Transcriber's note

Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. Minor punctuationerrors have been changed without notice. Printer errors have beenchanged and are listed at the end of this book. 

 THE CRITICS

 Versus

 SHAKSPERE

 A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENDANT

 By

 FRANCIS A. SMITH

 The Knickerbocker Press New York 1907

 COPYRIGHT, 1907

 BY

 FRANCIS A. SMITH

 THE CRITICS _versus_ SHAKSPERE

 A BRIEF FOR DEFENDANT. 

 By FRANCIS A. SMITH, of Counsel. 

Many years ago, I was retained in the great case of THE CRITICS AGAINSTSHAKSPERE, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during threecenturies. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and asoften reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who haveagain and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothingto reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the groundof newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony fromall lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury ofmankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action. 

Ben Jonson said that Shakspere "wanted art"; the highest appellate courtdecided that "Lear" was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles everproduced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of Frenchcriticism, decided that Shakspere was "votre bizarre sauvage;" the worldhas reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the"Henriade" is neglected for "Hamlet. "

During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumontand Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, andeven the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituaryto the memory of the "immortal" Cowley, --

 "By Shakspere's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines, Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines. 

 * * * * *

 Old Mother Wit and Nature gave Shakspere and Fletcher all they have; In Spencer and in Jonson, art Of slower Nature got the start. But both in him so equal are, None knows which bears the happiest share. "

One knows not which to admire most, the beauty of the poetry or thejustice of the encomium. 

James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, saidin 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in1652, that he was the "plebeian driller. "

Philipps, the pupil of Milton, refers to Shakspere's "unfiledexpressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of thecritical. " Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarelyobserved the Aristotelian laws of the three unities, " but was goodenough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "Heis many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling, into bombast. "

Thomas Rymer, another disciple of the unities, in 1693, declared"Othello" to be a "bloody farce without salt or savor, " and says that"in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff there is ameaning, there is a lively expression, and ... More humanity, than manytimes in the tragical flights of Shakspere. " How much humanity may beshown in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff may beleft to the impartial judgment of the jockey or the dog fancier, but theworld has got beyond the criticism of Rymer. In his view, "almosteverything in Shakspere's plays is so wretched that he is surprised howcritics could condescend to honor so wretched a poet with criticaldiscussions. "

John Dennis and Charles Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dustof more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere'splays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth tonature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him farbelow the ancients in all essential points, --in composition, invention, characterization. 

Dennis says Shakspere paid no heed to poetic justice ... "the good andbad perishing promiscuously in the best of his tragedies, so that therecan be either none or very weak instruction in them. " Gildon sums up hisopinion by the sententious remark that "his beauties are buried beneatha heap of ashes, isolated and fragmentary like the ruins of a temple, sothat there is no harmony in them. "

Against all this arraignment by the imitators of the French drama, wehave that loving tribute of the great Milton:--

 "Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy Name. Thou, in our wonder and astonishment, Hast built thyself a live-long monument. "

Pope could not resist the charm of his unacknowledged master. But Popepraises Dryden, Denham, and Waller, --never a word of commendation forShakspere: "he is not correct, not classic; he has almost as manydefects as beauties; his dramas want plan, are defective and irregularin construction; he keeps the tragic and comic as little apart as hedoes the different epochs and nations in which the scenes of his playsare laid; the unity of action, of place, and of time is violated inevery scene. "

The eighteenth century was notable for its corrections and remodellings, reducing the grandeur of the originals to the levels of the critics. Lord Lansdowne degraded Shylock into the clown of the play; it was"furnished with music and other ornamentation, enriched with a musicalmasque, 'Peleus and Thetis, ' and with a banqueting scene in which theJew, " dining apart from the rest, drinks to his God, Money. Gildonmangled "Measure for Measure" and provided it with "musicalentertainments. " The Duke of Buckingham divided "Julius Cæsar" into twotragedies with choruses. Worsdale reduced "The Taming of the Shrew" to avaudeville, and Lampe "trimmed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' into anopera. " Garrick adapted "Romeo and Juliet" to the stage of his time, byallowing Juliet to awake before Romeo had died of the poison, "TheTempest" by furnishing it with songs, "The Taming of the Shrew" bycutting it down to a farce in three acts. 

Even the great Samuel Johnson said that Shakspere "sacrifices virtue toconvenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct thathe seems to write without any moral purpose. " ... "His plots are oftenso loosely formed that a very slight consideration may improve them, andso carelessly pursued that he seems not always fully to comprehend hisown design. "

"It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part isevidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, andin view of his reward, he shortened the labor to snatch the profit. Hetherefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced and imperfectly represented. "

And so it may be said that in England, after Shakspere's death, theDrama was devoted to the imitators of ancient models, under theleadership of Ben Jonson, and later, beyond the middle of theseventeenth century, to the imitators of French taste, for the amusementof Charles the Second, "Defender of the Faith, " and the correct NellGwynn. Under the guidance of such imitators, from Davenant to Cibber, many of Shakspere's plays were reconstructed for the stage, until _TheTatler_ quotes lines from Davenant's mangled version of "Macbeth, " andN. Tate, in his edition of "Lear" "revived with alterations, as acted atthe Duke's Theatre, " refers to the original play as "an old piece withwhich he had become acquainted through a friend. " Davenant and Dryden in1670 improved "The Tempest"; Davenant corrected the errors of "Measurefor Measure" and "Much Ado" in 1673; Sedley cut out the immorality from"Antony" in 1677; Shadwell, in the following year, reformed thecharacter of "Timon"; Tate restored "Lear" to his kingdom and Cordeliato life, and even made "Henry VI. , " "Richard II. , " and "Coriolanus"conform to the rules of dramatic art which Shakspere had so defiantlyviolated. Durfey corrected the imperfect plot, characterization, anddiction of "Cymbeline, " and administered just punishment to Iachimo; andfinally, Betterton and Cibber, in 1710, added elegance to the wit ofFalstaff and refinement to the bloody cunning of Richard. 

"All these versions, " as Ulrici says, "were essentially the same incharacter; as a rule, only such passages as were most effective on thestage were left unaltered, but in all cases the editors endeavored toexpunge the supposed harshnesses of language and versification; powerfulpassages were tamed down and diluted, elegant passages embellished, tender passages made more tender; the comic scenes were provided withadditional indelicacies, and it was further endeavored to make the aimof the action more correct by the removal of some supposed excrescences, or by the alteration of the scenic arrangement and the course of theaction. "

Yet, in spite of all these distortions of the great originals, inconformity with the taste of corrupt courts, the love and admiration ofthe English people for the dramas as Shakspere wrote them was attestedby more than twenty complete and critical editions of his works beforethe end of the eighteenth century; and the high estimate of his geniusduring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was never questioneduntil 1904, when Professor Barrett Wendell, in his "Temper of theSeventeenth Century in English Literature, " discovered and revealed tothe world that Shakspere, except as a "phrase-maker" and except as theinventor of "historical fiction" in "Henry IV. " and "Henry V. , " was "themost skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethandramatists, " and "remained till the end an instinctively imitativefollower of fashions set by others. "

It had taken nearly three centuries of time and the researches ofcountless scholars to make the discovery, and they had all failed exceptProfessor Wendell. During Shakspere's life and after his death, none ofhis contemporaries ever accused him of imitating "fashions set byothers"; none of them, except the profligate Greene, of "beautifyinghimself with others' feathers. "

Edmund Malone, by what may be called digital criticism, undertook toprove that Shakspere, in the second and third parts of "Henry VI. , "stole 1771 lines from the "Contention, " originally written by anotherhand, remodelled 2373 lines, and added 1899 of his own; but even Malonedid not charge that Shakspere imitated the author of the "Contention";his argument, if it had not been conclusively answered again and again, would prove that Shakspere was "the most unblushing plagiarist that everput pen to paper. "

But long before Malone came Lessing, who in 1759 led the successfulattack upon the pseudo-classicism of the French dramatists, proved thatthe three unities were but the articles of an outworn creed, and in1758, that Shakspere was something more than a successful playwright, more than the successful rival of Marlowe and Kyd and Dekker andBeaumont and Fletcher, more than "the master of the revels to mankind, "and led critical opinion to the conclusion that he was the foremost manof his time and of all time, with power to search the secrets of allhearts, to measure the abysses of all passion, to portray the weaknessof all human foibles, to create characters who act and speak and are asmuch alive to us as the men and women we daily meet, to teach mankindthe profoundest philosophy, the littleness of the great, the greatnessof humility and truth, and to inculcate by immortal examples the highestand purest morality. 

And so England found at last the greatness of her greatest son in the"father of German literature, " and the nineteenth century affirmed thejudgment of Lessing. Among Germans, it needs only to name Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Ulrici, and Gervinus; among Englishmen, Coleridge, who said, "No one has ever yet produced one scene conceivedand expressed in the Shaksperean idiom"; and Charles Knight, who hasexploded the traditions of Rowe and Stevens about the deer stealing, thewife desertion and the testamentary insult, and conclusively shown that"the theory of Shakspere's first employment in repairing the plays ofothers is altogether untenable, supported only by a very narrow view ofthe great essentials of a dramatic work, and by verbal criticism which, when carefully examined, fails even in its own petty assumptions. "

But English criticism is not conclusive for us without the indorsementof American scholars. Let me quote what Emerson says:--"He is the fatherof German literature. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought areShaksperean. His mind is the horizon beyond which we at present do notsee. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. He cannot step fromhis tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspiration. He isinconceivably wise; the others conceivably. A good reader can, in asort, nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence, but not intoShakspere's. "

And Lowell has uttered what seemed the final estimate:--"Thosemagnificent crystallizations of feeling and phrase, basaltic masses, molten and interfused by the primal fires of passion, are not to bereproduced by the slow experiments of the laboratory striving to parodycreation with artifice.... Among the most alien races he is as solidlyat home as a mountain seen from many sides by many lands, itselfsuperbly solitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and domesticated inall imaginations. "

All this weight of opinion has not served to settle the question of thesovereignty of Shakspere. It is hardly needful to mention the actionbrought by Ignatius Donnelly to prove that Francis Bacon was the authorof work which excels the "Novum Organum, " for that action was laughedout of court by judge, jury, and audience. It might as well be claimedthat Job wrote "Hamlet"; for, whatever doubt may be raised as to hispersonal history, the folio of 1623 and the testimony of hiscontemporaries have shown as clearly that Shakspere wrote the dramasbearing his name as that Macaulay wrote a history of the Revolution of1688. 

But here come Barrett Wendell, Professor of English Literature atHarvard, and his pupil and disciple, Ashley H. Thorndike, AssistantProfessor of English at the Western Reserve University, with a new case, or a new brief on the old one, maintaining, with laborious industry andmutual sympathy, that Shakspere was only an Elizabethan playwright, whofound the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at onceseized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in thehistories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music ofhis blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the mannerof Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are butadaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but animitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style of dramamade popular by some contemporary of more original power, he immediatelyimitated his style and plot, surpassed him in phrase-making, and socoined sterling money to build and decorate his house at Stratford. 

If not the most formidable, this is the latest attack of the critics. Itshould seem from our brief review of former efforts, that this has beenfully answered. But if apology is needful for further defence, let it befound in this, that when men of eminent position as the instructors ofyouth, whose word in these days of careless and superficial reading islikely to be taken as final, undertake to change the opinion of thecivilized world as to the genius and character of its supreme mind, their assertions should be supported by something more substantial thanreferences to each other as authority, more reliable than dramaticchronology, which they themselves admit to be uncertain, more tangiblethan the effort to count the lines of "Henry VIII. " written by Fletcher. 

The position of Professor Wendell can be most fairly stated in his ownwords. After a hasty review of the early drama, he says of Shakspere:--

 "The better one knows his surroundings, the more clearly one begins to perceive that his chief peculiarity, when compared with his contemporaries, was a somewhat sluggish avoidance of needless invention. When anyone else had done a popular thing, Shakspere was pretty sure to imitate him and do it better. But he hardly ever did anything first. To his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient in originality, at least as compared with Lilly, or Marlowe, or Ben Jonson, or Beaumont and Fletcher. He was the most obviously imitative dramatist of all, following rather than leading superficial fashion. "

Professor Wendell proceeds to give what he is pleased to call examplesof Shakspere's "lack of superficial originality, " whatever that maymean, and assumes that he "had certainly done years of work as adramatic hack-writer" before the appearance of "Venus and Adonis. " Thereis no proof, not even the doubtful authority of tradition, that he wasever a hack-writer, or ever revised or revamped the dramatic work ofanother. 

