UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES -ERSITY 61 - AT LOS ANGELES UBRARY M - . TRANSACTIONS OF THE CONNECTICUT ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES INCORPORATED A. D. 1799 VOLUME 17, PAGES 1-211 JULY, 1912 The Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of " King Henry VI" BY C. F. TUCKER BROOKE, M. A., B. LITT. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT YALE UNIVERSITY Jf THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 1912 8468? i - -.. O 1 ) \ . *5 ^ * VJ WEIMAR: PRINTED BY R. WAGNER SOHN. CONTENTS PAGE THE APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT ........ 145 I. MARLOWE'S AUTHORSHIP OF THE CONTENTION AND TRUE TRAGEDY. 1. External Evidence 148 2. Plot 152 3. Character . . . ....... . .156 4. Verbal Parallels in the Contention and True Tragedy and in accepted Plays of Marlowe 160 5. Metrical Evidence . . . . . . . . . .177 6. flow Far do the Contention and True Tragedy represent Marlowe's Original Text? 183 II. THE G-KEENE-PEELE MYTH ... . . .188 III. SHAKESPEARE'S REVISION OF MARLOWE'S WORK . 194 H. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE SECOND AND THIRD PARTS OF KING HENRY VI, BY C. F. TUCKER BROOKE. THE APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT. During the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, at least five opposing theories were circulated in regard to the authorship of the second and third Henry VI plays, each supported by careful research and ingenious argument. Yet, in spite of the successive labors of Malone, Knight, Halliwell, Grant White, and Miss Jane Lee, with their respective followers, the problem was left at the end so much involved in the mists of conflicting opinion as to appear more insoluble than ever. Indeed, the very mass of accumulated argument has apparently had the effect of stifling inquiry during the last thirty-five years, notwithstanding the fact that the publication of careful facsimiles of the early quarto editions of 1594/5 and 1619 has placed the means of study within easy reach. It is possible that the failure of critics so far to arrive at conclu- sive results arises from the circumstance that they have all treated the question primarily, if not exclusively, in connexion with its bearing upon Shakespeare. Malone (d. 1812) contented himself with proving that Shakespeare was not the author of the early quar- tos entitled The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy. These plays he first assigned, with little discussion, to Greene and Peele on the evidence of a passage in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. 1 Subsequently, Malone lightly renounced this theory, and accepted the suggestion of Marlowe's authorship, originally proposed by Dr. Richard Farmer (d. 1797). 2 Charles Knight, in his Pictorial Shakespeare (1839, etc.), attempted on grounds purely sentimental to establish Shakespeare's exclusive right to the plays in all their phases. This extravagant claim, which contradicts all the probabilities, has not been accepted, I believe, by any other writer on the subject. In 1843, J. O. Halliwell (later HaUiweU-PhiUips) edited The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy for the (old) Shake- 1 See the Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI, printed in Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakespeare (1821), vol. xviii, p. 570 ff. 2 See An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in which the Plays of Shakspeare were Written, Boswell's Malone, vol. ii, p. 311 ff. 146 C. F. Tucker Brooke, speare Society. In his introduction to this work, the editor set up, as a sort of compromise between the views of Malone and Knight, the unfounded conjecture that the original plays upon which 2 and 3 Henry VI were based have been lost, and that the Contention and True Tragedy " included the first additions which Shakespeare made to the originals." The gratuitous assumption of such a hypothesis, inspired by the pious desire of the Shakespeare-worshipper to ascribe to his idol whatever might be of particular merit in the work, while relieving him of all responsibility for the mediocre portions, really carries the problem out of the domain of logical research, and makes the discussion of the non- Shakespearean residue impracticable and unimportant. An equally one-sided attitude to the question is involved in Richard Grant White's more painstaking Essay on the Authorship of Henry VI (1859). It was, of course, natural that this elaborate paper, composed for insertion in White's edition of Shakespeare, should concern itself primarily, like its predecessors, with Shake- speare's interest in the plays. White's theory assumes that all the passages in the earlier plays (*'. e., Contention and True Tragedy] retained in 2 and 3 Henry VI were of Shakespeare's original compo- sition. Thus, only the poor rejected matter in Contention and True Tragedy is ascribed to the other authors, whom White identifies as Greene, Peele, and Marlowe; and White's treatment of the non- Shake- spearean side of the question degenerates into an unworthy attempt to show by illustrative excerpts that the poets named were incapable of writing of the scenes retained in 2 and 3 Henry VI. Miss Lee's paper, 1 the most clearly reasoned discussion of the sub- ject which has yet appeared, is mainly occupied with a refutation of the ill-advised Shakespearean claims of Knight, Halliwell, and White. She advances solid, and, it appears to me, sufficient arguments in favor of the belief that Shakespeare had no part in the Contention or the True Tragedy. Yet Miss Lee's negative thesis is not much less engrossed with the special Shakespearean interest of the problem than were the positive theories which she opposed. Though she very con- scientiously devoted considerable pains to the discussion of Mar- lowe's and Greene's share in the earlier plays, she really left that part of the subject as undecided as she found it. Her concluding statements are that " Marlowe and Greene, and possibly Peele, were the authors" of the older plays, and " that there is, at least, nothing 1 " On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI and their Originals," Transactions of the New ShaJcspere Society, 1875 76, p. 219 ff. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 147 unreasonable, or even improbable, in supposing " that Marlowe furthermore collaborated with Shakespeare in the revised 2 and J Henry VI. 1 Thus critical investigation during nearly a century had travelled a circular path. Miss Lee, in 1875, guided by independent research, occupied approximately the same vague position taken up by Malone before 1800. It is not surprising that this relative failure to advance, in view of the careful scholarship and indubitable earnestness of the various investigators, should have discouraged further effort. It may be believed, however, without excessive temerity, that the difficulties encountered arose less from inherent lack of evidence than from the preoccupation of all the critics with one attractive, but rather unproductive, aspect of the question. The direct approach to the mystery of the authorship of 2 and J Henry VI from the side of Shakespeare's concern in the plays offers little secure foothold for the critic. Those writers who, like Knight, Halliwell, and White, attempted to prove Shakespeare's exclusive or partial interest in the antecedent plays of the Contention and the True Tragedy seem by all the best evidence to have been upholding a theory with no basis of fact ; and they unconsciously distorted the real truths in order to render this preconceived fiction tenable. Critics of the opposing group expended far more care upon the disproof of Shakespeare's author- ship than upon the discovery of the actual writers. Malone, indeed, regarding the question, like Knight and White, from the specialized view-point of the editor of Shakespeare, frankly lost interest when he had shown reason to believe the Contention and True Tragedy non- Shakespearean. Even Miss Lee's more comprehensive dis- cussion manifests in the constructive portion which deals with the actual origin of the earlier plays a vagueness and comparative in- 1 In consequence of a challenge from Dr. Furnivall, Miss Lee added, though with doubt and against her expressed better judgment, tables indi- cating Shakespeare's and Marlowe's shares in 2 and 3 Henry VI, and Mar- lowe's and Greene's shares in Contention and True Tragedy. These tables, which seem to me to possess no importance, will be found on pp. 293306 of the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875 76. Other dis- cussions worthy of attention are: A. Dyce, in the prefatory matter to his editions of Marlowe (1850, etc.), and Shakespeare (1857, etc.); F. G. Fleay, "Who Wrote Henry VI ?" Macmillan's Magazine, Nov., 1875, p. 5062; A. C. Swinburne, " The Three Stages of Shakespeare," Fortnightly Review, Jan., 1876, p. 25-30; F. E. Schelling, The English Chronicle Play, 1902, p. 78 ff. ; J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 1558 1642 ; 1910. vol. i, p. 59 67. 148 C. F. Tucker Brooke, difference very strikingly in contrast with the admirable acuteness with which she defends her negative position in regard to Shake- speare's authorship. It is doubtless true that the question of Shakespeare's concern in the Henry VI plays possesses considerably higher importance than any other which arises in this connexion. It seems clear, however, that this question can be adequately discussed only after definite knowledge has been attained regarding the origin and general charac- ter of the plays upon which Shakespeare based his work. In the following treatment, therefore, I purpose first to consider in detail the authorship and dramatic structure of the plays which Shake- speare received as his sources namely, the Contention and the True Tragedy ; and then, on the basis of what may thus be ascertained, to attempt an investigation of the extent and nature of the altera- tions introduced by Shakespeare. It is hoped that some light may thus be thrown upon the character of Shakespeare's style and method during his earliest dramatic period. That Marlowe was responsible for much or all of the best poetry in the Contention and the True Tragedy has been at least vaguely accepted by all writers on the subject for many years. Collier, in- deed, 1 appears to be the only nineteenth-century critic who felt doubt concerning Marlowe's authorship, though the problem of the origin of these plays has long been complicated by the general acceptance of a piece of external evidence, which I shall discuss later, 2 as proving that Greene and Peele also had shares in the work. It will be well to take up the examination of the Contention and True Tragedy from the point of view of the authorship of Marlowe, the only Elizabethan writer who, in my opinion, has any demon- strable interest in these plays. I. MARLOWE'S AUTHORSHIP OF THE CONTENTION AND TRUE TRAGEDY. 1. External evidence. It is a familiar fact that the two plays known since 1623 as the second and third parts of Henry VI have each been preserved in three different forms. It will be well to distinguish clearly the three phases in the evolution of the text. 1 See J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, etc., 2nd ed., 1879, vol. ii, p. 519-521. 8 See below, p. 188 ff. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 149 I. 2 Henry VI is first mentioned in the following entry on the Stationers' Register for March 12, 1593/4 : " Thomas Millington Entred for his copie vnder the handes of bothe the wardens a booke intituled, the firste parte of the Contention of the twoo famous houses of York and Lancaster with the death of the good Duke Humfrey, and the banishement and Deathe of the Duke of Suffolk, and the tragical! ende of the proud Cardinal! of Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade and the Duke of Yorkes f firste clayme vnto the Crowne." In the same year (1594), the play was printed, by Thomas Creed for Thomas Millington, with a title identical, except for spelling and the change of one preposition, with that given in the Register. The earliest version of 3 Henry VI does not appear to have been registered before publication ; but it was printed for Millington by P. S. (Peter Short) in the following year (1595), with the title : " The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants." In the year 1600, Millington published reprints of both plays, in- volving no essential alterations. II. In 1603, Millington retired from business. On April 19 of the previous year (1602), doubtless with the idea of winding up his affairs, he assigned over to Thomas Pavier his interest in the two plays we are considering, which he terms " the first and second parte of Henry the vi* ij bookes." It is not known that Pavier attempted to make commercial use of the copyright which he had thus obtained till 1619, for his only extant edition of the plays, though it bears no date on its title-page, appears to have been brought out simultane- ously with his 1619 edition of Pericles. 1 Pavier's version combined the two plays received from Millington in a single quarto with the title : " The Whole Contention betweene the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. With the Tragical! ends of the good Duke Humfrey, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie the sixt. Diuided into two Parts : And newly corrected and enlarged. Written by William Shakespeare, Gent." The text here printed introduced a number of more or less trivial alterations, which will be discussed 1 The signatures at the bottoms of the leaves in the two quartos are continuous ; that is, the leaves in the Whole Contention are signed with the letters, A Q, while the 1619 Pericles begins with R. The probable reason for Pavier's long delay in issuing an edition of our plays is that he took over in 1602, along with the copyright, a number of unsold copies of Milling- ton's 1600 quartos. 150 C. F. Tucker Brooke, later. 1 It may be said at once that Pavier's assertion of Shake- speare's authorship seems to be quite as little grounded in this case as in the same publisher's editions of Sir John Oldcastle (1600) 2 and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), where the words, " Written by W(il- liam) Shakespeare " likewise appear. III. The third and final phase in the evolution of the text of the plays under discussion is found in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. Here for the first time, the two plays, clearly first written as a two-part /drama, and so regarded for thirty years, are associated with the * previously unpublished First Part of King Henry VI and thus changed into the second and third members of a trilogy. The verbal alterations in the 1623 edition of our plays are so radical, particu- larly in the case of 2 Henry VI, as to make the revised texts almost new dramas, though the basic elements of plot and character are not very seriously affected.^ There is evidence to indicate that the revision represented in the 1623 text was carried out not later than 1592 3 : and it seems very likely that the matter then added was exclusively Shakespearean work and was the only Shakespearean work in the plays. There- fore, the discussion of Shakespeare's concern, in the concluding section of this article, will be mainly a discussion of the peculiar features of the 1623 text. Let us return for the present to the consideration of the external evidence connected with Millington's editions. It will have been noted that the first title-page of the True Tragedy expressly declares the drama to have been acted by the Earl of Pembroke's Company. The connection between the two plays under discussion is so close, and the later one so entirely unintelligible without the earlier, that it is perfectly safe to conclude that the introductory drama of the Contention must have been produced by the same company. The determination of the company by which the, plays printed by-,Milling- ton were acted, does not, of course, determine their authorship. Both Greene and Marlowe, among others, are known to have written for Pembroke's Men. The fact, however, that The Contention and True Tragedy texts represent plays written for Lord Pembroke's Company justifies us in inferring that Shakespeare had nothing to do with them ; for there is every reason against believing that Shake- speare had direct relations at any period of his life with any but the 1 See p. 186 ff. 2 This edition of Oldcastle, though dated 1600, was probably printed in the same year as the Whole Contention (1619). See p. 191. