** Folio, London, 1601. The story of Queen Elizabeth's order for "Falstaff in Love" first appeared, in 1702, in the {310}preface to John Dennis's "Comicale Gallant," from whom Rowe quoted. Although smacking of the same flavor as the Southampton and King James "yarns"--it is worth noting that this story may possess, perhaps, some vestige of foundation. If these sounding plays, so full of religion, politics, philosophy, and statecraft, were presented at Shakespeare's theater, it is only natural that it should come to Elizabeth's ears. The lion Queen did not care to have her subjects instructed too far. She liked to keep them well in hand, and was only--she and her ministers--too ready to "snuff treason in certain things that went by other's names." The run of comedies at other theaters were harmless enough (an adultery for a plot, and an unsuspecting husband for a butt. This was a comedy; plus a little blood, it was a tragedy). Let the people have their fill of amusement, but it is better not to meddle with philosophy and politics. So there are things more unlikely to have happened than that Elizabeth, through her Lord Chamberlain, should have intimated to manager Shakespeare to give them something more in the run and appetite of the day. * The "Merry Wives of Windsor" was, in due time, underlined. But, somehow or other, it was with a would-be adulterer, rather than an injured husband, for a butt; and, somehow or other, Galen and Esculapius and Epicurius had intruded where there was no need of them. * Collier--"Lives of Shakespeare's Actors, Introduction, page xv."--says that there were at least two, and perhaps three, other William Shakespeares in London in these days.