BY SAM. JOHNSON & GEO. STEEVENS, AND THE VARIOUS COMMENTATORS, UPON K. HENRY VIII. WRITTEN BY WILL. SHAKSPERE. -SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. VIRG. LONDON: Printed for, and under the Direction of, JOHN BELL, British-Library, STRAND, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES. M DCC LXXXVII, ANNOTATIONS UPON K. HENRY VIII. Dramatis Persona.] SIR William Sands was created Lord Sands about this time; but is here introduced among the persons of the drama as a distinct character. Sir William has not a single speech assigned to him; and to make the blunder the greater, is brought on after Lord Sands has already made his appearance. STEEVENS. There is no enumeration of the persons in the old edition. JOHNSON. PROLOGUE. 1 In a long motley coat, -] Alluding to the fools and buffoons, introduced for the generality in the plays a little before our author's time: and of whom he has left us a small taste in his own. THEOBALD. So Nash, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Have with you to Saffron-Walden, or Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, 1596: ❝-fooles ye know alwaies for the most part (especiallie if they bee naturall fooles) are suted in long coats.” STEEVENS, As fool and fight is,— -] This is not the only passage in which Shakspere has discovered his conviction of the impropriety of battles represented on the stage. He knew that five or six men with swords, gave a very unsatisfactory idea of an army, and therefore, without much care to excuse his former practice, he allows that a theatrical fight would destroy all opinion of truth, and leave him never an understanding friend. Magnis ingeniis & multa nihilominus habituris simplex convenit erroris confessio. JOHNSON. 20. the opinion that we bring, To make that only true we now intend,)] These lines I do not understand, and suspect them of corruption. I believe we may better read thus: -th' -th' opinion, that we bring Or make; that only truth we now intend. JOHNSON. To intend, in our author, has sometimes the same meaning as to pretend. So, in the preceding play"Intend some deep suspicion." STEEVENS. If any alteration were necessary, I should be for only changing the order of the words, and readingThat only true to make we now intend: i. e. that now we intend to exhibit only what is true. This passage, and others of this Prologue, in which great stress is laid upon the truth of the ensuing representation, would lead one to suspect, that this play of Henry the VIIIth, is the very play mentioned by Sir H. Wotton [in his letter of July 2, 1612, Reliq. Wotton. p. 425.] under the description of " a new play [acted by the king's players at the Bank-side] called, All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the VIIIth." The extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, with which, Sir Henry says, that play was set forth, and the particular incident of certain cannons shot off at the king's entry to a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house (by which the theatre was set on fire and burnt to the ground), are strictly applicable to the play before us. Mr. Chamberlaine, in Winwood's Memorials, Vol. III. p. 469, mentions, "the burning of the Globe, or playhouse, on the Bankside, on St. Peter's day [1613], which (says he) fell out by a peale of chambers, that I know not on what occasion were to be used in the play." B. Jonson, B |