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OBSERVATIONS.

KING JOHN.] The troublesome Reign of King John was written in two parts, by W. Shakespeare and W. Rowley, and printed 1611. But the present play is entirely dif ferent, and infinitely superior to it. POPE.

The edition of 1611 has no mention of Rowley, nor in the account of Rowley's works is any mention made of his conjunction with Shakespeare in any play. King John was reprinted, in two parts, in 1622. The first edition that I have found of this play, in its present form, is that of 1623, in folio. The edition of 1591 I have not seen. JOHNSON

Dr. Johnson mistakes, when he says there is no mention, in Rowley's works, of any conjunction with Shakespeare. The Birth of Merlin is ascribed to them jointly, though I cannot believe Shakespeare had any thing to do with it. Mr. Capell is equally mistaken, when he says (Pref. p. 15) that Rowley is called his partner in the titlepage of The Merry Devil of Edmonton.

There must have been some tradition, however erroneous, upon which Mr. Pope's account was founded. I make no doubt that Rowley wrote the first King John; and, when Shakespeare's play was called for, and could not be procured from the players, a piratical bookseller reprinted the old one, with W. Sh. in the title-page.

FARMER.

The elder play of King John was first published in 1591. Shakespeare has preserved the greatest part of the conduct of it, as well as some of the lines. A few of those I have pointed out, and others I have omitted as undeserv ing notice. The number of quotations from Horace, and

similar scraps of learning scattered over this motley piece, ascertain it to have been the work of a scholar. It contains likewise a quantity of rhyming Latin, and balladmetre; and in a scene where the Bastard is represented as plundering a monastery, there are strokes of humour, which seem, from their particular turn, to have been most evidently produced by another hand than that of our author.

Of this historical drama there is a subsequent edition in 1611, printed for John Helme, whose name appears before none of the genuine pieces of Shakespeare. I admitted this play some years ago as our author's own, among the twenty which I published from the old editions; but a more careful perusal of it, and a further conviction of his custom of borrowing plots, sentiments, &c. disposes me to recede from that opinion. STEEVENS.

A play entitled The troublesome Raigne of John King of England, in two parts, was printed in 1591, without the writer's name. It was written, I believe, either by Robert Greene, or George Peele; and certainly preceded this of our author. Mr. Pope, who is very inaccurate in matters of this kind, says that the former was printed in 1611, as written by W. Shakespeare and W. Rowley. But this is not true. In the second edition of this old play, in 1611, the letters W. Sh. were put into the title-page to deceive the purchaser, and to lead him to suppose the piece was Shakespeare's play, which, at that time, was not published.

See a more minute account of this fraud in An Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shakespeare's Plays, Vol. II. Our author's King John was written, I imagine, in 1596. The reasons on which this opinion is founded may be found in that essay. MALONE.

Though this play have the title of The Life and Death of King John, yet the action of it begins at the thirty-fourth year of his life, and takes in only some transactions of his reign to the time of his demise, being an interval of about seventeen years. THEOBALD.

Hall, Holinshed, Stowe, &c. are closely followed, not only in the conduct, but sometimes in the very expressions, throughout the following historical dramas; viz. Macbeth,

this play, Richard II. Henry IV. two parts, Henry V. Henry VI. three parts, Richard III. and Henry VIII.

"A booke called The Histoire of Lord Faulconbridge, bastard Son to Richard Cordelion," was entered at Stationers' Hall, Nov. 29, 1614; but I have never met with it, and therefore know not whether it was the old black letter history, or a play upon the same subject. For the original King John, see Six old Plays on which Shakespeare founded, &c. published by S. Leacroft, Charing-cross. STEEVENS.

The Histoire of Lord Faulconbridge, &c. is a prose narrative, in bl. 1. The earliest edition that I have seen of

it was printed in 1616.

A book entitled Richard Cur de Lion was entered on the Stationers' Books in 1558.

A play called The Funeral of Richard Cordelion, was written by Robert Wilson, Henry Chettle, Anthony Mundy, and Michael Drayton, and first exhibited in the year 1598. See The Historical Account of the English Stage, Vol. II. MALONE.

9

VOL. V.

A 2

King JOHN:

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

Prince HENRY, his son; afterwards king Henry III. ARTHUR, duke of Bretagne, son of Geffrey, late duke of Bretagne, the elder brother of king John.

WILLIAM MARESHALL, earl of Pembroke.

GEFFREY FITZ-PETER, earl of Essex, chief justiciary of England.

WILLIAM LONGSWORD, earl of Salisbury.

ROBERT BIGOT, earl of Norfolk.

HUBERT DE BURGH, chamberlain to the king.

ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son of Sir Robert Faulconbridge: PHILIP FAULCONBRIDGE, his half-brother, bastard son to king Richard the first.

JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Faulconbridge.

PETER of Pomfret, a prophet.

PHILIP, king of France.

LEWIS, the dauphin.

Arch-duke of Austria.

Cardinal PANDULPH, the pope's legate.

MELUN, a French lord.

CHATILLON, ambassador from France to king John.

ELINOR, the widow of king Henry II. and mother of king

John.

CONSTANCE, mother to Arthur.

BLANCH, daughter to Alphonso, king of Castile, and niece to king John.

Lady FAULCONBRIDGE, mother to the bastard, and Robert Faulconbridge.

Lords, Ladies, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and other Attendants.

SCENE-sometimes in England and sometimes in France.

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