Of Shakespeare's awareness of the living currents of literature about him, the late Sir Walter Raleigh had this to say:

The question I propose to discuss is that of the autobiographical element in Sidney's sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella. The discussion appears in all the older important studies of Sidney: those of Grosart, Symonds, Pollard, Fox-Bourne, Lee, Drinkwater, and Wallace, as well as in the two recent biographies by Miss Denkinger and Mrs. Wilson, and the study by Dr. Purcell. But the verdict of these critics is divided. Also in my belief I have found certain new and valid arguments that the sonnets are not autobiographical; that is, that they do not record a deeply felt love of Sidney for Stella.

Some ten years ago I pointed out (MLN, XL, 282–284) that the poem, “An Holy Medytacion,” first printed by Dr. MacCracken, was based directly on a thirteenth-century Latin poem, “De Humana Miseria Tractatus.” The English poem opens with a lively description of Spring which irresistibly recalls the beginning of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. No doubt Dr. MacCracken was impressed by the apparent reminiscences of Chaucer in this section of the poem, and it was very natural that these should have influenced him in assigning the “Holy Medytacion” to Lydgate. This Spring description, however, instead of being reminiscent of Chaucer, follows closely the phrases of its Latin original. Accordingly, the most plausible reason for assigning the poem to the monk of Bury at once disappears.

Professor G. R. Owst has called attention to the fact that the fable of the rat parliament, which forms a striking addition to the B-version of Piers Plowman, was also employed with reference to contemporary political conditions in a sermon preached at just this time by Thomas Brunton, Bishop of Rochester. Bishop Brunton, in an unsparing denunciation of corruption in the English government, praised Parliament for its action in bringing the conditions to light, but warned that vigorous steps must be taken to punish the guilty. Otherwise, he continued, Parliament would be like the assembly of rats and mice in the fable which decreed that a bell be hung about the cat's neck yet provided no one to carry the plan into execution. Father F. A. Gasquet, who was the first to point out this passage in Brunton's sermons, conjectured that the parliament in question was the “Good” Parliament and consequently suggested that the sermon was preached sometime in 1376. The interest which the document holds for both the historian and the student of Piers Plowman gives the question of its origin a peculiar importance. Detailed study of the manuscript arrangement of Brunton's collected sermons makes it possible, I believe, to arrive at a clearer understanding of the circumstances which inspired the sermon and even to determine the very day on which it was delivered.

In the past two years, partly to supplement in special fields the collections of the Middle English Dictionary, I have been searching the catalogues of manuscripts of English libraries for mediæval curiosities. Of these, early grammatical writings in English are not the least interesting. I have now four Latin grammatical pieces written in English in the fifteenth century: I, an anonymous grammar in St. John's College (Cambridge) MS. 163, f. 1a, printed below; II, another from Trinity College (Cambridge) MS. 0.5.4, f. 5a, printed in Essays and Studies in Eng. and Comp. Lit. in the series in Language and Literature, University of Michigan, xiii (1935), pp. 81–125; III, another in Douce MS. 103, f. 53a, printed below; and IV, a disquisition by a schoolmaster of Beccles (Suffolk), one John Drury, on the comparison of adjectives and adverbs in Cambridge Additional MS. 2830, f. 54a, printed in Speculum, ix (1934), 70–83. (I shall usually refer to them herein as I, II, III, and IV.)

Students of Elizabethan sonnet literature have been aware of general resemblances between Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella and Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke's Cælica, but no one has ever printed a full comparison of the two sonnet sequences. That we might expect to find some resemblances between the works of Greville and Sidney could be implied from what we know of the close relationship of the two men. The title-page of the 1633 edition of Greville's works describes them as “written in his youth and familiar exercise with Sir Philip Sidney.” Greville and Dyer were Sidney's closest literary friends, both sharing equally Sidney's books at his death. Greville was a member of the Areopagus, whatever its nature might be; and he and Sidney entered Shrewsbury School on the same day, and left college and went up to Court together. One of Greville's greatest boasts was his friendship with Sir Philip. It is not surprising, therefore, that when Sidney started to write a sonnet sequence Greville should follow suit, for the two men's interests were much the same. The similarities of Astrophel and Stella and Cœlica are the natural results of the poets' friendship.

