Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/329

[ 313 ] ed during the exhibition of a new play, called All is True; which, however, appears both from Sir Henry’s minute decription of the piece, and from the account given by Stowe’s continuator, to have been our author’s play of K. Henry VIII. If indeed Sir H. Wotton was accurate in calling it a new play, all the foregoing reaoning on this ubject would be at once overthrown; and this piece, intead of being acribed to 1601, hould have been placed twelve years later. But I trongly upect that the only novelty attending this play, in the year 1613, was its title, decorations, and perhaps the prologue and epilogue. The Elector Palatine was in London in that year; and it appears from the M. regiter of lord Harrington, treaurer of the chambers to K. James I. that many of our author’s plays were then exhibited for the entertainment of him and the princes Elizabeth. By the ame regiter we learn, that the titles of many of them were changed in that year. Princes are fond of opportunities to diplay their magnificence before trangers of ditinction; and James, who on his arrival here, mut have been dazzled by a plendour foreign to the poverty of his native kingdom, might have been peculiarly ambitious to exhibit before his on-in-law the mimick pomp of an Englih coronation. King Henry VIII. therefore, after having lain by for ome years unacted, on account of the cotlines of the exhibition, might have been revived in 1613, under the title of All is True, with new decorations and a new prologue and epilogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt oberves, that the prologue has two or three direct references to this title; a circumtance which authorizes us to conclude, almot with certainty, that it was an occaional producton, written ome years after the compoition of the play.

Vol. I.