Page:Shakespeare of Stratford (1926) Yale.djvu/41

Shakespeare of Stratford (B) Richard III (second edition).

''The Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Containing his treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence, the pitiful murther of his innocent nephews, his tyrannical usurpation, with the whole course of his detested life and most deserved death. As it hath been lately acted by the Right Honourable the Lord Chamberlain his servants. By William Shake-speare. 1598.''

(C) Love’s Labour’s Lost (earliest extant edition).

''A pleasant conceited comedy called Loves Labors Lost. As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere. 1598.''

Editions of both Richard II and Richard III, and one of Romeo and Juliet, appeared in 1597, all without any mention of the author. The earliest edition of the first part of Henry IV in 1598 likewise fails to indicate the author’s name, but the second quarto (1599) says, ‘Newly corrected by W. Shakespeare.’

(A) Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia, 1598.

As the Greek tongue is made famous and eloquent by Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Æschylus, Sophocles, Pindarus, Phocylides, and Aristophanes; and the Latin tongue by Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ausonius, and Claudianus: so the English tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments