65. 23. This subject had been imperfectly examined at the time when Dryden wrote, and his statement is not quite accurate. It is true that most of the old comedies before Shakspere, such as Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle, were written in rude twelve-syllable lines, to class which with the elegant French Alexandrines of the period is to pay them much too high a compliment. But there were exceptions; the Misogonus of Richards (about 1560) is in fourteen-syllable alternate rhymes; the Supposes of Gascoigne (1566) is in prose; the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone (1578) is in the heroic couplet; and the Taming of a Shrew (1594) is in blank verse. See Collier, Annals of the Stage, vol. iii.
30. The unfinished pastoral drama of The Sad Shepherd, or A Tale of Robin Hood, must have been written not long before Jonson's death in 1637; the prologue opens with the line—
'He that hath feasted you these forty years.'
66. 3. The pastoral drama of The Faithful Shepherdess, by Fletcher, was brought out about 1610.
18. Dryden truly says that The Merry Wives of Windsor is 'almost exactly formed'; that is, that the unities of time and place are nearly observed. The time of the action is comprised within two days; the place is, either some house in Windsor, or a street in Windsor, or a field near the town, or Windsor Park.
67. 11. It is curious to observe with what caution our author speaks, when he ventures to place Shakspere above Jonson; a caution which proves decisively the wretched taste of the period when he wrote. (Malone.)
68. 23. Chiefly on account of the woman-page Bellario, in whose mouth are put a profusion of pretty and graceful things which might often deserve to have been said by Shakspere's Viola. Lamb says (Eng. Dramatic Poets, p. 308), 'For many years after the date of Philasler's first exhibition on the stage [1608], scarce a play can be found without one of
