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* KING HENKY VI. PART I.] The hiftorical transaction contained in this play, take in the compass of above thirty years. I must observe, however, that our author, in the three parts of Henry VI. has not been very precise to the date and difpofition of his facts; but shuffled them, backwards and forwards, out of time. For instance; the lord Talbot is killed at the end of the fourth Act of this play, who in reality did not fall till the 13th of July, 1453: and The Second Part of Henry VI. opens with the marriage of the king, which was folemnized eight years before Talbot's death, in the year 1445. Again, in the Second Part, dame Eleanor Cobham is introduced to infult Queen Margaret; though her penance and banishment for forcery happened three years before that princess came over to England. I could point out many other tranfgreffions against history, as far as the order of time is concerned. Indeed, though there are several master-strokes in these three plays, which incontestibly betray the workmanship of Shakspeare; yet I am almost doubtful, whether they were entirely of his writing. And unless they were wrote by him very early, I should rather imagine them to have been brought to him as a director of the stage; and so have received some finishing beauties at his hand. An accurate observer will eafily fee, the diction of them is more obsolete, and the numbers more mean and profaical, than in the generality of his genuine compositions. THEOBALD.

Having given my opinion very fully relative to these plays at the end of The Third Part of King Henry VI. it is here only necessary to apprize the reader what my hypothefis is, that he may be the better enabled, as he proceeds, to judge concerning its probability. Like many others, I was long struck with the many evident Shakspearianisms in these plays, which appeared to me to carry such decisive weight, that I could scarcely bring myself to examine with attention any of the arguments that have been urged against his being the author of them. I am now furprized, (and my readers perhaps may say the same thing of themselves,) that I should never have adverted to a very striking circumstance which diftinguishes this first part from the other parts of King Henry VI. This circumstance is, that none of these Shaksperian passages are to be found here, though several are scattered through the two other parts. I am therefore decisively of opinion that this play was not written by Shakspeare. The reasons on which that opinion is founded, are ftated at large in the Differtation above referred to. But I would here request the reader to attend particularly to the verfification of this piece, (of which almost every line has a pause at the end,) which is fo different from that of Shakspeare's undoubted plays, and of the greater part of the two fucceeding pieces as altered by him, and fo exactly corresponds with that of the tragedies written by others before and about the time of his first commencing author, that

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this alone might decide the question, without taking into the ac count the numerous classical allufions which are found in this first part. The reader will be enabled to judge how far this argument deserves attention, from the several extracts from those ancient pieces which he will find in the Essay on this subject.

With respect to the second and third parts of King Henry VI. or, as they were originally called, The Contention of the Two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, they stand, in my appreherifion, on a very different ground from that of this first part, or, as I believe it was anciently called, The Play of King Henry VI. The Contention, &c. printed in two parts, in quarto, 1600, was, I conceive, the production of fome playwright who preceded, or was contemporary with Shakspeare; and out of that piece he formed the two plays which are now denominated the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.; as, out of the old plays of King John and The Taming of the Shrew, he formed two other plays with the fame titles. For the reasons on which this opinion is formed, I must again refer to my Effay on this fubject.

This old play of King Henry VI. now before us, or as our author's editors have called it, the first part of King Henry VI. I suppose, to have been written in 1589, or before. See An Attempt to afcertain the Order of Shakespeare's Plays, Vol. II. The difpofition of facts in these three plays, not always correfponding with the dates, which Mr. Theobald mentions, and the want of uniformity and confiftency in the series of events exhibited, may perhaps be in some measure accounted for by the hypothesis now stated. As to our author's having accepted these pieces as a Director of the stage, he had, I fear, no pretenfion to such a fituation at so early a period. MALONE.

The chief argument on which the first paragraph of the foregoing note depends, is not, in my opinion, conclufive. This hiftorical play might have been one of our author's earliest dramatick efforts: and almost every young poet begins his career by imitation. Shakspeare, therefore, till he felt his own strength, perhaps servilely conformed to the style and manner of his predeceffors. Thus, the captive eaglet described by Rowe :

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- a while endures his cage and chains,

"And like a prifoner with the clown remains :
" But when his plumes shoot forth, his pinions swell,
"He quits the ruftick and his homely cell,

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Breaks from his bonds, and in the face of day
Full in the fun's bright beams he foars away."

What further remarks I may offer on this subject, will appear in the form of notes to Mr. Malone's Effay, from which I do not wantonly differ,-though hardily, I confess, as far as my sentiments may feem to militate against those of Dr. Farmer.

STEEVENS.

