HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE LIBRARY OF SEP 10,1926 ENGLISH CLASSICS. EDITED BY WM. J. ROLFE, LITT. D. Illustrated. 16mo, Cloth, 56 cents per volume; Paper, 40 cents per volume. NEW YORK AND LONDON: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. Copyright, 1882, by HARPER & BROTHERS. Copyright, 1898, by HARPER & BROTHERS. I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY. Measure for Measure was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it occupies pages 61-84 in the division of "Comedies." It was not entered on the Stationers' Registers, and is not mentioned by Meres in 1598. No direct allusion to it in Shakespeare's time has been found, and we have nothing to fix the date of its composition but the style and versification, with some minor points of internal evidence. The critics, however, have generally agreed that the play was written in 1603 or early in 1604. Tyrwhitt and Malone conjectured that the following passages offer "a courtly apology for King James I.'s stately and ungracious demeanour on his entry into England:" "I'll privily away. I love the people, But do not love to stage me to their eyes. Their loud applause and aves vehement" (i. 1. 67 fol.). "The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness Ward (Hist. of Dram. Lit. 1. 408) is "inclined to accept this conjecture, the more so that there is something in the sentiment of these passages not ill according with the tendency towards shrinking from an unnecessary publicity, which we may fairly suppose to have been an element in the poet's own character.' "Heaven Malone also saw historical allusions in i. 2. 4: grant us its peace," etc.; and in i. 2. 77: "What with the war, what with the sweat," etc. James had early announced his intention of ending the war with Spain which was in progress when he came to the throne, and peace was concluded in the autumn of 1604. The year before, as Capell pointed out, the "sweating-sickness," or plague, had carried off more than thirty thousand people in London, about one fifth of the entire population of the city. In the first speech of iv. 3, among the ten prisoners mentioned are four "stabbers" and duellists; and, according to Wilson the historian, the "roaring boys, bravadoes, roysters,' and like characters had become so disorderly in 1604 that |