of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, and the final separation of the English from the Romish Church; but, when a new play was required for some special occasion, Shakespeare handed over the manuscript to Fletcher, who continued it in the spirit of a masque. It was Tennyson who made the first suggestion that led to the identification of Fletcher as Shakespeare's collaborator here, and scholars are now generally agreed in attributing to the latter the following portions: Act I., Scs. 1 and 2; Act II., Scs. 3 and 4; Act III., Sc. 2 (to exit of king); and Act V., Sc. 1; and to Fletcher, all the remainder, including the famous speech of Wolsey. Certainly, the trial scene is an integral part of Shakespeare's work; and Queen Katherine, another noble and magnanimous sufferer, is a twin-sister of Hermione in A Winter's Tale. But the chronology is altogether capricious, and the details gathered at haphazard from Holinshed's Chronicle, Hall's Union of the Families of Lancaster and York, George Cavendish's Life of Cardinal Wolsey, and the Acts and Monuments of the Church.

More interesting, in their reflections of the life and times of Shakespeare, are the London allusions which abound in this play. Shakespeare lived for some years in St. Helen's precinct, almost under the shadow of Crosby Place; and it must have been at the time of writing King Henry VIII. that he bought a house in Blackfriars, where the remains of the Blackfriars Monastery were afterwards found. This house, which he never seems to have occupied, was built partly over a gateway on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, then called Puddle Dock Hill, between St. Paul's Wharf and Black

friars Stairs. At that time, the monastery wail was still standing; the precinct was a fashionable residential quarter, with the Blackfriars Theatre hard by. The palace in the play is doubtless Bridewell, which was rebuilt in Bride Lane and "made stately and beautiful." York Place, afterwards called Whitehall, was long the town house of the Archbishops of York. Henry VIII. changed the name and added a sumptuous gallery and gatehouse fronting St. James's Park. St. Paul's or "Powle's" became a part of common Elizabethan slang, and the rallying-cry of "Clubs!" was identified with the London apprentices known as "the hope of the Strand."

The most notable event in connection with the production of King Henry VIII. was the burning of the "Globe" theatre during a performance on June 29, 1613. Various accounts are given of this disaster, which seems to have begun with the firing of the cannons during the scene at Wolsey's house. Several topical ballads describing it were also written. It has been suggested that the original copy of the play most likely perished in this fire, and that Fletcher's parts may have been rewritten by him from memory of scenes which at first were Shakespeare's. Not only was the "Globe" theatre rebuilt within a year, but this interval was seized by the enterprising Henslowe for building another new theatre in the BearGarden close by. This was the "Hope"; designed to be "as large as the Swan" and to have a tirehouse and a movable stage, which could be cleared away during "baiting." Pointed references to The Tempest and A Winter's Tale occur in Ben

Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, produced at the 'Hope" in 1614, as well as allusions to the new playhouse, not altogether flattering to the builders. Much satire is directed to the small tiring-house "in which one cannot go upright," and round which the author is said to have kicked the stagekeeper three or four times.

But from these rough, though not altogether sordid struggles, without which the English drama could never have been established among the people that created it, Shakespeare had now withdrawn. What little more he had to do for his art and his profession was to be done in his native town, where even now the "audacity of elected persons" was ruling all stage-plays to be "unlawful" and "to be put down." Here died, on April 23, 1616, the township's most illustrious rebel, vindicator of the dramatic method to all time. What Shakespeare left to Stratford and the world can hardly be better summed up than in the words of Mr. Walter Bagehot: "The fruits of a first-rate imagination working on a first-rate experience." ESTHER WOOD.