Be fad, as we would make ye: Think, ye fee
The very perfons of our noble' ftory,5
As they were living; think, you fee them great,
And follow'd with the general throng, and fweat,
Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, fee
How foon this mightiness meets mifery !
And, if you can be merry then, I'll fay,
A man may weep upon his wedding day.

S Think,

ye fee

The very perfons of our noble Story,] Why the rhyme fhould have been interrupted here, when it was fo eafily to be supplied, I cannot conceive. It can only be accounted for from the negligence of the prefs, or the tranfcribers; and therefore I have made no fcruple to replace it thus:

Think, before ye. THEOBALD.

This is fpecious, but the laxity of the verfification in this prologue, and in the following epilogue, makes it not necessary. JOHNSON.

Mr. Heath would read:

of our history. STEEVENS.

The word ftory was not intended to make a double, but merely a fingle rhyme, though, it must be acknowledged, a very bad one, the laft fyllable, ry, correfponding in found with fee. I thought Theobald right, till I observed a couplet of the fame kind in the epilogue:

"For this play at this time is only in

"The merciful conftruction of good women."

In order to preserve the rhyme, the accent must be laid on the daft fyllable of the words women and ftory.

A rhyme of the fame kind occurs in The Knight of the Burning Peftle, where Mafter Humphrey says:

"Till both of us arrive, at her request,

"Some ten miles off in the wild Waltham forest."

M. MASON.

King Henry the Eighth.

Cardinal Wolfey. Cardinal Campeius.
Capucius, Ambaffador from the Emperor, Charles V.
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Duke of Norfolk. Duke of Buckingham.
Duke of Suffolk. Earl of Surrey.
Lord Chamberlain. Lord Chancellor.
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

Bishop of Lincoln. Lord Abergavenny. Lord Sands.
Sir Henry Guildford. Sir Thomas Lovell.
Sir Anthony Denny. Sir Nicholas Vaux.
Secretaries to Wolfey.

Cromwell, Servant to Wolfey.

Griffith, Gentleman-Usher to Queen Katharine.
Three other Gentlemen.

Doctor Butts, Phyfician to the King.
Garter, King at Arms.

Surveyor to the Duke of Buckingham.
Brandon, and a Sergeant at Arms.

Door-keeper of the Council-Chamber. Porter, and

his Man. Page to Gardiner. A Crier.

Queen Katharine, Wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced.

Anne Bullen, her Maid of Honour, afterwards Queen.

An old Lady, Friend to Anne Bullen.
Patience, Woman to Queen Katharine.

Several Lords and Ladies in the Dumb Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Spirits, which appear to her; Scribes, Officers, Guards, and other Attendants.

SCENE, chiefly in London and Weftminster; once, at Kimbolton.

KING HENRY VIII.

ACT I. SCENE I.

London. An Ante-chamber in the Palace.

Enter the Duke of NORFOLK, at one Door; at the other, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM, and the Lord ABERGAVENNY."

BUCK. Good morrow, and well met. How have you done,

Since last we faw in France?

NOR. I thank your grace: Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer2 Of what I faw there.

BUCK.
An untimely ague
Stay'd me a prifoner in my chamber, when
Thofe funs of glory,3 thofe two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Arde.

I Lord Abergavenny] George Nevill, who married Mary, daughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. REED. —a fresh admirer-] An admirer untired; an admirer ftill feeling the impreflion as if it were hourly renewed.

2

JOHNSON.

3 Thofe funs of glory,] That is, thofe glorious funs. The editor of the third folio plaufibly enough reads-Those fons of glory; and indeed as in old English books the two words are used indiscriminately, the luminary being often spelt fon, it is

NOR.

'Twixt Guynes and Arde: 4 I was then present, saw them falute on horseback; Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung In their embracement, as they grew together;5 Which had they, what four thron'd ones could have weigh'd

Such a compounded one?

BUCK.

I was my chamber's prisoner.

NOR. Then you loft The view of earthly glory: Men might say, Till this time, pomp was fingle; but now married To one above itself. Each following day

All the whole time

fometimes difficult to determine which is meant; fun, or fon. However, the subsequent part of the line, and the recurrence of the fame expreffion afterwards, are in favour of the reading of the original copy. MALONE.

Pope has borrowed this phrafe in his Imitation of Horace's Epiftle to Augustus, v. 22:

66

Thofe funs of glory please not till they fet."

STEEVENS.

Guynes and Arde:] Guynes then belonged to the English, and Arde to the French; they are towns in Picardy, and the valley of Ardren lay between them. Arde is Ardres, but both Hall and Holinfhed write it as Shakspeare does.

REED.

66

S —as they grew together;] So, in All's well that ends well: "I grow to you, and our parting is as a tortured body." Again, in A Midfummer-Night's Dream: "So we grew together." STEEVENS.

as they grew together;] That is, as if they grew together. We have the fame image in our author's Venus and Adonis :

6.

— a sweet embrace;

"Incorporate then they feem; face grows to face."

MALONE.

• Till this time, pomp was fingle; but now married To one above itfelf.] The thought is odd and whimsical; and obfcure enough to need an explanation. Till this time (says

Became the next day's mafter, till the last
Made former wonders it's :7 To-day, the French,
All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,
Shone down the English; and, to-morrow, they
Made Britain, India: every man, that ftood,
Show'd like a mine. Their dwarfith pages were
As cherubins, all gilt: the madams too,
Not us'd to toil, did almost sweat to bear
The pride upon them, that their very labour
Was to them as a painting: now this mask
Was cry'd incomparable; and the enfuing night
Made it a fool, and beggar. The two kings,
Equal in luftre, were now beft, now worst,

the speaker) pomp led a fingle life, as not finding a husband able to fupport her according to her dignity; but the has now got one in Henry VIII. who could fupport her, even above her condition, in finery. WARBURTON.

Dr. Warburton has here difcovered more beauty than the author intended, who only meant to fay in a noify periphrafe, that pomp was encreafed on this occafion to more than twice as much as it had ever been before. Pomp is no more married to the English than to the French King, for to neither is any preference given by the speaker. Pomp is only married to pomp, but the new pomp is greater than the old. JOHNSON.

Before this time all pompous fhows were exhibited by one prince only. On this occafion the Kings of England and France vied with each other. To this circumftance Norfolk alludes. M. MASON.

7

Each following day

Became the next day's mafter, &c.] Dies diem docet. Every day learned fomething from the preceding, till the concluding day collected all the fplendor of all the former fhows. JOHNSON.

W

* All clinquant,] All glittering, all Shining. Clarendon uses this word in his defcription of the Spanish Juego de Toros.

JOHNSON.

It is likewise used in A Memorable Mafque, &c. performed before King James at Whitehall in 1613, at the marriage of the Palfgrave and Princess Elizabeth :

his bufkins clinquant as his other attire."

STEEVENS.