Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

But Margaret, that is daughter to a king?
Her peerless feature, joined with her birth,
Approves her fit for none, but for a king;
Her valiant courage, and undaunted spirit,
(More than in women commonly is seen,)
Will answer our hope in issue of a king;
For Henry, son unto a conqueror,
Is likely to beget more conquerors,
If with a lady of so high resolve,

As is fair Margaret, he be linked in love.

Then yield, my lords; and here conclude with me,
That Margaret shall be queen, and none but she.

K. Hen. Whether it be through force of your report,

My noble lord of Suffolk, or for that
My tender youth was never yet attaint
With any passion of inflaming love,
I cannot tell; but this I am assured,
I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,
Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,
As I am sick with working of my thoughts.

Take, therefore, shipping; post, my lord, to France;
Agree to any covenants; and procure

That lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come

To cross the seas to England, and be crowned
King Henry's faithful and anointed queen.
For your expenses and sufficient charge,
Among the people gather up a tenth.
Be gone, I say; for, till you do return,
I rest perplexed with a thousand cares.-
And you, good uncle, banish all offence;
If you do censure1 me by what you were,
Not what you are, I know it will excuse
This sudden execution of my will.
And so conduct me, where from company,
I may revolve and ruminate my grief."

1 To censure is here simply to judge.

[Exit.

2 Grief, in this line, stands for pain, uneasiness; in the next following, especially for sorrow.

Glo. Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.

[Exeunt GLOSTER and EXETER. Suff. Thus Suffolk hath prevailed; and thus he goes, As did the youthful Paris once to Greece; With hope to find the like event in love, But prosper better than the Trojan did. Margaret shall now be queen, and rule the king; But I will rule both her, the king, and realm.

[Exit.

320

Or this play there is no copy earlier than that of the folio in 1623, though the two succeeding parts are extant in two editions in quarto. That the second and third parts were published without the first, may be admitted as no weak proof that the copies were surreptitiously obtained, and that the printers of that time gave the public those plays, not such as the author designed, but such as they could get them. That this play was written before the two others is indubitably collected from the series of events; that it was written and played before Henry the Fifth is apparent, because in the epilogue there is mention made of this play, and not of the other parts:

"Henry the Sixth in swaddling bands crowned king;
Whose state so many had the managing,

That they lost France, and made his England bleed;
Which oft our stage hath shown."

France is lost in this play. The two following contain, as the old title imports, the contention of the houses of York and Lancaster.

The Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. were printed in 1600. When Henry V. was written, we know not; but it was printed likewise in 1600, and therefore before the publication of the first and second parts. The First Part of Henry VI. had been often shown on the stage, and would certainly have appeared in its place, had the author been the publisher. JOHNSON.

THAT the second and third parts, as they are now called, were printed without the first, is a proof, in my apprehension, that they were not written by the same author; and the title of The Contention of the Houses of York and Lancaster, being affixed to the two pieces which were printed in quarto, is a proof that they were a distinct work, commencing where the other ended, but not written at the same time; and that this play was never known by the title of The First Part of King Henry VI. till Heminge and Condell gave it that name in their volume, to distinguish it from the two subsequent plays; which, being altered by Shakspeare, assumed the new titles of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. that they might not be confounded with the original pieces on which they were formed. The first part was originally called The Historical Play of King Henry VI.

MALONE.

SECOND PART OF

KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THIS and the Third Part of King Henry VI. contain that troublesome period of this prince's reign, which took in the whole contention between the houses of York and Lancaster; and under that title were these two plays first acted and published. The present play opens with king Henry's marriage, which was in the twenty-third year of his reign [A. D. 1445], and closes with the first battle fought at St. Albans, and won by the York faction, in the thirty-third year of his reign [A. D. 1455]; so that it comprises the history and transactions of ten years.

