The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

Home > Fiction > The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works > Page 400
The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works Page 400

by William Shakespeare


  And thence retire me to my Milan, where

  Every third thought shall be my grave.

  ALONSO I long

  To hear the story of your life, which must

  Take the ear strangely.

  PROSPERO

  I’ll deliver all,

  And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,

  And sail so expeditious that shall catch

  Your royal fleet far off. (Aside to Ariel) My Ariel, chick,

  That is thy charge. Then to the elements

  Be free, and fare thou well.

  Exit Ariel

  Please you, draw near.

  Exeunt ⌈all but Prospero⌉

  Epilogue

  PROSPERO

  Now my charms are all o’erthrown,

  And what strength I have’s mine own,

  Which is most faint. Now ’tis true

  I must be here confined by you

  Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

  Since I have my dukedom got,

  And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

  In this bare island by your spell;

  But release me from my bands

  With the help of your good hands.

  Gentle breath of yours my sails

  Must fill, or else my project fails,

  Which was to please. Now I want

  Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;

  And my ending is despair

  Unless I be relieved by prayer,

  Which pierces so, that it assaults

  Mercy itself, and frees all faults.

  As you from crimes would pardoned be,

  Let your indulgence set me free.

  He awaits applause, then exit

  CARDENIO

  A BRIEF ACCOUNT

  MANY plays acted in Shakespeare’s time have failed to survive; they may easily include some that he wrote. The mystery of Love’s Labour’s Won is discussed elsewhere (pp. xxxvii, 337). Certain manuscript records of the seventeenth century suggest that at least one other play in which he had a hand may have disappeared. On 9 September 1653 the London publisher Humphrey Moseley entered in the Stationers’ Register a batch of plays including ‘The History of Cardenio, by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare’. Cardenio is a character in Part One of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published in English translation in 1612. Two earlier allusions suggest that the King’s Men owned a play on this subject at the time that Shakespeare was collaborating with John Fletcher (1579-1625). On 20 May 1613 the Privy Council authorized payment of £20 to John Heminges, as leader of the King’s Men, for the presentation at court of six plays, one listed as ‘Cardenno’. On 9 July of the same year Heminges received £6 13s. 4d. for his company’s performance of a play ‘called Cardenna’ before the ambassador of the Duke of Savoy.

  No more information about this play survives from the seventeenth century, but in 1728 Lewis Theobald published a play based on the story of Cardenio and called Double Falsehood, or The Distrest Lovers, which he claimed to have ‘revised and adapted’ from one ‘written originally by W. Shakespeare’. It had been successfully produced at Drury Lane on 13 December 1727, and was given thirteen times up to 1 May 1728. Other performances are recorded in 1740, 1741, 1767 (when it was reprinted), 1770, and 1847. In 1770 a newspaper stated that ‘the original manuscript’ was ‘treasured up in the Museum of Covent Garden Playhouse’; fire destroyed the theatre, including its library, in 1808.

  Theobald claimed to own several manuscripts of an original play by Shakespeare, and remarked that some of his contemporaries thought the style was Fletcher’s, not Shakespeare’s. When he himself came to edit Shakespeare’s plays he did not include either Double Falsehood or the play on which he claimed to have based it; he simply edited the plays of the First Folio, not adding either Pericles or The Two Noble Kinsmen, though he believed they were partly by Shakespeare. It is quite possible that Double Falsehood is based (however distantly) on a play of Shakespeare’s time; if so, the play is likely to have been the one performed by the King’s Men and ascribed by Moseley in 1653 to Fletcher and Shakespeare.

  Double Falsehood is a tragicomedy; the characters’ names differ from those in Don Quixote, and the story is varied. Henriquez rapes Violante, then falls in love with Leonora, loved by his friend Julio. Her parents agree to the marriage, but Julio interrupts the ceremony. Leonora (who had intended to kill herself) swoons and later takes sanctuary in a nunnery. Julio goes mad with desire for vengeance on his false friend; and the wronged Violante, disguised as a boy, joins a group of shepherds, and is almost raped by one of them. Henriquez’s virtuous brother, Roderick, ignorant of his villainy, helps him to abduct Leonora. Leonora and Violante both denounce Henriquez to Roderick. Finally Henriquez repents and marries Violante, while Julio (now sane) marries Leonora.

  Some of the motifs of Double Falsehood, such as the disguised heroine wronged by her lover and, particularly, the reuniting and reconciliation of parents with children, recall Shakespeare’s late plays. But most of the dialogue seems un-Shakespearian. Though the play deserved its limited success, it is now no more than an interesting curiosity.

