Biron and Rosaline of Love's Labour's Lost than were Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet the match-pair (sic) of Romeo and Juliet. In Love's Labour's Lost the question of complexion was identical, though the parts were reversed. He would cite but a few parallel passages in evidence of this relationship between the subjects of the two plays.
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Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 3. 1. "By heaven, thy love is black as ebony." 2. "No face is fair that is not full so black." 3. "O paradox! Black is the badge of hell." 4. "O, if in black my lady's brows be decked." 5. "And therefore is she born to make black fair." 6. "Paints itself black to imitate her brow." 7. "To look like her are chimney-sweepers black." |
Othello. 1. "An old black ram." i. 1. 2. "Your son-in-law is far more fair than black." i. 3. 3. "How if she be black and witty?" ii. 1. 4. "If she be black, and thereto have a wit." id. 5. "A measure to the health of black Othello." ii. 3. 6. "For I am black." iii, 3. 7. "Begrimed and black." id. |
Now, with these parallel passages before them, what man, woman, or child could bring himself or herself to believe that the connection of these plays was casual or the date of the first Othello removable from the date of the early contemporary late-first-period-but-one play Love's Labour's Lost, or that anybody's opinion that they were so was worth one straw? When therefore by the introduction of the Iago episode Shakespeare in his later days had with the assistance of three fellow-poets completed
