other childe, and all this in two houres space: which how absurd it is in sence, even sence may imagine.". The Winter's Tale is sneered at by B. Jonson, in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair, 1614: "If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, who can help it, nor a nest of antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget TALES, Tempests, and such like drolleries." By the nest of antiques, the twelve satyrs who are introduced at the sheep-shearing festival, are alluded to. — In his conversation with Mr. Drummond, -- of Hawthornden, in 1619, he has another stroke at his beloved friend: „He [Jonson] said, that Shakspeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by 100 miles." Drammond's Works, fol. 225, edit. 1711. When this remark was made by Ben Jonson, The Winter's Tale was not printed. These words, therefore, are a sufficient answer to Sir T. Hanmer's idle supposition that Bohemia was an error of the press for Bythinia. This play, I imagine, was written in the year 1611. MALONE. = Sir Thomas Hanmer gave himself much needless concern that Shakspeare should consider Bohemia as a maritime country. He would have us read Bythinia: but our author implicitly copied the novel before him. Dr. Grey, indeed, was apt to believe that Dorastus and Faunia might rather be borrowed from the play; but I have met with a copy of it which was printed in 1588. Cervantes ridicules these geographical mistakes, when he makes the princess Micomicona land at Ossuna. Corporal Trim's king of Bohemia "delighted in navigation, and had never a seaport in his dominions;" and my Lord Herbert tells us, that De Luines, the prime minister of France, when he was ambassador there, demanded, whether Bohemia was an inland country, or lay "upon the sea?" There is a similar mistake in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, relative to that city and Milan. FARMER. The Winter's Tale may be ranked among the historic plays of Shakspeare, 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 no where 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 the Eighth, 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: 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, The Winter's Tale was, therefore, in reality a second part of Henry the Eighth. WALPOLE. = This play, as Dr. Warburton justly observes, is, with all its absurdities, very entertaining. The character of Autolycus is naturally conceived, and strongly represented. JOHNSON. — XIV. COMEDY OF ERRORS. SHAKSPEARE might have taken the general plan of this comedy from a translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, by W. W. i. e. (according to Wood) William Warner, in 1595, whose version of the acrostical argument hereafter quoted is as follows: "Two twinne borne sonnes a Sicill marchant had, "Where th' other dwelt inricht, and him so like, "Father, wife, neighbours, cach mistaking either, "Much pleasant error, ere they meet togither." Perhaps the last of these lines suggested to Shakspeare the title for his piece. See this translation of the Menæchmi, among six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published by S. Leacroft, Charing-cross. At the beginning of an address Ad Lectorem, prefixed to the errata of Decker's Satiromastix, &c. 1602, is the following passage, which apparently alludes to the title of the comedy before us: "In steed of the Trumpets sounding thrice before the play begin, it shall not be amisse (for him that will read) first to beholde this short Comedy of Errors, and where the greatest enter, to give them instead of a hisse, a gentle correction." STEEVENS, = I suspect this and all other plays where much rhyme is used, and especially long hobbling verses, to have been among Shakspeare's more early productions. BLACKSTONE. I am possibly singular in thinking that Shakspeare was not under the slightest obligation, in forming this comedy, to Warner's translation of the Menæchmi. The additions of Erotes and Sereptus, which do not occur in that translation, and he could never invent, are, alone, a sufficient inducement to believe that he was no way indebted to it. But a further and more convincing proof is, that he has not a name, line, or word, from the old play, nor any one incident but what must, of course be common to every translation. Sir William Blackstone, I observe, suspects "this and all other plays where much rhyme is used, and especially long hobbling verses, to have been among Shakspeare's more early productions." But I much doubt whether any of these "long hobbling verses" have the honour of proceeding from his pen: and, in fact, the superior elegance and harmony of his language is no less distinguishable in his earliest than his latest production. The truth is, if any inference can be drawn from the most striking dissimilarity of style, a tissue as different as silk and worsted, that this comedy, though boast ing the embellishments of our author's genius, in addi tional words, lines, speeches, and scenes, was not originally his, but proceeded from some inferior playwright, who was capable of reading the Menæchmi without the help of a translation, or, at least, did not make use of Warner's. And this I take to have been the case, not a late editor (O si sic omnia!) has satisfactorily proved, but with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy, but as it pic-only with the three Parts of King Henry VI. as I think tured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the newborn 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: Lost, and