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PREFACE.

ABOUT the compiler of the chronicles whence most of the historical excerpts in this book have been taken, we know nothing save what his will reveals. He there described himself as "Raphael Hollynshed of Bromecote [Bramcott] in the County of Warr[wick]"; and bequeathed all his property to "Thomas Burdett of Bromecote aforesaid Esq.," whom he calls "my Master." The will was made on October 1, 1578, and proved on April 24, 1582.1

The first edition of Holinshed's Chronicles appeared in 1577. John Hooker alias Vowell, Abraham Fleming, Francis Thynne, and others, produced a second edition, bringing down the English annals to January, 1587. In this second edition the text was altered or modernized, and many new passages were added.

The historical authority used for some of the plays (when other works were not consulted) was apparently the second edition of Holinshed. In the subjoined parallel columns certain different readings of the two editions are collated, and a few enlargements of the second edition are noted. The left-hand column's references indicate the pages of this book, where the later readings or fresh matter will be found. The right-hand column gives references to the plays which have readings identical with or like the readings presented by the text of the second edition, or which embody matter added to that edition.

1 Camden's Annals, I. cxlix, cl. For conjectures touching Holinshed's kindred, see the Dictionary of National Biography, under his name.

2 In the story of Lear more than a dozen textual changes were made. I give two examples: that you have alwaies borne towards me] ed. 2 (p. 3 below). that towards me you have always borne ed. 1.-scarslie] ed. 2 (p. 4 below). vnneth ed. 1.

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PLAY.

wilde] Macb. I. iii. 40.
Rich. II., II. iv. 8.

1 Hen. IV., III. ii. 25.
2 Hen. IV., IV. iv. 125.

There is no barre
To make against your High-
nesse claime] Hen. V., I. ii.
34, 35.

dishonest] Hen. V., I. ii. 49.
who vsurpt] Hen. V., I. ii. 69.
Numbers] Hen. V., Í. ii. 98.
That all the Courts of France
will be disturb'd] Hen. V.,
I. ii. 265.
desolation] Hen. V., II. ii. 173.
offenses] Hen. V., II. ii. 181.
We shall your tawny ground
with your red blood
Discolour:
.] Hen. V.,
III.

vi. 170, 171.

1 Hen. VI., I. ii.

1 Hen. VI., V. iv.

2 Hen. VI., II. ii. 10-20.

sire; .] p. 256.

Lionell the third...

died with

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2 Hen. VI., II. iv. 16 (S. D.). Rich. III., I. iii. 255, 256.

Rich. III., V. ii. 20, 21.

Rich. III., V. iii. 236 (S. D.).

Rich. III., V. iii. 313 (S. D. in Qq.).

Mothers cost?] Rich. III., V. iii. 324.

The second edition of Holinshed must have been employed for those parts of Henry VIII. which are based on Cavendish's Life of Wolsey; if the dramatist did not resort directly to Stow, in whose Chronicles of England (1580) selections from this biography were first published.

With regard to the wider question of sources, the reader will find that, in Lear, Cymbeline, and the historical plays preceding 1 Henry VI., most of the borrowed action and dialogue can be illustrated by excerpts from Holinshed. Passages in the following plays—not traceable to Holinshed-are compared with other likely sources at the references given below: John (pp. 48-51); Richard II. (p. 118); 1 Hen. IV. (pp.

139 n. 2, 141 n. 2); 2 Hen. IV. (p. 163); Hen. V. (pp. 172, 173 n. 1, 185 n. 3, 186, 188).

