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The play, thus revived and new-named, was probaly called, in the bills of that time, a new play; which might have led Sir Henry Wotton to deſcribe it as ſuch. And thus his account may be reconciled with that of the other contemporary writers, as well as with thoſe arguments which have been here urged in ſupport of the early date of K. Henry VIII. Every thing has been fully ſtated on each ſide of the queſtion. The reader muſt judge.
Mr. Roderick in his notes on our author, (appended to Mr. Edwards’s Canons of Criticiſm) takes notice or ſome peculiarities in the metre of the play before us; viz. “ that there are many more verſes in it than in any other, which end with a redundant ſyllable”—“ very near two to one”—and that “ the cæſuræ or pauſes of the verſe are full as remarkable.”—The re-
at the Globe playhouſe when it was burnt; a circumſtance which in ſome meaſure ſtrengthens the conjecture that he was employed on the revival of King Henry VIII. for this was not the theatre at which his pieces were uſually repreſented:
“ Well fare the wiſe men yet on the Bank-ſide,
“ My friends, the watermen! they could provide
“ Againſt thy fury, when, to ſerve their needs,
“ They made a Vulcan of a ſheaf of reeds;
“ Whom they durſt handle in their holy-day coats,
“ And ſafely truſt to dreſs, not burn their boats.
“ But O thoſe reeds! thy mere diſdain of them
“ Made thee beget that cruel ſtratagem,
“ (Which ſome are pleas’d to ſtyle but thy mad prank)
“ Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank :
“ Which, though it were the fort of the whole pariſh,
“ Flank’d with a ditch and forc’d out of a mariſh,
“ I ſaw with two poor chambers taken in,
“ And raz’d; ere thought could urge this might have been.
“ See the world’s ruins! nothing but the piles
“ Left, and wit ſince to cover it with tiles.
“ The breth’ren, they ſtraight nois’d it out for news,
“ ’Twas verily ſome relick of the ſtews,
“ And this a ſparkle of that fire let looſe,
“ That was lock’d up in the Wincheſtrian gooſe,
“ Bred on the Bank in time of popery,
“ When Venus there maintain’d her miſtery,
“ But others fell, with that conceit, by the ears,
“ And cried, it was a threat’ning to the bears,
“ And that accurſed ground, the Paris-garden, &c.”