  ALL IS TRUE

  (HENRY VIII)

  BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND JOHN FLETCHER

  ON 29 June 1613 the firing of cannon at the Globe Theatre ignited its thatch and burned it to the ground. According to a letter of 4 July the house was full of spectators who had come to see ‘a new play called All is True, which had been acted not passing two or three times before’. No one was hurt ‘except one man who was scalded with the fire by adventuring in to save a child which otherwise had been burnt’. This establishes the play’s date with unusual precision. Though two other accounts of the fire refer to a play ‘of’—which may mean simply ‘about’—Henry VIII, yet another two unequivocally call it All is True; and these words also end the refrain of a ballad about the fire. When the play came to be printed as the last of the English history plays—all named after kings—in the 1623 Folio it was as The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eighth. We restore the title by which it was known to its first audiences.

  No surviving account of the fire says who wrote the play that caused it. In 1850, James Spedding (prompted by Tennyson) suggested that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher (1579-1625). We have external evidence that the two dramatists worked together in or around 1613 on the lost Cardenio and on The Two Noble Kinsmen. For their collaboration in All is True the evidence is wholly internal, stemming from the initial perception of two distinct verse styles within the play; later, more rigorous examination of evidence provided by both the play’s language and its dramatic technique has convinced most scholars of Fletcher’s hand in it. The passages most confidently attributed to Shakespeare are Act 1, Scenes 1 and 2; Act 2, Scenes 3 and 4; Act 3, Scene 2 to line 204; and Act 5, Scene 1.

  The historical material derives, often closely, from the chronicles of Raphael Holinshed and Edward Hall, supplemented by John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563, etc.) for the Cranmer episodes in Act 5. It covers only part of Henry’s reign, from the opening description of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, of 1520, to the christening of Princess Elizabeth, in 1533. It depicts the increasing abuse of power by Cardinal Wolsey; the execution, brought about by Wolsey’s machinations, of the Duke of Buckingham; the King’s abandonment of his Queen, Katherine of Aragon; the rise to the King’s favour of Anne Boleyn; Wolsey’s disgrace; and the birth to Henry and Anne of a daughter instead of the hoped-for son.

  Sir Henry Wotton, writing of the fire, said that the play represented ‘some principal pieces of the reign of Henry 8, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty’. It has continued popular in performance for the opportunities that it affords for spectacle and for the dramatic power of certain episodes such as Buckingham’s speeches before execution (2.1), Queen Katherine’s defence of the validity of her marriage (2.4), Wolsey’s farewell to his greatness (3.2), and Katherine’s dying scene (4.2). Though the play depicts
a series of falls from greatness, it works towards the birth of the future Elizabeth I, fulsomely celebrated in the last scene (not attributed to Shakespeare) along with her successor, the patron of the King’s Men.

  THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

  All Is True

  Prologue Enter Prologue

  PROLOGUE

  I come no more to make you laugh. Things now

  That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

  Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe—

  Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow

  We now present. Those that can pity here

  May, if they think it well, let fall a tear.

  The subject will deserve it. Such as give

  Their money out of hope they may believe,

  May here find truth, too. Those that come to see

  Only a show or two, and so agree

  The play may pass, if they be still, and willing,

  I’ll undertake may see away their shilling

  Richly in two short hours. Only they

  That come to hear a merry bawdy play,

  A noise of targets, or to see a fellow

  In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,

  Will be deceived. For, gentle hearers, know

  To rank our chosen truth with such a show

  As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting

  Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring

  To make that only true we now intend,

  Will leave us never an understanding friend.

  Therefore, for goodness’ sake, and as you are known

  The first and happiest hearers of the town,

  Be sad as we would make ye. Think ye see

  The very persons of our noble story

  As they were living; think you see them great,

  And followed with the general throng and sweat

  Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see

  How soon this mightiness meets misery. 30

  And if you can be merry then, I’ll say

  A man may weep upon his wedding day.

  Exit

  1.1 ⌈A cloth of state throughout the play.⌉ Enter the Duke of Norfolk at one door; at the other door enter the Duke of Buckingham and the Lord Abergavenny

  BUCKINGHAM (to Norfolk)

  Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done

  Since last we saw in France?

  NORFOLK

  I thank your grace,

  Healthful, and ever since a fresh admirer

  Of what I saw there.

  BUCKINGHAM

  An untimely ague

  Stayed me a prisoner in my chamber when 5

  Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,

  Met in the vale of Ardres.

  NORFOLK

  ’Twixt Guisnes and Ardres.

  I was then present, saw them salute on horseback,

  Beheld them when they lighted, how they clung

  In their embracement as they grew together,

  Which had they, what four throned ones could have

  weighed

  Such a compounded one?

  BUCKINGHAM

  All the whole time

  I was my chamber’s prisoner.

