However, I shall venture to place the following passage from Wilson's Logicke, a book very likely to have fallen in Shakespeare's way, which suggests a different meaning of 66 passy measures," leaving the whole matter in the reader's hands: Three merie fellowes reason when they are at nale, He that drynkes wel, slepes wel; He that slepes wel, sinnes not; He that sinnes not shalbe saved. Therefore let us drynk wel, and we shalbe saved. Marke the procedyng and you shall easily avoide the errour, for although in slepe we sinne not, yet by drinkyng we cause synne, and no one man at one time both drynketh and slepeth; therefore, though in slepyng he offended not, yet in drynkyng he passeth measure. V. 1. OLIVIA. A most EXACTING frenzy of mine own From my remembrance clearly banished his. This is the reading of the second folio, so much neglected, and nowhere more than in settling the text of this play. The common editions, following the first folio, have " extracting." "A most exacting frenzy of mine own," a frenzy that exacted from me all attention, all my thoughts and time; far better than "extracting," which seems to have got in from the "distract" of the line above. 412 A WINTER'S TALE. THE name of this play requires an article, although none is given to it in the Variorum. There is perhaps no very strong reason for preferring one to the other, but on the whole the indefinite article appears to me to express more exactly the meaning of the author than the definite, which is prefixed in the original editions. It is a Tale for Winter, or as in the Book of the Revels, a Winter Night's Tale, such a tale as we may conceive to have cheered the dreary hours of a winter's night as a family crowded round the fire, the storm beating against the casement, or, as it is ingeniously expressed in the title of one of the manuscripts in the library of Martin of Palgrave, written in 1605, as if written " of purpose to shorten the lives of long winter nights that lie watching in the dark for us." Shakespeare alludes to this practice of his times both in Macbeth, iii. 4, and King Richard the Second, v. 1. There are passages in the play which plainly allude to it. Such nights are probably now but of the things that have been.* The opinion has prevailed among the commentators that there was some coincidence in respect of the time when this * It is a touching picture of the interior of an Englishman's house which is presented in a few words by Dr. Henry More in the dedication of his Philosophical Poems to his father, Alexander More, a gentleman of Grantham, in Lincolnshire: "You have from my childhood tuned mine ears to Spenser's rhymes, entertaining us in Winter Nights with that incomparable piece of his, The Fairy Queen, a poem as richly fraught with divine morality as fancy." This is something higher than listening even to so wild a tale as Dorastus and Faunia, the story of this play; and I am willing to believe from this single circumstance belonging to it that the house of the Mores at Grantham was one in which all the virtues made their abode. play was written and the date of the Twelfth Night. Beyond the fact that we find the poet here again attacking the puritans I do not perceive on what the opinion rests. That, however, appears to me to be something. It may seem also that the title Twelfth Night may have suggested the title A Winter's Tale. There is a slight connection between them, and neither of them has any particular and exclusive suitability to the dramatic piece to which it is prefixed. This is one of the plays of which we have no earlier edition than that of 1623, in the first folio; neither is there any notice of it in the books of the Stationers' Company before that year. It is not named by Meres; and the earliest proof of its existence that has been hitherto discovered is in some writing of that ridiculous person, Dr. Simon Forman, among his papers in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He there states that he was present at the representation of this play on May 15, 1611. We have thus an incontrovertible limit in one direction.* It appears also from the Book of the Revels that it was performed at Court on the fifth of November in that year.t Mr. Collier in endeavouring to establish his point that A Winter's Tale was produced late in the poet's life lays a principal stress on these two facts. But nothing can be clearer than that the mere fact that Forman witnessed the performance in 1611 is no proof whatever that the play had not been written and performed many years before. He saw also about the same time Macbeth, King Richard the Second, and Cymbeline; and yet no person will I conceive be dis * It is in No. 208 of the Ashmole Manuscripts. My attention was first drawn to these notes of Forman by my friend Dr. Bliss (to whom every thing of this kind at Oxford is perfectly familiar), at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in the summer of 1832. + Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, by Peter Cunningham, 8vo. 1842, p. 210. posed to contend that these plays were written and first performed in 1610 or 1611. The performance at Court in the same year proves nothing in respect of date, except that the play was written before November 1611. As to anything more it is the argument pressed against my opinion of the early date of The Tempest, and admits of the same refutation. We do not know from anything else that Forman has written that he was one of those who never visit the theatres except on first nights; but we do know that plays which were not new were performed at Court, as hath been shewn in detail already; therefore, that A Winter's Tale was performed at Court on November 5, 1611, is no proof whatever that it was then a new play, nor does it raise the slightest probability in that direction. But there is an obvious reason for this play having been chosen for representation at Court on the night of the fifth of November, when the holyday had been spent in commemoration of the blow aimed at the King's anointed head, in the passage, which is so extremely appropriate to the day, If I could find example Of thousands that have struck anointed kings And flourished after, I'd not do it: but since Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one, Let villainy itself forswear it.-Act i. Sc. 2. These words we are sure at least would be received with a plaudite! Upon this passage Sir William Blackstone founded an argument to prove that A Winter's Tale could not have been written in the reign of Elizabeth, inasmuch as she was one who had struck, not an anointed king, indeed, but an anointed queen, in the person of the Queen of Scots. There was, however, something in the passage so grateful to the ear of royalty, that the minor consideration would probably be lost in it if the words were repeated before the queen: nor does it appear that she ever pleaded guilty to having given the command advisedly to put the Queen of Scots to death. So that on the whole there does not appear to be much in the remark. while The internal evidence for date is, indeed, exceedingly slight; of which no better proof can be given than the great discordancy of the commentators on this point. Chalmers comes to the conclusion that it was written in 1601 Malone, at three different periods of his life, contended for three different and distinct dates, namely, 1594, 1604, and finally 1611. Mr. Malone's reason for resting in the latest date is one which is also one of the three reasons on which Mr. Collier relies. At first view it appears conclusive; but it ceases to be so when brought to the test. The argument is this :Mr. Malone was acquainted with a manuscript journal of Sir Henry Herbert, who, about 1622, entered on the office of Master of the Revels. In this he found the following entry :-" For the King's Players, an old play, called Winter's Tale, formerly allowed of by Sir George Buck, and likewise by me, on Mr. Hemmings his word, that there was nothing profane added or reformed, though the allowed book was missing: and therefore I returned it without a fee, this 19th of August, 1623."* On this Mr. Collier argues, as Mr. Malone had done before him, thus :-"Sir George Buc was Master of the Revels from October 1610, until May 1622. Sir George Buc must, therefore, have licensed the Winter's Tale between October 1610, when he was appointed to his office, and May 1611, when Forman saw it at the Globe." This appears decisive: but it only appears *Boswell's Malone, vol. iii. p. 229. |