Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
This interesting clue to the source of the play has not been carefully followed up. “The origin of the story on which it is founded,” says Ward, “is unknown; but unless the Prologue's assertion that the plot is based on fact is to be taken literally, its source is probably some nearly contemporary novel. Either Ford or the novelist from whom he borrowed made little account of historical probability in choosing Sparta as the scene of a love-tragedy which savours of mediæval Italy.” Ellis, also, remarks that the scene is “curiously placed in Sparta,” and adds that the story “may have been taken from an Italian novel.”
page 274 note 1 Works, London, 1869, i, 215.
page 274 note 2 Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, London, 1899, iii, 79.
page 274 note 3 Mermaid Ford, new edition, 184.
page 275 note 1 Works, i, 7.
page 275 note 2 Mermaid Ford, 184.
page 277 note 1 Compare, for example, the famous story of Argalus and Parthenia, retold in verse by Francis Quarles, in 1621.
page 278 note 1 Works, iii; see Epistle Dedicatory of Fame's Memorial.
page 278 note 2 Ibid., 309.
page 278 note 3 Ibid., 281. See also, Fox-Bourne's Memorial of Sir Philip Sidney, London, 1862, 376, Note.
page 278 note 4 Ibid., iii, 279, Note.
page 280 note 1 Works, i, 218.
page 280 note 2 Symonds, Sidney, London, 1902, 36: “Writing to Lord Leicester, he (Sir Henry Sidney) couples Essex with his old enemy the Earl of Ormond, adding that ‘for that their malice, I take God to record, I could brook nothing of them both?‘”
page 280 note 3 Fox-Bourne, passim.
page 280 note 4 Works, i, 218.
page 281 note 1 Fox-Bourne, 129.
page 281 note 2 Works, i, 260.
page 281 note 3 Works, 219.
page 281 note 4 Fox-Bourne, 286.
page 281 note 5 Ibid.
page 281 note 6 Works, i, 219.
page 282 note 1 Ibid., 251.
page 282 note 2 Fox-Bourne, 288.
page 282 note 3 Works, i, 266.
page 282 note 4 Devereux, Lives of the Earls of the Essex, i, 155.
page 282 note 5 Works, i, 219.
page 282 note 6 Ibid.
page 282 note 7 Complete Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, London, 1877, i, 36.
page 283 note 1 Works, i, 251.
page 283 note 2 Complete Poems, i, 85.
page 283 note 3 Complete Poems, i, 179.
page 284 note 1 Complete Poems, i, 84.
page 285 note 1 Works of Spenser, London, 1902, 561.