Chapter 4

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:

"A young American scholar whose name has hardly yet crossed the Atlantic,--Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike,--has lately made some studies in dramatic chronology which go far to confirm the unromantic conjecture that to the end Shakspere remained imitative and little else. Professor Thorndike, for example, has shown with convincing probability that certain old plays concerning Robin Hood proved popular; a little later, Shakspere produced the woods and outlaws of 'As You Like It.' The question is one of pure chronology; and pure chronology has convinced me, for one, that the forest scenes of Arden were written to fit available costumes and properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike has shown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such as Marston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Caesar' and 'Hamlet.' With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has _virtually proved_ that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher--different both in motive and in style from any popular plays which had preceded them--were conspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began to write romances. It seems likely, therefore, that 'Cymbeline,' which less careful chronology had conjectured to be a model for Beaumont and Fletcher, was in fact imitated from models which they had made. In other words, Professor Thorndike has shown that one may account for all the changes in Shakspere, after 1600, by merely assuming that the most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists, remained to the end an instinctively imitative follower of fashions set by others."

Again, he says: "The likeness of their work to the romances of Shakspere--in subject, in structure, in peculiarities of verse,--has been often remarked; and they have consequently been supposed to have begun by skilful superficial imitation of his spiritually ripest phase. The question is one of chronology not yet fixed in detail; but as I have told you already, the studies of my friend Professor Thorndike have virtually proved that several of their plays must have been in existence decidedly before the dates commonly assigned to 'Cymbeline,' the 'Tempest' or the 'Winter's Tale.' If he is right,--and I believe him so,--the relation commonly thought to have existed between them and Shakspere is precisely reversed. Shakspere was the imitator, not they; indeed, as we have seen, he was from the beginning an imitator, not an inventor. And here his imitations are not in all respects better than his models."

Here the grave accusation is distinctly made that Shakspere imitated Beaumont and Fletcher, and to support it, reference is made to one man only, Professor Thorndike, his pupil and disciple.

And so, in this new case, we have two judges, and the curious fact that the instructor refers to the student and the student to the instructor as the sole authority for the soundness of the decision.

The "Introduction" of Professor Thorndike to his "Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere" sufficiently shows the animus of his essay: he cites the libel of Greene, and intimates that it is an accusation of plagiarism which we have rejected, but which "contains an element of truth worth keeping in mind"; he repeats in positive words the charge of Professor Wendell that Shakspere began by "imitating or revamping the work of others"; that "Titus Andronicus" and "Henry VI.," "so far as they are his, are certainly imitative of other plays of the time," and adds that "Richard II." and "Richard III." show the influence of Marlowe's tragedies, and "Love's Labour's Lost" of Lilly's comedies.

We have sufficiently answered as to "Henry VI.," "Titus Andronicus," and "Love's Labour's Lost." There is no proof offered as to the histories of the two Richards. The assertion is made without authority or example, without even the application of the usual "verse-tests" by which authorship is so conveniently determined.

Having repeated the erroneous and unsupported statements of his master, Professor Thorndike announces that after these early "imitations" little attention has been given to Shakspere's subsequent indebtedness to his contemporaries, for the reason that "to most students it has seemed absurd," while to him it is clear that "Hamlet" and "Lear" "contain traces of the 'tragedy of blood type'"; that "a closer adherence to current forms can be seen in the relation between the 'Merchant of Venice' and the 'Jew of Malta,'" "or in the many points of similarity between 'Hamlet' and the ... tragedies dealing with the theme of blood revenge," and that "characters ... are often clearly developments of types familiar on the stage," "as for example, Iago is a development of the conventional stage villain." He is certainly correct in saying that to most students these assumptions "seem absurd." Let us examine them briefly, for the purpose of learning whether they deserve any more serious adjective.

Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" appeared about 1589. As the author announces in the prologue, it is based upon Machiavel's theory of life--pure selfishness. The Jew makes war upon all the world, for the gratification of his passion for revenge; he poisons his daughter "and the entire nunnery in which she had taken refuge"; he kills, he betrays, he prepares a burning caldron for a whole garrison,--"tragedy such as this is simply revolting. The characters of Barabas and of his servant, and the motives by which they are stimulated, are the mere coinage of extravagance; and the effect is as essentially undramatic as the personification is unreal." The conduct of the drama is in keeping with the character of this incomprehensible monster of vindictiveness; he is "without shame or fear, and bloodthirsty even to madness." His bad schemes are always successful; but the action proceeds without connection, the characters come and go without apparent cause; the three Jews, the monks and nuns, the mother of Don Mathias "appear and disappear so unexpectedly, and are interwoven with the action in so entirely an external manner, that the defects of the composition are at once apparent."

If this seems a good model for Shakspere's Shylock, it will seem impossible, when Barabas shows us his own portrait:

"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls; Sometimes I go about and poison wells; And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves I am content to lose some of my crowns; That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'em go pinion'd along by my door. Being young, I studied physic, and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enriched the priest with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in use, With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells; And after that was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. And after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hung himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him. But mark how I am bless'd for plaguing them; I have as much coin as will buy the town. But tell me now, how hast thou spent thy time?"

And the servant answers in sympathetic lines:

"Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire, Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves. One time I was an ostler in an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats; Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, I strewed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so That I have laughed a-good to see the cripples Go limping home to Christendom on stilts."

Undoubtedly, the "groundlings" shouted with delight when this fiend was plunged into the boiling caldron which he had heated for others. Barabas dies, "in the midst of his crimes, with blasphemy and cursing on his lips; everything is the same at the end as it was from the beginning."

To the unlearned reader, there is no "relation" between this wild drama and the perfect art shown in Shakspere's Jew, who utters no curse when the gentle Portia pronounces sentence, but retires with dignity from her court, because "he is not well."

Professor Thorndike tells us that the "traces" of blood revenge in "Hamlet" and "Lear" have been frequently "remarked." What those traces are we are not informed, but he assures us that "they have not led to any careful investigation of Shakspere's indebtedness to his contemporaries." That investigation was reserved for his research, and we hope to show how successfully he has performed his great task. Meanwhile, we may be allowed to say that if "Lear" contains any "trace" of the tragedy of blood, it is utterly undiscoverable to the ordinary reader, in the action, character or fate of the victims; and as for "Hamlet," so far is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubts and disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed the existence of any other world, and dies at last not a bloody death, but by a foil "unbated and envenomed."

If Iago is but the development of the conventional stage villain, his origin and some of the missing links of his evolution ought to be shown; they have never been guessed, and no critic can produce a single member of his kindred.

From such premises, Professor Thorndike concludes that "it is only natural to expect that the genius who brought many of these forms to their highest perfection should not have been so much an inventor as an adapter"; "We may naturally expect," he says, "that Shakspere's transcendent plays owe a considerable debt to the less perfect but not less original efforts of his contemporaries." This "natural expectation" is not disappointed, in Professor Thorndike's opinion, by a comparison between some of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays and those he calls the "romances" of Shakspere,--"Cymbeline," "The Tempest," and "Winter's Tale." The argument is circuitous, but must be carefully followed in order to estimate the validity and weight of the conclusion.

In the first place, it is assumed as probable that Shakspere and Fletcher wrote "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and that Fletcher wrote part of "Henry VIII." It is admitted that this last assumption is "at odds with the weight of authority" and rests mainly, if not wholly, upon Spedding's essay, in 1850. The only additional suggestion is the new and original test, the so-called "em-them" test. A laborious table is made, purporting to show that in the part assigned to Shakspere "them" is used seventeen times, "'em" only five; that in the part assigned to Fletcher "them" is used but four times, "'em" fifty-seven. We are not told from what source this table was made, but "Henry VIII." was first published in the folio of 1623. Professor Thorndike says that later editions have strictly followed it, and in Knight's edition, which he certifies to be a reprint of the first folio, "'em" as a contraction for "them" occurs just once and no more. Thus far, then, the new "test" seems to give us no satisfactory aid.

