It may be also remarked, that while no play among our author's works exhibits more decisive marks of juvenility than Love's Labour's Lost, none, at the same time, is more strongly imbued with the peculiar cast of his youthful genius; for in style and manner, it bears a closer resemblance to the Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece, and the earlier Sonnets, than any other of his genuine dramas. It presents us, in short, with a continued contest of wit and repartee, the persons represented, whether high or low, vying with each other, throughout the piece, in the production of the greatest number of jokes, sallies, and verbal equivoques. The profusion with which these are every-where scattered, has, unfortunately, had the effect of throwing an air of uniformity over all the characters, who seem solely intent on keeping up the ball of raillery; yet is Biron now and then discriminated by a few strong touches, and Holofernes is probably the portrait of an individual, some of his quotations having justly induced the commentators to infer, that Florio, the author of First and Second Fruits, dialogues in Italian and English, and of a Dictionary, entitled A World of Words, was the object of the poet's satire.
If in dramatic strength of painting this comedy be deficient, and it appears to us, in this quality, inferior to Pericles, we must, independent of the vivacity of its dialogue already noticed, acknowledge,
that it displays several poetical gems, that it contains many just moral apophthegms, and that it affords, even in the closet, no small fund of amusement; and here it is worthy of being remarked, and may, indeed, without prejudice or prepossession, be asserted, that, even to the earliest and most unfinished dramas of our poet, a peculiar interest is felt to be attached, not arising from the fascination of a name, but from an intrinsic and almost inexplicable power of pleasing, which we in vain look for in the juvenile plays of other bards, and which serves, perhaps better than any other criterion, to ascertain the genuine property of Shakspeare; it is, in fact, a touchstone, which, when applied to Titus Andronicus, and what has been termed the First Part of Henry the Sixth, must, if every other evidence were wanting, flash conviction on our senses.
4. King Henry the Sixth: Part the First: 1592;
5. King Henry the Sixth: Part the Second: 1592:
It will be immediately perceived that this arrangement is intended to exclude what has very improperly, in modern times, been ascribed to Shakspeare as the First Part of HIS King Henry the Sixth. The spuriousness of this part, indeed, has been so satisfactorily proved by Mr. Malone, that no doubt can be supposed any longer to rest on the subject; and, if any lingered, it would be still further shaken by what has since transpired; for, from the discovery of Mr. Henslowe's Accounts, at Dulwich College, it appears that this play was never entitled, as Mr. Malone had conjectured, to its present appellation, but was simply styled as it is here entered, Henry the Sixth, and had no connection with the subsequent plays of Peele and Marlowe on the same reign. The entry is dated the 3d of March, 1591, and the play being the property of Lord Strange's company, and performed at the Rose theatre, with neither of which Shakspeare had, at any time, the smallest connection, render the external testimony still more confirmatory of Mr. Malone's position, as to the antiquity, priority, and insulated origin of this drama.[292:A] The internal evidence,
however, is quite sufficient for the purpose; for the hand of Shakspeare is nowhere visible throughout the entire of this "Drum-and-trumpet-Thing," as Mr. Morgan has justly termed it.[293:A] Yet that our author, subsequent to his re-modelling The first Part of the Contention, and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of Yorke, might alter the arrangement, or slightly correct the diction of this play, is very possible,—an interference, however trivial, which probably induced the editors of the first folio, from the period in which this design was executed, to register it with Shakspeare's undisputed plays, under the improper title of The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth.[293:B]
As this drama therefore, which we hold to contain not ten lines of Shakspeare's composition, was, when originally produced, called The Play of Henry the VI., and in 1623, registered The Third Part of King Henry the VI.; though, in the folio published during the same year, it was then for the first time named the first part, would it not be allowable to infer, that the two plays which our poet built on the foundations of Marlowe, or perhaps Marlowe, Peele, and Greene, though not printed before they appeared in the folio, were yet termed, not as they are designated in the modern editions, the second and third parts, but as we have here called them, the first and second parts? Such, in fact, appears to have been the case; for, since the publication of Mr. Malone's Essay, an entry on the Stationers' Registers has been discovered[293:C], made by Tho. Pavier, and dated
April, 19th, 1602, of "The 1st and 2d pts of Henry VI. ij. books[294:A];" which entry, whether it be supposed to apply to the original Contention and True Tragedy, or to an intended edition of the same plays as altered by Shakspeare, clearly proves, that this designation of first and second was here given either to the primary or secondary set of these two plays, and, if applied to one set, would necessarily be applicable to, and used in speaking of, the other.
These two plays then, founded on The First Part of the Contention of the Two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, and on the Second, or The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, written by Marlowe and his friends about the year 1590[294:B], we conceive to have been brought forward by Shakspeare with great and numerous improvements, in 1592.