swears by that, but that he particularly loves you, you should
not have it so. No Tragedy, Comedy, Farse, Demi-Farse, or Song
nowadayes, but is full of Love and Honour: Your Coffee-drinking
Crop-ear'd Little Banded-Secretary, that pretends not to know more
of Honour than it's Name, will out of abundance of Love be still
sighing and groaning for the Honour of the Nation.

The speaker of the Epilogue to _The Fatal Jealousy_ pointedly reminds
the audience that they have listened to a genuine tragedy and not to an
heroic play. Its author has not relied on the "rules of art," but hopes
he may have succeeded by some "Trick of Nature."

Most obvious of the Shakespearean influences is the jealousy theme in
which Don Antonio is modelled on Othello, Caelia on Desdemona, and
Jasper on Iago. My colleague, Professor E.L. Hubler, who has a vast deal
of the Shakespearean text in his memory, finds twenty-two possible
echoes or parallels. Of these we agree that at least fourteen are
certain. The influences strike in most impressively from _Othello_,
_Hamlet_, _Much Ado_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _The Tempest_. Let
me cite two or three unmistakable echoes. Jasper's manner of arousing
Antonio's jealousy (pp. 17-19) and even his words recall Iago's mental
torturing of the Moor in _Othello_, III, 3. Throughout Gerardo's
soliloquy on death, at the opening of Act III, there is continuous
reference to Hamlet's "To be or not to be." The antecedent of "madness
methodiz'd" (p. 35) is easily spotted, as is the parallel between
Flora's dream (p. 63) which will not leave her head and the song that
will not go from Desdemona's mind. So far as I can discover, the seekers
for Shakespearean allusions in seventeenth-century writing have not
located this rich mine.