QUESTIONS OF AUTHENTICITY
Owing to the conditions of publication described in Chapter VII there
are questions as to the authenticity of a number of the poems and plays
ascribed to Shakespeare. Of the poems, "The Ph[oe]nix and the Turtle"
and "A Lover's Complaint" have been sometimes rejected as unworthy, but
there is no other evidence against the ascription to him by the original
publishers. The case of _The Passionate Pilgrim_ is different and is
interesting as illustrating the methods of piracy practised by
booksellers and as affording the only record of a protest by Shakespeare
against the free use which they made of his name. This anthology was
published by W. Jaggard in 1599 as "by W. Shakespeare." The third
edition in 1612 added two pieces by Thomas Heywood. Heywood immediately
protested and in the postscript to his _Apologie for Actors_, 1612,
declared that Shakespeare was "much offended with M. Jaggard that
(altogether unknown to him) presumed to make so bold with his name." Of
the twenty poems that made up the volume, only five are certainly by
Shakespeare, two appearing also in _The Sonnets_ and three in _Love's
Labour's Lost_. Six others can be assigned to contemporary poets. The
authorship of the remaining nine is unknown, but probably only one or
two are by Shakespeare.
[Page Heading: The Shakespeare Apocrypha]
In addition to the thirty-seven plays now included in all editions of
Shakespeare, some forty others have been, for one reason or another,
attributed to him. The First Folio contained thirty-six plays; and it is
a strong evidence of the honesty and information of its editors, Heming
and Condell, that subsequent criticism has been satisfied to retain the
plays of their choice and to make but one addition, _Pericles_. Of these
plays, however, it is now generally agreed that a number are not
entirely the work of Shakespeare, but were written by him in part in
collaboration with other writers, _e.g._, _Titus Andronicus_, _1_, _2_,
and, _3 Henry VI_, _Timon of Athens_, _Pericles_, and _Henry VIII_. Of two
of these, _Titus Andronicus_ and _1 Henry VI_, some students refuse to
give Shakespeare any share. Of the forty doubtful plays, there is not
one which in its entirety is now credited to Shakespeare; and only three
or four in which any number of competent critics see traces of his hand.
Only in the case of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is there any weight of
evidence or opinion that he had a considerable share.
The second Folio kept to the thirty-six plays of the First Folio; but
the second printing of the third Folio (1664) added seven plays:
_Pericles Prince of Tyre_, _The London Prodigal_, _The History of Thomas
Lord Cromwell_, _Sir John Oldcastle_, _Lord Cobham_, _The Puritan
Widow_, _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, _The Tragedy of Locrine_. These seven
plays were also included in the fourth Folio, and as supplementary
volumes to Rowe's, Pope's, and some later editions. They were all
originally published in quarto as by W. S., or William Shakespeare, but
except in the case of _Pericles_, this has been regarded as a
bookseller's mistake or deception without warrant. _Locrine_, "newly set
forth, overseen, and corrected by W. S., 1595," is a play of about the
date of _Titus Andronicus_, and is probably by Greene, Peele, or some
imitator of Marlowe and Kyd. _Sir John Oldcastle_ appeared in 1600 in
two quartos, one of which ascribed it to William Shakespeare, but it was
clearly composed for the Admiral's men as a rival to the Falstaff plays
which the Chamberlain's men had been acting. _Thomas Lord Cromwell_
(1602) and _The Puritan_ (1607) were ascribed to W. S., on their
title-pages, but offer no possible resemblances to Shakespeare. _The
London Prodigal_ (1605) and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ (1608) were both acted
by Shakespeare's company, and bore his name on their first editions, and
the latter also on a second edition, 1619. The external evidence for his
authorship is virtually the same as in the case of _Pericles_, which
also was acted by his company, appeared under his name during his
lifetime, but was rejected by the editors of the First Folio. No one,
however, can discover any suggestion of Shakespeare in _The London
Prodigal_. _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ is a domestic tragedy in one act,
dealing with a contemporary murder. It gives the conclusion of a story
also treated in a play, _The Miseries of Enforced Marriage_ (1607) by
George Wilkins, the author of a novel _The Painful Adventures of
Pericles_, and sometimes suggested as a collaborator on the play
_Pericles_. _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ is very unlike Shakespeare, but it has
a few passages of extraordinarily vivid prose, which might conceivably
owe something to him.
[Page Heading: The Two Noble Kinsmen]
_The Two Noble Kinsmen_ was registered April 8, 1634, and appeared in
the same year with the following title-page "The Two Noble Kinsmen:
Presented at the Blackfriars by the Kings Maiesties servants, with great
applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time;
Mr. John Fletcher, and }
} Gent.
