charm of national feeling and recollection, and where a large patriotism, looking before and after, would find itself at home. Hence, no doubt, the early and rapid growth in England of the historical drama, as a species quite distinct from the old forms of tragedy and comedy. Nor, in this view of the matter, is there any thing incredible in the tradition reported by Gildon, that Shakespeare, in a conversation with Ben Jonson, said that, "finding the nation generally very ignorant of history, he wrote his historical plays in order to instruct the people in that particular." That he cared to make the stage a place of instruction as we!. as of pastime, appears in his Prologue to Henry VIII., where he says,,-"Such as give their money out of hope they may believe, may here find truth too." And something of this substantial benefit, it seems, was soon realized; for in Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1612, we are told, -" Plays have made the ignorant more apprehensive, taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories, instructed such as cannot read in the discovery of our English Chronicles." Of the historical plays referred to by Nash in the quotation with which we began, very few specimens have come down to us. In our Introduction to the First Part of Henry IV. is a passage quoted from the same pamphlet, showing that one of the plays he had in mind was The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, which is known to have been on the stage as early as 1588, because the leading comic part was sustained by Tarleton, who died that year In our In roduction to King John, also, we saw that that play was founded on an older one entitled The Troublesome Reign of King John, which was printed in 1591. In further illustration of this point, we have another passage in Nash's pamphlet: "How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that after he had lien two hundred year in his tomb he should triumph again on the stage; and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least, (at several times,) who, in the tragedian that represents his person, behold him fresh bleeding." Which evidently refers to THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH, wherein the last scenes of Talbot and his son are by far the most impressive and memorable passages, and are fraught with a pathos, which, in that day of unjaded and fresh sensibility, could scarce fail to produce such an effect as is here ascribed to them. Inferior as that play is to many that followed it in the same .ine and from the same pen, no English historical drama of so early a date has survived, that approaches it, either as a work of art, or in the elements of dramatic fect. To audiences that were wont to be entertained by such frigid and artificial, or such coarse and vapid performances as then occupied the boards, The First Part of Henry VI. must have been irresistibly attractive; a play which, perhaps for the first time, gave the English people "a stage ample and true with life," where, instead of learned echoes from classical antiquity, teir ears took in the clear free tones of nature and where swollen verbiage and strutting extravagance were replaced with the quiet power of simplicity, and with thoughts springing up fresh, home-born, and beautiful from the soil of common sense. That such was indeed the case, may be inferred from the words of Nash, and is confirmed by Henslowe's Diary, which ascertains that a play called Henry the Sixth was acted by "Lord Strange's men," March 3, 1592, and was repeated twelve times in the course of that season. As this was not the company to which Shakespeare belonged, and in which he held a respectable place as joint proprietor in 1589, it seems but reasonable to presume that the play had gone through a course of representation by his own company before it was permitted to the use of another; unless we suppose, what is indeed possible, that Henslowe's notes refer to another play on the same subject, gotten up perhaps in consequence of the success of the former at a rival theatre. At all events, the words of Nash, which could scarce point to any other than Shakespeare's Henry VI., and which clearly regard it as being already well known, fully warrant the conclusion that the play was written as early as 1589 or 1590. The First Part of Henry VI. is not known to have been printed in any shape, till it appeared in the folio of 1623, where the first four acts are regularly marked, as are also the scenes in the third act, but at the beginning of the fifth act we have merely Scena Secunda, and at the beginning of the last scene Actus Quintus A question has been raised, whether the play was originally writ ten as it is there printed. On this point we have no means of forming even an opinion, other than such probability as may ac crue from the fact that several of the Poet's earlier efforts after wards underwent revisal, the effects of which are in some cases quite apparent in certain inequalities of style and execution, some parts evincing a riper faculty and a more practised hand, and being especially charged with those peculiarities which all men have agreed to call Shakespearian, as if they were written when by repeated trial he had learned to trust his powers, and dared to be more truly himself. The play in hand, however, yields little if any argument that way, there being no such inequalities but what might well enough result from the ordinary differences of matter and of mental state; unless, perhaps, something may be gathered from such incoherences of representation as we discover in Joan of Arc, the latter end of whose character does not very well remember the beginning. The play, in short, though not wanting in what distinguishes Shakespeare from all other known writers of that time, has little of that which sometimes distinguishes Shakespeare from himself. The authorship of King Henry VI. was for a long time unquestioned, till at last Theobald started a doubt thereof, which mainly through the dogged industry of Malone. has since grown nto a general disbelief. This conclusion, and the arguments whereby it is reached, are built altogether on internal evidence, and proceed for the most part upon a strange oversight of what seems plain enough, namely, that Shakespeare's genius, great as it confessedly was, must needs have had to pass a time in youth and pupilage. The main points in Malone's argument, the only ones indeed of any real weight, are the following: That the diction and versification are of another colour than we find in Shakepeare's genuine dramas, the sense almost uniformly pausing or concluding at the end of every line, and the verse scarce ever having a redundant syllable; and that the classical allusions are more frequent than in any one of his plays on English history, and do not rise naturally out of the subject, but seem inserted to show the writer's learning; the play thus being in all these respects more like those preceding Shakespeare, than like those which he is known to have written: That there are several expressions which prove the author to have been familiar with Hall's Chronicles, whereas Holinshed was Shakespeare's historian: That in Act iii. sc. 4, the king is made to say,-"When I was young, (as yet I am not old,) I