'er the lawn.
One drops down here! another there!
In bushes as they groan;
I bend a scornful, careless ear,
To hear them make their moan."

May not this be the identical "sweet song" delivered by the nymph to the
Queen, and the occasion of the progress to Cowdray, in 1591, indicate
the entry of Roydon and Chapman into the rivalry between Shakespeare and
the scholars inaugurated two years earlier by Greene and Nashe?

This poem which I attribute to Roydon has all the manner of an
occasional production and is about as senseless as most of his other
"absolute comicke inventions." The masque-like allegory it exhibits,
introducing "Delight," "Wit," "Good Sport," "Honest Meaning" as persons,
was much affected by the Queen and Court in their entertainments. At the
marriage of Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester, in 1599, a
masque was given for the Queen in which we are told eight ladies of the
Court performed. One of these ladies "wooed her to dawnce, her Majesty
asked what she was, affection she said, affection, said the Queen,
affection is false, yet her Majesty rose and dawnced." During the stay
at Cowdray similar make-believe and allegory were evidently used in the
entertainments given for the Queen. Roydon's poem may, like _Love's
Labours Lost_, be a reflection of such courtly nonsense.

During the first three days of the Queen's stay at Cowdray she was
feasted and entertained (the records inform us) by Lady Montague, but on
the fourth day "she dined at the Priory," where Lord Montague kept
bachelor's hall, and whither he had retired to receive and entertain
the Queen without the assistance of Lady Montague. This reception and
entertainment of the Queen by Lord Montague was, no doubt, accompanied
by fantastic allegory--Lord Montague and his friends playing the parts
of hermits, or philosophers in retreat, as in the case of the King of
Navarre and his friends in _Love's Labour's Lost_. The paucity of plot
in this play has been frequently noticed, and no known basis for its
general action and plot has ever been discovered or proposed.

At this time (1591) Shakespeare had been in London only from four to
five years, and, judging from the prominence in his profession which he
shortly afterwards attained, we may be assured that these were years of
patient drudgery in his calling. Neither in his Stratford years, nor
during these inceptive theatrical years, would he be likely to have had
much, if