"Classification, 1802.
3rd Epoch. Henry VIII. Gelegenheitsgedicht.
Classification, 1819.
3rd Epoch. Henry VIII., a sort of historical masque, or show-play."
"It (the historical drama) must likewise be poetical; that only, I
mean, must be taken which is the permanent in our nature, which is
common, and therefore deeply interesting to all ages."--_Lit. Rem._,
vol. ii. p.160.
What is said in this last extract might be applied (as Coleridge, I feel no
doubt, had he gone one step farther into the subject, would have applied
it) to the Shakspearian drama generally; and tried by this test _Henry
VIII._ must certainly be found wanting.
Before I conclude I am anxious to make an observation with regard to the
extract from Mr. Emerson's _Representative Men_ (vol. ii. p. 307.). The
essay from which this is taken, I presume to be the same, in a printed
form, as a lecture which I heard that gentleman deliver. With abundant
powers to form a judgment for himself, I should say that his mind had never
been directed to questions of this nature. Accident, perhaps, had drawn his
attention to the style of _Henry VIII._; but, with reference to the general
subject, he had received implicitly and unquestioned the conclusions of
authorities who have represented Shakspeare as the greatest borrower,
plagiarist, and imitator that all time has brought forth. This, however,
did not shake his faith in the poet's greatness; and to reconcile what to
some would appear contradictory positions, he proposes the fact, I might
say the truism, that the greatest man is not the most original, but the
"most indebted" man. This, in the sense in which it is true, is saying no
more than that the educated man is better than the savage; but, in the
apologetic sense intended, it is equivalent to affirming that the greatest
thief is the most respectable man. Confident in this morality, he assumes a
previous play to Shakspeare's; but it appears to me that he relies too much
upon the "cadence" of the lines: otherwise I could not account for his
_selecting_ as an "autograph" a scene that, to my mind, bears
"unmistakeable traits" of Fletcher's hand, and that, by whomsoever written,
is about the weakest in the whole play.
It is a branch of the subject which I have not yet fully considered; but
MR. SPEDDING will observe that the view I take does not interfere with the
supposition that Fletcher revised the play, {403} with additions for its
revival in 1613; a task for the performance of which he would probably have
the consent of his early master.