Now expectation, tickling skittish fpirits, So, in Spenfer's Faery Queen, b. 5. c. 10: Again, in Warner's Albion's England, 1602. B. II. chap. 12: gates." STEEVENS. Mr. Theobald informs us that the very names of the gates of Troy have been barbarously demolished by the editors; and a deal of learned duft he makes in fetting them right again; much however to Mr. Heath's fatisfaction. Indeed the learning is modeftly withdrawn from the later editions, and we are quietly inftructed to read "Dardan, and Thymbria, Ilia, Scaa, Trojan, "And Antenorides." But had he looked into the Troy boke of Lydgate, inftead of puzzling "The fourthe gate | hyghte alfo Cetbeas; Lond. empr. by R. Pynson, 1513, Fol. b. ii. ch. rr. The Troy Boke was fomewhat modernized, and reduced into regular ftanzas, about the beginning of the last century, under the name of, The Life and Death of Hector-who fought a Hundred mayne Battailes in open Field against the Grecians; wherein there were flaine on both Sides Fourteene Hundred and Sixe Thousand, Fourfcore and Sixe Men.-Fol. no date. This work Dr. Fuller, and several other criticks, have erroneously quoted as the original; and obferve in confequence, that if Chaucer's coin were of greater weight for deeper learning, Lydgate's were of a more refined ftandard for purer language: fo that one might mistake him for a modern writer!" FARMER. On other occafions, in the courfe of this play, I fhall infert quotations from the Troye Boke modernized, as being the moft intelligible of the two. STEEVINS. Sets 1 Sets all on hazard:—And hither am I come To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Like, or find fault; do as your pleasures are ; 5 A prologue arm'd,] I come here to speak the prologue, and come in armour; not defying the audience, in confidence of either the authour's or actor's abilities, but merely in a character fuited to the subject, in a dress of war, before a warlike play. JOHNSON. -the vaunt-] i. e. the avaunt, what went before. STEEVENS. The vaunt is the van guard, called in our author's time the vauntguard. PERCY. Antenor, } Trojan Commanders. Calchas, a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks. Pandarus, Uncle to Creffida. Margarelon, a bastard son of Priam. Agamemnon, the Grecian General : Menelaus, his brother. Therfites, a deformed and fcurrilous Grecian. Alexander, fervant to Creffida. Servant to Troilus; Servant to Paris; Servant to Dio medes. Helen, wife to Menelaus. Andromache, wife to Hector. Caffandra, daughter to Priam; a Prophetess. Creffida, daughter to Calchas. Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants. SCENE, Troy, and the Grecian Camp before it. ACT I. SCENE I. Troy. Before Priam's Palace. Enter TROILUS arm'd, and PANDARUS. Tro. Call here my varlet, I'll unarm again: Why should I war without the walls of Troy, That The ftory was originally written by Lollius, an old Lombard author, and fince by Chaucer. POPE. Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the ftory of Troilus and Creffida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard; (of whom Gascoigne fpeaks in Dan Bartbolmewe bis firft Triumph: "Since Lollius and Chaucer both, make doubt upon that glofe") but Dryden goes yet further. He declares it to have been written in Latin verse, and that Chaucer tranflated it. Lollius was a hiftoriographer of Urbino in Italy. Shakspeare received the greatest part of his materials for the ftructure of this play from the Troye Boke of Lydgate. Lydgate was not much more than a tranflator of Guido of Columpna, who was of Meffina in Sicily, and wrote his Hiftory of Troy in Latin, after Dictys Cretenfis, and Dares Phrygius, in 1287. On thefe, as Mr. Warton obferves, he engrafted many new romantick inventions, which the taste of his age dictated, and which the connection between Grecian and Gothic fiction eafily admitted; at the fame time comprehending in his plan the Theban and Argonautic stories from Ovid, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus. Guido's work was published at Cologne in 1477, again in 1480: at Strafburgh 1486, and ibidem. 1489. It appears to have been tranflated by Raoul le Feure, at Cologne, into French, from whom Caxton rendered it into English in 1471, under the title of his Recuyel, &c. fo that there must have been yet fome earlier edition of Guido's performance than I have hitherto feen or heard of, unless his first tranflator had recourfe to amanufcript. Guido of Columpna is referred to as an authority by our own chronicler Grafton. Chaucer had made the loves of Troilus and Creffida famous, which very probably might have been Shakspeare's induce ment That find fuch cruel battle here within ? Let ment to try their fortune on the ftage.-Lydgate's Troye Boke was printed by Pynfon, 1513. In the books of the Stationers' Company, anno 1581, is entered "A proper ballad, dialogue-wife, between Troilus and Creffida." Again, Feb. 7, 1602: "The booke of Troilus and Creffida, as it is acted by my Lo. Chamberlain's men." The first of these entries is in the name of Edward White, the fecond in that of M. Roberts. Again, Jan. 28, 1608, entered by Rich. Bonian and Hen. Whalley, "A booke called the hiftory of Troilus and Creffida." STEEVENS. The entry in 1608-9 was made by the bookfellers for whom this play was published in 1609. It was written, I conceive, in 1602. See An Attempt to afcertain the order of Shakspeare's plays, Vol. I. MALONE. Before this play of Treilus and Creffida, printed in 1609, is a bookfeller's preface, fhewing that first impreffion to have been before the play had been acted, and that it was published without Shakespeare's knowledge, from a copy that had fallen into the bookfeller's hands. Mr. Dryden thinks this one of the first of our author's plays: but, on the contrary, it may be judged from the fore-mentioned preface, that it was one of his laft; and the great number of observations, both moral and politick, with which this piece is crowded more than any other of his, feems to confirm my opinion. POPE. We may rather learn from this preface, that the original proprietors of Shakspeare's plays thought it their intereft to keep them unprinted. The author of it adds, at the conclufion, thefe words: "Thank fortune for the 'fcape it hath made amongst you, fince, by the grand poffeffors wills, I believe you fhould have prayed for them, rather than been prayed," &c. By the grand poffeffors, I fuppofe, were meant Heming and Condell. It appears that the rival playhouses at that time made frequent depredations on one another's copies. In the Induction to the Malecontent, written by Webster, and augmented by Marfton, 1604, is the following paffage : "I wonder you would play it, another company having interest in it." "Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimo fexto with them? They taught us a name for our plays; we call it One for another." Again, T. Heywood, in his preface to the Erglish Traveller, 1633: "Others of them are itill retained in the hands of fome actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print." STEEVENS. It appears, however, that frauds were practifed by writers as well as actors. It stands on record against Robert Greene, the author of Friar Bacon |