APPENDIX ΤΟ ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF SOME OF THE EARLY PLAYS ASSIGNED SHAKESPEARE, AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS DRAMATIC GENIUS As the growth and development of Shakespeare's dramatic genius can be properly estimated only by studying his plays in the order of their production, as far as this can be ascertained, it is allimportant to form a right judgment as to the authorship of certain early dramas with which his name has been associated in very different senses by different critics. In forming a judgment on this matter I have observed the following principles : 1. When the external and the internal evidence agree as to authorship, the proof of authenticity may be regarded as unimpeachable. 2. When there is an apparent conflict of evidence, strong external evidence should be preferred to evidence that is merely internal. 3. It is dangerous to rely either on external or on internal evidence apart from each other. Should any one suppose that the enunciation of these canons of criticism is superfluous, a review of the various phases through which the question of authenticity has passed will soon convince him of his mistake. The chief external canon of evidence for the authenticity of any of Shakespeare's writings is the folio edition of his works published in 1623-that is to say, within seven years of his death. It was the compilation of Heminge and Condell, both of them fellow-actors with and intimate friends of the dramatist, and among the legatees mentioned in his will, the former being also the manager of the Globe Theatre, in which Shakespeare for the last portion of his life was part proprietor. These editors had obviously excellent opportunities of knowing what plays had whenever he found close resemblances between the old plays and the plays of Shakespeare's predecessors, he found an argument for the old plays being the work of the latter. A single passage may be taken as a sample of his reasoning : Two lines in The Third Part of King Henry VI. have been produced as a decisive and incontrovertible proof that these pieces were originally and entirely written by Shakespeare. "Who," says Mr. Capell, "that sees not the future monster, and acknowledges at the same time the pen that drew it, in these two lines only, spoken over a king who lies stabbed before him [i.e. before Richard, Duke of Gloster] What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted let him never pretend to discernment hereafter in any case of this nature." The two lines above quoted are found in The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, etc., on which, according to my hypothesis, Shakespeare's Third Part of King Henry VI. was formed. If, therefore, these lines decisively mark the hand of Shakespeare, the old, as well as the new, play must have been written by him, and the fabric which I have built with some labour falls at once to the ground. But let not the reader be alarmed; for, if it suffers from no other battery but this, it may last to the crack of doom. Marlowe, as Dr. Farmer observes to me, has the very same phraseology in King Edward II. :— Scorning that the lowly earth Should drink his blood, mounts up into the air, and in the same play I have lately noticed another line in which we find the very epithet here applied to the pious Lancastrian king Frown'st thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster? - So much for Mr. Capell's irrefragable proof. It is not the business of the present Essay to enter further into the subject. I merely seize the opportunity of saying that the preceding passages now incline me to think Marlowe the author of The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, etc., and perhaps of the other old drama also entitled The First Part of the Contention of the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster. Marshalled in this precise manner, the arguments of Malone proved effective enough to persuade English critics that none of the plays impeached could be really Shakespeare's. Porson is said to have pronounced Malone's reasoning the most convincing piece of literary criticism with which he was acquainted: the conclusions of the latter were substantially adopted by his disciple, Boswell, and afterwards by Dyce, both editors of Shakespeare's works, while Hallam acquiesced in the suggestion that Henry VI. may have been the work partly of Marlowe, partly of Greene.1 On Yet, in spite of the effect it produced, and of the industry and ingenuity with which it is constructed, the argument of Malone, when examined in detail, is seen to be of the frailest. A work of genius always carries on its face the unmistakable personality of the author. True; but it is a fallacy to suppose that this character will be always of one rigid and immutable type. Malone's principle of criticism, it is certain that (internal evidence being alone considered) a person judging of Tennyson's style by In Memoriam or The Idylls of the King, without any historical study of the development of his genius, would deny that he could have had any share in the authorship of Poems by Two Brothers, published in 1827, and evidently written in imitation of Byron. Such is precisely the value of the reasoning of those who deny the authorship of the First Part of King Henry VI. to Shakespeare, because it contains "more allusions to mythology," etc., than are found in the later English histories. of Shakespeare, and because "those allusions are introduced very much in the same manner as they are introduced in the works of Greene, Peele, Lodge, and other dramatists who preceded Shakespeare." The argument founded on historical contradictions in the different plays proves nothing whatever: there is no reason why one and the same author should not have committed an error as to fact in one play, and have corrected it in a play of later date. Nor is there any more strength in the reasoning that The Contention and The True Tragedy cannot have been the work of Shakespeare, because these plays were acted by the Earl of Pembroke's Company, while all the later plays of Shakespeare, published with