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THE

COMPLETE WORKS

OF

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

WITH

A LIFE OF THE POET, EXPLANATORY FOOT-NOTES, CRITICAL NOTES, AND A GLOSSARIAL INDEX.

Harvard Edition.

BY THE

REV. HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.

IN TWENTY VOLUMES.

VOL. VIII.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO.

1881.

PR 2753 ня 1881

v. a C

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
HENRY N. HUDSON,

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

GINN & HEATH:

J. S. CUSHING, PRINTER, 75 MILK STREET,
BOSTON.

KING HENRY VI.

PART FIRST.

NEVE

TEVER printed that we know of till in the folio of 1623; but evidently referred to by Thomas Nash in his Pierce Penniless, 1592: "How would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French, to think that, after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage; and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least, (at several times,) who, in the tragedian that represents his person, behold him fresh bleeding." The special matter of this allusion is in the fifth, sixth, and seventh scenes of the fourth Act, where the veteran Earl of Shrewsbury and his son John fight it out together to the death.

During those years, one of the London theatres, called "The Rose," was under the management of Philip Henslowe, who had numerous and varied dealings with playwrights and actors, and from whose records much of our information about the dramatic doings of the time is derived. From this source we learn that a play called Henry the Sixth was acted at his theatre by "Lord Strange's men" on the 3d of March, 1592, and was repeated twelve times in the course of that season. Whether this play were the same as that referred to by Nash, we have no means of ascertaining. Shakespeare is not known to have had any connection with the theatrical company designated as "Lord Strange's men"; and most of his plays, if not all, were undoubtedly written for another company. But it is well known that at that time the same play was often performed by several different companies in succession; for in such matters what we call copyright was then unsecured by law, and little regarded by custom: so it is nowise unlikely that Shakespeare's King Henry the Sixth,

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