the fundamental "idea" in which it was composed, it is remarkable how many incidents and expressions which have previously appeared to us at least difficult of comprehension are rendered clear and satisfactory. As believers in Shakspere we know that he wrought in the spirit of the highest art, producing in every case a work of unity, out of the power of his own "multiformity." But, as we have before said, we have not always, as in the case of the natural landscape, got the right point of view, so as to have the perfect harmony of the composition made manifest to us. Let us be assured, however, that there is an entirety, and therefore a perfect accordance in all its parts, in every great production of a great poet,-and above all in every production of the world's greatest poet; and then, studying with this conviction, when the parts have become familiar to us— as in the case before us, the sparkling raillery of Benedick and Beatrice, the patient gentleness of Hero, the most truthful absurdity of Dogberry—they gradually fuse themselves together in our minds, and the whole at last lies clear before us, "A world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite." CHAPTER VI. THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. THE first edition of this play was published in 1602. The same copy was reprinted in 1619. The comedy, as it now stands, first appeared in the folio of 1623; and the play in that edition contains very nearly twice the number of lines that the quarto contains. The succession of scenes is the same in both copies, except in one instance; but the speeches of the several characters are greatly elaborated in the amended copy, and some of these characters are not only heightened, but new distinctive features given to them. For example, the Slender of the present comedy— one of the most perfect of the minor characters of Shakspere is a very inferior conception in the first copy. Our Slender has been worked up out of the first rough sketch, with touches at once delicate and powerful. Again, the Justice Shallow of the quarto is an amusing person-but he is not the present Shallow; we have not even the repetitions which identify him with the Shallow of 'Henry IV.' We point out these matters here, for the purpose of showing that, although the quarto of 1602 was most probably piratically published when the play had been remodelled, and was reprinted without alteration in 1619 (the amended copy then remaining unpublished), the copy of that first edition must not be considered as an imperfect transcript of the complete play. The differences between the two copies are produced by the alterations of the author working upon his first sketch. The extent of these changes and elaborations can only be satisfactorily perceived by comparing the two copies, scene by scene. As an example, we subjoin the scene at Herne's Oak, which has no doubt been completely rewritten :— QUARTO OF 1602. "Qui. You fairies that do haunt these shady groves, Look round about the wood if you can spy Give them their charge, Puck, ere they part away. Sir Hugh. Come hither, Peane, go to the country houses, And when you find a slut that lies asleep, With your long nails pinch her till she cry, And swear to mend her sluttish housewifery. Fai. I warrant you, I will perform your will. Hu. Where's Pead? Go and see where brokers sleep, And fox-eyed serjeants, with their mace, Sir Hugh. I smell a man of middle earth. Sir Hugh. See, I have spied one by good luck, His body man, his head a buck. Fal. God send me good fortune now, and I care not. Qui. Go straight, and do as I command, And take a taper in your hand, And set it to his fingers' ends, And if you see it him offends, And that he starteth at the flame, Then is he mortal, know his name: If with an F it doth begin, Why then be sure he 's full of sin. About it then, and know the truth, Of this same metamorphos'd youth. Sir Hugh. Give me the tapers, I will try And if that he love venery. FOLIO OF 1623. Qui. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine-revellers, and shades of night, You orphan-heirs of fixed destiny, Attend your office and your quality. Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes. Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys. Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'st unraked, and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry: Fal. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die: I'll wink and couch: no man their works must eye. [Lies down upon his face. Search Windsor-castle, elves, within and out: In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue and white: Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, Eva. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set: And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, To guide our measure round about the tree. But stay: I smell a man of middle earth. Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy! Lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pist. Vild worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth. Qui. With trial-fire touch me his finger end. If he be chaste, the flame will back descend And turn him to no pain; but, if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. Pist. A trial, come. Eva. Come, will this wood take fire? [They burn him with their tapers. Fal. Oh, oh, oh! *In the folio there is a distinction between the abbreviations of the names affixed to these speeches-Qui. and Qu. The one may be taken for Quickly-the other for Queen. It is certain that in the revised edition Anne was "to present the fairy queen." Qui. