ic. Certain objects reappearing from scene to
scene--love-letters crammed with verses to the margin, and lovers'
toys--hint obscurely at some story of intrigue. Between these groups,
on a smaller scale, come the slighter and more homely episodes, with
Sir Nathaniel the curate, the country-maid Jaquenetta, Moth or Mote the
elfin-page, with Hiems and Ver, who recite "the dialogue that the two
learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo." The
ladies are [164] lodged in tents, because the king, like the princess
of the modern poet's fancy, has taken a vow

to make his court a little Academe,

and for three years' space no woman may come within a mile of it; and
the play shows how this artificial attempt was broken through. For the
king and his three fellow-scholars are of course soon forsworn, and
turn to writing sonnets, each to his chosen lady. These
fellow-scholars of the king--"quaint votaries of science" at first,
afterwards "affection's men-at-arms"--three youthful knights, gallant,
amorous, chivalrous, but also a little affected, sporting always a
curious foppery of language, are, throughout, the leading figures in
the foreground; one of them, in particular, being more carefully
depicted than the others, and in himself very noticeable--a portrait
with somewhat puzzling manner and expression, which at once catches the
eye irresistibly and keeps it fixed.

Play is often that about which people are most serious; and the
humourist may observe how, under all love of playthings, there is
almost always hidden an appreciation of something really engaging and
delightful. This is true always of the toys of children: it is often
true of the playthings of grown-up people, their vanities, their
fopperies even, their lighter loves; the cynic would add their pursuit
of fame. Certainly, this is true without exception [165] of the
playthings of a past age, which to those who succeed it are always full
of a pensive interest--old manners, old dresses, old houses. For what
is called fashion in these matters occupies, in each age, much of the
care of many of the most discerning people, furnishing them with a kind
of mirror of their real inward refinements, and their capacity for
selection. Such modes or fashions are, at their best, an example of
the artistic predominance of form over matter; of the manner of the
doing of it over the thing done; and have a beauty of their own. It is
so with that old euphuis