It may be permitted an ordinary reader to wonder how any critic can persuade himself that Fletcher wrote the speech of Wolsey on his downfall, or the prophecy of Cranmer at the christening of Elizabeth. Why is it not a permissible hypothesis that "Henry VIII." was written during the reign of the great Queen, and subsequently revised by Shakspere, after her death, and presented as a "new play," as Wotten calls it?

The only external evidence that Shakspere wrote any portion of "The Two Noble Kinsmen" is the quarto of 1634. On the contrary, all the previous external evidence is against that guess, for it was left out of the First Folio, and Heminge & Condell's positive knowledge is certainly of more weight than the opinion of Professor Thorndike's sole authority, Mr. Littledale. Moreover, the play was not included among Shakspere's works in the folio of 1632, and did not appear among them until, with six other doubtful plays, the editions of 1664 and 1685. In view of this proof, it is admitted that the question of collaboration is likely to remain forever unsettled, "because it does not admit of complete demonstration." Nevertheless, collaboration is assumed, and the "em-them" test is applied to the text so as to credit 1034 lines to Shakspere, 1486 to Fletcher.

German criticism has taken up the subject with minute care, and, we may assert with confidence, has settled beyond doubt that Shakspere never wrote a single line of "The two Noble Kinsmen." And it may be added with equal certainty that if the citations from that play are correctly credited to Fletcher, he never wrote a line of "Henry VIII." Professor Thorndike is not consistent with himself. On one page he calls his theory conjectural, on another, a "reasonable conclusion." The play itself ought to convince any fair mind that Shakspere had no share in it, for it contains an obvious imitation of Ophelia's madness in "Hamlet," which in some points "is a direct plagiarism." But it was important for Professor Thorndike to show what he calls a "probability" that Shakspere and Fletcher collaborated, in order to establish his theory that Fletcher "influenced" Shakspere. With the vanishing of the "probability" the "influence" vanishes.

The second step in the argument is a review of the chronology of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, among which only _seven_ are immediately important. "The Woman Hater," licensed 20th May, 1607, published in quarto 1607, as lately acted, again in 1648, and assigned to Beaumont and Fletcher. Its first representation is put by Mr. Fleay on April 5th, 1607. Professor Thorndike conjectures that this play was produced in 1606. "Philaster," the most important in connection with our subject, was first published in 1620. Mr. Fleay dates its composition in 1611; Professor Thorndike, in 1608. The "Four Plays in One" he likewise assigns conjecturally to the same year. The fact is, it was first printed in the folio of 1647, and no authority fixes the date of its production. "Thiery and Theodoret" was first published in 1621, without giving the name of any author. The quarto of 1648 credits Fletcher as the sole author; that of 1649, Beaumont and Fletcher as the joint authors. Fleay places the date about 1617; Oliphant maintains that it was written about 1607 or 1608, and afterwards revised in 1617 by Fletcher and Massinger; Professor Thorndike ventures the guess that it was written in 1607.

"The Maid's Tragedy" he places doubtfully in 1609. It was first published in 1619 without naming its authors. The only evidence as to its date is that it was licensed October 31st, 1611.

"Cupid's Revenge" was acted at Court in 1612, and first published in 1615. Professor Thorndike thinks it was an effort to repeat the success of "Philaster," and therefore assigns it to 1609 or 1610.

"A King and No King" he puts without hesitation in the year 1611, and this is supported by authority. Professor Thorndike remarks that this is the only play (of Beaumont and Fletcher), "acted before 1612, the year of whose production is fixed."

The only reason for referring to "The Woman Hater" is to fix the date of Beaumont and Fletcher's appearance. There is absolutely no proof that they were known to literature before that play was licensed by Sir George Buc on the 20th May, 1607. Yet Professor Thorndike, in spite of this, assigns "The Woman's Prize," first printed in 1647, and first acted, so far as the record shows, November 28th, 1633, to the year 1604.

