[ 337 ]
have had an intereſt alſo in Titus Andronicus, in Pericles, The Puritan, and Sir John Oldcaſtle; and whoſe name is not prefixed to any one of Shakſpeare’s undiſputed performances, except K. Henry V. and two parts of K. Henry VI. of which plays he printed copies manifeſtly ſpurious and imperfect.
38. Antony and Cleopatra, 1608.
Antony and Cleopatra was entered on the Stationers’ books, May 2, 1608; but was not printed till 1623.
In Ben Jonſon’s Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. iv, 1609, this play ſeems to be alluded to:
“Moroſe. Nay, I would fit out a play that were nothing but fights at ſea, drum, trumpet and target.”
39. Coriolanus, 1609.
40. Timon of Athens, 1610.
Theſe two plays, which were neither entered in the books of the Stationers’ company, nor printed, till 1623, are claſſed here only on the principle mentioned in a preceding article[1]. Shakſpeare, in the courſe of about twenty years, produced, if the rejected plays and Titus Andronicus were his, forty-three dramas; if they were ſpurious, thirty-five. Moſt of his other plays have been attributed, on plauſible grounds at lead, to former years. As we have no proof to aſcertain when theſe were written, it ſeems reaſonable to aſcribe them to that period, to which we are not led by any particular circumſtance to attribute any other of his works; at which, it is ſuppoſed, he had not ceaſed to write; which yet, unleſs theſe pieces were then composed, muſt, for aught that now appears, have been unemployed. When once he had availed himſelf of North’s Plutarch, and had thrown any one of the lives into a dramatick form, he probably found it ſo eaſy as to induce him to proceed, till he had exhauſted all the ſubjects which he imagined that book would afford. Hence the four plays of Julius Cæſar, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon, are ſuppoſed to have been written in ſucceſſion.
NOTE.
- ↑ Ante No. 31.