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." single company known successively as Lord Strange's, Lord Derby's Lord Hunsdon's, the Lord Chamberlain's, and the King's of which he was personally a member. Those critics who imagine Shakespeare employed during his early years as a hack writer for various companies reason against all the evidence and all the probabilities. The old distinction between the " universit)' wits " on the one hand and Shakespeare on the other is trite and superficial, but it has one true side. About 1590, there were two sets of dramatic writers in London. The larger class was made up of professional litterateurs, who, like Greene and Marlowe, had no personal knowledge of the stage, or whose interest in any one company, like that of Ben Jonson, was too unsatisfactory to encourage permanence. These poets naturally disposed of their plays as best they could, now to one company, now to another, but nearly always, as far as we can tell, at pitiably low rates and much to their own discontent. To the other set belonged Shakespeare^who, approaching the stage from its non-literary side, was already a loyal and relatively prosperous actor in a particular company when he commenced his career as playwright by patching up old dramas for purely utilitarian reasons. To the end, Shakespeare's income from the success of his company seems to have far exceeded his earnings as a writer. Considering, then, where the theatrical profits lay in his time, it would have been utterly absurd for Shakespeare to dispose of any play capable of being successfully acted to a company (X> in which he had no interest. And it is hardly less absurd to imagine the Earl of Pembroke's Company applying for dramatic material, between 1590 and 1592 to an active member of a rival company, who was as yet almost unknown as a dramatic author. Pembroke's company acted Marlowe's Edward II, which seems to have been composed a very little later than the plays we are considering. x The only other piece of external evidence bearing upon the 1594/5 texts concerns the publisher, Thomas Millington. The entry of the Contention, March 12, 1593/4, quoted above, 2 is the earliest mention of Millington's name on the Stationers' Register. Milling- ton next appears, just two months and five days later (May 17, 1594), when he, in conjunction with Nicholas Linge, registered " the famouse tragedie of the Riche Jewe of Malta." Unfortunately, no edition of the Jew of Malta, published at this time, is known to have survived ; but it is worth remarking that the registration notice, 1 With reference to the relative dates of these plays, see pp. 173 177. 2 See p. 149. 152 C. F. Tucker Brooke, like that of the Contention, and like the registration notice and all the early title-pages of Tamburlaine, omits the author's name. Hence, Millington's failure to mention Marlowe as author of the Contention and True Tragedy should not be taken as evidence against that poet's authorship, particularly as the revised version by Shake- speare must probably have been better known to the public at the time when Millington's quartos were published. The rather scanty external evidence regarding the 1594/5 texts of our plays seems to me, therefore, quite sufficient to disqualify Shakespeare as possible author. Respecting the positive determi- nation of authorship, though there is nothing in this evidence which at all approaches proof, it seems worth remembering that the com- pany which acted the Contention and True Tragedy very shortly after acted Marlowe's play of Edward II, and that the publisher of our plays recorded his ownership of the copyright of Marlowe's other play of The Jew of Malta during the very months when the Contention and True Tragedy were issuing from his press. 2. Plot. The two plays we are considering are very carefully welded into one. The Contention breaks off abruptly at the most exciting mo- ment, when the success of York at the first Battle of St. Albans renders civil war inevitable. Without any intermission or prelude, the first scene of the True Tragedy introduces the conversation of the victorious leaders as they compare their experiences on the battle-field. The whole work is planned with an imaginative appre- ciation of the meaning of history and a power of unifying details which are very remarkable and which would make themselves more generally felt even in the revised versions of Shakespeare, if these plays were there separated in the reader's mind from the unrelated First Part of Henry VI. The very determination of the limits of the double drama shows marked constructive ability. The first play opens with the arrival of Margaret, England's evil genius. The second closes with the final ruin of Margaret's cause at Tewkes- bury, and the death of the pious Henry, whose fate has been so disastrously linked with that of his terrible queen. Between these termini the poet's imagination moves with an iron precision. Though the historical figures necessarily shift and disappear, the tone of the work never changes. There is nothing irrelevant or episodic. Even the Horner, Simcox, and Cade scenes in the Contention bear directly upon the general tragic plot and have their comedy suffused with its stern light. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 153 // This singleness of purpose and feeling, in dramas dealing with a particularly chaotic era and belonging clearly to the earliest period in the development of the history play, is a very remarkable pheno- menon. How far such solidarity of outlook lay from the youthful Shakespeare will be abundantly clear when we come to analyze the spirit in which the changes introduced into the revised 2 and 3 Henry VI were made. How infinitely far it lay from Peele and Greene need hardly be suggested to any one who has considered the wonderful medleys of plot and tone illustrated in Edward I, James IV, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Leaving all con- firmatory evidence out of mind, I believe that it would be safe to assert that the brilliant synthesis of plot and emotion manifested in the Contention and True Tragedy can about 1590 have been the work of only one dramatist known to literary history. The whole tangled story is resolutely pitched in a single key, preserved with hardly a fluctuation through the two plays, which thus become a kind of monody on the single note of ambition, transmitted from the throat of one leading figure to that of the next, from York's glorious vaunt in the first scene of the Contention to Richard's final pro- clamation of his magnificent villainy at the close of the True Tragedy. This insistence upon one mood and one aspect produces a sense of order in the midst of plot confusion and a touch also of that fine lucidity which in classic works accompanies restrictedness of view^ For other examples of this rare unity injected into ill-unified matter by the vividness of the poet's feeling one can turn among plays contemporary with those we are discussing only to the ac- cepted works of Marlowe. Through the two parts of Tamburlaine the fervid expression of heaven-topping egoism lends consecutive- ness and meaning to the hopelessly ill-ordered material. In Edward II, the first great English historical play, a wild, purposeless reign and an uninteresting monarch are made deeply affecting by the con- sistent tragedy which the poet, almost gratuitously, reads into them. An even closer parallel to the tone and method of the Contention and True Tragedy is found in Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, where French history during seventeen years just past (15721589) is carelessly depicted in connexion with the three sensational inci- dents of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the death of the Due de Guise, and the assassination of Henri III. Here there is no sem- blance of technical unity. Yet the reader hardly perceives any incoherence, because the consuming anti-papal ardor of the poet is strong enough to focuss and bring into apparent relation all the alien elements of the play. 154 C. F. Tucker Brooke, There is about Marlowe's genius a kind of fierceness of perception and expression which renders him equally incapable of dramatic impartiality, of incoherence, and of dullness. Life and history he viewed always from one side only, the side of the picturesque ; and what he saw he reproduced necessarily in the most brilliant color, with little of the modesty of nature, but with a glowing feeling which made his picture, however unfaithful to outward fact, inevitably true in its expression of a single clear passion of the poet. Once the predominant emotion is set in play, it courses through the work, and tinges every atom of material. No triviality, digression, or change of attitude is possible. In Tamburlaine, the hero's lust for conquest rages through every scene. In Faustus, the atmosphere of sulphur and brimstone pervades even such ostensibly comic passages as the masque of the seven deadly sins, Faust's visit to Rome, or the interview with the horse-courser. Never for an instant, I think, in the genuine part of that play, is the central tragic idea out of the mind of either poet or spectator. So it is with the plays we are considering. The True Tragedy, the higher-pitched of the two, contains no spark of .comedy, a thing almost marvellous in an early English history play. The Contention has several scenes, which, handled by any Elizabethan writer except Marlowe, would probably be broadly farcical and digressive; but as they here appear, they are filled no less than the rest of the drama with the muffled roar of civil war. The Homer and Cade scenes, instead of conflicting with the tragic passages, seem to me to tend toward precisely the same effect In an age when the drama was almost universally inclined to excessive range of mood and subject, this constant adherence to the one note is very conspicuous. It made Marlowe a poor drama- tist in several respects : it certainly prevented the normal expansion of his abilities as a playwright. Undoubtedly, however, it permitted him to give unity and force to the handling of subjects which would otherwise have \vanted both those qualities. It is commonly said that Marlowe lacked the perception of comedy. This is probably not true. A grim sense of humor will hardly be denied the poet by those who have carefully read his works. It is, however, quite true that the student of Marlowe misses both the irresponsible transition from black tragedy to light-hearted merri- ment, so characteristic of the cruder Elizabethan dramatists, and also Shakespeare's judicial power of setting side by side the tragic aspect which a particular circumstance may bear for those vitally interested and the commonplace or even ludicrous view taken by The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 155 casual outsiders. The absence of this changefulness of mood and of dramatic irony should probably be ascribed, not to any congenital want of humor in the poet, but to his total absorption in the special side of the question which he is endeavoring to portray. Few men can throw themselves into the delineation of the highest sublimities of passion and at the same time retain full consciousness of all the little humorous accompaniments of life. Even in Shakespeare thi power came only with maturity, and in Shakespeare it is almost unique. It is easy for the cold critic, sympathizing with Shake- speare's Pistol, to find much that is absurd in the intensity of Tambur- laine ; but it would have been quite impossible for any poet, while in a mood unimpassioned enough to be conscious of these laughable trivialities, to reach the tragic exaltation which makes the greatness of Marlowe's play. Thus, the fact that Marlowe's strong tragic pinion bears him in his moments of inspiration above the lowly species of comedy with which Greene, for instance, was accustomed to intersperse his romantic extravaganzas should not be taken as a necessary indication that Marlowe at all times lacks a sense of humor, or that he was incapable of utilizing comic material where it was possible to do so without subverting the great tragic purpose of his dramas. The evidence is all against this common assumption. I believe that the most conspicuous comic scenes in the Conten- tion, those dealing with Jack Cade, are distinctly in Marlowe's manner. It has been usual, of course, to declare that these scenes cannot have been composed by Marlowe, because they are effective comedy, and Marlowe was no comic writer. Such an argument involves a complete non sequitur. What we are really justified in expecting of comic matter introduced by Marlowe into a serious play is that it shall not be tawdry, as is much of Greene's buffoonery and most of the later, non-Marlovian, additions to the text of Doctor Faustus ; and that it shall not be extraneous to the main issue of the play, as Shakespeare's early comic scenes usually are. The Cade scenes offend in none of these respects. So far are they from being irrelevant that they serve a very necessary function in preparing the way for York's rebellion and bringing out the instability of Henry's rule. Their spirit is not that imparted by the professed comedian or fun-maker. Cade's followers, unlike the insipid clowns of contemporary farce, are a band of wild fanatics, as heavily charged with tragedy as any that in later days did homage to the goddess Guillotine. Their follies and extravagances, like the murderous jests in The Massacre at Paris, have in every case a deadly sequel which actually darkens the black atmosphere of the tragedy. 156 C. F. Tucker Brooke, The figure of Cade himself is a masterpiece which could never have emerged from the brain of an essentially " comic " writer. Instead of the buffoon and demagogue that one would expect, one finds a colossus in whose character grandeur and pathos are continually getting the better of boorishness a giant peasant type near of kin to Tamburlaine, w r ho seems restrained only by the limitations of the historic plot from snapping the bonds of the commonplace and soaring with the Scythian shepherd into the heights of poetry and heroism. That the Cade scenes could have been \vritten by Shake- speare at the early period at which they were written appears simply impossible in the light of what we know of that poet's comic method in such contemporary plays as Love's Labor's Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. That the scenes in question were moulded at the same time as the rest of the original play, of which they form an integral part, is, I think, unquestionable ; and it seems to me that in spirit and character delineation they bear the strongest testimony to Marlowe's authorship. 3. Character. The Contention and True Tragedy contain twelve important characters. Of these eight are conspicuous in the earlier play : Suf- folk, Margaret, King Henry, Duke Humphrey, Cardinal Beaufort, York, Warwick, and Jack Cade. Four of these, Humphrey, the Cardinal, Suffolk, and Cade, die during the course of the earlier play ; and the remaining four are supplemented in the True Tragedy by Richard, Edward, and Young Clifford, who, though all on the stage in the last part of the Contention are not there psychologically important. The True Tragedy introduces one new figure worthy of study in Margaret's son, Prince Edward. If any deduction concerning the authorship of the plays is to be drawn from their delineation of character, the final conclusion must be based upon the treatment of these twelve figures. The character of Cade has already been discussed. It seems to me unlike the work of any known dramatist of the time except Marlowe. The other notable figures divide themselves into two or three groups. Seven of them, the most memorable and the least altered in Shakespeare's revision, represent the type of bold bad nobility whose romantically egoistic and vindictive figures seem in Edward II and The Massacre at Paris to have caught the imagination of Mar- lowe to the exclusion of nearly everything else in history. Suffolk, Warwick, the Cardinal, and Young Clifford form a group of over- daring, remorseless, terrible, yet splendid peers comparable only The Autliorship of " King Henry VI." 157 perhaps with the similar group of turbulent barons in Edward II. Three other figures of this same type, York, Queen Margaret, and Richard, are yet more highly individualized. They are masterpieces of that overwhelming evil ambition and malignant selfishness in which a rather curious twist of Marlowe's genius made him see the highest reach of human glory. These three characters are related by the closest bonds to the supreme embodiments of evil power in Marlowe's accepted history plays : Young Mortimer in Edward II and Guise and the Old Queen in the Massacre at Paris. Verbal similarities may be reserved for later discussion ; but on the evidence of spirit and general style alone, it seems impossible to read in suc- cession two such companion passages as those printed below without complete assurance that in each the same poet's mind has been at work under the impulse of the same inspiration. The first quotation is from the soliloquy of Guise near the opening of the Massacre at Paris (11. 