Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/321

[ 305 ] before that in folio, in 1623; but it does not follow from thence, that the cenes which then firt appeared in print, and all the chorues were added by Shakspeare, as Mr. Pope uppoes, after 1608. We know indeed the contrary to be true; for the chorus to the fifth act mut have been written in 1599. The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, publihed in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exit, but that thoe copies were urreptidous, (probably taken down in hort hand, during the repreentation;) and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publih the whole, publihed what he could. I have not indeed met with any evidence (except in three plays) that the everal cenes which are found in the folio of 1623, and are not in the preceding quartos, were added by the econd labour of the author.—The lat chorus of K. Henry V. already mentioned, affords a triking proof that this was not always the cae. The two copies of the Second Part of K. Henry IV. printed in the ame year (1600) furnih another. In one of thee, the whole firt cene of Act III. is wanting; not becaue it was then unwritten, (for it is found in the other copy publihed in that year) but because the editor was not poSS undefinedeSS undefineded of it. That what have been called additions by the author, were not really uch, may be alo collected from another circumtance; that in ome of the quartos where thee uppoed additions are wanting, references and replies are found to the paSS undefinedages omitted. I do not however mean to ay, that Shakpeare never made any alterations in his plays. We have reaon to believe that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and The Merry Wives of Windor, were entirely new written; and a econd revial or temporary topicks might have uggeted, in a coure of years, ome additions and alterations in all his pieces. But with repect to the entire cenes that are wanting in ome of the