Page:George Chapman, a critical essay (IA georgechapmancri00swin).pdf/109

anti-Gallican or seditious element in the success of a play which must certainly, one would say, have needed all the outward and casual help it could get to impose itself on the goodwill of the multitude, the French envoy was not slack in bringing a counter influence to bear against it; for three of the recalcitrant actors were arrested at his suit; but M. de Beaumont regretfully adds that "the principal person, the author, escaped." When three years later the poem was published, his printers had probably learnt caution enough from this fresh experience to ensure the suppression in all published copies of every trace of the forbidden part; and indeed there should seem to be two gaps in the printed text; one at the sudden end of the brief fourth act of the first part, which breaks off sharply after the eloquent and elaborate narrative of the speeches exchanged on the occasion of Biron's embassy to England between the marshal, Queen Elizabeth, and her prime minister; one at the end of the first or opening of the second act of the second part, which acts in both editions of the play are run into each other without any mark of division; but the great