elsewhere precisely or altogether traceable in Shakespeare; that no exact parallel to it can be found among his other plays; and that if not the partial work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher in his tragic poetry. On the other hand, we contend that its exceptional quality might perhaps be explicable as a tentative essay in a new line by one who tried so many styles before settling into his latest; and that, without far stronger, clearer, and completer proof than has yet been or can ever be advanced, the question is not solved but merely evaded by the assumption of a double authorship. - SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 93.

I have no doubt that much of "Henry VIII." also is not Shakespeare. It is largely written by Fletcher, with passages unmistakably by Shakespeare, notably the two first scenes in the first Act, which are sane and compact in thought, expression and simile. - TENNYSON, Alfred, LORD, 1883, Some Criticisms on Poets, Memoir by his Son, vol. II, p. 291.

If Katharine is a little disappointing, Anne is an unmitigated failure. . . . Turning to the character of Henry VIII. we find a showy figure, who plays his part of king not without effect. Looking deeper, we discover that there is nothing deeper to discover. The Henry of history is a puzzling character, but the Henry of a play should be adequately conceived and intelligibly presented. Whatever disguise he may choose to assume towards the men and women who walk beside him on the boards, to us he must be without disguise. As it is, we know no more than after reading Holinshed whether the Henry of

the play believed or did not believe or what partial belief he had-in those "scruples," for instance, to which he refers, not without a certain unction. He is illogical, insubstantial, the merely superficial presentment of a deeply interesting historical figure, who would, we may be sure, have had intense interest for Shakespeare, and to whom Shakespeare would have given his keenest thought, his finest workmanship. - SYMONS, ARTHUR, 1887-90, Henry Irving Shakespeare, vol. VIII, þþ. 162, 163.

REJECTED PLAYS.

ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM.

The speeches in "Arden of Feversham" have spirit and feeling; but there is none of that wit, that fertility of analogical imagery, which the worst plays of Shakspeare display. The language is also more plain and perspicuous than we ever find in him, especially on a subject so full of passion. HALLAM, HENRY, 1842, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. ii, ch. vi, par. 33, note.

The play, as a whole, is but a slovenly piece of work, and the characters carrying on its action are throughout either repulsive or uninteresting. There seems an intention to suggest in Arden's avarice a kind of poetic justification of his doom; but the hint is too slight to be of much effect. The character of the wife, hateful in itself, is invested with no adventitious charm or allurement; vice is painted as nakedly and blackly as it is by the

chronicler. The personages of the hired ruffians are rather in Ben Jonson's style; but there is little humour to relieve the loathsomeness of the figures. On the other hand, "Arden of Feversham" contains one or two passages which strongly resemble Shakspere in manner. WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, p. 218.

Either this play is the young Shakespeare's first tragic master-piece, or there was a writer unknown to us then alive and at work for the stage who excelled him as a tragic dramatist not less to say the very least - than he was excelled by Marlowe as a narrative and tragic poet. . . . I cannot but finally take heart to say, even in the absence of all external or traditional testimony, that it seems to me not pardonable merely nor permissible, but simply logical and reasonable, to set down this poem, a young man's work on the face of it, as the possible work of no man's youthful hand but Shakespeare's. SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, pp. 136, 141.

Has no similarities of versification, and does not, in its dealing with the murder of a husband by his wife and her baseborn paramour, suggest Shakespeare's choice of subject, but is closer in some ways than any other play to his handling in character and psychological analysis. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 329.

Highly as I esteem "Arden of Feversham," I cannot believe that Shakespeare wrote a single line of it. It was not like him to choose such a subject, and still less to

treat it in such a fashion. The play is a domestic tragedy, in which a wife, after repeated attempts, murders her kind and forbearing husband, in order freely to indulge her passion for a worthless paramour. It is a dramatisation of an actual case, the facts of which are closely followed, but at the same time animated with great psychological insight. That Shakespeare had a distaste for such subjects is proved by his consistent avoidance of them, except in this problematical instance; whereas if he had once succeeded so well with such a theme, he would surely have repeated the experiment. The chief point is, however, that only in a few places, in the soliloquies, do we find the peculiar note of Shakespeare's style that wealth of imagination, that luxuriant lyrism, which plays like sunlight over his speeches. In “Arden of Feversham" the style is a uniform drab. Brandes, George, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 204.

SIR JOHN OLDCASTLE.

"Sir John Oldcastle" is certainly not worthy to be ranked among the works of Shakespear, and it is with great propriety that it has been generally rejected. It has, however, evident marks in places of strong and familiar genius, which might have arisen from his having improved it; but even then they appear to be the shadow of his writing rather than the writing itself. - DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 77.

"Sir John Oldcastle" is the compound piecework of four minor playwrights, one of them afterwards and

otherwise eminent as a poet Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathaway: a thin sample of poetic patchery cobbled up and stitched together so as to serve its hour for a season without falling to pieces at the first touch. SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, Appendix, p. 232.

CROMWELL.

'Cromwell" is one of those plays rejected as Shakespear's, and certainly with great reason, for it has upon the whole less of those marks of his genius and judgment than any of those pieces that have been merely attributed to him. That he had some concern in it, however, cannot be doubted. The foot of Hercules can belong only to Hercules. DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. III, p. 90.

"Thomas Lord Cromwell" is a piece of such utterly shapeless, spiritless, bodiless, soulless, senseless, helpless, worthless, rubbish, that there is no known writer of Shakespeare's age to whom it could be ascribed without the infliction of an unwarrantable insult on that writer's memory. SwINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, Appendix, p. 232.

YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY.

Is by some attributed to Shakespear; as however all his commentators, except Mr. Steevens, have agreed to