Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/332

[ 316 ] at the Globe playhoue when it was burnt; a circumtance which in ome meaure trengthens the conjecture that he was employed on the revival of King Henry VIII. for this was not the theatre at which his pieces were uually repreented: “ Well fare the wie men yet on the Bank-ide, “ My friends, the watermen! they could provide “ Againt thy fury, when, to erve their needs, “ They made a Vulcan of a heaf of reeds; “ Whom they durt handle in their holy-day coats, “ And afely trut to dres, not burn their boats. “ But O thoe reeds! thy mere didain of them “ Made thee beget that cruel tratagem, “ (Which ome are pleas’d to tyle but thy mad prank) “ Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank : “ Which, though it were the fort of the whole parih, “ Flank’d with a ditch and forc’d out of a marih, “ I aw with two poor chambers taken in, “ And raz’d; ere thought could urge this might have been. “ See the world’s ruins! nothing but the piles “ Left, and wit ince to cover it with tiles. “ The breth’ren, they traight nois’d it out for news, “ ’Twas verily ome relick of the tews, “ And this a parkle of that fire let looe, “ That was lock’d up in the Winchetrian gooe, “ Bred on the Bank in time of popery, “ When Venus there maintain’d her mitery, “ But others fell, with that conceit, by the ears, “ And cried, it was a threat’ning to the bears, “ And that accured ground, the Paris-garden, &c.” The play, thus revived and new-named, was probaly called, in the bills of that time, a new play; which might have led Sir Henry Wotton to decribe it as uch. And thus his account may be reconciled with that of the other contemporary writers, as well as with thoe arguments which have been here urged in upport of the early date of K. Henry VIII. Every thing has been fully tated on each ide of the quetion. The reader mut judge.

Mr. Roderick in his notes on our author, (appended to Mr. Edwards’s Canons of Criticim) takes notice or ome peculiarities in the metre of the play before us; viz. “ that there are many more veres in it than in any other, which end with a redundant yllable”—“ very near two to one”—and that “ the cæuræ or paues of the vere are full as remarkable.”—The re-