due rather to the temper of the times than to French influences. When we examine the matter of the Queen Anne and Restoration tragedy, we find no Jonsonian borrowings unmistakable enough to warrant definite assertions.

In view of Jonson's undoubted weight of authority and the fact that he endeavored, long before the 'classi-, cal' school arose, to write tragedy on a strictly classical theory; and in view of the fact that the 'classical' tragedies themselves resemble the French tragedies more in accidentals than in essentials, I should hazard it as my opinion that a 'classical' tragedy of some sort was, in the course of a natural evolution, bound to appear in England, and that, even without French models, it would not have differed greatly in its methods and tone from the tragedy that did appear. The French impetus probably hastened its actual appearance, and gave it a certain bias, but was hardly responsible for its coming into being.

E. EDITOR'S NOTE

The following list of abbreviations obtains in the footnotes to the text:

FI = Yale Library copy of the 1616 Folio.

F2 = Yale Elizabethan Club copy of the 1616 Folio.

Q1= First Quarto.

QI

In the collations I have endeavored throughout to avoid the irrelevant. Mere changes of spelling I have omitted, and changes of punctuation I have only admitted when they entail a real change in meaning. A few obvious misprints in the Folio text have been corrected.