Professor Wendell asserts, upon the authority of Mr. Sidney Lee, thatShakspere came to London in 1586, --that is, when he was twenty-two. Aubry, his oldest biographer, says in 1680 that "this William, beingnaturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess abouteighteen (i. E. , in 1582), and was an actor at one of the playhouses, anddid act exceeding well. " "He began early to make essays at dramaticpoetry, and his plays took well. " The date is important, as will soon beseen. 

Professor Wendell proceeds:--"'Love's Labour's Lost' is obviously inthe manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI. , ' certainly collaborative, is achronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chiefmakers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almostmasterly 'Edward II. ' 'Titus Andronicus' ... Is a tragedy of blood muchin the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popularpresentation a familiar kind of Latin comedy. "

We may differ with some of these assertions because dissent is supportedby the highest authority, both German and English. Ulrici says that"Lilly's works in fact contain nothing but witty words; the actual witof comic characters, situations, actions, and incidents is almostentirely wanting. Accordingly, his wit is devoid of dramatic power, hisconception of comedy still not distinct from the ludicrous, which isalways attached to one object; he has no idea of a comic whole. " "Love'sLabour's Lost" is assigned by the best authority to 1591-92, after theappearance of "Pericles, " "Titus Andronicus, " the two parts of the"Contention, " "The Comedy of Errors, " and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona. "Professor Wendell admits that in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Shaksperedid work of his own. After that, it is not quite "obvious" that "Love'sLabour's Lost" is in the style of Lilly, however clear to the critic maybe its "tedious length. "

Lilly wrote "Endymion, or The Man in the Moon, " first published in 1591;it is "one great and elaborate piece of flattery addressed to 'ElizabethCynthia', " that is, the Queen; she instructs her ladies in Morals andPythagoras in Philosophy. "Her kiss breaks the spell" which put Endymioninto his forty-years sleep, upon which, and upon his deliverance fromwhich, "the action principally turns within the space of forty years. "Can any impartial reader trace this "manner of Lilly" in "Love'sLabour's Lost"?

Lilly's "Pleasant conceited Comedy, " called "Mother Bombie, " appeared in1594, his "Midas" in 1592, and his "Most Excellent Comedie ofAlexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes" in 1584. "Mother Bombie" representsfour servants, treated partly as English, partly as Roman slaves, whodeceive their respective masters in an "equally clumsy, unlikely, andun-motived manner. " It is difficult to see how "Love's Labour's Lost, "produced in 1592, could have imitated "Mother Bombie, " produced in 1594. "Alexander and Campaspe" is "taken from the well known story of themagnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionatelove for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of herlover Apelles. " The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes theopportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all comers by hiscynical speeches. 

Lilly's most ambitious work was his "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, verypleasant for all Gentlemen to read, " "probably printed as early as1579. " Long before Shakspere's time, all "Gentlemen" had read it, andit had introduced to the fashionable world a new language which nobodybut the high-born could understand. 

If "Love's Labour's Lost" is "in the manner of Lilly, " it is not so inProfessor Wendell's sense, but only as it ridicules with unsparingsatire Lilly's conceits and puns. 

The statement that "Henry VI. " is "certainly collaborative" isunwarranted, because it has been successfully challenged and disprovedby the eminent critics Hermann Ulrici and Charles Knight; it issupported only by the guesswork of Clark, Wright, Halliwell and otherswho assume to find a divided authorship from assumed divergencies ofstyle. The result shows the futility of the method. What Shakspere isassumed not to have written is assigned to Marlowe, Greene, Peele orLodge. If style cannot determine between them, what warrant is there forthe conclusion that "Henry VI. " is "certainly collaborative"?

The second and third parts of "Henry VI. " are the final form of "TheFirst Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster, "and "The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York. " Greene, in his savageattack upon Shakspere, quotes a line which appears in the "Third Part"and also in "The True Tragedy. " His attack proves the sole authorship ofboth by the man he maligns, to whom Chettle apologized within a year. 

The argument of Knight has been before the critical world for manyyears, and its careful arrangement of facts and its logical conclusionsfrom them, have well-nigh overcome the prejudices of English scholarswho for many years after the appearance of Malone's "Dissertation"adopted his theory that the two parts of the "Contention" containednothing from Shakspere's hand. But because American writers areconstantly seeking reputation for learning by repeating Malone'sargument, it will be useful, in the interest of truth, to state Knight'sanswer. 

He first takes up Malone's assumption that the two parts of the"Contention" were not written by the author of the "First Part of HenryVI. , " and proves the identity of authorship by the intimate connectionand unity of action and characterization, and by the identity of manner, making the three plays one integral whole. In the "First Part of HenryVI. " and in the "First Part of the Contention, " Suffolk is the same man, Margaret the same woman. In both plays, Gloster and Beaufort speak thesame scorn and defiance in the same tongue. The garden scene, with itsred and white roses, is the prologue to the "Contention" andindissolubly links together the three parts of "Henry VI. " as one dramaby the same hand. 

Malone's first assumption was therefore without foundation. Even Collieronly claims that "it is _plausibly conjectured_" that Shakspere didnot write the "First Part of Henry VI. " but that it is an old play mostlikely written about 1589. Who did write it, was before Knight andUlrici the theme of endless debate. Hallam was "sometimes inclined toassign it to Greene. " Gervinus in his "Commentaries, " took the sameview, but subsequently changed it. Knight has shown that the three partsof "Henry VI. " are "in the strictest sense" Shakspere's own, and Ulriciagrees with Knight. 

It is worthy of note that the "First Part" was acted thirteen times inthe spring of 1592 by Lord Strange's men, under the title "Henry VI. "Greene lived until the 2d of September in that year, and yet in his"Groatsworth of Wit" he made no claim that the "First Part" was anyportion of his "feathers. "

The next point made is that the two parts of the "Contention" werewritten by the author of "Richard III. " Malone studiously avoided anycomparison between them, and yet it is entirely clear that with the"first Part of Henry VI. " they form one drama. "'Richard III. ' stands atthe end of the series as the avowed completion of a long tragic history. The scenes of that drama are as intimately blended with the scenes ofthe other dramas as the scenes that belong to the separate dramas areblended among themselves. Its story not only naturally grows out of theprevious story, --its characters are not only, wherever possible, thesame characters as in the preceding dramas, --but it is even morepalpably linked with them by constant retrospection to the events whichthey had exhibited. "

In "Richard III. " Margaret is still the same "she-wolf of France" as inthe three previous plays. If Shakspere wrote those terrible lines in"Richard III. , " as all scholars admit, --

 "From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept A hell-hound, that doth hunt us all to death; That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes, To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood;

 * * * * *

 O upright, just and true disposing God, How do I thank thee, that this carnal cur Preys on the issue of his mother's body, * * * * *

 Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge"--

if Shakspere wrote those lines, he wrote those like them from the samelips, in the second part of the "Contention"--

 "Or, where's that valiant crook-backed prodigy, Dicky, your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, 'mongst the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York, I dipped this napkin in the blood That valiant Clifford, with his rapier's point, Made issue from the bosom of thy boy. "

The two parts of the "Contention" are admitted to be by the same hand. 

Margaret, Edward IV. , Elizabeth his Queen, Clarence and Gloster appearin the "Second Part" and in "Richard III. "

And here, the unity of action and of characterization conclusively showsthe common authorship, precisely as the same resemblance unites thefirst part of "Henry VI. " and the "Contention. "

The "Second Part of the Contention" ends thus:--

 "And now what rests but that we spend the time With stately triumphs and mirthful comic shows, Such as befit the pleasures of the court?"

"Richard III. " begins with a continuation of the triumphant strain:--

 "Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. "

In "Richard III. " are repeated references to events in the "SecondPart"; to the murder of Rutland by the "black-faced Clifford"; to thecrowning of York with paper, and the mocking offer of a "clout steepedin the faultless blood of pretty Rutland. " It must not be forgotten thatthese striking likenesses, references, unities, are not between "RichardIII. " and the portion of the "Contention" assigned to Shakspere, butbetween the unquestioned author of "Richard" and that part of the"Contention" assigned by Malone and his disciples to somebody else, named only by conjecture. 

But the most striking identity of character in these three plays, showing conclusively the identity of authorship, appears in Richardhimself: Knight justly and forcibly says: "It seems the mostextraordinary marvel that the world, for more than half a century, should have consented to believe that the man who absolutely createdthat most wonderful character, in all its essential lineaments, in the'Second Part of the Contention, ' was not the man who continued it in'Richard III. '"

To prove the point, it is only necessary to permit Richard to describehimself. 

This picture is from the "Contention":--

 "I will go clad my body in gay garments, And lull myself within a lady's lap, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought! Why, love did scorn me in my mother's womb; And, for I should not deal in her affairs, She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh, And plac'd an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To dry mine arm up like a wither'd shrimp; To make my legs of an unequal size. And am I then a man to be beloved?

 Easier for me to compass twenty crowns. Tut, I can smile, and murder when I smile; I cry content to that which grieves me most; I can add colours to the chameleon; And for a need change shapes with Proteus, And set the aspiring Cataline to school. Can I do this, and cannot get the crown? Tush, were it ten times higher, I'll pull it down. "

And here is the companion portrait from "Richard III. ":--

 "But I, that am not shap'd for sporting tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty, To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;-- I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;-- Why I, in this weak, piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to see my shadow in the sun, And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, I am determinèd to prove a villain, And hate the idle pleasure of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other; And, if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up. "

The pictures that Hamlet showed his mother were not more unlike thanthese are like. But Malone's examination was microscopic, and he used sopowerful an instrument that he could not distinguish resemblance ordifference beyond its field of vision. The result is that he countsamong the lines mended by Shakspere those that differ from those in the"Contention" only by a particle or a conjunction. By this "capriciousarithmetic, " only six lines in the scenes with Jack Cade in the "SecondPart of Henry VI. " are credited to Shakspere, and we are asked tobelieve that the man who was to fix the price of bread at "sevenhalf-penny loaves for a penny, " to give the "three-hooped pot tenhoops, " to "make it felony to drink small beer, " was portrayed byMarlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or Lilly, or Kyd, or Nash, or somebodyelse still more completely forgotten. 

If, then, "Henry VI. " is "certainly collaborative, " a "chronicle historyof the earlier kind, " as Professor Wendell expressly asserts, it oughtto be shown for our certain instruction who was Shakspere's collaboratorin the three parts of that drama. This neither he nor any other critichas yet done. Malone says it was Greene or Peele, but, in spite of theestablished fact that we have abundant remains of both, he cannotdetermine between them from style, or rhythm, or other peculiarities;Collier "supposes" it was Greene; Dyce "conjectures" it was Marlowe. 

On the contrary, it may be conclusively shown that Shakspere isconstantly quoting from the "First Part of Henry VI. " and the"Contention, " as from himself, --adjectives, figures of speech, sentences, phrases. The cardinal in "Henry VI. " is called a "scarlethypocrite, " in "Henry VIII. " a "scarlet sin. " In one play the sentence"I am but shadow of myself" becomes in the other "I am the shadow ofpoor Buckingham. " "My book of memory" in "Henry" is changed to "thetable of my memory" in "Hamlet. " "Who now is girded with a waist ofiron" is repeated in "King John"--"That as a waist do girdle you about. "More striking still is the close resemblance between the line in the"First Part"--"'Tis but the short'ning of my life one day" and the linein "Henry V. "--"Heaven shorten Harry's happy life one day. "

In the "First Part of the Contention" the character described "bears aduke's whole revenue on her back. " In "Henry VIII. " this is recalled bythe line, --they "have broke their backs with laying manors on them"; andin "King John"--"bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs. " In"Macbeth" the sentence "Infected minds to their deaf pillows willdischarge their secrets" is but a repetition of the line from the"Contention" in which Duke Humphrey's assassin "whispers to his pillowas to him. "

"You have no children, devils, " is the language of the "Contention"; "hehas no children" of "Macbeth. "

 "Bring forth that fatal screech owl to our house, That nothing sung but blood and death"

are the words of the "Contention";

 "Out on you, owls, nothing but songs of death, "

of "Richard III. "

Malone suppresses the obvious resemblance between these passages andothers like them, and is guilty of the same uncritical conduct indisregarding the classical allusions in the "Second and Third Parts ofHenry VI. " which he admits were added by Shakspere, --allusions asnumerous and striking as those in the "First Part. "

Mr. Richard Grant White, after reviewing the argument of Knight, reachesthe conclusion that he "demolished Malone's theory, " and this conclusionis a sufficient answer to Professor Wendell's unsupported assertion that"Henry VI. " is "certainly collaborative. "

But Professor Wendell further says that "Greene and Peele were the chiefmakers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almostmasterly 'Edward II. '" We are therefore asked to believe that Shakspere, in the historical plays bearing his name, imitated them or one of them. Examination of the record will best show whether this latest critic hasdiscovered any evidence to support his new charge, that Shakspere "wasthe most obviously imitative dramatist of all, following rather thanleading superficial fashion. "

Malone, in his "Chronological Order, " says: "'The First Part of KingHenry VI. , ' which I imagine was formerly known by the name of the'Historical Play of King Henry VI. , ' had, I suspect, been a verypopular piece for _some_ years, before 1592, and perhaps was firstexhibited in 1588 or 1589. " Collier states "that it is merely the _old_play on the early events of that reign, which was most likely written in1589. " Knight concludes that "there can be no doubt that the compositionof this play preceded that of the two parts of the 'Contention. '" Thatthese had been upon the stage before Greene died in 1592 is provenbeyond dispute by Greene's savage attack, at that time Shakspere wastwenty-eight years old and for at least three years had been ashareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, and, if Mr. Sidney Lee is right, had been in London six years; if old Aubry was better informed, he hadbeen "acting exceeding well" and making "essays at dramatic poetry whichtook well" for ten years. 

