In the management of particular scenes of this play, likewise, certain circumstances are observable, which, separately, seem to go a certain length in establishing Shakspeare's claim to the arrangement, and have considerable force when taken together. [Sidenote: Act I. scene ii. design'd by Shakspere.] The second scene of the first act would appear to have been sketched by him rather than Fletcher, from its containing no activity of incident, and serving no obvious purpose but the development of the character and situation of the two princes; a mode of preparation not at all practised by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act I. scene iii. also. And] Neither does any consequence flow from the beautiful scene immediately following; a circumstance which points out Shakspeare as having arranged the scene, and would strengthen the evidence of his having written the dialogue, if that required any corroboration. [Sidenote: Act V. scenes i. ii. iii. [? Emilia with the pictures.]] The bareness and undiversified iteration of situation in the first three scenes of the last act form one presumption against the devising of those scenes by Fletcher. [Sidenote: Act V. scene v. also designd by Shakspere.] The economy of the fifth scene of that act, in which Emilia, left alone on the stage, listens to the noise of the combat, is also, to me, strongly indicative of Shakspeare. The contrivance is unusual, but extremely well imagined. I do not recollect an instance in Fletcher bearing the smallest likeness to it, or founded on any principles at all analogous to that which is here called into operation. In Shakspeare, I think we may, in more than one drama, discover something which might have given the germ of it. [Sidenote: Shakspere's expedients for avoiding spectacles; in] He has not only in his historical plays again and again regretted the insufficiency of the means possessed by his stage, or any other, for the representation of such spectacles; but in several of those plays he has devised expedients for avoiding them. In 'Henry V.' we have the battle of Azincour; but the only encounter of [78:1]the opposite parties is that of Pistol and the luckless Signor Dew. [Sidenote: _1 Henry IV._,] In 'the first part of Henry IV.' he has shewn an unwillingness to risk the effect even of a single combat; for in the last scene of that play, where prince Henry engages Hotspur, the spectator's attention is distracted from the fight between them, by the entrance of Douglas, and his attack on the prudent Falstaff. [Sidenote: _Richard II._,] In 'Richard II.' the lists are exhibited for the duel of Bolingbroke and Norfolk, which is inartificially broken off at the very last instant by the mandate of the king. [Sidenote: Emilia in _Two N. K._ I. v., like Lady Macbeth in II. ii. of _Macbeth_.] But a more deeply marked likeness to the spirit in which the scene in 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is arranged, meets us in Lady Macbeth watching and listening