ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE EIGHTH VOLUME. 6. Mother Jourdain, Hume, Duchess, &c.-Opie. 7. York, Salisbury, and Warwick.-Hamilton. 10. Rutland, Tutor, Clifford, &c.-Northcote. 11. King Henry, Son, Father, &c.-Boydell. HISTORICAL NOTICE OF KING HENRY VI.-PART I. This piece is supposed by Malone to have made its appearance on the stage about the year 1588, and to have been formerly known by the appellation of 'The Historical Play of King Henry VI.' The learned commentator has endeavored to prove that it was written neither by Shakspeare nor by the author of the other two plays detailing the events of a subsequent period of the same reign; and these conjectures are confirmed by the manuscript accounts of Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose Tavern, Bankside, which have been since discovered at Dulwich College. The entry is dated the 3d of March, 1591; and the play being the property of Lord Strange's company, and performed at the Rose theatre, with neither of which Shakspeare had at any time the smallest connexion, the testimony of Malone's position as to the antiquity, priority, and insulated origin of this drama, is much corroborated. At this distance of time it is impossible to ascertain on what principle our author's friends, Heminge and Condell, admitted The First Part of King Henry V1. into their volume. Malone remarks, that they may have given it a place as a necessary introduction to the two other parts, and because Shakspeare had |