King Richard II., in all which pieces Shakspeare's new work is as apparent as the brightest touches of Titian would be on the poorest performance of the veriest canvas-spoiler that ever handled a brush. The originals of these plays, (except The Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.) were never printed, and may be thought to have been put into his hands by the manager, military saints; and the learned Dr. Warburton appears for the purpose of alteration and improvement, which to believe (Supplement to the Introduction to Don Quixote) we find to have been an ordinary practice of the theatre that the first accounts of enchantments were brought into in his time. We are therefore no longer to look upon this part of the world by those who returned from their the above "pleasant and fine conceited comedie,” as en- eastern expeditions. But there is always some distance titled to a situation among the "six plays on which Shak- between the birth and maturity of folly as of wickedness: speare founded his Measure for Measure," &c. of which this opinion had long existed, though perhaps the appliI should hope to see a new and improved edition. RIT- cation of it had in no foregoing age been so frequent, SON. This comedy, I believe, was written in 1592. MA- nor the reception so general. Olympiodorus, in Photius's LONE. On a careful revision of the foregoing scenes, Extracts, tells us of one Libanius who practised this kind I do not hesitate to pronounce them the composition of of military magic, and having promised ywpis önduwv two very unequal writers. Shakspeare had undoubtedly zarà ßagßágwv ¿vegyeìv, to perform great things a share in them; but that the entire play was no work against the Barbarians without soldiers, was, at the inof his, is an opinion whieh (as Benedick says) "fire can- stance of the empress Placidia, put to death, when he not melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake." Thus, was about to have given proofs of his abilities. The as we are informed by Aulus Gellius, Lib. III. cap. 3. empress showed some kindness in her anger, by cutting Come plays were absolutely ascribed to Plautus, which in him off at a time so convenient for his reputation. truth had only been (retractatæ et expolita) retouched But a more remarkable proof of the antiquity of this noand polished by him. In this comedy we find more in- tion may be found in St. Chrysostom's book de Sacertricacy of plot than distinction of character; and our at- dotio, which exhibits a scene of enchantments not exceeded tention is less forcibly engaged, because we can guess in by any romance of the middle age: he supposes a specgreat measure how the denouement will be brought about. tator overlooking a field of battle, attended by one that Yet the subject appears to have been reluctantly dis- points out all the various objects of horror, the engines missed, even in this last and unnecessary scene, where of destruction and the arts of slaughter. Λεικνύτο δὲ the same mistakes are continued, till their power of af- ἔτι παρὰ τοῖς ἐναντίοις καὶ πετομένους ἵππους διά fording entertainment is entirely lost. STEEVENS. — The τινος μαγγανείας, καὶ ὁπλίτας δὲ ἀέρος φερομένους, long doggrel verses that Shakspeare has attributed in this καὶ πάσην γοητείας δύναμιν καὶ ἰδέαν. Let him then play to the two Dromios, are written in that kind of metre proceed to show him in the opposite armies flying horses which was usually attributed, by the dramatic poets be- || by enchantment, armed men transported through the air, fore his time, in their comic pieces, to some of their in- and every power and form of magic. Whether St. Chryferior characters; and this circumstance is one of many sostom believed that such performances were really to be that authorizes us to place the preceding comedy, as well seen in a day of battle, or only endeavoured to enliven as Love's Labour's Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew, his description, by adopting the notions of the vulgar, it (where the same kind of versification is likewise found,) is equally certain, that such notions were in his time reamong our author's earliest productions; composed pro- ceived, and that therefore they were not imported from bably at a time when he was imperceptibly infected with the Saracens in a later age; the wars with the Saracens the prevailing mode, and before he had completely learned || however gave occasion to their propagation, not only as "to deviate boldly from the common track." MALONE.= bigotry naturally discovers prodigies, but as the scene of Mr. Malone also, in opposition to Mr. Steevens, asserts action was removed to a great distance. The Reformhis firm opinion, that the whole of the present comedy ation did not immediately arrive at its meridian, and was written by Shakspeare. CHALMERS. == though day was gradually increasing upon us, the goblins of witchcraft still continued to hover in the twilight. In the time of Queen Elizabeth was the remarkable trial of the witches of Warbois, whose conviction is still commemorated in an annual sermon at Huntingdon. But in the reign of King James, in which this tragedy was written, many circumstances concurred to propagate and confirm this opinion. The king, who was much celebrated for his knowledge, had, before his arrival in England, not only examined in person a woman accused of witchcraft, but had given a very formal account of the practices and illusions of evil spirits, the compacts of witches, the ceremonies used by them, the manner of detecting them, and the justice of punishing