[295] A. H. Bullen’s reprint of Day’s works was privately printed in 1881.  Though the text is not in all respects satisfactory, I have thought myself justified in quoting from it as the only edition available.

[296] Not tennis, as Mr. Bullen states (Introd. p. 17), oblivious for the moment of the impossibility of representing a tennis match on the stage, as well as of the fact that the game was never, in Elizabethan times, played by ladies.

[297] There is one printed play, the relation of which to the Arcadia is not very clear.  The title, Mucedorus, at once suggests some connexion, but it is difficult to follow it out in detail.  Mucedorus, ’the king’s sonne of Valentia,’ leaves his father’s court and goes disguised as a shepherd to win the love of Amadine, ‘the king’s daughter of Arragon.’  He twice rescues the princess, is sentenced to banishment, and reveals his identity just as his father arrives in search of him.  The play was originally printed in 1598, but no doubt originated some years earlier, c. 1588 according to Fleay.  Most of the resemblances with the Arcadia, however, are due to scenes which first appeared in 1610, in which edition the king of Valentia first plays a part.  Beyond Mucedorus’ disguise there is absolutely nothing pastoral in the play.  With the exception of some of the additional scenes, which are undoubtedly by a different hand from the rest, the play is unrelieved rubbish.  Probably the original author utilized in the composition of his piece such elements and incidents of the Arcadia as he had gathered orally while the unfinished work still circulated in MS. Later the reviser, being aware of this source, expanded the play from a knowledge of the completed work.  It cannot be said to be a dramatization of the romance, though it is undoubtedly in a manner founded upon it.

[298] Egerton MS. 1994.  Not Love’s Changelings Changed, as usually quoted.

[299] Old Plays, ii. p. 432.

[300] Rawl.  Poet, 3.

[301] In the Bodleian MS. Ashmole 788 is a Latin epistle by Philip Kynder, a miscellaneous writer and court agent under Charles I, born in 1600 at latest, which was ’prefixt before my Silvia, a Latin comedie or pastorall, translated from the Archadia, written at eighteen years of age.’ (See Halliwell’s Dic. of Plays.) The ‘Archadia’ might, of course, refer either to Sannazzaro’s or Lope de Vega’s romances, though this is highly improbable.

[302] So much we learn from the title-page itself.  The play had very likely been acted at court some years earlier, but the document mentioning such a performance, printed by Cunningham, is of doubtful authenticity, while Fleay contradicts himself upon the subject.  The question is, happily, immaterial to our present purpose.

[303] Here, as in the Isle of Gulls, the titles of Duke and Duchess have been imperfectly substituted for King and Queen, probably for court performance.