any extent either at the beginning or but always to some incongruous cir- the birth of Elizabeth the ultimate triumph of the Reformed religion, of which she was to become so distinguished a champion, our sympathies might have been turned that way, and so reconciled to the prosperous consummation. But it is evident that no attempt has been made to do this. The afflictions, the virtue, and the patience of Katharine are elaborately exhibited. To these and to the pathetic penitence of Wolsey our attention is especially commended in the prologue, and with them it is entirely occupied to the end of the fourth act. Anne Bullen is kept almost out of sight. Such reason and religion as there were in Henry's scruples are scarcely touched upon, and hardly a word is introduced to remind us that the dispute with the Pope was the forerunner of the Reformation. I know no other play in Shakspere which is chargeable with a fault like this, none in which the moral sympathy of the spectator is not carried along with the main current of action to the end. In all the historical tragedies a providence may be seen presiding over the development of events, as just and relentless as the fate in a Greek tragedy. Even in Henry IV. where the comic element predominates, we are never allowed to exult in the success of the wrong doer, or to forget the penalties which are due to guilt. And if it be true that in the romantic comedies our moral sense does sometimes suffer a passing shock, it is never owing to an error in the general design, Be sad, as we would make you: Think ye see And if you can be merry then, I'll say This day let no man think Of this strange inconsistency, or at least of a certain poorness in the general effect which is amply accounted for by such inconsistency, I had for some time been vaguely conscious; and I had also heard it casually remarked by a man of first-rate judgment on such a point that many passages in Henry VIII. were very much in the manner of Fletcher; when I happened to take up a book of extracts, and opened by chance on the following beautiful lines: Would I had never trod this English earth, What will become of me now wretched lady? I am the most unhappy woman living. Alas! poor wenches, where are now your for- Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity, I'll hang my head and perish. Was it possible to believe that these lines were written by Shakspere? I had often amused myself with attempting to trace the gradual change of his versification from the simple monotonous cadence of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, to the careless felicities of the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, of which it seemed as impossible to analyse the law as not to feel the melody but I could find no stage in that progress to which it seemed possible to refer these lines. I determined upon this to read the play through with an eye to this especial point, and see whether any solution of the mystery would present itself. The result of my examination was a clear conviction that at least two different hands had been employed in the composition of Henry VIII.; if not three; and that they had worked, not together, but alternately upon distinct portions of it. This is a conclusion which cannot of course be established by detached extracts, which in questions of style are doubtful evidence at best. The only satisfactory evidence upon which it can be determined whether a given scene was or was not by Shakspere, is to be found in the general effect produced on the mind, the ear, and the feelings by a free and broad perusal; and if any of your readers care to follow me in this inquiry, I would ask him to do as I did,-that is, to read the whole play straight through, with an eye open to notice the larger differences of effect, but without staying to examine small points. The effect of my own experiment was as follows: The opening of the play,-the conversation between Buckingham, Norfolk, and Abergavenny,-seemed to have the full stamp of Shakspere, in his latest manner: the same closepacked expression; the same life, and reality, and freshness; the same rapid and abrupt turnings of thought, so quick that language can hardly follow fast enough; the same impatient activity of intellect and fancy, which having once disclosed an idea cannot wait to work it orderly out; the same daring confidence in the resources of language, which plunges headlong into a sentence without knowing how it is to come forth; the same careless metre which disdains to produce its harmonious effects by the ordinary devices, yet is evidently subject to a master of harmony; the same entire freedom from book-language and common-place; all the qualities, in short, which distinguish the magical hand which has never yet been successfully imitated. In the scene in the council-chamber which follows (Act i. sc. 2), where the characters of Katharine and Wolsey are brought out, I found the same characteristics equally strong. But the instant I entered upon the third scene, in which the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sands, and Lord Lovel converse, I was conscious of a total change. I felt as if I had passed suddenly out of the language of nature into the language of the stage, or of some conventional mode of conversation. The structure of the verse was quite different and full of mannerism. The expression became suddenly diffuse and languid. The wit wanted mirth and character. And all this was equally true of the supper scene which closes the first act. The second act brought me back to the tragic vein, but it was not the tragic vein of Shakspere. When I compared the eager, impetuous, and fiery language of Buckingham in the first act with the languid and measured cadences of his farewell speech, I felt that the difference was too great to be accounted for by the mere change of situation, without supposing also a change of writers. The presence of death produces great