Small time, but in that small, most greatly lived
This star to England. Fortune made his sword,
By which the world's best guerdon he achieved,
And of it left his son imperial lord.

Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crowned king,
Of France and England did this king succeed;
Whose state, so many had the managing—

That they lost France, and made this England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; and for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take."

On the strength of past repeated successes, he here evidently requests a favourable consideration for his present effort. In the prologue, he had condescended to beseech his audience

"Gently to hear, kindly to judge our play;"

and now he gives a reason why he fancies his request should have been, and be, granted. It is pleasing to think that he did not ask in vain. Did he, as Henry, "himself assume the port of Mars "? How often do these regretful questionings arise ?

In the prologue to "Troilus and Cressida," which was "a new play, never staled with the stage," in 1609, the author is much more independent, for he tells his audience,

"Like or find fault;-do as your pleasures are."

That Shakespere laboured at and revised his plays, even after representation, seems to be implied in the closing lines of the prologue to "Romeo and Juliet :”—

"If you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.'

The earliest collected edition of Shakespere's dramatic works appeared in 1623, seven years after his own death, and after the demise of his widow. It has been inferred, from this and other circumstances, that Shakespere, and his widow after him, possessed a copyright and life-rent interest in the plays, which lapsed, after their death, to the proprietors of the Globe Theatre; and that it was only then they could be made available by the players as a publication. It might also be further inferred, we think, from several expressions in the "Dedication" and "Address," of the folio of 1623, that Shakespere intended to produce a revised and amended edition of those works himself, had he been spared, in the ease and comfort of his Stratford home, to complete his design. How else

shall we account for the regretful expression, emphasized by a parenthesis," He not having the Fate, common with some, to be execquutor to his owne writings"? or this: "It had been a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that the author himselfe had lived to have set forth and overseen his owne writings; but since it hath been ordained otherwise, and he by Death departed from that right"? &c. Do these words not seem to imply regret at an unaccomplished design, as much as, if not more than, at a haughty, indolent, or heedless negligence of works so meritorious and so wonderful? There is a singular eagerness about sales, too, in the address to the readers, which seems to argue an interest in the work, greater than that expressed in the dedication, viz. : "Onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend and Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare." If this is not altogether a fancy, it would go far to substantiate the idea of the community of interest in keeping them unpublished during the LIVES of the other holders, and the hasty thrusting of them into the market immediately upon the demise of their latest co-beneficiare.

The edition of 1623, collected together and published under the names, if not with the editorial care, of John Heminge and Henrie Condell, is called, now-a-days," The First Folio." It bore the following words upon the title-page :-"Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true original copies. London. Printed by Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623." A portrait of the author, by Martin Droeshout, graced the work; and Ben Jonson attested his own veneration for Shakespere, and the essential accuracy, considering the art of engraving then, of the likeness, by these lines, placed opposite it :

"To the reader:

This Figure, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle SHAKESPEARE cut;
Wherein the Graver had a strife

With Nature, to out-doo the life.

O, could he but have drawne his wit

As well in brasse as he hath hit

His face, the print would then surpasse

All that was ever writ in brasse;

But, since he cannot, Reader, looke

Not on his Picture-but his Booke. B. J."

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Several other commendatory verses are prefixed to the work, as was then the custom; the names of the principal actors in all these playes" are also given; and there follows "A catalogue of the severall Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, contained in this Volume."

This edition contains all the thirty-seven plays, now commonly accepted, with a few reservations, as Shakespere's, except "Pericles, Prince of Tyre;" though Troilus and Cressida" seems only to have got a place in it by an afterthought, as it does not appear in the list, but holds a place, unpaged, in the body of the volume.

"The Bondman," by Philip Massinger, was performed at the Cockpit, in Drury Lane, on 3rd December, 1623, and was printed in the following year. To this publication some commendatory lines were prefixed, bearing the initials W. B., commonly supposed to be William Basse, a minor poet, who had the leading place among the commenders of Shakespere in the first folio. Ben Jonson's Works," 1616, and Shakespere's "Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," were the only collected editions of dramas then published. It is very probable, therefore, that those are meant in these two concluding stanzas of this rhyme,

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"And in the way of poetry now-a-days,

Of all that are called ' Works,' the best are 'Plays.'"

The allusion to Jonson is palpable, but the time marked (1624), if the author be correctly guessed at, implies Shakespere.

