"The first Part of Henry the Sixt" was printed originally in the folio of 1623, where it occupies twenty-four pages; viz. from p. 96 to p. 119 inclusive, in the division of "Histories." It was reprinted in the folios 1682, 1664, and 1685. INTRODUCTION. THIS historical drama is first found in the folio of 1623: no earlier edition of it in any shape, or in any degree of imperfectness, has been discovered. Of the second and third parts of "Henry VI.," copies in quarto, under different titles, lengthened in some speeches, and abbreviated in others, are extant; but the first part of "Henry VI. " appeared originally in the collected edition of "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies," put forth under the care of his fellow-actors, Heminge and Condell. This single fact is sufficient, in our mind, to establish Shakespeare's claim to the authorship of it, even were we to take Malone's assertion for granted (which we are by no means inclined to do) that the internal evidence is all opposed to that claim. When Heminge and Condell published the folio of 1623, many of Shakespeare's contemporaries, authors, actors, and auditors, were alive; and the player-editors, if they would have been guilty of the dishonesty, would hardly have committed the folly of inserting a play in their volume which was not his production, and perhaps well known to have been the work of some rival dramatist. If we imagine the frequenters of theatres to have been comparatively ignorant upon such a point, living authors and living actors must have been aware of the truth, and in the face of these Heminge and Condell would not have ventured to appropriate to Shakespeare what had really come from the pen of another. That tricks of the kind were sometimes played by fraudulent booksellers, in publishing single plays, is certainly true; but Heminge and Condell were actors of repute, and men of character: they were presenting to the world, in an important volume, scattered performances, in order to "keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, and we cannot believe that they would have included any drama to which he had no title. In all probability they had acted with Shakespeare in the first part of "Henry VI.:" they had received his instructions and directions from time to time with reference to the performance of it, and they must almost necessarily have been acquainted with the real state of the property in it. Our opinion is therefore directly adverse to that of Malone, who, having been "long struck with the many evident Shakespeareanisms in these plays, " afterwards came to the |