changes in men, but no such change as we have here. When in like manner I compared the Henry and Wolsey of the scene which follows (Act ii. sc. 2) with the Henry and Wolsey of the councilchamber (Act i. sc. 2), I perceived a difference scarcely less striking. The dialogue, through the whole scene, sounded still slow and artificial. The next scene brought another sudden change. And, as in passing from the second to the third scene of the first Act, I had seemed to be passing all at once out of the language of nature into that of convention, so in passing from the second to the third scene of the second Act (in which Anne Bullen appears, I may say for the first time, for in the supper scene she was merely a conventional court lady without any character at all,) I seemed to pass not less suddenly from convention back again into nature. And when I considered that this short and otherwise insignificant passage contains all that we ever see of Anne (for it is necessary to forget her former appearance) and yet how clearly the character comes out, how very a woman she is, and yet how distinguishable from any other individual woman, I had no difficulty in acknowledging that the sketch came from the same hand which drew Perdita. Next follows the famous trial-scene. And here I could as little doubt that I recognized the same hand to which we owe the trial of Hermione. When I compared the language of Henry and of Wolsey throughout this scene to the end of the Act, with their language in the council-chamber (Act 1, sc. 2), I found that it corresponded in all essential features: when I compared it with their language in the second scene of the second Act, I perceived that it was altogether different. Katharine also, as she appears in this scene, was exactly the same person as she was in the council-chamber; but when I went on to the first scene of the third Act, which represents her interview with Wolsey and Campeius, I found her as much changed as Buckingham was after his sentence, though without any alteration of circumstances to account for an alteration of temper. Indeed the whole of this scene seemed to have all the peculiarities of Fletcher, both in conception, language, and versification, without a single feature that reminded me of Shakspere; and, since in both passages the true narrative of Cavendish is followed minutely and carefully, and both are therefore copies from the same original and in the same style of art, it was the more easy to compare them with each other. In the next scene (Act iii. sc. 2) I seemed again to get out of Fletcher into Shakspere; though probably not into Shakspere pure; a scene by another hand perhaps which Shakspere had only remodeled, or a scene by Shakspere which another hand had worked upon to make it fit the place. The speeches interchanged between Henry and Wolsey seemed to be entirely Shakspere's; but in the altercation between Wolsey and the lords which follows I could recognise little As for instance :- or nothing of his peculiar manner, while many passages were strongly marked with the favourite Fletcherian cadence;* and as for the famous "Farewell, a long farewell," &c. though associated by means of Enfield's Speaker with my earliest notions of Shakspere, it appeared (now that my mind was opened to entertain the doubt) to belong entirely and unquestionably to Fletcher. Of the 4th Act I did not so well know what to think. For the most part it seemed to bear evidence of a more vigorous hand than Fletcher's, with less mannerism, especially in the description of the coronation, and the character of Wolsey; and yet it had not to my mind the freshness and originality of Shakspere. It was pathetic and graceful, but one could see how it was done. Katharine's last speeches, however, smacked strongly again of Fletcher. And altogether it seemed to me that if this Act had occurred in one of the plays written by Beaumont and Fletcher in conjunction it would probably have been thought that both of them had had a hand in it. The first scene of the 5th Act, and the opening of the second, I should again have confidently ascribed to Shakspere, were it not that the whole passage seemed so strangely out of place. I could only suppose (what may indeed be supposed well enough if my conjecture with regard to the authorship of the several parts be correct,) that the task of putting the whole together had been left to an inferior hand; in which case I should consider this to be a genuine piece of Shakspere's work, spoiled by being introduced where it has no business. In the execution of the christening scene, on the other hand (in spite again of the earliest and strongest associations), I could see no evidence of Shakspere's hand at all; while in point of design it seemed inconceivable that a judgment like his could have been content Now I feel Of what base metal ye are moulded, -Envy. How eagerly ye follow my disgraces As if it fed ye, and how sleek and wanton Ye appear in everything may bring my ruin! Follow your envious courses, men of malice: Ye have Christian warrant for them, &c. with a conclusion so little in harmony with the prevailing spirit and purpose of the piece. Such was the general result of my examination of this play with reference to the internal evidence of style and treatment. With regard to external evidence, I can only say that I know of none which stands in the way of any of these conclusions. Henry VIII. was first printed in the folio of 1623. It was printed no doubt as Shakspere's, without any hint that any one else had had a hand in it. But so were Titus Andronicus and all the three parts of Henry VI. The editors were not critics, and it was not then the fashion for authors to trouble the public with their jealousies. The play would naturally go by the name of Shakspere, having so much in it of his undoubted and best workmanship, and as such it would naturally take its place in the general collection. With regard to the date of its