fourth line, the old text reads "makes the senses rough"; which is stark nonsense. The correction in the text is Hanmer's, and accords very well with the context. Dyce quotes a similar expression from Byron's Island: "How every sense bows to your beauties."

P. 100. Suf. I pr'ythee, lady, wherefore talk you so?

Mar. I cry you mercy; 'tis but quid for quo. -The words I pr'ythee are wanting in the original. As a rhyming couplet was evidently intended, there should of course be no such gap in the line. Capell reads " Nay, hear me, lady"; Collier's second folio, "Lady, pray tell me." Either of these might answer as well as that in the text; which is Dyce's reading.

P. 100. Suf. I'll undertake to make thee Henry's Queen;
And set a precious crown upon thy head,

If thou wilt condescend to

Mar.
Suf.

What?

His love. In the third of

these lines, the original reads "If thou wilt condescend to be my —." But the context clearly shows the words be my to be an interpolation. The reading in the text was proposed by Steevens.

So Dyce.

P. 101. And here, my lord, I will expect thy coming.· The words my lord are wanting in the original. A few lines before, Suffolk has addressed Reignier, "Yes, there is remedy enough, my lord."

P. 101. Upon condition I may quietly

Enjoy mine own, the counties Maine and Anjou. — The old text has "the Country Maine and Anjou." Theobald's correction.

P. 103. Bethink thee on her virtues that surmount,

And natural graces that extinguish art. — So Capell. The old text has Mad instead of And.

ACT V., SCENE 4.

P. 104. First, let me tell you whom you have condemn'd:
Not one begotten of a shepherd swain,

But issued from the progeny of kings. - The old text reads "Not me begotten," &c. An obvious error, hardly worth noting.

P. 105. No, misconceivers! Joan of Arc hath been

A virgin from her tender infancy. — The old text has miscon

ceived instead of misconceivers.

P. 105. Well, well, go to; we'll have no bastards live. and Walker. The old text reads "Well, go to," &c.

P. 107. Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes

The hollow passage of my prison'd voice. - The original has

"my poyson'd voyce." Corrected by Theobald.

P. 108. Must he be, then, a shadow of himself? — The old text has "Must he be then as shadow." Corrected in the fourth folio.

ACT V., SCENE 5.

So Dyce. The orig

P. III. O, yes, my lord, her father is a king. inal lacks O, at the beginning of this line. The second folio completes the metre by printing "Yes, my good lord."

P. III. But marriage is a matter of more worth, &c.—So the second folio. The first omits But.

P. III. And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,

It most of all these reasons bindeth us,

In our opinions she should be preferr'd.—The original lacks

It in the second line. Supplied by Rowe.

P. 112. Will answer hope in issue of a king. Lettsom. The old text has "Will answer our hope."

P. 112. That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come

- So Steevens and

Across the seas to England, &c.— So Walker. The old text

reads "To cross the seas."

KING HENRY VI.

PART SECOND.

NEVER

TEVER printed that we know of, with its present title or in its present form, till in the folio of 1623. The folio copy, however, is but an alteration and enlargement of an earlier form, which was published in quarto in 1594, and entitled The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster. No author's name is there given, nor is it stated by what company the play had been performed. And the facts touching The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth are so nearly the same, that it seems best to speak of the two together. This, also, as given in the folio, is but an alteration and improvement of an earlier form, which was issued in 1595, in quarto, and entitled The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York. In this case, however, the name or title of the company is given: "As it was sundry times acted by the Right-Honourable the Earl of Pembroke's Servants." Both pieces were issued again in 1600, the text, the titles, and the publisher being all the same as in the former. A third edition of both plays was put forth by another publisher in 1619, in the title-page of which "William Shakespeare "is printed as the name of the author. It is not to be supposed that either the withholding of the author's name in the first two issues, or the giving of it in the third, proves any thing as to the real authorship one way or the other; for, on the one hand, several of Shakespeare's plays were first issued without his name, and, on the other hand, his name was repeatedly given in the case of plays that he had no hand in writing.

