nd a most suggestive resemblance to much of the
action and plot of _Love's Labours Lost_. The Queen and Court arrived at
Cowdray House at eight o'clock on Saturday evening, 15th August. That
night, the records tell us, "her Majesty took her rest and so in like
manner the next, which was Sunday, being most royally feasted, the
proportion of breakfast being 3 oxen and 140 geese." "The next day," we
are informed, "she rode in the park where a delicate bower" was prepared
and "a nymph with a sweet song delivered her a crossbow to shoot at the
deer of which she killed three or four and the Countess of Kildare one."
In _Love's Labour's Lost_ the Princess and her ladies shoot at deer from
a coppice.

PRINCESS. Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush
That we must stand and play the murderer in?

FOR. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;
A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.

In Act IV. Scene ii., Holofernes makes an "extemporal epitaph on the
death of the deer," which is reminiscent of the "sweet song" delivered
to the Queen by "the nymph."

HOL. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on the death
of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call I the deer the
princess killed a pricket.

* * * * *

I will something affect the letter, for it argues facility.

The preyful princess pierced and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket;
Some say a sore, but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting.
The dogs did yell; put L to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket;
Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.
If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores one sorel.
Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.

_In a former publication I have shown that an antagonism had developed
between Shakespeare and Chapman as early as the year 1594, and in a more
recent one have shown Matthew Roydon's complicacy with Chapman in his
hostility to Shakespeare, and also Shakespeare's cognizance of it._ I
have displayed Shakespeare's answers to the attacks of these scholars in
his caricature of Chapman as Holofernes, and of the curate Roydon as the
curate Nathaniel. Chapman's attack upon Shakespeare in 1593 in the early
_Histriomastix_ and his reflection of the Earl of Southampton as
Mavortius give evidence that his hostility owed its birth to
Shakespeare's success in winni