alone, conquers the crown of Aragon and half the world in addition,
accompanied by monotonous noise and blood. The ghost of Mahomet is
introduced 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 the
marriage of Alphonsus with Iphigenia fails to enliven the style of the
poet. But the machinery that moves the action is all wonderful and
striking and quite un-historical. Venus and the Muses recite the
Prologue and act the dumb shows, representing at the beginning of each
act a retrospection of the Past and a forecast of the Future. And Venus
herself, with the help of Calliope, writes the play, "not with pen and
ink, but with flesh and blood and living action." "This ... indicates
the fundamental idea of the piece. Wherever the all-powerful goddess of
love and beauty herself plans the actions and destinies of mortals,
there extraordinary things come to pass with playful readiness and
grace."
"The Historie of Orlando Furioso," issued from the London press in 1594,
is a light production hastily sketched for a Court Festival, based upon
the great romance of Ariosto, "but the superstructure presents the most
extravagant deviations from Ariosto's plan. The pomposity of the diction
is not amiss in the mouths of such stately personages as the Emperor of
Africa, the Soldan of Egypt, the Prince of Mexico, the King of the Isles
and 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; the
enchantress Melissa gives a whole speech in Latin hexameters; Orlando
bursts into Italian rhymes to utter his rage against Angelica,--"a want
of taste," says the commentator, "which brings the already unsuccessful
scene, the centre of the whole action, down to the sphere of the
ridiculous."
Nobody has been able to determine how much of the "Looking Glass for
London and England" was written by Lodge, how much by Greene. Knight
thinks the poetry should be assigned to Greene. The whole piece is made
up of an extraordinary mixture of Kings of Nineveh, Crete, Cicilia, and
Paphlagonia; of usurers, judges, lawyers, clowns, and ruffians; of
angels, magi, sailors, lords, and "one clad in Devil's attire." The
Prophet Hosea presides over the whole performance, with the exception of
the first and last scenes,--a silent, invisible observer of the
characters, for the purpose of uttering an exhortation to the people at
the end of each scene, that they should take warning from Nineveh. There
is a flash of lightning which kills two of the royal family, and then
another which strikes the parasite, Radagon. Both admonitions are
equally futile. At last an angel prays repeatedly, and in answer Jonah
is sent to preach repentance. His mission is successful, and at last
Jehovah himself descends in angelic form and proclaims mercy. It has
been thought that the piece was written to silence the Puritan zealots
who claimed that the secular drama had demoralized the stage, and
forgotten the purity of the Moral and Miracle plays; but it has never
been suggested that this was a "chronicle history."
"George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield," is not generally credited to
Greene, but Ulrici, from the style, assigns it to him. It makes no claim
as an historical drama, but is based upon two popular legends and some
events during the reign of King Edward, without specifying which king of
that name, and "without regard to chronological order or historical
truth."
Such is a brief and fair summary of the works, whether authentic or
doubtful, of Robert Greene. Let us turn to those of Peele, the friend of
Greene and Marlowe.
Dyce assigns to him "The History of the two valiant Knights, Syr
Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, sonne of the King of Denmark, and
Syr Clamides the White Knight," printed without the author's name in
1584.
The subject, a chivalrous romance, with dragons and sorcerers and lost
princesses, is more a narrative in dialogue than a drama. It is full of
long 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 during
his absence, the other to prevent Clyomon's mistress "from committing
rash and unnecessary suicide." The clown calls the piece a "pageant"; it
cannot be called "a chronicle history."
Peele's "Arraignment of Paris, a Pastorall" is a court drama in the
style of Lilly, intended to flatter the Queen, "poor in action but all
the richer in gallant phrases, provided with songs, one in Italian, and
with all kinds of love scenes between shepherds and shepherdesses,
nymphs and terrestrial gods"; the diction is interesting, because it
shows revolt from the prevailing "euphuism," and therefore Peele must
be given the praise of first opposing Lilly's affected style.
