Mr. Greenwood does not attribute the wit (such as it is), the quips,
the conceits, the affectations satirised in Love's Labour's Lost, to
Will's knowledge of the artificial style then prevalent in all the
literatures of Western Europe, and in England most pleasingly used in
Lyly's comedies. No, "the author must have been not only a man of
high intellectual culture, but one who was intimately acquainted with
the ways of the Court, and the fashionable society of his time, as
also with contemporary foreign politics." {129a}

I search the play once more for the faintest hint of knowledge of
foreign politics. The embassy of the daughter of the King of France
(who, by the date of the affair of the ducats, should be Charles VII)
has been compared to a diplomatic sally of the mother of the
childless actual King of France (Henri III), in 1586, when Catherine
de Medici was no chicken. I do not see in the embassy of the
Princess of the story any "intimate acquaintance with contemporary
foreign politics" about 1591-3. The introduction of Mayenne as an
adherent of the King of Navarre, shows either a most confused
ignorance of foreign politics on the part of the author, or a
freakish contempt for his public. I am not aware that the author
shows any "intimate acquaintance with the ways" of Elizabeth's Court,
or of any other fashionable society, except the Courts which Fancy
held in plays.

Mr. Greenwood {129b} appears to be repeating "the case as to this
very remarkable play" as "well summed up by the late Judge Webb in
his Mystery of William Shakespeare" (p. 44). In that paralysing
judicial summary, as we have seen, "the author could not have been
more familiar with French politics if, like Bacon, he had spent three
years in the train of an Ambassador to France." The French politics,