them, in his dialogues of Dæmonologie, written in the Scottish dialect, and published at Edinburgh. This book was, soon after his succession, reprinted at London; and as the ready way to gain King James's favour was to flatter his speculations, the system of Dæmonologie was immediately adopted by all who desired either to gain preferment or not to lose it. Thus the doctrine of witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated; and as the greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion, it cannot be doubted but this persuasion made a rapid progress, since vanity and credulity co-operated in its favour. The infection soon reached the parliament, who, in the first year of King James, made a law, by which it was enacted, (chap. xii.) That "if any person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked spirit; 2. or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose; 3. or take up any dead man, woman, or child, out of the grave, —or the skin, bone, or any part of the XV. MACBETH. In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age, and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment, and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies; but a survey of the notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakspeare was in no danger of such censures, since he only turned the system that was then universally admitted, to his advantage, and was far from overburdening the credulity of his audience. The reality of witchcraft or enchantment, which, though not strictly the same, are confounded in this play, has in all ages and countries been credited by the common people, and in most, by the learned themselves. The phantoms have indeed appeared more frequently, in proportion as the darkness of ignorance has been more gross; but it cannot be shown, that the brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world. The time in which this kind of credulity was at its height, seems to have been that of the holy war, in which the Christians imputed all their defeats to enchantments or diabolical opposition, as they ascribed their success to the assistance of the dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of was called for, and could not be procured from the players, witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; 4. or shall a piratical bookseller reprinted the old one, with W. Sh. ase, practise, or exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, in the title-page. FARMER. = The elder play of King charm, or enchantment; 5. whereby any person shall be John was first published in 1591. Shakspeare has predestroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in served the greatest part of the conduct of it, as well as any part of the body; 6. That every such person being some of the lines. The number of quotations from Hoconvicted shall suffer death." This law was repealed in race, and similar scraps of learning scattered over this our own time. Thus, in the time of Shakspeare, was motley piece, ascertain it to have been the work of a the doctrine of witchcraft at once established by law and scholar. It contains likewise a quantity of rhyming Latin, by the fashion, and it became not only unpolite, but cri- and ballad-metre; and in a scene where the Bastard is minal, to doubt it; and as prodigies are always seen in represented as plundering a monastery, there are strokes proportion as they are expected, witches were every day of humour, which seem, from their particular turn, to discovered, and multiplied so fast in some places, that have been most evidently produced by another hand than Bishop Hall mentions a village in Lancashire, where their that of our author. Of this historical drama there is number was greater than that of the houses. The jesuits a subsequent edition in 1611, printed for John Helme, and sectaries took advantage of this universal error, and whose name appears before none of the genuine pieces endeavoured to promote the interest of their parties by of Shakspeare. I admitted this play some years ago as pretended cures of persons afflicted by evil spirits; but our author's own, among the twenty which I published they were detected and exposed by the clergy of the from the old editions; but a more careful perusal of it, established church. Upon this general infatuation Shak- and a further conviction of his custom of borrowing plots, speare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially sentiments, &c. disposes me to recede from that opinion. since he has followed with great exactness such histories| STEEVENS. — A play entitled The troublesome Raigne of as were then thought true; nor can it be doubted that John King of England, in two parts, was printed in 1591, the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be without the writer's name. It was written, I believe, ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought|| either by Robert Greene, or George Peele; and certainly awful and affecting. JOHNSON.In the concluding para-preceded this of our author. Mr. Pope, who is very ingraph of Dr. Johnson's admirable introduction to this play, accurate in matters of this kind, says that the former was he seems apprehensive that the fame of Shakspeare's magic may be endangered by modern ridicule. I shall not hesitate, however, to predict its security, till our national taste is wholly corrupted, and we no longer deserve the first of all dramatic enjoyments; for such, in my opinion at least, is the tragedy of Macbeth. STEEVENS. This tragedy was written, I believe, in the