Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him:-Our children's chil

dren

Shall see this, and bless Heaven.

King.

Thou speakest wonders. Cran. She shall be, to the happiness of England An aged princess; many days shall see her, And yet no day without a deed to crown it. 'Would I had known no more! but she must die (She must, the saints must have her) yet a virgin;' A most unspotted lily shall she pass

To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her.
King. O, lord archbishop!

Thou hast made me now a man: never, before
This happy child, did I get any thing.

This oracle of comfort has so pleas'd me,
That when I am in heaven I shall desire
To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.
I thank ye all.-To you, my good lord mayor,
And your good brethren, I am much beholding:
I have receiv'd much honour by your presence,
And ye shall find me thankful.
Lead the way,

lords:

Ye must all see the queen, and she must thank ye;

On a picture of King James, which formerly belonged to Bacon, and is now in the possession of Lord Grimston, he is styled imperii Atlantici conditor. In 1612 there was a lottery for the plantation of Virginia. The lines probably allude to the sett ement of that colony.

3 We here follow a suggestion of Mr. Dyce, in so pointing the passage as to make Cranmer express regret at his foreknowledgethat Elizabeth was to die childless, not that she was to die; which atter is the meaning given by the usual pointing, thus:

"'Would I had known no more! but she must die,
She must, the saints must have her; yet a virgin,
A most unspotted lily shall she pass," &c.

She will be sick else. This day, no man think
He has business at his house, for all shall stay;
This little one shall make it holiday.

[Exeunt.

EPILOGUE.

"Tis 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, 'tis clear,
They'll say 'tis 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 're 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 'em: If they smile,
And say 'twill do, I know, within a while
All the best men are ours; for 'tis ill hap,
If they hold, when their ladies bid 'em clap.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

TRAGEDY OF TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

THE first edition of this play was a quarto pamphlet of fortysix leaves, issued in 1609, with a title-page reading as follows: "The Famous History of Troilus and Cressid: Excellently expressing the beginning of their loves, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus, Prince of Licia. Written by William Shakespeare. London Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the Spread Eagle in Paul's Churchyard, over against the great north door, 1609." There is also an entry in the Stationers' Register, dated January 28, 1609, and reading thus: "Richard Bonian and Henry Walley: Entered for their copy, under the hands of Mr. Segar, Deputy to Sir George Buck and Mr. Warden Lownes, a book called The History of Troilus and Cressida." Of course the first issue was made in pursuance of this entry. And that issue is specially remarkable in being accompanied with a sort of prefatory address to the reader by the editor or publisher; which address may be seen at the end of this Introduction. In that address are two points of information which should be noticed here. The first is, that the play was then new, and had never been publicly acted; the words being,-"You have here a new play, never stal'd with the stage, never clapperclaw'd with the palms of the vulgar." And again: "Not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude." The other point is, that the publishing of the play was unauthorized and surreptitious. The writer bids his readers, - -"Thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you; since by the grand possessors' wills I believe you should have pray'd for it, rather than Deen pray'd." The "grand possessors' were doubtless the propri etors of the Globe Theatre, in whom the rights of ownership were vested; and how strong their interest was in withholding Shakespeare's plays from the press, appears in that only this play and King Lear were published between 1604 and the Poet's death and probably both of these without the owners' consent.

The edition of 1609 it seems, went to a second issue in the course of the same year; the prefatory address being withdrawn, and the title-page changed so as to read thus: "The History of Troilus and Cressida: As it was acted by the King's Majesty's servants at the Globe." We speak of these as two issues of one and the same edition, because the text of both copies is in all respects the same, with the exception of two or three typographica! corrections. It will be observed, no doubt, that the play must have been acted on the public stage soon after the first issue, and that this was a good reason for suppressing the editor's preface and changing the title-page in the second.

How Bonian and Walley should have obtained their copy for the press, is a question more likely to be raised than satisfactorily answered. From the title-page to the quarto edition of King Lear, which was issued in 1608, we learn that that play was acted "before the King's Majesty at Whitehall upon St. Stephen's night in Christmas holidays, by his Majesty's servants playing usually at the Globe." It is not unlikely that, before the first issue, Troilus and Cressida had been acted at the same place and by the same persons; as this would nowise conflict with the statement, in the preface, of its being "a new play, never stal'd with the stage," nor "sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude." But whether the play had been so acted or not, we can easily conceive how it might have got into the publishers' hands without the owners' consent. For copies of it must of course have been given out to the players some time before the day of performance. And so the most likely account of " the scape it hath made amongst you" seems to be, that the copy leaked somehow through the players' hands, and was put through the press before it could be got ready for the stage.

In both issues of the quarto edition, Troilus and Cressida is called a "history;" while in the prefatory address it is reckoned amongst the Poet's "comedies." In the folio of 1623, where it was next published, it was called a "tragedy." The circumstances of its appearance in the latter edition are in some respects quite peculiar. It is not included in the list of plays prefixed to the volume, and is printed without any numbering of the pages, save that the pages of the second leaf are numbered 79 and 0. In that edition, as we have several times remarked, the plays are distributed under the three heads of Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Each of these divisions is paged by itself, and in that of Tragedies the paging begins with Coriolanus. Troilus and Cressida is placed between the Histories and Tragedies, with nothing to mark which of the two divisions it falls under, excep that in the general title it is called a " tragedy," as at the head of this Introduction. From its not being included in the list of plays nor in the paging, some have inferred that its insertion in the folio was an after-thought; and that either the existence of it