And craves no other tribute at thy hands, But love, fair looks, and true obedience, Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel, And graceless traitor to her loving lord?" In these adapted plays, then, partly from the nature of their subjects and partly because his thoughts ran in that direction, we find Shakespeare chiefly occupied with the relation between man and woman, and specially between husband and wife. They are not, however, his first works. At the age of five-and-twenty or thereabouts Shakespeare began his independent dramatic production, and, following the natural bent of youth and youthful vivacity, he began it with a light and joyous comedy. We have several reasons, partly metrical (the frequency of rhymes), partly technical (the dramatic weakness of the play), for supposing _Love's Labour's Lost_ to be his earliest comedy. Many allusions point to 1589 as the date of this play in its original form. For instance, the dancing horse mentioned in i. 2 was first exhibited in 1589; the names of the characters, Biron, Longaville, Dumain (Duc du Maine), suggest those of men who were prominent in French politics between 1581 and 1590; and, finally, when we remember that the King of Navarre, as the Princess's betrothed, becomes heir to the throne of France, we cannot but conjecture a reference to Henry of Navarre, who mounted that throne precisely in 1589. The play has not, however, reached us in its earliest form; for the title-page of the quarto edition shows that it was revised and enlarged on the occasion of its performance before Elizabeth at Christmas 1597. There are not a few places in which we can trace the revision, the original form having been inadvertently retained along with the revised text. This is apparent in Biron's long speech in the fourth act, sc. 3:-- "For when would you, my lord, or you, or you, Have found the ground of study's excellence, Without the beauty of a woman's face? From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the academes, From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire." This belongs to the older text. Farther on in the speech, where we find the same ideas repeated in another and better form, we have evidently the revised version before us:-- "For when would you, my liege, or you, or you, In leaden contemplation have found out