e student of
Shakespeare's style and of his mental development. There is not an
interweaving of styles as in "Troilus and Cressida"; the two are
distinctly separable; and there is external historical evidence which
supports the internal.

We have a record in Francis Meres's "Palladis Tamia" of a play by
Shakespeare called "Love's Labor's Won"; and there is no reasonable
doubt that that was the first name of "All's Well that Ends Well." As
the "Palladis Tamia" was published in 1598, this play was produced
before that year, and all the evidence, internal and external, goes to
show that Shakespeare wrote it soon after "Love's Labor's Lost," and as
a counterpart to that comedy. The difference of its style in various
parts had been remarked upon in general terms; but I believe that this
difference was first specially indicated in the following passage, which
I cannot do better here than to quote from the introduction to my
edition of the play published in 1857; and I do so with the greater
freedom because the particular traits which it discriminated have been
lately, in the present year, insisted upon by the Rev. Mr. Fleay, in his
very useful and suggestive, but not altogether to be trusted
"Shakespeare Manual," to which I have before referred.

"It is to be observed that passages of rhymed couplets, in which the
thought is somewhat constrained and its expression limited by the form
of the verse, are scattered freely through the play, and that these are
found side by side with passages of blank verse in which the thought, on
the contrary, so entirely dominates the form, and overloads and weighs
it down, as to produce the impression that the poet, in writing them,
was almost regardless of the graces of his art, and merely sought an
expression of his ideas in the most compressed and elliptical form. The
former trait is characteristic of his youthful style; the latter marks a
certain period of his maturer years. Contracted words, which Shakespeare
used more freely in his later than in his earlier works, abound; and in
some passages words are used in an esoteric sense, which is distinctive
of the poet's style about the time when 'Measure for Measure' was
produced. Note, for instance, the use of 'succeed' in 'owe and succeed
thy weakness,' in Act II., Sc. 4 of that play, and in 'succeed thy
father in manners,' Act I., Sc. 1 of this. It is to be observed also
that the advice given by the Countess to Bertram when he leaves
Rousil