Taming of

the Shrew?' This play we may believe, without any violation of fact or probability, to have been used as the rude material for both authors to work upon. Whether the author or improver of the play printed in 1594 be Marlowe or Greene (to each of whom the comedy has been assigned), there can be little question as to the characteristic superiority of Shakspere's work.

But there is a third theory-that of Tieck -that The Taming of a Shrew' was a youthful work of Shakspere himself. To our minds that play is totally different from the imagery and the versification of Shakspere.

Shakspere's 'Taming of the Shrew' was produced in a "taming" age. Men tamed each other by the axe and the fagot; parents tamed their children by the rod and the ferule, as they stood or knelt in trembling silence before those who had given them life; and, although England was then called the "paradise of women," and, as opposed to the treatment of horses, they were treated "obsequiously," husbands thought that "taming," after the manner of Petrucio, by oaths and starvation, was a commendable fashion.

We are the happier our fortune-living in an age when this practice of Petrucio is not universally considered orthodox; and we owe a great deal to him who has exhibited the secrets of the "taming school" with so much spirit in this comedy, for the better belief of our age, that violence is not to be subdued by violence. Pardon be for him, if, treading in the footsteps of some predecessor whose sympathies with the peaceful and the beautiful were immeasur ably inferior to his own, and sacrificing something to the popular appetite, he should have made the husband of a froward woman kill her in her own humour," and bring her upon her knees to the abject obedience of a revolted but penitent slave:— "A foul contending rebel, And graceless traitor to her loving lord." Pardon for him? If there be one reader of Shakspere, and especially if that reader be a