The theory of "imitation" rests upon the assumption that Shakspere didnot begin to write for the stage before 1592; Collier asserts, withoutthe slightest support from known facts, and against the hostiletestimony of Greene, that he wrote the "tiger's heart lines" beforeSeptember, 1592, that "the 'History of Henry VI. , ' the 'First Part ofthe Whole Contention, ' and the 'True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, 'were all three in being before Shakspere began to write for the stage";and Mr. Hallam says, more cautiously, that "it seems probable that theold plays of the 'Contention' ... Were in great part by Marlowe. "

And so, we find Shakspere in London, from six to ten years connectedwith its principal theatre, but writing nothing for its stage, not evenas a "hack-writer. " We respectfully dissent from this conclusion becauseit lacks support either in fact or probability. The man who, from utterpenury, had in 1589 won his way to a lucrative share in the theatre hemade illustrious, and who wrote "Romeo and Juliet, " which firstappeared, according to Ulrici's investigation, in 1592, was more capableof writing, and more likely to have written, the three original piecesthan Greene or Marlowe, to one of whom, or to some other writer, theauthorship is assigned by mere conjecture, from a fancied but confusedand indeterminate likeness of style or metre or classical quotation. 

Marlowe was killed in a brawl with one Francis Archer, at Deptford, onthe first day of June, 1593. The only dramas that can be certainlycalled his are the "Two Parts of Tamburlaine, " "The Massacre of Paris, ""Faustus, " the "Jew of Malta" and "Edward II. " His merits and his faultshave been discussed by many scholars; his style is characterized as the"mighty line"; he is said by many to have invented and introduced blankverse as the vehicle of the drama, although "Gorboduc, " acted before theQueen in 1561 and published in 1565, Gascogne's "Jocasta, " played in1566, and Whetstone's "Promos and Cassandra, " printed in 1578, werewholly or partly in blank verse. But it is admitted by all editors andcritics that Marlowe's only historical plays are "The Massacre" and "thealmost masterly Edward II. , " as Professor Wendell somewhat ambiguouslycalls it. The "Massacre" ends with the death of Henry III. Of France, who was assassinated on the 1st of August, 1589; "it cannot, therefore, have been written earlier than about 1590. " Whatever its true date, itis not claimed to bear any likeness to either part of the "Contention. "On the contrary, "it was a subject in which Marlowe would naturallyrevel; for in the progress of the action, blood could be made to flow asfreely as water. " The resemblance is sought in his Edward II. , which, asall the facts tend to show, was his latest work, written after the"Massacre" and certainly not published in his lifetime. It was enteredat Stationer's Hall in July, 1593, a little more than a month afterMarlowe's death. But here stands the "Contention" with a fixed date, proved to have been in existence "in or close upon the first half ofthe decade commencing in 1585, " and the admission of all scholars thatit preceded Marlowe's "Edward II. " If, therefore, Marlowe wrote one orboth parts of the "Contention, " the extravagant assumption must be made"that his mind was so thoroughly disciplined at the period when heproduced 'Tamburlaine, ' 'Faustus' and the 'Jew of Malta' that he wasable to lay aside every element, whether of thought or expression, bywhich those plays are characterized, adopt essentially differentprinciples for the dramatic conduct of a story, copy his characters fromliving and breathing models of actual men; come down from his pomp andextravagance of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry withfamiliar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaringand fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ... But with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon thecommon earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows, --pride, and envy, and ambition, and revenge, --most fearful, from their alliancewith stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was whatMarlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustainedscene of either part of the 'Contention'; before he could have depictedthe fierce hatreds of Beaufort and Gloster, the never-subdued ambitionof Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends andreviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity, the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and thepassionless ferocity of Richard. "

Does it need more to show that Marlowe was not the author of the"Contention"? Here is the proof, and it does not rest upon conjecture, or inference from disputed facts, but upon records that have survivedthe waste of three centuries. The "First Part of the Contention" wasprinted by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, in 1594; "The TrueTragedy of Richard, " the old name of the "Second Part of theContention, " by "P. S. " for Thomas Millington, in 1595. The title pagegives the name of no author for either play, and it is claimed byeminent authority that both were piratical editions; but if Marlowe wasthe unquestioned author, were not his friends and associates stillliving, three years after his death, to claim the honor of creating twodramas which immeasurably surpassed any other he ever wrote? If it beasked why Shakspere's friends did not claim the authorship for him, itis answered that as soon as another edition appeared, they did. In 1619, three years after his death, a new edition of these very plays appeared, with Shakspere's full name on the title page, and enlarged by additionsfrom the second and third parts of "Henry VI. " And this proof is furthersupported: In an entry in the Stationer's Registers under date of April19, 1602, appears the following remark:--"Thom. Pavier: By assignmentfrom Th. Millington _salvo jure cujuscunque_: the First and SecondParts of 'Henry VI. ', two books. " This entry refers to the two plays firstpublished in 1594 and 1595, the first of which is always called "TheFirst Part of the Contention, " and both of which in the edition of 1619were under the title of "The whole Contention between the two famousHouses of Lancaster and York, " by the same Th. Pavier who had receivedthem "by assignment" from the original publisher of the editions of 1594and 1595, --_Thomas Millington_. _Pavier_ knew in 1619, and therefore puthis name on the title page of his edition, that Shakspere was the authorof the two parts of the "Contention, " but instead of giving them theextended titles of the former editions, briefly and inaccuratelydesignated them as "The First and Second Parts of Henry VI. " It resultsfrom these facts, that when Malone was attempting to show that Shaksperewas imitating Marlowe's "Edward II. " in the lines--

 "Scorning that the lowly earth Should drink his blood, mounts up to the air, "

and--

 "Frown'st thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster?"

he forgot the important and established truth that Marlowe was imitatingShakspere in the "Contention. "

For two centuries, until Malone's "Dissertation, " nobody had claimedthat Marlowe wrote any portion of the "Contention"; for nearly twocenturies, the "Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. " had appeared as thesole work of Shakspere, embodying act for act, scene for scene, eventfor event and character for character, the whole "Contention, " andnobody had claimed that he was not the sole author of both. We thereforerespectfully submit that Professor Wendell has no warrant for hisassertion that "to his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient inoriginality, as least as compared with Lilly or Marlowe. " "Henry VI. "was not "collaborative. " Marlowe did not develop the type of chroniclehistory into his "almost masterly Edward II. "

But Professor Wendell further asserts that "Greene and Peele were thechief makers of such plays" before Marlowe, and the implication is thatShakspere, in his historical plays, "followed the superficial fashion"set by them. 

Of Greene's dramas, only two purport to have been his work, --"FriarBacon and Friar Bungay" and "The Scottish History of James the Fourth. ""Orlando Furioso, " generally assigned to him, has no name on its titlepage; "Alphonsus, King of Aragon, " is probably his, as it bears theinitials "R. G. "; "The Looking Glass for London and England" bears thejoint names of Lodge and Greene; "The pleasant conceyted comedy ofGeorge-a-Green, the Pinner of Wakefield, " sometimes assigned to him, isof doubtful authorship. 

"Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" is characterized by Knight as "the oldstory of the Brazen Head. There is here, unquestionably, more facilityin the versification, much less of what we may distinguish by the nameof fustian, and some approach to simplicity and even playfulness. Butwhenever Greene gets hold of a king, he invariably makes him talk in theright royal style which we have already seen; and our Henry III. Doesnot condescend to discourse in a bit more simple English than the Soldanof Egypt or the King of Nineveh. "

This play was first printed in 1594. 

The old popular tradition of Friar Bacon and his magic arts isinterwoven with the loves of Prince Edward and Earl Lacy. Legend andlove story have nothing in common, and their connection is merelyaccidental. The Friar's design fails through the stupidity of hisservant, but no explanation is given of the folly of entrusting suchweighty matters to a fool. The love story turns upon the retirement fromthe amorous contest in favor of Lacy, but no reason is assigned for theresulting trials of the successful party. There is no glimpse of historyor of historical chronicle in the piece. Of one thing we may be certain:With all his wonderful power, Shakspere was incapable of imitating "Thehonorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay. "

"James the Fourth" appeared in print in 1598 under the title "TheScottish Historie of James the Fourth, slaine at Flodden, intermistedwith a pleasant Comedie &c. " Of this drama Ulrici says that "Greene, ledastray perhaps by Marlowe, ventured upon a task quite beyond him. He asyet obviously had no idea of the dignity of history, of an historicalspirit, of an historical conception of the subject, or of an historicalform of the drama. History with him resolves itself into a romance. "This opinion is fully sustained by the play itself; James falls in lovewith Ida, the daughter of the Countess of Arran, but in spite of hisdisloyalty, his Queen is faithful. James repents for the very goodreason that Ida spurns him, but not until he has ordered the Queen to bekilled. The murder is unsuccessfully attempted, and after her partialrecovery, she rushes between the armies, disarms the hostility of herfather, the English King, and wins back her husband's love. The chiefcharacters are Oberon, King of Fairies, and Rohan, a "misanthropicrecluse. " Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, andso justifies himself for having withdrawn from a bad world. This is the"pleasant Comedie" which is connected with the main action by Slipper, Rohan's son, who plays the part of clown. It is not strange that theimpartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "theatmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene'staste. " The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has nopretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it:"From what source our author derived the materials of this strangefiction I have not been able to discover; nor could Mr. David Laing ofEdinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of hiscountry, point out to me any Scottish chronicle or tract which mighthave afforded hints to the poet for its composition. "

The play originally called in 1599 "The Chronicle History of Alphonsus, King of Aragon" is based upon a semi-historical foundation, and yet, asthe highest authority has pronounced, Greene "has erected such aromantic and fantastic structure upon this foundation, that it would bedoing him an injustice to judge his work from the standpoint of anhistorical drama. "

It is plainly an imitation of "Tamburlaine. " Alphonsus, singly andalone, conquers the crown of Aragon and half the world in addition, accompanied by monotonous noise and blood. The ghost of Mahomet isintroduced as if to give variety to the scene, but fails utterly, and, nobody can guess why, refuses to give the required oracle, but finally, importuned by the attendant priests, gives a false one. Even themarriage of Alphonsus with Iphigenia fails to enliven the style of thepoet. But the machinery that moves the action is all wonderful andstriking and quite un-historical. Venus and the Muses recite thePrologue and act the dumb shows, representing at the beginning of eachact a retrospection of the Past and a forecast of the Future. And Venusherself, with the help of Calliope, writes the play, "not with pen andink, but with flesh and blood and living action. " "This ... Indicatesthe fundamental idea of the piece. Wherever the all-powerful goddess oflove and beauty herself plans the actions and destinies of mortals, there extraordinary things come to pass with playful readiness andgrace. "

"The Historie of Orlando Furioso, " issued from the London press in 1594, is a light production hastily sketched for a Court Festival, based uponthe great romance of Ariosto, "but the superstructure presents the mostextravagant deviations from Ariosto's plan. The pomposity of the dictionis not amiss in the mouths of such stately personages as the Emperor ofAfrica, the Soldan of Egypt, the Prince of Mexico, the King of the Islesand the mad Orlando. "

It may not be amiss to quote an example:

 "Discourteous woman, nature's fairest ill, The woe of man, that first created curse, Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins, Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust, Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles, Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds; And in their hearts sit shameless treachery, Turning a truthless vile circumference! O, could my fury paint their furies forth! For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts, Too simple devils to conceal their arts; Born to be plagues unto the thoughts of men, Brought for eternal pestilence to the world. "

It is difficult to think of Shakspere "bombasting out a blank verse"like this. 

