With willing sport, to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course:
I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step.
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium."[370:A]
10. King Richard the Third: 1595. It is the conjecture of Mr. Malone, and by which he has been guided in his chronological arrangement, that this play, and King Richard the Second, were written, acted, registered, and printed in the year 1597. That they were registered and published during this year, we have indisputable authority[370:B]; but that they were written and acted within the same period, is a supposition without any proof, and, to say the least of it, highly improbable.
Mr. Chalmers, struck by this incautious assertion, of two such plays being written, acted, and published in a few months[370:C]; reflecting that
Shakspeare, impressed by the character of Glocester, in his play of Henry the Sixth, might be induced to resume his national dramas by continuing the Historie of Richard, to which he might be more immediately stimulated by his knowledge that an enterlude entitled the Tragedie of Richard the Third, had been exhibited in 1593, or 1594; and ingeniously surmising that Richard the Second was a subsequent production, because it ushered in a distinct and concatenated series of history, has, under this view of the subject, given precedence to Richard the Third in the order of composition, and assigned its origin to the year 1595.