SHAKESPEARE SELECT. PLAYS AS YOU LIKE IT EDITED BY WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT, M.A. Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCC LXXXIII [All rights reserved] PREFACE. WITH regard to the origin and date of this most delightful and popular of Shakespeare's Comedies there is but little uncertainty. The registers of the Stationers' Company contain the following entry among others which are found on two leaves at the beginning of vol. C: 4. Augusti As you like yt/ a booke Henry the ffift/ a booke Euery man in his humour/a booke The commedie of muche A doo about nothing a booke/ to be staied. These are all under the head of 'my lord chamberlens menns plaies.' The year is not given, but the date of the previous entry is 27 May 1600, and that of the following 23 January 1603, and as the other plays mentioned in the entry were printed in 1600 and 1601, it may be fairly conjectured that the year to be supplied is 1600. The play was probably written in the course of the same year. It is not mentioned by Meres in the list of Shakespeare's plays which he gives in Palladis Tamia, and it contains a quotation (iii. 5. 80) from Marlowe's Hero and Leander, which was first published in the year 1598. Now Meres's book was entered at Stationers' Hall on the 7th of September 1598, and therefore between that date and 4 August 1600, we have to put the three plays Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, and As You Like It, which are all mentioned in the memorandum made under the latter date, while apparently they were not published when Meres wrote. Again, 150189 |