in 'Notes and Queries,' vol. ii. p. 198, August 24, 1850; and by Mr Fleay, in 'New Shaks. Soc. Transactions,' 1874, Append., p. 23. It may be looked on as certain." He further mentions that, in addition to Professor Dowden [who speaks of it as "conclusive," Primer,' p. 153], it is supported by Mr Browning and Professor Ingram; and that the application of other tests, chiefly metrical, made by himself and others, confirms the result. See also Dowden's note, p. 413, sq. For my own part, I cannot help suspecting that the theory has been carried too far; though I candidly admit that, as against solid investigation, and authorities such as those which have been named, my mere suspicion (for it amounts to little more) is entitled to no weight. I am glad, however, to find that Mr Hudson, whose judgment as a Shakspearian critic is, in my opinion, inferior to none, demurs no less than I do to the sweeping character of the Spedding conclusions. "This argument," he writes, "pushed to the upshot, would consign many whole scenes, and indeed full half the play, to Fletcher. In particular, it would take away from Shakspeare the whole scene of Buckingham's execution, ii. 1; also the whole scene of Katharine, Wolsey, and Campeius, iii. 1; also the whole scene of Katharine's death, iv. 2; and, finally, the whole of Cranmer's magnificent prediction, near the close. Unfortunately, however, for the argument, it seems to kill itself by proving too much. For I do not well see how, by this rule, we can except the superb dialogue of Wolsey and Cromwell, in iii. 2; though I believe this whole scene is left to Shakspeare by those who would assign all the other portions specified to Fletcher. [This is a mistake. Only the former part of the scene, up to the king's exit, 250, is given to Shakspeare; the remainder, more than one-half, 250-533, is supposed to be Fletcher's]. If, for instance, Wolsey's soliloquy

1 Dr Abbott ('Gramm.,' § 455) presses the matter still further, and pronounces the whole play to be not Shakspeare's, because, unlike any other play written by him, it contains constant exceptions to the rule that "the extra syllable [at the end of a line] is very rarely a monosyllable."

2 Mr Courtenay, a far inferior judge upon such a point, may also be reckoned on the same side. Recognising the fact that in Henry VIII, there is a distinct and peculiar versification, which makes "a speech in this play to sound differently from most others of Shakspeare," he adds, "how he came thus to vary his measure, I cannot guess; but that it is his measure I see not the slightest reason for doubting."-Vol. ii. p. 172. In regard to the question of authorship, it is unfortunate that so much difference of opinion should exist respecting the date of the play. See above, vol. i. p. xlvi, note.

beginning, 'Farewell, a long farewell,' &c., and his last speech to Cromwell, may pass as Shakspeare's, it does not appear, so far at least as the argument in question goes, why those other portions may not also be left to him. That soliloquy and that speech have the same, or nearly the same, excess of amphibrachic [or 'double'] endings; yet, to my sense, there is nothing in the play more like Shakspeare, or less like Fletcher, in all other respects. Nor, indeed, do I find the scenes [the portions of sc. 2 in the third Act] in question relishing particularly of Fletcher, save in the one point of the forenamed excess. The truth seems to be, that Shakspeare's verse became less and less studious of iambic ending as he advanced in life; the comparative frequency of lines ending with amphibrachs [] being one of the most special traits of his later style. Nevertheless, I am far from disowning altogether Fletcher's partnership in the play, some portions of which, it seems to me, relish decidedly of his hand in certain other characteristics, such as the hollow affected piquancy, and falsetto spiritedness, in scenes 3 and 4 of the first Act, and the forced feebleness of wit in the last scene but one [v. 3]. Nor should I scruple at all to give up the scene of the coronation, iv. 1. Certainly, if these, and perhaps a few other passages, were written by Shakspeare, I should say his hand must have lapsed from its cunning at the time."-Vol. ii. p. 176, sq. So far Mr Hudson; and now-since the foregoing extract was madethe appearance of Mr Halliwell-Phillipps's 'Outlines,' second edition, 1882, shows conclusively that he at least is not prepared to surrender his belief that this play, as a whole," is the genuine work of Shakspeare, notwithstanding all the evidence which the ignes fatui of so-called "metrical tests may show to the contrary. With regard to these, he remarks: "During the last five or six years of the poet's career, the immoderate use of lines with the hypermetrical syllable became fashionable with our dramatists; and . . . it appears certain that, in his later years, he suffered himself to be influenced by this disagreeable innovation."-P. 164. See also p. 199, and p. 304, where he describes himself as "literally petrified by the announcement that Wolsey's celebrated 'Farewell,' &c., &c., is henceforth to be considered the composition of some other author."

