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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 AGAINST
SHAKSPERE, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during three
centuries. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and as
often reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who have
again and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothing
to reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the ground
of newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony from
all lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury of
mankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action.
Ben Jonson said that Shakspere "wanted art"; the highest appellate court
decided that "Lear" was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles ever
produced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of French
criticism, decided that Shakspere was "votre bizarre sauvage;" the world
has reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the
"Henriade" is neglected for "Hamlet."
During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumont
and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and
even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary
to 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 the
justice of the encomium.
James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, said
in 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in
1652, that he was the "plebeian driller."
Philipps, the pupil of Milton, refers to Shakspere's "unfiled
expressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of the
critical." Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarely
observed the Aristotelian laws of the three unities," but was good
enough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "He
is 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 a
meaning, there is a lively expression, and ... more humanity, than many
times in the tragical flights of Shakspere." How much humanity may be
shown in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff may be
left to the impartial judgment of the jockey or the dog fancier, but the
world has got beyond the criticism of Rymer. In his view, "almost
everything in Shakspere's plays is so wretched that he is surprised how
critics could condescend to honor so wretched a poet with critical
discussions."
John Dennis and Charles Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dust
of more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere's
plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to
nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far
below the ancients in all essential points,--in composition, invention,
characterization.
Dennis says Shakspere paid no heed to poetic justice ... "the good and
bad perishing promiscuously in the best of his tragedies, so that there
can be either none or very weak instruction in them." Gildon sums up his
opinion by the sententious remark that "his beauties are buried beneath
a heap of ashes, isolated and fragmentary like the ruins of a temple, so
that there is no harmony in them."
Against all this arraignment by the imitators of the French drama, we
have 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 Pope
praises Dryden, Denham, and Waller,--never a word of commendation for
Shakspere: "he is not correct, not classic; he has almost as many
defects as beauties; his dramas want plan, are defective and irregular
in construction; he keeps the tragic and comic as little apart as he
does the different epochs and nations in which the scenes of his plays
are laid; the unity of action, of place, and of time is violated in
every 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 musical
masque, 'Peleus and Thetis,' and with a banqueting scene in which the
Jew," dining apart from the rest, drinks to his God, Money. Gildon
mangled "Measure for Measure" and provided it with "musical
entertainments." The Duke of Buckingham divided "Julius Caesar" into two
tragedies with choruses. Worsdale reduced "The Taming of the Shrew" to a
vaudeville, and Lampe "trimmed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' into an
opera." Garrick adapted "Romeo and Juliet" to the stage of his time, by
allowing Juliet to awake before Romeo had died of the poison, "The
Tempest" by furnishing it with songs, "The Taming of the Shrew" by
cutting it down to a farce in three acts.
Even the great Samuel Johnson said that Shakspere "sacrifices virtue to
convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct that
he seems to write without any moral purpose." ... "His plots are often
so loosely formed that a very slight consideration may improve them, and
so carelessly pursued that he seems not always fully to comprehend his
own design."
"It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is
evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and
in view of his reward, he shortened the labor to snatch the profit. He
therefore 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, the
Drama was devoted to the imitators of ancient models, under the
leadership of Ben Jonson, and later, beyond the middle of the
seventeenth century, to the imitators of French taste, for the amusement
of Charles the Second, "Defender of the Faith," and the correct Nell
Gwynn. Under the guidance of such imitators, from Davenant to Cibber,
many of Shakspere's plays were reconstructed for the stage, until _The
Tatler_ quotes lines from Davenant's mangled version of "Macbeth," and
N. Tate, in his edition of "Lear" "revived with alterations, as acted at
the Duke's Theatre," refers to the original play as "an old piece with
which he had become acquainted through a friend." Davenant and Dryden in
1670 improved "The Tempest"; Davenant corrected the errors of "Measure
for Measure" and "Much Ado" in 1673; Sedley cut out the immorality from
"Antony" in 1677; Shadwell, in the following year, reformed the
character of "Timon"; Tate restored "Lear" to his kingdom and Cordelia
to life, and even made "Henry VI.," "Richard II.," and "Coriolanus"
conform to the rules of dramatic art which Shakspere had so defiantly
violated. Durfey corrected the imperfect plot, characterization, and
diction of "Cymbeline," and administered just punishment to Iachimo; and
finally, Betterton and Cibber, in 1710, added elegance to the wit of
Falstaff and refinement to the bloody cunning of Richard.
