[ 300 ]
tioners’ books, Auguſt 23, 1600, and was printed in that year. It was probably written in the latter end of the year 1598, for from the epilogue it appears to have been compoſed before K. Henry V. which itſelf muſt have been written in, or before, 1599.
It is obſervable that the First Part of K. Henry IV. was entered at Stationers’ hall, in the beginning of the year 1598, by the name of “ A Booke entitled thee Hiſtorie of Henry the Fourth, &c.” At that time, it is probable, the author had not conceived the idea of exhibiting Fallſtaff in a ſecond drama, and therefore that play was not then diſtinguiſhed by the title of The First Part. When the ſame piece was entered about a year afterwards, on the 9th of Jan. 1598—9, it was entitled, “ A book called The First Part of the Life and Reign of K. Henry IV. extending to the end of the firſt year of his reign. The poet having now compoſed two plays on this ſubject diſtinction became neceſſary. The Second Part of K. Henry IV. we may, therefore, conclude with certainty, was written in the interval between theſe two entries, that is, ſome time in the year 1598, probably in the latter part of it; for Meres, who in his Wit’s Treaſury, (which was not publiſhed before September in that year) has enumerated Henry IV. among our author’s plays, does not ſpeak of it as a firſt part, nor does he mention it as a play in two parts. His words are theſe: “ As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the beſt for comedy and tragedy, among the Latines, ſo Shakeſpeare, among the Engliſh, is the moſt excellent in both kinds for the ſtage: for comedy, witneſs his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love’s Labour Lost, his Love’s Labour Wonne, his Midſummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy[1], his Richard II. Richard III. Henry IV. K. John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet[2].”
The following alluſion to one of the characters in this play, which is found in Ben Jonſon’s Every Man out of his Humour, Act V. Sc. ii. firſt acted in 1599, is an additional