 * * * * *

The dramatic characters recite passages from the classic authors; theenchantress Melissa gives a whole speech in Latin hexameters; Orlandobursts into Italian rhymes to utter his rage against Angelica, --"a wantof taste, " says the commentator, "which brings the already unsuccessfulscene, the centre of the whole action, down to the sphere of theridiculous. "

Nobody has been able to determine how much of the "Looking Glass forLondon and England" was written by Lodge, how much by Greene. Knightthinks the poetry should be assigned to Greene. The whole piece is madeup of an extraordinary mixture of Kings of Nineveh, Crete, Cicilia, andPaphlagonia; of usurers, judges, lawyers, clowns, and ruffians; ofangels, magi, sailors, lords, and "one clad in Devil's attire. " TheProphet Hosea presides over the whole performance, with the exception ofthe first and last scenes, --a silent, invisible observer of thecharacters, for the purpose of uttering an exhortation to the people atthe end of each scene, that they should take warning from Nineveh. Thereis a flash of lightning which kills two of the royal family, and thenanother which strikes the parasite, Radagon. Both admonitions areequally futile. At last an angel prays repeatedly, and in answer Jonahis sent to preach repentance. His mission is successful, and at lastJehovah himself descends in angelic form and proclaims mercy. It hasbeen thought that the piece was written to silence the Puritan zealotswho claimed that the secular drama had demoralized the stage, andforgotten the purity of the Moral and Miracle plays; but it has neverbeen suggested that this was a "chronicle history. "

"George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, " is not generally credited toGreene, but Ulrici, from the style, assigns it to him. It makes no claimas an historical drama, but is based upon two popular legends and someevents during the reign of King Edward, without specifying which king ofthat name, and "without regard to chronological order or historicaltruth. "

Such is a brief and fair summary of the works, whether authentic ordoubtful, of Robert Greene. Let us turn to those of Peele, the friend ofGreene and Marlowe. 

Dyce assigns to him "The History of the two valiant Knights, SyrClyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, sonne of the King of Denmark, andSyr Clamides the White Knight, " printed without the author's name in1584. 

The subject, a chivalrous romance, with dragons and sorcerers and lostprincesses, is more a narrative in dialogue than a drama. It is full oflong speeches without any real action. It resembles the "Moralities":the clown is called "Subtle Shift, " sometimes "Vice. " "Rumour" and"Providence" appear, the one to tell Clyomon what has happened duringhis absence, the other to prevent Clyomon's mistress "from committingrash and unnecessary suicide. " The clown calls the piece a "pageant"; itcannot be called "a chronicle history. "

Peele's "Arraignment of Paris, a Pastorall" is a court drama in thestyle of Lilly, intended to flatter the Queen, "poor in action but allthe richer in gallant phrases, provided with songs, one in Italian, andwith all kinds of love scenes between shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs and terrestrial gods"; the diction is interesting, because itshows revolt from the prevailing "euphuism, " and therefore Peele mustbe given the praise of first opposing Lilly's affected style. 

The subject and action are as far removed from history as earth fromheaven; Paris is accused by Juno and Pallas before the assembled gods, for having pronounced an unjust sentence; he is released withoutpunishment, but as the fair plaintiffs persist in their appeal, thedecision is left to Diana, who then awards the fatal apple, not to anyof the three goddesses, but to the wise nymph Eliza, who is as chaste asshe is beautiful and powerful. Juno, Pallas, and Venus of course agreeto this decision and lay all their gifts at the feet of the Queen. Atthe end, even the three Fates appear, in order, in a Latin chant, todeliver up the emblems of their power, and therewith the power itself, to the exalted nymph. 

"The Old Wife's Tale, a pleasant conceited Comedie, " published in 1595, is a dramatized old wife's story told to three erring fancies, Frolic, Antic and Fantastic, quite in the style of a fairy tale, "alwayswavering in the peculiar twilight, between profound sense and nonsense, between childish play and matured humor. " Two brothers who have losttheir sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering with adouble-edged sword and attended by an enamored fool, and finally aknight-errant devoting his fortune to pay the stingy sexton for theburial of a victim of poverty; they are now hunting for the princess, the sisters, and the beloved lady, and to free them from the sorcerer;none of them succeed in the effort, except the knight, "and he only bythe help of the ghost of the poor Jack whose body he buried. "

"The Battel of Alcazar fought in Barbarie" is attributed to Peele andwas published in 1586, soon after Marlowe's "Tamburlaine, " after whichit is modelled and to which it expressly refers. The commentator says:"It is a mere battle piece, full of perpetual fighting and noise, ofwhich the action almost exclusively consists. " There is nothing to showthat it had any connection with history or chronicle, or was anythingbetter than a hurriedly written, spectacular drama. 

The "Edward I. " of Peele bears this title: "The famous Chronicle of KingEdward the First, surnamed Edward Longshanks, with his Return from theHoly Land. Also the life of Llewellen Rebell in Wales. Lastly, thesinking of Queene Elinor, who sunk at Charing-crosse, and rose again atPottershith, now named Queenshith. "

The title itself proves that it is not a "chronicle" but an unhistoricalfiction. The events pass by in one straight, continuous line, thedramatic personages are characterized almost solely by their actions, the language is a mere sketch. The Queen murders the Lady Mayoress, andon her death-bed confesses a double adultery; she commits perjury bydenying the murder and calls upon Heaven to sink her into the depths ofthe earth if she had spoken falsely. "That she 'sunk at Charing-crosse'before it was erected to her memory, is a sufficiently remarkablecircumstance in Peele's play, but it is more remarkable that, assumingto be a 'famous Chronicle, ' and in one or two of the events followingthe Chronicle, he has represented the Queen altogether to be a fiend infemale shape, --proud, adulterous, cruel, treacherous and bloody. " Theplay contradicts the Chronicle, and therefore cannot be called achronicle history. Hollinshed, the source of all Shakspere's histories, says of Queen Eleanor: "She was a godly and modest princess, full ofpity, and one that showed much favor to the English nation, ready torelieve every man's grief that sustained wrong, and to make thosefriends that were at discord, so far as in her lay. "

Mr. Hallam has characterized this violation of historical truth as a"hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile.... The'Edward I. ' of Peele is a gross tissue of absurdity with some facilityof language, but nothing truly good. " Nobody but Professor Wendell hasever even intimated that Shakspere imitated it. 

It is hardly necessary to consider "The Love of King David and FairBethsabe, " published in 1599, because, in the deliberate opinion ofthose who have studied the subject most deeply, it was not written till"Romeo and Juliet" was upon the stage in 1592. In it there are distincttraces of Shakspere's influence. "The love scenes, and the images andsimiles describing the charms of the beauty of nature, remind one ofthose incomparable pictures in 'Romeo and Juliet. '" In Peele's otherplays he has made but feeble attempts to depict love, beauty, or grace;in "King David" he has "depicted them with a remarkably high degree ofsuccess. "

These are all the works of Peele which have come down to our time, andafter this review of his and of Greene's dramas, it does not seem that"Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays, " that is, of"chronicle histories, " before Marlowe. The truth is, that all thesupporters of Malone's theory have taken Malone's unsupported statementas indisputable fact; they have not sufficiently examined the works ofGreene and Peele, but have assumed, as Malone assumed, that Greene'scharge in his "Groat's Worth of Wit" was conclusive proof that Shaksperedid not write the two parts of the "Contention, " and that Greene, or oneof the friends he addresses, was in fact the author. 

This assumption has again and again been shown to be without foundation. There was no point in Greene's dying sarcasm if he merely quoted a linewritten by himself; if he quoted one written by Shakspere, the wholeargument of Professor Wendell, that "Henry VI. " was "certainlycollaborative, " that his early work was "hack-writing, " that "he hardlyever did anything first, " that "to his contemporaries he must haveseemed deficient in originality, " falls to the ground. 

Having done what Malone failed to do, and what Professor Wendell seemsnot to have done, --having reviewed at some length the works ofShakspere's contemporaries to whom the older chronicle plays areattributed by Malone, --we invoke, in support of the position we havetaken, the opinion of Mr. Charles Knight in his "Essay on Henry VI. AndRichard III. "

"The dramatic works of Greene, which were amongst the rarest treasuresof the bibliographer, have been rendered accessible to the generalreader by the valuable labors of Mr. Dyce. To those who are familiarwith these works we will appeal, without hesitation, in saying that thecharacter of Greene's mind, and his habits of composition, rendered himutterly incapable of producing, not the Two Parts of the 'Contention, 'or one Part, but a single sustained scene of either Part. 

"And yet a belief has been long entertained in England, to which somewise and judicious still cling, that Greene and Peele either wrote theTwo Parts of the 'Contention' in conjunction; or that Greene wrote onePart and Peele the other Part; or that, at any rate, Greene had someshare in these dramas. This was the theory propagated by Malone in his'Dissertation'; and it rests not upon the slightest examination of thesewriters, but solely on the far-famed passage in Greene's posthumouspamphlet, the 'Groat's Worth of Wit, ' in which he points out Shakspereas 'a crow beautified with our feathers. ' The hypothesis seems to us tobe little less than absurd.... He parodies a line from one of theproductions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home, to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been mostjustly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the lineparodied had not been that of the very writer attacked. "

"Titus Andronicus" is a "tragedy of blood" written by Shakspere, according to the highest authority, when he was twenty-three ortwenty-four years of age. Ben Johnson says, in his "Bartholomew Fair"(1614), that it had been on the stage for twenty-five or thirty years. It was doubtless a very early work, but whether "much in the manner ofKyd, " as Professor Wendell asserts, can be best determined by referenceto Kyd's works. The claim has been made by other critics that "Titus"was "collaborative, " but Professor Wendell's is that it was an"imitation. "

"The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda, " first printed in 1599, is ofdoubtful authorship, but has sometimes been credited to Kyd. "The piecestill bears a striking resemblance to the old Moral Plays and therebyproves its relatively early origin. A chorus consisting of theallegorical figures Love, Happiness, and Death opens the play and eachseparate act, and ends it with a controversy in which all thepersonified powers boast of their deeds and triumphs over the others, till at the end of the fifth act Death remains the victor, and the wholeconcludes with a eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, the only mortal whom Deathdoes not venture to approach. " "Titus Andronicus" will be searched invain for "much" or little of this "manner of Kyd. "

"The First Part of Jeronimo, with the Warres of Portugal and the Lifeand Death of Don Andrea, " not published till 1605, is not an authenticwork of Kyd, but is attributed to him by some because, judging from thesubject, it belongs to "The Spanish Tragedy" and is regarded by Hensloweas the first part of it. A. W. Schlegel says that "both of these partsare full of absurdities, that the author had ventured upon describingthe most forced situations and passions without being aware of his wantof power, that especially the catastrophe of the second part, which isintended to surpass every conceivable horror, is introduced in a trivialmanner, merely producing a ludicrous effect, and that the whole was likea child's drawings, wholly unmindful of the laws of proportion. "

Ulrici maintains that "Jeronimo" itself may be treated as a play inthree parts connected only externally: first, the war between Portugaland Spain; second, the life and death of Don Andrea, and third the actsof Jeronimo, who is, however, only a subordinate character. But whetherthe play be treated as a whole or as composed of substantially separateparts, its action and interest are centred in the story of the love ofDon Andrea and Bellimperia; Lorenzo, her brother, persecutes bothbecause he is jealous of Andrea's success. Andrea is finally killed; athis funeral, his ghost appears for no assigned reason, except toexchange greeting with his friend Horatio. "Revenge" and Charon alsoappear, the one "to forbid Andrea's ghost from divulging the secrets ofHell, the other to accompany him back to the lower regions, " and thelearned critic adds that "this allegorical by-play is inserted soarbitrarily, so inappropriately and so unmeaningly, that it forms thebest standpoint for judging the piece as regards its composition andpoetical character. _In this respect its value is next to nothing. _"

If Kyd wrote "Jeronimo, " of which there is no satisfactory proof, andif Shakspere wrote "Titus, " "much in the manner of Kyd, " which weventure to think more doubtful than the authorship of "Jeronimo, " thenShakspere's supposed imitation was much "better" than the original"popular thing. "

That Kyd wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end ofDon Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo, "first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology forActors, " and there is good authority for the opinion that it was actedas early as 1588. We quote the summary of the plot:

"It is not wanting in absurdities, for the play opens and is connectedwith 'Jeronimo' by a conversation between Andrea's ghost and 'Revenge';both remain continually on the stage as silent, invisible spectators, inorder, at the end of every act, to add a few words, in which Andrealaments over the delay in the revenge of his death upon the InfantaBelthazar, and 'Revenge' admonishes him to be patient; at the end ofthe fifth act both return satisfied to the lower regions. ThenBellimperia suddenly falls in love with Horatio, who now steps intoAndrea's place, and is persecuted by Lorenzo, at first without any causewhatever, and is finally assassinated. By some means which remainperfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimofrom the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation againstthe murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness, which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudentaction. The conclusion of the piece is a general massacre, in whichJeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabsthe Duke of Castile, and then himself with a penknife. "

It can hardly seem strange that the critic should add: "This at onceexplains why no piece was more generally ridiculed by contemporary andyounger poets, than "The Spanish Tragedy. ""

If Shakspere imitated Kyd in "Titus, " from such stuff as this, he wassurely wise in his "sluggish avoidance of needless invention. "

We are tempted to suggest, however, that "The Spanish Tragedy" affords arich and ample field to modern critics who are solicitous to save thelife and work of "the gentle William" from the imputation of being"superhuman": Is it not clear that "Hamlet" was only an imitation of"The Spanish Tragedy"? Did not Hamlet have a friend whose name wasHoratio? Was not Hamlet, like Jeronimo, "essentially mad, " and did nothis madness "turn into a well calculated and prudent action"?