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In regard to the sources from which the historical matter of the play is drawn, Shakspeare's usual authority now becomes a contemporary at least the narrative upon which he relies is derived immediately from contemporary writings. Holinshed did not live

in the reign of Henry VIII.; but Hall was certainly of years of discretion-a barrister and (like Fabyan) under-sheriff, if not a member of Parliament. And the work of Polydore Virgil, whom Holinshed also quotes, was written and published in the same period [in 1533].”—COURTENAY, vol. ii. p. 119. The history, so far as relates to the fall of Wolsey and divorce of Katharine, was derived originally from the 'Life of Wolsey,' by George Cavendish, gentleman usher to the cardinal, and himself an eyewitness of much that he describes. See Wordsworth's Ecc. Biog.,' vol. i. pp. 461-646. The book was known only from MSS. in Shakspeare's time; but so much of it as fell within the plot of the drama had been embodied in the Chronicles of Holinshed and Stowe. Of the fifth Act, the incidents, and, in many cases, the very words, are taken from the 'Acts and Monuments' of Foxe the martyrologist,-whose work, first published in 1563, had become very popular in our poet's time. See Hudson, vol. ii. p. 178.

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2. GENERAL MERITS OF THE PLAY. "That this is a play of Shakspeare's latest style is evident; . . . the outward marks show it no less than the inward spirit. There is weakness in many parts ; but it is abundantly clear that these weak passages, and the disappointing effect of the whole play, are due to Fletcher, and not to Shakspeare."-FURNIVALL, Introd., p. xciii. Mr Spedding, there quoted, observes: "The effect of this play, as a whole, is weak and disappointing. The truth is, that the interest, instead of rising towards the end, falls away utterly, and leaves us in the last Act among persons whom we scarcely know [i.e., I conclude, from the play itself], and events for which we do not care." [?] This is an exaggeration of Johnson's criticism, which, though itself an exaggeration, is nearer to the truth. "The meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Katharine have furnished some scenes which may be justly numbered among the greatest efforts of tragedy. But the genius of Shakspeare comes in and goes out with Katharine. Every other part may be easily conceived and easily written." Mr Hudson's judgment, though not dissimilar, is less confined. "I think the play, as a whole, may be not unfitly remarked as showing the poet's genius in a course of alternate fadings and revivings, or as flickering through turns of faintness and of splendour.”—Vol. ii. p. 177.

1 A note says: "Holinshed's date is not known; but his work was published in 1577, the 19th of Elizabeth." According to Bishop Tanner, he took his M. A. at Cambridge in 1544, three years before King Henry's death. It is certainly, therefore, a mistake that "he did not live in Henry's reign."

