tioners' books without the name of the writer, the regularity of the versification, the dissimilitude of the style from that of those plays which are undoubtedly composed by our author, and the tradition mentioned by Ravenscroft *, at a period when some of his contemporaries had not been long dead †, render it highly improbable that this play should have been the composition of Shakspere.

2. LOVE's LABOUR LOST, 1591.

Shakspere's natural disposition leading him, as Dr. Johnson has observed, to comedy, it is highly probable that his first dramatick production was of the comick kind; and of his comedies none appears to me to bear stronger marks of a first essay than Love's Labour

I have been told, by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it [Titus Andronicus] was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." Ravenscroft's preface to Titus An◄ dronicus, altered by him.

+ John Lowin, and Joseph Taylor, two of the actors in Shakspere's plays, were alive a few years before the Restoration of King Charles II. and Sir William D'Avenant, who had himself written for the stage in 1629 (thirteen years after the death of our author), did not die till April 1668. Ravenscroft's alteration of Titus Andronicus, was published in 1687.

Lost.

Lost. The frequent rhymes with which it abounds*, of which, in his early performances, he seems to have been extremely fond, its imperfect versification, its artless and desultory dialogue, and the irregularity of the composition, may be all urged in support of this conjecture.

Love's

*As this circumstance is more than once mentioned in the course of these observations, it may not be improper to add a few words on the subject of our author's metre. A mixture of rhymes with blank verse, in the same play, and sometimes in the same scene, is found in almost all his pieces, and is not peculiar to Shakspere, being also found in the works of Jonson, and almost all our ancient dramatick writers. It is not, therefore, merely the use of rhymes, mingled with blank verse, but their frequency, that is here urged as a circumstance which seems to characterize and distinguish our poet's earliest performances. In the whole number of pieces which were written, antecedent to the year 1600, and which, for the sake of perspicuity, have been called his early compositions, more rhyming couplets are found than in all the plays composed subsequently to that year; which have been named his late productions. Whether in process of time Shakspere grew weary of the bondage of rhyme, or whether he became convinced of its impropriety in a dramatick dialogue, his neglect of rhyming (for he never wholly disused it) seems to have been gradual. As, therefore, most of his early productions are characterized by the multitude of similar terminations which they exhibit, whenever, of two early pieces, it is doubtful which preceded the other, I am disposed

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Love's Labour Lost was not entered at StationersHall till the 23d of January 1606, but is mentioned by Francis Meres* in his Wit's Treasury, or The Second Part of Wit's Commonwealth †, in 1598, and was printed in that year. In the title-page of this edition (the oldest hitherto discovered), this piece is said to have been presented before her highness [Queen Elizabeth] the last Christmas [1597], and to be newly cor

posed to believe (other proofs being wanting), that play, in which the greater number of rhymes is found, to have been first composed. This, however, must be acknowledged to be but a fallible criterion; for the Three Parts of King Henry VI. which appear to have been among our author's earliest compositions, do not abound in rhymes.

*This writer, to whose list of our author's plays we are so much indebted, appears, from the following passage of the work here mentioned, to have been personally ac quainted with Shakspere:

"As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Py, thagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lies in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakspere. Witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugured Sonnets among his pri vate friends, &c." Wit's Treasury, p. 282. There is no edition of Shakspere's Sonnets, now extant, of so early a date as 1598, when Meres's book was printed; so that we may conclude, he was one of those friends to whom they were privately recited, before their publication.

+ This book was probably published in the latter-end of the year 1598; for it was not entered at Stationers-Hall till September in that year.

rected

rected and augmented: from which it should seem, that there had been a former impression.

Mr. Gildon, in his observations on Love's Labour Lost, says, "he cannot see why the author gave it this name."-The following lines exhibit the train of thoughts, which probably suggested to Shakspere this title, as well as that which anciently was affixed to another of his comedies-Love's Labour Won.

"To be in love where scorn is bought with groans, "Coy looks with heart-sore sighs; one fading moment's mirth

"With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights: "If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain; "If lost, why then a grievous labour won."

Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act. I. sc. i.

3. THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY VI. 1591. The regular First Part of King Henry VI. was not published till 1623, at which time it was entered at Stationers-Hall by the printers of the earliest folio, under the name of The Third Part of King Henry VI. In one sense it might be called so; for two parts had appeared before. But considering the history of that reign, and the period of time it comprehends, it ought to have been called, what in fact it is, The FIRST Part of King Henry VI. Why this First Part was not entered on the Stationers' books with the other two, it is impossible now to determine. That it was written before the Second and Third Parts, Dr. Johnson thinks, appears

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"It is

appears indubitably from the series of events. apparent," he says, "that The Second Part begins where the former ends, and continues the series of transactions of which it pre-supposes the first part already known. This is a sufficient proof that the Second and Third Parts were not written without dependance on The First, though they were printed as containing a complete period of history."

I once thought differently from the learned commentator; imagining that The First Part of King Henry VI. was not written till after the two other parts. But on an attentive examination of these three plays, I have found sufficient reason to subscribe to Dr. Johnson's opinion.

This piece is supposed to have been produced in the year 1591, on the authority of Thomas Nashe, who in a tract, entitled, Pierce Pennyless his Supplication to the Devil, which was published in 1592*, expressly mentions one of the characters in it, who does not appear in the Second or Third Part of King Henry VI. nor, I believe, in any other play of that time. "How, says he, would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French †, to think that after he had

lain

This was the first edition, for it was not entered on the Stationers' books before that year. + Thus Talbot is described in The First Part of King Henry VI. A& I. sc. iii.

“Here, said they, is the terror of the French."