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fion, contained in any of the lines in praife of the queen, inconfiftent with the idea of the whole of the panegyrick on her having been compofed in her life-time.

in further confirmation of what has been here advanced to fhew that this play was probably written while queen Elizabeth was yet alive, it may be obferved, (to use the words of an anonymous writer",) that "Shakspeare has caft the difagreeable parts of her father's character as much into fhade as poffible; that he has reprefented him as greatly difpleased with the grievances of his fubjects, and ordering them to be relieved; tender and obliging [in the early part of the play] to his queen, grateful to the cardinal, and in the cafe of Cranmer, capable of distinguishing and rewarding true merit." "He has exerted (adds the fame author) an equal degree of complaifance, by the amiable lights in which he has fhewn the mother of Elizabeth. Anne Bullen is reprefented as affected with the most tender concern for the fufferings of her mistress, queen Catherine; receiving the honour the king confers on her, by making her marchionefs of Pembroke, with a graceful humility; and more anxious to conceal her advancement from the queen, left it fhould aggravate her forrows, than follicitous to penetrate into the meaning of fo extraordinary a favour, or of indulg ing herself in the flattering profpect of future royalty."

It is unneceffary to quote particular paffages in fupport of these affertions; but the following lines which are fpoken of Anne Boleyn by the Lord Chamberlain, appear to me fo evidently calculated for the ear of Elizabeth, (to whom such incenfe was by no means displeasing) that I cannot forbear to tranfcribe them:

"I have perufed her well;

"Beauty and honour are in her fo mingled,

"That they have caught the king: and who knows yet, "But from this Lady may proceed a gem,

"To lighten all this ifle.'

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The Globe play-houfe, we are told by the continuator of Stowe's Chronicle, was burnt down, on St. Peter's day, In the year 1613, while the play of K. Henry VIII. was exhibiting. Sir Henry Wotton, (as Mr. Tyrwhitt has obferved) fays in one of his letters, that this accident happen

NOTE.

The author of Shakespeare illuftrated.

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ed during the exhibition of a new play, called All is True; which, however, appears both from Sir Henry's minute defcription of the piece, and from the account given by Stowe's continuator, to have been our author's play of K. Henry VIII. If indeed Sir H. Wotton was accurate in calling it a new play, all the foregoing reasoning on this fubject would be at once overthrown; and this piece, inftead of being afcribed to 1601, fhould have been placed twelve years later. But I ftrongly fufpect that the only novelty attending this play, in the year 1613, was its title, decorations, and perhaps the prologue and epilogue, The Elector Palatine was in London in that year; and it appears from the Mf. register of lord Harrington, treasurer of the chambers to K. James I. that many of our author's plays were then exhibited for the entertainment of him and the princess Elizabeth. By the fame register we learn, that the titles of many of them were changed in that year. Princes are fond of opportunities to difplay their magnificence before strangers of diftinction; and James, who on his ar rival here, muft have been dazzled by a splendour foreign to the poverty of his native kingdom, might have been peculiarly ambitious to exhibit before his fon-in-law the mimick pomp of an English coronation P. King Henry VIII. therefore, after having lain by for fome years unacted, on account of the coftlinefs of the exhibition, might have been revived in 1613, under the title of All is True, with new de corations and a new prologue and epilogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt obferves, that the prologue has two or three direct references to this title; a circumftance which authorizes us to conclude, almoft with certainty, that it was an occafional production, written fome years after the compofition of the play.

NOTES.

Thus Henry IV. P. I. was called Hotfpur; Henry IV. P. II. or The Merry Wives of Windfor, was exhibited under the name of Sir John Falstaff; Much Ado about Nothing was new named Bene dict and Beatrix, and Julius Cæfar seems to have been represented under the title of Cafar's Tragedy.

P The Prince Palatine was not prefent at the representation of K. Henry VIII, on the 30th of June O. S. when the Globe play. house was burnt down, having left England fome time before, But the play might have been revived for his entertainment in the beginning of the year 1613; and might have been occafionally repefented afterwards.

VOL. I,

Dr. Johnfon long fince fufpected, from the contemptoous manner in which "the noife of targets, and the fellow in a long motley coat," or, in other words, most of our author's plays, are fpoken of, in this prologue, that it was not the compofition of Shakspeare, but written after his departure from the stage, on fome accidental revifal of K. Henry VIII. by B. Jonfon, whofe ftyle, it feemed to him to refemble 1. Dr.

NOTE.

૧ In fupport of this conjecture it may be obferved that Ben Jonfon has in many places endeavoured to ridicule our author for reprefenting battles on the ftage. So in his prologue to Every Man in his Humour:

"Yet ours for want, hath not fo lov'd the stage,
As he dare serve the ill cuftoms of the
age,
Or purchase your delight at fuch a rate
As, for it, he himself must justly hate;
To make, &c.-

—or with three rufly fwords,
And help of fome few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancafter's long jars,
And in the tyring boufe bring wounds to fears."

Again, in his Silent Woman, A& IV. fc. iv.

Nay, I would fit out a play, that were nothing but fights at fea, drum, trumpet, and target."