"All these versions," as Ulrici says, "were essentially the same in
character; as a rule, only such passages as were most effective on the
stage were left unaltered, but in all cases the editors endeavored to
expunge the supposed harshnesses of language and versification; powerful
passages were tamed down and diluted, elegant passages embellished,
tender passages made more tender; the comic scenes were provided with
additional indelicacies, and it was further endeavored to make the aim
of the action more correct by the removal of some supposed excrescences,
or by the alteration of the scenic arrangement and the course of the
action."
Yet, in spite of all these distortions of the great originals, in
conformity with the taste of corrupt courts, the love and admiration of
the English people for the dramas as Shakspere wrote them was attested
by more than twenty complete and critical editions of his works before
the end of the eighteenth century; and the high estimate of his genius
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was never questioned
until 1904, when Professor Barrett Wendell, in his "Temper of the
Seventeenth Century in English Literature," discovered and revealed to
the world that Shakspere, except as a "phrase-maker" and except as the
inventor of "historical fiction" in "Henry IV." and "Henry V.," was "the
most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan
dramatists," and "remained till the end an instinctively imitative
follower of fashions set by others."
It had taken nearly three centuries of time and the researches of
countless scholars to make the discovery, and they had all failed except
Professor Wendell. During Shakspere's life and after his death, none of
his contemporaries ever accused him of imitating "fashions set by
others"; none of them, except the profligate Greene, of "beautifying
himself with others' feathers."
Edmund Malone, by what may be called digital criticism, undertook to
prove that Shakspere, in the second and third parts of "Henry VI.,"
stole 1771 lines from the "Contention," originally written by another
hand, remodelled 2373 lines, and added 1899 of his own; but even Malone
did 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 ever
put pen to paper."
But long before Malone came Lessing, who in 1759 led the successful
attack upon the pseudo-classicism of the French dramatists, proved that
the three unities were but the articles of an outworn creed, and in
1758, that Shakspere was something more than a successful playwright,
more than the successful rival of Marlowe and Kyd and Dekker and
Beaumont and Fletcher, more than "the master of the revels to mankind,"
and led critical opinion to the conclusion that he was the foremost man
of his time and of all time, with power to search the secrets of all
hearts, to measure the abysses of all passion, to portray the weakness
of all human foibles, to create characters who act and speak and are as
much alive to us as the men and women we daily meet, to teach mankind
the profoundest philosophy, the littleness of the great, the greatness
of humility and truth, and to inculcate by immortal examples the highest
and 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 the
judgment 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 conceived
and expressed in the Shaksperean idiom"; and Charles Knight, who has
exploded the traditions of Rowe and Stevens about the deer stealing, the
wife desertion and the testamentary insult, and conclusively shown that
"the theory of Shakspere's first employment in repairing the plays of
others is altogether untenable, supported only by a very narrow view of
the 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 indorsement
of American scholars. Let me quote what Emerson says:--"He is the father
of German literature. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are
Shaksperean. His mind is the horizon beyond which we at present do not
see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. He cannot step from
his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspiration. He is
inconceivably wise; the others conceivably. A good reader can, in a
sort, nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence, but not into
Shakspere's."
And Lowell has uttered what seemed the final estimate:--"Those
magnificent crystallizations of feeling and phrase, basaltic masses,
molten and interfused by the primal fires of passion, are not to be
reproduced by the slow experiments of the laboratory striving to parody
creation with artifice.... Among the most alien races he is as solidly
at home as a mountain seen from many sides by many lands, itself
superbly solitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and domesticated in
all imaginations."