Kyd was the undoubted author of another work, under the following title:"Pompey the Great, his fair Cornelia's Tragedie: effected by herFather's and Husband's downe-cast Death and fortune, written in Frenchby that excellent Poet, R. Garnier, and translated into English byThomas Kyd. " This translation was printed in 1595. The play is thussummarized: It is "a piece which is constructed upon a misunderstoodmodel of the ancients; it is altogether devoid of dramatic action, inreality merely lyrics and rhetoric in dialogue. The whole of the firstact consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperatecondition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility, --ajeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, inrhymed stanzas. In this tone it proceeds without a trace of actionthrough the whole of the succeeding act, till maledictions and outburstsof grief on the part of Cornelia conclude the piece at the same point atwhich it had commenced. "

It has never been claimed that "Cornelia" was the model for "Titus. ""Cornelia" and "The Spanish Tragedy" are the only dramas that can becertainly called Kyd's. Comparison between these, or either of theothers doubtfully attributed to him, and "Titus Andronicus, " showsbeyond question that the only similarity between the most similar isthat both are "tragedies of blood. " There is no likeness of plot, characterization, action or diction. There is in "Titus" none of Kyd's"huffing, bragging, puft" language. A ghost concludes "Jeronimo" whose"hopes have end in their effects" "when blood and sorrow finish mydesires, " "these were spectacles to please my soul. " In "Titus, " eventhe Satanic Aaron, "in the whirlwind of passion, " "acquires and begets atemperance" that "gives it smoothness. "

When Tamora proposes crimes to her sons, that fiends would refuse toexecute, Lavinia does not shriek, nor rant, nor call upon the gods, butspeaks what nobody but Shakspere could have uttered, --

 "O Tamora! thou bear'st a woman's face. "

It is not necessary to consider the claim sometimes made, that Kyd wrotean old "Taming of the Shrew" or an old "Hamlet. " "It is a mere arbitraryconjecture" that he was the author of either. 

There is therefore no proof that Shakspere imitated Kyd, and ProfessorWendell's assertion that "Titus Andronicus" is "much" in his manner isutterly without support. 

"The Comedy of Errors" was unquestionably suggested by the "Twins" ofPlautus. Is it therefore an imitation?

What is literary imitation? Did Dante imitate Virgil because Virgil'sghost was the guide through the "Inferno"? Did Milton imitate Dante in"Paradise Lost" because he describes the same scenes in different words?Did he imitate the author of Genesis because he reproduces the Garden ofEden in majestic poetry? "Paradise Lost" seems to Professor Wendell"almost superhuman, " but when any suggestion of transcendent power isapplied to Shakspere, it assumes an "unnecessary miracle. " Shakspere, whom ten generations of great men have failed to imitate, is in theopinion of Professor Wendell but an imitator, because while, as he says, "he could not help wakening to life the stiffly conventional characterswhich he found, as little more than names, in the tales and thefictions he adapted for the stage, " he wrote chronicle plays, comedies, romances, tragedies, after others had worked in the same fields. 

Milton was born in 1608. "That was the year, " says Professor Wendell, "when Shakspere probably came to the end of his tragic period, and, withthe imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newlypopular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher. "

But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote hislanguage: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. ReadScripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost. ' Turn thento whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turnto Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will findhim, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberatePuritanism and learning; but that difference does not make himirrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel howwonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take thethings for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidentlyas any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and hecould so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that theyseem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the othergreat works where he found them. " "'Paradise Lost' transcends all tracesof its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter ofmere curiosity. "

And so it appears that Professer Wendell applies one definition of theword "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere foundchronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vividand truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matterof mere curiosity, " and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy ofErrors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation"of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "somethingutterly apart, " "something almost superhuman ... In its grand solitude";if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work thatthey seem truly and admirably a part of it, " then "Love's Labour's Lost"is not an "imitation" of Lilly, nor "Henry VI. " of Greene or Peele orMarlowe, nor "Titus Andronicus" of Kyd. 

But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, andmay therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge asstated by Professor Wendell:

"A young American scholar whose name has hardly yet crossed theAtlantic, --Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike, --has lately made somestudies in dramatic chronology which go far to confirm the unromanticconjecture that to the end Shakspere remained imitative and little else. Professor Thorndike, for example, has shown with convincing probabilitythat certain old plays concerning Robin Hood proved popular; a littlelater, Shakspere produced the woods and outlaws of 'As You Like It. ' Thequestion is one of pure chronology; and pure chronology has convincedme, for one, that the forest scenes of Arden were written to fitavailable costumes and properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike hasshown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such asMarston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Cæsar' and 'Hamlet. 'With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has _virtually proved_that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher--different both in motive andin style from any popular plays which had preceded them--wereconspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began towrite romances. It seems likely, therefore, that 'Cymbeline, ' which lesscareful chronology had conjectured to be a model for Beaumont andFletcher, was in fact imitated from models which they had made. In otherwords, Professor Thorndike has shown that one may account for all thechanges in Shakspere, after 1600, by merely assuming that the mostskilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists, remained to the end an instinctively imitative follower of fashions setby others. "

Again, he says: "The likeness of their work to the romances ofShakspere--in subject, in structure, in peculiarities of verse, --hasbeen often remarked; and they have consequently been supposed to havebegun by skilful superficial imitation of his spiritually ripest phase. The question is one of chronology not yet fixed in detail; but as I havetold you already, the studies of my friend Professor Thorndike havevirtually proved that several of their plays must have been in existencedecidedly before the dates commonly assigned to 'Cymbeline, ' the'Tempest' or the 'Winter's Tale. ' If he is right, --and I believe himso, --the relation commonly thought to have existed between them andShakspere is precisely reversed. Shakspere was the imitator, not they;indeed, as we have seen, he was from the beginning an imitator, not aninventor. And here his imitations are not in all respects better thanhis models. "

Here the grave accusation is distinctly made that Shakspere imitatedBeaumont and Fletcher, and to support it, reference is made to one manonly, Professor Thorndike, his pupil and disciple. 

And so, in this new case, we have two judges, and the curious fact thatthe instructor refers to the student and the student to the instructoras the sole authority for the soundness of the decision. 

The "Introduction" of Professor Thorndike to his "Influence of Beaumontand Fletcher on Shakspere" sufficiently shows the animus of his essay:he cites the libel of Greene, and intimates that it is an accusation ofplagiarism which we have rejected, but which "contains an element oftruth worth keeping in mind"; he repeats in positive words the charge ofProfessor Wendell that Shakspere began by "imitating or revamping thework of others"; that "Titus Andronicus" and "Henry VI. , " "so far asthey are his, are certainly imitative of other plays of the time, " andadds that "Richard II. " and "Richard III. " show the influence ofMarlowe's tragedies, and "Love's Labour's Lost" of Lilly's comedies. 

We have sufficiently answered as to "Henry VI. , " "Titus Andronicus, " and"Love's Labour's Lost. " There is no proof offered as to the histories ofthe two Richards. The assertion is made without authority or example, without even the application of the usual "verse-tests" by whichauthorship is so conveniently determined. 

Having repeated the erroneous and unsupported statements of his master, Professor Thorndike announces that after these early "imitations" littleattention has been given to Shakspere's subsequent indebtedness to hiscontemporaries, for the reason that "to most students it has seemedabsurd, " while to him it is clear that "Hamlet" and "Lear" "containtraces of the 'tragedy of blood type'"; that "a closer adherence tocurrent forms can be seen in the relation between the 'Merchant ofVenice' and the 'Jew of Malta, '" "or in the many points of similaritybetween 'Hamlet' and the ... Tragedies dealing with the theme of bloodrevenge, " and that "characters ... Are often clearly developments oftypes familiar on the stage, " "as for example, Iago is a development ofthe conventional stage villain. " He is certainly correct in saying thatto most students these assumptions "seem absurd. " Let us examine thembriefly, for the purpose of learning whether they deserve any moreserious adjective. 

Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" appeared about 1589. As the author announces inthe prologue, it is based upon Machiavel's theory of life--pureselfishness. The Jew makes war upon all the world, for the gratificationof his passion for revenge; he poisons his daughter "and the entirenunnery in which she had taken refuge"; he kills, he betrays, heprepares a burning caldron for a whole garrison, --"tragedy such as thisis simply revolting. The characters of Barabas and of his servant, andthe motives by which they are stimulated, are the mere coinage ofextravagance; and the effect is as essentially undramatic as thepersonification is unreal. " The conduct of the drama is in keeping withthe character of this incomprehensible monster of vindictiveness; he is"without shame or fear, and bloodthirsty even to madness. " His badschemes are always successful; but the action proceeds withoutconnection, the characters come and go without apparent cause; the threeJews, the monks and nuns, the mother of Don Mathias "appear anddisappear so unexpectedly, and are interwoven with the action in soentirely an external manner, that the defects of the composition are atonce apparent. "

If this seems a good model for Shakspere's Shylock, it will seemimpossible, when Barabas shows us his own portrait:

 "As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls; Sometimes I go about and poison wells; And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves I am content to lose some of my crowns; That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'em go pinion'd along by my door. Being young, I studied physic, and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enriched the priest with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in use, With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells; And after that was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. And after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hung himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him. But mark how I am bless'd for plaguing them; I have as much coin as will buy the town. But tell me now, how hast thou spent thy time?"

And the servant answers in sympathetic lines:

 "Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves. One time I was an ostler in an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats; Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, I strewed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so That I have laughed a-good to see the cripples Go limping home to Christendom on stilts. "

Undoubtedly, the "groundlings" shouted with delight when this fiend wasplunged into the boiling caldron which he had heated for others. Barabasdies, "in the midst of his crimes, with blasphemy and cursing on hislips; everything is the same at the end as it was from the beginning. "

To the unlearned reader, there is no "relation" between this wild dramaand the perfect art shown in Shakspere's Jew, who utters no curse whenthe gentle Portia pronounces sentence, but retires with dignity from hercourt, because "he is not well. "

Professor Thorndike tells us that the "traces" of blood revenge in"Hamlet" and "Lear" have been frequently "remarked. " What those tracesare we are not informed, but he assures us that "they have not led toany careful investigation of Shakspere's indebtedness to hiscontemporaries. " That investigation was reserved for his research, andwe hope to show how successfully he has performed his great task. Meanwhile, we may be allowed to say that if "Lear" contains any "trace"of the tragedy of blood, it is utterly undiscoverable to the ordinaryreader, in the action, character or fate of the victims; and as for"Hamlet, " so far is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubtsand disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed theexistence of any other world, and dies at last not a bloody death, butby a foil "unbated and envenomed. "

If Iago is but the development of the conventional stage villain, hisorigin and some of the missing links of his evolution ought to be shown;they have never been guessed, and no critic can produce a single memberof his kindred. 

