1586-1592
Giving new light on the pre-Sonnet period; showing the inception of relations between Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton and displaying
JOHN FLORIO
AS
Sir JOHN FALSTAFF
By ARTHUR ACHESON
AUTHOR OF “SHAKESPEARE AND THE RIVAL POET”
“MISTRESS DAVENANT, THE DARK LADY OF THE SONNETS”, ETC.
TO MY SONS
ARTHUR MURRAY ACHESON
AND
ALEXANDER G. ACHESON
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME
“The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”
Hamlet, Act III. Scene ii.