The Contention of the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster was published in quarto; the first part in 1594; the second, or True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, in 1595; and both were reprinted in 1600. In a dissertation annexed to these plays, Mr. Malone has endeavored to establish the fact, that these two dramas were not originally written by Shakspeare, but by some preceding author or authors before the year 1590; and that upon them Shakspeare formed this and the following drama, altering, retrenching, or amplifying, as he thought proper. We will endeavor to give a brief abstract of the principal arguments:-The entry on the Stationers' books, in 1594, does not mention the name of Shakspeare; nor are the plays printed with his name in the early editions; but, after the Poet's death, an edition was printed by one Pavier without date, but really in 1619, with the name of Shakspeare on the title-page. This is shown to be a common fraudulent practice of the booksellers of that period. When Pavier republished The Contention of the Two Houses, &c. in 1619, he omitted the words "as it was acted by the earl of Pembrooke his servantes," which appeared on the original title-page,just as, on the republication of the old play of King John, in two parts, in 1611, the words "as it was acted in the honorable city of London" were omitted; because the omitted words in both cases marked the respective pieces not to be the production of Shakspeare. And as, in King John, the letters W. Sh. were added, in 1611, to deceive the purchaser; so, in the republication of The whole Contention, &c., Pavier, having dismissed the words above-mentioned, inserted these "Newly corrected and enlarged by William Shakspere;" knowing that these pieces had been made the groundwork of two other plays; that they had in fact been corrected and enlarged (though not in his copy, which was a mere reprint from the edition of 1600), and exhibited under the titles of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.; and hoping that this new edition of the original plays would pass for those altered and augmented by Shakspeare, which were then unpublished.

[blocks in formation]

A passage from Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, adduced by Mr. Tyrwhitt, first suggested, and strongly supports, Malone's hypothesis. The writer, Robert Greene, is supposed to address himself to his poetical friend, George Peele, in these words:-"Yes, trust them not [alluding to the players], for there is an upstart crowe beautified with our feathers, that, with his tygre's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes hee is well able to bombaste out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Joannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a country."-"O tyger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!" is a line in the old quarto play entitled The First Part of the Contention, &c. There seems to be no doubt that the allusion is to Shakspeare; that the old plays may have been the production of Greene, Peele, and Marlowe, or some of them; and that Greene could not conceal his mortification, at the fame of himself and his associates, old and established playwrights, being eclipsed by a new, upstart writer (for so he calls the Poet), who had then perhaps first attracted the notice of the public by exhibiting two plays formed upon old dramas written by them, considerably enlarged and improved. The very term that Greene uses, "to bombaste out a blank verse," exactly corresponds with what has been now suggested. This new poet, says he, knows as well as any man how to amplify and swell out a blank verse.

Shakspeare did for the old plays, what Berni had before done to the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo. He wrote new beginnings to the acts; he new versified, he new modeled, he transposed many of the parts; and greatly amplified and improved the whole. Many lines, however, and whole speeches, which he thought sufficiently polished, he accepted, and introduced, without any, or very slight, alterations.

Malone adopted the following expedient to mark these alterations and adoptions, which has been followed in the present edition :-All those lines which the Poet adopted without any alteration, are printed in the usual manner; those speeches which he altered or expanded, are distinguished by inverted commas; and to all lines entirely composed by himself asterisks are prefixed.

The internal evidences upon which Malone relies, to establish his position are, The variations between the old plays in quarto, and the corresponding pieces in the folio edition of Shakspeare's dramatic works, which are of so peculiar a nature as to mark two distinct hands. Some circumstances are mentioned in the old quarto plays, of which there is not the least trace in the folio; and many minute variations occur, that prove the pieces in the quarto to have been original and distinct compositions. No copyist or short-hand writer would invent circumstances totally different from those which appear in Shakspeare's new-modeled draughts, as exhibited in the first folio; or insert whole speeches, of which scarcely a trace is found in that edition. In some places, a speech in one, of these quartos consists of ten or twelve lines; in Shakspeare's folio, the same speech consists perhaps of only half the number. A copyist by the ear, or an unskilful short-hand writer, might mutilate and exhibit a poet's thoughts or expressions imperfectly; but he would not dilate and amplify them, or introduce totally new matter.

Malone then exhibits a sufficient number of instances to prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, his position: so that (as he observes) we are compelled to admit, either that Shakspeare wrote two sets of plays on the story which forms his Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI., hasty sketches, and entirely distinct and more finished performances; or else we must acknowledge that he formed his pieces on a foundation laid by another writer or writers, that is, upon the two parts of The Contention of the Two Houses of York, &c. It is a striking circumstance, that almost all the passages in the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. which

« AnteriorContinuar »