91 ff.). 1 The second gives the soliloquy of York at the close of the first scene of the Contention. " Now Guise begins those deepe ingendred thoughts To burst abroad those neuer dying flames, Which cannot be extinguisht but by bloud. Oft haue I leueld, and at last haue learnd, That perill is the cheefest way to happines, And resolution honors fairest aime. What glory is there in a common good, That hanges for euery peasant to atchiue ? That like I best that flyes beyond my reach. Set me to scale the high Peramides (*. e., pyramids), And thereon set the Diadem of Fraunce, He either rend it with my nayles to naught, Or mount the top with my aspiring winges, Although my downfall be the deepest hell. For this I wake when others think I sleepe, For this I waite, that scornes attendance else. The gentle King whose pleasure vncontrolde \Veakneth his body, and will waste his Realme, 1 References to Marlowe in the following pages will give the line number in my edition, Clarendon Press, 1910 ; references to Contention, True Tragedy, and the 1619 quarto allude to page and line in the Praetorius facsimiles 1886 1891 ; references to Shakespeare's plays: including 2 and 3 Henry VI follow the Oxford Shakespeare. TRAXS. CONN. ACAD., Vol. XVII. 11 JULY, 1912. 158 C. F. Tucker Brooke, If I repaire not what he ruinates : Him as a childe I dayly winne with words, So that for proofe he barely beares the name : I execute, and he sustaines the blame. Giue me a look, that when I bend the browes, - Pale death may walke in furrowes of my face : A hand, that with a graspe may gripe world, An eare, to heare what my detractors say, A royall seate, a scepter, and a crowne : That those which doe beholde, thay may become As men that stand and gase against the Sunne. The plot is laide, and things shall come to passe, Where resolution striues for victory." " Anioy and Maine, both giuen vnto the French, Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Euen as I haue of fertill England. A day will come when Yorke shall claime his owne, And therefore I will take the Neuels parts, And make a show of loue to proud Duke Humphrey : And when I spie aduantage, claime the Crowne, For that's the golden marke I seeke to hit : Nor shall proud Lancaster vsurpe my right, Nor hold the scepter in his childish fist, Nor weare the Diademe vpon his head, Whose church-like humours fits not for a Crowne : Then Yorke be still a while till time do seme, Watch thou, and wake when others be asleepe, To prie into the secrets of the state, Till Henry surfeiting in ioyes of loue, With his new bride, and Englands dear bought queene, And Humphrey with the Peeres be falne at iarres, Then will I raise aloft the milke-white Rose, With whose sweete smell the aire shall be perfumde, And in my Standard beare the Armes of Yorke, To graffle with the House of Lancaster : And force perforce, ile make him yeeld the Crowne, Whose bookish rule hath puld faire England downe." (Contention, p. 7, 1. 143 - p. 8, 1. 166). In addition to the figures just discussed, there remain four which merit attention : Henry VI, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, Edward IV, and the young Prince Edward. These, in contrast with The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 159 the others, are good characters. The prince perhaps need not be seriously considered, because he appears relatively little and owes his romantic courage quite as much to the chronicle accounts as to the poet's original portraiture. The other three figures are likely to surprise the readers of the Contention and True Tragedy by their comparative tameness. It was in the presentation of the good characters that Shakespeare found his most fruitful opportunity to improve upon the delineation of the earlier plays. It is remarkable, certainly, that in the Contention the picture of so mean a creature as Suffolk remains clearer in the memory than that of Humphrey, the real hero of the epoch in the chronicle accounts and a particularly promising subject, one would say, for dramatic presentation. There is no question, I think, that the Contention fails on the whole to make Duke Humphrey and King Henry vivid personalities, and that the True Tragedy makes the capable and relatively virtuous Edward a far less interesting figure than either the villainous Richard or the madly impetuous and mischief -making Warwick. The same uncon- vincingness in the normal or good characters must strike the student of the acknowledged work of Marlowe, for that poet appears never to have been able to separate virtue from mediocrity or to portray vivid personality except in the prosecution of godless and desperate extravagance. To depict sympathetically and persuasively a great man strong in righteousness, as, for example, the unknown author of the contemporary play of Woodstock did with an earlier Duke of Gloucester very similar to Humphrey in character and fate, seems to have been decidedly beyond the range of Marlowe's genius. The representation of the king's well-meaning brother Edmund in Edward II and even of the great figure of Henry of Navarre in the Massacre at Paris illustrates the same failure on the poet's part to rise to the possibilities latent in the portrayal of simple nobleness. It would appear, therefore, that the presentation of character in the Contention and the True Tragedy manifests both the special merits and also the particular limitations of Marlowe's work. I think, moreover, that the parallel between the characters of the plays we are considering and those of accepted Marlovian dramas can be traced yet farther. Careful readers will hardly fail to notice the close resemblance between the complex quadrangle of relations between Henry VI, Margaret, Suffolk, and Prince Edward in our plays and the relations of Edw r ard II, Isabella, Young Mortimer, and Prince Edward in Edward II. So, too, the similarity between the treat- ment of Margaret's experiences at the French court and those of Isabella in Edward II seems very much closer than historic coin- 160 C. F. Tucker Brooke, cidence would make natural. It would perhaps be unduly tedious to dwell at length upon the likenesses between the two sets of charac- ters ; but it is certainly worth remarking that, wherever the analogy seems particularly striking, the Contention and True Tragedy will be found to be merely reproducing history, while Edward II frequently departs from the facts recorded by the chroniclers in order to conform to our plays. Thus, Edward IV's despatching of Warwick to France to prevent Louis from listening to Margaret's appeals is a well-known historic occurrence ; but Edward II's sending of Levune on a similar mission against Isabella appears to be a gratuitous invention suggested from the other play. Here, then, and in other instances, where an account of debit and credit can be set up between Edward II and the early versions of the Henry VI plays, it is the former which proves to be the borrower. Hence, if we are unwilling to admit that Marlowe was influenced in Edward II by reminiscence of his own earlier productions, we shall be driven to the unlikely conclusion that in his most mature play he introduced a series of small purposeless imitations of an inferior work by an undetermined author. 1 4. Verbal Parallels in the Contention and True Trag and in Accepted Plays of Marlowe. Previous critics have been struck with the close parallel between some six or eight passages in the plays under discussion and corre- sponding passages in Marlowe's acknowledged dramas, and they have explained the similarity in various ways. Dyce, who dis- covered five of the most important resemblances, believed that they indicated Marlowe's authorship of the Contention and True Tragedy, in part at least. 2 Grant White, holding the opposite view, tried to invalidate this testimony by the citation of several vague parallels between plays by Marlowe and others by Shakespeare. Miss Lee accepted the parallels as proof of Marlowe's authorship of parts of the plays, but attempted quite fruitlessly to point out another set of parallels with the works of Greene, in order that the claim of that poet might also be supported. 3 The list which follows will show that the verbal echoes of undoubted Marlovian dramas in the Contention and the True Tragedy are three or four times as numerous as has been hitherto suggested. It is important to discuss with some care what these resemblances really indicate. 1 For a further discussion of this point see p. 175 ff. * Cf. " Some Account of Marlowe and his Writings " in Dyce's edition of Marlowe (1850, etc.). 3 Cf. Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 187576, p. 248. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 161 It must be admitted as axiomatic that mere similarity or identity of language between two works does not of itself imply common authorship. In the case of Shakespeare, for example, striking repeti- tion of the wording of genuine plays in a doubtful work would go far to discredit the claim of the latter, because Shakespeare, who was often imitated by other writers, was never much disposed to repeat his own lines and phrases. In the present case, before the parallels in question can be used ta support the theory of Marlowe's authorship of the Contention and True Tragedy, it will be necessary first to prove from the certainly genuine plays that Marlowe was accustomed to reproduce his ideas and expressions in the particular manner in which our plays reproduce them, and then to show that the passages which appear in the plays before us cannot be reasonably explained as an alien poet's imitation of Marlowe's work. I believe it possible to establish both these theses. Marlowe's tendency to hark back to a favorite image or idea and to ring the changes upon any line which by its mellifluous flow had caught his fancy, is, indeed, too familiar to require much illustration. The following examples, selected rather at random among the undis- puted plays, will serve as a basis for comparison with the Marlovian parallels in the Contention and True Tragedy : (a) Tamburlaine, 1.729: "And now we will to faire Persepolis." ,, 1. 745 : " To follow me to faire Persepolis." ,, 1. 754 : " And ride in triumph through Persepolis. " 1. 755 : " And ride in triumph through Persepolis. " ,, 1. 759 : " And ride in triumph through Persepolis. " (b) Doctor Faustus, 11. 1422-1430: " Stand stil you euer moouing spheres of heauen, That time may cease, and midnight neuer come : Faire Natures eie, rise, rise againe, and make Perpetuall day, or let this houre be but A yeare, a moneth, a weeke, a naturall day, That Faustus may repent, and saue his soule. The starres mooue stil, time runs, the clocke wil strike The diuel wil come, and Faustus must be damnd Edward II, 11. 2050-2056 : " Continue euer thou celestiall sunne, Let neuer silent night possesse this clime, Stand still you watches of the element, 162 C. F. Tucker Brooke, All times and seasons rest you at a stay, That Edward may be still faire Englands king : But dayes bright beames dooth vanish fast away, And needes I must resigne my wished crowne." (c) Edward II, 11. 343 f. : " Ere my sweete Gaueston shall part from me, This He shall fleete vpon the Ocean." Dido, 11. 1340 f.: " And let rich Carthage fleete vpon the seas. So I may haue Aeneas in mine armes. " (d) Edward II, 11. 393-397 : " Proud Rome, that hatchest such imperiall groomes, For these thy superstitious taperlights, Wherewith thy antichristian churches blaze, He fire thy crazed buildings and enforce The papall towers to kisse the lowlie ground." Massacre at Paris, 11. 1210-1215 : " Which if I doe, the Papall Monarck goes To wrack and antechristian kingdome falles. These bloudy hands shall teare his triple Crowne, And fire accursed Rome about his eares. He fire his erased buildings and inforse The papall towers to kisse the holy earth." Jew of Malta, 11. 2066 f.: " I'le helpe to slay their children and their wiues, To fire the Churches, pull their houses downe." (e) Doctor Faustus, 11. 1328 f. : " Was this the face that lancht a thousand shippes, And burnt the toplesse Towres of Ilium ? " Dido, 11. 481 f.: " In whose sterne faces shin'd the quenchles fire, That after burnt the pride of Asia." (f) Edward II, 11. 117f.: " Brother, reuenge it, and let these their heads Preach vpon poles for trespasse of their tongues." Ibid., 1. 1326 : " Strike off their heads, and let them preach on poles. (g) Massacre at Paris, 1. 289: " Cheefe standard bearer to the Lutheranes." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 163 Ibid., I. 317 : " Cheef standard bearer to the Lutheranes." (h) Massacre at Paris, 11. 524-530: "I, but my Lord let me alone for that, For Katherine must haue her will in France : As I doe Hue, so surely shall he dye, And Henry then shall weare the diadem. And if he grudge or crosse his Mothers will, He disinherite him and all the rest : For He rule France, but they shall weare 'the crowne." Ibid., 11. 653-659: " Thus man, let me alone with him, To work the way to bring this thing to passe : And if he doe deny what I doe say, He dispatch him with his brother presently, And then shall Mounser weare the diadem : Thus, all shall dye vnles I haue my will, For while she Hues Katherine will be Queene." (i) Ibid., 11. 938 f. : " Come on sirs, what, are you resolutely bent, Hating the life and honour of the Guise ? " Ibid., 11. 956 f.: " But are they resolute and armde to kill, Hating the life and honour of the Guise ? " (j) Massacre at Paris, 11. 992 f. : " Now doe I but begin to look about, And all my former time was spent in vaine." Ibid., 11. 1011 f. : " Nay then tis time To look about." In the instances just cited, two kinds of parallels are illustrated. In some cases, as in (a), (f), (g), (i), (j), a striking line or expression, which has already been used once in a play, lingers in the poet's mind and repeats itself later either from carelessness or as a con- scious rhetorical device. In the other cases, though identity of wording is still largely present, this is of less importance than the identity of idea. In these latter instances, usually occurring in different plays, the poet happens to deal with similar conceptions, and his mind naturally reacts in each case in a similar manner, so that there results a parallel of thought and language, quite un- 164 C. F. Tucker Brooke, realized by the writer, but more clearly demonstrative of unity of authorship than any number of mere word echoes. Now, if Marlowe wrote the Contention and True Tragedy, we should normally expect to find both these types of parallels there illustrated. We should expect to find the poet introducing parallels of language and thought from his other plays particularly from those nearly contemporary with the ones in question ; and we should also expect to find him continuing the same practice of repetition within the new plays themselves. That is, we should expect to find the same similarities of language and idea between the different parts of the Contention and True Tragedy as between those plays and accepted works like the Massacre at Paris and Edward II. This is precisely what we do find. It will be well to take up first the passages which show the plays under consideration echoing lines in Marlowe's acknowledged dramas. I give a list of all the instances I have noted in the order in which they appear. The references allude, as before, to the page and line number in the Praetorius facsimiles of Contention and True Tragedy and to the line number in my edition of Marlowe : /(l) Contention, p. 4, 1. 