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We are told in the memoirs of Ben Jonfon's life, that he went to France in the year 1613. But at the time of the revival of King Henry VIII. he either had not left England, or was then returned; for he was a fpectator of the fire which happened at the Globe theatre during the representation of that piece. [See the next note.]

It may, perhaps, feem extraordinary, that he fhould have prefumed to prefix this covert cenfure of Shakspeare, to one of his own plays. But he appears to have eagerly embraced every opportunity of depreciating him. This occafional prologue (whoever was the writer of it) confirms the tradition handed down by Rowe, that our author retired from the flage about three years before his death. Had he been at that time joined with Heminge and Burbage in the management of the Globe theatre, he scarcely would have fuffered the lines above alluded to, to have been spoken. In lord Harrington's account of the money difburfed for the plays that were exhibited by his majefty's fervants, in the year 1613, before the Elector Palatine, all the payments are faid to have been made to " John Heminge, for himself and the rest of his fellows;" from which we may conclude that he was then the principal manager. A correfpondent, however, of Sir Thomas Puckering's (as I

learn

Dr. Farmer is of the fame opinion, and thinks he fees fomething of Jonfon's hand, here and there, in the dialogue alfo. After our author's retirement to the country, Jonfon was perhaps employed to give a novelty to the piece by a new title and prologue, and to furnish the managers of the Globe with a defcription of the coronation ceremony, and of thofe other decorations, with which, from his connection with Inigo Jones, and his attendance at court, he was peculiarly converfant.

The piece appears to have been revived with fome degree of fplendour; for Sir Henry Wotton gives a very pompous account of the reprefentation. The unlucky accident that happened to the house during the exhibition, was occafioned by difcharging fome fmall pieces, called chambers, on K. Henry's arrival at cardinal Wolfey's gate at Whitehall, one of which, being injudiciously managed, fet fire to the thatched roof of the theatre',

NOTES.

The

learn from Mr. Tyrwhitt) in a Mf. letter, preferved in the Mufeum, and dated in the year 1613, calls the company at the Globe, "Bourbage's company"-Shakspeare's name ftands before either of thefe, in the licence granted by K. James; and had he not left London before that time, the players at the Globe theatre, I fhould imagine, would rather have been entitled, his company.-The burlesque parody on the account of Falstaff's death, which is contained in Fletcher's comedy of the Captain, acted in 1613, and the ridicule of Hamlet's celebrated foliloquy, and of Ophelia's death, in his Scornful Lady, which was reprefented about the fame time, confirm the tradition that our author had then retired from the stage, careless of the fate of his writings, inattentive to the illiberal attacks of his contemporaries, and negligent alike of present and pofthumous fame.

The Globe theatre (as I learn from the Mff. of Mr. Oldys) was thatched with reeds, and had an open area in its center. This area we may suppose to have been filled by the lowest part of the audience, whom Shakfpeare calls the groundlings.-Chambers are not, like other guns, pointed horizontally, but are discharged as they stand erect on their breeches. The accident may, therefore, be easily accounted for. If these pieces were let off behind the fcenes, the paper or wadding with which their charges were confined, would reach the thatch on the infide; or if fixed without the walls, it might have been carried by the wind to the top of the roof.

This accident is alluded to, in the following lines of Ben Jonfon's Execration upon Vulcan, from which it appears, that he was

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The play, thus revived and new-named, was probably called, in the bills of that time, a new play; which might have led Sir Henry Wotton to defcribe it as fuch. And thus his account may be reconciled with that of the other contemporary writers, as well as with thofe arguments which have been here urged in fupport of the early date of K. Henry VIII. Every thing has been fully stated on each fide of the queftion. The reader muft judge.

Mr. Roderick in his notes on our author, (appended to Mr. Edwards's Canons of Criticifm) takes notice of fome peculiarities in the metre of the play before us; viz. "that there are many more verfes in it than in any other, which end with a redundant fyllable”—“ very near two to one"-and that "the cafura or paufes of the verfe are full as remarkable."-The re

NOTE.

at the Globe playhouse when it was burnt; a circumstance which in fome measure strengthens the conjecture that he was employed on the revival of King Henry VIII. for this was not the theatre at which his pieces were ufually represented:

"Well fare the wife men yet on the Bank-fide,

"My friends, the watermen! they could provide

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Against thy fury, when, to ferve their needs,
"They made a Vulcan of a fheaf of reeds;
"Whom they durft handle in their holy-day coats,
"And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats.
"But O thofe reeds! thy mere disdain of them
"Made thee beget that cruel ftratagem,

(Which fome are pleas'd to style but thy mad prank)

"Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank:

"Which, though it were the fort of the whole parish,
"Flank'd with a ditch and forc'd out of a marish,

"I faw with two poor chambers taken in,

"And raz'd; ere thought could urge this might have been.

"See the world's ruins! nothing but the piles

"Left, and wit fince to cover it with tiles.

"The breth'ren, they ftraight nois'd it out for news,

'Twas verily fome relick of the stews,

"And this a fparkle of that fire let loose,
"That was lock'd up in the Winchestrian goose,
"Bred on the Bank in time of popery,
"When Venus there maintain'd her mistery.
"But others fell, with that conceit, by the ears,
"And cried, it was a threat'ning to the bears,
"And that accurfed ground, the Paris-garden, &c."

dundancy,

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