Sal. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear. My liege! my lord!-But now a king,-now thus. P. Hen. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay! Bast. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind, To do the office for thee of revenge; And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres, Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths; And instantly return with me again, To push destruction, and perpetual shame, Sal. It seems, you know not then so much as we: The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin; Bast. He will the rather do it, when he sees Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already; With whom yourself, myself, and other lords, To cónsummate this business happily. Bast. Let it be so:-And you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon your father's funeral. P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be interr'd;" For so he will'd it. Bast. Thither shall it then. And happily may your sweet self put on And true subjection everlastingly. Sul. And the like tender of our love we make, To rest without a spot for evermore. P. Hen. I have a kind soul, that would give you thanks, And knows not how to do it, but with tears. Bast. O, let us pay the time but needful woe, Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.This England never did, (nor never shall,) Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us rue, If England to itself do rest but true. [Exeunt. 8 At Worcester must his body be interr'd;] A stone coffin, containing the body of King John, was discovered in the cathedral church of Worcester, July 17, 1797. STEEVENs. "The tragedy of King John, though not written with the utmost power of Shakspeare, is varied with a very pleasing interchange of incidents and characters. The lady's grief is very affecting; and the character of the Bastard contains that mixture of greatness and levity which this author delighted to exhibit. JOHNSON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING RICHARD II.] But this history comprises little more than the two last years of this prince. The action of the drama begins with Bolingbroke's appealing the Duke of Norfolk, on an accusation of high treason, which fell out in the year 1398; and it closes with the murder of King Richard at Pomfret Castle towards the end of the year 1400, or the beginning of the ensuing year. THEOBALD. It is evident from a passage in Camden's Annals, that there was an old play on the subject of Richard the Second; but I know not in what language. Sir Gillie Merick, who was concerned in the hare-brained business of the Earl of Essex, who was hanged for it, with the ingenious Cuffe, in 1601, is accused, amongst other things," quod exoletam tragœdiam de tragicâ abdicatione regis Ricardi Secundi in publico theatro coram conjuratis datâ pecuniâ agi curasset.” I have since met with a passage in my Lord Bacon, which proves this play to have been in English. It is in the arraign ments of Cuffe and Merick, Vol. IV. p. 412, of Mallet's edition : "The afternoon before the rebellion, Merick, with a great company of others, that afterwards were all in the action, had procured to be played before them the play of deposing King Richard the Second; -when it was told him by one of the players, that the play was old, and they should have loss in playing it, because few would come to it, there was forty shillings extraordinary given to play, and so thereupon played it was.' It may be worth enquiring, whether some of the rhyming parts of the present play, which Mr. Pope thought of a different hand, might not be borrowed from the old one. Certainly, however, the general tendency of it must have been very different; since as Dr, Johnson observes, there are some expressions in this of Shakspeare, which strongly inculcate the doctrine of indefeasible right. FARMER. "And for Bacon elsewhere glances at the same transaction: your comparison with Richard II. I see you follow the example of them that brought him upon the stage, and into print in Queen Elizabeth's time." Works, Vol. IV. p. 278. The partizans of Essex had, therefore, procured the publication as well as the acting of this play, HOLT WHITE. It is probable, I think, that the play which Sir Gilly Merick procured to be represented, bore the title of HENRY IV. and not of RICHARD II. Camden calls it" exoletam tragediam de tragica abdicatione regis Ricardi secundi; and Lord Bacon (in his account of The Effect of that which passed at the arraignment of Merick and others,) says: "that the afternoon before the rebellion, Merick had procured to be played before them, the play of deposing King Richard the Second." But in a more particular account of the proceeding against Merick, which is printed in the State Trials, Vol. VII. p. 60, the matter is stated thus: "The story of Henry IV. being set forth in a play, and in that play, there being set forth the killing of the king upon the stage; the Friday before, Sir Gilly Merick and some others of the earl's train having an humour to see a play, they must needs have The Play of HENRY IV. The players told them that was stale; they should get nothing by playing that; but no play else would serve and Sir Gilly Merick gives forty shillings to Philips the player to play this, besides whatsoever he could get." Augustine Philippes was one of the patentees of the Globe playhouse with Shakspeare, in 1603; but the play here described was certainly not Shakspeare's HENRY IV. as that commences above a year after the death of Richard. TYRWHITT. This play of Shakspeare was first entered at Stationers' Hall by Andrew Wise, Aug. 29, 1597. STEEVENS. It was written, I imagine, in the same year. MALONE. |
