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29. King Henry V. was, undoubtedly, founded on preceding dramas with the same title. Nash refers to one which, as early as 1592, must have been well known on the stage, and which had certainly been represented prior to 1588. "What a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage, leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin to swear fealty!" In 1594, we find mention of another (if, indeed, it were not the same then first printed)-The famous Victories of Henry V., containing Between 1596 and the honourable Battle of Agincourt. 1615, there are three more entries of a play with the same title, on the books of the Stationers' Company. One of these was Shakespear's; the two others were by

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31, 32. In King Richard III. Shakespear had also prior dramas before him. Some of them are enumerated in the last edition of Malone, by Boswell; and a mutilated copy of one which our dramatist had certainly in view, is printed in the nineteenth volume of But he had also other dramas that laborious work.

before him. We need not, however, observe that his amazing superiority will appear as much in the present as in any other instance where a comparison can be instituted.- King Henry VIII., we are told, is the only historical play of Shakspeare which had not a dramatic predecessor. Yet even it had one. Rowley, his contemporary, was the author of When you see me you know me, or the Famous Chronicle History of King Henry the Eighth; and it is impossible to believe that this stupid production followed the other.

Titus Andronicus and Pericles are certainly not the offspring of Shakespear's genius. No ingenuity can show that there is the least affinity between the minds which Much controproduced them and that of our author.

versy has, indeed, been expended on it; but, with no other guide than common sense, no man can be at a loss what to think of them. They would disgrace even the third rate dramatists of Shakespear's age.

From the preceding observations it is evident, that for all his plots Shakespear was indebted to other sources; and that sixteen of his dramas, if not more, were immediately constructed on preceding dramas. His obligations in both respects are, no doubt, greater than we at present suspect. If the next half century should witness no diminution of zeal in the efforts of our dramatic antiquaries, new discoveries will, doubtless, confer a greater extent of obligation. But to whatever extent they may be carried, the glory of Shakespear will not be effected by them. Even for invention he will merit greater praise, than any dramatist we could mention, with two exceptions,- Lope de Vega and Calderon. But he has other, and, to the dramatist, higher qualities. him.

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racters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world: by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets, a character is too often an individual: in those of Shakspeare it is commonly a species. "It is from this wide extension of design that so much It is this which fills the plays of instruction is derived. Shakspeare with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakspeare, that from his works may be collected But his real a system of civil and economical prudence. power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered bis house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

"It will not easily be imagined how much Shakspeare excels in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in The same remark may be applied to every any other place. The theatre, when it is under stage but that of Shakspeare. any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard,

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