year 1606, MALONE. This play is deservedly celebrated for the propriety of its fictions, and solemnity, grandeur, and variety of its action; but it has no nice discriminations of character: the events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions, and the course of the action necessarily determines the conduct of the agents. The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said, in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that, in Shakspeare's time,|| it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions. The passions are directed to their true end. Lady Macbeth is merely detested; and though the courage of Macbeth preserves some esteem, yet every reader rejoices at his fall. JOHNSON. = printed in 1611, as written by W. Shakspeare and W. Rowley. But this is not true. In the second edition of this old play, in 1611, the letters W. Sh. were put into the title-page, to deceive the purchaser, and to lead him to suppose the piece was Shakspeare's play, which, at that time, was not published. Our author's King John was written, imagine, in 1596, MALONE. Though this play have the title of The Life and Death of King John, yet the action of it begins at the thirty-fourth year of his life, and takes in only some transactions of his reign to the time of his demise, being an interval of about seventeen years. THEOBALD. = Hall, Holinshed, Stowe, &c. are closely followed, not only in the conduct, but sometimes in the very expressions, throughout the following historical dramas, viz. Macbeth, this play, Richard II. Henry IV. two parts, Henry V. Henry VI. three parts, Richard III. and Henry VIII. "A booke called The Historie of Lord Faulconbridge, bastard son to Richard Cordelion," was entered at Stationers' Hall, Nov. 29, 1614; but I have never met with it, and therefore know not whether it was the old black letter history, or a play upon the same subject. For the original King John, see Six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published by S. Leacroft, Charing-cross. STEEVENS. The Historie of Lord Faulconbridge, &c. is a prose narrative, in bl.l. The earliest edition that I have seen of it was printed THE troublesome reign of King John was written in two in 1616. But by an entry on the Stationers' Registers, parts, by W. Shakspeare and W. Rowley, and printed 29th Nov. 1614, it appears that there had been an old 1611. But the present play is entirely different, and in- edition of the tract, entitled, The History of George W. finitely superior to it. POPE. The edition of 1611 has Faulconbridge, the son of Richard Cordelion, and that the no mention of Rowley, nor in the account of Rowley's copy had been assigned by (William) Barley to Thomas works is any mention made of his conjunction with Shak- || Beale. A book entitled Richard Cur de Lion, was enspeare in any play. King John was reprinted in two tered on the Stationers' Books in 1558. A play called parts, in 1622. The first edition that I have found of The Funeral of Richard Cordelion, was written by Rothis play, in its present form, is that of 1623, in folio. bert Wilson, Henry Chettle, Anthony Mundy, and MiThe edition of 1591 I have not seen. JoHNSON. — Dr. chael Drayton, and first exhibited in the year 1598. MAJohnson mistakes, when he says there is no mention, in LONE. The tragedy of King John, though not written Rowley's works, of any conjunction with Shakspeare. The with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a Birth of Merlin is ascribed to them jointly, though I very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The cannot believe Shakspeare had any thing to do with it. || lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Mr. Capell is equally mistaken, when he says (Pref. p. 15.) || Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity that Rowley is called his partner in the title-page of which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON. = The Merry Devil of Edmonton. There must have been some tradition, however erroneous, upon which Mr. Pope's account was founded. I make no doubt that Rowley wrote the first King John; and when Shakspeare's play XVI. KING JOHN. XVII. KING RICHARD II. THIS history comprises little more than the two last years of this prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the duke of Norfolk, on an accusation of high treason, which fell out in the year 1398; and it closes with the murder of king Richard at Pomfret Castle, towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the ensuing year. THEOBALD. It is evident from a passage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the subject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained business of the earl of Essex, who was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accused, amongst other things "quod exoletam tragœdiam de tragicà abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datà pecunià agi|| curasset." I have since met with a passage in my lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraignments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV. p. 412., of Mallet's edition: "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second; - when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was." It may be worth enquiring, whether some of the rhyming parts of the present play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different haud, might not be bor rowed from the old one. Certainly, however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; since, as Dr. Johnson observes, there are some expressions in this of