field, and tells him that he is not to revel into duchies, or win provinces with a nimble galliard. The truth is, that the poet's matter failed him in the fifth act, and he was glad to fill it up with whatever he could get; and not even Shakspeare can write well without a proper subject. It is a vain endeavour for the most skilful hand to cultivate barrenness, or to paint upon vacuity. JOHNSON.

Our author, I believe, was led imperceptibly by the old play to give this representation of Henry, and meant probably, in this speech at least, not to oppose the soldier to the lover, but the plain honest Englishman, to the less sincere and more talkative Frenchman.

The subsequent speech, however, "Marry, if you would put me to verses," &c. fully justifies Dr. Johnson's observation. MALONE.

I have no strength in measure,]

STEEVENS.

P. 110, l. 14. i. e. in dancing. P. 110, 1. 22, I cannot look greenly,] i. e. like a young lover, aukwardly. STEEVENS. P. 119, 1. 34. 35. take a fellow of plain aud uncoined constancy; A constancy in the ingot, that hath suffered no alloy, as all coined metal has. WARBURTON.

I believe this explanation to be more ingenious than true; to coin is to stamp and to counterfeit. He uses it in both senses; uncoined constancy signifies real and true constancy, unrefined and unadorned, JOHNSON.

P. 111, 1. 5. A good leg will fall;] i. e. shrink, fall away. STEEVENS.

P. 112,

1. 20. I get thee with scambling,] scrambling. STEEVENS. P. 112, 1. 2. 25.

i. e.

that shall go to Con

stantinople, and take the Turk by the beard?] Shakspeare has here committed an anarchronism. The Turks were not possessed of Constantinople before the year 1453, when Henry V. had been dead thirty-one years. THEOBALD.

P. 113, 1. 6-8. yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage.] Certainly untempting. WARBURTON.

Untempering I believe to have been the poet's word. The sense is, I conceive that you love me, notwithstanding my face has no power to temper, i. e. soften you to my purpose. STEEvens. P. 114, 1. 25. the weak list - i. e. slight

barrier. STEEVENS.

P. 115, 1. 11. my condition is not smooth:] Condition is temper. STEEVENS.

P. 115, 1. 15. and fol. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, &c.] We have here but a mean dialogue for Princes; the merriment is very gross, and the sentiments are very worthless.

JOHNSON.

P. 116, 1. 3. This moral-] That is, the application of this fable. The moral being the application of a fable, our author calls any application a moral. JOHNSON.

P. 116, last but one 1. Praeclarissimus filius.] What, is tres cher, in French, Praeclarissimus in Latin? We should read, praecarissimus. WARBURTON.

"This is exceeding true," says Dr. Farmer, "but how came the blunder? It is a typographical one in Holinshed, which Shakspeare copied; but must indisputably have been corrected, had he been acquainted with the languages."

STEEVENS.

P. 118, 1. 10. Our bending author hath pursu'd the story.] By

bending, our author meant, unequal to the weight of his subject, and bending beneath it; or he may mean, as in Hamlet: "Here stooping to your clemency." STEEVENS.

P. 118, 1. 12. Mangling by starts.] By touching only on select parts. JOHNSON.

P. 118, 1. 16. the world's best garden —] i. e. France. A similar distinction is bestowed, in The Taming of the Shrew, on Lombardy: "The pleasant garden of great Italy.

STEEVENS.

This play has many scenes of high dignity, and many of easy merriment. The character of the King is well supported, except in his courtship, where he has neither the vivacity of Hal, nor the grandeur of Henry. The humour of Pistol is very happily continued: his character has perhaps been the model of all the bullies that have yet appeared on the English stage.

"The lines given to the Chorus have many admirers; but the truth is, that in them a little may be praised, and much must be forgiven; nor can it be easily discovered why the intelligence given by the Chorus is more necessary in this play than in many others where it is omitted. The great. defect of this play is the emptiness and narrowness of the last act, which a very little diligence might have easily avoided. JOHNSON.

NOTES TO THE

FIRST

PART OF

*

KING HENRY VI.

* The historical transactions 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 disposition of his facts; but shuffled them, backwards and forwards, out of time. For instance; the lord Talbot is kill'd at the end of the fourth act of this play, who in reality dit not fall till the 15th of July, 1453: and The Second Part of Henry VI. opens with the marriage of the King, which was solemnized eight years before Talbot's death, in the year 1445. Again, in the second part, dame Elenor Cobham is introduced to insult Queen Margaret; though her penance and banishment for sorcery happened three years before that Princess came over to England. I could point out many other transgressions 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 easily see, the diction of them is more obsolete, and the numbers more mean and pros

aical, 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 hypothesis 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 surprised, (and my readers perhaps may say the same thing of themselves,) that I should never have adverted to a very striking circumstance which distinguishes this first part from the other parts of King Henry VI. This circumstance is, that none of these Shakspearian passages are to be found here, though several are scattered through the two other parts. I am therefore decisively of opinion thất this play was not written by Shakspeare. The reasons on which that opinion is founded, are stated at large in the Dissertation above refered to. But I would here request the reader to attend particularly to the versification of this piece, (of which almost every line has a pause at the end,) which is so different from that of Shakspeare's undoubted plays, and of the greater part of the two succeeding pieces as altered by him, and so exactly corresponds with that of the tragedies writ-ten by others before and about the time of his first commencing author, that this alone might decide the question, without taking into the account the numerous classical allusions which are found in