[327] Homer Smith, in making these assertions, overlooks historical evidence.  It is, however, only fair to Goffe to say that other critics apparently take a very much more favourable view of the merits of the piece than I am able to do.

[328] Hardly in those of the prologue to Hymen’s Triumph, as suggested by Homer Smith.

[329] W. C. Hazlitt (Manual of Plays, p. 25) records:  ’Bellessa, the Shepherd’s Queen:  The scene, Galicia.  An unpublished and incomplete drama in prose and verse.  Fol.’  In the absence of further evidence I conclude that this is an imperfect MS. of Montagu’s piece.

[330] The designs for the scene, by Inigo Jones, are preserved in the British Museum, MS. Lansd. 1,171, fols. 15-16.  Fols. 5-6 of the same MS. contain the ground-plans ’for a pasterall in the hall at whitthall w’ch was ackted by the ffrench on St Thomas day the 23th of decemb’r 1635,’ which may refer to the same piece.

[331] It may, however, be founded on some French romance.

[332] The play will be found in Hazlitt’s ‘Dodsley,’ vol. xii, whence I quote.  Hazlitt suggests that ‘the episode of Sylvia and Thyrsis’ may have had its foundation in certain intrigues traceable in Digby’s memoirs, and Fleay would see in the characters of Stella and Mirtillus a hint of Dorset’s liaison with Lady Venetia.  I suppose that it has been thought necessary to find allusions to actual persons, chiefly because the author explicitly denies their existence.  Homer Smith describes the play as a pure Arcadian drama.  ‘The court element,’ he writes, ’is so completely overshadowed by the pastoral’ as to justify the classification, in spite, apparently, of the fact that the heroine never appears on the stage in pastoral guise at all, and that in the greater part of the last three acts the scene is laid at court.

[333] See above, p. 246, for Fanshawe’s version of the passage in question.

[334] Were it not for these points of similarity, I should have supposed Gosse to have been misled by the pastoral-sounding title of Randolph’s Plautine comedy into confusing it with the Amyntas.  The criticism is from an article in the Cornhill for December, 1876.  Homer Smith cites it.

[335] The surname rests on Kirkman’s authority, the addition of the Christian name is apparently due to Chetwood, and is therefore to be accepted with caution.  I have been unable to trace any one of the name.

[336] II. ii, sig.  C 1^v of the old edition.

[337] Halliwell, Description of MSS. in the Public Library, Plymouth, to which are added Some Fragments of Early Literature hitherto unpublished.  MS. CII is a copy of the original manuscript in the possession of Sir E. Dering.  A manuscript of the play was in Quaritch’s Catalogue for November, 1899; I have been unable to trace it.