The subject and action are as far removed from history as earth from
heaven; Paris is accused by Juno and Pallas before the assembled gods,
for having pronounced an unjust sentence; he is released without
punishment, but as the fair plaintiffs persist in their appeal, the
decision is left to Diana, who then awards the fatal apple, not to any
of the three goddesses, but to the wise nymph Eliza, who is as chaste as
she is beautiful and powerful. Juno, Pallas, and Venus of course agree
to this decision and lay all their gifts at the feet of the Queen. At
the end, even the three Fates appear, in order, in a Latin chant, to
deliver 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, "always
wavering in the peculiar twilight, between profound sense and nonsense,
between childish play and matured humor." Two brothers who have lost
their sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering with a
double-edged sword and attended by an enamored fool, and finally a
knight-errant devoting his fortune to pay the stingy sexton for the
burial 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 by
the help of the ghost of the poor Jack whose body he buried."
"The Battel of Alcazar fought in Barbarie" is attributed to Peele and
was published in 1586, soon after Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," after which
it is modelled and to which it expressly refers. The commentator says:
"It is a mere battle piece, full of perpetual fighting and noise, of
which the action almost exclusively consists." There is nothing to show
that it had any connection with history or chronicle, or was anything
better than a hurriedly written, spectacular drama.
The "Edward I." of Peele bears this title: "The famous Chronicle of King
Edward the First, surnamed Edward Longshanks, with his Return from the
Holy Land. Also the life of Llewellen Rebell in Wales. Lastly, the
sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunk at Charing-crosse, and rose again at
Pottershith, now named Queenshith."
The title itself proves that it is not a "chronicle" but an unhistorical
fiction. The events pass by in one straight, continuous line, the
dramatic personages are characterized almost solely by their actions,
the language is a mere sketch. The Queen murders the Lady Mayoress, and
on her death-bed confesses a double adultery; she commits perjury by
denying the murder and calls upon Heaven to sink her into the depths of
the earth if she had spoken falsely. "That she 'sunk at Charing-crosse'
before it was erected to her memory, is a sufficiently remarkable
circumstance in Peele's play, but it is more remarkable that, assuming
to be a 'famous Chronicle,' and in one or two of the events following
the Chronicle, he has represented the Queen altogether to be a fiend in
female shape,--proud, adulterous, cruel, treacherous and bloody." The
play contradicts the Chronicle, and therefore cannot be called a
chronicle history. Hollinshed, the source of all Shakspere's histories,
says of Queen Eleanor: "She was a godly and modest princess, full of
pity, and one that showed much favor to the English nation, ready to
relieve every man's grief that sustained wrong, and to make those
friends 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 facility
of language, but nothing truly good." Nobody but Professor Wendell has
ever even intimated that Shakspere imitated it.
It is hardly necessary to consider "The Love of King David and Fair
Bethsabe," published in 1599, because, in the deliberate opinion of
those 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 distinct
traces of Shakspere's influence. "The love scenes, and the images and
similes describing the charms of the beauty of nature, remind one of
those incomparable pictures in 'Romeo and Juliet.'" In Peele's other
plays he has made but feeble attempts to depict love, beauty, or grace;
in "King David" he has "depicted them with a remarkably high degree of
success."
These are all the works of Peele which have come down to our time, and
after 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 the
supporters of Malone's theory have taken Malone's unsupported statement
as indisputable fact; they have not sufficiently examined the works of
Greene and Peele, but have assumed, as Malone assumed, that Greene's
charge in his "Groat's Worth of Wit" was conclusive proof that Shakspere
did not write the two parts of the "Contention," and that Greene, or one
of 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 line
written by himself; if he quoted one written by Shakspere, the whole
argument of Professor Wendell, that "Henry VI." was "certainly
collaborative," that his early work was "hack-writing," that "he hardly
ever did anything first," that "to his contemporaries he must have
seemed deficient in originality," falls to the ground.
