ten till 1601, when the play was printed. It appears to have been Jonfon's firft performance ; and we may presume that it was the very play, which, we are told, was brought on the ftage by the good offices of Shakspeare, who himself acted in it. Malignant and envious as Jonfon appears to have been, he hardly would have ridiculed his benefactor at the very time he was fo effentially obliged to him. In two or three years afterwards, his jealoufy probably broke out, and vented itself in this prologue. It is certain that, not long after the year 1600, a coolness f arose between Shakspeare NOTES. • That this attack on King Henry V. was made in 1601, appears the more probable from this circumftance:-in Ben Jonfon's Poetafter, which was first acted in that year, feveral paffages of this play are ridiculed. d Jonfon himself tells us in his Induction to the Magnetick Lady, that this was his firft dramatick performance." The author beginning his ftudies of this kind with Every Man in his Humour.” • If the names of the actors, prefixed to this play, were arranged in the fame order as the perfons reprefented, which is very probable, Shakspeare played the part of Old Knowwell. It is faid, that he alfo played the part of Adam in As you Like It; and we are informed by Betterton that he performed the Ghost in his own Hamlet. We may prefume, therefore, that he usually represented old men. f See an old comedy called The Return from Parnaffus: [This piece was not published till 1606; but appears to have been written in 1602-certainly was produced before the death of Queen Elizabeth, which happened on the 24th of March 1603.] "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; ay and Ben Fonfon too. O that Ben Jonfon is a peftilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." The play of Jonfon's in which he gave the poets a pill, and endeavoured to ridicule fome words ufed by Shakspeare, is the Poet after, acted in 1601. In what manner Shakspeare put bim down, or made him betray his credit, does not appear. His retaliation, we may be well affured, contained no grofs or illiberal abufe; and, perhaps, did not go beyond a ballad or an epigram, which may have perished with things of greater confequence. He has, however, marked his difregard for the calumniator of his fame, by not leaving him any memorial by his Will.-In an apologetical dialogue that Jonfon annexed to the Poetafter, he fays, he had been provoked for three years (i. e. from 1598 to 1601) en every stage by flanderers; as for the players, he fays, Shakspeare and him, which, however, he may talk of his almoft idolatrous affection, produced on his part, from that time to the death of our author, and for many years afterwards, much clumfy farcasm and many malevolent reflec tions & NOTES. "It is true, I tax'd them, And yet but fome, and thofe fo fparingly, I am not mov'd with. If it gave them meat, Some better natures, by the rest drawn in To run in that vile line." On By the words" Some better natures" there can, I think, be little doubt that Shakspeare was alluded to. In his Silent Woman, A&t V. Sc. ii. 1609. Jonson seems to point at Shakspeare, as one whom he viewed with fcornful, yet with jealous, eyes: "So, they may cenfure poets and authors, and compare them; Daniel with Spenfer, Jonfon with t'other youth, and fo forth." In the Induction to Bartholomew Fair, which was acted in 1614, two years before the death of our author, three of his plays, and in the piece itself two others, are attempted to be ridiculed. The Induction to The Staple of Nerus, which appeared in 1625, not very long after the publication of our author's plays in folio, contains a fneer at a paffage in Julius Cæfar— "Know Cæfar doth not wrong; nor without caufe which for the purpofe of ridicule is quoted unfaithfully; and in the fame play may be found an effort, as impotent as that of Voltaire, to raise a laugh at Hamlet's exclamation when he kills Polonius. Some other paffages which are found in Jonfon's works, might be mentioned in fupport of this obfervation, but being quoted hereafter for other purposes, they are here omitted. Notwithstanding thefe proofs, Jonfon's malevolence to Shakfpeare, and jealouty of his fuperior reputation, have been doubted by Mr. Pope and others; and much stress has been laid on a paffage in his Difcoveries, and on the commendatory verses prefixed to the first edition of our author's plays in folio.-The rea • "Ab! ma mere, s'écrie-t-il, il y a un gros rat derriére la tapiffirie-il tire fon épée, court au rat, et tue le bon bomme Polonius."-Oeuvres de Voltaire. Tome XV., P: 473. 4to. der, On this play Mr. Pope has the following note, Ac I. Sc. i. "This first scene was added fince the edition of 1608, which is much fhort of the prefent editions, wherein the fpeeches are generally enlarged, and raised; feveral whole fcenes befides, and the choruses also, were fince added by Shakespeare.' Dr. Warburton also pofitively afferts that this first scene was written after the acceffion of K. James I. and the fubfequent editors agree, that feveral additions were made by the author to King Henry V. after it was originally compofed. But there is, I believe, no good ground for these affertions. It is true that no perfect edition of this play was published NOTES. der, after having perufed the following character of Jonfon, drawn by Mr. Drummond of Hawthornden, a contemporary, and an intimate acquaintance of his, will not, perhaps, readily believe these pofthumous encomiums to have been fincere." Jonfon, (fays that writer) was a great lover and praifer of himself; a