From such premises, Professor Thorndike concludes that "it is onlynatural to expect that the genius who brought many of these forms totheir highest perfection should not have been so much an inventor as anadapter"; "We may naturally expect, " he says, "that Shakspere'stranscendent plays owe a considerable debt to the less perfect but notless original efforts of his contemporaries. " This "natural expectation"is not disappointed, in Professor Thorndike's opinion, by a comparisonbetween some of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays and those he calls the"romances" of Shakspere, --"Cymbeline, " "The Tempest, " and "Winter'sTale. " The argument is circuitous, but must be carefully followed inorder to estimate the validity and weight of the conclusion. 

In the first place, it is assumed as probable that Shakspere andFletcher wrote "The Two Noble Kinsmen, " and that Fletcher wrote part of"Henry VIII. " It is admitted that this last assumption is "at odds withthe weight of authority" and rests mainly, if not wholly, uponSpedding's essay, in 1850. The only additional suggestion is the new andoriginal test, the so-called "em-them" test. A laborious table is made, purporting to show that in the part assigned to Shakspere "them" is usedseventeen times, "'em" only five; that in the part assigned to Fletcher"them" is used but four times, "'em" fifty-seven. We are not told fromwhat source this table was made, but "Henry VIII. " was first publishedin the folio of 1623. Professor Thorndike says that later editions havestrictly followed it, and in Knight's edition, which he certifies to bea reprint of the first folio, "'em" as a contraction for "them" occursjust once and no more. Thus far, then, the new "test" seems to give usno satisfactory aid. 

It may be permitted an ordinary reader to wonder how any critic canpersuade himself that Fletcher wrote the speech of Wolsey on hisdownfall, or the prophecy of Cranmer at the christening of Elizabeth. Why is it not a permissible hypothesis that "Henry VIII. " was writtenduring the reign of the great Queen, and subsequently revised byShakspere, after her death, and presented as a "new play, " as Wottencalls it?

The only external evidence that Shakspere wrote any portion of "The TwoNoble Kinsmen" is the quarto of 1634. On the contrary, all the previousexternal evidence is against that guess, for it was left out of theFirst Folio, and Heminge & Condell's positive knowledge is certainly ofmore weight than the opinion of Professor Thorndike's sole authority, Mr. Littledale. Moreover, the play was not included among Shakspere'sworks in the folio of 1632, and did not appear among them until, withsix other doubtful plays, the editions of 1664 and 1685. In view of thisproof, it is admitted that the question of collaboration is likely toremain forever unsettled, "because it does not admit of completedemonstration. " Nevertheless, collaboration is assumed, and the"em-them" test is applied to the text so as to credit 1034 lines toShakspere, 1486 to Fletcher. 

German criticism has taken up the subject with minute care, and, we mayassert with confidence, has settled beyond doubt that Shakspere neverwrote a single line of "The two Noble Kinsmen. " And it may be added withequal certainty that if the citations from that play are correctlycredited to Fletcher, he never wrote a line of "Henry VIII. " ProfessorThorndike is not consistent with himself. On one page he calls histheory conjectural, on another, a "reasonable conclusion. " The playitself ought to convince any fair mind that Shakspere had no share init, for it contains an obvious imitation of Ophelia's madness in"Hamlet, " which in some points "is a direct plagiarism. " But it wasimportant for Professor Thorndike to show what he calls a "probability"that Shakspere and Fletcher collaborated, in order to establish histheory that Fletcher "influenced" Shakspere. With the vanishing of the"probability" the "influence" vanishes. 

The second step in the argument is a review of the chronology of theplays of Beaumont and Fletcher, among which only _seven_ areimmediately important. "The Woman Hater, " licensed 20th May, 1607, published in quarto 1607, as lately acted, again in 1648, and assigned toBeaumont and Fletcher. Its first representation is put by Mr. Fleay onApril 5th, 1607. Professor Thorndike conjectures that this play wasproduced in 1606. "Philaster, " the most important in connection with oursubject, was first published in 1620. Mr. Fleay dates its composition in1611; Professor Thorndike, in 1608. The "Four Plays in One" he likewiseassigns conjecturally to the same year. The fact is, it was firstprinted in the folio of 1647, and no authority fixes the date of itsproduction. "Thiery and Theodoret" was first published in 1621, withoutgiving the name of any author. The quarto of 1648 credits Fletcher asthe sole author; that of 1649, Beaumont and Fletcher as the jointauthors. Fleay places the date about 1617; Oliphant maintains that itwas written about 1607 or 1608, and afterwards revised in 1617 byFletcher and Massinger; Professor Thorndike ventures the guess that itwas written in 1607. 

"The Maid's Tragedy" he places doubtfully in 1609. It was firstpublished in 1619 without naming its authors. The only evidence as toits date is that it was licensed October 31st, 1611. 

"Cupid's Revenge" was acted at Court in 1612, and first published in1615. Professor Thorndike thinks it was an effort to repeat the successof "Philaster, " and therefore assigns it to 1609 or 1610. 

"A King and No King" he puts without hesitation in the year 1611, andthis is supported by authority. Professor Thorndike remarks that this isthe only play (of Beaumont and Fletcher), "acted before 1612, the yearof whose production is fixed. "

The only reason for referring to "The Woman Hater" is to fix the date ofBeaumont and Fletcher's appearance. There is absolutely no proof thatthey were known to literature before that play was licensed by SirGeorge Buc on the 20th May, 1607. Yet Professor Thorndike, in spite ofthis, assigns "The Woman's Prize, " first printed in 1647, and firstacted, so far as the record shows, November 28th, 1633, to the year1604. 

It is to be noted that of the six other plays referred to by ProfessorThorndike, and claimed to have been in existence before the end of 1611, the dates of all except "A King and No King" are only conjecturallygiven. 

Compared with these, the chronology of "Cymbeline, " "Tempest" and"Winter's Tale" is reviewed. "Cymbeline, " according to Dr. SimonForman's Diary, was acted between April 20th, 1610, and May 15th, 1611;it must therefore have been written before the last named date. Mr. Fleay fixes the date in 1609, Malone in 1605, and both Chalmers andDrake substantially agree with Malone. Ulrici assigns the date ofcomposition to 1609 or 1610. 

"The Tempest, " according to Professor Thorndike, cannot be dated earlierthan October 13th, 1610, nor later than 1613, and was probably writtenand acted late in 1610 or early in 1611. Ulrici agrees with this. 

"The Winter's Tale, " as appears by Forman's Diary, was acted May 15, 1611. Ulrici says: "It is now a matter of certainty that it must havebeen brought upon the stage between August, 1610, and May, 1611. " It hasbeen suggested with some plausibility that this play was an earlyproduction by Shakspere which he remodelled. A play called "AWinternyght's Pastime" is entered at Stationer's Hall as early as 1594. Professor Thorndike fixes the date between January 1st and May 15th, 1611 and assumes that the drama is imitated from Jonson's "Masque ofOberon. " He suggests that as in the "Masque" the chariot of Oberon isdrawn by two white bears, "perhaps here, as in the dance, costume andactor reappeared in the play, in the bear who chases Antigonus. "Anything to show that Shakspere imitated anybody. 

The argument is based upon this chronology and the alleged similaritybetween the enumerated dramas: the issue is made upon the respectivedates of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster" and Shakspere's"Cymbeline. " There is no claim that Shakspere imitated Beaumont andFletcher or was influenced by them, except in his three "romances, " andof these, "Cymbeline" is placed first. Professor Thorndike undertakes toprove that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610, and thisis his reasoning:

"In the 'Scourge of Folly' by John Davies of Hertford, entered in theStationer's Register October 8th, 1610, occurs an epigram referring tothis play. " Let us examine this statement first. On the next page hesays: "The '_Scourge of Folly_' furnishes no further clue in regard tothe date of the epigram. " On page 59 of the same essay, referring toanother play, "Don Quixote, " the statement is made that it was "enteredS. R. 1611 and printed 1612. " The entry was therefore in the nature of a"license to print. " It is clear that in this instance the actualprinting or publication was after the entry. The same rule must apply toother plays of the same period. The date of entry affords no proofwhatever of the date of publication or of presentation. Therefore thedate of the entry of "The Scourge of Folly, " October 8th, 1610, asProfessor Thorndike states, "affords no clue in regard to the date" ofDavies's "epigram. " The "epigram" may have been written long after theentry in the Stationer's Register, and probably was, because it is notto be assumed that the "epigram" appeared in the entry of the play, andDavies cannot be assumed to have had any knowledge of the existence of"Philaster" until it appeared upon the stage, a date entirely uncertain. 

Further, Professor Thorndike says: "There is no reason why 'Philaster'may not have been produced before Burbage took up the Blackfriar's leasein 1608. There is in fact no early limit that can be set for the date;the final limit is of course fixed by Davies' epigram. " Of what value isthe final limit "fixed by the epigram" when there is no proof of thedate of that? What ground is there, beyond mere arbitrary assumption, for assigning "Philaster" to 1608? That play was not printed till 1620. Mr. Fleay, Professor Thorndike's constant authority, says it was writtenin 1611, after "Cymbeline" was upon the stage. There is absolutely noproof, therefore, that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610, no proof when it was entered, licensed or first acted; and so it isclear, as Professor Thorndike says, that "the date, 1608, adopted byDyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay, is no more than a conjecture. " On theother hand, as we have shown, the external evidence is conclusive that"Cymbeline" was upon the bills before May 15th, 1611, and therefore theargument that "Philaster" preceded "Cymbeline" finds no better supportthan the opinion of Dyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay. It is mereconjecture. 

Professor Thorndike expressly admits that of the six plays which areclaimed as "romances, " "A King and No King" "is the only one actedbefore 1612 the year of whose production is fixed, " but he stateswithout qualification that "Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest" were notacted until after "Philaster. " As we have seen, "Winter's Tale" wasacted May 15th, 1611, and Professor Thorndike himself says that "'TheTempest' was probably written and acted late in 1610 or early in 1611";"Cupid's Revenge" "was acted the Sunday following New Year's 1612; 'AKing and No King' in December, 1611. " These are the only two of the sixof which the date of acting is given. Nowhere does Professor Thorndikepretend to give any date whatever when "Philaster" was acted; the onlyquestion discussed is as to the year of authorship, and that is leftuncertain. The statement that "Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" were"not acted until after 'Philaster'" is utterly without warrant orauthority. If Shakspere is to be adjudged the "imitator" of Beaumont andFletcher, the judgment must rest upon facts or inference from facts, andnot upon the unsupported opinion of Professor Wendell's pupil. 

Professor Thorndike in fact admits that "we cannot be certain about thedate of 'Cymbeline, '" but yet assumes that "Philaster" preceded it, bothin date of production and public appearance, and proceeds to draw along parallel between the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher and thoseof Shakspere, for the purpose of showing that the "romance" or theheroic "romance" was a new style of drama, "created" by Beaumont andFletcher and probably adapted and improved by Shakspere. 

Whether there is any difference in definition between the "romance" andthe "heroic romance" seems immaterial, since Professor Thorndike usesone term as synonymous with the other. He gives "the most noticeablecharacteristics of the romances": "A mixture of tragic and idyllicevents, a series of highly improbable events, heroic and sentimentalcharacters, foreign scenes, happy denouements. " This definition iselaborated in connection with the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher:

1st. They took the plots from any source. 

2nd. The plots are ingenious and improbable. 

3rd. The plots lack realism. 

4th. The plots deal with heroic persons and actions. 

5th. The characters are not historical. 

6th. The plays are located far off, for example, in Milan, Athens, Messina, Lisbon. 

7th. The action has little to do with the real life of any historicperiod, but with "romance. "

8th. The story is of sentimental love, as contrasted with gross, sensualpassion. 

9th. There is variety of emotional effect. 

10th. There is always a happy denouement. 