All this weight of opinion has not served to settle the question of the
sovereignty of Shakspere. It is hardly needful to mention the action
brought by Ignatius Donnelly to prove that Francis Bacon was the author
of work which excels the "Novum Organum," for that action was laughed
out of court by judge, jury, and audience. It might as well be claimed
that Job wrote "Hamlet"; for, whatever doubt may be raised as to his
personal history, the folio of 1623 and the testimony of his
contemporaries have shown as clearly that Shakspere wrote the dramas
bearing his name as that Macaulay wrote a history of the Revolution of
1688.
But here come Barrett Wendell, Professor of English Literature at
Harvard, and his pupil and disciple, Ashley H. Thorndike, Assistant
Professor of English at the Western Reserve University, with a new case,
or a new brief on the old one, maintaining, with laborious industry and
mutual sympathy, that Shakspere was only an Elizabethan playwright, who
found the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at once
seized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in the
histories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music of
his blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the manner
of Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are but
adaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but an
imitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style of drama
made popular by some contemporary of more original power, he immediately
imitated his style and plot, surpassed him in phrase-making, and so
coined sterling money to build and decorate his house at Stratford.
If not the most formidable, this is the latest attack of the critics. It
should seem from our brief review of former efforts, that this has been
fully answered. But if apology is needful for further defence, let it be
found in this, that when men of eminent position as the instructors of
youth, whose word in these days of careless and superficial reading is
likely to be taken as final, undertake to change the opinion of the
civilized world as to the genius and character of its supreme mind,
their assertions should be supported by something more substantial than
references to each other as authority, more reliable than dramatic
chronology, which they themselves admit to be uncertain, more tangible
than the effort to count the lines of "Henry VIII." written by Fletcher.
The position of Professor Wendell can be most fairly stated in his own
words. 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 examples
of Shakspere's "lack of superficial originality," whatever that may
mean, and assumes that he "had certainly done years of work as a
dramatic hack-writer" before the appearance of "Venus and Adonis." There
is no proof, not even the doubtful authority of tradition, that he was
ever a hack-writer, or ever revised or revamped the dramatic work of
another.
Professor Wendell asserts, upon the authority of Mr. Sidney Lee, that
Shakspere came to London in 1586,--that is, when he was twenty-two.
Aubry, his oldest biographer, says in 1680 that "this William, being
naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about
eighteen (i.e., in 1582), and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and
did act exceeding well." "He began early to make essays at dramatic
poetry, and his plays took well." The date is important, as will soon be
seen.
Professor Wendell proceeds:--"'Love's Labour's Lost' is obviously in
the manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI.,' certainly collaborative, is a
chronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chief
makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost
masterly 'Edward II.' 'Titus Andronicus' ... is a tragedy of blood much
in the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popular
presentation a familiar kind of Latin comedy."
We may differ with some of these assertions because dissent is supported
by the highest authority, both German and English. Ulrici says that
"Lilly's works in fact contain nothing but witty words; the actual wit
of comic characters, situations, actions, and incidents is almost
entirely wanting. Accordingly, his wit is devoid of dramatic power, his
conception of comedy still not distinct from the ludicrous, which is
always attached to one object; he has no idea of a comic whole." "Love's
Labour's Lost" is assigned by the best authority to 1591-92, after the
appearance 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" Shakspere
did work of his own. After that, it is not quite "obvious" that "Love's
Labour's Lost" is in the style of Lilly, however clear to the critic may
be 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 'Elizabeth
Cynthia'," that is, the Queen; she instructs her ladies in Morals and
Pythagoras in Philosophy. "Her kiss breaks the spell" which put Endymion
into his forty-years sleep, upon which, and upon his deliverance from
which, "the action principally turns within the space of forty years."
Can any impartial reader trace this "manner of Lilly" in "Love's
Labour's Lost"?
Lilly's "Pleasant conceited Comedy," called "Mother Bombie," appeared in
1594, his "Midas" in 1592, and his "Most Excellent Comedie of
Alexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes" in 1584. "Mother Bombie" represents
four servants, treated partly as English, partly as Roman slaves, who
deceive their respective masters in an "equally clumsy, unlikely, and
un-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 the
magnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionate
love for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of her
lover Apelles." The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes the
opportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all comers by his
cynical speeches.