  NORFOLK

  Then you lost

  The view of earthly glory. Men might say

  Till this time pomp was single, but now married

  To one above itself. Each following day

  Became the next day’s master, till the last

  Made former wonders its. Today the French,

  All clinquant all in gold, like heathen gods

  Shone down the English; and tomorrow they

  Made Britain India. Every man that stood

  Showed like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were

  As cherubim, all gilt; the mesdames, too,

  Not used to toil, did almost sweat to bear

  The pride upon them, that their very labour

  Was to them as a painting. Now this masque

  Was cried incomparable, and th‘ensuing night

  Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings

  Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,

  As presence did present them. Him in eye

  Still him in praise, and being present both,

  ’Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner

  Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns—

  For so they phrase ’em—by their heralds challenged

  The noble spirits to arms, they did perform

  Beyond thought’s compass, that former fabulous story

  Being now seen possible enough, got credit

  That Bevis was believed.

  BUCKINGHAM

  O, you go far!

  NORFOLK

  As I belong to worship, and affect

  In honour honesty, the tract of ev’rything

  Would by a good discourser lose some life

  Which action’s self was tongue to. All was royal.

  To the disposing of it naught rebelled.

  Order gave each thing view. The office did

  Distinctly his full function.

  BUCKINGHAM

  Who did guide—

  I mean, who set the body and the limbs

  Of this great sport together, as you guess?

  NORFOLK

  One, certes, that promises no element

  In such a business.

  BUCKINGHAM

  I pray you who, my lord?

  NORFOLK

  All this was ordered by the good discretion

  Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.

  BUCKINGHAM

  The devil speed him! No man’s pie is freed

  From his ambitious finger. What had he

  To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder

  That such a keech can, with his very bulk,

  Take up the rays o’th’ beneficial sun,

  And keep it from the earth.

  NORFOLK

  Surely, sir,

  There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends.

  For being not propped by ancestry, whose grace

  Chalks successors their way, nor called upon no

  For high feats done to th’ crown, neither allied

  To eminent assistants, but spider-like,

  Out of his self-drawing web, a gives us note

  The force of his own merit makes his way—

  A gift that heaven gives for him which buys

  A place next to the King.

  ABERGAVENNY

  I cannot tell

  What heaven hath given him—let some graver eye

  Pierce into that; but I can see his pride

  Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?

  If not from hell, the devil is a niggard

  Or has given all before, and he begins

  A new hell in himself.

  BUCKINGHAM

  Why the devil,

  Upon this French going out, took he upon him

  Without the privity o’th’ King t’appoint

  Who should attend on him? He makes up the file

  Of all the gentry, for the most part such

  To whom as great a charge as little honour

  He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,

  The honourable board of council out,

  Must fetch him in, he papers.

  ABERGAVENNY

  I do know

  Kinsmen of mine—three at the least—that have

  By this so sickened their estates that never

  They shall abound as formerly.

  BUCKINGHAM

  O, many

  Have broke their backs with laying manors on ’em

  For this great journey. What did this vanity

  But minister communication of

  A most poor issue?

  NORFOLK

  Grievingly I think

  The peace between the French and us not values

  The cost that did conclude it.
r />   BUCKINGHAM

  Every man,

  After the hideous storm that followed, was

  A thing inspired, and, not consulting, broke

  Into a general prophecy—that this tempest,

  Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded

  The sudden breach on’t.

  NORFOLK

  Which is budded out—

  For France hath flawed the league, and hath attached

  Our merchants’ goods at Bordeaux.

  ABERGAVENNY

  Is it therefore

  Th’ambassador is silenced?

  NORFOLK

  Marry is’t.

  ABERGAVENNY

  A proper title of a peace, and purchased

  At a superfluous rate.

  BUCKINGHAM

  Why, all this business

  Our reverend Cardinal carried.

  NORFOLK

  Like it your grace,

  The state takes notice of the private difference

  Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you—

  And take it from a heart that wishes towards you

  Honour and plenteous safety—that you read

  The Cardinal’s malice and his potency

  Together; to consider further that

  What his high hatred would effect wants not

  A minister in his power. You know his nature,

  That he’s revengeful; and I know his sword

  Hath a sharp edge—it’s long, and’t may be said no

  It reaches far; and where ’twill not extend

  Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel,

  You’ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock

  That I advise your shunning.

  Enter Cardinal Wolsey, the purse containing the great seal borne before him. Enter with him certain of the guard, and two secretaries with papers. The Cardinal in his passage fixeth his eye on Buckingham and Buckingham on him, both full of disdain

  CARDINAL WOLSEY (to a secretary)

  The Duke of Buckingham’s surveyor, ha?

  Where’s his examination?

  SECRETARY

  Here, so please you.

  CARDINAL WOLSEY

  Is he in person ready?

  SECRETARY

  Ay, please your grace.

  CARDINAL WOLSEY

  Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham Shall lessen this big look.

 

‹ Prev