INTRODUCTION.

The following plays are interesting not only in themselves, but inasmuch as they run parallel with certain parts of Shakespeare's historical series. We have either seen or heard of no fewer than five editions of them; but they are all now so scarce, that the modern reader may be said to have here, for the first time, an opportunity of comparing the similar scenes of the Duke of Glocester's hypocrisy and cruelty, in the two writers. He will doubtless come to the conclusion of the late Charles Lamb, that Heywood was but a prose Shakespeare; but he will remember that these plays are meant only to be "histories," not comedies or tragedies; that plot and poetry are not essential to them; and he will close even this specimen with a conviction that Thomas Heywood was a very practised and clever playwright, as (to be sure) the writer or assistant in two hundred and twenty plays, and an actor, to boot, could scarcely fail of being.

Perhaps Shakespeare would not have left untouched so pathetic a tragedy as that of Jane Shore, if he had

not seen it so well handled by Heywood. Steevens has this note on "Richard the Third:"—

"In the books of the Stationers' Company, June 19, 1594, Thomas Creede made the following entry: An enterlude intitled the tragedie of Richard the Third, wherein is shown the deathe of Edward the Fourthe, with the smotheringe of the two princes in the Tower, with the lamentable end of Shore's wife, and the contention [conjunction] of the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke.' This could not have been the work of Shakespeare, unless he afterwards dismissed the death of Jane Shore, as an unnecessary incident, when he revised the play."

In the "True Tragedy of Richard the Third," which was acted before Shakespeare's play of that title, and which is reprinted (though incompletely) in Boswell's edition of the great poet, there are a few poor scenes in which Jane Shore appears, but her end or death is not exhibited.

King Edward the Fourth, too, would have made a character worthy of Shakespeare's pen; and though our great poet would doubtless have surpassed Heywood in the tragedy of the Shores, yet he could not well have excelled him in the manner in which he has dramatized the old ballad of the King and the Tanner of Tamworth. So dramatically, indeed, is this done, that the late Mr. Waldron made a two-act piece of it, under the title of "The King in the Country," and it was acted at Richmond and Windsor, in 1788, after the return of the very different King George the Third from Cheltenham. And yet perhaps Shakespeare saw the difficulty and

a Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. 148, and Collier's Shakespeare, vol. v. p. 343.

delicacy of representing on the stage a starved woman —a situation, however pathetic in reality, which even the taste of Rowe, more refined than that of Heywood, was not able to make probable to the theatrical spectator. Rowe professed, in his questionable tragedy of "Jane Shore," to imitate Shakespeare; but to imitate Shakespeare is more easily talked of than done: he has only borrowed a scene from Shakespeare's "Richard the Third," and has been much more indebted to Heywood's "Edward the Fourth."

A writer in the "Retrospective Review "b says, that this play is "a long and tedious business," but praises the scenes and characters of the Shores. These I am inclined to think equal in execution (as they resemble them in story) with those of the same author's "Woman kill'd with Kindness," which the Retrospective Reviewer extols so highly. He adds, that "the author has made

Richard III.' a very vulgar villain." Some of his "asides" are certainly gross; but they are scarcely worse than the following, in the third part of "King Henry the Sixth," whoever wrote it :—

"Glos. And that I love the tree from whence thou sprang'st, Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.

(Aside.) To say the truth, as Judas kissed his Master,

And cried All hail! whenas he meant All harm!"

If the reader will refer to Dr. Percy's Reliques and Ritson's "Antient Popular Poetry," he will see how Heywood has improved upon the old ballads of the King b Vol. xi. p. 126.

This is one word, and had better be so printed: it means little more than when, just as whereas is often used for where, and vice versá.

and the Barker, or Tanner, of Tamworth; and this episode is not unartistically woven into the story of the first part of our plays. Indeed, it comes more naturally in, than the tale of the Shores, which goes through both parts.

I have only to add that the Shakespeare Society is indebted to the constant kindness of Lord Francis Egerton for this reprint, from a copy supposed to be unique, of the earliest and (as is generally the case) the best edition of these plays. It is in black letter, and dated 1600. There are two other black letter editions, without dates, but certainly later than this, because the word "God" is frequently changed in them into " Cock," in evasion of the statute of the 3 Jac. I., which had passed since 1600. And this may account for the absence of dates to these editions, which may have been intended to render a breach of the act of parliament more difficult of proof. We are no defenders of any violation of the third commandment; but we confess that the substituted word appears to us more profane than the original. Mr. Collier dates these two gothicletter copies 1605 and 1613; and to him I am indebted for the collation of the edition of 1626 with one of them, and with that of 1619. These black letters appear to have proceeded from a different font of types from that of 1600, but the title-pages are wanting in our copies. The editions of 1619 and 1626 are in Roman letter, and by the same printer with that of 1600, Humfrey Lownes, and the last is in the title-page called "the fourth impression;" but we thus make it the fifth. At any rate, the Biographia Dramatica is wrong in supplying

the want of a date, to the black letter edition it cites, with "1599," and Langbaine is more correct in saying "16—." The following entry in the Biog. Dram, may be accurate, but there was also a play called "Jane Shore," by Chettle and Day, acted at the Rose Theatre in 1602:—

"231. The Life and Death of Master Shore and Jane Shore his wife, as it was lately acted by the Earle of Derbie his servants. Entered on the Stationers' book, Aug. 28, 1599. This play is mentioned in the Knight of the Burning Pestle,' and appears to be the second part of Heywood's Edward the Fourth.'"

The fullest account of Thomas Heywood is in the last edition of Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. vii. p. 217; and the latest notices of the author will be found in the respective introductions to his "Apology for Actors," reprinted by this Society, and to his "Marriage Triumph," by the Percy Society.