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drama-and, in thus closely adhering to the truth of history, he pays a silent tribute to the liberality of Elizabeth, more worth than all his warmest eulogiums.

Katharine's first speech, in that excellent part of the play, her trial, is taken from history, with but trivial variation; and likewise the King's reply to it. Her dying scene, particularly her letter and message to the King, have also the sanction of history for their most pathetic passages. Commentators have, in general, preferred the latter scene to the foregoing one, in its quality of exciting compassion, But, perhaps, a mild and submissive woman, such as Katharine is described, can never be considered so much an object of pity, as when bitter provocation has impelled her to assume the deportment of haughtiness, and the language of anger.

The selfsame words which Wolsey spoke upon his fall are here inserted, and are the lines beginning, "Had I served my God," &c.-This statesman and churchman is by far more respectable in his adversity, than in his prosperity-and yet, it may be observed, that he merely took the road to heaven, when the path to all terrestrial joys had closed upon his footsteps.

High as the merit of this play is, its attraction on the stage is aided by a magnificent coronation of the elevated Anne Bullen. It is melancholy, however, to reflect, upon viewing this fictitious ceremony-that a few years only elapsed, after the spectacle had been in reality exhibited, when the same unthinking crowd

who resorted to gaze-ran, with equal curiosity, to behold the identical object of all this splendour, and their admiration-perish upon a scaffold.

Anne Bullen, or rather Queen Anne, was the first crowned head who suffered death by the law of England; and yet her daughter, Elizabeth,-less penetrated by her mother's woes, than governed by her father's cruelty, caused the second legal execution of a sovereign, in the person of her own cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

Many parts of this drama, where the principal characters are not introduced, are, nevertheless, highly interesting: such, in particular, is the final adieu of the Duke of Buckingham. The prayers and good wishes of him, and of all the injured persons in this play, for their common tyrant Henry, are not more remarkable for their charity than for their inefficacy. Henry's remaining life was divided between fits of anger, remorse, despondency: and he died, after a reign of thirty-seven years, hated by every Englishman, with the rancour of a slave.

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LORDS, LADIES, BISHOPS, JUDGES, OFFICERS, GUARDS, and ATTENDANTS.

SCENE-Chiefly in London and Westminster; once, at Kimbolton.

KING HENRY VIII.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.

London.

An Antichamber in the Palace.

Enter the DUKE OF NORFOLK and the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, meeting.

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

Since last we saw in France?

Nor. I thank your grace:

Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer

Of what I saw there.

Buck. An untimely ague

Stay'd me a prisoner in my chamber, when
Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,
Met in the vale of Arde.

Nor. Then you lost

The view of earthly glory: Men might say,
Till this time pomp was single; but now marry'd
To one above itself. Each following day
Became the next day's master, till the last
Made former wonders its : To-day, the French,
All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,

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