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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:

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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, bore a still-born son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy, but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the new-born 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;

'Tis yours;

"And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,
"So like you, 'tis the worse."-

The Winter's Tale was therefore in reality a second part of Henry the Eighth. WALPOLE.

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Another Sicilian lord.

ROGERO, a Sicilian gentleman.

An Attendant on the young prince Mamillius.
Officers of a Court of Judicature.

POLIXENES, king of Bohemia.

FLORIZEL, his son.

ARCHIDAMUS, a Bohemian lord.
A Mariner.

Gaoler.

An old Shepherd, reputed father of Perdita.
Clown, his son.

Servant to the old shepherd.

AUTOLYCUS, a rogue.
TIME, as chorus.

HERMIONE, queen to Leontes.

PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione.
PAULINA, wife to Antigonus.

EMILIA, a lady,

Two other ladies, attending the queen.

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Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; Satyrs for a dance; Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Guards, &c.

SCENE-Sometimes in Sicilia; sometimes in Bohemia.

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