The date of the Q text of Much Ado About Nothing is fixed by external evidence within fairly narrow limits. The only quarto edition of the play was registered for publication on August 23, 1600, after having been noted as “to be staied” on a fly-leaf of a volume of the Stationers' Register under date of August 4, with no year attached but closely following another entry dated May 27, 1600, and therefore presumably of the same year. The title does not appear in Meres's list of 1598, although of course there is the ever-present question of the mysterious Love's Labour's Won mentioned by Meres, with which, however, no attempts have been made to identify Much Ado in recent years. These facts apparently fix the date of writing of the play as between shortly before September 7, 1598, when Meres's work was registered, and August 4, 1600. That it was not immediately before the last-mentioned date is evident from the inclusion of As You Like It in the same list with Much Ado as “to be staied.” Touchstone is a rôle of the type intended for Robert Armin, who superseded Will Kemp as clown of the Chamberlain's Men, while Kemp is known to have played Dogberry. The writing, staging, and popularizing of As You Like It therefore intervened between that of Much Ado and August 4, 1600. Kemp seems to have left the company early in 1599. These facts tend to date Much Ado in the fall or winter of 1598–99, and this is today the generally accepted date.

The chronology of the “Monkes Tale” has been often discussed, and there are widely divergent views regarding its composition. Skeat and others have suggested that it was an independent work of Chaucer's, written early as the beginning of a collection after the form of the De Casibus. More recently, Professor Robinson has suggested that Chaucer's model was the Roman de la Rose, which provided not only the source for some of the stories but the connecting link of the Fortune Moral as well. If Chaucer did use the Roman de la Rose, the “Monkes Tale” may very well have been written early, at a time, indeed, when the French influence on Chaucer was still strong. For this reason and others, Professors Robinson and Kittredge regard the poem as an early composition. On the other hand, Professor Tatlock has argued that the poem was written expressly for the Canterbury Tales and at a time when this project was already well under way.

During the period covered by the Early Modern English Dictionary, witchcraft occupied the mind of the average man, and became the subject-matter of literature (dramatic, theological, philosophical, legal) to an extent probably not known in any other epoch. It is natural that such a predominating interest should have its effect on the vocabulary. There can now be described, with more detail than has hitherto been available, one instance in which the beliefs and practices of contemporary charlatans, pretending to supernatural connections, made an interesting development of meaning for a common word. This instance will be illustrated at length, for the sake of the analogies which it suggests as to possible starting points for studying other words. The discussion seems to indicate that elements in the problem go back to learned tradition and at the same time to primitive Teutonic folk-lore.

The teasing sense of mystery felt by the student of the biography of Spenser is nowhere more noticeable than with regard to the Shepheardes Calender. C. H. Herford's statement is still too near the truth:

Except that the authorship is absolutely certain, posterity knows very little more about the circumstances in which the Shepheardes Calender was composed than “E. K.” has chosen to tell us.