30: " Her lookes did wound, but now her speech doth pierce." Dido, 1. 1007 : " Aeneas, no, although his eyes doe pearce." (2) Contention, p. 5, 1. 79: " Ah Lords, fatall is this marriage canselling our states." Massacre at Paris, 1. 206: " Oh fatall was this marriage to vs all." (3) Contention, p. 7, 11. 149 f. : " And when I spie aduantage, claime the Crowne, For thats the golden marke I seeke to hit." Ibid., p. 32, 1. 80: " And dogged Yorke that leuels at the Moone." Ibid., p. 53, 1. 94: " If honour be the marke whereat you aime." True Tragedy, p. 28, 1. 18: " Ambitious Yorke did leuell at thy Crowne." Edward II, 11. 1581 f. : " Thats it these Barons and the subtill Queene Long leueld at." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 165 Ibid., 1. 2277: "It is the chief est marke they leuell at." (4) Contention, p. 8, 1. 156: " Watch thou and wake when others be asleepe." Massacre at Paris, 1. 104: " For this I wake, when others think I sleepe." (5) Contention, p. 12, 11. 49 f. : " But still must be protected like a childe, And gouerned by that ambitious Duke." Edward II, 11. 1336 f. : " As though your highnes were a schoole boy still, And must be awde and gouernd like a child." (6) Contention, p. 13, 11. 59-61 : " I tell thee Poull, when thou didst runne at Tilt, And stolst away our Ladaies hearts in France, I thought King Henry had bene like to thee." .Edward II, 11. 2516-2518: " Tell Isabell the Queene, I lookt not thus, When for her sake I ran at tilt in Fraunce, And there vnhorste the duke of Cleremont." (7) Contention, p. 17, 11. 15 f. : " (Night) Wherein the Furies maske in hellish troupes, Send vp I charge you from Sosetus lake." Tamburlaine, 1. 1999: " Furies from the blacke Cocitus lake." (8) Contention, p. 25, 1. 10: " Euen to my death, for I haue liued too long." Edward II, 1. 2651 : " Nay, to my death, for too long haue I liued." (9) Contention, p. 25, 1. 17: " For sorrowes teares hath gripte my aged heart." Ibid., p. 42, 1. 12: " See how the panges of death doth gripe his heart." True Tragedy, p. 21, 1. 156: " How inlie anger gripes his hart." Massacre at Paris, 11. 542 f. : " A griping paine hath ceasde vpon my heart : A sodaine pang, the messenger of death." 166 C. F. Tucker Brooke, (10) Contention, p. 27, 11. 9 f . : " That earst did follow thy proud Chariot wheeles, When thou didst ride in tryumph through the streetes." Massacre at Paris, 11. 990 f. : " So will I triumph ouer this wanton King, And he shall follow my proud Chariots wheeles." Tamburlaine, 1. 754 (repeated in 11. 755, 759) : " And ride in triumph through Persepolis." (11) Contention, p. 33, 11. 134-136: " The wilde Onele my Lords, is vp in Armes, With troupes of Irish Kernes that vncontrold Doth plant themselues within the English pale." Edward II, 11. 969 f . : " The wilde Oneyle, with swarmes of Irish Kernes Liues vncontroulde within the English pale." (12) Contention, p. 39, 1. 127: " To trie how quaint an Orator you \vere." True Tragedy, p. 12, 1. 2: " Nay, I can better plaie the Orator." Ibid., p. 29, 1. 42 : " Full wel hath Clifford plaid the Orator." Tamburlaine, 1. 32 : ' Or looke you, I should play the Orator." Ibid., 1. 328: " Our swords shall play the Orators for vs." 1 (13) Contention, p. 49, 11. 6 f . : " Lord Say, lacke Cade hath solemnely vowde to haue thy head. Say. I, but I hope your highnesse shall haue his." Massacre at Paris, 11. 783 f. : " For he hath solemnely sworne thy death. Muge. I may be stabd, and Hue till he be dead." (14) Contention, p. 57, 1. 53: " Deepe trenched furrowes in his frowning brow." True Tragedy, p. 68, 11. 10 f. : " The wrinkles in my browes now fild with bloud Were likened oft to kinglie sepulchers." Edward II, 1. 94 : " The sworde shall plane the furrowes of thy browes." 1 A similar line is found in Shakespeare's Richard III. Ill, v, 94 : " Doubt not, my lord, I'll play the orator." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 167 Massacre at Paris, \. 158 : " Giue me a look, that when I bend the browes, Pale death may walke in furrowes of my face." (15) True Tragedy, p. 10, 1. 177: " And die in bands for this vnkingly deed." Edward II, 1. 1289 : " Weaponless must I fall and die in bands ? " (16) True Tragedy, p. 11, 1. 2101: " Sterne Fawconbridge Commands the narrow seas." Ibid., p. 64, 1. 24: " Is past in safetie through the narrow seas." Edward II, 1. 970 : " The hautie Dane commands the narrow seas." (17) True Tragedy, p. 21, 11. 139 f. : " But you are more inhumaine, more inexorable, O ten times more then Tygers of Arcadia (i. e., Hyrcania) " 1 Edward II, I. 2057 : " Inhumaine creatures, nurst with Tigers milke." Dido, 11. 1566 f. : " But thou art sprung from Scythian Caucasus, And Tygers of Hircania gaue thee sucke." (18) True Tragedy, p. 19, 1. 92: " Off with the Crowne and with the Crowne his head." Edward II, 1. 2043 : " Here, take my crowne, the life of Edward too." (19) True Tragedy, p. 21, 11. 164 f. : " Off with his head and set it on Yorke Gates, So Yorke maie ouerlooke the towne of Yorke." Edward II, 11. 1547 f. : " For which thy head shall ouerlooke the rest As much as thou in rage out wentst the rest." (20) True Tragedy, p. 23, 11. 45 f. : " Sweet Duke of Yorke, our prop to leane vpon, Now thou art gone there is no hope for vs." 1 " Arcadia," the reading of the editions of 1595 and 1619, is evidently a printer's error. The 1623 edition gives the correct " Hyrcania." 168 C. F. Tucker Brooke, Massacre at Paris, 11. 11221: " Sweet Duke of Guise, our prop to leane vpon, Now thou art dead, heere is no stay for vs." (21) True Tragedy, p. 39, 11. 30 f. : " Thus farre our fortunes keepes an vpward Course, And we are grast with wreathes of victorie." Ibid., p. 69, 11. 1 1 : " Thus still our fortune giues vs victorie, And girts our temples with triumphant ioies." Massacre at Paris, 1. 794: " And we are grac'd with wreathes of victory." (22) True Tragedy, p. 43, 1. 9: " Your highnesse shall doe well to grant it then." Jew of Malta, 1. 274 : " Your Lordship shall doe well to let them haue it.' (23) True Tragedy, p. 52, 1. 189: " Did I impale him with the regall Crowne." Edward II., 11. 1472 f. : " The royall vine, whose golden leaues Empale your princelie head, your diadem." (24) True Tragedy, p. 66, 11. 32 f. : " But whilst he sought to steale the single ten, The king was finelie fingerd from the decke." Massacre at Paris, 11. 146-148: " Since thou hast all the Gardes within thy hands To shuffle or cut, take this as surest thing : That right or wrong, thou deale thy selfe a King." (25) True Tragedy, p. 68, 11. 6 f . : " Thus yeelds the Cedar to the axes edge, Whose armes gaue shelter to the princelie Eagle." Edward II., 11. 818 f. : " A loftie Cedar tree faire flourishing, On whose top-branches Kinglie Eagles pearch." (26) True Tragedy, p. 68, 1. 9: " Whose top branch ouerpeerd loues spreading tree. Edward II., 11. 2579 f. : " I stand as loues huge tree, And others are but shrubs compard to me." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 169 (27) True Tragedy, p. 71, 11. 35-37 : " See brothers, yonder stands the thornie wood, Which by Gods assistance and your prowesse, Shall with our swords yer night be cleane cut downe." Tamburlaine, 11. 1397-1399: " Shaking their swords, their speares and yron bils, Enuironing their standard round, that stood As bristle-pointed as a thorny wood." (28) True Tragedy, p. 76, 11. 50 f . : " What ? will the aspiring bloud of Lancaster Sinke into the ground ? I had thought it would haue mounted." Edward II, 1. 93 : " Frownst thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster ? " Ibid., 11. 2000 f. : " Highly scorning that the lowly earth Should drinke his bloud, mounts vp into the ayre.". In a number of the passages just quoted (e. g., nos. 3, 9, 12, 14), parallels appear not only with the accepted plays of Marlowe, but also between the various parts of the Contention and True Tragedy. In the following additional instances the plays we are considering exhibit parallels for which the acknowledged plays offer no suggestion or counterpart : (29) Contention, p. 4, 1. 39: " Till terme of eighteene months be full expired." Ibid., p. 5, 11. 60 f.: " Till terme of 18. months be full expirde." (30) Contention, p. 6, 11. 98-101 : " The common people swarme about him straight, Crying lesus blesse your royall exellence, With God preserue the good Duke Humphrey, And many things besides that are not knowne." Ibid., p. 30, U. 9-12: " See you not how the Commons follow him In troupes, crying, God saue the good Duke Humphrey, And with long life, lesus preserue his grace, Honouring him as if he were their King." (31) Contention, p. 6, 1. 104: " lie laie a plot to heaue him from his seate." 170 C. F. Tucker Brooke, Ibid., p. 6, 1. Ill : " Weele quickly heaue Duke Humphrey from his seate. (32) Contention, p. 6, 1. 108: " And put them from the marke they faine would hit.' Ibid., p. 1, 1. 150: " For thats the golden marke I seeke to hit." (33) Contention, p. 7, 11. 144 f. : " Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Euen as I haue of fertill England." Ibid., p. 31, 11. 34 f. : " Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Euen as I haue of fertill England." (34) Contention, p. 23, 1. 171 : " My mind doth tell me thou art innocent." Ibid., p. 32, 1. 70: " My conscience tells me thou art innocent." (35) Contention, p. 33, 11. 1181: " If our King Henry had shooke hands with death, Duke Humphrey then would looke to be our King." True Tragedy, p. 19, 11. 86 f. : " As I bethinke me you should not be king, Till our Henry had shooke hands with death." (36) Contention, p. 40, 1. 165: " You bad me ban, and will you bid me sease ? " True Tragedy, p. 20, 1. 128: " Bids thou me rage ? why now thou hast thy will." (37) Contention, p. 62, 1. 63: " Make hast, for vengeance comes along with them." True Tragedy, p. 38, 1. 61 : " Awaie my Lord for vengeance comes along with him. (38) True Tragedy, p. 33, l.'3-p. 34, 1. 5: " For strokes receiude, and manie blowes repaide, Hath robd my strong knit sinnews of their strength, And force perforce needes must I rest my selfe." Ibid., p. 68, 11. 25-27: " For manie wounds receiu'd, and manie moe repaid, Hath robd my strong knit sinews of their strength, And spite of spites needes must I yeeld to death." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 171 (39) True Tragedy, p. 45, 1. 64: " Her lookes are all repleat with males tie." Ibid., p. 63, I. 19: " Thy lookes are all repleat with Maiestie." Contention, p. 4, 1. 21 : " Lend me a heart repleat with thankfulnesse." (40) True Tragedy, p. 47, I. 107: " For I am not yet lookt on in the world." Ibid., p. 78, 1. 22 : " For yet I am not lookt on in the world." (41) True Tragedy, p. 52, 11. 135-143: " tell false Edward thy supposed king, That Lewis of France is sending ouer Maskers To reuell it with him and his now bride. Bona. Tell him in hope heele be a Widower shortlie, He weare the willow garland for his sake. Queen. Tell him my mourning weedes be laide aside, And I am readie to put armor on. War. Tell him from me, that he hath done me wrong, And therefore He vncrowne him er't be long." Ibid., p. 56, 11. 64-66, 69 1, 74 1, 79 f. : " tell false Edward thy supposed king, That Lewis of France is sending ouer Maskers, To reuill it with him and his new bride . . . Tel him, quoth she, in hope heele proue a widdower shortly He weare the willow garland for his sake . . . Teh 1 him, quoth shee, my mourning weeds be Doone, And I am readie to put armor on ... Tell him quoth he, that he hath done me wrong, And therefore lie vncrowne him er't be long." (42) True Tragedy, p. 59, 1. 52 f. : " And free king Henry from imprisonment, And see him seated in his regall throne." Ibid., p. 63, 1. 58: " And pull false Henry from the Regall throne." (43) True Tragedy, p. 65, 1. 3: " Awaie with him, I will not heare him speake." Ibid., p. 72, 1. 50 : " Awaie, I will not heare them speake." 172 C. F. Tucker Brooke, Even though one rates evidence derived from parallel passages at its very lowest value, making every allowance for possible coin- cidence, I believe that the cumulative force of this long list of resem- blances must go very near to proving identity of authorship between the Contention and True Tragedy and the plays of Marlowe. In the face of the number, complexity, and closeness of the parallels in the first list (nos. 128) Grant White's theory of mere accident seems now entirely indefensible. And reason argues hardly less strongly, I think, against the other alternative of conscious plagiarism. Mar- lowe, to be sure, was a much imitated writer. Yet it is notorious that none of the poet's imitators was ever able to raise his own style near enough to that of his model to prevent the presence of the stolen finery striking the attention of any careful reader. The probability of Marlowe's authorship of the Contention and True Tragedy gains in force very considerably upon comparison of their Marlovian parallels with the conspicuous borrowings from Tambur- laine and Doctor Faustus in the pre- Shakespearean Taming of a Shrew. 1 The two cases are fundamentally different. The passages in the Contention and True Tragedy which are reminiscent of accepted plays do not arouse attention in their contexts. In every instance they are homogeneous with the rest of the speeches in which they occur, and they illustrate the same habits of mind shown in the parallels between the genuine plays. On the other hand, the borrow- ings from Marlowe in the Taming of a Shrew are totally different in style from the rest of the play and incongruous with its spirit. Of this unevenness, indicating the presence of an alien mind, no trace is found in the dramas we are discussing. A strong additional proof of the Marlovian quality of the Con- tention and True Tragedy is implied in the list of parallels (nos. 2943) occurring within those plays alone. Here no model was furnished by other plays of Marlowe. Yet the distinctive note of Marlowe's style seems clearly apparent in the more conspicuous of these passages, such as nos. 32, 33, 38, 39, 42 : and the repetition of wording and idea is in these cases of precisely the same kind as that found in the parallels between the various accepted plays (a j) and between those plays and ours (nos. 128). Here we have a state of affairs which seems quite unexplainable on any assumption of plagiarism. Even if we admit the possibility that another writer could imitate passages in Marlowe's plays with the delicate fidelity 1 A detailed list of these parallels is given in Appendix I of Prof. Boas's edition of The Taming of a Shrew, 1908. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 173 to verse music and feeling, and yet with the perfect appropriateness to the new context which appear in examples 128, it seems utterly fantastic to imagine that this writer could then proceed to compose from his own mind other lines perfectly suggestive of Marlowe and to vary these original lines in precisely the manner in which he had varied those stolen from Marlowe. No poet, it may probably be said, who plagiarizes largely from another, will plagiarize from himself in the same manner and to the same relative extent. Yet no one, I think, can compare such parallels as those cited above in (b), (c), (d), in (6), (11), (17), and in (35), (38), (42) without feeling that in each case the same mind has been at work both in the original con- ception of the idea and in its later repetition. To conclude otherwise would be to assume that there existed, all unknown to history, an exact intellectual double to one of the most original and peculiar geniuses in English literature. I believe that Marlowe's authorship of the Contention and True Tragedy is sufficiently attested, in so far as the parallel passages bear upon the question, by what has been already said. There is, however, a further point which it seems improper to ignore, since it offers positive evidence in the same direction. It will have been observed that decidedly the greatest number of the resemblances between the Contention and True Tragedy and the canonical plays of Marlowe in the list given on pp. 164169 refer to Edward II and The Massacre at Paris. Of the twenty-eight parallels there cited, fourteen concern the former play and nine the latter. The obvious inference from this is that these four dramas, all dealing with historical themes, were composed within relatively short limits of time. It is important to attempt to fix the precise sequence of the four plays in question, since the theory that an unidentified author imitated Marlowe in the Contention and True Tragedy is tenable only on the assumption that the latter plays are subsequent to those from which they appear to borrow. Some of the parallels offer evidence on this question. Wherever a passage appearing in two plays is naturally suggested by the con- text in one, while in the other it appears out of keeping or unne- cessary to the argument, I think it may be assumed that the passage is original in the former instance and has been gratuitously intro- duced in the second either by a trick of the author's memory or by the conscious imitation of a later writer. Now, in regard to The Massacre at Paris, though the material for inference is rather scanty, the probabilities seem to favor the priority of that play to The Contention and The True Tragedy. For example, the allusion to the TRANS. CONN. ACAD., Vol. XVII. 12 JULY, 1912. 