For convenience of thought and language, I shall henceforth designate The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy as the quarto editions of The Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth. For, in these plays as given in the folio, with a few trifling exceptions the entire plan, arrangement, concep

tion, character, and more than half the language word for word, are all the same as in the corresponding earlier editions. Mr. Grant White, in his Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, has elaborated the theme with great minuteness and care; and his account of the matter foots up as follows: The Second Part contains 3057 lines, of which 1479 are adopted or altered from the quarto, thus leaving 1578 lines as original in the folio; while the Third Part has 2879 lines, of which 1931 are adopted or altered from the quarto ; so that here we have but 948 new lines in the folio. Or, taking the two Parts together, we have in all 5936 lines, of which only 2526 are new in the folio, thus leaving 3410, or nearly two thirds of the whole, as adopted or altered from the quartos. And of the alterations a large part, certainly not less than half, are very slight, often not going beyond a change of epithet or a verbal transposition, and nowise effecting the sense. In many cases, moreover, the folio presents a judicious elaboration and expansion of old thoughts, with little or no addition of new ones. In the Second Part, again, the alterations and additions are in the main diffused pretty equally through the whole play; while in the Third Part the additions come much more in large masses, some entire scenes being mostly new in the folio, and others nearly the same as in the quarto. All together, therefore, it may be safely affirmed, that of the two plays the whole conception and more than half the execution are precisely the same in the quarto and folio copies.

This brings me to the question of the authorship of the two plays as printed in 1594 and 1595. And here, again, as in case of the First Part, we have a wide diversity of opinions. Stated in the briefest terms, one theory is, that Shakespeare had no hand at all in the original composition; another, that he was the sole author of the plays in their original form; while a third finds them to be the joint workmanship of Shakespeare, Robert Greene, and Christopher Marlowe. These theories have each their advocates, who support them with a formidable array of arguments; Malone being the principle one for the first, Knight for the second, and Grant White for the third. The arguments, even in the briefest possible statement of them, would stretch far beyond my present limits; so that I can do little more than

set forth the conclusion I have reached upon the whole matter. As I have no fourth theory to offer, nor any ambition to excogitate one, I am content to tie up substantially with Mr. White: That the two plays were originally written conjointly by Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, the latter doing much the larger portion; that afterwards, for reasons unknown to us, Shakespeare rewrote them, throwing out most of what the other two had contributed, and replacing it with his own matter, and otherwise improving them; that this joint authorship was the reason of no author's name being given in the first two editions; and that Greene's share in them, perhaps Marlowe's also, sufficiently accounts for the use made of them, or of one of them, by “the Earl of Pembroke's Servants," a theatrical company with which Shakespeare is not known or believed to have had any connection.

Mr. White, I think, clearly and conclusively identifies several passages, one of them extending to twenty consecutive lines, in the quarto form of these plays, as the workmanship of Greene; which passages are entirely excluded from the folio copy. This identification proceeds chiefly by means of a certain trick or mannerism, perhaps I should say vulgarism, of style, as in the line, “And charm the fiends for to obey your wills," which occurs repeatedly in the quartos, but not once in the folio; and instances of which abound in Greene's acknowledged works. What with this, and what with two or three other little idioms of manner, Mr. White, it seems to me, leaves no room for doubt that Greene had a hand in the original writing of the plays. He also urges, and, I think, proves, that the quarto form has a great many passages, some of them including from fifty to a hundred successive lines, which, while confessedly far beyond the reach of Greene, are at the same time so different, in style, imagery, and conception, from all that Marlowe is known to have produced before that time, that no one, with the matter fairly in his eye, could think of ascribing them to him. I say before that time, because, as we shall presently see, the original form of the plays now in hand must have been in being before 1592; whereas Marlowe's Edward the Second, which is much the best of his plays, was in all probability of later production, nothing being