exaggerated and conceited. He is the suitor favored by Luce's father, but Luce herself prefers Jasper. Even in this burlesque, he is to be laughed at above the other dramatis persona. His affected manner of speech is obvious, even in the passage of the play we have been considering. Therefore, it is not surprising that (for the moment) he comes out of his part, as it were, and speaks as an actor known to the audience rather than as a person in the play. His little excursion is, of course, ignored by Luce-who, as a young girl unconnected with the theatre, could not be expected to know, in character, what he meant; she replies to him as if he had not exhibited the property gloves with a wink, as he speaks the words "or no money." They are "F. S."-fakes and slumboes-property-and... they cost him nothing.

If I have accused the editors of this play of giving us explanations which are largely guesswork, I must extend the accusation to myself, for I have no proof that this phrase-which meets all the conditions requisite-was known to, or used by, the Elizabethans. It is, however, as good an explanation as Skeat's "as friendly," Mr. Anderson's "misfortune," or the editors' "symbolic pricemark." And if we have, as yet, no evidence that "fakes and slumboes" was Elizabethan, or that it was abbreviated "F. S." and, as such, was known to Beaumont and Fletcher's public, we have at least indicated the possibility of much more comedy in these lines than the editors have hitherto granted.

Smith College.

DRAYTON'S USE OF WELSH HISTORY

1

BY ROBERT RALSTON CAWLEY

Charles Gross is authority for the statement that, "For a long time the standard work on Wales was an Elizabethan compilation called A Historie of Cambria." This book was a collection by Caradoc of Llancarvan of the "successions and actes of the Brytish Princes after Cadwalader, to the yeare of Christ 1156." Monks in the Welsh abbeys of Conway and Stratflur then added events as they occurred till the year 1270; and all this material coming into the hands of Humphrey Lloyd, "a paineful and a worthie searcher of Brytish antiquities," was translated by him into English. But he did not live to complete the work, which was reluctantly undertaken and published in 1584 by another Welshman, David Powel.2

The work naturally enough has a strong Welsh bias, and Drayton reflects much of that bias when, in the Ninth Song of Poly-olbion, he makes Mount Snowdon sing Cambria's "native Princes' praise." In several instances he even transcends Powel's prejudice. His love for Wales was evidently deep if we are to take as sincere his address "To My Friends, the Cambro-Britans," prefixed to Poly-olbion. He speaks there of "my loved Wales," and proceeds to offer some explanation for his affection:

And beside my natural inclination to love antiquities (which Wales may highly boast of) I confess the free and gentle company of that true lover of his Country, Mr. John Williams, his Majesty's Goldsmith, my dear and worthy friend, hath made me the more seek into the antiquities of your Country.

Drayton found that Powel's book contained just the manner of praise of things Welsh he required; and, in consequence, he followed it for some two hundred lines, almost without a break. His

1 Sources and Literature of English History from the Earliest Times to About 1485. London, 1915. P. 192.

2 The most convenient form of this book is in a reprint for John Harding, London, 1811. References will be to that edition.

3 Complete Works of Michael Drayton. London, 1876. 3 vol. Ed. R. Hooper, I, xxxvi-xxxvii. Unless otherwise specified, all allusions will be to this edition.

procedure in this borrowing is consistent; he tends to stress the beginnings and ends of the separate chapters, to consult Powel's index in order to link similar events, and to fabricate transitions if they are lacking in his original. These transitions usually consist of patriotic outbursts, in which he not infrequently distorts the facts of history.

The very spirit with which Drayton undertakes to praise Welsh heroism is inherent in "A Description of Cambria," retained by Powel as an introduction to his book. The poet's lines are:

Whilst here this general Isle, the ancient Britans ow'd,
Their valiant deeds before by Severne have been show'd:
But, since our furious foe, these pow'rful Saxon swarms
(As merciless in spoil, as well approv'd in arms)
Here called to our aid, Loëgria us bereft,

5

Those poor and scatt'red few of Brute's high linage left,
For succour hither came; where that unmixed race
Remains unto this day, yet owners of this place:

Of whom no Flood nor Hill peculiarly hath song.

These, then, shall be my theme: lest Time too much should wrong
Such Princes as were ours, since sever'd we have been."

Much of Lloyd's introduction is concerned with injustices wrought upon the Welsh by Anglo-Saxon invaders; and the reasons Powel assigns for finishing Lloyd's task embrace Drayton's motives:

First, because I see the politike and martiall actes of all other inhabitants of this Iland, in the time of their government to be set out to the uttermost, and that by divers and sundrie writers: and the whole doings and government of the Brytaines the first inhabitants of the land, who continued their rule longer than anie other nation, to be nothing spoken of nor regarded of anie, especialie sithence the reigne of Cadwalader, having so manie monuments of antiquitie to declare and testifie the same, if anie would take the paines to open and discover them to the vew of the world."

In "To My Friends, the Cambro-Britans," the poet says he is "striving, as my much-loved (the learned) Humfrey Floyd, in his description of Cambria to Abraham Ortelius, to uphold her [Wales'] ancient bounds."

Poly-olbion, from Song IV through X, is well filled with tributes to the Welsh. E. g. vi, 237 ff., VIII, 375-6.

'Or Logres, a common name for England used in the old romances and histories, derived from the legendary king Locrine or Locris. Drayton uses it frequently. Cf. Pol. v, 74, VIII, 33.

Ll. 177-87. Allusions to lines in Poly-olbion, Ninth Song between 177 and 436 will be without reference to poem or song.

'Historie of Cambria, x.

Drayton next makes use of two details from Lloyd's introduction. The first concerns the name Welsh:

Till with the term of Welsh, the English now embase

The nobler Britans' name."

Lloyd's objection is worded thus:

And bicause the name of this countrie is changed, or rather mistaken by the inhabitants of England, and not by them called Cambry, but Wales: I thinke it necessarie to declare the occasion thereof."

Two pages are then devoted to proving that Welsh was a late term meaning strange foisted in derision upon the noble Britons. Drayton continues his description of the British race:

that well-near was destroy'd

With pestilence and war, which this great Isle annoy'd.1o

At the conclusion of his summary Description of Wales, Lloyd says:

The Princes of Wales, sith the conquest of the Normans, could never keepe quiet possession thereof, but what for strangers and what for disloyaltie of their owne people, vexation and war, were for the most part compelled to keepe themselves in Caermardhynshire.11

The poet now plunges into the history itself, and from this point his procedure in adapting prose to verse can best be illustrated by parallel passages:

D.

Cadwallader 13 that drave

to the Armoric shore:

To which, dread Conan,
Lord of Denbigh, long before,
His countrymen from hence

auspiciously convey'd: Whose noble feats in war,

and never-failing aid, Got Maximus (at length) the victory in Gaul,

LI. 190-91.

• Historie, xviii.

10 LI. 191-92.

11 Historie, XXXV-Xxxvi.

P.

Cadwalader... by extreame plagues of death and famine, was driven to forsake this his Realme and native Countrie, and to sojourne with ... his cousen Alan, King of little Brytaine. Little Brytaine is a countrie in France, called in Cæsars time, Armorica, and after inhabited by Brytaines, who about the yeare of Christ 384 under the conduct of

12 The corresponding section in Powel is headed Cadwalader. It would

be the first word on which Drayton's eye would light.