Pol. Paul. So much the more our carver's excellence; 30 Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her As she lived now. Leon. I am ashamed: does not the stone rebuke me Per. Lady, And give me leave, And do not say 'tis superstition, that I kneel and then implore her blessing. Dear queen, that ended when I but began, Give me that hand of yours to kiss. Paul. O, patience! The statue is but newly fix'd, the color's Not dry. Cam. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on, Would I were dead, but that, methinks, al ready What was he that did make it? See, my lord, Would you not deem it breathed ? and that those veins Did verily bear blood? Masterly done : in't, As we are mock'd with art. Paul. I'll draw the curtain: My lord's almost so far transported that Leon. I could afflict you farther. Leon. Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock Good my lord, forbear: 80 tain? proach; 99 Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come, I'll fill your grave up: stir, nay, come away, Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs : [Hermione comes down. Start not; her actions shall be holy as L's she become the suitor? O, she's warm! Pol. She embraces him. Cam. She hangs about his neck: 110 If she pertain to life let her speak too. Pol. Ay, and make 't manifest where she has lived, Or how stolen from the dead. Paul. Please you to interpose, fair madam: kneel 120 Her. You gods, look down And from your sacred vials pour your graces Thy father's court? for thou shalt hear that I, Knowing by Paulina that the oracle Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserved Myself to see the issue. Paul. There's time enough for that; Lest they desire upon this push to trouble Your joys with like relation. Go together, 130 You precious winners all; your exultation Partake to every one. I, an old turtle, Will wing me to some wither'd bough and there 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, As I by thine a wife: this is a match, And made between's by vows. Thou hast found mine; But how, is to be question'd; for I saw her, As I thought, dead, and have in vain said many 140 A prayer upon her grave. I'll not seek far- Is richly noted and here justified By us, a pair of kings. Let's from this place. What! look upon my brother both your pardons, : KING HENRY VIII. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1612-13.) INTRODUCTION. This play, as we learn from Sir Henry Wotton and from T. Lorking, was being enacted as a new play at the Globe Theatre, under the name of All is True, in June, 1613, when some burning paper shot off from a cannon set fire to the thatch and occasioned the destruction of the building. It has been shown conclusively by Mr. Spedding that the play is in part from Shakespeare's hand, in part from Fletcher's. The latter's verse had certain strongly-marked characteristics, one of which is the very frequent occurrence of double endings. Going over the play, scene by scene, and applying the various tests, Mr. Spedding arrived at the following result: Shakespeare's part: Act 1., Sc. I. II.; Act I., Sc. III. IV.; Act III., Sc. II. (to exit of the king); Act V., Sc. 1. The rest of the play is by Fletcher. A German critic (Hertzberg) has described Henry VIII. as "a chronicle-history with three and a half catastrophes, varied by a marriage and a coronation pageant, ending abruptly with the baptism of a child." It is indeed incoherent in structure. After all our sympathies have been engaged upon the side of the wronged Queen Katharine, we are called upon to rejoice in the marriage triumph of her rival, Anne Boleyn. "The greater part of the fifth act, in which the interest ought to be gathering to a head, is occupied with matters in which we have not been prepared to take any interest by what went before, and on which no interest is reflected by what comes after." But viewed from another side, that of its metrical workmanship, the play is equally deficient in unity, and indeed betrays unmistakably the presence of two writers. Nevertheless, there are three great figures in the play clearly and strongly conceived by Shakespeare: The King, Queen Katharine, and Cardinal Wolsey. The Queen is one of the noble, long-enduring sufferers, just-minded, disinterested, truly charitable, who give their moral gravity and grandeur to Shakespeare's last plays. She has clear-sighted penetration to see through the Cardinal's cunning practice, and a lofty indignation against what is base, but no unworthy personal resentment. Henry, if we judge him sternly, is cruel and self-indulgent; but Shakespeare will hardly allow us to judge Henry sternly. He is a lordly figure, with a full, abounding strength of nature, a self-confidence, an ease and mastery of life, a power of effortless sway, and seems born to pass on in triumph over those who have fallen and are afflicted. Wolsey is drawn with superb power: ambition, fraud, vindictiveness, have made him their own, yet cannot quite ruin a nature possessed of noble qualities. It is hard at first to refuse to Shakespeare the authorship of Wolsey's famous soliloquy in which he bids his greatness farewell, but it is certainly Fletcher's, and when one has perceived this one perceives also that it was an error ever to suppose it written in Shakespeare's manner. The scene in which the vision appears to the dying Queen is also Fletcher's, and in his highest style. We can see from this play that if Shakespeare had returned at the age of fifty to the historical drama, the works written then would have been greater in moral grandeur than those written from his thirtieth to his thirty-fifth years. |