Having done what Malone failed to do, and what Professor Wendell seems
not to have done,--having reviewed at some length the works of
Shakspere's contemporaries to whom the older chronicle plays are
attributed by Malone,--we invoke, in support of the position we have
taken, the opinion of Mr. Charles Knight in his "Essay on Henry VI. and
Richard III."
"The dramatic works of Greene, which were amongst the rarest treasures
of the bibliographer, have been rendered accessible to the general
reader by the valuable labors of Mr. Dyce. To those who are familiar
with these works we will appeal, without hesitation, in saying that the
character of Greene's mind, and his habits of composition, rendered him
utterly 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 some
wise and judicious still cling, that Greene and Peele either wrote the
Two Parts of the 'Contention' in conjunction; or that Greene wrote one
Part and Peele the other Part; or that, at any rate, Greene had some
share in these dramas. This was the theory propagated by Malone in his
'Dissertation'; and it rests not upon the slightest examination of these
writers, but solely on the far-famed passage in Greene's posthumous
pamphlet, the 'Groat's Worth of Wit,' in which he points out Shakspere
as 'a crow beautified with our feathers.' The hypothesis seems to us to
be little less than absurd.... He parodies a line from one of the
productions 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 most
justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line
parodied 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 or
twenty-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 of
Kyd," as Professor Wendell asserts, can be best determined by reference
to 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 of
doubtful authorship, but has sometimes been credited to Kyd. "The piece
still bears a striking resemblance to the old Moral Plays and thereby
proves its relatively early origin. A chorus consisting of the
allegorical figures Love, Happiness, and Death opens the play and each
separate act, and ends it with a controversy in which all the
personified powers boast of their deeds and triumphs over the others,
till at the end of the fifth act Death remains the victor, and the whole
concludes with a eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, the only mortal whom Death
does not venture to approach." "Titus Andronicus" will be searched in
vain for "much" or little of this "manner of Kyd."
"The First Part of Jeronimo, with the Warres of Portugal and the Life
and Death of Don Andrea," not published till 1605, is not an authentic
work of Kyd, but is attributed to him by some because, judging from the
subject, it belongs to "The Spanish Tragedy" and is regarded by Henslowe
as the first part of it. A. W. Schlegel says that "both of these parts
are full of absurdities, that the author had ventured upon describing
the most forced situations and passions without being aware of his want
of power, that especially the catastrophe of the second part, which is
intended to surpass every conceivable horror, is introduced in a trivial
manner, merely producing a ludicrous effect, and that the whole was like
a child's drawings, wholly unmindful of the laws of proportion."
Ulrici maintains that "Jeronimo" itself may be treated as a play in
three parts connected only externally: first, the war between Portugal
and Spain; second, the life and death of Don Andrea, and third the acts
of Jeronimo, who is, however, only a subordinate character. But whether
the play be treated as a whole or as composed of substantially separate
parts, its action and interest are centred in the story of the love of
Don Andrea and Bellimperia; Lorenzo, her brother, persecutes both
because he is jealous of Andrea's success. Andrea is finally killed; at
his funeral, his ghost appears for no assigned reason, except to
exchange greeting with his friend Horatio. "Revenge" and Charon also
appear, the one "to forbid Andrea's ghost from divulging the secrets of
Hell, the other to accompany him back to the lower regions," and the
learned critic adds that "this allegorical by-play is inserted so
arbitrarily, so inappropriately and so unmeaningly, that it forms the
best standpoint for judging the piece as regards its composition and
poetical character. _In this respect its value is next to nothing._"
If Kyd wrote "Jeronimo," of which there is no satisfactory proof, and
if Shakspere wrote "Titus," "much in the manner of Kyd," which we
venture to think more doubtful than the authorship of "Jeronimo," then
Shakspere's supposed imitation was much "better" than the original
"popular thing."
