NOTES.

Authorship of Henry viii.

In my last communication on the subject of Henry VIII., I referred to certain characteristic tricks of Fletcher’s style of frequent occurrence in that play, and I now beg leave to furnish you with a few instances.  I wish it, however, to be understood, that I advance these merely as illustrative specimens selected at random; as there is scarcely a line of the portions of the play I assume to be Fletcher’s but would furnish some evidence to a diligent student of this writer’s style:  and that, although I think each separate instance as strongly characteristic of Fletcher as it is unlike Shakspeare, it is only in their aggregate number that I insist upon their importance.

The first instance to which I call attention is the use of the substantive “one” in a manner which, though not very uncommon, is used by no writer so frequently as Fletcher.  Take the following:—­

“So great ones.”—­Woman’s Prize, ii. 2. 
“And yet his songs are sad ones.”—­Two Noble Kinsmen, ii. 4.

and the title of the play, The False One.

Compare with these from Henry VIII.:—­

“This night he make a supper, and a great one.”—­Act I. 3. 
“Shrewd ones.”—­“Lame ones.”—­“so great ones.”—­Ibid.
“I had my trial,
And must needs say a noble one.”—­Act ii. 1. 
“A wife—­a true one.”—­Act iii. 1. 
“They are a sweet society of fair ones.”—­Act I. 4.

Fletcher habitually uses “thousand” without the indefinite article, as in the following instances: 

“Carried before ’em thousand desolations.”—­False One, ii. 9. 
“Offers herself in thousand safeties to you.”—­Rollo, ii. 1. 
“This sword shall cut thee into thousand pieces.”—­Knight of Malta, IV.

        2.

In Henry VIII. we have in the prologue: 

              “Of thousand friends.” 
  “Cast thousand beams upon me.”—­Act IV. 2.

The use of the word “else” is peculiar in its position in Fletcher:—­

“’Twere fit I were hang’d else.”—­Rule a Wife, II. 
“I were to blame else.”—­Ibid.
“I’ve lost me end else.”—­Act IV. 
“I am wide else.”—­Pilgrim, IV. 1.

In Henry VIII., the word occurs in precisely the same position:—­

  “Pray God he do!  He’ll never know himself, else.”—­Act II. 2. 
  “I were malicious, else.”—­Act IV. 2.

{34} The peculiarly idiomatic expression “I take it” is of frequent occurrence in Fletcher, as witness the following:—­

  “This is no lining for a trench, I take it.”—­Rule a Wife, III. 
  “And you have land i’ th’ Indies, as I take it.”—­Ibid. IV. 
  “A fault without forgiveness, as I take it.”—­Pilgrim, IV. 1. 
  “In noble emulation (so I take it).”—­Ibid. IV. 2.