contemner and scorner of others, rather chufing to lofe a friend than a jeft; jealous of every word and action of those about him, efpecially after drink, which was one of the elements he lived in; a diffembler of the parts which reigned in him; a bragger of fome good that he wanted: he thought nothing right, but what either himself or fome of his friends had done. He was paffionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or to keep; vindictive, but, if he was well anfwered, greatly chagrined; interpreting the best fayings often to the worst *. He was for any religion, being verfed in all. His inventions were fmooth and eafy, but above all, he excelled in tranflation. In fhort, he was, in his perfonal character, the very reverse of Shakespeare; as furly, ill-natured, proud and difagreeable, as Shakespeare, with ten times his merit, was gentle, good-natured, eafy, and amiable." Drummond's Works, fol. 1711. In the year 1619 Jonfon went to Scotland, to vifit Mr. Drummond, who has left a curious account of a converfation that paffed between them, relative to the principal poets of those times.. From a natural partiality to his author, the foregoing well-authenticated character was fuppreffed by the laft learned editor of Jonson's works. His mifquoting a line of Julius Cæfar, fo as to render it nonfenfe, at a time when the play was in print, is a ftrong illuftration of this part of his character. The plea of an unfaithful memory cannot be urged in his defence, for he tells us in his Difcoveries, that till he was paft forty, he could repeat every thing that he had written. before before that in folio, in 1623; but it does not follow from thence, that the fcenes which then first appeared in print, and all the chorufcs, were added by Shakspeare, as Mr. Pope fuppofes, after 1608. We know indeed the contrary to be true; for the chorus to the fifth act must have been written in 1599. The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, publifhed in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exift, but that thofe copies were furreptitious, (probably taken down in fhort hand, during the reprefentation;) and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publifh the whole, publifhed what he could. I have not indeed met with any evidence (except in three plays) that the feveral fcenes which are found in the folio of 1623, and are not in the preceding quartos, were added by the fecond labour of the author.-The laft chorus of K. Henry V. already mentioned, affords a ftriking proof tha this was not always the cafe. The two copies of the Second Part of K. Henry IV. printed in the fame year (1600) furnish another. In one of thefe, the whole firft fcene of Act III. is wanting; not because it was then unwritten, (for it is found in the other copy published in that year) but because the editor was not poffeffed of it. That what have been called additions by the author, were not really fuch, may be alfo collected from another circumftance; that in fome of the quartos where thefe fuppofed additions are wanting, references and replies are found to the paffages omit ted. I do not however mean to fay, that Shakspeare never made any alterations in his plays. We have reafon to believe that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and the Merry Wives of Windfor, were entirely new written; and a second revifal or temporary topicks might have fuggefted, in a course of years, fome additions and alterations in all his pieces. But with respect to the entire scenes that are wanting in some of the ΝΟΤΕ. Of this fee a remarkable inftance in K. Henry IV. P. II. A& I. fc. i. where Morton in a long fpeeeh having informed Northum berland that the archbishop of York had joined the rebel party, the Earl replies," I knew of this before"-The quarto contains the reply, but not a fingle line of the narrative to which it relates. VOL. I. [U] early early editions, (particularly thofe of K. Henry V. the Second and Third Part of King Henry VI. and the Second Part of King Henry IV.) I fuppofe the omiffions to have arifen from the imperfection of the copies; and inftead of faying that "the first scene of K. Henry V. was added by the author after the publication of the quarto in 1600," all that we can pronounce with certainty is, that this fcene is not found in the quarto of 1600. 23. The Puritan, 1600. Printed in 1600, without the name of Shakspeare. In the title page are the letters W. S. 24. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, 1600. Much Ado about Nothing, was written, we may prefume, early in the year 1600; for it was entered at Stationers' hall, Auguft 23, 1600, and printed in that year. It is not mentioned by Meres in his lift of our author's plays, publifhed in the latter end of the year 1598. 25. AS YOU LIKE IT, 1600. This comedy was not printed till 1623, and the caveat or memorandumi in the fecond volume of the books of the Stationers' company, relative to the three plays of As You Like it, Henry V. and Much Ado about Nothing, has no date except Aug. 4. But immediately above that caveat there is an entry, dated May 27, 1600, -and the entry, immediately fellowing it, is dated Jan. 23, 1603. We may therefore prefume that this caveat was entered between those two periods: more efpecially, as the dates fcattered over the pages where this entry is found, are, except in one instance, in a regular feries from 1596 to 1615. This will appear more clearly by exhibiting the entry exactly as ftands in the book: NOTE. i See Mr. Steevens's extracts from the books of the Stationers' company, ante p. 256. |