STATE OF THE TEXT, AND CHRONOLOGY, OF THE WINTER'S TALE.

We have no edition of the Winter's Tale prior to that of the folio of 1623; nor was it entered upon the registers of the Stationers' Company previous to the entry by the proprietors of the folio. The original text, which is divided into acts and scenes, is remarkably correct; and although the involved construction which is peculiar to Shakspere's later writings, and the freedom of versification which contrasts with the regularity of his earlier works, have occasionally tempted the commentators to try their hands at emendation, the ordinary text is upon the whole pretty accurate. We have endeavoured, as in all other instances, completely to restore the original text, wherever possible.

Chalmers has assigned the Winter's Tale to 1601. The play contains this passage:

"These lines," says Chalmers, "were called forth by the occasion of the conspiracy of Essex." "No," says Malone, "these lines could never have been intended for the ear of her who had deprived the Queen of Scots of her life. To the son of Mary they could not but have been agreeable." Upon this ground he assigned the comedy to 1604. There is a third critic, of much higher acuteness than the greater number of those who have given us speculations on the chronology of Shakspere's plays,—we mean Horace Walpole, whose conjecture is so ingenious and amusing that we copy it without abridgment :

"The Winter's Tale may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakspere, though not one of his numerous critics and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compliment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother, Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears nowhere to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for the bard to have ventured so home an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true portrait of Henry VIII., who generally made the law the engine of his boisterous passions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable, but several passages are so marked that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. Hermione, on her trial,

says,

For honour,

'Tis a derivative from me to mine,
And only that I stand for.'

"This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution, where she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary character, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as Queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy but as it pictured Elizabeth, is where Paulina, describing the new-born princess, and her likeness to her father, says, She has the very trick of his frown.' There is one sentence, indeed, so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulina, speaking of the child, tells the king

'Tis yours;

And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
So like you, 't is the worse.'

The Winter's Tale was therefore in reality a second part of Henry VIII."

Plausible as this may appear, the conjecture falls to the ground when we consider that Shakspere adopted all that part of the plot of this comedy which relates to the "unreasonable jealousy of Leontes" from a novel, of which we have an edition as early as 1588. Robert Greene, the author of 'Pandosto,' could scarcely have intended his story as "a compliment to Queen Elizabeth" and a "true portrait of Henry VIII.," for he makes the jealous king of his novel terminate his career with suicide. In truth, as we have repeatedly inferred, questions such as this are very pretty conundrums, and worthy to be cherished as the amusement of elderly gentlemen who have outlived their relish for early sports, and leave to others who are less careful of their dignity to

"Play at push-pin with the boys."

Beyond this they are for the most part worthless.

In the absence of any satisfactory internal evidence of the date of this comedy, beyond that furnished by the general character of the language and versification, it was at length pointed out by Malone that an entry in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels in 1623, mentions" an old play called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Bucke and likewise by me." Sir George Bucke first exercised the office of Master of the Revels in 1610. The play, therefore, could not have been earlier than this year; and Mr. Collier has produced conclusive evidence that it was acted in 1611. In our Introductory Notice to Richard II. mention will be found of “a book of plays, and notes thereof, for common policy" kept by Dr. Symon Forman, and discovered some few years ago in the Bodleian Library. Forman saw the Winter's Tale acted on the 15th of May, 1611, at Shakspere's theatre, the Globe. It was most probably then a new play; for he is very minute in his description of the plot.

"Observe there how Leontes, King of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the King of Bohemia, his friend that came to see him; and how he contrived his death, and would have had his cupbearer to have poisoned him, who gave the King of Bohemia warning thereof, and fled with him to Bohemia.