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was founded. Imake no doubt that Rowley wrote the first King John; and when Shakspeare's play was called for, and could not he procured from the players, a piratical bookseller reprinted the old one, with W. Sh. in the title-page. FARMER.

The elder play of King John was first published in 1591. Shakspeare has preserved the greatest part of the conduct of it, as well as some of the lines. A few of these I have pointed out, and others I have omitted as undeserving notice. The number of quotations from Horace, and similar scraps of learning scattered over this motley piece, ascertain it to have been the work of a scholar. It contains likewise a quantity of rhyming Latin, and ballad-metre; and in a scene where the Bastard is represented as plundering a monastery, there are strokes of humour, which seem, from their particular turn, to have been most evidently produced by another hand than that of our author.

Of this hisorical drama there is a subsequent edition in 1611, printed for John Helme, whose name appears before none of the genuine pieces of Shakspeare. I admitted this play some years ago as our author's own, among the twenty which I published from old editions; but a more careful perusal of it, and a further conviction of his custom of borrowing plots, sentiments, &c. disposes me to recede from that opinion.

STEEVENS.

A play entitled The troublesome raigne of John King of England, in two parts, was printed in 1591, without the writer's name. It was written, believe, either by Robert Greene, or George Peele; and certainly preceded this of our author. Mr. Pope, who is very inaccurate

in matters of this kind, says that the former was printed in 1611, as written by W. Shakspeare and W. Rowley. But this is not true. In the second edition of this old play in 1611, the letters W. Sh. were put into the title-page, to deceive the purchaser, and to lead him to suppose the piece was Shakspeare's play, which at that time was not published. See a more minute account of this fraud in An Attempt to ascertain the order of Shakspeare's Plays, Vol. I. Our author's King John was written, I imagine, 1596. The reasons on which this opinion is founded, may be found in that Essay. MALONE.

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in

Though this play have the title of The Life and Death of King John, yet the action of it begins at the thirty-fourth year of his life; and takes in only some transactions of his reign to the time of his demise, being an interval of about seventeen years. THEOBALD.

Hall, Holinshed, Stowe, &c. are closely followed not only in the conduct, but sometimes in the very expressions throughout the following historical dramas; viz. Macbeth, this play, Richard II. Henry IV. two parts, Henry V. Henry VI. three parts, Richard III. and Henry VIII.

"A hooke called The Historie of Lord Faulconbridge, bastard Son to Richard Cordelion." was entered at Stationers' Hall, Nov. 29, 1614; but I have never met with it, and therefore know not whether it was the old black letter history, or a play on the same subject. For the orginal K. John. sec Six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published by S. Leacroft, CharingCross. STEEVENS.

The hystorie of Lord Faulconbridge, &c. is VOL. VIII.

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a prose narrative, in bl. 1. The earliest edition that I have seen of it, was printed in 1616.

A book entitled "Richard Cur de Lion" was entered on the Stationers' Books in 1558.

A play called The Funeral of Richard Cordelion, was written by Robert Wilson, Henry Chettle, Anthony Mundy, and Michael Drayton, and first exhibited in the year 1598. See The Historical Account of the English Stage.

MALONE.

Page 2, line 9. William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury,] Son to King Henry II. by Rosamond Clifford. STEEVENS.

P. 5, l. 10-12. — speaks the King of France, In my behaviour,] The word behaviour seems here to have a signification that I have never found in any other author. The King of France, says the envoy, thus speaks in my behaviour to the majesty of England; that is, the King of France speaks in the character which I here assume. I once thought that these two lines, in my behaviour, &c. had been uttered by the ambassador as part of his master's message, and that behaviour had meant the conduct of the King of France towards the King of England; but the ambassador's speech, as continued after the interruption, will not admit this meaning. JOHNSON

I my behaviour means, in the manner that I now do. M. MASON.

In my behaviour means, I think, in the words and action that I am now going to use. MALONE. P. 4, 1. 9. The proud control-] Opposition, from controller. JOHNSON.

I think it rather means constraint or compulsion. M. MASON

P. 4, 1. 20. Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;] The simile does not suit well: the lightning indeed appears before the thunder is heard, but the lightning is destructive and the thunder innocent. JOHNSON.

The allusion may nothwithstanding be very proper so far as Shakspeare had applied it, i. e. merely to the swiftness of the lightning, and its preceding and foretelling the thunder. But there is some reason to believe that thunder was not thought to be innocent in our author's time, as we elsewhere learn from himself. See King Lear, Act III. sc. ii. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. sc. v. Julius Caesar, Act I. sc. iii. and still more decisively in Measure for Measure, Act. II. sc. ii. This old superstition is still prevalent in many parts of the country. RITSON.

:

King John does not allude to the destructive powers either of thunder or lightning; he only means to say, that Chatillon shall appear to the eyes of the French like lightning, which shows that thunder is approaching and the thunder he alludes to is that of his cannon. Johnson also forgets, that though philosophically speaking, the destructive power is in the lightning, it has generally in poetry been attributed to the thunder. M. MASON.

P. 4, 1. 23. 24. Be thou the trumpet of

your wrath,

And sullen presage &c.] By the epithet sullen, which cannot be applied to a trumpet, it is plain that our author's imagination had now suggested a new idea. It is as if he had said, be a trumpet to alarm with our invasion, be a bird of ill omen to croak out the prognostick of your own ruin.

JOHNSON.

I do not see why the epithet sullen may not be applied to a trumpet, with as much propriety as to a bell. In our author's Henry IV. P. II. we find: "Sounds ever after as a sullen bell.”

MALONE.

That here are two ideas, is evident; but the second of them has not been luckily explained. The sullen presage of your own decay, means, the dismal passing bell, that announces your own approaching dissolution. STEEVENS. is here conduct,

manage STEEVENS.

P. 5, first 1. administration. P. 5, 1. 21. and PHILIP, his basard brother.] Though Shakspeare adopted this character of Philip Faulconbridge from the old play, it is not improper to mention that it is compounded of two distinct personages.

Matthew Paris says:- "Sub illius temporis curriculo, Falcasius de Brente, Neusteriensis, et spurius ex parte matris, atque Bastardus, qui in vili jumento manticato ad Regis paulo ante clientelam descenderat," &c.

Matthew Paris, in his History of the Monks of St Albans, calls him Falco, but in his General History, Falcasius de Brente, as above.

Holinshed says, "That Richard I. had a natural son named Philip, who in the year following killed the Viscount de Limoges to revenge the death of his father." STEEVENS.

Perhaps the following passage in the Continuation of Harding's Chronicle, 1543, fol. 24. b. ad ann. 1472, induced the author of the old play to affix the name of Faulconbridge to King Richard's natural son, who is only mentioned in our histories by the name of Philip:" one Faulconbridge, therle of Kent, his bastarde, a stoute-harted man.'