My mate, that's never to be found again, Lament till I am lost. Leon. O peace, Paulina! Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent, Thou hast found mine; By us, a pair of kings.-Let's from this place. My ill suspicion.-This your son-in-law, And son unto the king, (whom heavens directing) [Exeunt. And take her hand, whose worth, and honesty,] The usual reading is the ruin of the line by the needless insertion of two particles, “And take her by the hand, whose worth, and honesty." We may be confident that they had in some way been foisted into the text, almost without the assurance of the corrector of the folio, 1632, who puts his pen through by the. "The Life and Death of King John" was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it occupies twenty-two pages; viz. from p. 1 to p. 22 inclusive, a new pagination beginning with the "Histories." It occupies the same place and the same space in the re-impressions of 1632, 1664, and 1685. INTRODUCTION. "KING JOHN," the earliest of Shakespeare's "Histories" in the folio of 1623 (where they are arranged according to the reigns of the different monarchs), first appeared in that volume', and the Registers of the Stationers' Company have been searched in vain for any entry regarding it. It was not enumerated by Blount and Jaggard on the 8th November, 1623, when they inserted a list of the pieces, "not formerly entered to other men," about to be included in their folio: hence an inference might be drawn, that there had been some previous entry of "King John" "to other men," and, perhaps, even that the play had been already published 2. It seems indisputable that Shakespeare's "King John" was founded upon an older play, three times printed anterior to the publication of the folio of 1623: "The first and second part of the troublesome Reign of John, King of England," came from the press in 1591, 1611, and 16223. Malone, and others who have adverted to this production, have obviously not had the several impressions before them. The earliest copy, that of 1591, has no name on the title-page that of 1611 has "W. Sh." to indicate the author, and that of 1622, "W. Shakespeare," the sur-name only at length*. It purports to be divided into acts and scenes, but very irregularly: thus, what is called Actus Secundus fills no more than about half a page, and Actus Quartus is twice repeated. The later folios adopt this defective arrangement, excepting that in those of 1632 and 1664 Actus Quintus is made to precede Actus Quartus. 2 On the 29th Nov. 1614, "a booke called the Historie of George Lord Faulconbridge, bastard son of Richard Cordelion," was entered on the Stationers' Registers, but this was evidently the prose romance of which an edition in 1616, 4to, is extant. Going back to 1568, it appears that a book called "Kynge Rychard Curdelyon was entered on the Stationers' Register of that year by Thomas Purfoote: see "Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers' Company," printed by the Shakespeare Society, i. 199. 64 3 "It was written, I believe (says Malone), by Robert Greene, or George Peele," but he produces nothing in support of his opinion. The mention of "the Scythian Tamburlaine," in the Prologue to the edition of the old King John," in 1591, might lead us to suppose that it was the production of Marlowe, who did not die until 1593; but the style of the two parts is evidently different: rhyming couplets are much more abundant in the first than in the second, and there is reason to believe, according to the frequent custom of that age, that more than one dramatist was concerned in the composition of the play. • Nevertheless, Mr. Singer tells us that both names are "at length :" he pro |
