The question, as to the source of Chaucer's unfinished poem Anelida and Arcite is an unsolved problem. Professor Skeat points out in his introduction to this poem that the first three stanzas are from Boccaccio's Teseide, as are also stanzas 8, 9, and 10; and that stanzas 4 to 7 are partly from Statius. The origin of the rest of the poem, which is far the greater part, is unknown.

Among the scholars of Cambridge who essayed the presentation of Thomas Legge's Latin play of Richardus Tertius at St. John's in 1579, perhaps the most ambitious were those three ingenuous and versatile youths, Howland, Henlowe, Kendall, who enacted the “chorus tumultuantium civium.” Surely, “a little o'erparted”! Easier far with three rusty swords to fight over York and Lancaster's long jars than to portray through three, four, six, or even seven or eight persons the many-headed monster in its varying moods. To trace the evolution of mob-mind from the stage of orderly self-possession and personal consciousness through the psychic process of the withering of the individual and the accumulation of collective energy under the stress of exciting causes to its final state of a fiercely emotional and keenly suggestible crowd-self, lay of course far beyond the purpose and powers of Thomas Legge. Far, too, was this above the aim of such controversial playwrights of the Reformation as that Catholic author of Respublica who presented “the people” in the guise of a single smatterer of dialect. Yet this study of multiplied suggestion which has taxed the observation of ancient historian and modern psychologist has always and with reason made large appeal to that analyst of many men's motives, the dramatist. Humanity in the mass exerted its fascination sometimes over Shakspere's fellows and followers; but it cast a far more potent spell upon Shakspere himself—notably in the Jack Cade scenes (2 Henry VI) and in the two Roman plays of Julius Cæsar and Coriolanus.

In The Folk-Lore, Record for 1881 (Vol. 4, pp. 1 ff.), Mr. Alfred Nutt published an article entitled “The Aryan Expulsion-And-Return Formula in the Folk- and Hero Tales of the Celts.” In this article, Mr. Nutt advances the theory that the Perceval romances, the English and the Welsh versions especially, are variants of the Expulsion and Return formula. This classification has been accepted by subsequent writers, with the result that the English version, Sir Perceval, is declared to be the most faithful representative of the so-called primitive or original form of the story.