174 C. F. Tucker Brooke, " proud chariot's wheels " in the tenth parallel is perfectly natural in the context in which it appears in the Massacre. Guise is referring to Roman life in a carefully sustained simile : " As ancient Romanes ouer their Captiue Lords, So will I triumph ouer this wanton King, And he shall follow my proud Chariots wheeles." In the case of the Contention, however, the allusion to the chariot is anachronistic and even absurd, for Humphrey is speaking, without any suggestion of figurative language, of his own wife and of the present time : " Sweete Nell, ill can thy noble minde abrooke The abject people gazing on thy face, That earst did follow thy proud Chariot wheeles, When thou didst ride in tryumph through the streetes." May we not here feel reasonably sure that the picture of the Duchess Eleanor driving in triumph through fifteenth-century London streets in a proud chariot with the abject people following at her wheels is due to a mischievous freak of the poet's memory, which suddenly diverted his attention from the real subject and caused Humphrey's plain speech to end incongruously with the repetition of a remembered line from the Massacre and another from Tamburlaine ? There is one other parallel which seems likewise to suggest the earlier composition of the Massacre. When, near the close of that play, Dumaine says of his brother (1. 11221), " Sweet Duke of Guise, our prop to leane vpon, Now thou art dead, heere is no stay for vs," he is speaking only what the exigencies of the occasion justify, for the Guise's party is crushed and the speaker himself is at the moment threatened with death. However, when Edward repeats virtually the same words in the True Tragedy (p. 23, 1. 45 f.), " Sweet Duke of Yorke, our prop to leane vpon, Now thou art gone there is no hope for vs," they seem decidedly less appropriate to the speaker's situation, for Edward's emotion is merely personal sorrow at his father's death, and his very next speech shows that he is as far as possible from having lost political hope : " His name that valiant Duke hath left with thee (i. e., Richard), His chaire and Dukedome that remaines for me." (1. 56f.) The Authorship of "King Henry VI." 175 The case is different with the parallels between our plays and Edward II. When Queen Margaret, enraged at the mild inasser- tiveness of Henry's character and the consequent predominance of Gloucester and his Duchess at the English court, exclaims to Suffolk (paraUel 6) : " I tell thee Poidl, when thou didst runne at Tilt, And stolst away our Ladaies hearts in France, I thought King Henry had bene like to thee, Or else thou hadst not brought me out of France," the words are admirably adapted to the speaker's character and to the facts of history. The chroniclers all give special attention to the magnificent jousts in which Suffolk was the chief figure, both during his negotiations with the French king for Henry's marriage and later when he returned to France as Henry's representative to escort the new queen to England. The similar lines spoken by Edward II in his distress, " Tell Isabell the Queene, I lookt not thus, When for her sake I ran at Tilt in France, And there vnhorste the duke of Cleremont," add a desired touch of romance and pathos to the king's figure, but they seem to be quite unjustified by history. The words which naturally suggested themselves in connexion with Suffolk's knightly accomplishments seem to have been consciously repeated in order to lend an unhistoric charm to the personality of the hero of a later play. So far w r as Edward II reaUy, at the time of his marriage with Isabella, from paralleling the chivalrous feats of Suffolk, that a very dark cloud was thrown over the wedding and coronation ceremonies (January, February, 1308) by the obvious degeneracy and effeminacy of the bridegroom. 1 In the O'Neill passages, again, the Contention version (parallel 11) seems clearly the original, suggested by the historical sources and by dramatic propriety, while the similar lines in Edward II form a mere replica which, except for the recollection of the already written Contention, would have had nothing to suggest it. The name O'Neill was, indeed, very familiar to the English public of Marlowe's day in connexion with Irish disturbances because of the activities of " the . great O'Neill," as Fabyan calls him, who was created Earl of Tyrone in 1543 after thrice invading the Pale. But the lines of the Contention, 1 See Chalfant Robinson, " Was King Edward the Second a Degenerate ? " American Journal of Insanity, 1910, p. 454 f. 176 C. F. Tucker Brooke, " The wilde Onele my Lords, is vp in armes, With troupes of Irish Kernes that vncontrold, Doth plant themselves within the English pale," perfectly describe the situation at the time of the action of the play Henry O'Neill (d. 1489) was at this period a conspicuous figure in Irish affairs, and was officially recognized by England in 1459. The despatch of the Duke of York, in 1448, to quell the unrest in Ireland, the remarkable success of the Duke, and the consequent devotion of the Irish to his cause during the English civil wars were facts dwelt upon at considerable length by all the chroniclers, and they had an important bearing upon the fortunes of the Yorkist party. The similar lines in Edward II, on the other hand, " The wilde Onele, with swarmes of Irish Kernes, Liues vncontroulde within the English pale," must be regarded as a mere fabrication of the poet. No O'Neill, living at this period, is regognized by the Dictionary of National Bio- graphy. Nor was there an Irish rebellion at the time w r hen Gaveston was sent as governor to Ireland. 1 Only four lines after the O'Neill passage in Edward II, Young Mortimer cites another evidence of Edward's misrule (1. 970 f.) : " The hautie Dane commands the narrow seas, While in the harbor ride thy ships vnrigd." Now history knows nothing, apparently, of any Danish interference with the English seas during Edward II's reign. But the corre- sponding line in the True Tragedy (parallel 16) " Sterne Fawconbridge commands the narrow seas" alludes to a prominent actual character of the time and to an actual situation. In these cases it would seem preposterous to believe that histor- ically unfounded lines were needlessly invented by Marlowe in Edward II, and that these lines were then later found to fit precisely the historic facts presented in the Henry VI plays. The debt must lie the other way, as the evidence discussed on pages 159 and 160 also suggests. 1 /. e., 1308/9. Later, in 1315, war broke out in connexion with Edward Bruce's attempt to gain the Irish crown, and the O'Neills appeared on his side (cf. T. F. Tout, Political History of England, 12161377, p. 270). At this time Gaveston had been dead three years. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." ill Thus, we get the following sequence of plays : Massacre at Paris Contention True Tragedy Edward II. Once this order is accepted, the theory that the Contention and True Tragedy were written by an imitator of Marlowe and not by Marlowe himself becomes indefen- sible, since upholders of that theory would be obliged to assume that the plagiarist first succeeded in introducing into the plays we are con- sidering marvellous imitations of the spirit and language of Marlowe's earlier dramas, such as Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and The Massacre at Paris ; next that he himself composed other original passages conspicuously suggestive of Marlowe's hand ; and then that Marlowe borrowed copiously from these passages in his later play of Edward II. By this theory, one would have to assume such a poetic identity between the two authors, each writing in the same style, and each stealing from the other in the same manner, that the two would constitute a kind of literary syndicate, To any one who considers Marlowe's striking individuality and his aloofness from all his dramatic contemporaries, no conception can well seem more extravagant. 5. Metrical evidence. The imperfect state in which the Contention and True Tragedy are preserved in the earliest editions of 1594/5 makes it impossible to apply metrical tests to the solution of the problem of authorship with even the doubtful authority which such tests possess in the case of the works of Shakespeare. Yet, after allowing for the in- conclusiveness of this evidence, the results obtained by tabulating the various metrical criteria seem pretty strongly to suggest homo- geneity of authorship between the Contention and True Tragedy and the Marlovian plays of about the same date, while they point yet more decisively to the fact that the Contention and True Tragedy cannot have been written by the author of the new passages inserted in the revised 2 and 3 Henry VI. JjBlank verse, as written by Marlowe, is a definitely decasyllabic measure, in which the individual line is still unmistakeably the poetic unit. Marlowe, therefore, avoids run-on lines, in which the division of one verse from the nex,t is obscured in the unity of sentence or paragraph ; and double-ending lines, in which the normal ten-syllable measure is varied by the addition of a more or less strongly stressed eleventh syllablej These latter features, which give the impression of colloquial ease, grew steadily more conspicuous, as dramatic verse came in the later Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights to be re- garded less as a medium for impassioned lyric declamation and more 178 C. F. Tucker Brooke, as a vehicle of real conversation. Run-on lines and double endings are far more frequent even in the earliest of Shakespeare's plays than in Marlowe's, and in the works of such Jacobean writers as Fletcher and Massinger they predominate to such an extent as to make the blank verse of these writers largely lose the quality of poetry and become, like much of Wordsworth's, mere measured prose. The change indicated is in great measure a regular evolution occasioned by a change in the purpose and tone of the drama from Marlowe's time to Fletcher's ; and the stylistic peculiarities of Mar- lowe's verse are shared, to a certain extent, by several of the more impassioned writers of his age by Kyd and Peele, for example. The discussion of the minutiae of versification by which Marlowe's in- dividual style can be distinguished even from that of his immediate contemporaries would be not altogether germane to the present sub- ject, and would carry the inquiry unjustifiably far afield. I hope to prosecute this investigation in another place. For the present, I offer the statistics below as proving merely that the Contention and True Tragedy cannot reasonably be regarded as the work of the author who wrote the additions to these plays in 2 and 3 Henry VI, while fully agreeing with the theory that Marlowe wrote the first two pla^s and Shakespeare the additions. One of the most striking characteristics of Marlowe's verse, an outgrowth of his tendency to emphasize the division of lines and his dislike of double endings, is the frequent appearance of two weak syllables in the final foot. This pyrrhic ending gives the verse a kind of dying fall which very markedly emphasizes its close. It also permits the avoidance of a double ending where words like " resolu- tion" or "valiant" conclude the line. In such cases, Marlowe and the author of Contention and True Tragedy normally pronounce every possible syllable, making the line a regular pentameter, whereas Shakespeare and the author of the additions in 2 and 3 Henry VI cause the fifth foot to close with the stressed antepenult of the word, and run the remaining " -tion " or " -iant " together as a single super- fluous eleventh syllableT^The ordinary Marlovian pronunciation is seen in the line : "Before /we part / with our/ posses- /tfi-on." (Tamburlaine, 340) or " Desirde / her more, / and waxt / outra- / gi-ous " (Edward II, 857) / The usual Shakespearean scansion, on the other hand, appears in the line (Richard III, I, 1, 18): The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 179 " I that / am cur- / tail'd of / this fair / proper- / tion '/ Marlowe, writing this last line, would normally have omitted two of the syllables. " I, cur- / tail'd of/this fair / proper- / ti-on " or, " I that/ am cur- / tail'd of / proper / ti-on " would represent the regular Marlovian rhythm. Marlowe's avoidance of the eleventh syllable and his fondness for the pyrrhic fifth foot frequently led him to make trisyllables out of awkward final dissyllables such as " England " by the insertion of a colorless parasitic vowel before the liquid consonant. Thus, (Edward II, 1. 581), " But can- / not brooke / a night / grown mush- / (e)rump / (mush- room) " This tendency is illustrated in the second line of a couplet which occurs twice in the Contention (p. 7, 1. 145 ; p. 31, 1. 35) : " Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Even as I I have / of fer- / till Eng- ( (e}land." The rhythm of the italicized verse, quite characteristic of Marlowe, was clearly displeasing to the reviser, for in each of the corresponding lines in 2 Henry VI he has altered the metrical flow according to his own principles of prosody. In the first instance (2 Henry VI, I, i, 239) he has made the last foot a regular iambus by the addition of a color- less monosyllable : " Even as / I have / of fer- / tile Eng- / land's soil" In the second case (2 Henry VI, III, i, 88), he has an eleven-syllable line : " As firm- / ly as / I hope / for fer- / tile Eng- / land." Since no alteration of meaning is involved in these changes, and since the revised lines are not inherently more musical or more correct than the original, it is clear that the alteration illustrates the dis- agreement between the stylistic idiosyncracies of the twd v x poets.. There are many other instances in which lines with the peculiar Marlovian rhythm in Contention and True Tragedy have been recast in 2 and 3 Henry VI merely in order to avoid the pyrrhic final foot or in order to admit the eleventh-syllable mannerism of the reviser. In the following cases the revised form seems actually inferior to the older version : Contention, p. 32, 1. 100: " Before / his legs / can beare / his bo- / die vp." 180 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 2 Henry VI, III, i, 190 : " Before / his legs / be firm / to bear / his bo- / dy." Contention, p. 37, 1. 59 : " Of a- / shie sem- / blance, pale, / and blood- / (e)lesse." 2 Henry VI, III, ii, 162 : " Of a- / shy sem- / blance, mea- / gre, pale, / and blood- / less." Contention, p. 38, 1. 93: " Blunt wit- / ted Lord, / igno- / ble in / thy words." 2 Henry VI, III, ii, 210 : " Blunt wit- / ted lord, / igno- / ble in / demea- / nour." Contention, p. 57, 1. 51 : " Did worke / me and / my land / such cru- / ell spight." 2 Henry IV, V, i, 70: " That Ii- / ving wrought / me such / excee- / ding trou- / ble." True Tragedy, p. 5, 1. 55 : " My heart / for an- / ger breakes, / I can- / not speake." 3 Henry VI, I, i, 60 : " My heart / for an- / ger burns ; / I can- / not brook / it." True Tragedy, p. 49, 1. 39: " Whose wise- / dome was / a mir- / rour to / the world." 3 Henry VI, III, iii, 84 : "Whose wis- / dom was / a mir / ror to / the wis- / est." Trve Tragedy, p. 62, 1. 35: " With what / secur' / ty we / maie doe / this thing." 3 Henry VI, IV, vii, 52: " By what / safe means / the crown / may be / reco- / ver'd." Trve Tragedy, p. 70, 1. 22: " Women / and chil- / dren of / so high / resolve." 