It is to be noted that of the six other plays referred to by Professor Thorndike, and claimed to have been in existence before the end of 1611, the dates of all except "A King and No King" are only conjecturally given.

Compared with these, the chronology of "Cymbeline," "Tempest" and "Winter's Tale" is reviewed. "Cymbeline," according to Dr. Simon Forman's Diary, was acted between April 20th, 1610, and May 15th, 1611; it must therefore have been written before the last named date. Mr. Fleay fixes the date in 1609, Malone in 1605, and both Chalmers and Drake substantially agree with Malone. Ulrici assigns the date of composition to 1609 or 1610.

"The Tempest," according to Professor Thorndike, cannot be dated earlier than October 13th, 1610, nor later than 1613, and was probably written and acted late in 1610 or early in 1611. Ulrici agrees with this.

"The Winter's Tale," as appears by Forman's Diary, was acted May 15, 1611. Ulrici says: "It is now a matter of certainty that it must have been brought upon the stage between August, 1610, and May, 1611." It has been suggested with some plausibility that this play was an early production by Shakspere which he remodelled. A play called "A Winternyght's Pastime" is entered at Stationer's Hall as early as 1594. Professor Thorndike fixes the date between January 1st and May 15th, 1611 and assumes that the drama is imitated from Jonson's "Masque of Oberon." He suggests that as in the "Masque" the chariot of Oberon is drawn by two white bears, "perhaps here, as in the dance, costume and actor reappeared in the play, in the bear who chases Antigonus." Anything to show that Shakspere imitated anybody.

The argument is based upon this chronology and the alleged similarity between the enumerated dramas: the issue is made upon the respective dates of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster" and Shakspere's "Cymbeline." There is no claim that Shakspere imitated Beaumont and Fletcher or was influenced by them, except in his three "romances," and of these, "Cymbeline" is placed first. Professor Thorndike undertakes to prove that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610, and this is his reasoning:

"In the 'Scourge of Folly' by John Davies of Hertford, entered in the Stationer's Register October 8th, 1610, occurs an epigram referring to this play." Let us examine this statement first. On the next page he says: "The '_Scourge of Folly_' furnishes no further clue in regard to the date of the epigram." On page 59 of the same essay, referring to another play, "Don Quixote," the statement is made that it was "entered S. R. 1611 and printed 1612." The entry was therefore in the nature of a "license to print." It is clear that in this instance the actual printing or publication was after the entry. The same rule must apply to other plays of the same period. The date of entry affords no proof whatever of the date of publication or of presentation. Therefore the date of the entry of "The Scourge of Folly," October 8th, 1610, as Professor Thorndike states, "affords no clue in regard to the date" of Davies's "epigram." The "epigram" may have been written long after the entry in the Stationer's Register, and probably was, because it is not to be assumed that the "epigram" appeared in the entry of the play, and Davies cannot be assumed to have had any knowledge of the existence of "Philaster" until it appeared upon the stage, a date entirely uncertain.

Further, Professor Thorndike says: "There is no reason why 'Philaster' may not have been produced before Burbage took up the Blackfriar's lease in 1608. There is in fact no early limit that can be set for the date; the final limit is of course fixed by Davies' epigram." Of what value is the final limit "fixed by the epigram" when there is no proof of the date of that? What ground is there, beyond mere arbitrary assumption, for assigning "Philaster" to 1608? That play was not printed till 1620. Mr. Fleay, Professor Thorndike's constant authority, says it was written in 1611, after "Cymbeline" was upon the stage. There is absolutely no proof, therefore, that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610, no proof when it was entered, licensed or first acted; and so it is clear, as Professor Thorndike says, that "the date, 1608, adopted by Dyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay, is no more than a conjecture." On the other hand, as we have shown, the external evidence is conclusive that "Cymbeline" was upon the bills before May 15th, 1611, and therefore the argument that "Philaster" preceded "Cymbeline" finds no better support than the opinion of Dyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay. It is mere conjecture.