Now seeing that both Roydon and Chapman are satirised by Shakespeare in _Love's Labours Lost_, it occurs to me that the "preyful Princess" verses quoted above (which display parody in every line) are intended by Shakespeare to caricature the known work of the author of the sweet song delivered to the Queen by the nymph, and consequently that this song was from the pen of one of this learned couple. As I have already noticed, in the records of the Queen's stay at the other noblemen's houses that she visited on this progress, many verses and songs appear which were written specially for these occasions, while no songs, nor verses, have been preserved from the Cowdray or Tichfield festivities, occasions when they would be likely to have been used, considering Southampton's interest in literary matters and the court paid to him by the writers of the day. Among the poems which I have collected that I attribute to Roydon, I have elsewhere noticed one that Shakespeare makes fun of at a later time in _Midsummer Night's Dream_--that is, _The Shepherd's Slumber_. This poem deals with the exact season of the year when the Queen was at Cowdray--"peascod time"--and also with the killing of deer, "when hound to horn gives ear till buck be killed"; and in one verse describes just such methods of killing deer as is suggested, both in _Love's Labours Lost_ and in _Nichol's Progresses_, which latter records the entertainment for the Queen at Cowdray House. "And like the deer, I make them fall! That runneth o'er the lawn. One drops down here! another there! In bushes as they groan; I bend a scornful, careless ear, To hear them make their moan." May not this be the identical "sweet song" delivered by the nymph to the Queen, and the occasion of the progress to Cowdray, in 1591, indicate the entry of Roydon and Chapman into the rivalry between Shakespeare and the scholars inaugurated two years earlier by Greene and Nashe? This poem which I attribute to Roydon has all the manner of an occasional production and is about as senseless as most of his other "absolute comicke inventions." The masque-like allegory it exhibits, introducing "Delight," "Wit," "Good Sport," "Honest Meaning" as persons, was much affected by the Queen and Court in their entertainments. At the marriage of Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Worcester, in 1599, a masque was given for the Queen in which we are told eight ladies of the Court performed. One of these ladies "wooed her to dawnce, her Majesty asked what she was, affection she said, affection, said the Queen, affection is false, yet her Majesty rose and dawnced." During the stay at Cowdray similar make-believe and allegory were evidently used in the entertainments given for the Queen. Roydon's poem may, like _Love's Labours Lost_, be a reflection of such courtly nonsense.