Comfort thyself, as I do, gentle queen,

With hope of sharp, unheard-of, dire revenge. -
He bids me to provide his funeral;

And so I will: but all the peers in France
Shall mourners be, and weep out bloody tears,
Until their empty veins be dry and sere:
The pillars of his hearse shall be their bones:
The mould that covers him, their cities' ashes;
His knell, the groaning cries of dying men;
And, in the stead of tapers on his tomb,

An hundred fifty towers shall burning blaze,
While we bewail our valiant son's decease.

But grief is soon turned to joy. Although so outnumbered by his foes, the valiant Prince is victorious, and the play thus ends:

Her.

Flourish of trumpets within. Enter a Herald.
Rejoice, my lord; ascend the imperial throne!
The mighty and redoubted Prince of Wales,
Great servitor to bloody Mars in arms,
The Frenchman's terror, and his country's fame,
Triumphant rideth like a Roman peer;
And, lowly at his stirrup, comes afoot
King John of France, together with his son,

In captive bonds; whose diadem he brings,

To crown thee with, and to proclaim thee king.

Edw. Away with mourning, Philippa, wipe thine eyes;

Sound, trumpets, welcome in Plantagenet!

A loud flourish. Enter Prince, Audley, Artois, with King John, and Philip.

As things, long lost, when they are found again,

So doth my son rejoice his father's heart,

For whom, even now, my soul was much perplex'd!
(Running to the Prince, and embracing him.
(Kissing him.

Queen.

Be this a token to express my joy.
For inward passions will not let me speak.
My gracious father, here receive the gift.

Prince.

(Presenting him with King John's crown.
This wreath of conquest, and reward of war,
Got with as mickle peril of our lives,
As e'er was thing of price before this day;
Install your highness in your proper right:
And, herewithal, I render to your hands
These prisoners, chief occasion of our strife.

Edw.

John.

Edw.

John.

Prince.

Edw.

So, John of France, I see, you keep your word,
You promis'd to be sooner with ourself

Than we did think for, and 't is so indeed:
But, had you done at first as now you do,
How many civil towns had stood untouch'd,
That now are turn'd to ragged heaps of stones?
How many people's lives might you have sav'd,
That are untimely sunk into their graves?

Edward, recount not things irrevocable;
Tell me what ransom thou requir'st to have?
Thy ransom, John, hereafter shall be known;
But first to England thou must cross the seas,
To see what entertainment it affords;
Howe'er it falls, it cannot be so bad

As ours hath been since we arriv'd in France.
Accursed man! of this I was foretold,

But did misconster what the prophet told.

Now, father, this petition Edward makes,
To Thee, (kneels) whose grace hath been his strongest shield
That, as Thy pleasure chose me for the man
To be the instrument to show Thy power,
So Thou wilt grant, that many princes more,
Bred and brought up within that little isle,
May still be famous for like victories! -
And, for my part, the bloody scars I bear,
The weary nights that I have watch'd in field,
The dangerous conflicts I have often had,
The fearful menaces were proffer'd me,

The heat, and cold, and what else might displease

I wish were now redoubled twenty-fold;

So that hereafter ages, when they read

The painful traffic of my tender youth,

Might thereby be inflamed with such resolve,
As not the territories of France alone,

But likewise Spain, Turkey, and what countries else
That justly would provoke fair England's ire,
Might, at their presence, tremble and retire!

Here, English lords, we do proclaim a rest,
And interceasing of our painful arms:

Sheathe up your swords, refresh your weary limbs,
Peruse your spoils; and, after we have breath'd
A day or two within this haven town,

God willing, then for England, we'll be shipped;
Where, in a happy hour, I trust, we shall
Arrive, three kings, two princes, and a queen.

(Flourish. Exeunt omnes.

To get an adequate conception of the greatness of this drama, one should read it uninfluenced by those critics who realize, as Phillipps did, how fatal to their cause it is to cut loose from the so-called Canon of Heminge and Condell. Had it been included in that collection, we should have had another volume or more added to Furness's "Monument of Scholarship," and Phillipps would have been far less chary in praising it. As it was, he was obliged to treat it indifferently in order to sustain the futile theory which his predecessors had imposed upon him. To question the infallibility of Heminge and Condell, he believed that we "should be launched on a sea with a chart in which are unmarked perilous quicksands of intuitive opinions. Especially is the vessel itself in danger if it touches the insidious bank raised up from doubts.'

As in the case of "Edward II," so with that of "Edward III." Parallels of thought and expression with the "Shakespeare" Works and those of Francis Bacon are numerous, which link it with them in a manner which to an unbiased mind is convincing of a common authorship. Both "Edward II" and "Edward III" exhibit defects similar to those in the plays comprised in the Canon; defects for which the playwrights who had a hand in adapting them to the stage, and the actors who altered words and lines, or omitted them in acting, were responsible. It was this that justified the nominal but wellinformed editors of the First Folio in their use of the words "mutilated" and "deformed" when speaking of "surreptitious copies," which they professed were not made use of in the work, but which, in a number of instances at least, certainly were, owing most likely to haste and oversight while it was going through the press.

We would examine several other dramas once known as "Shakespeare" plays, but have thought it better to confine ourselves to the seven included in the Third Folio, the two in the Leopold Shakespeare, and "Edward II" and "Edward III," which reveal the hand of the master. In treating this

branch of our subject we have had in mind the single object of presenting to the reader an accurate view of the condition to-day of Shaksperian criticism. To do this we have felt it necessary to place the critics on the witness stand, that the reader might understand the conflicting and unreliable character of their testimony, and to devote more time than we wished to the "doubtful" plays, that they might better understand the scope of this greatest of literary problems.

VI

MYTHICAL RELICS

THE PORTRAITS

LET us devote ourselves to a critical study of the portraits of the Stratford actor, that the reader may be able to form an independent judgment respecting them.

THE DROESHOUT PORTRAIT

The first is the most important, as it is the earliest, being found in the Folio of 1623, seven years after the death of the actor. It is known as the Droeshout portrait, and has been considered by his biographers as authentic. Portraits, however, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were as unreliable as royal favors. When the bewigged and bespectacled publisher wanted a portrait to embellish a book to make it more salable, he applied to the poor engraver who was usually plying his trade in an attic, and procured one. If a portrait of the subject had been painted, and a copy of it was obtainable, well and good; but painted portraits were comparatively few, even of the great, so the engraver improvised one as well as circumstances permitted.

The writer, while spending a year in the British Archives collecting historical material, spent some of his spare moments gathering portraits of prominent men of the Tudor and Stuart reigns, and, on one occasion, was referred by a Museum official to an expert on the portraiture of these reigns. He was an aged man, and had a large collection of rare portraits. In discussing portraits difficult of acquisition he proved interesting. A portrait of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the father of American colonization, was particularly wanted. All his ancient haunts had been visited, correspondence opened with