WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE PLAYS EDITED FROM THE FOLIO OF MDCXXIII, WITH VARIOUS THE ENGLISH DRAMA, A MEMOIR OF THE POET, BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE VOL. VI. BOSTON LITTLE BROWN AND COMPANY 1859 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by RICHARD GRANT WHITE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. The Life and Death of King John occupies twenty-two pages in the folio of 1623; viz., from p. 1 to p. 22 inclusive, in the division of Histories, — each of the three great divisions of that volume having its own numeration of pages. The play is there divided into Acts and Scenes, but with a transposition, in the second Act, of Actus Secundus and Scena Secunda. It is without a list of Dramatis Personæ, which was first supplied by Rowe. (6) KING JOHN. INTRODUCTION. HAKESPEARE'S Historical Plays are often discoursed works, written in pursuance of a plan, the purpose of which was to illustrate English History. That they illustrate history, and in a certain sense were meant to do so, is manifest upon their very face; but that they do this in conformity with a systematic design, there is neither external nor internal evidence to show. The origin of a contrary opinion must be traced to a tradition first mentioned by Gildon, according to which Shakespeare told Ben Jonson, that "finding the nation generally very ignorant of history, he wrote plays in order to instruct the people in that particular." But of all the unfounded stories told of Shakespeare, this is the most difficult of belief. Such a declaration could not have been made by one of those men to the other with a grave face, actors though they were. For Historical Plays, or Histories, as they were called, were in vogue with our ancestors before Shakespeare began to write for the stage; and so far was he from seeking to impart historical knowledge to the audiences at the Blackfriars, that he did not even attempt to correct the grossest violations of historical truth in the older play upon which he founded one of his Histories this very King John; and in other instances, in which he went for his story directly to the Chronicles, he did not hesitate to bring together events really separated by years, (though connected as cause and effect, or means to a common end,) when, by so grouping them, he could produce a vivid and impressive dramatic picture of the period which he undertook to represent. In writing the Histories he had the same purpose as in writing the Comedies and Tragedies; that purpose always being, to make a good play: and with him a good play was one which would fill the theatre whenever it was performed, and at the (7) |