ut in the absence of any law of copyright publishers
often defied the wishes of the owner of manuscripts. Many copies of a
popular play were made for the actors, and if one of these copies chanced
to fall into a publisher's hands, it was habitually issued without any
endeavour to obtain either author's or manager's sanction. In March 1599
the theatrical manager Philip Henslowe endeavoured to induce a publisher
who had secured a playhouse copy of the comedy of _Patient Grissell_ by
Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton to abandon the publication of it by
offering him a bribe of 2 pounds. The publication was suspended till
1603 (cf. Henslowe's _Diary_, p. 167). As late as 1633 Thomas Heywood
wrote of 'some actors who think it against their peculiar profit to have
them [_i.e._ plays] come into print.' (_English Traveller_, pref.)

{49} W. S. Walker in his _Shakespeare's Versification_, 1854, and
Charles Bathurst in his _Difference in Shakespeare's Versification at
different Periods of his Life_, 1857, were the first to point out the
general facts. Dr. Ingram's paper on 'The Weak Endings' in _New
Shakspere Society's Transactions_ (1874), vol. i., is of great value.
Mr. Fleay's metrical tables, which first appeared in the same society's
_Transactions_ (1874), and have been reissued by Dr. Furnivall in a
somewhat revised form in his introduction to Gervinus's _Commentaries_
and in his _Leopold Shakspere_, give all the information possible.

{51} The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose dominions the scene is
laid. The two chief lords in attendance on him in the play, Biron and
Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most strenuous supporters of
the real King of Navarre (Biron's later career subsequently formed the
subject of two plays by Chapman, _The Conspiracie of Duke Biron_ and _The
Tragedy of Biron_, which were both produced in 1605). The name of the
Lord Dumain in _Love's Labour's Lost_ is a common anglicised version of
that Duc de Maine or Mayenne whose name was so frequently mentioned in
popular accounts of French affairs in connection with Navarre's movements
that Shakespeare was led to number him also among his supporters. Mothe
or La Mothe, the name of the pretty, ingenious page, was that of a French
ambassador who was long popular in London; and, though he left England in
1583, he lived in the memory of playgoers and playwrights long after
_Love's Labour's Lost_ was written. In Chapman's _An Humourous Day