Almost every nineteenth-century critic has declared one or more of the leading characters of Much Ado in some respects unconvincing or at least distasteful. Chambers, moreover, finds in the play as a whole “inconsistency of purpose” and “the chiaroscuro of melodrama”; and Schücking asks why Shakespeare makes his characters “behave as irrationally” as do the characters in Much Ado. Lawrence explains the apparent inconsistencies of the plot as the outcome of Shakespeare's close adherence to the old popular tale that was his ultimate source; but in Much Ado Shakespeare did make bold departures from Bandello and Belleforest in the Hero-Claudio romance, and, furthermore, replaced two insipid minor characters with the vigorous Benedick and the glib and pungent Beatrice. Stoll explains these difficulties rather as the outcome of dramatic convention, and declares that Hero's public repudiation “is a matter of Elizabethan art and taste rather than of character”; but Stoll neither makes clear how Elizabethan “art” demanded the interpolation of such an incident, nor cites similar interpolations in other plays. These two explanations, therefore, seem hardly satisfactory, and this study proposes to examine the problem in the light of Elizabethan culture and ideals. Why is Claudio, though clearly intended as a hero, so mercenary in his wooing, so apparently malicious in publicly defaming Hero, and so fickle in accepting another bride? Why does Hero passively accept such treatment?

The Rime of Sir Thopas,“ wrote Tyrwhitt,”was clearly intended to ridicule the ‘palpable gross’ fictions of the common Rimers of that age, and still more, perhaps, the meanness of their language and versification.“ This view, which Skeat found ”judicious and correct,“ has until recent years met with little question. In 1922, however, Miss Lilian Winstanley, while admitting the piece to be a burlesque of the metrical romances, argued that it was also ”intended as a satire against Philip van Artevelde“; and Professor J. M. Manly later set forth at considerable length the view that ”the object of satire was the ridiculous pretentiousness“ of the Flemings, that ”Chaucer's primary object in writing was not so much to burlesque the minstrel romances as to produce a satire of the countrymen of Sir Thopas, and that his contemporaries enjoyed its subject matter even more than its form.“ This general line of argument has been accepted by Professor F. N. Robinson, who, in his admirable edition of Chaucer, observes that ”two recent studies of Sir Thopas have made it seem very probable that Chaucer had another purpose, perhaps his primary one, namely, to poke fun at the Flemish knighthood.“ Since this interpretation of Chaucer's gay little piece has thus received an authoritative blessing, in a standard edition, it may well be examined in some detail, in order to determine how far it is really valid.

In his Reference Guide to Edmund Spenser (1923) Carpenter remarked (p. 101) that the “Spenserian place-names in Ireland have been but slightly studied.” The statement still holds. Although materials for the study of Irish place-names have been made accessible, editors and critics since 1923 have persisted in keeping alive fictions and interpretations which are no longer tenable.

In a recent article in the Review of English Studies Mr. R. B. McKerrow opens the question of the use of the 1577 or the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles as a source for 2 Henry VI and gives it as his judgment that the Contention is based on the first edition. In making a study of this question, I have compared in detail the original editions of both the 1577 and the 1587 versions of the history with the Folio texts of 1, 2, and 3 Henry VI instead of with the Quartos, since in my opinion the Folios are the earlier. Such an investigation furnishes distinct evidence that the dramatist used the 1587 Holinshed and not the first edition.

In modern English usage, the term elegy bears a distinct connotation of threnody: broadly, it indicates any funeral poem or lament for the dead; more precisely, it describes a lengthened, dignified poem which either mourns reflectively for a deceased person or broods with a more inclusive sorrow over the tragedy men encounter in living. In this narrower sense, the elegy is a reflective lyric, suggested by the fact or fancy of death. The emotion, personal or public, finds utterance in keen lament, to be allayed, however, by tranquil consideration of the mutability of life, the immutability of Something which justifies life and death;

or, in the words of Edmund Gosse, it is a poem of lamentation and regret, called forth by the decease of a beloved or revered person, or by a general sense of the pathos of mortality…. It must be mournful, meditative, and short without being ejaculatory.

The source of Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus is well established. This long medieval tractate on prudence is a translation—and a very close translation—of a French treatise which Chaucer read and admired so much that he put it into English dress and placed it among his Canterbury Tales. The French treatise was, in turn, an adaptation of a Latin work by Albertano of Brescia: namely, Liber Consolationis et Consilii. Chaucer's tale, however, was uninfluenced by the Latin: he was content simply to translate the French adaptation which he had under his eyes.