INTRODUCTION. SHAKESPEARE'S play of King Henry VIII. was first printed in the folio of 1623. On the 12th of February, 1604 (New style, 1605), there is this memorandum in the books of the Stationers' Company : "Nath. Butter.] Yf he get good allowance for the Enterlude of K. Henry 8th before he begyn to print yt, and then procure the Wardens' hand to yt for the entrance of yt, he is to have the same for his copy." This shows that there was felt to be some risk of official interference with a play that dealt with the royalty of England in critical times not yet beyond the touch of living memory. A man of seventyfive in February, 1605, was a youth of seventeen when Henry VIII. died, but he would only have been a child of three in the year of the christening of Elizabeth, with which Shakespeare closed his play. The "good allowance" was obtained; for Nathaniel Butter did publish in that year (1605) -with a woodcut of Henry VIII. upon its title page-a play of King Henry VIII., called, 'When you See me, you Know me; or, the famous Chronicle Historie of King Henrie the Eight, with the berth and vertuous life of Edward Prince of Wales. As it was playd by the high and mightie Prince of Wales his servants." It is clear, therefore, that the entry made in February, 1605, referred to this play, which was by Samuel Rowley, and which was printed again for Nathaniel Butter in 1613 and in 1621, and of which there was a fourth edition in 1632. Thus there were three editions of Samuel Rowley's play before the first printing of Shakespeare's in the first folio. It is an artless play, in which the young Prince Edward and Will Summers, the King's jester, are much dwelt upon; there are two fools to delight the audience, for Wolsey's fool, Patch, is another of the persons of the comedy. It might even be said that there are three fools, his boisterous Majesty, King Henry VIII., being the third. What evidence is there, then, as to the time when Shakespeare wrote his play of King Henry the Eighth? None. On the 29th of June, 1613, the old Globe Theatre was burnt down, about twenty years after its first erection, by the firing of the thatched roof over its stage during the per formance of a play clearly identified by Sir Henry Wotton's description of it, and by references to it in a ballad of the time upon "The Lamentable Burning of the Globe Play-house on Saint Peter's Day." We learn that the discharge of chambers referred to was that in the fourth Scene of the First Act when, during Wolsey's banquet at York House, the King is supposed to be landing without, and the stage direction is "Drum and Trumpet. Chambers discharged." Chambers were shallow bombs, of little or no use for discharging shot, but used for firing powder on occasions of rejoicing. The old Globe was a summer theatre, open to the sky, but over the stage there was a thatched roofing to protect the actors and contribute to the framing of the groups they formed. Sir Henry Wotton, writing to his nephew on the 2nd of July, said, "Now to let matters of state sleep; I will entertain you at the present with what hath happened this week at the Bank-side. The King's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the Knights of the Order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats, and the like: sufficient in truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, |