William Tyndale in his Practyse of Prelates, 1530, relates the wild legend of Charlemagne’s dotage:—­“And beyond all that, the saying is that in his old age a whore had so bewitched him with a ring and a pearl in it and I wot not what imagery graven therein, that he went a salt after her as a dog after a bitch and the dotehead was beside himself and whole out of his mind:  insomuch that when the whore was dead he could not depart from the dead corpse but caused it to be embalmed and to be carried with him whithersoever he went, so that all the world wondered at him; till at the last his lords accombered with carrying her from place to place and ashamed that so old a man, so great an emperor, and such a most Christian king, on whom and on whose deeds every man’s eyes were set, should dote on a dead whore, took counsel what should be the cause:  and it was concluded that it must needs be by enchantment.  Then they went unto the coffin, and opened it, and sought and found this ring on her finger; which one of the lords took off, and put it on his own finger.  When the ring was off, he commanded to bury her, regarding her no longer.  Nevertheless he cast a fantasy unto this lord, and began to dote as fast on him, so that he might never be out of sight; but where our Charles was, there must that lord also be; and what Charles did, that must he be privy unto:  until that this lord, perceiving that it came because of this enchanted ring, for very pain and tediousness took and cast it into a well at Acon [Aix la Chapelle], in Dutchland.  And after that the ring was in the well, the emperor could never depart from the town; but in the said place where the ring was cast, though it were a foul morass, yet he built a goodly monastery in the worship of our lady, and thither brought relics from whence he could get them, and pardons to sanctify the place, and to make it more haunted.  And there he lieth, and is a saint, as right is:  for he did for Christ’s Vicar as much as the great Turk for Mahomet; but to save his holiness, that he might be canonised for a saint, they feign that his abiding there so continually was for the hot-baths’ sake which be there.” (Works, ed.  Parker Society, ii. 265.)

Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii., Sect. 2, Memb. 3, Subs. 5, briefly narrates the story.

In the first scene of the Distracted Emperor, l. 17, for the reading of the MS.  “Can propp thy mynde, fortune’s shame upon thee!” we should undoubtedly substitute “Can propp thy ruynde fortunes? shame upon thee!”

Dr. Reinhold Koehler of Weimar explains once for all the enigmatical letters at the end of the play:—­“The line denotes: 

    Nella fidelta finiro la vita.