Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/333

[ 317 ] dundancy, &c. oberved by this critick, Mr. Steevens thinks (a remark, which, having omitted to introduce in its proper place, he deires me to inert here) “ was rather the effect of chance, than of deign in the author; and might have arien either from the negligence of Shakpeare, who in this play has borrowed whole cenes and peeches from Holinhed, whoe words he was probably in too much hate to compres into verification trictly regular and harmonious; or from the interpolations of Ben Jonon, whoe hand Dr. Farmer thinks he occaionally perceives in the dialogue.” Whether Mr. Roderick’s poition be well founded, is hardly worth a contet; but the peculiarities which he has animadverted on, (if uch there be) add probability to the conjecture that the piece underwent ome alterations, after it had paSS undefineded out of the hands of Shakpeare. Our author had produced o many plays in the proceding years, that it is not likely that K. Henry VIII. was written before 1601. It might perhaps with equal propriety be acribed to 1602, and it is not eay to determine in which of thoe years it was compoed; but it is extremely probable that it was written in one of them. K. Henry VIII. was not printed till 1623. “ A book or poem, called the Life and Death of Thomas Wooley Cardinall,” which was entered on the books of the Stationers’ oompany, in the year 1599, perhaps uggeted this ubject to Shakpeare.

28. The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell, 1602. Entered at Stationers’ hall, Augut, 1602. Printed in 1613, with the letters W. S. only, in the title page.

Troilus and Cressida was entered at Stationers’ hall Feb. 7. 1602—3, by J. Roberts, the printer of Hamlet, the Merchant of Venice, and A Midummer Night’s Dream. It was therefore, probably, written in 1602. It was printed in 1609, with a preface by the editor, who peaks of it as if it had not been then acted. But it is entered in 1602—3, “ as acted by my Lord Chamberlain’s men.” The players at the Globe theatre, to which Shakpeare belonged, were called the Lord Chamberlain’s ervants, till the year 1603. In that