Of Shakspeare's Comedy of Love's Labor's Lost before Queen Elizabeth.

THE subject of the accompanying plate is a fancy sketch by a celebrated English artist, named Buss, representing the performance of Shakspeare's comedy of Love's Labor's Lost, before queen Elizabeth and her Court. We believe, from the London papers, that the painter intended to represent Shakspeare upon the stage before his august patron, in the performance of Don Adriano de Armado, a fantastical Spaniard, a character in the above comedy. But we have no authority that the dramatist ever performed in the play in question, although we do not possess the power of contradicting the assertion. The nation and nature of the character, and the quaint allusion contained in its name, were undoubtedly designed as a grateful compliment to her virgin majesty. Shakspeare was indubitably a courtier, and spared no means of gratifying the weaknesses of Elizabeth and the prejudices of the day. The vilifying twisting of the character of Richard III., the mortal enemy of the grandfather of the queen, is a convincing evidence in support of our assertion.

The play of Love's Labor's Lost (so named in the folio of 1623,) is generally supposed to be the earliest of Shakspeare's productions. Malone assigns 1591 as the date of the original drama, but changed it afterwards, with sufficient reason, to 1594. Chalmers supposes 1592 as the year wherein this comedy was written, but gives no satisfactory cause for his preference. The original edition of this play is doubtless lost, for the oldest copy extant, dated 1598, is said, in the title page, to be "newly corrected and augmented." In 1597, it was represented at Whitehall palace, before queen Elizabeth, by her express desire-we are then to suppose that we possess the copy of the piece as it was "newly corrected and augmented" for the purpose of exhibition before her majesty.

We have said that there is no authority extant for the assu nption that Shakspeare personated Armado, even at the command of her majesty the queen. At the same time, if he played in the