cal talk of London in the period about 1589.[1] In 1880 (Sir) Sidney Lee pointed out three features of this part of the play which bear an analogy to contemporary history:
(1) The King of Navarre, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine have names which are identical or practically so with those of four conspicuous leaders in the French civil war of 1589–1593: Henri IV (Henry of Navarre); his two generals, Marshal Biron and the Duke of Longueville; and his great opponent, the Duke du Maine, or de Mayenne, brother to the Duke of Guise.[2]
(2) In 1586 Catherine de Medici, Queen-Mother of France, conducted a diplomatic conference with Henry of Navarre at St.-Bris, at which the Queen attempted to influence the course of negotiations by means of a band of gay and charming ladies in waiting.[3]
- ↑ Several recent writers see English topical references in the Princess of France's visit to Navarre. Thus Mr. Arthur Acheson (Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1920, p. 119, 165 ff.) conjectures that Love's Labour's Lost 'was written late in 1591, or early in 1592, as a reflection of the Queen's progress [August, 1591] to Cowdray House, the home of the Earl of Southampton's maternal grandfather, Viscount Montague, and that the shooting of deer by the Princess and her ladies fancifully records phases of the entertainments arranged for the Queen during her visit.' Cf. note on IV. i. 112.
- ↑ Dumaine is prominent in Marlowe's Massacre at Paris as an enemy of Navarre. It is very likely, as Hart and Charlton diffidently suggest, that Shakespeare confused him with Marshal d'Aumont, who, though originally anti-Huguenot, was one of the first to recognize Navarre after Henri III's death (1589) and shared with him in the victory at Ivry (1590). Longueville gained a great victory for the Huguenots at Senlis in 1589. Lee's further assumption that Moth is named after La Motte, a French ambassador at Elizabeth's court in earlier days, lacks probability.
- ↑ Lefranc would substitute for the meeting at St.-Bris an earlier meeting of Catherine and Navarre at Nérac in 1580.
