Shakespeare's Navarre

Abstract

ON THE FIRST LEAF of Gabriel Harvey's copy of An Excellent Discourse upon the Now Present Estate of France, which the Huntington Library possesses, its original owner lists some of the more impressive texts on France current in 1592, such as the essays of Montaigne. He concludes from this evidence that Varieties of accidents, and many pregnant practiques have refined divers French wittes even above the sharpest Italians, or Spaniards at this instant. ' Harvey's compatriots agreed, for the religious civil wars in France were then reaching their climax, as the fortunes of the Protestant Henri IV prospered with the aid of subsidies and troops from Elizabeth, led for a time by her favorite, the earl of Essex.2 Around the period of Henri's accession in 1589, hundreds of pamphlets explaining the relevant circumstances began to appear in France, and many of these were quickly translated into English.3 The Elizabethans felt vastly more interest in France than any other foreign country, since Henri appeared on the verge of duplicating the Tudor compromise in France. The strong impression arises that the English only wanted to hear good news; hence the immense multiplication of newsletters when Henri IV won his famous victories in 1589-1590. Indeed, from this stage it appears evident that Henri has become a folk-hero of the English . . . with their ineradicable taste for romance on horseback. s4 There was every reason for fashionable young playwrights to exploit this popularity in the early 1590's, and Shakespeare was no exception. Love's Labour's Lost is thus in part an