ng plays:--_Tempest_, _Two
Gentlemen of Verona_, _Measure for Measure_, _Merchant of Venice_, _As
You Like It_, _Taming of the Shrew_, _Comedy of Errors_, _Macbeth_,
_King John_, _1st Henry IV._, _2nd Henry VI._, _3rd Henry VI._, _Henry
VIII._, _Troilus and Cressida_, _Coriolanus_, _Julius Caesar_,
_Pericles_, _Othello_. These therefore may be dismissed at once. There
remain the following plays in which indications of the seasons intended
either in the whole play or in the particular act may be traced. In some
cases the traces are exceedingly slight (almost none at all); in others
they are so strongly marked that there is little doubt that Shakespeare
used them of set purpose and carefully:--_Merry Wives_, _Twelfth Night_,
_Much Ado_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _As You
Like It_, _All's Well_, _Winter's Tale_, _Richard II._, _1st Henry IV._,
_Henry V._, _2nd Henry VI._, _Richard III._, _Timon of Athens_, _Antony
and Cleopatra_, _Cymbeline_, _Titus Andronicus_, _Romeo and Juliet_,
_King Lear_, _Hamlet_, and _Two Noble Kinsmen_.

_Merry Wives._ Herne's oak gives the season intended--

"Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest,
Doth _all the winter time_ at still midnight
Walk round about an oak with ragged horns."

If Shakespeare really meant to place the scene in mid-winter, there may
be a fitness in Mrs. Quickly's looking forward to "a posset at night, at
the latter end of a sea-coal fire," for it was a "raw rheumatick day"
(act iii, sc. 1), in Pistol's--

"Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing,"

in Ford's "birding" and "hawking," and in the concluding words--

"Let us every one go home,
And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire" (act v, sc. 5);

but it is not in accordance with the literature of the day to have
fairies dancing at midnight in the depth of winter.

_Twelfth Night._ We know that the whole of this play occupies but a few
days, and is chiefly "matter for a May morning." This gives emphasis to
Olivia's oath, "By the roses of the Spring . . . I love thee so" (act
ii, sc. 4).

_Much Ado._ The season must be summer. There is the sitting out of doors
in the "still evening, hushed on purpose to grace harmony;" and it is
the time of year for the full leafage when Beatrice might

"Steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,