Shakspeare, which strongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMER. Bacon elsewhere glances at the same transaction; "And for your comparison with Richard II. I see you follow the example of them that brought him upon the stage, and into print in queen Elizabeth's time.” Works, Vol. IV. p. 278. The partizans of Essex had, therefore, procured the publication as well as the acting of this play. HOLT WHITE. It is probable, I think, that the play which Sir Gilly Merick procured to be represented, bore the title of HENRY IV. and not of RICHARD II. Camden calls it "exoletam tragœdiam de tragicà abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi;" and Lord Bacon (in his account of The effect of that which passed at the arraignment of Merick and others,) says: "that the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick had procured to be played before them, the play of deposing King Richard the Second." But in a more particular account of the proceeding against Merick, which is printed in the State Trials, Vol. VII. p. 60. the matter is stated thus: "The story of Henry IV. being set forth in a play, and in that play, there being set forth the killing of the king upon the stage; the Friday before, sir Gilly Merick and some others of the earl's train having an humour to see a play, they must needs have The Play of HENRY IV. The players told them that was stale; they should get nothing by playing that; but no play else would serve: and sir Gilly Merick gives forty shillings to Philips the player to play this, besides whatsoever he could get." Augustine Philippes was one of the patentees of the Globe play-house with Shakspeare, in 1603: but the play here described was certainly not Shakspeare's HENRY IV. as that commences above a year after the death of Richard. TYRRWHITT. This play of Shakspeare was first entered at Stationers' Hall by Andrew Wise, Aug. 29, 1597. STEEVENS. Mr. Malone thinks that this play was written in 1593, that it was Shakspeare's first tragic performance, and is as manifestly his production as his more highly wrought and finished pieces. Mr. M. wonders that Dr. Farmer should give any countenance to the idle notion entertained by Mr. Pope, that "some of the rhyming parts in this tragedy were of a different hand." CHALMERS. This play is extracted from the Chronicle of Holinshead, in which many passages may be found which Shakspeare has, with very little alteration, transplanted into his scenes; particularly a speech of the bishop of Carlisle, in defence of King Richard's unalienable right, and immunity from human jurisdiction. — Jonson, who, in his Catiline and Sejanus, has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was perhaps induced to that practice by the example of Shakspeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakspeare had more of his own than Jonson; and, if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, showed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity. This play is one of those which Shakspeare has apparently revised; but as success in works of invention is not always proportionate to labour, it is not finished at last with the happy force of some other of his tragedies, nor can be said much to affect the passions, or enlarge the understanding. JOHNSON. The notion that Shakspeare revised this play, though it has long prevailed, appears to me extremely doubtful; or, to speak more plainly, I do not believe it. MALONE. XVIII. KING HENRY IV. PART I THE transactions contained in this historical drama are comprised within the period of about ten months; for the action commences with the news brought of Hotspur having defeated the Scots under Archibald earl of Douglas at Holmedon, (or Halidown-hill,) which battle was fought on Holy-rood day, (the 14th of September,) 1402; and it closes with the defeat and death of Hotspur at Shrewsbury; which engagement happened on Saturday the 21st of July, (the eve of Saint Mary Magdalen,) in the year 1403. THEOBALD. This play was first entered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 25, 1597, by Andrew Wise. Again, by M. Woolff, Jan. 9, 1598. For the piece supposed to have been its original, see Six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published for S. Leacroft, Charing-cross. STEEVENS. Shakspeare has apparently designed a regular connexion of these dramatic histories from Richard the Second to Henry the Fifth. King Henry, at the end of Richard the Second, declares his purpose to visit the Holy Land, which he resumes in the first speech of this play. The complaint made by King Henry in the last Act of Richard the Second, of the wildness of his son, prepares the reader for the frolics which are here to be now to be exrecounted, and the characters which are hibited. JOHNSON. This comedy was written, I believe, in the year 1597. MALONE. = XIX. KING HENRY IV. THE transactions comprized in this history take up about nine years. The action commences with the account of Hotspur's being defeated and killed [1403]; and closes with the death of King Henry IV. and the coronation of King Henry V. (1412-13.] THEOBALD. This play was entered at Stationers' Hall, August 23, 1600. STEEVENS. The Second Part of King Henry IV. I suppose to have been written in 1598. MALONE. = Mr. Upton thinks these two plays improperly called The First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. The first play ends, he says, with the peaceful settlement of Henry in the kingdom by the defeat of the rebels. This is hardly true: for the rebels are not yet finally suppressed. The