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme; And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. If the quarto is not to be taken as a guide in the formation of a text, it appears to us, viewed in connection with some circum stances which we shall venture to point out as heretofore in some degree unregarded, to be a highly interesting literary curiosity. Malone, contrary to his opinion with regard to the quarto edition of Henry V.,' says of the quarto of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' "The old edition in 1602, like that of Romeo and Juliet,' is apparently a rough draught, and not a mutilated or imperfect copy." His view, therefore, of the period when this play was written applies to the "rough draught." Malone's opinion of the date of this sketch is thus stated in his 'Chronological Order :'"The following line in the earliest edition of this comedy, 'Sail like my pinnace to those golden shores,' shows that it was written after Sir Walter Raleigh's return from Guiana in 1596. 6 "The first sketch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' was printed in 1602. It was entered in the books of the Stationers' Company on the 18th of January, 1601-2, and was therefore probably written in 1601 after the two Parts of King Henry IV.,' being, it is said, composed at the desire of Queen Elizabeth, | in order to exhibit Falstaff in love, when all the pleasantry which he could afford in any other situation was exhausted. But it may not be thought so clear that it was written after 'King Henry V.' Nym and Bardolph are both hanged in 'King Henry V.,' yet appear in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor.' Falstaff is disgraced in 'The Second Part of King Henry IV.,' and dies in 'King Henry V.;' but, in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' he talks as if he were yet in favour at court: 'If it should come to the ear of the court how I have been transformed,' &c.: and Mr. Page discountenances Fenton's addresses to his daughter because he 'kept company with the wild prince and with Pointz.' These circumstances seem to favour the supposition that this play was written between the First and Second Parts of King Henry IV.' But that it was not written then may be collected from the tradition above mentioned. The truth, I believe, is, that, though it ought to be read (as Dr. Johnson has observed) between the 'Second Part of King Henry IV.' and 'King Henry V.,' it was written after King Henry V.,' and after Shakspeare had killed Falstaff. In obedience to the royal commands, having revived him, he found it necessary at the same time to revive all those persons with whom he was wont to be exhibited, Nym, Pistol, Bardolph, and the Page, and disposed of them as he found it convenient, without a strict regard to their situations or catastrophes in former plays.” The opinion that this comedy was written after the two Parts of 'Henry IV.' is not quite in consonance with the tradition that Queen Elizabeth desired to see Falstaff in love; for Shakspere might have given this turn to the character in 'Henry V.,' after the announcement in the Epilogue to 'The Second Part of Henry IV.'-" our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it." Malone's theory, therefore, that it was produced after 'Henry V.,' is in accordance with the tradition as received by him with such an implicit belief. George Chalmers, however, in his 'Supplemental Apology,' laughs at the tradition, and at Malone's theory. He believes that the three histerical plays and the comedy were successively written in 1596, and in 1597, but that 'Henry V.' was produced the last. He says, “In it (Henry V.') Falstaff does not come out upon the stage, but dies of a sweat, after performing less than the attentive auditors were led to expect: and in it ancient Pistol appears as the husband of Mistress Quickly; who also dies, during the ancient's absence in the wars of France. Yet do the commentators bring the knight to life, and revive and unmarry the dame, by assigning the year 1601 as the epoch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor.' Queen Elizabeth is said by the critics to have commanded these miracles to be worked in 1601,—a time when she was in no proper mood for such fooleries. The tradition on which is founded the story of Elizabeth's command to exhibit the facetious 6 Shakspere in which he should show the knight in love. Malone considers that the tradition, as given by Dennis, came to him from Dryden, who received it from Davenant ; Rowe, Pope, and Theobald adopted a more circumstantial tradition from Gildon, who published it in his 'Remarks on Shakspere's Plays,' in 1710. But even this authority is more vague than the usual statement. It runs thus "The Fairies in the fifth act make a handsome compliment to the queen, in her palace of Windsor; who had obliged him [Shakspere] to write a play of Sir John Falstaff in love, and which I am very well assured he performed in a fortnight." The tradition, as stated by Dennis, is not inconsistent with the belief that 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' (of course we speak of the sketch) was produced before the two Parts of 'Henry IV.' The more circumstantial tradition is completely reconcileable only with Malone's theory, that Shakspere, continuing the comic characters of the historical plays in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' ventured upon the daring experiment of reviving the dead. knight in love, I think too improbable for | she commanded a play to be written by belief." Chalmers goes on to argue that after Falstaff's disgrace at the end of 'The Second Part of Henry IV.' (which is followed in 'Henry V.' by the assertion that "the king has killed his heart") he was not in a fit condition for "a speedy appearance amongst the Merry Wives of Windsor ;" and further, that if it be true, as the first act of | the Second