A few notes may be added on some of the more remarkable of the plays enumerated. A wholly baseless anecdote, condensed into a stinging epigram by Endymion Porter, asserted that _The Lover's Melancholy_ was stolen by Ford from Shakespeare's papers. Undoubtedly, the madness of the hero of this play of Ford's occasionally recalls Hamlet, while the heroine is one of the many, and at the same time one of the most pleasing, parallels to Viola. But neither of them is a copy, as Friar Bonaventura in Ford's second play may be said to be a copy of Friar Lawrence, whose kindly pliability he disagreeably exaggerates, or as D'Avolos in _Love's Sacrifice_ is clearly modelled on Iago. The plot of _The Lover's Melancholy_, which is ineffective because it leaves no room for suspense in the mind of the reader, seems original; in the dialogue, on the other hand, a justly famous passage in Act i. (the beautiful version of the story of the nightingale's death) is translated from Strada; while the scheme of the tedious interlude exhibiting the various forms of madness is avowedly taken, together with sundry comments, from Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Already in this play Ford exhibits the singular force of his pathos; the despondent misery of the aged Meleander, and the sweetness of the last scene, in which his daughter comes back to him, alike go to the heart. A situation--hazardous in spite of its comic substratum--between Thaumasta and the pretended Parthenophil is conducted, as Gifford points out, with real delicacy; but the comic scenes are merely stagy, notwithstanding, or by reason of, the effort expended on them by the author.