said, 'As I live, he shall have but five knights!"" Other small points are these:-Gornoille, as we have seen she did in Wace, complains of her father's dotage; in Shakespeare (I. iv. 278) Lear says, "Woe that too late repents," while in The Brut Leir says, "Woe worth the man that hath land with honour, and giveth it unto his child while he may hold it, for oft it chanceth that he repents it." This account also most tallies with Shakespeare's picture of the old king's hundred knights with their crowd of squires. In the later accounts there is little or no mention made of Leir's retinue; in Layamon's account Leir lives with his retinue of forty armed knights (sixty in Geoffrey), with thane and swain and squire, with horse, and hawk, and hound; and the mention of the "knights' inn" recalls Goneril's complaint about their quarter in her palace, which she says "shows like a riotous inn" (I. iv. 264). After The Brut, we come on the Leir story in the metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (written after 1297). He tells it, greatly abbreviated, from Layamon's account; the story takes up 184 lines of seven (rarely six) accents. We read that after the dukes take the old king's land "the King of Scotland, against his wife's Gornoril's advice, takes him with sixty knights into his house." No reason is assigned for Leir questioning his daughters, except that he is about to give them away in marriage.1 Nearly half a century later, Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, in Lincolnshire, deals with the story in about 1See Mr. W. Aldis Wright's edition, Roll's Series, 1887, vol. i. pp. 50-64, lines 680-864. 280 lines of four accents.1 This part of his chronicle, we are often told, is translated from Wace; but Mannyng certainly does not follow Wace's Leir story closely; the circumstances leading to the questioning depart from Wace's account, and from Geoffrey's; it is parallel with that in Robert of Gloucester. Robert Mannyng tells us that soon they began ' to abate his lieure '" (compare" to scant my sizes," Lear, II. iv. 178), and afterwards they began "to abate his meyne" (meiny, retinue) of forty knights. There is a Latin version of our story in the Flores Historiarum, that chronicle formerly attributed Mathew of Westminster. Exactly the same account to to a letter is found in the Chronica Majora of Mathew Paris, but this part of Paris' chronicle Luard has shown conclusively to be a thing of shreds and patches, in which he levies toll from various old chroniclers. This he seems to have taken from the Flores Historiarum, but Luard, in his Preface to the 1890 edition of that work, proves conclusively that Mathew never had a being, and that the Flores is a medley "partly written and partly composed by various writers of St. Albans and Westminster." The Leir story in each is absolutely identical; it takes up about sixty-six lines; the names of the two elder sisters are not given, only Cordeilla; Leir goes to France, attended by a knight and a standard-bearer ("cum uno milite et uno armigero"). And now to come to the English chroniclers. The first of them (if so he may be called), John Trevisa, in 1 See Dr. Furnivall's edition, Roll's Series, 1887, vol. i. pp. 81-91, lines 2267-2564. 2 See Luard edition of the Flores, 1890, vol. i. pp. 31-33; and his edition of the Chronica Majora, 1890, p. 31. his translation of Higden's Polychronicon (1387), mentions "King Leir which gate (begot) three daughters, of the storys Britones," that is all. John Harding, the metrical chronicler, writing early in the reign of Henry the Sixth, gives a rude account of the story in seven seven-line stanzas (ed. 1812, pp. 52-54): here Regan's husband is described as "Hanemos of Wales and Cornwayle." Robert Fabyan, in his New Chronicles of England and France, published (after the author's death) in 1516, professes to follow Geoffrey of Monmouth in his account of the story, but differs from him in this, that he entirely omits any reference to a motive for Leyr's question. His account runs thus: "Whane this Leyr, or Leyth, after some writers, was fallen in competent age ('in impotent age,' ed. 1559) to know the mynde of his three daughters, he firste askyd Gonorilla," etc. We find that the story is also briefly told in John Rastell's Chronicle, The Pastime of People, 1529 (ed. 1811, p. 90). This is the only chronicle account which does not follow Geoffrey's statement as to the husbands of the two elderdaughters. Richard Grafton, in his Chronicle at large ... of the Affayres of England (1568), follows Fabyan's account almost, if not quite, verbatim (see ed. 1809, pp. 35 and 36). The version in Ralph Holinshed, our next chronicler (1577), has been already dealt with; and it is rather curious that in assigning a cause for Leir's conduct, he seems to follow no previous form of the story. There are several other versions which possibly Shakespeare may have seen, and taken a hint or two from. The old French romance of Perceforest, composed about the middle of the fifteenth century, probably after 1461, he is not likely to have seen. In that curious medley the story is to be met with (see La Treselegante, Delicieuse, Meliflue et tresplaisante Hystoire du tresnoble, victorieux et excellentisme roy Perceforest, Roy de la grande Bretaigne, fundatieur du Franc palais et du temple du souverain dieu, chap. v. pp. 18, 19). It occurs also in that remarkable mediaval hoard of anecdotes, The Gesta Romanorum, in two wholly different versions. One is found in the ordinary printed edition (see Sir Frederick Madden's edition, i. 123-158). But our story, in its other form, fathered on the Emperor Theodosius, "a wys emperour," which appears to have been first noticed by Douce, is found in a different version of the Gesta, contained in a Harleian MS., No. 7333. No names are given to the daughters or their husbands, but the story nearly resembles that of Lear. According to the story in the printed version, "Kynge Leyre's three daughters espouse respectively Managles, the kynge of Scotlonde; Hanemos, erle of Cornwaylle; and Agape, kynge of Fraunce." It is possible that our poet, who probably drew from this story-book in his Merchant of Venice, may have seen this account. Again, as Percy was, I think, the first to notice, Camden, in his "Wise Speeches" at the end of his Remains (see ed. 1605, p. 306), told a similar story to that of Leir, of Ina, king of the West Saxons. Malone observed "that it is probable that Shakespeare had a passage of it in his thoughts when he wrote Cordelia's reply to her father." Steevens had pre d viously quoted a passage from the Mirrour for Magistrates as a parallel to the same speech; but Malone thinks that Shakespeare rather drew from Camden, as Camden's book was published recently, before he appears to have composed this play, and "Wise Speeches," near the passage in question, "furnished him with a hint in Coriolanus." Here are the two passages: First, Camden: "Ina, king of the West Saxons, had three daughters, of whom upon a time he demanded whether they did love him. The youngest, but the wisest, told her father flatly, without flattery, that albeit she did love, honour, and reverence him yet she did think one day it would come to passe that she would affect another more fervently, meaning her husband, when she were married. . . . " Higgins tells, or rather makes Cordell relate, the King Leir story in the first part of the Mirror for Magistrates, and here is the passage which Steevens noted: But not content with this, he asked me likewise If I did not him love and honour well. No cause (quoth I) there is I should your grace despise: To love you as I ought my father, well; Yet shortly I may chance, if Fortune will, To find in heart to beare another more good will. Thus much I said of nuptial loves that ment. And Singer writes that Shakespeare may have also taken from the Mirour " a hint for the behaviour of the steward (Oswald). Here is what he must refer to: The meaner upstart courtiers thought themselves his mates, His daughter him disdained and forced not (ie. regarded not) his foile. Warner, again, gives a version of the story in his |