style of Euphues (which is improbable), they learned the trick of it
from Euphues; not the author of Euphues from them. Lyly's most
popular prose was accessible to Shakespeare. The whole convention as
to how the great should speak and bear themselves was accessible in
poetry and the drama. A man of genius naturally made his ladies and
courtiers more witty, more "conceited," more eloquent, more gracious
than any human beings ever were anywhere, in daily life.

It seems scarcely credible that one should be obliged to urge facts
so obvious against the Baconian argument that only a Bacon,
intimately familiar with the society of the great, could make the
great speak as, in the plays, they do--and as in real life they
probably did NOT!

We now look at Love's Labour's Lost, published in quarto, in 1598, as
"corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The date of composition
is unknown, but the many varieties of versification, with some
allusions, mark it as among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing
that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fine manners and speech,
and of the tedious quips and conceits which he satirises, from the
contemporary poems, plays, and novels which abounded in them, and
from precieux and precieuses who imitated them, as I suggest, even
then Love's Labour's Lost is an extremely eccentric piece. I cannot
imagine how a man who knew the foreign politics of his age as Bacon
did, could have dreamed of writing anything so eccentric, that is, if
it has any connection with foreign politics of the time.

The scene is the Court of Ferdinand, King of Navarre. In 1589-93,
the eyes of England were fixed on the Court of her ally, Henri of
Navarre, in his struggle with the League and the Guises; the War of