Mr. William Shakespeare}
Printed at London by the Tho. Cotes for Iohn Waterson; and are to be
sold at the signe of the Crowne in Paul's Church-yard. 1634." The
exclusion of the play from the First Folio may be explained on the same
basis as the exclusion of _Pericles_; for in each play Shakespeare wrote
the minor part. There is now general agreement that _The Two Noble
Kinsmen_ was written by two authors with distinct styles, and that the
author of the larger portion is Fletcher. The attribution of the
non-Fletcherian part to Shakespeare has been upheld by Lamb, Coleridge,
De Quincey, Spalding (in a notable Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of
_The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 1833), Furness, and Littledale (who edited the
play for _The New Shakespeare Society_, Series II, 1, 8, 15, London,
1876-1885); but there are still many critics who do not believe that
Shakespeare had any part in the play. This question will probably always
remain a matter of opinion; but the evidence of various verse tests
confirms esthetic judgment in assigning about two fifths of the verse to
Shakespeare. The Shakespearean portion, here and there possibly touched
by Fletcher, includes, I. i; I. ii; I. iii; I. iv. 1-28; III. i; III.
ii; V. i. 17-73; V. iii. 1-104; V. iv, and perhaps the prose II. i and
IV. iii.
The dance in the play is borrowed from an anti-masque in Beaumont's
_Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn_, presented at court,
February 20, 1613. This fixes the date of composition for the play in
1613, the same year as _Henry VIII_, on which it is now generally agreed
that Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated. On both of the plays the
collaboration seems to have been direct; _i.e._, after making a fairly
detailed outline, each writer took certain scenes, and, to all intents,
completed these scenes after his own fashion.
One other play must be mentioned in connection with _The Two Noble
Kinsmen_. _Cardenio_, entered on the Stationers' Register, 1653, was
described as "by Fletcher and Shakespeare." It seems probably identical
with a _Cardenno_ acted at court by the King's men in May, 1613, and a
_Cardenna_ in June, 1613. Attempts have been made to connect it with
_Double Falsehood_, assigned to Shakespeare by Theobald on its
publication in 1728.
[Page Heading: Last Ascriptions]
Other non-extant plays ascribed to Shakespeare after 1642 require no
attention, nor do a number of Elizabethan plays assigned to him in
certain of their later quartos. Among these are _The Troublesome Reign
of King John_, on which Shakespeare's _King John_ was based; _The First
Part of The Contention_, and (the Second Part) _The True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York_ (versions of _2 Henry VI_ and _3 Henry VI_); and
_The Taming of a Shrew_, the basis of Shakespeare's play. The relation
of Shakespeare's plays to these earlier versions is discussed in the
introductions to the respective volumes of the Tudor Shakespeare. Other
plays assigned, without grounds, to Shakespeare by late
seventeenth-century booksellers are _The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The
Arraignment of Paris, Fair Em, Mucedorus_, and _The Birth of Merlin_.
A few other anonymous plays have been ascribed to Shakespeare by modern
critics. Of chief note are _Arden of Feversham_, 1592, first attributed
to Shakespeare by Edward Jacob in 1770; _Edward III_, 1596, included
with other false attributions to Shakespeare in a bookseller's list of
1659, and edited and assigned to Shakespeare by Capell in 1760; _Sir
Thomas More_, an old play of about 1587, preserved in manuscript until
edited by Dyce in 1844 and assigned to Shakespeare by Richard Simpson in
1871. There is no evidence for the ascription of various portions of
these plays to Shakespeare, except that certain passages seem to some
critics characteristic of him. But at the date when the three plays
were written his style had not attained its characteristic
individuality; and the assignment of these anonymous plays to any
particular author neglects the obvious fact that many writers of that
period present similar traits of versification and imagery. The
attribution to Shakespeare of the Countess of Salisbury episode in
_Edward III_, parts of the insurrection scenes in _Sir Thomas More_, and
a few passages in _Arden of Feversham_ has scarcely any warrant beyond
the enthusiastic admiration of certain critics for these passages.
Thus only one play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha has any considerable
claim to admission into the canon. The evidence for his participation in
_The Two Noble Kinsmen_ is about as strong as in _Pericles_, and the
part assigned to him is fairly comparable with his contribution to
_Henry VIII_.