second, he tells us, shows Henry the Fifth in the various lights of a good-natured rake, till, on his father's death, he assumes a more manly character. This is true; but this representation gives us no idea of a dramatic action. These two plays will appear to every reader, who shall peruse them without ambition of critical discoveries, to be so connected, that the second is merely a sequel to the first; to be two only because they are too long to be one. | JOHNSON. = I fancy every reader, when he ends this play, cries out with Desdemona, "O most lame and impotent conclusion!" As this play was not, to our knowledge, divided into acts by the author, I could be content to conclude it with the death of Henry the Fourth: "In that Jerusalem shall Harry die." more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion, when they see Heury seduced by Falstaff. JOHNSON. XX. KING HENRY V. THIS play was writ (as appears from a passage in the chorus to the fifth Act) at the time of the earl of Essex's commanding the forces in Ireland in the reign of queen Elizabeth, and not till after Henry the Sixth had been played, as may be seen by the conclusion of this play. POPE. The transactions comprized in this historical play commence about the latter end of the first and terminate Katharine princess of France, and closed up the differin the eighth year of this king's reign: when he married ences betwixt England and that crown. THEOBALD. This play, in the quarto edition, 1608, is styled The Chronicle History of Henry, &c. which seems to have been the title anciently appropriated to all Shakspeare's historical dramas. So, in The Antipodes, a comedy, by R. Brome, 1638: These scenes, which now make the fifth Act of Henry the Fourth, might then be the first of Henry the Fifth ; but the truth is, that they do not unite very commodiously to either play. When these plays were represented, I believe they ended as they are now ended in the books; but Shakspeare seems to have designed that the whole series of action, from the beginning of Richard the Second, to the end of Henry the Fifth, should be considered by the reader as one work, upon one plan, only broken into parts by the necessity of exhibition. None of Shakspeare's plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no author has ever, in two plays, afforded so much delight. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable: the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. - The prince, who is the hero both of the comic and tragic part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. The character is great, original, and just. Percy is a rugged soldier, choleric and quarrelsome, and has only the soldier's virtues, generosity and courage. But Falstaff unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired, but not esteemed; of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing ¦ power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth. The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is "These lads can act the emperors' lives all over, "And Shakspeare's Chronicled Histories to boot." The players likewise, in the folio edition, 1623, rank these pieces under the title of Histories. - It is evident that a play on this subject had been performed before the year 1592. Nash, in Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil, dated 1592, says, "what a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage, leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin to sweare fealtie." Perhaps this is the same play as was thus entered in the books of the Stationers' Company: "Tho. Strode] May 2, 1594. A booke intituled The famous Victories of Henry the Fift, containing the honorable Battle of Agincourt" There are two more entries of a play of Henry V. viz. between 1596 und 1615, and one August 14th, 1600. I have two copies of it in my possession; one without date, (which seems much the elder of the two,) and another, (apparently printed from it,) dated 1617, though printed by Bernard Alsop, (who was printer of the other edition,) and sold by the same person, and at the same place. Alsop appears to have been a printer before the year 1600, and was afterwards one of the twenty appointed by decree of the Star-chamber to print for this kingdom. I believe, however, this piece to have been prior to that of Shakspeare for several reasons. First, because it is highly probable that it is the very "displeasing play" alluded to in the epilogue to The Second Part of King Henry IV. - for Oldcastle died a martyr. Oldcastle is the Falstaff of the piece, which is despicable, and full of ribaldry and impiety from the first scene to the last. Secondly, because Shakspeare seems to have taken not a few hints from it; for it comprehends, in some measure, the story of the two Parts of Henry IV. as well as of Henry V.: and no ignorance, I think, could debase the gold of Shakspeare into such dross; though no chemistry but that of Shakspeare could exalt such base metal into gold. When the Prince of Wales, in Henry IV., calls Falstaff my old lad of the Castle, it is probably but a sneering allusion to the deserved fate which this performance met with; for there is no proof that our poet was ever obliged to change the name of Oldcastle into that of Falstaff, though there is an absolute certainty that this piece must have been condemned by any audience before whom it was ever represented. · Lastly, because it appears (as Dr. Farmer has observed) from the Jests of the famous comedian, Tarlton, 4to. 1611, that he had been particularly |