3 Henry VI, V, iv, 50: " Women / and chil- / dren of / so high / a cou- / rage." Trve Tragedy, p. 76, i, 56 : "If a- / nie sparke / of life / remaine / in thee." 3 Henry VI, V, vi, 66: "If a- / ny spark / of life / be yet / remai- / ning." Of course, it is not to be supposed that Marlowe never wrote eleven-syllable lines or that the reviser (Shakespeare) never employed the pyrrhic fifth foot. The figures below would at once dispel such The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 181 a notion. It seems quite clear, however, that the normal tendencies of the two writers were distinctly opposed as regards the use of these two metrical forms. The list which I have just given of ten- syllable lines in Contention and True Tragedy expanded into eleven- syllable lines in the revised plays might be greatly increased ; but 1 have been unable to find even a single instance of the converse, where an eleven-syllable line in the original version has been recast as ten syllables. There follows a list of the percentages of pyrrhic fifth feet, eleven- syllable lines, and run-on lines in three of Marlowe's later plays Edward II, The Massacre at Paris, and The Jew of Malta ; in the Contention and the True Tragedy ; in those parts of 2 and J Henry VI not found in the earlier plays or found there in essentially different form ; and in Shakespeare's most closely connected play, Richard III. Percent Percent Percent Total number pyrrhic 11 -syllable run-on of metrical fifth feet lines lines lines Contention 1 4 4 + 1254 2 Henry VI 11 14 10 2148 (additional matter) True Tragedy 10 7 5 1865 3 Henry VI 8 14 7V 2 1550 (additional matter) Edward II 13V 2 4V 3 6 2 / 3 2519 Massacre at Paris 14 2 7 x / 4 1039 Jew of Malta 18 3 10Y 8 1811 Richard III 9 19+ 13+ 3412 The evidence of this table is, on the whole, quite definite. In the small percentage of eleven-syllable lines (less than four percent and seven percent respectively) the Contention and True Tragedy, even in their corrupted texts, agree closely with the undisputed plays of Marlowe, and are strikingly at variance with the additional matter of the 1623 edition (14 percent) and with Richard III (19 percent). In the work which I would attribute to Marlowe to put the converse of what has just been said the percentage of ten-syllable lines out of the total number scannable as pentameters, ranges from 98 percent in The Massacre at Paris to 93 percent in The True Tragedy. The average is well above 95 percent. In the additional matter of the Henry VI plays, however, the percentage of ten-syllable lines is only 86 and in Richard III only 81. So too, the percentage of pyrrhic fifth feet is in all the work ascribed 182 C. F. Tucker Brooke, to Marlowe considerably in excess of the percentage of eleven-syllable lines, whereas in all the work ascribed to Shakespeare the proportion is reversed. The ratio of run-on lines bears out the same division with two easily explainable irregularities. Normally Marlowe paused at the close of nearly every line even in his latest plays. In the Contention and True Tragedy, only about five percent of the lines run on ; in Edward II and The Massacre at Paris only about seven percent. 1 Shakespeare's percentage of run-on lines, however, even in so early a play as Richard III, is over thirteen. Apparently, therefore, we should expect something over the ten percent of run- on lines in the additional matter in 2 Henry VI, and considerably more than the seven and a half percent of J. Henry VI. However, this exception is only superficial. The figures are based on the total number of lines added or materially altered in the 1623 edition, but the opportunity for the reviser to insert run-on lines occurred almost exclusively in new passages extending to several verses. In 3 Henry VI, especially, the reviser's work consists very largely of single new lines, almost necessarily end-stopped, because not closely consecutive with the old matter ; and of old lines rewritten, where the original pauses were for the most part retained. If the per- centages of run-on lines in the supposedly Shakespearean part of 2 and 3 Henry VI were based entirely upon the number of lines where the reviser had a fair opportunity of arranging verse pause according to his own ear, the proportion would be found very mate- rially in excess of that given in the table. The figures in the table contain, indeed, only one serious discrep- ancy. That occurs in the ratio of pyrrhic fifth feet in the Contention and in the additional matter of 2 Henry VI respectively. Since Mar- lowe uses the mannerism in question much more frequently than Shakespeare, one would expect the percentages of seven for the Contention and eleven for the " new " matter to be reversed. Rules relating to metrical tests are doubtless particularly subject to ex- ceptions, and it may be, of course, that the irregularity here is only accidental. It is worth noting, however, that this apparent dis- crepancy lends weight to the inference, which on other grounds amounts to practical certainty, that the 1254 lines printed in the Contention give a much abbreviated and corrupted version of Mar- lowe's manuscript, whereas the large number of new and altered 1 It seems almost certain that the relatively high percentage of run-on lines in The Jew of Malta is due to the serious alteration which that play suffered between Marlowe's death and its publication in 1633. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 183 lines in 2 Henry VI (2148) include not only Shakespeare's revisions, but also a very considerable amount of original matter not represented in the Contention.* 6. How far do the Contention and True Tragedy represent Marlowe's original text? In the last section it was suggested that, although the evidence of metre in general strongly confirms the idea that the Contention and True Tragedy were written by Marlowe and altered by Shake- speare into 2 and 3 Henry VI, at least one metrical consideration indicates that Marlowe's share in the performance is not wholly represented in the 1594/5 text. Evidence of another kind, now to be discussed, points in the same direction, justifying the assumption that the 1623 version of the plays, besides including for the first time the alterations of Shakespeare, also represented a purer and more complete copy of the Mario vian work than Millington, the publisher of the 1594/5 quartos, was able to acquire. Though there appears not a shadow of likelihood of collaborationx in the original composition of the Contention and True Tragedy, there is a practical certainty of contamination of Marlowe's text./ No intelligent reader will probably desire to hold so careful a metrist as Marlowe responsible for the five percent, or more, of totally unscannable lines in Contention and True Tragedy, or for the three percent in The Massacre at Paris and four percent in The Jeu> of Malta. Moreover, since it is known that inferior matter, not by Marlow r e, was injected into Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus, sub- sequent to their original composition, is it not impossible that spuri- ous scenes may have been added to the Contention and True Tragedy even before they were revised by Shakespeare. The unusual excellence of the Folio text of Shakespeare's plays in- clines us to estimate too highly the accuracy of the extant versions of the works of other dramatists of the period. Shakespeare's practical connexion with the company that acted his plays was productive to the poet of many benefits, both literary and temporal. Among others, it protected the acting version of his plays from outside inter- ference, made sure that such changes as might from time to time become commercially desirable should during his life be made by the poet himself, and after his death procured the careful editing of the genuine texts by those who knew most about them. Thus Shake- speare's position in his company and the friendly services of his 1 For a further discussion of this point, see pp. 184 188. 184 C. F. Tucker Brooke, " fellows," Hemings and Condell gained for his works the same textual purity which Ben Jonson obtained by the unusual expedient of personal revision and publication. With the dramas of Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and other popular writers not connected with particular companies, the case is very different. For these poets the power of ensuring the form of their productions ceased when the plays were once sold to an acting company. Yet a popular play was likely to need frequent reno- vation in the eyes of the company's manager, and the latter would be likely to turn the manuscript over for revision to some hack in his employ often, doubtless, to one incapable of appreciating the purposes of the original poet. Moreover, there was small chance that a valuable stage play would reach the press even in the modi- fied form in which the actors presented it; for the companies cer- tainly frowned on publication. Therefore, a very large number of the dramas of Marlowe and his contemporaries were printed sur- reptitiously from damaged, imperfect, or superseded drafts less authoritative even than the playhouse copies. In the case of no play of Marlowe, not even in the case of Edward II, which is least corrupt, can we feel assurance that there has survived a text based upon the author's original manuscript and comparable in authority with the texts of the Shakespeare and Jonson Folios. The Contention and True Tragedy are particularly imperfect. The dubious authenticity of the printed text should, therefore, be kept in mind lest the occasional degeneration of the poetry into rank doggerel or the sudden weakening of the dialogue be given undue weight in judging the plays. It is largely on the basis of this textual impurity that the theory of double or triple authorship of our plays has arisen, the tendency being to ascribe to one poet what has sur- vived more or less in its original state, while assigning to another whatever the theatrical manipulator and the printer's devil have junited in deforming. / Several parallels to passages in Marlowe's accepted dramas occur in lines of 2 and 3 Henry VI not found in the Contention and True Tragedy versions : 2 Henry VI, I, ii, 15 f. : / " And never more abase our sight so low As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground." Edward II, 1. 879 f . : " Whose mounting thoughts did never creepe so low, As to bestow a looke on such as you." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 185 2 Henry VI, I, iii, 83: " She bears a duke's revenues on her back." l Edward II, 1. 704 : " He weares a lords revenewe on his back." 3 Henry VI, I, ii, 28-31 : " And, father, do but think How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown, Within whose circuit is Elysium, And all that poets feign of bliss and joy." Tamburlaine, 11. 763765 : " I thinke the pleasure they enioy in heaven Can not compare with kingly ioyes in earth, To weare a Crowne enchac'd with pearle and golde." Ibid., 11. 863, 879 f. : " The thirst of raigne and sweetnes of a crowne That perfect blisse and sole felicitie, The sweet fruition of an earthly crowne." 3 Henry VI, II, iii, 56: " Forslow no longer; make we hence amain." Edward II, 1. 1138 : " Forslowe no time, sweet Lancaster, lets march." 3 Henry VI, II, v, 14 f. : " These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet ; My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre." Jew of Malta, 1. 1192: " These armes of mine shall be thy Sepulchre." There would thus seem, on prima facie evidence and on the testi- mony of parallels, very good reason to believe that Millington's version of the Contention and True Tragedy, printed in 1594/5, gave a corrupt text of the plays and omitted certain passages belonging to Marlowe's original draft. This suspicion is rendered almost a certainty when we consider the intermediate version printed by Pavier in 1619. In the preceding pages there has been little occasion to mention Pavier's edition, which inherently possesses very small 1 See p. 187. 186 C. F. Tucker Brooke, importance. No just ground exists for supposing either that this edition represents an independent recension of the plays or that it includes any of Shakespeare's alterations. Pavier doubtless used as basis for his printer's " copy " the text of Millington, of which the copyright was in his possession. In the case of the Contention, he increased the total number of lines by some eight or ten ; in the True Tragedy he added two new lines, but omitted, presumably by accident, two of the old ones. In the main essentials, however, the text of Pavier is the text of Millington ; and the failure of the former to make use of the hundreds of new lines by Shakespeare, in spite of his fraudulent insertion of Shakespeare's name on the title-page, is conclusive evidence that he had no access to the Shakespearean version of the dramas 7j Yet Pavier 's edition is not a mere reprint of either of Millington 's, as Millington's 1600 edition is a reprint of his 1594/5 text. Four brief passages in the Contention are given by Pavier in rather longer and more satisfactory form, and about two hundred distinct changes of word or phrase occur through the two parts, exclusive of mere correction of misprints and variation of spelling. A careful list of the variant readings of ed. 1619 will be found in the introductions to the Praetorius facsimiles of the Whole Contention (1886). Study of these variants makes it clear that Pavier's edition, though mainly based on Millington's, must have had also another source independent both of the Millington quartos and of the Shakespearean version of the plays. Thus, in the four passages of the Contention, previ- ously mentioned, where ed. 1619 notably amplifies the text of 1594, the later edition often approaches comparatively close to the version of 1623. Yet it is quite certain that ed. 1619 cannot here be merely a corrupted rendering of the Shakespearean text, for it contains matter not found in either of the other versions. For example, in York's list of the descendants of Edward III (2 Henry VI, II, ii, 9 ff.), the 1623 Folio differs very radically from the quarto of 1594 ; and the 1619 text, while agreeing in places with each of the others, is in some respects quite independent of both. The progeny of the Black Prince is fully stated, by ed. 1619 alone (Facsimile, p. 231) : " Now Edward the blacke Prince dyed before his Father, leaving behinde him two sonnes, Edward borne at Angolesme, who died young, and Richard that was after crowned King, by the name of Richard the second." 1 This Edward of Angouleme, though duly 1 The suggestion that Edward of Angouleme survived his father is, of course, incorrect. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 187 mentioned by Holinshed, is entirely ignored in both the other versions of the play.-^ In this same passage, ed. 1619 reverses the order of Edward Ill's sixth and seventh sons, as given in the other versions. Both in the Contention and again in the True Tragedy, the 1619 edition adds./ a line, apparently quite genuine, which does not appear elsewhere. 1 It prints in the obviously correct sequence another line, clearly misplaced in the edition of 1594 and entirely omitted in that of 1623 (Part I of Whole Contention, p. 34, fifth line from top of page) : "And burnes and spoiles the Country as they go." Moreover, it inserts for the first time one of the lines found in the 1623 version, but not in that of Millington, which verbal resemblance to Edward II would indicate to be of Marlowe's composition (Part I of Whole Contention, p. 12) : " She beares a Dukes whole revennewes on her backe." 2 / The only reasonable conclusion from the state of the 1619 text seems to be that Pavier, who shows no acquaintance whatever with any of the characteristically Shakespearean alterations in the plays, did have access to some version of the Marlovian text different in a number of particulars from that printed by Millington. Since the / influence of this other version tends on the whole to bring Pavier's edition closer than Millington's to that of 1623, we are doubtless justified in inferring that the discrepancy between Marlowe's original and the version of Shakespeare was less broad than the text of the Millington quartos would suggest. _} fit is by no means to be supposed, I think, that all the necessary corrections of the Millington text, or even all the better readings accessible to Pavier in manuscript, are embodied in the 1619 edition. The chief value of that edition lies merely in the fact that it furnishes a rough measure of the inaccuracy of the earlier quartos, and proves the existence of some other source independent of the two important printed versions of 1594/5 and 1623. That Pavier made full use of 1 The new lines are those italicized in the following passages : Part I of W hole Contention, p. 35, " Vnder the title of lohn Mortimer, (For he is like him every kinde of way) " and Part II of Whole Contention, p. 62, " For I will buz abroad such Prophesies Vnder pretence of outward seeming ill." 2 See p. 185. 