The court went to Windfor in the beginning of July, 1603, and foon afterwards the feaft of Saint George was celebrated there with great folemnity. The Prince of Wales, the duke of Lenox, our poet's great patron the carl of Southampton, the earl of Pembroke, and the earl of Marre, were inftalled knights of the garter; and the chief ladies of England did homage to the queen. The king and queen afterwards ufually refided in the fummer at Greenwich. The allufion to the infignia of the order of the garter in the fifth act of this comedy, if written recently after fo fplendid a folemnity, .would have a peculiar grace; yet the order having been originally inftituted at Windfor by King Edward III., the place in which the fcene lay, might, it must be owned, have fuggefted an alluon to it, without any particular or temporary object. It is obfervable that Mrs. Quickly fays, there had been knights, lords, and gentlemen, with their coaches, coach after coach, &c. Coaches, as appears from Howes's Continuation of Stowe's Chronicle, did not come into general ufe, till the year 1605. It may therefore be prefumed that this play was not enlarged very long before that year.

There is yet another note of time to be confidered. In the firft fcene of the enlarged copy of The Merry Wives of Windfor, Slender afks Mr. Page. "How does your fallow greyhound, fir?

I hear he was outrun on Cotfale." He means the Cotswold hills in Glocefterfhire. In the beginning of the reign of James the Firft, the Cotswold games were inftituted by one Dover. They confifted, as Mr. Warton has observed, of wrestling, leaping, pitching the bar, handling the pike, dan

cing of women, various kinds of hunting, and particularly courfing the hare with greyhounds." Mr. Warton is of opinion that two or three years must have elapsed before these games could have been effectually established, and therefore fuppofes that our author's additions to this comedy were made about the year 1607. Dr. Farmer doubts whether Capt. Dover was the founder of these games. "Though the Captain," he obferves, "be celebrated in the Annalia Dubrenfia as the founder of them, he might be the reviver only, or fome way contribute to make them more famous: for in. the fecond part of King Henry IV. Justice Shallow reckons among the fwinge-bucklers, "Will Squeele, a Cotfole man." In confirmation of Dr. Farmer's opinion Mr. Steevens remarks, that in Randolph's poems, 1638, is found "An eclogue on the noble. affemblies revived on Cotswold hills by Mr. Robert Dover."

If the Cotswold games were celebrated before the death of Queen Elizabeth, the paffage above cited certainly proves nothing. Let us then endeavour to ascertain that fact. Dover himfelf tells us in the Annalia Dubrenfia that he was the founder of these games:

"Yet I was bold for better recreation

"To invent thefe fports, to counter-check that fashion." and from Ben Jonfon's verfes in the fame collection we learn that they were exhibited in the time of James I. and revived in 1636. Nothing more then follows from Randolph's verses, compared with Jonfon's, than that the games had been discontinued after their firft inftitution by Dover, (probably foon

after the death of King James,) and were revived by their founder at a subsequent period. Cotswold, long before the death of Elizabeth, might have been famous for fwinge bucklers, or in other words for ftrong men, skilled in fighting with fword and buckler, wrestling, and other athletick exercises: but there is no ground for fuppofing that courfing with greyhounds, in order to obtain the prize of a filver collar, was cuftomary there, till Dover inftituted those prizes after the acceffion of James to the throne.

That they were inftituted about the year 1603, when King James acceded to the English throne, may be collected from the account given of them by Wood in his Athen. Oxon. Vol. II. p. 812: "The faid games were begun, and continued at a certain time of the year, for 40 years, by one Robert Dover, an attorney of Burton on the heath in Warwickshire; who did, with leave from King James I. felect a place on Cotswold-hills in Gloucefterfhire, whereon thofe games fhould be acted. Dover was conftantly there in perfon, well mounted and accoutred, and was the chief director and manager of thofe games, even till the rafcally rebellion was begun by the Prefbyterians, which gave a ftop to their proceedings, and spoiled all that was generous and ingenious elsewhere."

This comedy was not printed in its present state till 1623, when it was published with the reft of our author's plays in folio. The republication of the imperfect copy in 1619 has been mentioned as a circumstance from which we may infer that Shakfpeare's improved play was not written, or at least not acted, till fome years after 1607. I confefs,

I do not perceive, on what ground this inference is made. Arthur Johnson, the bookfeller for whom the imperfect copy of this play was published in 1602, when the whole edition was fold off, reprinted it in 1619, knowing that the enlarged copy remained in MS. in the hands of the proprietors of the Globe theatre, and that fuch of the publick as wished to read the play in any form, must read the imperfect play, of which he had fecured the property by entering it at Stationers' hall. In the fame manner Thomas Pavier in 1619 reprinted the first and second parts of The whole Contention of the two Houfes of Yorke and Lancaster, though he could not but know that the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. which were formed on thofe pieces, and were much more valuable than them, had been frequently acted, antecedent to his republication, and that the original plays had long been withdrawn from the scene. Not being able to procure the improved and perfect copies, a needy bookfeller would publifh what he could.

22. KING HENRY VIII. 1601.

This play was probably written, as Dr. Johnfon and Mr. Steevens obferve, before the death of Queen Elizabeth, which happened on the 24th of March, 1602-3. The elogium on king James, which is blended with the panegyrick on Elizabeth, in the laft fcene, was evidently a fubfequent infertion, after the acceffion of the Scottish monarch to the throne: for Shakspeare was too well acquainted with courts, to compliment in the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth, her prefumptive fucceffor, of whom hiftory informs us fhe was not a little

jealous. That the prediction concerning King James was added after the death of the queen, is ftill more clearly evinced, as Dr. Johnson has remarked, by the aukward manner in which it is connected with the foregoing and subsequent lines.

The following lines in that prediction may fervė to afcertain the time when the compliment was introduced:

"Wherever the bright fun of heaven shall shine,
"His honour and the greatness of his name
"Shall be, and make new nations:"

Though Virginia was difcovered in 1584, the first colony fent out went there in 1606. In that year the king granted two letters patent for planting that country, one to the city of London, the other to the cities of Briftol, Exeter and Plymouth. The colony fent from London fettled in Virginia; that from the other cities in New England; the capital of which was built in the following year, and called James-town. In 1606 also a scheme was adopted for the plantation of Ulfter in Ireland. " I fufpect therefore that the panegyrick on the king was introduced either in that year, or in 1612, when a lottery was granted expressly for the establifhment of English Colonies in Virginia.

It may be objected, that if this play was written after the acceffion of King James, the author could not introduce a panegyrick on him, without making Queen Elizabeth the vehicle of it, fhe being the object immediately prefented to the audience in the laft act of King Henry VIII; and that, therefore, the praifes fo profufely lavished on her, do not 5 Bacon's Works, Vol. IV. p. 440.