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Dr. Farmer is of the ſame opinion, and thinks he ſees ſomething of Jonſon’s hand, here and there, in the dialogue alſo. After our author’s retirement to the country, Jonſon was perhaps employed to give a novelty to the piece by a new title and prologue, and to furniſh the managers of the Globe with a deſcription of the coronation ceremony, and of thoſe other decorations, with which, from his connection with Inigo Jones, and his attendance at court, he was peculiarly converſant.
The piece appears to have been revived with ſome degree of ſplendour; for Sir Henry Wotton gives a very pompous account of the repreſentation. The unlucky accident that happened to the houſe during the exhibition, was occaſioned by diſcharging ſome ſmall pieces, called chambers, on K. Henry’s arrival at cardinal Wolſey’s gate at Whitehall, one of which, being injudiciouſly managed, ſet fire to the thatched roof of the theatre[1].
- ↑ The Globe theatre (as I learn from the Mſſ. of Mr. Oldys) was thatched with reeds, and had an open area in its center. This area we may ſuppoſe to have been filled by the loweſt part of the audience, whom Shakſpeare calls the groundlings.—Chambers are not, like other guns, pointed horizontally, but are diſcharged as they ſtand erect on their breeches. The accident may, therefore, be eaſily accounted for. If theſe pieces were let off behind the ſcenes, the paper or wadding with which their charges were confined, would reach the thatch on the inſide; or if fixed without the walls, it might have been carried by the wind to the top of the roof.
This accident is alluded to, in the following lines of Ben Jonſon’s Execration upon Vulcan, from which it appears, that he was
learn from Mr. Tyrwhitt) in a Mſ. letter, preſerved in the Muſeum, and dated in the year 1613, calls the company at the Globe, “ Bourbage’s company”—Shakſpeare’s name ſtands before either of theſe, in the licence granted by K. James; and had he not left London before that time, the players at the Globe theatre, I ſhould imagine would rather have been entitled, his company.—The burleſque parody on the account of Falſtaff’s death, which is contained in Fletcher’s’s comedy of the Captain, acted in 1613, and the ridicule of Hamlet’s celebrated ſoliloquy, and of Ophelia’s death, in his Scornful Lady, which was repreſented about the ſame time, confirm the tradition that our author had then retired from the ſtage, careleſs of the fate of his writings, inattentive to the illiberal attacks of his contemporaries, and negligent alike of preſent and poſthumous fame.