188 C. F. Tucker Brooke, that source is highly improbable, since he seems clearly to have printed from one of Millington's editions, merely correcting that text here and there from the results of an inattentive collation of the manuscript. It is worth noting that extensive changes in ed. 1619 appear only in the first two acts of the earlier play (the Contention). For all the rest of the work of collator seems to have contented himself with the insertion of one or two omitted lines and the alteration of an occasional single word, doubtless marking his cor- rections in the margin of a copy of Millington's text as he glanced carelessly through the manuscript. Ji II. THE GREEXE-PEELE MYTH. \ Near the close of Robert Greene's last work, Greens Groats-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance, is printed a letter ad- dressed " To those Gentlemen, his Quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plaies." Upon a complete misinter- pretation of this passage, which altogether extends to about three pages, is based alone the current idea that Greene and Pee]e had a concern, along with Marlowe, in the earlier version of 2 and 3 Henry VI. Here, as in so many other cases, interest in an entirely incidental, though important, allusion to Shakespeare has tended to blind readers to the true significance of the document, and has led to wholly unfounded conclusions. _ ] Greene's main purpose is, indeed, made sufficiently clear in the heading. To his former acquaintances, who, like Greene, " spend their wits in making plays " and of whom three are specifically ad- dressed, Greene wishes " a better exercise," that is, a more profit- able occupation and the avoidance thereby of the extremities brought upon the writer, as he asserts, by his connection with the ungrateful trade of playwright. The purpose, therefore, of these last words, written by Greene in his poverty and sickness, was not, as it is generally explained, the expression of a mean-spirited grudge against Shakespeare because of a paltry piece of borrowing by that poet. The purpose was rather the arraignment of the very unfair relations existing in Greene's day between the writers of plays, nearly always dependent and necessitous, and the prosperous actors who built their fortunes upon the ill-paid product of the others' genius. The allusion to Shakespeare, which has so much distorted the view of critics, is quite subordinate, and it certainly does not contain the slightest possible suggestion that Shakespeare had plagiarized from Greene, either in Henry VI or elsewhere. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 189 It is generally agreed rightly, I think that the three authors addressed by Greene in the passage under discussion are first Mar- lowe, " famous gracer of Tragedians," whose supposed atheism and Machiavellianism are dwelt upon in rather malicious manner ; then i Nash, " young luvenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastlie with mee together writ a Comedie" ; and finally Peele. The address to the last and the general admonition which follows must be quoted entire, since they include the pith of the letter:^/ '* And thou no lesse deseruing then the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferiour ; driuen (as my selfe) to extreame shifts ; a little haue I to say to thee : and were it not an idolatrous oth, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthie better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base minded men al three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned ; for unto none of you (like me) sought those burres to cleaue : those Puppits (I meane) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they al haue beene beholding : is it not like that you, to whome they all haue beene beholding, shall (were ye in the case that I am now) be both at once of them forsaken ? Yes, trust them not : for there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses ; & let these Apes imitate your past excellence, and neuer more acquaint them with your admired inventions. I know the best husband of you all wil neuer proue an Vsurer, and the kindest of them all wil neuer prooue a kinde nurse : yet, whilst you may, seeke you better Maisters ; for it is pittie men of such rare wits, should be subject to the plea- sures of such rude groomes." 1 _J LThe " extreame shifts " to which Peele was driven by his poverty were notorious in his day and furnished the subject of many contem- porary anecdotes. 2 Greene's comment is pointed enough : " thou art unworthie better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay" ; namely, on the sorry recompense offered by the players to their poets. Base-minded men, he goes on, they must all be if they are not warned by Greene's misery, for none of them has been so much solicited in the past as Greene, by " those burres . . . those Puppits 1 Shakspere Attusion- Books, Part I, ed. C. M. Ingleby, 1874, p. 29-31. 2 Cf. The Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gent., 1607. TEAKS. CONN. ACAD., Vol. XVII. 13 JDLY, 1912. 190 C. F. Tucker Brooke, that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours ;" that is, by the actors in search of dramatic material. Is it not likely that the other poets, in spite of their services to the ungrateful companies, will in the end be forsaken, like Greene, in their extre- mities. Here Greene, in his anger, cites another cause for distrust of the actors : " Yes, trust them not for there is an vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers (i. e., a presumptuous actor who makes his fortune by repeating our lines) that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being an absolute lohannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." (jThat the allusion here is to Shakespeare is unmistakeable ; but the charge which Greene brings against him is not that of pla- giarism. Greene is moved merely by pique that this upstart player, accustomed to make his profit out of the ill-paid labors of the poets, should now add insult to injury by venturing to enter the ranks of dramatic authors and thus attempting to prove himself an absolute Johannes fac totum. ^The line, " Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide," is clearly a parrtxiy of " Oh Tygers hart wrapt in a womans hide " in the True Tragedy l and seems to have pertinence only if we assume Shakespeare's revision of the play in question already to have been made. Similarly, the next clause, " supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you," indicates that Johannes-fac-totum had definitely put his blank verse rendering of the play into competition with that of " the best " of the poets addressed by Greene (viz., Marlowe ?). For even a hint, however, that Greene or Peele was connected in any way with the work quoted the reader must look in vain. The very use of the second person of the pronoun, rather than the first, in the phrase, " as well able to bumbast out a blanke .verse as the best of you," shows, it seems to me, that Greene did not feel himself included in the challenge involved in 'the actor-poet's revisionary work/J After this not unnatural excursus upon the effrontery of an indi- vidual actor who had dared in his revision of the Henry VI plays to match his blank verse against that of the best of the professional poets, Greene returns to his main theme : the unprofitableness of the playwright's career : " O that I might intreate your rare wits to be imployed in more profitable courses (i. e., that I might entreat you to employ your genius in more lucrative undertakings than play-writing) & let these Apes (the actors) imitate your past 1 Facsimile of True Tragedy, 1891, p. 20, 1. 122 ; 3 Henry VI, I, iv, 137. The Authorship of "King Henry VI." 191 excellence (act your old plays), and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions (refrain for the future from writing for the stage). " I know," Greene continues, " the best husband of you all will neuer proue an Vsurer, and the kindest of them all wil neuer prooue a kinde nurse ; yet, whilst you may seeke you better Maisters ; for it is pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes." Considerable injustice has been done to Greene in the prevailing interpretation of this passage. 1 A certain malice appears, to be sure, in the address to Marlowe, and there is open hostility in the allusion to Shakespeare hostility directed in the latter instance rather against the actor than the poet. In general, however, Greene's letter, instead of voicing petty literary spite and unfounded charges of plagiarism, expresses a manly denunciation of one of the crudest injustices of Elizabethan life : the heart-breaking and pauperizing subservience of the dramatic poets to the managers of theatrical companies. The genuineness of the grievance against which the dying Greene inveighs is illustrated not only by the cases cited by the writer that of Peele and of Greene himself but even more pathetically in the detailed sketch which Henslowe's Diary gives of the straitened lives of that penurious manager's employes, Chettle and Dekker. Greene's letter bears upon the True Tragedy, and inferentially upon the Contention, only in so far as it suggests that Shakespeare's revision of these pieces had already been completed at the time of Greene's death (September, 1592), and in so far as it seems to in- dicate more remotely that the original author was Marlowe./ No hint whatever of Peele's connexion with the plays occurs and Greene's connexion appears to be positively disclaimed by the wording of the passage. No accusation of plagiarism is brought against Shake- speare. Such a charge would, indeed, have been absurd in view 1 Apparently Malone in his Dissertation on King Henry VI (Boswell's Malone, vol. xviii, p. 570 ff.) first concluded from the Groatsworth of Wit that Shakespeare had plagiarized from Greene and Peele. Tyrwhitt (cf. Boswell's Malone, same volume, p. 551 f.) had previously called attention to the passage in question, but only as proving that Shakespeare was author of the Henry VI plays and that " they had, at the time of their appearance, a sufficient degree of excellence to alarm the jealousy of the older playwrights." The interpretation which I have attempted to give I find to be partially anticipated in a brief note by Richard Simpson (The Academy, Apr. 4, 1874) and in Ingleby's correction of Simpson's view. p. xi of General Introduction to Shakspere Allusion- Books, Part I (1874). 192 C. F. Tucker Brooke, of the facts ; for an author hired by one theatrical company to re- vise a play manuscript acquired from another company could in Greene's time no more be held guilty of plagiarizing from the ori- ginal writer than could to-day the poet who adapted for the stage another man's novel after the acting rights had been sold. Greene's real accusation against Shakespeare is quite the reverse. Instead of charging him with slavish imitation, he derides his effrontery in essaying too boldly to match his verse, tyro and mechanical as he was, against that of the leading professional dramatist of the day. We shall see, in comparing the earlier and later versions of the plays, that it is precisely this feature, the independence with which Shakespeare alters both the metre and the thought of Marlowe, that distinguishes the later poet's work. The arguments by which successive critics have sought to support the idea of Greene's and Peele's interest in Henry VI, falsely de- duced from the passage just considered, are admitted to be of the most insubstantial nature, and they fall with the fall of the pre- conception which avowedly suggested them. Grant White laid an absurd stress upon the appearance in the Contention and True Tragedy of the idiom for to in infinitive phrases, erroneously asserting that this idiom was a peculiar mark of Greene's style never employed by Marlowe or Shakespeare. Miss Lee, herself an advocate of the Greene theory, admits that for to, which occurs five times in the Contention and four times in the True Tragedy, occurs also in Shake- speare and in Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, and Massacre at Paris. In the last play alone I find six instances. 1 Miss Lee mentions examples from The Winter's Tale, Pericles, All 's Well that Ends Well, Titus Andronicus, and the older (1603) version of Hamlet. In regard to the last play, it is noteworthy that the earlier for to is twice altered in the later version into the normal to. The fact is that the old use of for to as sign of the infinitive was still generally current at the end of the sixteenth century, but had come to be regarded as slip-shod. Greene, a careless writer, employs it fre- quently. Marlowe and Shakespeare also use it frequently in their rougher works, but tend to eliminate it upon revision. The only other evidence even speciously favorable to the theory of Greene's partial authorship of our plays is, I think, the circum- stance that " mightie Abradas, the great Masadonian Pyrate," men- tioned in the Contention (Facsimile, p. 44, 1. 51), is mentioned also 1 LI. 518, 559, 1033, 1120, 1131, 1260. White, indeed, himself admitted that his theory broke down in the case of this play. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 193 in Greene's prose work, Penelope's Web, 1 but not, apparently, in any other Elizabethan author. Henry VI, Part II (IV, i, 108) alters the name to " Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate." In de- ciding a question of authorship between Marlowe and Greene, who, after the same kind of school training, had passed through the same Cambridge career at about the same time, no small piece of classic or pseudo-classic learning can safely be held to be the peculiar possession of either. Whatever Greene knew about Abradas he is likely to have learned at Cambridge, where it is improbable that Marlowe failed to gain precisely the same knowledge from the same source. I believe that no value whatever attaches to the other putative evidence laboriously collected by Miss Lee and her predecessors: the facts, namely, that Greene as w r ell as Marlowe uses words like countervail and eternize, which are found in the Contention and True Tragedy ; and that four passages in these plays, of which two are closely paralleled in Marlowe, are remotely similar to passages in Greene. Miss Lee is herself careful to avow the small stress she lays upon such arguments. 2 Indeed, the reading of her pages tends to convince one the more strongly of the entire baselessness of the Greene theory, as one observes what perfectly negligible results have been attained by the most diligent inquiry backed by fervent belief on the part of the investigator. It is not enough to say that there is absolutely no proof of Greene's concern in the plays under consideration. There is the strongest reason against believing that Greene collaborated with Marlowe at any time. Though the latter is naturally included in the group of scholar-poets to whom Greene's letter is addressed, the tone of the words concerning Marlowe is covertly hostile. We know from the apology of Greene's executor, Chettle, in his Epistle to the Gentlemen Readers of Kind-Harts Dreame that Marlowe as well as Shakespeare resented Greene's letter and made his resentment known. Four years before the composition of the Groatsworth of Wit, in the preface to Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588), Greene had attacked Marlowe yet more openly : " I keepe my old course, to palter up some thing in Prose, using mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentle- 1 " Abradas the great Macedonian Pirat thought every one had a letter of mart that bare sayles in the Ocean," Greene's Works, ed. Grosart, vol.v, p. 197. The entire passage is repeated verbatim in Greene's Menaphon, vol. vi, p. 77 f. of Grosart's ed. 2 Transactions New Shakspere Society, p. 245. 