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"T is ten to one, this play can never please All that are here: Some come to take their ease, And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear, We have frighted with our trumpets; so 't is clear, They'll say 't is naught: others, to hear the city Abus'd extremely, and to cry," that 's witty!" Which we have not done neither: that, I fear, All the expected good we are like to hear, For this play at this time, is only in The merciful construction of good women; For such a one we show'd them: If they smile And say, 't will do, I know, within a while All the best men are ours; for 't is ill hap, If they hold, when their ladies bid them clap,

End of

King Henry VIII.

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'ROMEO AND JULIET was first printed in the year 1597. The second edition was printed in 1599. The title of that edition declares it to be "Newly corrected, augmented, and amended." There can be no doubt whatever that the corrections, augmentations, and emenda. tions were those of the author. We know of nothing in literary history more curious or more instructive than the example of minute attention, as well as consummate skill, exhibited by Shakspere in correcting, augmenting, and amending the first copy of this play.

"Of the truth of Juliet's story, they (the Veronese) seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact-giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." Byron thus described the tomb of Juliet to his friend Moore, as he saw it at the close of autumn, when withered leaves had dropped into the decayed sarcophagus, and the vines that are trailed above it had been stripped of their fruit. His letter to Moore, in which this passage occurs, is dated the 7th November. But this wild and desolate garden only struck Byron as appropriate to the legend-to that simple tale of fierce hatreds and fatal loves which tradition has still preserved, amongst those who may never have read Luigi da Porto or Bandello, the Italian romancers who give the tale, and who, perhaps, never

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