Chapter 2

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."