Читать книгу The Shakespeare-Expositor - Thomas Keightley - Страница 13

Editions. 4to (by Fisher), 1600; 4to (by Roberts), 1600; in the folio, 1623.

Date. Anterior to 1598, as it is mentioned by Meres. I do think that in Act II. Sc. 1 there is an allusion to the state of the weather in the summer of 1594, and that Shakespeare may have been writing this play at that very time. I therefore incline to give that year, or 1595, as the date of its composition.

Origin. Purely and absolutely the whole the poet's own invention. He was well read in Chaucer, in Golding's Ovid, and in North's Plutarch, where he got the names of his characters and some circumstances.