his name, were acted only by the Lord Chamberlain's, or the Queen's, or the King's Players. The early plays in question were produced while Shakespeare was a young man, lately arrived in London, and (assuming him to have been the author of them) he may well have associated at that time, like Marlowe and his contemporaries, mainly with the Earl of Pembroke's Company. Such an association would, indeed, account for the close friendship which sprang up in course of time between Shakespeare and William Herbert, if, as is at least possible, the latter is identical with "Mr. W. H." of the Sonnets. But it is said that Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit plainly accuses Shakespeare of plagiarism; and it is probable that the 1 Hallam's History of European Literature (1854), vol. ii. p. 171. theft he had in his mind was Shakespeare's adaptation of The Contention and The True Tragedy. That the first of these propositions is true admits of no doubt; at any rate Greene sneers at Shakespeare as a copyist; but as to the inference that he is alluding to anything so particular as Malone supposes, the reader may judge for himself. Greene warns Marlowe and Peele not to rely upon their favour with the public: "Trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygre's heart wrapt in a Player's hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Naturally interpreted, these words seem to express the apprehensions of a jealous rival who warns his associates that Shakespeare has copied the new blank verse style which they have introduced on the stage, and is likely to develop it in such a manner as to deprive them of their popularity: the expressions would be much too weak to describe the action of a poet who had stolen hundreds (nay thousands) of lines from plays written by the speaker and his companions, to reproduce them in a play which he pretended to be his own. Malone's incapacity for reasoning correctly from the facts which he had accurately and industriously collected is most apparent in the triumphant tone of his reply to Capell, who had justly noted the Shakespearian manner in two lines occurring both in the Third Part of Henry VI. and The True Tragedy. Capell is obviously referring to the spirit and character of the passage, but Malone thinks it quite sufficient, in answer, to point out that similar expressions are found in Marlowe's Edward II-a fact on which he founds the extraordinary conclusion that Marlowe was probably the author of The True Tragedy. He did not see either that, though the two lines in The True Tragedy might very well have been suggested by the passage he cited from Marlowe, their grandeur depended entirely on the new turn given to the image, or that it was extremely improbable that a poet of a powerful genius like Marlowe, rapid and fluent in composition, should have fallen back on the poverty - stricken device of borrowing from his own writings. The lines are evidently the work of an imitator of Marlowe, not of Marlowe himself. Meantime the opinions of the German critics, who had from the first argued in behalf of the authenticity of King Henry VI, began to make an impression on the English editors of Shakespeare, as was shown by Charles Knight's edition, published in 1842, in which the authorship of the whole of Henry VI., as well as of The Contention and The True Tragedy, was assigned to conclusions of the latter were substantially adopted by his disciple, Boswell, and afterwards by Dyce, both editors of Shakespeare's works, while Hallam acquiesced in the suggestion that Henry VI. may have been the work partly of Marlowe, partly of Greene.1 Yet, in spite of the effect it produced, and of the industry and ingenuity with which it is constructed, the argument of Malone, when examined in detail, is seen to be of the frailest. A work of genius always carries on its face the unmistakable personality of the author. True; but it is a fallacy to suppose that this character will be always of one rigid and immutable type. On Malone's principle of criticism, it is certain that (internal evidence being alone considered) a person judging of Tennyson's style by In Memoriam or The Idylls of the King, without any historical study of the development of his genius, would deny that he could have had any share in the authorship of Poems by Two Brothers, published in 1827, and evidently written in imitation of Byron. Such is precisely the value of the reasoning of those who deny the authorship of the First Part of King Henry VI. to Shakespeare, because it contains "more allusions to mythology," etc., than are found in the later English histories of Shakespeare, and because "those allusions are introduced very much in the same manner as they are introduced in the works of Greene, Peele, Lodge, and other dramatists who preceded Shakespeare." The argument founded on historical contradictions in the different plays proves nothing whatever: there is no reason why one and the same author should not have committed an error as to fact in one play, and have corrected it in a play of later date. Nor is there any more strength in the reasoning that The Contention and The True Tragedy cannot have been the work of Shakespeare, because these plays were acted by the Earl of Pembroke's Company, while all the later plays of Shakespeare, published with his name, were acted only by the Lord Chamberlain's, or the Queen's, or the King's Players. The early plays in question were produced while Shakespeare was a young man, lately arrived in London, and (assuming him to have been the author of them) he may well have associated at that time, like Marlowe and his contemporaries, mainly with the Earl of Pembroke's Company. Such an association would, indeed, account for the close friendship which sprang up in course of time between Shakespeare and William Herbert, if, as is at least possible, the latter is identical with "Mr. W. H." of the Sonnets. But it is said that Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit plainly accuses Shakespeare of plagiarism; and it is probable that the 1 Hallam's History of European Literature (1854), vol. ii. p. 171. |