Lilly's most ambitious work was his "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, very
pleasant for all Gentlemen to read," "probably printed as early as
1579." Long before Shakspere's time, all "Gentlemen" had read it, and
it had introduced to the fashionable world a new language which nobody
but the high-born could understand.
If "Love's Labour's Lost" is "in the manner of Lilly," it is not so in
Professor Wendell's sense, but only as it ridicules with unsparing
satire Lilly's conceits and puns.
The statement that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative" is
unwarranted, because it has been successfully challenged and disproved
by the eminent critics Hermann Ulrici and Charles Knight; it is
supported only by the guesswork of Clark, Wright, Halliwell and others
who assume to find a divided authorship from assumed divergencies of
style. The result shows the futility of the method. What Shakspere is
assumed not to have written is assigned to Marlowe, Greene, Peele or
Lodge. If style cannot determine between them, what warrant is there for
the conclusion that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative"?
The second and third parts of "Henry VI." are the final form of "The
First Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster,"
and "The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York." Greene, in his savage
attack upon Shakspere, quotes a line which appears in the "Third Part"
and also in "The True Tragedy." His attack proves the sole authorship of
both by the man he maligns, to whom Chettle apologized within a year.
The argument of Knight has been before the critical world for many
years, and its careful arrangement of facts and its logical conclusions
from them, have well-nigh overcome the prejudices of English scholars
who for many years after the appearance of Malone's "Dissertation"
adopted his theory that the two parts of the "Contention" contained
nothing from Shakspere's hand. But because American writers are
constantly seeking reputation for learning by repeating Malone's
argument, it will be useful, in the interest of truth, to state Knight's
answer.
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 Henry
VI.," and proves the identity of authorship by the intimate connection
and unity of action and characterization, and by the identity of manner,
making the three plays one integral whole. In the "First Part of Henry
VI." and in the "First Part of the Contention," Suffolk is the same man,
Margaret the same woman. In both plays, Gloster and Beaufort speak the
same scorn and defiance in the same tongue. The garden scene, with its
red and white roses, is the prologue to the "Contention" and
indissolubly links together the three parts of "Henry VI." as one drama
by the same hand.
Malone's first assumption was therefore without foundation. Even Collier
only claims that "it is _plausibly conjectured_" that Shakspere did
not write the "First Part of Henry VI." but that it is an old play most
likely written about 1589. Who did write it, was before Knight and
Ulrici the theme of endless debate. Hallam was "sometimes inclined to
assign it to Greene." Gervinus in his "Commentaries," took the same
view, but subsequently changed it. Knight has shown that the three parts
of "Henry VI." are "in the strictest sense" Shakspere's own, and Ulrici
agrees with Knight.
It is worthy of note that the "First Part" was acted thirteen times in
the 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 any
portion of his "feathers."
The next point made is that the two parts of the "Contention" were
written by the author of "Richard III." Malone studiously avoided any
comparison between them, and yet it is entirely clear that with the
"first Part of Henry VI." they form one drama. "'Richard III.' stands at
the 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 of
the other dramas as the scenes that belong to the separate dramas are
blended among themselves. Its story not only naturally grows out of the
previous story,--its characters are not only, wherever possible, the
same characters as in the preceding dramas,--but it is even more
palpably linked with them by constant retrospection to the events which
they had exhibited."
In "Richard III." Margaret is still the same "she-wolf of France" as in
the 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 same
lips, 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 appear
in the "Second Part" and in "Richard III."
And here, the unity of action and of characterization conclusively shows
the common authorship, precisely as the same resemblance unites the
first 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 bruised 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 "Second
Part"; to the murder of Rutland by the "black-faced Clifford"; to the
crowning of York with paper, and the mocking offer of a "clout steeped
in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland." It must not be forgotten that
these striking likenesses, references, unities, are not between "Richard
III." and the portion of the "Contention" assigned to Shakspere, but
between 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 Richard
himself: Knight justly and forcibly says: "It seems the most
extraordinary marvel that the world, for more than half a century,
should have consented to believe that the man who absolutely created
that 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 describe
himself.