All these elements of the definition are applied to "Cymbeline, " "TheTempest" and "Winter's Tale, " and it is maintained that none ofShakspere's previous dramas present the same features. This is aconvenient method of showing that Beaumont and Fletcher "created theromantic drama" and that Shakspere was "influenced" in writing"Cymbeline" by "Philaster, " but it is not criticism; it is rather anattempt to "create" a definition and apply it to "Philaster, " and thento deny its application to "Midsummer Night's Dream, " "Much Ado AboutNothing, " "The Merchant of Venice, " "Twelfth Night" or "Measure forMeasure. "

Why does Professor Wendell call the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" a"romantic comedy, " if Beaumont and Fletcher "created" the type whichProfessor Thorndike pronounces "romance"? He deliberately classifies"Much Ado" and "Twelfth Night" as "romantic comedies. " Is not"Philaster" a "romantic comedy"? Then, as "Much Ado" was probablywritten in 1599, "Twelfth Night" in 1598, when Beaumont was twelve orthirteen and Fletcher twenty-two or twenty-three, it seems quite"probable" that they were "influenced" in writing their "romances" byShakspere. If there is any fundamental difference between "romanticcomedy" and "romance, " what is it? This is a difficult question, whichProfessor Thorndike has attempted but failed to answer. He admits that"Philaster" has some generic resemblance to "Measure for Measure, " butsays that "No one would think of finding close resemblance between itand anyone of the 'romances. '" If the resemblance is generic, does itmatter whether it is "close"? If "Measure for Measure" falls within thelaborious definition of a "romance, " or of a "tragi-comedy, " as boththat play and "Philaster" are called, why shouldn't we think of "Measurefor Measure, " produced in 1604, four years before the wildest conjectureputs the date of "Philaster, " as the model upon which Beaumont andFletcher built?

"Measure for Measure" answers every detail of the definition: the plotis taken from "Promos and Cassandra"; it is ingenious and improbable, lacks realism, deals with heroic persons and actions, a sovereign dukeand his rascal brother; the characters are not historical; the locationis far off; the action has little to do with the real life of anyhistorical period; the story involves sentimental love, as distinctlycontrasted with sensual passion; there is variety of emotional effect;the denouement is happy. If therefore the definition of "romance" iscorrect, "Measure for Measure" is as much of that type as "Philaster";Beaumont and Fletcher did not "create" it, and there is no reason forsupposing that Shakspere imitated them in "Cymbeline, " "Tempest, " or"Winter's Tale. "

But certain traits of construction are named as peculiar to the six"romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher and those of Shakspere, and it issought to show that Beaumont and Fletcher set the fashion in these also. 

1st. They did not observe the unities. 

2nd. They disregarded the chronicle method. 

3rd. They left out battles and armies. 

4th. They presented a series of contrasted and interesting situationsleading up to a startling climax. 

5th. The by-plots assist the main action. 

6th. There is the use of tragi-comedy. 

Does any attentive reader of Shakspere's comedies, whether calledromantic or tragi-comic, or by whatever other name, need to be told thatmany of them contain all these traits? General review is impossible, buttake "The Merchant of Venice" as an illustration:

The unities are not observed. We think it is generally thought thatShakspere was in the habit of disregarding them. The chronicle method isignored. We are not aware that Shakspere ever followed it except inwriting historical plays. Battles and armies are left out. This comedy, like others by the same cunning hand, presents a series of contrastedand interesting situations leading up to a startling climax. Need wecall to mind the rash contract of the merchant, and its almost tragicresult, the game of the caskets, the trial and defeat of the clamorousShylock? The by-plot assists the main action, else why does Jessica keephouse for Portia while she goes to play "A Daniel come to judgment"?There is the use of tragi-comedy in the ruin of the merchant, in thewhetting of the Jew's knife for the heart of his assured victim. Ifthese "traits" characterize the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher, they are possibly more likely to have been the "imitators, " because"Shylock" was created in 1596 or 1597, some years before "Philaster" wasexhibited as a stage decoration. 

It is urged further that in the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher "thecharacters are not individuals, but types, " and that those types arerepeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very badand a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad asto seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden, " of "thelily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It issupposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not markthe highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak andshadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike, however, cannot too much commend this style, because it gives such widescope for intense passion, startling situation, and successful stageeffect, and proceeds to seek for similar types in Shakspere's "romances"as further proof that he "imitated" "Philaster. " In his view, thecharacters show "surprising loss of individuality. " Imogen's character"fails to supply really individual traits"; "Perdita and Miranda haveeven less marks of individuality than Imogen. " They are like Beaumontand Fletcher's heroines who appear in the same stage costumes, wearingthe same masks, differing only in stage postures and dialogue. More thanthis: Professor Thorndike would reduce the "creations" of Viola andRosalynd to the conventional type of the "love-lorn" maiden, to mereadaptations for the stage, because they dressed in boy's clothes; ofPerdita, to an "imitation" of Lady Amelia in "Palamon and Arcyte"because she gathered flowers prettily and was commended by the Queen. Hemakes the surprising statement that the three heroines in "Cymbeline, "the "Tempest" and "Winter's Tale" have on the stage "few qualities todistinguish them from almost any of Beaumont and Fletcher's. " It isdifficult to discuss such generalizations with the temperance ofcriticism. They can be true only if Professor Thorndike's theory iscorrect, --that the delineation of character is solely for stage effect. There is another theory announced and recorded by Shakspere himself, andillustrated in every drama he wrote, --that the sole end and aim of thestage itself and of the characters it represents, is "to hold the mirrorup to nature, " and therefore his characters are not "types"; they aremen and women who were born, not manufactured; each is a separate, individual human being; each different from every other. We know them, for they have entered our houses, sat at our tables, talked with us, laughed and wept with us, made us shudder at crime and exult in thetriumph of virtue. 

Therefore, there is but one "Lear": his madness was never imitatedoutside of Bedlam; but one Lady Macbeth, and we have seen her walking inher awful dream. Beaumont and Fletcher in six romances delineate"love-lorn maidens, " "conventionalized types, " who differ little fromeach other, except that three of them "masquerade in boy's clothing" andthree do not. They have "little individuality, " "are utterly romantic, ""utterly removed from life"; all are presented to produce novelsituations leading up to a startling climax. 

Imogen is not like Miranda or Perdita; neither is a "type" of the"love-lorn" maiden; all are living, acting individuals, differing fromeach other like those we know, resembling each other only as onebeautiful and pure woman resembles another. Professor Thorndike, who isthe advocate of Beaumont and Fletcher, may keep his personal opinionthat Imogen lacks "individual traits, " but we respectfully decline totake his opinion as a critic that she is like Arethusa in "Philaster. "For us and for all men and women, Shakspere has _created_ the characterof Imogen, as of Perdita and Miranda, and her "individual traits" areclear enough, to those who have had the happiness of her acquaintance, to show that neither in feature or dress, neither in manners or morals, did she "imitate" any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher. But evenas a critic we must differ from Professor Thorndike; he accuses Mirandaof unpardonable indelicacy, and says she "proposed" to Ferdinand! Hegives her language from "Tempest, " and remarks with satisfaction that itsounds "very much like one of Beaumont and Fletcher's heroines, " meaningof course Arethusa, and so draws the obvious conclusion that Shaksperein this remarkable instance clearly "imitated" the "creators" of the"heroic romantic drama. " The difficulty with this statement first of allis, that it is not true: Miranda does not "propose" to Ferdinand; beforeher sweet confession of love, Ferdinand had given all lovers the bestform of proposal ever spoken, in this language:

 "I, Beyond all limit of what else i' the world, Do love, prize, honor you. "

Arethusa does "propose" to Philaster, and therefore her "proposal" doesnot "sound very much like" the proposal in "Tempest, " or, if it does, ittends strongly to show that Beaumont and Fletcher attempted an"imitation" from "The Tempest. " Professor Thorndike the critic has herebeen misled by his zeal as the partisan: isn't it just possible that thelike zeal has misled him in the conclusion that "Cymbeline" was animitation of "Philaster"?

The second class of "types, " as shown by the dramas of Beaumont andFletcher, is the "evil woman"--Evadne in the "Maid's Tragedy, " Bacha in"Cupid's Revenge, " Megra in "Philaster, " Brunhalt in "Thierry andTheodoret" and Arane in "A King and No King. " Professor Thorndike saysthat "four of them brazenly confess adultery, and four attempt murder, "and that "the resemblance ... Is unmistakable ... And on the stage evenmore than in print" these characters "must have seemed to all intentsidentical. "

The only parallel to this in Shakspere's "romances, " as drawn byProfessor Thorndike, is that the "wicked Queen in 'Cymbeline' is verylike the wicked queens of Beaumont and Fletcher, " and that "there areother characters ... Who show resemblances to Beaumont and Fletcher'sstock types. " What the resemblances are we are not told, and we need notinquire until we learn which "type" is the original, which the"imitation. " Meanwhile, we may rest upon the fact that, so far as queensare concerned, there is no "stock type" in Shakspere; they differ fromeach other as widely as Hamlet's mother from Imogen's mother-in-law. Ifany of them resemble Beaumont and Fletcher's queens, it is clear thatBeaumont and Fletcher were the "imitators, " not Shakspere. 

Further similarities are suggested between the "type" of the "faithfulfriend" as shown in five of Beaumont and Fletcher's "romances" andGonzalo in "Tempest, " Camillo in "Winter's Tale, " and Pisanio in"Cymbeline. " The "lily-livered heroes" and the "poltroons" are left outof the laborious comparison, perhaps because none of either can be foundin Shakspere sufficiently like the original types in Beaumont andFletcher. The examples of the "faithful friend" are not happy. ForGonzalo sets Prospero adrift in a crazy boat and Camillo betrays onepatron to save another. 

Still following the assumption that "Philaster" was earlier than"Cymbeline, " we find Professor Thorndike asserting that "Cymbeline""shows a puzzling decadence" in style, "an increase in the proportion ofdouble endings, " "a constant deliberate effort to conceal the metre";"the verse constantly borders on prose"; "Shakspere's structure ingeneral is like Fletcher's, particularly in the use of parentheses andcontracted forms for 'it is, ' 'he is, ' 'I will. '" There is a "loss ofmastery" in "Cymbeline, " "an apparently conscious and not quitesuccessful struggle to overcome the difficulties of the new structure. "An apologetic phrase that all this does not impute any "directimitation" of Fletcher does not redeem it from the imputation thatShakspere was not content with copying Fletcher's plot, characters, situations, but he deliberately departed, when "Philaster" met his eye, from the methods he had used for more than twenty years, and carefullycopied the mannerisms of a contemporary who, according to establishedchronology, had been known to the public hardly three years. The meritsof the charge, whether of direct or indirect imitation, must bedetermined solely by the priority in date of the two plays. Meanwhile, the critic's argument would have more force if he had told us how"Cymbeline" shows a "puzzling decadence, " how "the structure is likeFletcher's, " how the struggle to overcome the difficulty of its noveltyappears. As the argument stands it reminds one of Lowell's remark inrelation to this style of criticism: "Scarce one but was satisfied thathis ten finger tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders ofpoise and counterpoise ... In his metres; scarce one but thought hecould gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows mayhave been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunlessroots of Being and Consciousness, mock the plummet. "

Professor Thorndike takes the further point, in his review of the Dramafrom 1601 to 1611, that during that period "There are almost no romantictragi-comedies"; that in fact, including "Measure for Measure, " thereare only five which offer the slightest generic resemblance to theheroic tragi-comedies like "Philaster" and "Winter's Tale"; that when"Philaster" appeared, there had been "no play for seven or eight yearsat all resembling it"; and draws the conclusion that Shakspere, who hadbeen writing "gloomy tragedies" for several years, suddenly left thatstyle and wrote "Cymbeline" in imitation of "Philaster, " because"Philaster" had "filled the audience with surprise and delight. " Theuncomplimentary and uncritical remark is added that perhaps "Timon" and"Coriolanus" had not achieved great success on the stage--at any ratethe success of "Philaster" aroused his interest. 

