Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/330

[ 314 ] Dr. Johnon long ince upected, from the contemptoouscontemptous [sic] manner in which “ the noie of targets, and the fellow in a long motley coat,” or, in other words, mot of our author’s plays, are poken of, in this prologue, that it was not the compoition of Shakpeare, but written after his departure from the tage, on ome accidental revial of K. Henry VIII. by B. Jonon, whoe tyle, it eemed to him to reemble In upport of this conjecture it may be oberved that Ben Jonon has in many places endeavoured to ridicule our author for repreenting battles on the tage. So in his prologue to Every Man in his Humour: “ Yet ours for want, hath not o lov’d the tage, As he dare erve the ill cutoms of the age, Or purchae your delight at uch a rate As, for it, he himelf mut jutly hate; To make, &c. or with three ruty words, And help of ome few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancater’s long jars, And in the tyring houe bring wounds to cars.” Again, in his Silent Woman, Act IV. c. iv. “ Nay, I would it out a play, that were nothing but fights at ea, drum, trumpet, and target.” We are told in the memoirs of Ben Jonon’s life, that he went to France in the year 1613. But at the time of the revival of King Henry VIII. he either had not left England, or was then returned; for he was a pectator of the fire which happened at the Globe theatre during the repreentation of that piece. [See the next note.] It may, perhaps, eem extraordinary, that he hould have preumed to prefix this covert cenure of Shakpeare, to one of his own plays. But he appears to have eagerly embraced every opportunity of depreciating him. This occaional prologue (whoever was the writer of it) confirms the tradition handed down by Rowe, that our author retired from the tage about three years before his death. Had he been at that time joined with Heminge and Burbage in the management of the Globe theatre, he carcely would have uffered the lines above alluded to, to have been poken. In lord Harrington’s account of the money dibured for the plays that were exhibited by his majety’s ervants, in the year 1613, before the Elector Palatine, all the payments are aid to have been made to “ John Heminge, for himelf and the ret of his fellows;” from which we may conclude that he was then the principal manager. A correpondent, however, of Sir Thomas Puckering’s (as I.