Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/336

[ 320 ] King James was o much offended by the untaught, and, we may add, undeerved, gratulations of his ubjects, on his entry into England, that he iSS undefinedued a proclamation, forbidding the people to reort to him.—“ Afterwards,” ays the hitorian of his reign, “ in his publick appearances, epecially in his ports, the acceSS undefinedes of the people made him o impatient, that he often dipersed them with frowns, that we may not ay with cures .”

That Meaure for Meaurewas written before 1607, may be fairly concluded from the following paSS undefinedage in a poem publihed in that year, which we have good ground to believe was copied from a imilar thought in this play, as the author, at the end of his piece, profeSS undefinedes a peronal regard for Shakpeare, and highly praies his Venus and Adonis:

“ So play the foolih throngs with one woons; Come all to help him, and o top the air By which he would revive.” Mea. for Mea. Act. II. Sc. ii. “ And like as when ome udden axtaie Seizeth the nature of a icklie man; When he’s dicern’d to woune, traite by and by Folke to his helpe confuedly have ran, And eeking with their art to fetch him backe, So many throng that he the ayre doth lacke.” Myrrha the Mother of Adonis, or Lute’s Prodigies, by William Barkted, a poem, 1607.

Cymbeline was not entered on the Stationers’ books, nor printed, till 1623. It tands the lat in the earliet folio edition; but nothing can be collected from thence, for the folio editors manifetly paid no attention to chronological arrangement. Not containing any intrinick evidence by which its date might be acertained, it is attributed to this year, chiefly becaue there is no proof that any other play was written by Shakpeare in 1604. And as in the coure of omewhat more than twenty years, he produced, according to ome, forty-three, in the opinion of others, thirty-five