interwoven in the play, noting all the analogous passages and the use
Shakespeare has made of them. (For Greene's 'Pandosto' or 'History of
Dorastus and Fawnia' see 'Shakespeare's Library,' or pp. 118-125 and
Notes in First Folio Edition.)

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Do Shakespeare's borrowed and additional archaisms and his confusion
of names and places show carelessness? Is his continuation of the
story merely a playwright's device to join the two parts of the plot
and make a good stage piece end happily? (As to Coast of Bohemia see
_Poet Lore_, April, 1894), also in "First Folio Edition," pp. 176-177.


II

THE RESEMBLANCES TO THE 'ALKESTIS' OF EURIPIDES

In Greene and in Shakespeare the King wishes the Queen's death because
he is uncomfortable so long as she lives, and he prefers his comfort
to aught else, taking it as his conjugal right and royal prerogative.
(See ii. 3, 1 and 204.) The Queen, understanding this, says, "My life
stands in the level of your dreams, which I'll lay down." To her she
says, "can life be no commodity" when love, "the crown and comfort of
her life," is gone. So Alkestis (see any translation of Euripides, in
Bohn edition, literal prose translation, vol. i. p. 223) says she "was
not willing to live bereft" of Admetos, therefore she did not spare
herself to die for him, "though possessing the gifts of bloomy youth
wherein" she "delighted." This point of correspondence may have
occurred to Shakespeare and suggested his continuation of Greene's