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 determined 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 than
these are like. But Malone's examination was microscopic, and he used so
powerful an instrument that he could not distinguish resemblance or
difference beyond its field of vision. The result is that he counts
among the lines mended by Shakspere those that differ from those in the
"Contention" only by a particle or a conjunction. By this "capricious
arithmetic," only six lines in the scenes with Jack Cade in the "Second
Part of Henry VI." are credited to Shakspere, and we are asked to
believe that the man who was to fix the price of bread at "seven
half-penny loaves for a penny," to give the "three-hooped pot ten
hoops," to "make it felony to drink small beer," was portrayed by
Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or Lilly, or Kyd, or Nash, or somebody
else still more completely forgotten.
If, then, "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative," a "chronicle history
of the earlier kind," as Professor Wendell expressly asserts, it ought
to be shown for our certain instruction who was Shakspere's collaborator
in the three parts of that drama. This neither he nor any other critic
has yet done. Malone says it was Greene or Peele, but, in spite of the
established fact that we have abundant remains of both, he cannot
determine 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 is
constantly 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 "scarlet
hypocrite," 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 of
poor Buckingham." "My book of memory" in "Henry" is changed to "the
table of my memory" in "Hamlet." "Who now is girded with a waist of
iron" 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 line
in "Henry V."--"Heaven shorten Harry's happy life one day."
In the "First Part of the Contention" the character described "bears a
duke's whole revenue on her back." In "Henry VIII." this is recalled by
the line,--they "have broke their backs with laying manors on them"; and
in "King John"--"bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs." In
"Macbeth" the sentence "Infected minds to their deaf pillows will
discharge their secrets" is but a repetition of the line from the
"Contention" in which Duke Humphrey's assassin "whispers to his pillow
as to him."
"You have no children, devils," is the language of the "Contention"; "he
has 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 and
others like them, and is guilty of the same uncritical conduct in
disregarding the classical allusions in the "Second and Third Parts of
Henry VI." which he admits were added by Shakspere,--allusions as
numerous and striking as those in the "First Part."
Mr. Richard Grant White, after reviewing the argument of Knight, reaches
the conclusion that he "demolished Malone's theory," and this conclusion
is 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 chief
makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost
masterly '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 has
discovered any evidence to support his new charge, that Shakspere "was
the most obviously imitative dramatist of all, following rather than
leading superficial fashion."
Malone, in his "Chronological Order," says: "'The First Part of King
Henry VI.,' which I imagine was formerly known by the name of the
'Historical Play of King Henry VI.,' had, I suspect, been a very
popular piece for _some_ years, before 1592, and perhaps was first
exhibited 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 in
1589." Knight concludes that "there can be no doubt that the composition
of this play preceded that of the two parts of the 'Contention.'" That
these had been upon the stage before Greene died in 1592 is proven
beyond dispute by Greene's savage attack, at that time Shakspere was
twenty-eight years old and for at least three years had been a
shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, and, if Mr. Sidney Lee is right,
had been in London six years; if old Aubry was better informed, he had
been "acting exceeding well" and making "essays at dramatic poetry which
took well" for ten years.
The theory of "imitation" rests upon the assumption that Shakspere did
not begin to write for the stage before 1592; Collier asserts, without
the slightest support from known facts, and against the hostile
testimony of Greene, that he wrote the "tiger's heart lines" before
September, 1592, that "the 'History of Henry VI.,' the 'First Part of
the 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 the
old plays of the 'Contention' ... were in great part by Marlowe."