An account of the Shakespeare Apocrypha is, however, incomplete without
reference to the forgeries of documents or plays. Theobald published
_Double Falsehood_ in 1728, as based on a seventeenth-century manuscript
which he conjectured to be by Shakespeare. John Jordan, a resident of
Stratford, forged the will of Shakespeare's father, and probably some
other papers in his _Collections_, 1780; William Henry Ireland, with the
aid of his father, produced in 1796 a volume of forged papers purporting
to relate to Shakespeare's career, and on April 2, 1796, Sheridan and
Kemble presented at Drury Lane the tragedy of _Vortigern_, really by
Ireland, but said by him to have been found among Shakespeare's
manuscripts. Ireland was exposed by Malone, and he published a
confession of his forgeries in 1805. More skilful and far more
disturbing to Shakespearean scholarship are the forgeries of John Payne
Collier, extending over a period from 1835 to 1849. These included
manuscript corrections in a copy of the second Folio, and many documents
concerning the biography of Shakespeare and the history of the
Elizabethan theater. These forgeries have vitiated many of Collier's
most important publications, as his _Memoirs of Edward Alleyn_, and
_History of English Dramatic Poetry_.
[Page Heading: Forgeries]
We turn now from attempts to increase Shakespeare's writings to an
extraordinary effort to deny him the authorship of all his plays. Doubts
on this score seem to have been raised by Joseph C. Hart in his _Romance
of Yachting_, 1848, and by an article in _Chambers' Journal_, August 7,
1852. In 1856, Mr. W. H. Smith first proposed Bacon's authorship in a
letter to Lord Ellesmere, "Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's
plays?" These were followed by an article by Miss Delia Bacon in
_Putnam's Monthly_, 1856, and a volume, _The Philosophy of the Plays of
Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon_. Since Miss Bacon's book, her
hypothesis has resulted in the publication of hundreds of volumes and
pamphlets supporting many variations of the theory. Some are content to
view the authorship as a mystery, assigning the plays to an unknown
author. Others attribute the authorship to a club of distinguished men,
or to Sir Anthony Shirley, or the Earl of Rutland, or another. Others
give Bacon only a portion of the plays, as those containing many legal
terms. The majority, however, are thoroughgoing "Baconians," and the
most prodigious cases of misapplied ingenuity have been the efforts to
find in the First Folio a cipher, by which certain letters are selected
which proclaim Bacon's authorship; as _The Great Cryptogram_, 1887, by
Ignatius Donnelly, and _The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon_, 1900,
by Mrs. Gallup. Such cyphers are mutually destructive, and their
absurdity has been repeatedly demonstrated. Either they will not work
without much arbitrary manipulation, or they work too well and are found
to indicate Bacon's authorship of literature written before his birth
and after his death. Yet similar 'discoveries' continue to be announced.
The evidences supporting Shakespeare's authorship have been set forth
sufficiently in this volume and offer no basis for an attitude of
skepticism. A few considerations may be recalled as correctives for a
partial or mistaken reading of the evidence. (1) Though the records of
Shakespeare's life are meager, they are fuller than for any other
Elizabethan dramatist. Indeed we know little of the biography of any men
of the sixteenth century unless their lives affected church or politics
and hence found preservation in the records. There is no 'mystery' about
Shakespeare. (2) Records amply establish the identity between
Shakespeare the actor and the writer. Moreover, the plays contain many
words and phrases natural to an actor, many references to the actor's
art, and show a wide and detailed knowledge of the ways and
peculiarities of the theater. (3) The extent of observation and
knowledge in the plays is, indeed, remarkable, but it is not accompanied
by any indication of thorough scholarship, or a detailed connection with
any profession outside of the theater, or a profound knowledge of the
science or philosophy of the time. (4) The law terms are numerous, and
usually correct, but do not establish any great knowledge of the law.
Elizabethan London was full of law students who were among frequent
patrons of the theater. Through acquaintance with these gentlemen
Shakespeare might have readily acquired all the law that he displays.
Moreover Shakespeare had an opportunity to gain a considerable
familiarity with the law through the frequent litigations in which he
and his father were concerned. (5) The dedication, commendatory poems,
and address to the readers prefixed to the First Folio ought in
themselves to be sufficient to remove the skepticism as to Shakespeare's
authorship.
[Page Heading: The "Baconian" Question]
The following considerations apply to the attribution to Bacon, so far
as that rests on any tangible basis: (1) Sir Tobie Matthews writes in a
letter to Bacon, written some time later than January, 1621, "The most
prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation and of this side of the sea
is of your Lordship's name, though he be known by another." The
sentence probably refers to Father Thomas Southwell, a Jesuit, whose
real surname was Bacon. There is nothing to connect it with Shakespeare.
(2) The parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare and Bacon deal with
phrases in common use and fail to establish any connection between the
two men. (3) The few surviving examples of Bacon's verse suggest no
ability as a poet. (4) Bacon's life is well known, and it offers no hint
of connection with the theaters and no space in its crowded annals for
the production of Shakespeare's plays. In fact, if we had to find an
author for Shakespeare's plays among writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, Bacon would be about the last person
conceivable.