Part evinces, that Sir John, soon after doing good service at Shrewsbury, was sent off, with some charge, to Lord John of Lancaster at York, he could not consistently saunter to Windsor, after his re-encounter with the Chief Justice." Looking at these contradictions, Chalmers places "the true epoch of this comedy in 1596," and affirms "that its proper place is before The First Part of Henry IV." We had been strongly impressed with the same opinion before we had seen the passage in Chalmers, which is not given under his view of the chronology of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor.' But we are quite aware that the theory is at first sight open to objection: though it is clearly not so objectionable as Malone's assertion that Shakspere revived his dead Falstaff, Quickly, Nym, and Bardolph; and it perhaps gets rid of the difficulties which belong to Dr. Johnson's opinion that "the present play ought to be read between 'Henry IV.' and 'Henry V.'" The question, altogether, appears to us very interesting as a piece of literary history; and we therefore request the indulgence of our readers whilst we examine it somewhat in detail. And first, of the tradition upon which Malone builds. Dennis, in an epistle prefixed to 'The Comical Gallant,' an alteration of this play which he published in 1702, says, "This comedy was written at her (Queen Elizabeth's) command, and by her direction, and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased at the representation." The tradition, however, soon became more circumstantial; for Rowe, and Pope, and Theobald each inform us that Elizabeth was so well pleased with the Falstaff of the two Parts of Henry IV.,' that Malone, according to his theory, believes that the sketch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' "finished in fourteen days," was written in 1601; Chalmers that it was written in 1596. We are inclined to think that the period of the production of the original sketch might have been earlier than 1596. Raleigh returned from his expedition to Guiana in 1596, having sailed in 1595. In the present text of the 'Merry Wives' (Act I. Scene 3) Falstaff says, "Here's another letter to her she bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty. I will be cheater to them both, and they shall be exchequers to me: they shall be my East and West Indies." In the original sketch the passage stands thus :-" Here is another letter to her; she bears the purse too. They shall be exchequers to me, and I'll be cheaters to them both. They shall be my East and West Indies." In the amended text we have, subsequently, "Sail like my pinnace to those golden shores;" 66 which line is found in the quarto, the being | Act II. Sc. 1); Mrs. Quickly's allusion to coaches; the poetical description of the insignia of the Garter; and the mention of the "Cotsall" games. But, as not one of these passages is found in the original quarto, the question of the date of the sketch remains untouched by them. The exact date is of very little importance, because we do not know the exact dates of the two Parts of 'Henry IV.' But, before we leave this branch of the subject, we may briefly notice a matter which is in itself curious, and hitherto unnoticed. in the place of those. This line alone is taken by Malone to show that the comedy, in its first unfinished state, was written after Sir Walter Raleigh's return from Guiana in 1596." Surely this is not precise enough. Golden shores were spoken of metaphorically before Raleigh's voyage; but the region in Guiana is a very different indication. To our minds it shows that the sketch was written before Raleigh's return; -the finished play after Guiana was known and talked of. "The Fairy Queen' of Spenser was published in 1596. "The whole plot," says Chalmers, "which was laid by Mrs. Page, to be executed at the hour of fairy revel, around Herne's Oak, by urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white, was plainly an allusion to The Fairy Queen' of 1596, which for some time after its publication was the universal talk." A general mention of fairies and fairy revels might naturally occur without any allusion to Spenser; and thus in the original sketch we have only such a general mention. But in the amended copy of the folio The Fairy Queen' is presented to the audience three times as a familiar name. If these passages may be taken to allude to 'The Fairy Queen' of Spenser, we have another proof (as far as such proof can go) that the original sketch, in which they do not occur, was written before 1596. ..... Again, in Falstaff's address to the Merry Wives at Herne's Oak, we have-"Let the sky rain potatoes, . . . . . and snow eringoes." These portions of a sentence are in Lodge's 'Devils Incarnate,' 1596;—but they are not found in the original sketch of this comedy. Whatever may be the date of the original sketch, there can be no doubt, we think, that the play, as we have received it from the folio of 1623, was enlarged and revived after the production of 'Henry IV. Some would assign this revival to the time of James I. The passages which indicate this, according to Malone and Chalmers, are those in which Falstaff says, "You'll complain of me to the king?"-the word being council in the quarto ; "these knights will hack "-(see In the original sketch we have the follow- "Doctor. Where be my host de gartir? But be-gar I will tell you von ting. This introduces the story of the " cozen- This curious volume contains a sort of passport from Lord Howard, addressed to all Justices of Peace, Mayors, and Bailiffs, which we give without correction of the orthography:— "Theras this nobleman, Counte Mombeliard, is to passe ouer Contrye in England, into the lowe Countryes, Thise schal be to wil ( I 1 0 t |