Joseph Taylor, one of the actors in the Blackfriars theatre, who played the part of Paris, in Massinger's "Roman Actor," also composed some prefatory lines to that play, which seem to indicate that Shakespere's dramas held command (among others) of the stage, and so acted detrimentally upon the interests of younger playwrights; for he speaks, 1626, of some sour censurer,

"Who's apt to say,

No one, in these times, can produce a play

Worthy his reading; since, of late, 'tis true

The old accepted are more than the new.”

The same inference may justly be made from the fact that in all the commendatory verses prefixed to his plays, no one ventures to hint a rivalship with Shakespere, though they do not scruple to mention him beside Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, &c. That Mas

singer had begun to write prior to the demise of Shakespere, has been ascertained from Henslowe's "Diary," and may also be inferred from his characterization of "The Unnatural Combat," as an "old tragedy, without prologue or epilogue, it being composed in a time (and that, too, peradventure, as knowing as this) when such by-ornaments were not advanced above the fabric of the whole work;" and we know that some of Shakespere's plays, e.g., Henry V., Henry VIII., Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, &c., have either or both. Massinger, however, was the disciple, not the rival of Shakespere.

In 1632, a second edition appeared in the same form as the first, with a few verbal alterations, but no additions. This is called "The Second Folio."

Thomas Heywood's tragi-comedy of " The English Traveller," was printed in 1633, just the year after the publication of the second Shakespere folio. He was a rapid and voluminous writer. In the preface to this play, he says it is one " amongst 220, in which I had either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger ;" and then goes on to say:- -"True it is that my plays are not exposed to the world in volumes, to bear the title of Works (as others). One reason is, that many of them, by shifting, and change of companies, have been negligently lost. Others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third, that it never was any great ambition in me to be, in this kind, voluminously read." There seems here an allusion to the recently published second folio, as in Basse's lines there appeared to be a reference to the first.

The first edition of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," published in 1634, was said, on the title-page, to be written by Fletcher and Shakespere. It is now included in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher.

Thomas De Quincey, whose acuteness as a critic few will venture to dispute, says, in a note to one of his papers in Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1827, that "The first act [of the "Two Noble Kinsmen"] has been often and justly attributed to Shakespere ; but the last act is no less indisputably his, and in his very finest style." The first printed edition appeared in 1634, and is represented on the title-page as being "written by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shake

speare." In 1833, Professor William Spalding issued "A Letter on Shakespere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen,'" in which he maintains that the whole of the first act, undoubtedly, was Shakespere's, and that the underplot, and some portions of the rest, were by Fletcher, who died in August, 1625.

There is preserved in the Bodleian Library a volume of poems, mostly short, published about 1660, with the following title:"Cupid's Cabinet Unlock't, or the New Accademy of Complements, Odes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets, Poesies, Presentations, Congratulations, Ejaculations, Rhapsodies, &c., with other various fancies. Created partly for the delight, but chiefly for the use of all Ladies, Gentlemen and Strangers, who affect to speak Elegantly, or write Queintly. By W. Shakespeare." The volume is curious, but has no authoritative evidence of authenticity, of which we are aware. It proves the continued popularity of his name, and its availability, as a trade mark, to sell a book; but it can only be received as his on due proof offered, and as this has not been given, critics remain sceptical. We have been unable to discover that it bore even the remotest internal evidence of a Shaksperean authorship.

The third folio was brought out in 1664, but is scarce, because, it may be presumed, many copies were burnt during the Great Fire, 1666. It contained a reprint of all the plays in the former editions, and seven more, viz. :-Pericles, The London Prodigal, The History of Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, The Puritan Widow, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Tragedy of Locrine. The first only of these is now reprinted among Shakespere's plays.

The fourth folio, of 1685, is a mere reproduction of the third, and is very much disfigured by errors.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, Kirkman, a bookseller who dealt in and studied old plays much, attributed "The Merry Devil of Edmonton" to the pen of Shakespere. It, however, appears in the books of the Stationers' Company, in 1608, as being written by an author whose initials are T. B. It was highly popular, but it is not likely it is Shakespere's.

"The Birth of Merlin" was published in 1662, as written by William Shakespere and William Rowley, but Kirkman is here again the only authority, and he is supposed to have used popular names to work off his stock.