As most of the quotations from Holinshed, illustrating the three Parts of Henry VI., are paraphrases of Halle, it is generally impossible to determine which of these authorities was used, and I have therefore in such cases added a reference to the latter chronicler. But, when Halle alone is cited, the reader will understand that the subsequent excerpt is not paraphrased or copied in the second edition of Holinshed.1 It is clear that the dramatist of The First Part of Henry VI. availed himself of accounts of Jeanne Darc, given by Holinshed (see pp. 210-212, 238, 239), which are not in Halle; and we may conjecture that Holinshed's paraphrase of Halle was the source of 1 Hen. VI., V. i. 5, 6. In the passage illustrating these lines (p. 234 below), both editions of Holinshed read peace for concorde. Holinshed has: "exhorting them . . . to conforme themselues to reason, ... so that, in concluding a godlie peace, they might receiue profit and quietnesse heere in this world," &c. The equivalent words of Halle are: exhorting . . them, . . . that they would . . . conforme themselfes to reason, and to Godly concorde, by the whiche they should receaue honor, profite, and continuall quietnesse in the worlde," &c. Ll. 83 and 95, 96, Act III. sc. ii. (pp. 225, 226), were probably derived from Holinshed. Fabyan may have yielded some details in Act I. sc. iii. (p. 213), Act III. sc. i. (p. 221), and Act III. sc. ii. (p. 225). Ll. 61-71, Act IV. sc. vii. (p. 233), were copied from an epitaph published by Crompton and Brooke in 1599 and 1619, respectively.2

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The reviser who turned The Contention into The Second Part of Henry VI. was indebted to Holinshed or Stow for York's full pedigree (pp. 256258). Amalgamated with the dramatic version of Cade's revolt are many particulars-recorded by these chroniclers-of the villeins' outbreak in the reign of Richard II. (pp. 271, 272, 272 n. 2, 273 n. 4, 277, 278). Recourse to Holinshed (p. 251) is indicated by ll. 163, 164, Act I. sc. iii.; and a hint for the Entry at Act II. sc. iv. l. 16, was probably taken from his chronicle (p. 261). The excerpts from Holinshed (pp. 246-249, 281), and from Stow (pp. 253, 261), may be regarded as possible sources of the play both in its

1 Halle, 256 ("This deadly," &c., p. including the words "periured duke," of Holinshed. Halle, 296 (p. 337) and 295

306), the last clause of Halle, 293 (p. 334),and Halle, 300 (p. 338), are in the first edition (p. 338, n. 2), are slightly changed in Hol. ed. 1. Slight verbal resemblances suggest that the text of the inscription given by Brooke was the immediate source of these lines. See p. 233, n. 1, below.

3 The pedigree in The Contention (1594) is very erroneous and defective. In The Whole Contention (1619) some mistakes were corrected, but York's descent from Philippa, daughter of Lionel Duke of Clarence, was not traced.

original and enlarged form. The same may be said of the quotations from Fabyan1 at pp. 246, 268, 276, and 286; though, in I. i. 114, the reviser uses a phrase-not, however, an uncommon one-which occurs verbatim in that chronicler (p. 245). A doubtful instance of resort to Hardyng will be found at p. 262. Neither Halle nor Holinshed gives Sir Thomas More's story of the sham miracle at St. Albans (pp. 253-255); dramatized in both forms of the play.

The Third Part of Henry VI. is, as a rule, based on Halle or on his paraphraser Holinshed; but the dramatist appears to have profited also by Stow and parts of Holinshed's compilation which were not drawn from Halle. See pp. 291 n. 3, 293, 295, 296, 299, 302, 309.

Holinshed was the chief historical source of Richard III. Halle and Grafton contain the story mentioned in III. v. 76-79 (p. 374). In an Entry at III. vii. 94 (p. 383) Halle or Grafton's continuation of Hardyng was turned to account.

The primary authorities dramatized in Henry VIII. are Halle, Stow, Polydore Vergil, Foxe, and Cavendish. These materials-Foxe excepted -are brought together in the second edition of Holinshed. Most of the Fifth Act and some other portions of the play were derived from Foxe.