And so, we find Shakspere in London, from six to ten years connected
with its principal theatre, but writing nothing for its stage, not even
as a "hack-writer." We respectfully dissent from this conclusion because
it lacks support either in fact or probability. The man who, from utter
penury, had in 1589 won his way to a lucrative share in the theatre he
made illustrious, and who wrote "Romeo and Juliet," which first
appeared, according to Ulrici's investigation, in 1592, was more capable
of writing, and more likely to have written, the three original pieces
than Greene or Marlowe, to one of whom, or to some other writer, the
authorship is assigned by mere conjecture, from a fancied but confused
and indeterminate likeness of style or metre or classical quotation.
Marlowe was killed in a brawl with one Francis Archer, at Deptford, on
the first day of June, 1593. The only dramas that can be certainly
called his are the "Two Parts of Tamburlaine," "The Massacre of Paris,"
"Faustus," the "Jew of Malta" and "Edward II." His merits and his faults
have been discussed by many scholars; his style is characterized as the
"mighty line"; he is said by many to have invented and introduced blank
verse as the vehicle of the drama, although "Gorboduc," acted before the
Queen in 1561 and published in 1565, Gascogne's "Jocasta," played in
1566, and Whetstone's "Promos and Cassandra," printed in 1578, were
wholly or partly in blank verse. But it is admitted by all editors and
critics that Marlowe's only historical plays are "The Massacre" and "the
almost masterly Edward II.," as Professor Wendell somewhat ambiguously
calls 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, it
is not claimed to bear any likeness to either part of the "Contention."
On the contrary, "it was a subject in which Marlowe would naturally
revel; for in the progress of the action, blood could be made to flow as
freely as water." The resemblance is sought in his Edward II., which, as
all the facts tend to show, was his latest work, written after the
"Massacre" and certainly not published in his lifetime. It was entered
at Stationer's Hall in July, 1593, a little more than a month after
Marlowe's death. But here stands the "Contention" with a fixed date,
proved to have been in existence "in or close upon the first half of
the decade commencing in 1585," and the admission of all scholars that
it preceded Marlowe's "Edward II." If, therefore, Marlowe wrote one or
both parts of the "Contention," the extravagant assumption must be made
"that his mind was so thoroughly disciplined at the period when he
produced 'Tamburlaine,' 'Faustus' and the 'Jew of Malta' that he was
able to lay aside every element, whether of thought or expression, by
which those plays are characterized, adopt essentially different
principles for the dramatic conduct of a story, copy his characters from
living and breathing models of actual men; come down from his pomp and
extravagance of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry with
familiar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaring
and fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ...
but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the
common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,--pride,
and envy, and ambition, and revenge,--most fearful, from their alliance
with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was what
Marlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustained
scene of either part of the 'Contention'; before he could have depicted
the fierce hatreds of Beaufort and Gloster, the never-subdued ambition
of Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends and
reviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity,
the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and the
passionless 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 survived
the waste of three centuries. The "First Part of the Contention" was
printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, in 1594; "The True
Tragedy of Richard," the old name of the "Second Part of the
Contention," by "P. S." for Thomas Millington, in 1595. The title page
gives the name of no author for either play, and it is claimed by
eminent authority that both were piratical editions; but if Marlowe was
the unquestioned author, were not his friends and associates still
living, three years after his death, to claim the honor of creating two
dramas which immeasurably surpassed any other he ever wrote? If it be
asked why Shakspere's friends did not claim the authorship for him, it
is 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 additions
from the second and third parts of "Henry VI." And this proof is further
supported: In an entry in the Stationer's Registers under date of April
19, 1602, appears the following remark:--"Thom. Pavier: By assignment
from Th. Millington _salvo jure cujuscunque_: the First and Second
Parts of 'Henry VI.', two books." This entry refers to the two plays first
published in 1594 and 1595, the first of which is always called "The
First Part of the Contention," and both of which in the edition of 1619
were under the title of "The whole Contention between the two famous
Houses of Lancaster and York," by the same Th. Pavier who had received
them "by assignment" from the original publisher of the editions of 1594
and 1595,--_Thomas Millington_. _Pavier_ knew in 1619, and therefore put
his name on the title page of his edition, that Shakspere was the author
of the two parts of the "Contention," but instead of giving them the
extended titles of the former editions, briefly and inaccurately
designated them as "The First and Second Parts of Henry VI." It results
from these facts, that when Malone was attempting to show that Shakspere
was 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 imitating
Shakspere in the "Contention."
