hand-strokes, where neither sword nor bill was spared; at which encounter the Lord Stanley joined with the earl. The Earl of Oxford in the mean season, fearing lest while his company was fighting they should be compassed and circumvented with the multitude of his enemies, gave commandment in every rank that no man should be so hardy as go above ten foot from the standard; which commandment once known, they knit themselves together, and ceased a little from fighting. The adversaries, suddenly abashed at the matter, and mistrusting some fraud or deceit, began also to pause, and left striking, and not against the wills of many, which had liefer had the king destroyed than saved, and therefore they fought very faintly or stood still. The Earl of Oxford, bringing all his band together on the one part, set on his enemies freshly. Again, the adversaries perceiving that, placed their men slender and thin before, and thick and broad behind, beginning again hardily the battle. While the two forwards thus mortally fought, each intending to vanquish and convince the other, King Richard was admonished by his explorators and espials that the Earl of Richmond, accompanied with a small number of men of arms, was not far off; and as he approached and marched toward him, he perfectly knew his personage by certain demonstrations and tokens which he had learnt and known of other; and being inflamed with ire and vexed with outrageous malice, he put his spurs to his horse and rode out of the side of the range of his battle, leaving the avant-gardes fighting, and like a hungry lion ran with spear in rest toward him. The Earl of Richmond perceived well the king furiously coming toward him, and, by cause the whole hope of his wealth and purpose was to be determined by battle, he gladly proffered to encounter with him body to body and man to man. King Richard set on so sharply at the first brunt that he overthrew the earl's standard and slew Sir William Brandon, his standard-bearer, (which was father to Sir Charles Brandon, by King Henry the Eighth created Duke of Suffolk,) and matched hand to hand with Sir John Cheinye, a man of great force and strength, which would have resisted him, and the said John was by him manfully overthrown, and so he making open passage by dint of sword as he went forward, the Earl of Richmond withstood his violence and kept him at the sword's point without advantage longer than his companions other thought or judged; which, being almost in despair of victory, were suddenly recomforted by Sir William Stanley, which came to succours with iii thousand tall men, at which very instant King Richard's men were driven back and fled, and he himself, manfully fighting in the middle of his enemies, was slain and brought to his death as he worthily had deserved." [Weapons found in Bosworth Field.] 'THE famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth' was first published in the folio collection of Shakspere's works in 1623. The text, taken as a whole, is singularly correct: it contains, no doubt, some few typographical errors, but certainly not so many as those which deform the ordinary reprints. The commentators had, speaking comparatively, meddled very little with this text; but for the want of a careful collation several verbal errors had been constantly trans ferred from one modern edition to another without correction. For example: in the exquisite song in the beginning of the third act, the passage The date of the original production of this drama has been a subject of much discussion. The opinions in favour of its having been produced in the reign of Elizabeth are far more numerous than those which hold it to be a later production. As the question is one of more than usual interest, we shall examine it somewhat in detail. And first, of the external evidence. The Globe, Shakspere's theatre, was burnt down in June, 1613. The cause of this accident, and the circumstances attending it, are minutely related by several witnesses. In Winwood's Memorials' there is a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, dated from London the 12th of July, 1613, which describes the burning,"which fell out by a peal of chambers." This conflagration took place on the previous 29th of June. The play acted on this occasion was one on the story of Henry VIII. Were the "chambers" (small cannon) which produced the misfortune those fired according to the original stage direction in the fourth scene of the first act of Shakspere's King Henry VIII., Drum and trumpet, chambers discharged?" In the Harleian Manuscripts there is a letter from Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, dated "this last of June, 1613," in which the writer says, "No longer since than yesterday, while Bourbage his company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII., and there shooting of certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catch'd." But this does not establish that it was Shakspere's play. The accomplished Sir Henry Wotton, writing to his nephew on the 6th of July, 1613, gives a minute and graphic account of the accident at the Globe :-"Now to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the pressnt with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes being more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within less than an hour, the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks: only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."* Here, then, is a new play described "representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII. ;" and further, the passage of Shakspere's play in which the "chambers" are discharged, being the " entry" of the king to the "mask at the cardinal's house," is the same to the letter. But the title which Sir Henry Wotton gives the new play is ‘All is True.' Gifford thinks this sufficient to show that the play represented at the Globe in June, 1613, was not Shakspere's. But other persons call the play so represented ‘Henry VIII.' Howes, in his continuation of Stow's Chronicle, so calls it. He writes some time after the destruction of the Globe, for he adds to his account of the fire, "and the next spring it was new builded in far fairer manner than before." He speaks of the title of the play as a familiar thing: -"the house being filled with people to behold the play, viz. of Henry the Eighth." When Howes wrote, was the title 'All is Truc' merged in the more obvious title derived from the subject of the play, and following the character of the titles of Shakspere's other historical plays? There can be no difficulty in showing that the Prologue to Henry VIII. especially keeps in view such a title as Sir Henry Wotton has mentioned : "Such as give Their money out of hope they may believe, "Gentle hearers, know, To rank our chosen truth with such a show "To make that only true we now intend." ! Boswell has a very ingenious theory that this Prologue had especial reference to another play on the same historical subject, 'When You See Me You Know Me, or the Famous Chronicle History of King Henry the Eighth, &c., by Samuel Rowley,' in which "the incidents in Henry's reign are thrown together in the most confused manner." But upon the whole, the probability is that the Henry VIII. of Shakspere, and the 'All is True' described by Wotton, are one and the same play. The next question is, then, whether Wotton was correct in describing the Henry VIII. as a new play. Chalmers, who almost stands alone in his opinion, maintains that the fact of a play on the subject of Henry VIII. being termed new in 1613 is decisive as to the date of its original production at that time. Malone, on the contrary, conjectures that the Henry VIII. was written in 1601, and revived in 1613, with a new title and prologue, "having lain by some years unacted." This conjecture rests upon no external evidence. We proceed, therefore, to the other division of the subject the evidence of its date which is furnished by the play itself. In the prophecy of Cranmer in the last scene, the glories of the reign of Elizabeth are carried on to that of her successor, in the following lines: "Nor shall this peace sleep with her: But as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new create another heir, As great in admiration as herself; So shall she leave her blessedness to one, (When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,) Who, from the sacred ashes of her honour, Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was, And so stand fix'd: Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror That were the servants to this chosen infant, Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him; Reliquia Wottonianæ. |