ANNOTATIONS

UPON

The WINTER's TALE.

THE WINTER'S TALE.] Ar Stationers-Hall, May 22, 1594, Edward White entered "A booke entitled A Wynter Nyght's Pastime.”

In the novel of Dorastus and Fawnia, the king of Sicilia whom Shakspere names

The parts of Antigonus, Paulina, and Autolycus, are of the poet's own invention; but many circumstances of the novel are omitted in the play.

STEEVENS.

None of our author's plays has been more censured for the breach of dramatick rules than The Winter's Tale. In confirmation of what Mr. Steevens has remarked in another place-" that Shakspere was not ignorant of these rules, but disregarded them”—it may be observed, that the laws of the drama are clearly laid down by a writer once universally read and admired, Sir Philip Sydney, who, in his Defence of Poesy, has pointed out the very improprieties which our author has fallen into in this play. After mentioning the defects of the tragedy of Gorboduc, he adds: "But if it be so in Gorboducke, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia on the one side, and Affricke of the other, and so manie other under kingdomes, that the player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.-Now of time they are much more liberal. For ordinarie it is, that two young princes fall in love, after many traverses she is got with childe, delivered of a faire boy: he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is readie to get another childe, and all this in two houres space: which how absurd it is in sence, even sence may imagine."

This play is sneered at by Ben Jonson, in the induction to Bartholomew Fair, 1614:- "If there be

never a servant monster in the fair, who can help it, nor a nest of antiques? He is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries."

By the nest of antiques, the twelve satyrs, who were introduced at the sheep-shearing festival, are alluded MALONE.

to.

The Winter's Tale may be ranked among the historick plays of Shakspere, though not one of his numerous criticks and commentators have discovered the drift of it. It was certainly intended (in compli ment to Queen Elizabeth) as an indirect apology for her mother Anne Boleyn. The address of the poet appears no where to more advantage. The subject was too delicate to be exhibited on the stage without a veil; and it was too recent, and touched the queen too nearly, for, the bard to have ventured so home an allusion on any other ground than compliment. The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes, and his violent conduct in consequence, form a true portrait of Henry the Eighth, who generally made the law the engine of his boisterous passions. Not only the general plan of the story is most applicable, but several passages are so marked, that they touch the real history nearer than the fable. Hermione on her trial says:

-for honour,

""Tis a derivative from me to mine,

“And only that I stand for.”

This seems to be taken from the very letter of Anne Boleyn to the king before her execution, where

she

she pleads for the infant princess his daughter. Mamillius, the young prince, an unnecessary cha racter, dies in his infancy; but it confirms the allusion, as queen Anne, before Elizabeth, bore a stillborn son. But the most striking passage, and which had nothing to do in the tragedy, but as it pictured Elizabeth, is, where Paulina, describing the newborn princess, and her likeness to her father, says: "She has the very trick of his frown." There is one sentence, indeed, so applicable, both to Elizabeth and her father, that I should suspect the poet inserted it after her death. Paulino, speaking of the child, tells the king:

'Tis yours;

"And might we lay the old proverb to your charge,

"So like you, 'tis the worse.".

The Winter Evening's Tale was therefore, in reality, a second part of Henry the Eighth.

WALPOLE.

Sir Thomas Hanmer gave himself much needless concern that Shakspere should consider Bohemia as a maritime country. He would have us read Bythinia: but our author implicitly copied the novel before him. Dr. Grey, indeed, was apt to believe that Dorastus and Faunia might rather be borrowed from the play; but I have met with a copy of it, which was printed in 1588. -Cervantes ridicules these geographical mistakes, when he makes the princess Micomicona land at Ossuna. -Corporal Trim's king of Bohemia "delighted in navigation, and had never a sea-port in

his dominions ;" and my lord Herbert tells us, that De Luines, the prime minister of France, when he was ambassador there, demanded, whether Bohemia was an inland country, or lay 66 upon the sea?"There is a similar mistake in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, relative to that city and Milan. FARMER.

ACT I.

Line 8.OUR entertainment, &c.] Though we cannot give you equal entertainment, yet the consciousness of our good-will shall justify us.

JOHNSON. 27.royally attornied-] Nobly supplied by substitution of embassies, &c.

JOHNSON.

30. -as over a Vast :--] Thus the folio 1623. The folio 1632:-over a Vast sea. I have since found that Hanmer attempted the same correction, though I believe the old reading to be the true one. Vastum is the ancient term for waste uncultivated land. Over a vast, therefore, means at a great and vacant distance from each other, Vast, however, may be used for the sea, in Pericles Prince of Tyre:

"Thou God of this great vast, rebuke the surges."

STEEVENS.

Shaksperc