To those Gentlemen, his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to present his extremities.

Thou famous gracer of Tragedians, Juvenall, that byting Satyrist, deserving than the other two.

al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned, for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleave: those Puppets (I mean) that speake from our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding; is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might entreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses: and let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.

Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance (written before his death [1592], and published at his dying request).

PREFACE TO THE THREE PARTS

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

FIRST EDITIONS

(I.) The First Part of Henry the Sixth was in all probability printed for the first time in the First Folio. On November 8, 1623, Blount & Jaggard entered, among other copies of Shakespeare's works "not formerly entered to other men," "the Thirde Parte of Henry the Sixt," by which term they evidently referred to the play which, chronologically considered, precedes the Second and Third

Parts.

The opening lines of the play are sufficient to render it well-nigh certain that 1 Henry VI is not wholly Shakespeare's; 1 and there can be little doubt that "the hand of the Great Master is only occasionally perceptible therein. Probably we have here an inferior production by some unknown dramatist,2 writing about 1589, to which Shakespeare made important "additions" in the year 1591; to him may safely be assigned the greater part of Act IV. ii.-vii., especially the Talbot episodes (scene vii., in spite of its rhyme, has the Shakespearian note, and is noteworthy from the point of view of literary history); the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk (V. iii.) has, too, some

1 Cp. Coleridge, "If you do not feel the impossibility of [these lines] having been written by Shakespeare, all I dare suggest is, that you may have ears,-for so has another animal,-but an ear you cannot have, me judice."

2 Dr. Furnivall sees at least four hands in the play; Mr. Fleay assigns it to Peele, Marlowe, Lodge or Nash, and Shakespeare. The attempt to determine the authorship is futile, owing to the absence of all evidence on the point.

thing of Shakespeare's touch; finally, there is the Temple Garden scene (II. iv.), which is certainly Shakespeare's, though, judged by metrical peculiarities it may well have been added some years after 1591. We may be sure that at no time in his career could he have been guilty of the crude and vulgar presentment of Joan of Arc in the latter part of the play.

(II.) The Second and Third Parts of Henry the Sixth, forming together a two-sectioned play, have come down to us in two versions:-(a) The Folio version, authorized by Shakespeare's editors; (b) a carelessly printed early Quarto version, differing in many important respects from (a); about 3,240 lines in the Quarto edition appear either in the same or an altered form in the Folio edition, while about 2,740 lines in the latter are entirely new.1 The titlepages of the first Quartos, corresponding to Parts I. and II. respectively, are as follows:-(i.) "The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: | And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolk, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Iacke Cade: | And the Duke of Yorke's first slaime unto the Crowne. LONDON. Printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, and are to be sold at his shop vnder Saint Peter's Church in Cornwall. | 1594." 2 [Q.1.] (ii) "The true Tragedie of Richard | Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene | the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times | acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pem-brooke his Seruants. Printed at London by P. S. for Thomas Milling-ton, and are to be sold at his shoppe under | Saint

1 "Out of 3075 lines in Part II., there are 1715 new lines and some 840 altered lines (many but very slightly altered), and some 520 old lines. In Part III., out of 2902 lines, there are about 1021 new unes, about 871 altered lines, and above 1010 old lines."

2 Entered in the Stationers' Register, March 12, 1593.