before that distinction was conferred on any play of Shakespeare's.
It need not be supposed, however, that Romance, in her triumphant progress through the land, met with no bitter and sustained hostility. From the very beginning she took the world by storm, and from the very beginning the godly denounced and reviled her. The jesters and gleemen and minstrels who relieved the insufferable ennui of our rude forefathers in those odd moments when they were neither fighting nor eating, were all branded as "Satan's children" by that relentless accuser, "Piers Plowman." In vain the simple story-spinners who narrated the exploits of Robin Hood and Tom-a-Lincoln claimed that their merry legends were "not altogether unprofitable, nor in any way hurtful, but very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long winter evenings." It was not in this cheerful fashion that the "unco gude"—a race as old as humanity itself—considered the long winter evenings should be passed. Roger Ascham can find no word strong enough in which to condemn "certaine bookes of Chivalrie, the whole pleasure of whiche stand-