do remember how my father said;" but Shakespeare knew that Henry could not remember any thing of his father, for in the Second Part, Act iv. sc. 9, he makes him say, -"But I was made a king at nine months old:" again, in Act ii. sc. 5, of the play in hand, the earl of Cambridge is said to have "levied an army" against his sovereign; whereas Shakespeare in King Henry V. represents the matter as it really was. We have endeavoured to give Malone's reasons with all the strength of statement they will bear, for, in truth, they are at best so unequal to the service put upon them, that one may well be loth to state them at all, lest he should seem wanting in candour; at all events, to understate them would be more apt to provoke a charge of unfairness, than any possible overstatement to make them bear out the conclusion. Nevertheless, for these reasons, or, if there were others, they have not been given, a large num ber of critics and editors have rested in the same judgment, among whom are found such respectable names as Morgann, Drake, Singer, and Hallam. Morgann speaks of the play as "that drum-and-trumpet thing, written, doubtless, or rather exhibited, long before Shakespeare was born, though afterwards repaired and furbished up by him with here and there a little sentiment and diction." Hallam says, "In default of a more probable claimant, I have sometimes been inclined to assign The First Part of Henry VI. to Greene." And Drake proposed that the play should be excluded from future editions of the Poet, as "offering no trace of any finishing strokes from the master-bard." These authorities, backed up as they are by a host of concurring names, must be our excuse for having stated, in the Introduction to The Two Gentlemer Verona, that "the three parts of Henry VI were adapted from preexisting stock copies, into which Shakespeare distilled something of the life and spirit of his genius; a statement which we regret having made, being now persuaded that such a conclusion cannot well survive a careful sifting of the arguments whereon it has been based. For in the first place, the diction and versification have not the qualities specified by Malone in nearly so great a degree as his statement would lead one to suppose. In variety of pause and structure, the verse, though nowise comparable to what the Poet afterwards wrote, is a good deal in advance of any preceding dramas that have come down to us from other hands. On this score, the play may be safely affirmed to differ much less, for example, from Shakespeare's King John and Richard II., than these do from his Henry VIII.; or than A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice from The Tempest and The Winter's Tale. Yet in these cases of course no one has ever thought of inferring diversity of authorship from difference of style. Besides, what might we expect, but that in these respects his first performances would be more like what others had done before, than what was afterwards done by himself? Would he not naturally begin by writing very much as those about him wrote, and hus by practice gradually learn to write better? Surely his style must needs draw towards such models as were before him, till he had time to form a style of his own: so that, had the play in hand borne less of resemblance to such as then held the stage, this would have been a strong argument that it was not the work of a beginner, but of one who had attained considerable experience and proficiency in his art. As to the classical allusions, Malone nere brought the power of figures to bear, and found there were just twenty-two in the play. He also figured out, that of something more than six thousand lines in the Second and Third Parts, Shakespeare was the sole author of somewhat less than one third, and he took the pains to mark Shakespeare's lines with asterisks for the convenience of all future readers and editors. Knight's Shakespeare has a very learned and elaborate essay, wherein Malone's argument is thoroughly knocked to pieces, showing, among other things, that in the lines thus painfully marked there are no less than eighteen classical allusions and quotations, and those not a whit more apt and natural than Malone', twenty-two. Which seems to finish that part of the argument. Again, touching the Chronicles used, it is to be observed that Holinshe t's were first published in 1577, when Shakespeare was in his fourteenth year, and Hall's about thirty years earlier; and it is quite probable that the Poet became familiar with the elder chronicler in his boyhood, before the other got into circulation Moreover, Holinshed embodies in his own work the greater part of Hall, insomuch that, on most of the subjects handled by the Poet, the same matter, an: in nearly the same words, is found in both chroniclers, thus often making it uncertain to which of them he was immediately indebted. Remains but to add on this point, that Shakespeare's unquestioned dramas furnish numerous instances of acquaintance with Hall, as may be seen from time to time by the notes to this edition. Finally, as to the discrepancies of representation, which Malone cites in proof of his point, these might indeed make somewhat for the purpose, but that similar discrepancies are not unfrequently to be met with in the Poet's undoubted plays. For example, in this very play, Act i. sc. 3, Gloster says to Beaufort," I'll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal's hat;" and the Mayor a little after, "This cardinal's more haughty than the devil:" yet in Act v. sc. 1, Exeter exclaims, "What! is my lord of Winchester install'd, and call'd unto a cardinal's degree?" as if that were the first notice he had of his brother's advancement. Does this infer that the first and fifth acts of this play were written by several hands? Another still more material discrepancy is adduced by Knight. It occurs in The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Act iii. sc. 1, where the following is put into the mouth of Bolingroke : "But which of you was by, (You, cousin Neville, as I may remember,) Though then, God knows, I had no such intent." This refers to what took place in King Richard II., Act v. sc. 1, which was some time after the same Bolingbroke had said to the parliament,-"In God's name I'll ascend the regal throne." The matter is pointed out in a note, Volume V., page 372 of this edition. It is hardly needful to add, that on the principle of Malone's reasoning the two plays in question could not have been by the same author. Several other inaccuracies of this kind are remarked in our notes, and indeed occur too often in these plays to prove any thing but that either the Poet or his characters sometimes made mistakes. Thus it appears that upon examination. Malone's argument e ally comes to nothing. But even if it were at all points sound, still it has not force enough to shake, much less to overthrow, the evidence on the other side. Of this evidence the leading particulars are thus stated by Mr. Collier: "When Heminge and Condell published the folio of 1623, many of Shakespeare's contemporaries, authors, actors, and auditors, were alive; and the player-editors, if they would have been guilty of the dishonesty would hardly have committed the folly, of inserting a play in their |