of Cardinal Wolfey, printed in The Mirrour of Magiflrates, 1587. "Have we fome ftrange Indian with the great tool come to court, the women so befiege us," fays the Porter in the last act of this play. This note of time may perhaps hereafter ferve to afcertain the date of this piece, though I cannot avail myself of it, not having been able to discover to what circumflance Shakspeare here alludes. In A play entitled The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell, was publifhed at London in 1602. the title-page it is faid to be written by W. S.; letters which undoubtedly were inferted to deceive the reader, and to induce him to fuppofe that the piece was written by Shakspeare, as a kind of fequel to his Henry VIII. This circumftance may ferve in fome meafure to confirm my conjecture that King Henry VIII. had been exhibited in the preceding year. Rowley's King Henry VIII. was publifhed in 1605, probably with a view that it alfo might be confounded with Shakspeare's drama; and both it and Lord Cromwell were re-printed with the fame fraudulent intention in 1613, in which year our author's play was revived with great fplendour. The Globe play-house, 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 happened 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 fubje&t 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. regifter 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 princefs Elizabeth. By the fame regifter we learn, that the titles of many of them were changed in that year. Princes are fond of opportunities to difplay their magnificence before ftrangers of diftinction; and James, who on his arrival here must have been dazzled by a fplendour 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.' K. Henry VIII., there ད 2 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 newnamed Benedick and Beatrix, and Julius Cefar feems to have been reprefented under the title of Cefar's Tragedy. 3 The Prince Palatine was not prefent at the reprefentation of K. Henry VIII. on the 30th of June O. S. when the Globe playhoufe 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 reprefented afterwards. fore, 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 decorations, and a new prologue and epilogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt obferves, that the prologue has two or three direct references to this title; a circumflance which authorizes us to conclude, almoft with certainty, 'that it was an occafional production, written fome years after the compofition of the play. King Henry VIII. not being then printed, the fallacy of calling it a new play on its revival was not easily detected. Dr. Johnson long fince fufpected, from the contemptuous manner in which" the noife of targets, and the fellow in a long motley coat," or in other words, moft of our author's plays, are spoken of, in this prologue, that it was not the compofition of Shakspeare, but written after his departure from the ftage, on fome accidental revival of King Henry VIII. by Ben Jonfon, whose style, it feemed to him to refemble.+ Dr. Farmer is of 4 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 : 66 Yet ours, for want, hath not fo lov'd the stage, As he dare ferve the ill customs of the age; "Or purchase your delight at fuch a rate, "As, for it, he himself muft justly hate; "To make, &c. 66 or with three rufty fwords, And help of fome few foot-and-half-foot words, 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." the fame opinion, and thinks he fees fomething of Jonfon's hand here and there, in the dialogue also. 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 censure of Shakspeare to one of his own plays. But he appears to have eagerly embraced every opportunity of depretiating him. This occafional prologue (whoever was the writer of it) confirms the tradition handed down by Rowe, that our author retired from the flage fome years before his death. Had he been at that time joined with Heminge and Burbage in the management of the Globe theatre, he fcarcely would have fuffered the lines above alluded to, to have been fpoken. 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 66 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 from Mr. Tyrwhitt) in a MS. 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 imagine, would rather have been entitled, his company. The burlefque parody on the account of Falftaff'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 flage, care lefs of the fate of his writings, inattentive to the illiberal attacks of his contemporaries, and negligent alike of prefent and pofthumous fame. งา 66 Since the above note was written, I have feen the mortgage 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 furnifh the managers of the Globe with a defcription of the coronation ceremony, and of those 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 discharging fome fmall pieces, called chambers, on King Henry's arrival at cardinal Wolfey's gate at Whitehall, one of which, being injudicioufly managed, fet fire to the thatched roof of the theatre. ". which is printed in Vol. I. p. 97. and was executed by Shakspeare in March 1612-13. From this deed we find that he was in London in that year; he might, however, have parted with his property in the theatre before. The Globe theatre (as I learn from the Mfs. of Mr. Oldys) was thatched with reeds, and had an open area in its center. This area we may fuppofe to have been filled by the lowest part of the audience, whom Shakspeare calls the groundlings. Chambers are not, like other guns, pointed horizontally, but are difcharged as they fand erect on their breeches. The accident may, therefore, be easily accounted for. If thefe 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 Joufon's Execration upon Vulcan, from which it appears, that he was at the Globe playhouse when it was burnt; a circumftance which in fome measure ftrengthens the conjecture that he was employed on the revival of King Henry VIII. for |