Valuable as Holinshed's Chronicles were as a store-house of our national history, the method pursued by the editors was uncritical. Thus, Raphael and his successors interwove the late and mostly fictitious Historia Britonum with authentic notices of British affairs, taken from Roman writers. (See pp. 7-13 below.) A few meagre facts recorded by Marianus Scottus, Tighernac, the Ulster Annals, and the Saxon Chronicle embrace nearly all that we know about the real Macbeth, but Holinshed presented to the reader a circumstantial romance composed by Hector Boece. From the scant genuine particulars extant, we may, I think, conjecture that Macbeth was not regarded as "an vntitled Tyrant" (Macb. IV. iii. 104) among his own Gaelic countrymen dwelling north of Edinburgh, though, in the Anglicized region of Lothian, his rival Malcolm—who had adopted the customs of strangers-was doubtless preferred. It is certain at least that

1 Halle (246, n. 2) is a more likely source of I. i. 159 than Fab., whom I have quoted in the text (246). From Halle (247, n. 2) also, perhaps, rather than from Hol.'s reprint of Stow (247), came I. i. 191-193.

2 These facts, recorded in the Saxon Chronicle (ed. Ingram, p. 307), are significant: Malcolm III., and Margaret, his English wife, died in 1093. Disregarding the claim of their sons, "the Scots [the Gael] then chose Dufenal [Donalbain] to king, Melcolm's brother, and drove out all the English that formerly were with the king Melcolm."

Macbeth ruled for fourteen years;1 from the time when young 2 Duncan was murdered to the day when Siward triumphed. Three of the stories commonly associated with Macbeth-the weird sisters' predictions, Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, and his death at the hand of a foe not born of woman-were first narrated by Andrew Wyntoun, Prior of St. Serf, who finished his Cronykil of Scotland about 1424. According to Wyntoun, Macbeth saw the weird sisters in a dream (p. 24, n. 1, below), and was slain by a "knycht," whose name is not given. Subjected to the fancy of Boece, the dream became an apparition; and the nameless knight assumed definite shape as Macduff, Thane of Fife. Fordun,-who was writing in the last quarter of the fourteenth century,-and Wyntoun, first make mention of Macduff. Banquo and Fleance were, I suppose, creatures of Boece's imagination. Of Gruoch, Macbeth's wife, there is one contemporary memorial. It is a copy of a charter whereby "Machbet filius finlach . . . & gruoch filia bodhe rex et regina Scotorum" gave Kyrkenes to the Culdees of St. Serf's monastery on Loch Leven; free of all obligations save the duty of praying for the donors.3

The purpose of this book does not include a detailed examination of the evidence which a dramatist found in the printed chronicles of his times, and I therefore say no more anent the materials used by Holinshed. I warn the reader (if a caution be needed) to take with a large grain of salt what Holinshed, Halle, and others relate concerning the youthful follies of Henry V., the evil life and death of Cardinal Beaufort, and the crimes of Cardinal Wolsey. The shameful charges against Jeanne Darc need, of course, no comment. Before, however, closing these prefatory words, I shall briefly notice two cases in which treatment of character has far exceeded such historical warrant as was easily accessible. Margaret of

Duncan II.—a son of Malcolm by a prior union-assembled an Anglo-Norman army, and deposed Donalbain. "But the Scots afterwards gathered some force together, and slew full nigh all his men; and he himself with a few made his escape. Afterwards they were reconciled, on the condition that he never again brought into the land English or French." See pp. 41, 42 below.

1 In 1046, according to Ann. Dunelm. (Pertz, xix. 508), Siward dethroned Macbeth, who, however, was speedily reinstated. A revolt seems to have broken out on behalf of Duncan's sons, for under the year 1045 we find the following entry: "Battle between the Albanich on both sides, in which Crinan, abbot of Dunkeld [Duncan's father], was slain, and many with him, viz. nine times twenty heroes.”—Tighernac (Skene), 78.

2 Dreaming of Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth says: "yet who would haue thought the olde man to haue had so much blood in him" (V. i. 43-45). The historical Duncan I. was slain "immatura etate."-Tighernac (Skene), 78.

3 Liber Cartarum Prioratus Sancti Andree in Scotia (Bannatyne Club), ed. T. Thomson, 1841, p. 114.

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