When Coleridge says that Hamlet's tragedy is owing to his failure to realize that ‘action is the chief end of existence’, when Dr. Johnson says that the prince is ‘throughout the whole play, rather an instrument than agent’, each is noticing the extent to which the nature and meaning of action by human agency is the pivot on which Shakespeare's play turns. Among modern critics, Maynard Mack has commented on Hamlet's central concern with action: he says, ‘“Act” . . . I take to be the play's radical metaphor. It distills the various perplexities about the character of reality into a residual perplexity about the nature of an act.‘ I see ‘act’ as not just a metaphor, in Mack's sense that the play uses its concern for action to imply something about the larger issue of reality itself, for I think Hamlet expresses what may be a deeper insight, that action may not only ‘represent’ reality, but, in some sense that the play tries to define, is reality, as Coleridge suggests.

Though a discredited scandal might best be forgotten, its reverberations may still have meaning. In 1537 England was cut off by the break with the Roman church from its Italian contacts outside of Venice; yet a scandal which was the talk of Rome and Florence in hat and following years not only made its speedy way to England but was soon recorded in print there.

Cosimo Gheri, Bishop of Fano, died in Fano of an apparent long standing malaria or other fever in September 1537. A young man of twenty-four, he owed his bishopric to his late uncle, his predecessor as bishop. He was praised for both learning and devotion and was well known from his recent student days at Padua to many of new eminence in the church—Contarini, Cortese, Sadoleto, Pole, Cervini. A laudatory account of him was written on January 1, 1538, for Venetian friends by his fellow-student Ludovico Bcccadelli, then in the famiglia of Cardinal Contarini in Rome, and his good works in the short year of his incumbency at Fano have been recorded by the local historian.

MY interest in Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who rebelled against Queen Mary in January-February 1554, led me to The historie of Wyates rebellion (December 1554) by John Proctor, a Kentish schoolmaster who was an eyewitness of many of the events he describes. But Proctor himself admitted that his Historie was not the first printed account of Wyatt's rebellion. In his dedicatory epistle to Queen Mary he refers to ‘a printed book late[ly] set forth at Canterbury', from Which either of haste or of purpose [important matters] were omitted'. Proctor's modern editor, unable to identify the earlier book, gave to the page bearing Proctor's epistle the running title ‘The Lost History of Wyatt's Rebellion'. It was from this point that I began my search for the lost history.

AS early as March 23, 1535, 105 days before his execution, there had been written an epitaph for St. Thomas More. Salmonius Macrinus (Jean Salmon, valet de chambre to Francis 1, and known as Macrin) on March 23 presented a copy of the epitaph to some person who inscribed it on page 6 of a copy of Thomas's Epigrammata (Basel, December 1520).

Why Montaigne decided to use the title ‘Des coaches’ for one of the essays of Book III has never been clearly explained. Villey believes that the essay could have been divided into three distinct chapters, but that Montaigne ‘les a aboutés l'un à l'autre; il a entassé toutes ces réflexions sous un même titre. C'était trop; le cadre a éclaté.' He also suggests that ‘le luxe’ is really the ‘idée maîtresse qui revient de place en place comme un leit-motiv’ (Villey, II, 300), and which would have clarified matters for the reader had it been incorporated into the title. He concludes, however, that Montaigne was not aiming for clarity, and that ‘ce titre est là pour surprendre’ (Villey, II, 300).

Nicholas Breton, the self-avowed author of The Strange Fortunes and the attributed author of The Arbor, has received little tribute for his lyrical poetry, and until very recently only one instance of his having inspired a musician to set his poetry had been pointed out, namely ‘Phillida and Corydon’ from The Honorable Entertainmentgiuen to the Queene Majestie in Progresse, at Eluetham in Hampshire, by the Right Honorable the Earle of Hertford, 1591. It is the purpose of this brief article to bring to the notice of scholars the existence of settings of two other lyrics ascribed to Breton, settings which are fully worth recording for their musical value while affording the only other known texts of Breton lyrics with certain slight variants.

In the Catalogue of the British Museum and the Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England, 1558-1640, the book An Advertisement written to a Secretarie . . . is assigned to Joseph Creswell, S.J. The ascription does not come from the title page since it was published under the pen name of ‘An Inglishe Intelligencer as he passed through Germanic towards Italie' but instead from a misleading reference in Felipe Alegambe's Biblioteca Scriptorum Societatis Iesu. Alegambe noted: ‘Joseph Creswell: In English under the name John Perney, a book opposing the Edict of Queen Elizabeth against the Catholics, also unless it is the same book, (one) against the letters of Cecil. However it is highly probable that Alegambe composed his entry from secondhand information without having seen the books he described.

On February 14, 1613, Frederick, the Elector Palatine, was married to Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James 1 of England. Shortly afterwards he and Prince Charles made a visit to Cambridge University. As on all such occasions, disputations were held, plays were acted, and congratulatory poems in Greek and Latin were offered. A contemporary account preserved in Gonville and Caius College (MS. 73, p. 232) records that after a speech the orator ‘presented the Princes with eyther of them a written book of verses, fairly bownd in vellum filletted and guilded, with crimson strings; that to the Prin: was gratulatorie, only that to the Palat: the former part gratulatori, the latter Epithalamia.’