"Timon" is assigned by most critics to the last of Shakspere's life, bymany to the year 1612. "Cymbeline, " as we have seen, was acted beforeMay 15th, 1611; it is therefore difficult to understand, if the dateassigned to "Timon" is correct, how its failure could have "influenced"the production of "Cymbeline. "

But Professor Thorndike's statement is incorrect. During the decadenamed, "Measure for Measure" was acted at Court in 1604; his conjecturaldate of "Philaster" is 1608. As we have shown, "Measure for Measure"fully answers his definition of the "romance" or "heroic tragi-comedy, "and he admits that it bears a generic resemblance to "Philaster. " Hisstatement that for seven or eight years before "Philaster" "no play hadappeared at all resembling it" is therefore without support, andcontradicts his own admission. He assumes much more, and to support hisconclusion argues that "Philaster" was perhaps produced before 1608. Theimportance of the point justifies deliberate attention. Against theopinion of most scholars, against the express statement of Dryden, heassigns "Pericles" to the year 1608; credits Shakspere with theauthorship of the "Marina story;" admits that "the plot is ... Likethose of the romances, and particularly like that of the 'Winter'sTale, ' in dealing with a long series of tragic events leading to a happyending, " but endeavors to escape the inevitable conclusion, by thestatement, utterly inconsistent with his own chronology, that, "if theplay was as late as 1608, there is a possibility of Beaumont andFletcher's influence just as in the romances. "

"Pericles" contains a sentimental love story, the plot is like that ofthe "romances, " the variety of the emotional effects is similar, andthere is a contrast of tragic and idyllic elements. The play is foundedupon a "romantic story. " All this is admitted, but Professor Thorndikethinks the love story is not sufficiently prominent, the idyllicelements are not treated as in the romances, and Marina is therefore notlike any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher, but, while "somethinglike Portia, more like Isabella. " And so "Pericles" is distinguishedfrom the romances because the "treatment" is "different, " and finally, because Professor Thorndike is committed to the theory that Beaumont andFletcher "created" a new type of drama, he asserts that "'Pericles' isdoubtless earlier than Shakspere's romances, but there is no probabilitythat it preceded all of Beaumont and Fletcher's. " Dryden in his Prologueto Davenant's "Circe" says: "Shakspere's own muse his Pericles firstbore, " and the great weight of opinion is that it was a very earlyproduction. The "Story of Marina" is as romantic as "Cymbeline, " and isof the same "type" as "Philaster, " and therefore, if Dryden is right, there is a strong probability that "Pericles" preceded all of Beaumontand Fletcher's romances, and that in "Cymbeline" Shakspere did notimitate them. 

We come at last to the end of the argument. Professor Thorndike, premising that the historical portion of "Cymbeline" and the exile ofPosthumous have no parallels in "Philaster, " institutes a detailedcomparison between the plots, characters, and composition of the twoplays, and shows that they are so strikingly similar as to justify thepositive conclusion that "Shakspere influenced Beaumont and Fletcher orthat they influenced him. " We may admit more than this: If "Cymbeline"followed "Philaster, " he was not only influenced by them, he not onlyimitated them, he was a plagiarist; and no apologetic words that, uponthe assumption stated, "Cymbeline" did not owe a very large share of itstotal effect to "Philaster, " can make less the gravity of the charge, and if the assumption is groundless or even probably groundless, noexcuse remains to the critic who makes it. 

Let us see: After all his learned review of dramatic chronology, afterall his statements conveying the assurance that "Philaster" was theoriginal "type" of the "romance, " Professor Thorndike says in so manywords, which for accuracy we quote: "Some such statement of theinfluence of 'Philaster' on 'Cymbeline' could be adopted if we werecertain of our chronology. But the evidence for the priority of'Philaster' is not conclusive, and its support cannot be confidentlyrelied upon. Leaving aside, then, the question of exact date, and onlypremising the fact that both plays were written at about the same time, we must face the questions, --which is more plausible, that Shakspereinfluenced Beaumont and Fletcher or that they influenced him? Which onits face is more likely to be the original, 'Cymbeline' or 'Philaster'?"

If "Cymbeline" was first written, then "Philaster" becomes not anoriginal but a copy, adaptation, imitation, plagiarism, if you will. Thesimilarities remain the same, the argument is reversed. We have shownthat the evidence is conclusive, in the opinion of the best critics, that "Cymbeline" preceded "Philaster. " Coleridge, Ulrici, Tieck andKnight think that "this varied-woven romantic history had inspired thepoet in his youth" to attempt its adaptation to the stage; that havinghad but a temporary appearance, Shakspere long afterwards, near the endof his career, may have remodelled it, and Malone, Chalmers, and Drakeassign "Cymbeline" with "Macbeth" to 1605 or 1606. Our argument might besafely put upon this point alone. Professor Thorndike's is placed solelyupon "plausibility" and "likelihood. " To support it, he assumes againthe certainty of "the priority of Philaster"--which he had just admittedto be uncertain--in order to show "the nature of Shakspere'sindebtedness, " and then concludes from "the nature of the indebtedness, "and from the fact that "Philaster" "was followed immediately by fiveromances of the same style in plot and characters" "which markFletcher's work for the next twenty years, " that "these facts create astrong presumption that 'Philaster' was the original, " "a strongpresumption that 'Cymbeline' was the copy, " and finally ends theargument as it began, with these flattering words: "We may, indeed, safely assert that Shakspere almost never invented dramatic types. " Andthis is the argument which Professor Wendell thinks "virtually provesthat several of their plays (Beaumont and Fletcher's romances) must havebeen in existence decidedly before 'Cymbeline, ' 'The Tempest' or'Winter's Tale, '" "that the relation commonly thought to have existedbetween them and Shakspere is precisely reversed. "

Let us answer both Teacher and Pupil. Suppose, to follow the Thorndikemethod, that "Cymbeline" appeared before "Philaster, " that six romancesby Beaumont and Fletcher followed in rapid succession, while only two byShakspere appeared, but differing essentially from each other and from"Philaster. " Suppose that "Cymbeline" upon its first night "filled theaudience with surprise and delight, " that Beaumont and Fletcher, perceiving "its dramatic and poetic excellence, " copied in "Philaster" aportion of its plot and attempted to copy some of its characters andsituations. Suppose their experiment with this copy took the crowd bystorm--Isn't it reasonable to suppose that they would repeat theprofitable attempt as many times as the applause warranted? Isn't thatjust what they did, repeating and imitating themselves over and over, until Beaumont died? Does the number of repetitions and imitationsincrease the "plausibility" or "likelihood" of the theory that"Philaster" was the original of the type? If Shakspere found his gainincreasing by copying the fable, character, style, and denouement of"Philaster, " why did he not continue to copy in "The Tempest" and"Winter's Tale, " and why is it impossible for Professor Thorndike todeny originality to either of these plays, except by his careless erroras to Miranda's "proposal" and the reference to Lady Amelia gatheringflowers at Oxford in 1566? Professor Thorndike's argument comes to thisand only this: If Shakspere wrote "Cymbeline" before Beaumont andFletcher wrote "Philaster, " then Shakspere was the "creator of theheroic romances. " If the question of priority is doubtful, it is just asimpossible to prove the "plausibility" or "likelihood" of priority as itis to prove the date. There is no proof, therefore, no presumption, strong or weak, that "Cymbeline" was influenced by "Philaster" or was a"copy" of it. But there is proof that Beaumont and Fletcher repeatedlyand habitually imitated Shakspere, and we cite it mostly from ProfessorThorndike's essay. 

In "The Two Noble Kinsmen" there is a "distinct imitation of thecircumstances of Ophelia's madness and death in Hamlet. " In "The WomanHater, " assigned conjecturally to 1605 or 1606 by Professor Thorndike, there are "several burlesque imitations of Hamlet. "

In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" (1607-1608) there are burlesqueimitations of passages in "Henry IV. " and in "Romeo and Juliet. "

In "Philaster" occurs this line:

 "Mark but the King, how pale he looks with fear, "

--a distinct parody of the similar line in "Hamlet"; but it will beremarked that Professor Thorndike calls it an "echo, " not an imitation. 

In "The Woman's Prize, " improbably assigned to 1604, the whole play isimitated from "The Taming of the Shrew, "--is in fact an attempted sequelto it, and Professor Thorndike wanders from chronology to indulge asneer, by the remark that "The Woman's Prize" was "very well liked, "the "Taming of the Shrew" only "liked. " Possibly that was because then, as now, some people preferred imitations. 

In "The Woman's Prize, " there is also a burlesque on "Hamlet" and aparody on "King Lear. " In "The Triumph of Death" these lines occur:--

 "No, take him dead drunk now, without repentance, His lechery enseamed upon him, "

and Professor Thorndike says "it sounds like a bit from an old revengeplay. " It is a distinct imitation from "Hamlet" where the King is seenat his prayers. 

In the "Scornful Lady" there is one certain and one possible slur at"Hamlet. "

In "Cupid's Revenge" there is an imitation from "Antony and Cleopatra. "

In "Philaster" Arethusa imitates Lear when he awakens from insanity toconsciousness. 

Upon the Wendell-Thorndike theory, we have a few undisputed factsbearing upon the "plausibility" of the conclusion that Beaumont andFletcher "influenced" Shakspere, the likelihood that "Philaster" was theoriginal, "Cymbeline" the "copy. " Shakspere at the age of forty-six, long after he had portrayed the real insanity of Lear, the simulatedinsanity of Hamlet, the confessional dream of Lady Macbeth; long afterhe had "filled the audience with surprise and delight" by the romanticrealities of Hero and Portia, of Viola and Rosalind; years after he hadanticipated the heroic "romance" in the romantic adventures of Marina;long after he had depicted the heroic triumph of Isabella over thelustful Angelo--this man, Shakspere, condescended to imitate a youth oftwenty-two, whose name was Beaumont, to steal from him much of the plot, characters, action, and denouement of "Philaster" and to make the theftmore open and unblushing, presented "Cymbeline" upon the same stagewithin a year of the original "type, " and assigned the parts to the sameactors who had won remarkable popular applause for the drama from whichhe had "cribbed" his imitation. And this imitation was not from friendlyauthors, but from those of a hostile school, who had during their wholecareer borrowed from his plots, parodied his phrases, and ridiculed hismasterpieces by slurs and burlesques. We respectfully dissent from theassertion that these facts "create a strong presumption that 'Philaster'was the original, " "Cymbeline" the "copy. " On the contrary, it seems tous that they are utterly inconsistent with any such presumption, andwith the whole theory and teaching of Professors Wendell and Thorndike. 

That theory, as we have shown, is based upon the assumption thatMarlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or somebody else, wrote most of "HenryVI"; the assumption that Fletcher helped Shakspere write "Henry VIII";the assumption that Shakspere assisted Fletcher in the composition of"The Two Noble Kinsmen"; the unsupported, the admitted conjecture that"Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610; the unwarrantedassertion that Beaumont and Fletcher "created the romance" in spite ofthe admission that the date of creation depends upon the priority of"Cymbeline" or "Philaster, " which is likewise admitted to be whollyuncertain; the suppression of the proof from "Measure for Measure" that, years before "Philaster, " Shakspere, within the proposed definition, hadproduced a romantic tragi-comedy; the guess as to priority in favor ofBeaumont and Fletcher, in spite of repeated imitations by them fromprevious plays of Shakspere. And so the argument in support of thetheory is a pyramid of _ifs_, supporting an apex that vanishes intothe thin air of an invisible conclusion. 

To us, after all this latest effort to depose the sovereign of Englishliterature from the throne where he has worn the crown for more thanthree centuries, and seat there a pretender, having no title, either bydivine right or the suffrages of mankind, Shakspere is the sovereignstill. 

He needed and he sought no allies to win his realm; he imitated nofashions of other courts to maintain his own; he took good care that therecords of his universal conquests should be kept, --written by his ownhand, and fortunately preserved by his friends, --secure from theinterpolations and imitations of his contemporaries and successors. 

Much has been written of Shakspere's impersonality, and we have beentaught to think that his dramas are utterly silent as to his ownexperience. But now and then one finds in them a glimpse of it, as thelightning flash in the darkest night for an instant shows the heavensand the earth. That others attempted to imitate him is clear enough;that he imitated others, and least of all Beaumont and Fletcher, nobodycan reasonably believe who reads his opinion of the imitator in "JuliusCæsar":

 "A barren spirited fellow; one that feeds On objects, arts, and imitations, Which, out of use, and stal'd by other men, Begin his fashion. "

Matthew Arnold's verdict has not been reversed. 

 "_Others abide our question. Thou art free. _ _We ask and ask--Thou smilest and art still, _ _Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill, _ _Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, _

 "_Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea, _ _Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, _ _Spares but the cloudy border of his base_ _To the foil'd searching of mortality;_

 "_And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, _ _Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, _ _Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. --Better so!_

 "_All pains the immortal spirit must endure, _ _All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, _ _Find their sole speech in that victorious brow. _"

 * * * * *

Transcriber's note

The following changes have been made to the text:

Page 14: "a successful playright" changed to "a successful playwright". 

Page 33: "'T is but the short'ning" changed to "'Tis but the short'ning". 

Page 53: "piece was writtin" changed to "piece was written". 

Page 53: "two valiant Kinghts" changed to "two valiant Knights". 

Page 73: "Professer Wendell applies" changed to "Professor Wendell applies". 

Page 87: "German critcism has" changed to "German criticism has". 

Page 108: "is n't it just" changed to "isn't it just". 

Page 126: "throne where he was worn" changed to "throne where he has worn".