For two centuries, until Malone's "Dissertation," nobody had claimed
that Marlowe wrote any portion of the "Contention"; for nearly two
centuries, the "Second and Third Parts of Henry VI." had appeared as the
sole work of Shakspere, embodying act for act, scene for scene, event
for event and character for character, the whole "Contention," and
nobody had claimed that he was not the sole author of both. We therefore
respectfully submit that Professor Wendell has no warrant for his
assertion that "to his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient in
originality, as least as compared with Lilly or Marlowe." "Henry VI."
was not "collaborative." Marlowe did not develop the type of chronicle
history into his "almost masterly Edward II."
But Professor Wendell further asserts that "Greene and Peele were the
chief makers of such plays" before Marlowe, and the implication is that
Shakspere, in his historical plays, "followed the superficial fashion"
set by them.
Of Greene's dramas, only two purport to have been his work,--"Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay" and "The Scottish History of James the Fourth."
"Orlando Furioso," generally assigned to him, has no name on its title
page; "Alphonsus, King of Aragon," is probably his, as it bears the
initials "R. G."; "The Looking Glass for London and England" bears the
joint names of Lodge and Greene; "The pleasant conceyted comedy of
George-a-Green, the Pinner of Wakefield," sometimes assigned to him, is
of doubtful authorship.
"Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" is characterized by Knight as "the old
story of the Brazen Head. There is here, unquestionably, more facility
in the versification, much less of what we may distinguish by the name
of fustian, and some approach to simplicity and even playfulness. But
whenever Greene gets hold of a king, he invariably makes him talk in the
right royal style which we have already seen; and our Henry III. does
not condescend to discourse in a bit more simple English than the Soldan
of Egypt or the King of Nineveh."
This play was first printed in 1594.
The old popular tradition of Friar Bacon and his magic arts is
interwoven with the loves of Prince Edward and Earl Lacy. Legend and
love story have nothing in common, and their connection is merely
accidental. The Friar's design fails through the stupidity of his
servant, but no explanation is given of the folly of entrusting such
weighty matters to a fool. The love story turns upon the retirement from
the amorous contest in favor of Lacy, but no reason is assigned for the
resulting trials of the successful party. There is no glimpse of history
or of historical chronicle in the piece. Of one thing we may be certain:
With all his wonderful power, Shakspere was incapable of imitating "The
honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay."
"James the Fourth" appeared in print in 1598 under the title "The
Scottish Historie of James the Fourth, slaine at Flodden, intermisted
with a pleasant Comedie &c." Of this drama Ulrici says that "Greene, led
astray perhaps by Marlowe, ventured upon a task quite beyond him. He as
yet obviously had no idea of the dignity of history, of an historical
spirit, of an historical conception of the subject, or of an historical
form of the drama. History with him resolves itself into a romance."
This opinion is fully sustained by the play itself; James falls in love
with Ida, the daughter of the Countess of Arran, but in spite of his
disloyalty, his Queen is faithful. James repents for the very good
reason that Ida spurns him, but not until he has ordered the Queen to be
killed. The murder is unsuccessfully attempted, and after her partial
recovery, she rushes between the armies, disarms the hostility of her
father, the English King, and wins back her husband's love. The chief
characters are Oberon, King of Fairies, and Rohan, a "misanthropic
recluse." Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, and
so 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 the
impartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "the
atmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene's
taste." The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has no
pretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it:
"From what source our author derived the materials of this strange
fiction I have not been able to discover; nor could Mr. David Laing of
Edinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of his
country, point out to me any Scottish chronicle or tract which might
have 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, as
the highest authority has pronounced, Greene "has erected such a
romantic and fantastic structure upon this foundation, that it would be
doing him an injustice to judge his work from the standpoint of an
historical drama."