Coleridge and other critics have noticed that Henry VIII. is a sort of historical masque or show-play. It opens with a description of the gorgeous meeting of King Henry and the French monarch, Francis I.; it includes the coronation of Anne Boleyn; and it ends with the procession at the christening of Elizabeth. "The deep interest of the play, however," as Professor Reed observes, p. 190, "is not in its scenes of pomp and display, but in the silence and stillness of the tragic misery that it tells of." Gervinus complains of "the lack of dramatic unity, and of an ethical focus in the play" (p. 827); and he had already illustrated the remark, with his usual insight, at p. 825, sq. Mr Hudson strikes the same key, and perhaps with still greater force: "The characterisation of this drama, at least in all the leading persons, is thoroughly Shakspearian. But I cannot think the piece a happy instance of the poet's skill in dramatic architecture. The several parts, though noble in themselves, and though not wanting in historical connection, seem to have no clear principle of dramatic concert and unity, no right artistic centre: they rather give the impression of having been put together arbitrarily, and not under any organic law. The various threads of interest do not pull together, nor show any clear intelligence of each other. The matter is well stated by Gervinus: The interest first clings to Buckingham and his designs against Wolsey; but with the second Act he leaves the stage; then Wolsey draws the attention increasingly, and he too disappears in the third Act; meanwhile our sympathies are drawn more and more to Katharine, who also leaves the stage in the fourth Act; then, after being thus shattered through four Acts by circumstances of a tragic character, we have the fifth Act closing with a merry festivity, for which we are not prepared, and crowning the king's base passion with victory, in which we take no warm interest.' The interest, however, of the several portions is deep and genuine while it lasts. We are carried through a series of sudden and most affecting reverses. One after another the mighty are broken, and the lofty laid low; their prosperity being strained to a high pitch, as if on purpose to deepen their plunge, just when they have reached the summit. . . . First, we have Buckingham, in the full-blown pride of rank and talents. . . . Next, we have the patient and saintly Katharine, sitting in state with the king, all that she could ask being granted ere she asks it. . . . Then we have the over-great Cardinal, who, in his plenitude of inward forces, has cut his way, and carried himself upward over whatever offered to stop him. . . . In all these cases, inasmuch as the persons have their strength inherent, and not ad

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ventitious, therefore they carry it with them in their reverses: or rather, in seeming to lose it, they augment it. For it is then seen, as it could not be before, that the greatness that was in their circumstances served to obscure that which was in themselves."-Vol. ii. pp. 183-185.

3. CHARACTERS TO BE CHIEFLY STUDIED:—

(a) KING HENRY VIII.-The character of Henry VIII. is too well known to require illustration here. At the end of this play he was only forty-two, and had still fourteen years more to live; so that, happily, Shakspeare was spared the necessity of exhibiting his portrait in its full size. He has still to marry four more wives ; and after Buckingham and Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, Thomas Cromwell (Earl of Essex), and the Earl of Surrey, have still to receive at his hands treatment more or less similar, and to undergo a similar fate. The reader who desires further remarks upon the character of Henry may find them in Gervinus, pp. 822-824, and in Hudson, vol. ii. p. 182, and p. 191, sq. In the latter passage especially, full justice is done to the tact with which "the poet keeps the worst parts of the king's character mainly in the background, veiling them withal so adroitly and so transparently as to suggest them to all who are willing to see them; in other words, he does not directly expose or affirm his moral hatefulness, but places it silently in facts, and so makes him characterise himself in a way to be felt; nay, he even makes the other persons speak good things of him, but at the same time, lets him refute and reprove their words by his deeds."

The following three characters all rise through humiliation :— (b) DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.-" A too self-flattering sense of his strength and importance has made him insolent and presumptuous; and while he is exultingly spreading snares for the Cardinal, he is himself caught and crushed with the strong toils of that master-hand."-HUDSON, vol. ii. p. 184. "He erred rather from foolish indiscretion than from actual criminal intentions. When he is fallen, he collects himself after his sentence: he dies composed and noble, forgiving, without hatred, already half in heaven,' completely devoid of all pride of rank in that moment which so impressively calls to remembrance the vanity of such distinctions."-GERVINUS, p. 820.

(c) CARDINAL WOLSEY.-"The towering greatness of Wolsey in the state is because he really leads the age in the faculties and resources of solid statesmanship. But his rapid growth of power and honour not only turns his own head, but provokes the hatred