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ed during the exhibition of a new play, called All is True; which, however, appears both from Sir Henry’s minute deſcription of the piece, and from the account given by Stowe’s continuator, to have been our author’s play of K. Henry VIII. If indeed Sir H. Wotton was accurate in calling it a new play, all the foregoing reaſoning on this ſubject would be at once overthrown; and this piece, inſtead of being aſcribed to 1601, ſhould have been placed twelve years later. But I ſtrongly ſuſpect that the only novelty attending this play, in the year 1613, was its title, decorations, and perhaps the prologue and epilogue. The Elector Palatine was in London in that year; and it appears from the Mſ. regiſter of lord Harrington, treaſurer of the chambers to K. James I. that many of our author’s plays were then exhibited for the entertainment of him and the princeſs Elizabeth. By the ſame regiſter we learn, that the titles of many of them were changed[1] in that year. Princes are fond of opportunities to diſplay their magnificence before ſtrangers of diſtinction; and James, who on his arrival here, muſt have been dazzled by a ſplendour foreign to the poverty of his native kingdom, might have been peculiarly ambitious to exhibit before his ſon-in-law the mimick pomp of an Engliſh coronation[2]. King Henry VIII. therefore, after having lain by for ſome years unacted, on account of the coſtlineſs of the exhibition, might have been revived in 1613, under the title of All is True, with new decorations and a new prologue and epilogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt obſerves, that the prologue has two or three direct references to this title; a circumſtance which authorizes us to conclude, almoſt with certainty, that it was an occaſional producton, written ſome years after the compoſition of the play.
- ↑ Thus Henry IV. P. I. was called Hotſpur; Henry IV. P. II. or The Merry Wives of Winſdor, was exhibited under the name of Sir John Falſtaff; Much Ado about Nothing was new named Benedict and Beatrix, and Julius Cæſar ſeems to have been repreſented under the title of Cæſar’s Tragedy.
- ↑ The Prince Palatine was not preſent at the repreſentation of K. Henry VIII.' on the 30th of June O. S. when the Globe playhouſe was burnt down, having left England ſome time before. But the play might have been revived for his entertainment in the beginning of the year 1613; and might have beeen occaſionally repreſented afterwards.
Vol. I.
