Popular Appellations, often referred to in Literature and Conversation. By William A. Wheeler. Nineteenth edition, with appendix by Charles G. Wheeler. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Cloth, pp. 440.

(34) ENGLISH MEN OF ACTION SERIES. Henry the Fifth. By Rev. J. A. Church. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Cloth, pp. 155.

(35) SIR ANTHONY SHERLEY THE AUTHOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. By Scott Surtees. London: Henry Gray. Cloth, pp. 42.

(36) SHAKESPEARE'S PROVINCIALISMS. Words used in Sussex. By Scott Surtees. Densdale-on-Tees. Paper, pp. 8.

SHAKESPEARE'S WORD-PLAY AND PUNS.

B

II.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

URBY'S quarto of 1598 speaks on its title-page of Love's Labour's Lost as "a Pleasant Conceited Comedie." The description suits well. For among all the plays this is the one in which the poet, free as yet from all constraint of serious thinking on any grave. problem, has given the widest range to his love of the fantastic element in life and in speech. Those critics are, indeed, very foolish that can see nothing but conceits in the comedy, and those readers are very stupid who fail to find the conceits pleasant. But, along with much daintiness in portrayal of character and large wealth of poetic effects, there is throughout the drama a youthful debauch of the poet in word-plays. In fact there is not perhaps in literature any other work of a great poet that contains within so small a compass so vast a variety of tricks with words. Of the eighteen characters, sixteen may fairly be called punsters, and the dialogue at all stages of the action is sparkling and flashing from all sides with puns.

Of these word-plays, which come so thick and fast as almost to blind observation, more than two hundred and fifty may be observed as noteworthy. The distribution of these two hundred and fifty among the sixteen characters is, for the study of Shakespeare's method in portraying character, so curious that it may be given in tabular form: