Chapter 3

"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 Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, and so justifies himself for having withdrawn from a bad world.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."

It is plainly an imitation of "Tamburlaine." Alphonsus, singly and 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?