Malone thinks that a piece the principal persons of which are so void of character, and the plot of which is so poor and uninteresting must certainly be supposed to have been one of the earliest compositions of the poet; the beauties that adorn it not being a contradiction, since Shakespeare's genius, also in his minority, knew to raise the coarsest matters with the warmest colours. Therefore he assigns this play to the year 1595. Drake, who has alleged many reasons to set right the critique of Malone, nevertheless pretends to find in this play a barren plot, want of character, and the pro- duction of fiery youthful power and inexperience. He fixes its date two years earlier than Malone. Ulrici says:„It is self-evident that no eminent, staid or thoroughly consistent, characters could take part in such a play. Only the most common aesthetic misapprehension could, in this case, demand a sharp delineation of character true to nature. Hence all the figures— in accordance with the sense and spirit of the whole— are throughout drawn in a kind of wavering chiaro- scuro, with but a few light touches and no strong shades whatever. All are full of feeling and imagination, full of self-will and caprice, or, like Bottom and his associates, full of grotesque folly. Ordinary criticism, however, generally clings to the delineation of characters— a criterion readily discernible— and judges the value of the dramatic poem from this one point alone. This accounts for the fact of the earlier English and some of the recent German critics forming so poor an estimate of this play, and for their placing it as far back as possible into the days of the poet's youth... From internal evidence I am inclined to assume that 1596— 97 was the year in which the piece was composed. For, in spirit and character, it agrees so entirely with the works belonging to the close of the second period of Shakespeare's career, that it would be difficult for any one to separate it from these“.

After hearing critics that place this play among the early comedies, because the characters are superficially de- lineated, we heard Ulrici who allows this to be true, but