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Dr. Johnſon long ſince ſuſpected, from the contemptoous manner in which “ the noiſe of targets, and the fellow in a long motley coat,” or, in other words, moſt of our author’s plays, are ſpoken of, in this prologue, that it was not the compoſition of Shakſpeare, but written after his departure from the ſtage, on ſome accidental reviſal of K. Henry VIII. by B. Jonſon, whoſe ſtyle, it ſeemed to him to reſemble[1].
- ↑ In ſupport of this conjecture it may be obſerved that Ben Jonſon has in many places endeavoured to ridicule our author for repreſenting battles on the ſtage. So in his prologue to Every Man in his Humour:
“ Yet ours for want, hath not ſo lov’d the ſtage,
As he dare ſerve the ill cuſtoms of the age,
Or purchaſe your delight at ſuch a rate
As, for it, he himſelf muſt juſtly hate;
To make, &c.
or with three ruſty ſwords,
And help of ſome few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaſter’s long jars,
And in the tyring houſe bring wounds to ſcars.”
Again, in his Silent Woman, Act IV. ſc. iv.
“ Nay, I would ſit out a play, that were nothing but fights at ſea, drum, trumpet, and target.”
We are told in the memoirs of Ben Jonſon’s life, that he went to France in the year 1613. But at the time of the revival of King Henry VIII. he either had not left England, or was then returned; for he was a ſpectator of the fire which happened at the Globe theatre during the repreſentation of that piece. [See the next note.]
It may, perhaps, ſeem extraordinary, that he ſhould have preſumed to prefix this covert cenſure of Shakſpeare, to one of his own plays. But he appears to have eagerly embraced every opportunity of depreciating him. This occaſional prologue (whoever was the writer of it) confirms the tradition handed down by Rowe, that our author retired from the ſtage about three years before his death. Had he been at that time joined with Heminge and Burbage in the management of the Globe theatre, he ſcarcely would have ſuffered the lines above alluded to, to have been ſpoken. In lord Harrington’s account of the money diſburſed for the plays that were exhibited by his majeſty’s ſervants, in the year 1613, before the Elector Palatine, all the payments are ſaid to have been made to “ John Heminge, for himſelf and the reſt of his fellows;” from which we may conclude that he was then the principal manager. A correſpondent, however, of Sir Thomas Puckering’s (as I
