Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/325

[ 309 ] This play eems to have been entered on the Stationers’ books, February 12, 1604, under the title of the Enterlude of K. Henry VIII. It was probably written, as Dr. John{ls}}on and Mr. Steevens oberve, before the death of queen Elizabeth, which happened on the 24th of March 1603. The elogium on king James, which is blended with the panegyrick on Elizabeth, in the lat cene, was evidently a ubequent inertion, after the acceSS undefinedion of the Scotih monarch to the throne: for Shakpeare was too well acquainted with courts, to compliment in the life-time of queen Elizabeth, her preumptive ucceSS undefinedor, of whom hitory informs us he was not a little jealous. That the prediction concerning king James was added after the death of the queen, is till more clearly evinced, as Dr. Johnon has remarked, by the aukward manner in which it is connected with the foregoing and ubequent lines. It may be objected, that if this play was written after the acceSS undefinedion of king James, the author could not introduce a panegyrick on him, without making queen Elizabeth the vehicle of it, he being the object immediately preented to the audience in the lat act of K. Henry VIII. and that, therefore, the praies o profuely lavihed on her, do not prove this play to have been written in her life-time; on the contrary, that the concluding lines of her character eem to imply that he was dead, when it was compoed. The objection certainly has weight; but, I apprehend, the following obervations afford a ufficient anwer to it. 1. It is more likely that Shakpeare hould have written a play, the chief ubject of which is, the digrace of queen Catharine, the aggrandizement of Anne Boleyn, and the birth of her daughter, in the life-time of that daughter, than after her death: at a time when the ubject mut have been [U3]