composition we have no conclusive evidence; but that which approaches nearest to that character goes to show that it was acted, and considered as a new play, on St. Peter's day, 1613, when the Globe Theatre was burnt down. The play then acted was certainly on the subject of Henry VIII., and contained at least one incident which occurs in the present work-the discharge of Chambers upon the arrival of the masquers in the supper-scene. It was called, indeed," All is True;" but that title suits the present work perfectly well; and it may have been the original one, though the editors in including it among the histories preferred the historical title. There is evidence likewise that a play called "The Interlude of Henry VIII." was in existence in 1604, but none to show that it was by Shakspere, still less that it was the present play in its present state, which is to me, I confess, quite incredible. Altogether, therefore, I may say that if any one be inclined to think that Henry VIII. was composed in 1612 or 1613, and that Beaumont and Fletcher were employed in the composition as well as Shakspere, there is nothing in the external evidence to forbid him. Here, however, a new question will arise. Supposing the inequality of the workmanship in different parts of the play to be admitted, as by most people I think it will, may not this be sufficiently accounted for by supposing that it was written by Shakspere at different periods? May it not have been an early performance of his own, which in his later life he corrected, and in great part re-wrote; as we know he did in some other cases? I think not; for two reasons. First, because if he had set about the revisal of it on so large a scale in the maturity of his genius, he would have addressed himself to remove its principal defect, which is the incoherence of the general design. Secondly, because the style of those parts which upon this supposition would be referred to the earlier period does not at all resemble Shakspere's style at any stage of its developement. This is another conclusion which it is impossible to establish by extracts in any moderate quantity. But let any one who doubts it try it by the following test. Let him read an act in each of the following plays, taking them in succession:-Two Gentlemen of Verona; Richard II.; Richard III.; Romeo and Juliet; Henry IV. (part 2); As You Like It; Twelfth Night; Measure for Measure; Lear; Anthony and Cleopatra; Coriolanus; Winter's Tale; and then let him say at what period of Shakspere's life he can be supposed to have written such lines as these If I am not much mistaken he will be convinced that Shakspere's style never passed, nor ever could have passed, through this phase. In his earlier plays, when his versification was regular and his language comparatively diffuse, there is none of the studied variety of cadence which we find here; and by the time his versification had acquired more variety, the current of his thought had become more gushing, rapid, and full of eddies; not to add that at no period whatever in the developement of his style was the proportion of thought and fancy to words and images so small as it appears in this speech of Buckingham's. Perhaps there is no passage in Shakspere which so nearly resembles it as Richard II.'s farewell to his queen; from which indeed it seems to have been imitated; but observe the difference Good sometime Queen, prepare thee hence for Think I am dead: and that even here thou tak'st Of woeful ages long ago betid: And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief, Tell thou the lamentable tale of me, which I have noticed as, in their general character, un-Shaksperian. In those parts which have the stamp of Shakspere upon them in other respects, the proportion of lines with the redundant syllable is not greater than in other of his later plays-Cymbeline, for instance, and the Winter's Tale. In the opening scene of Cymbeline, an unimpassioned conversation, chiefly narrative, we find twenty-five such lines in sixty-seven; in the third scene of the third Act, which is in a higher strain of poetry but still calm, we find twenty-three in one hundred and seven; in the fourth scene, which is full of sudden turns of passion, fiftythree in one hundred and eighty-two. Taking one scene with another therefore, the lines with the redundant syllable are in the proportion of about two to seven. In the Winter's Tale we may take the second and third scenes of the third Act as including a sufficient variety of styles; and here we find seventy-one in two hundred and forty-eight; the same proportion as nearly as possible, though the scenes were selected at random, Let us now see how it is in Henry VIII. Here is a table showing the proportion in each successive scene : Scene. Lines. Red. Syll. Propn. And if we compare the two entire scenes the difference will appear ten times greater, for Richard's passion makes a new subject of every passing incident and image, and has as many changes as an Eolian harp. And send the hearers weeping to their beds. Act. I. 63 To a practised ear the test which I have proposed will, I think, be sufficient, and more conclusive perhaps than any other. Those who are less quick in perceiving the finer rhythmical effects may be more struck with the following consideration. It has been observed, as I said, that lines with a redundant syllable at the end occur in Henry VIII. twice as often as in any of Shakspere's other plays. Now, it will be found on examination that this observation does not apply to all parts of the play alike, but only to those Here then we have, out of sixteen separate scenes, six in which the redundant syllable occurs (taking one with another), about as often as in Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale; the proportion being never higher than two in five, which is the same as in * As far as the exit of King Henry, GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXIV. R |