That Kyd wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end of
Don Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo,"
first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology for
Actors," and there is good authority for the opinion that it was acted
as early as 1588. We quote the summary of the plot:
"It is not wanting in absurdities, for the play opens and is connected
with 'Jeronimo' by a conversation between Andrea's ghost and 'Revenge';
both remain continually on the stage as silent, invisible spectators, in
order, at the end of every act, to add a few words, in which Andrea
laments over the delay in the revenge of his death upon the Infanta
Belthazar, and 'Revenge' admonishes him to be patient; at the end of
the fifth act both return satisfied to the lower regions. Then
Bellimperia suddenly falls in love with Horatio, who now steps into
Andrea's place, and is persecuted by Lorenzo, at first without any cause
whatever, and is finally assassinated. By some means which remain
perfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimo
from the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation against
the murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness,
which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudent
action. The conclusion of the piece is a general massacre, in which
Jeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabs
the Duke of Castile, and then himself with a penknife."
It can hardly seem strange that the critic should add: "This at once
explains why no piece was more generally ridiculed by contemporary and
younger poets, than "The Spanish Tragedy.""
If Shakspere imitated Kyd in "Titus," from such stuff as this, he was
surely wise in his "sluggish avoidance of needless invention."
We are tempted to suggest, however, that "The Spanish Tragedy" affords a
rich and ample field to modern critics who are solicitous to save the
life 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 was
Horatio? Was not Hamlet, like Jeronimo, "essentially mad," and did not
his 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 her
Father's and Husband's downe-cast Death and fortune, written in French
by that excellent Poet, R. Garnier, and translated into English by
Thomas Kyd." This translation was printed in 1595. The play is thus
summarized: It is "a piece which is constructed upon a misunderstood
model of the ancients; it is altogether devoid of dramatic action, in
reality merely lyrics and rhetoric in dialogue. The whole of the first
act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate
condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility,--a
jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in
rhymed stanzas. In this tone it proceeds without a trace of action
through the whole of the succeeding act, till maledictions and outbursts
of grief on the part of Cornelia conclude the piece at the same point at
which 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 be
certainly called Kyd's. Comparison between these, or either of the
others doubtfully attributed to him, and "Titus Andronicus," shows
beyond question that the only similarity between the most similar is
that 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 my
desires," "these were spectacles to please my soul." In "Titus," even
the Satanic Aaron, "in the whirlwind of passion," "acquires and begets a
temperance" that "gives it smoothness."
When Tamora proposes crimes to her sons, that fiends would refuse to
execute, Lavinia does not shriek, nor rant, nor call upon the gods, but
speaks 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 wrote
an old "Taming of the Shrew" or an old "Hamlet." "It is a mere arbitrary
conjecture" that he was the author of either.
There is therefore no proof that Shakspere imitated Kyd, and Professor
Wendell's assertion that "Titus Andronicus" is "much" in his manner is
utterly without support.
"The Comedy of Errors" was unquestionably suggested by the "Twins" of
Plautus. Is it therefore an imitation?
What is literary imitation? Did Dante imitate Virgil because Virgil's
ghost 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 of
Eden in majestic poetry? "Paradise Lost" seems to Professor Wendell
"almost superhuman," but when any suggestion of transcendent power is
applied to Shakspere, it assumes an "unnecessary miracle." Shakspere,
whom ten generations of great men have failed to imitate, is in the
opinion of Professor Wendell but an imitator, because while, as he says,
"he could not help wakening to life the stiffly conventional characters
which he found, as little more than names, in the tales and the
fictions 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, with
the imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newly
popular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher."
But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote his
language: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. Read
Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then
to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn
to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find
him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate
Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him
irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how
wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the
things for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidently
as any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and he
could so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they
seem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the other
great works where he found them." "'Paradise Lost' transcends all traces
of its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter of
mere curiosity."
And so it appears that Professer Wendell applies one definition of the
word "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere found
chronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vivid
and truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matter
of mere curiosity," and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy of
Errors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation"
of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "something
utterly apart," "something almost superhuman ... in its grand solitude";
if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work that
they 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 or
Marlowe, nor "Titus Andronicus" of Kyd.
But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, and
may therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge as
stated by Professor Wendell: