Or, by Saint Paul, I'll strike thee to my foot,

And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.

Such is the worship paid to wealth in England, down even to the present day, that the most current expression of contempt is to brand a man with the epithet of beggar! as used in the sense of poverty-" Get out, you beggar!"

The stock-in-trade of this play consists of murders, conspiracies, and perjuries, and, amid this sickening sea of crime, the female characters figure to such singular disadvantage as to give another to the many proofs that Shakespeare did not have a very high estimate of women.

The play which follows "Richard III," and closes the Shakespearean dramatic histories, is that of "Henry VIII," which leaves the reign of Richmond, or Henry VII, unrepresented in the historical series. The Baconians seek to make a great point of this hiatus, by producing the fact that Bacon wrote a special prose history of the reign of Henry VII, over his own signature, and that, having thus met all the historical necessities of the subject in prose, his tired muse did not feel called upon to repeat the task, under the disadvantages of dramatic poetry. It strikes me, however, that it is much more reasonable to attribute Shakespeare's neglect of Henry VII for the purposes of a play to the utter absence of any dramatic incident in a reign which was devoted only to mere social progress and "the establishment of law and order."

CHAPTER XXIX.

KING HENRY VIII."

THE greatest of all the controversies which have raged among the commentators, both German and English, upon the life, genius, and writings of William Shakespeare, is that concerning the date of our poet's production of the play of Henry VIII." And the object of the dispute is by no means unworthy of the consequence which has been given to it, for its date defines, to a great extent, the motives which induced Shakespeare to prostitute his pen to the laudation of a monster whose very name it is the common duty of mankind to execrate. Moreover, the play, as it stands, bears sharply upon the question of Shakespeare's religious faith, and, particularly in that expression in Cranmer's christening speech (upon which Knight so much relies), when the Archbishop predicts that during the reign of Elizabeth-which was a Protestant reign

"God shall be truly known."

Be it observed at this point, however, that the whole of this speech of Cranmer's is generally regarded as spurious by the English commentators, and is attributed by most of them to Ben Jonson, who is supposed to have "written it in," subsequent to its production, as a compliment to King James, who ascended the throne at the death of Elizabeth, in March, 1603. Indeed, there is now scarcely a doubt of

'Dr. Reichensperger, clerical member of the German Parliament, has recently issued a work, in which he says that "Cranmer's prediction of

this. Among those who deny the authenticity of Cranmer's speech, but who believe that the play was written by Shakespeare as early as 1602, are Dr. Johnson, Theobald, Steevens, Malone, Collier, and Halliwell, with only Knight and Hunter, among the English critics, to the contrary. "All of the German commentators, however," says Elze, "with the exception of Schlegel and Kreyssig, are in favor of the year 1612." Speddon says that Shakespeare planned "Henry VIII," "but wrote less than half of it (1,116 lines), Fletcher writing the rest (1,761 lines)."

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The argument for the production of "Henry VIII" in 1612 has its main support in two private letters (written, one on June 30, and the other on July 6, 1613, by a Mr. Thomas Lorkin and Sir Henry Wotton, respectively), describing the burning of the Globe Theatre, of London, on the 29th of June previous. During the performance of "King Henry VIII," says Lorkin, the house was set on fire by the discharge of chambers (small cannon) on the entrance of the King to Wolsey's palace-the wadding of the said chambers having lodged in the thatch of the roof. Sir Henry Wotton's letter, in alluding to the same incident, speaks of the piece which was being performed at the time of the fire as a new play, called "All is True, representing some Principal Pieces of the reign of Henry VIII." Now, it is very easy to conceive that Sir Henry Wotton might have thought the piece a new one without being correct; or that he may never before have been at a theatre, and consequently knew but little of such matters; but it is not easy to conceive that Shakespeare should have so closely interwoven his pæan to

the glories of Elizabeth's reign, at the end of 'King Henry VIII,' is an interpolation of the low court parasite, Ben Jonson."

The April number of the "Catholic Progress," published in London, contains a paper by "J. B. M.," which says, in referring to "Henry VIII": "Clap-trap passages about the 'virgin queen,' for instance, may possibly not be Shakespeare's own writing. If they are, they are of course drawbacks. No real Catholic would flatter a monster whose savage cruelties were endeavoring to eradicate from her subjects the Catholic faith." To this, I may add, that Henry burnt Protestants as well as Catholics when he took the notion.

the infant Elizabeth with the panegyric on King James, when it was generally known (and by no one better than by Shakespeare) that James had by no means a good opinion of his predecessor.'

This, to my mind, indicates the Cranmer christening speech to be an interpolation on the text of Shakespeare, and also favors the idea that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1602, to please the Queen, and to soften the character of Henry VIII, her father.

With these preliminary observations, I will pass to the illustrations of the play. The first that arrests our attention is the one in which Buckingham (after having been condemned in a most unfair trial by notoriously prejudiced judges, and by testimony so obviously false, that it attracted the attention of Queen Katharine, and elicited her womanly protest) is made by Shakespeare to acquit and bless the royal brute who would neither hearken to justice nor to her:

Act II, Scene 1.

"Commend me to his grace;

And if he speak of Buckingham, pray tell him,
You met him half in heaven; my vows and prayers
Yet are the king's; and till my soul forsake,

Shall cry for blessings on him; may he live
Longer than I have time to tell his years!

Ever beloved and loving, may his rule be!

And, when old Time shall lead him to his end,
GOODNESS AND HE FILL UP ONE MONUMENT!

It is worthy of notice that, among the many tributes to the virtues of Queen Elizabeth which immediately followed her death, none came from Shakespeare. This neglect appeared so singular that Chettle publicly rebuked him for it, under the term of Melicert, in the lines:

"Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert

Drop from his honied muse one sable tear,
To mourn her death that graced his desert,
And to his laies open'd her royal eare.

Shepherd, remember our Elizabeth,

And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death."

"Mourning Garment," p. 160; Z. Holmes, p. 41.

I had my trial.

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And, must needs say, a noble one; which makes me

A little happier than my wretched father:

Yet thus far we are one in fortunes. -Both

Fell by our servants, by those men we loved most;

A most unnatural and faithless service!

At this point one of the Duke of Buckingham's retainers, a surveyor, testifies against him, but with such evident prejudice and malice that the Queen again interposes:

Q. KATH.

Enter a Surveyor.

If I know you well,

You were the duke's surveyor, and lost your office
On the complaint o' the tenants. Take good heed
You charge not in your spleen a noble person,
And spoil your nobler soul! I say, take heed!
Act II, Scene 2.
SUFFOLK. How is the king employ'd?
CHAM.

I left him private,
Full of sad thoughts and troubles.

What's the cause?

NORFOLK.
CHAM. It seems the marriage with his brother's wife
Has crept too near his conscience.

SUFFOLK. How sad he looks! sure he is much afflicted.

K. HEN. Who is there? ha?
NORFOLK.

'Pray God, he be not angry.

The character of the witnesses in this "noble trial was thus prefigured by the conscientious Queen Katharine to the conscienceless and bloody boar, King Henry:

Act I, Scene 2.

Q. KATH. I am sorry that the duke of Buckingham

Is run in your displeasure.