;

King Henry the Sixth.

Duke of Glofter, Uncle to the King, and Protector. Duke of Bedford, uncle to the King, and Regent of France. Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, great Uncle to the

King.

Henry Beaufort, great Uncle to the King, Bishop of
Winchester, and afterwards Cardinal.
John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset; afterwards, Duke.
Richard Plantagenet, eldest Son of Richard late Earl
of Cambridge; afterwards Duke of York.
Earl of Warwick. Earl of Salisbury. Earl of Suffolk.
Lord Talbot, afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury :
John Talbot, his Son.

Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.
Mortimer's Keeper, and a Lawyer.
Sir John Faftolfe. Sir William Lucy.
Sir William Glansdale. Sir Thomas Gargrave.
Mayor of London. Woodville, Lieutenant of the Tower.
Vernon, of the White Rofe, or York Faction.
Baffet, of the Red Rose, or Lancaster Faction.
Charles, Dauphin, and afterwards King of France.
Reignier, Duke of Anjou, and titular King of Naples.
Duke of Burgundy. Duke of Alençon.
Governor of Paris. Bastard of Orleans.
Master-Gunner of Orleans, and his Son.
General of the French Forces in Bourdeaux.
A French Sergeant. A Porter.

An old Shepherd, Father to Joan la Pucelle.

Margaret, Daughter to Reignier; afterwards married

to King Henry.

Countess of Auvergne.

Joan la Pucelle, commonly called Joan of Arc.

Fiends appearing to La Pucelle, Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and feveral Attendants both on the English and French.

SCENE, partly in England, and partly in France.

FIRST PART OF

KING HENRY VI.

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ACT I. SCENE I.

Westminster Abbey.

Dead march. Corpse of King Henry the Fifth difcovered, lying in ftate; attended on by the Dukes of BEDFORD, GLOSTER, and EXETER; the Earl of WARWICK, the Bishop of Winchester, Heralds, &c.

BED. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

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-earl of Warwick ;) The Earl of Warwick who makes his appearance in the first scene of this play is Richard Beauchamp, who is a character in King Henry V. The Earl who appears in the subsequent part of it, is Richard Nevil, fon to the Earl of Salisbury, who became possessed of the title in right of his wife, Anne, fifter of Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, on the death of Anne his only child in 1449. Richard, the father of this Henry, was appointed governor to the king, on the demise of Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, and died in 1439. There is no reason to think that the author meant to confound the two characters. RITSON.

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Hung be the heavens with black, Alluding to our ancient stage-practice when a tragedy was to be expected. So, in Sid

Brandish your crystal tresses 3 in the sky;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars,
That have consented 4 unto Henry's death!

ney's Arcadia, Book II: "There arose, even with the sunne, a vaile of darke cloudes before his face, which shortly had blacked over all the face of heaven, preparing (as it were) a mournfull stage for a tragedie to be played on." See alfo Mr. Malone's Hiftorical Account of the English Stage. STEEVENS,

3 Brandish your crystal treffès-] Crystal is an epithet repeatedly bestowed on comets by our ancient writers. So, in a Sonnet, by Lord Sterline, 1604 :

"When as those chrystal comets whiles appear." Spenser, in his Fairy Queen, Book I. c. x. applies it to a lady's

face:

"Like funny beams threw from her chrystal face." Again, in an ancient song entitled The falling out of Lovers is the renewing of Love:

"You chrystal planets shine all clear

"And light a lover's way."

"There is also a white comet with filver haires," says Pliny, as tranflated by P. Holland, 1601. STEEVENS.

4 That have consented-) If this expression means no more than that the stars gave a bare confent, or agreed to let King Henry die, it does no great honour to its author. I believe to confent, in this instance, means to act in concert. Concentus, Lat. Thus Erato the muse, applauding the song of Apollo, in Lyly's Midas, 1592, cries out: "O sweet consent!" i. e. sweet union of founds. Again, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, B. IV. c. ii: "Such musick his wife words with time consented."

Again, in his tranflation of Virgil's Culex:

" Chaunted their sundry notes with sweet concent." Again, in Chapman's version of the 24th Book of Homer's Odyffey:

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all the facred nine

"Of deathless muses, paid thee dues divine:
" By varied turns their heavenly voices venting;
"All in deep paffion for thy death confenting.'

Consented, or as it should be spelt, concented, means, have thrown themselves into a malignant configuration, to promote the death of Henry. Spenser, in more than one instance, spells this word as it appears in the text of Shakspeare, as does Ben Jonson, in his Epithalamion on Mr. Weston. The following lines,

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