lady" of the Sonnets. If,
then, we find in the same plays in which these personal reflections are
shown a certain distinctly marked type of character, bearing stronger
_prima facie_ evidence than the others of having been developed from a
living original, may we not reasonably infer that the individual so
represented might also have been linked in life in some manner
approximating to his relations in the play, with the lives and interests
of the other persons shadowed forth?

With this idea in mind I have searched all available records relating to
Southampton, in the hope of finding among his intimates an individual
whose personality may have suggested Shakespeare's characterisation, or
caricature, set forth in the successive persons of Armado, Parolles, and
Sir John Falstaff. The traceable incidents of John Florio's life, his
long and intimate association with Shakespeare's patron, and reasonable
inferences for the periods where actual record of him is wanting, gave
probability, in my judgment, to his identity as Shakespeare's original
for these and other characters. A further consideration of the man's
personality, temperament, and mental habitude, as I could dimly trace
them in his few literary remains that afford scope for unconscious
self-revelation, left no doubt in my mind as to his identity as
Shakespeare's model.

Supposing it to be impossible, with our present records, to visualise
Shakespeare more definitely in his contemporary environment, it has been
common with biographers, in their endeavours to link him with the men of
his times, to draw imaginative pictures of his intimate and friendly
personal relations with such men as Sir Walter Raleigh, Bacon, Chapman,
Marston, and others, equally improbable, forgetting the social
distinctions, the scholastic prejudices, and still more, the religious
or political animosities that divided men in public life in those days,
as they do, though in a lesser degree, to-day. The intimate relations of
the Earl of Southampton with Lord Burghley, during the earliest period
of his Court life, when he was affianced to Burghley's granddaughter,
and his later intimacy with the Earl of Essex and with the gentlemen of
the Essex faction, coupled with Shakespeare's sympathy with the cause of
his patron and his patron's friends, must be borne in mind in any
endeavour that is made to trace in the plays either Shakespeare's
political leanings or his probable affiliations with, or antag