194 C. F. Tucker Brooke, men Poets made two madmen of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers, & had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses iet upon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the fa burden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne. On Marlowe's side we have no open expression of such early hostil- ity to Greene, but it is easy to guess that he cannot have relished Greene's plagiarism of Tamburlaine in AlpJionsvs of Arragon and Orlando Furioso or his clear attempt to cap the success of Doctor Faustus in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Everything indicates that the unfriendliness between Greene and Marlowe was permanent through the entire period, 15881592, and it seems out of the question that the Contention and True Tragedy, both certainly com- posed within this period, can have been the result of a friendly alliance between the two poets. Apart from the state of Marlowe's personal relations with Greene, it seems quite unlikely that the former poet can have collaborated in the Contention and True Tragedy with any writer of his day. Marlowe appears to have worked alone. His genius was not of the character which seeks the assistance and companionship of other men. Except in the case of Dido, ascribed on the title-page to Marlowe and Nash, there is no reason to suppose that any other poet was concerned in the original draft of any of Marlowe's works. And even Dido bears the stamp of Marlowe's hand so wholly, that editors both of Nash and of Marlowe find difficulty in imagining it the result of a real partnership, preferring on the whole to conclude that Nash had merely a subsequent interest in the play as reviser after Marlowe's death. It may very safely be said, therefore, I think, that all the evidence at present accessible strongly supports the inference that the original version of 2 and 3 Henry VI, somewhat imperfectly represented in the Contention and the True Tragedy, was written by Marlowe alone. III. SHAKESPEARE'S REVISION OF MARLOWE'S WORK. (_The student who compares the Contention and True Tragedy with the Folio text of 2 and 3 Henry VI will perceive one of the most conspicuous indications of diverse authorship in the character of King Henry as it appears in the two versions. In the earlier plays 1 Greene's Works, ed. Grosart, vol. vii, p. 7, 8. The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 195 the king is presented as an amiable weakling of the type of Mycetes in Tamburlaine. Nothing, I think, in the personality here displayed attracts the attention of the reader, or suggests special interest on the author's part. The negative virtues of humility and irresolute conscientiousness made little appeal to Marlowe's soaring imagi- nation. Thvs, the pious Henry is depicted in the Contention and True Tragedy, without insight or sympathy, as a mere foil to bring out the more positive and more evil characters of those who seek to rule or overthrow him.~~l (jn the texts printed in the Shakespeare Folio the impression made by this figure is not only vastly deeper ; it is also quite different in kind. For the first time Henry becomes important by virtue of the qualities which he possesses rather than because of those he lacks. The view of life back of this later treatment of the king's character is the impartial, judicial view illustrated by Shakespeare a little later in the careful balancing of Bolingbroke against Richard II. It involves an outlook quite foreign to the partisan view-point of Mario we. "^ u"he change in Henry's character, tending to add vividness and poetic charm to the dry stock of Marlowe, is observable almost from the very start of 2 Henry VI. The first scene of Act II of that play, though otherwise not notably different from the corresponding scene in the Contention,* increases the lines given to Henry by fifty percent and makes the king's words for the first time significant. In the earlier version of the scene, Henry's speeches are nearly all dull, reflecting no spark of sympathy on the author's part ; but in 2 Henry II there appears a vein of the rich meditative wisdom which endears to vs the figure of the equally incapable Richard II. With hardly an exception, the new lines are conspicuous for poetic and philosophic value ; e. g., \ '(/To see how God in all his creatures works ! Yea man and birds are fain of climbing high " ; 1. 7 f.) "Heaven, " The treasury of everlasting joy " ; (1. 18) " How irksome is this music to my heart ! When such strings jar, what hope of harmony ? " (1. 56 f : God be prais'd that to believing souls l^ Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair ! " (66 f.) 1 In the Contention this scene contains 171 lines ; in 2 Henry VI it contains 203. The added lines are almost exclusively those given to King Henry. 196 C. F. Tucker Brooke, / Great is his comfort in this earthly vale, \ Although by his sight his sin be multiplied " ; (1. 70 f .) " God! seest thou this, and bearst so long' " (1. 153) " O God ! what mischiefs work the wicked ones, Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby " ; (1. 184 f.) "And poise the cause in justice' equal scales, Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails." (202 f.) These lines, found only in the revised scene, are strikingly at variance with the bald insipidities of Henry's speeches in the Con- tention. They mark the presence of a mind to which was revealed, behind the practical incompetence of the monarch, a counter- balancing wealth of moral and poetic feeling entirely unpercieved by the original author. ) The same new-birth of sympathy for the king is conspicuous in the scene where Duke Humphrey is arraigned (2 Henry VI, III, i). Marlowe's version of this passage, in the Contention, treats Henry with open contempt. He is allowed to speak only twelve detached lines expressive of his total inability to cope with the situation or even to comprehend it. Shakespeare's version still depicts the king as weak, of course ; but it no longer presents him as a mere puppet. Whereas the Contention permits Margaret and Suffolk to slander Duke Humphrey without a word of protest from the passive ruler, the 1623 text inserts a fine sympathetic speech admirably expressive of Henry's shy timidity before his headstrong peers and of his innate feeling for righteousness (2 Henry VI, III, 1, 66-73) : " My lords, at once : the care you have of us, To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot, Is worthy praise ; but shall I speak my conscience, Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent From meaning treason to our royal person, As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove. The duke is virtuous, mild, and too well given To dream on evil, or to work my downfall." ~~] N > Unconvinced, the protesting king is simply talked down by Mar- garet. Later in the scene, when Humphrey is formally accused and led away by the Cardinal's men, the king goes out, leaving the Queen and her counselors to do as they please. Marlowe here gives Henry only three bare lines in which to speak his feeble sorrow (Contention, p. 33, 1. 109-111) : The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 197 "I, Margaret. My heart is kild with grief e, Where I may sit and sigh in endlesse mone, For who's a Traitor, Gloster he is none." 1 The Folio version, on the other hand, assigns the king twenty-five lines of fine poetry, written in the unmistakeable strain of the young Shakespeare, and calculated to enlist the audience's sympathy with the speaker (2 Henry VI, III, i, 198-222) : " Ay, Margaret ; my heart is drown'd with grief, Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes, My body round engirt with misery, For what's more miserable than discontent ? Ah ! uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see The map of honuor, truth, and loyalty ; And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come That e'er I prov'd thee false, or fear'd thy faith. What low'ring star now envies thy estate, That these great lords, and Margaret our queen, Do seek subversion of thy harmless life ? Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong ; And as the butcher takes away the calf, And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays, Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house, Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence ; And as the dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went, And can do nought but wail her darling's loss ; Even so myself bewails good Gloucester's case, With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimm'd eyes Look after him, and cannot do him good ; So mighty are his vowed enemies. His fortunes I will weep ; and, twixt each groan, Say ' Who's a traitor, Gloucester he is none.' "j This fairmindedness, which impels the poet to see two sides of the situation, and to sympathize with the claims of the feebler perso- nality, is the most notable contribution made by Shakespeare to the psychology of the plays. It not only makes Henry VI's character for the first time worthy of consideration as it appears in the Shake- 1 As the sense is not quite consecutive, it is possible that a line may have been lost between the first and second verses of this speech. The 1619 edition makes no correction. 198 C. F. Tucker Brooke, spearean revision. It adds also very notably to the pathos and attractiveness of the good Duke Humphrey. In Marlowe's strenuous philosophy of life, nothing succeeded like success. Genial and sympathetic as was the character of the Duke in the chronicles, the Contention has a decided tendency to slight the treatment of this representative of defeated magnanimity in the ardent interest with which the play follows the rising fortunes of Humphrey's rivals, Margaret, Suffolk, and York. The 1623 version does much more justice to the claims of Humphrey's personality, thus broadening the humanity of the work, and reflecting again that impartiality in the judgment of character, which from the first made Shakespeare's equipment as a dramatist superior to Marlowe's. Otherwise, it can hardly be held that Shakespeare's adaptation greatly enriched the plays we are discussing either in plot or in portraiture. Within the narrow psychological province where Mar- lowe's genius was at its best in the depicting of evil ambition- Shakespeare was in 1592 only a pupil, and he seems to have been content to leave the outlines of the great figures of York, Suffolk, Margaret, Warwick, and Richard as he found them. Certainty the minor alterations which he admitted were quite insufficient in all these cases to obscure the deep impression of Marlowe's original sketch. So, too, the plot of 2 and 3 Henry VI hinges upon the partic- ular kind of interest which Marlowe read into the story of the chron- iclers ; and, though Shakespeare, as befitted the professional actor, occasionally rearranged the old scenes in the interests of practical stage-craft notably in the case of scenes ii vii of Act IV of 3 Henry VI he did not essentially affect the general method or tone of his models. Thus, the reader of the later version should bear in mind that, with the rather unimportant exceptions just mentioned, the second and third parts of Henry VI represent the ideas and the dramatic theory of Marlowe, though about half the actual lines printed in the 1623 Folio may be due either to the independent composition or to the careful re-writing of Shakespeare. Enough has probably been said in other connexions to refute the unfounded hypothesis of Miss Lee that Shakespeare was assisted by Marlowe in his revision. To assume that either Marlowe or Shake- speare was concerned with these plays in more than one of the phases of their evolution is merely to set up a conjecture, unsup- ported by fact or likelihood, for the purpose of needlessly involving the question of authorship. No known circumstance in the life of either poet suggests the possibility of collaboration between The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 199 Shakespeare and Marlowe at any time ; and the great difference both between the careers of the two authors and between the circles in which they moved would make very definite evidence necessary to the proof of so unlikely a connexion. As regards the present question, it would seem particularly improbable that Marlowe, at the height of his fame, should have condescended to rewrite two of his plays under the direction of a young player belonging to a company with which Marlo\ve can hardly be shown ever to have had business relations. 1 And, on the other hand, there appears no shadow of reason why Shakespeare's company, having one of their own number able to make all the changes required, should have gone to the trouble and expense of hiring a great unattached poet to add what admittedly can have been only a small proportion of the new passages. Collaboration, of course, did exist in Shakespeare's time among the numerous hacks in the regular employ of Henslowe, where it was natural and easily arranged ; but Marlowe never belonged to that band of hacks, and there is good reason against believing that Shake- speare or Shakespeare's company ever approved the practice. It has been indicated, however, that Marlowe's complete work cannot safely be assumed to exist in the Contention and True Tragedy texts. The latter plays appear rather to be bad copies of acting versions, themselves perhaps abbreviated. Shakespeare's revision was made two or three years before the publication of the Contention and Ture Tragedy, and it was certainly based upon a purer text than that given in Millington's quartos not improb- ably upon the very manuscript originally sold by Marlowe to Lord Pembroke's Company. In considering the additional passages found in the 1623 Folio, it is a somewhat delicate matter to dis- criminate between passages belonging to the original Marlovian plays, but misrepresented or omitted by Millington, and newer passages which embody the revision of Shakespeare. In a few instances it is clear that the 1623 edition is merely giving the accurate text of Marlowe, where the earlier version prints a corrupt reading. Thus, in 3 Henry VI, III. iii, 97, the line, " And not bewray thy treason with a blush," is obviously what Marlowe wrote, though the True Tragedy text, by omitting the necessary " not ", destroys the sense. In IV, iii, 31 f. of the same play, 1 Henslowe's Diary, indeed, shows that The Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris were acted by Lord Strange's Men in 1592/93. Both plays, however, were also acted by other companies with which Henslowe happened to be connected, and it seems doubtful whether either belonged in the first in- stance to the Strange Company. 200 C. F. Tucker Brooke, " When you disgrac'd me in my embassade, Then I degraded you from being king," it seems again probable that Shakespeare preserves Marlowe's text, and that the appearance of " disgraste," instead of " degraded " in the True Tragedy (p. 58, 1. 33) is due to the 1595 printer's inad- vertent repetition of the word used in the previous line. In Act V, scene iii, of 3 Henry VI (11. 4-6) we read " I spy a black, suspicious, threat'ning cloud, That will encounter with our glorious sun, Ere he attain his easeful western bed ;" whereas the True Tragedy version gives (p. 69, 1. 6-8) : "I see a blacke suspitious cloud appeare, That will encounter with our glorious sunne Before he gaine his easefull westerne beames." Here there is room for doubt in the case of most of the variants whether Shakespeare is revising the True Tragedy text or merely printing correctly what that text gives in corrupted form. But as regards the last word, it is clear that " bed ", the reading of the Folio, must be the reading of Marlowe's manuscript also, because the alternative, " beames," fails to make sense and confesses itself the perversion of a sleepy compositor. Sometimes lines, which seem to be original with the 1623 version, have merely been borrowed from other parts of the earlier text. In II, i, 53 of 3 Henry VI, the messenger reporting York's death uses a line which does not occur in the corresponding passage of the True Tragedy : " But Hercules himself must yield to odds." One would probably be inclined to regard this line as original with Shakespeare ; but on investigation one discovers that the identical line appears many pages later in the True Tragedy in connection with the death of Warwick (p. 68, 1. 24) : " But Hercules himself e must yeeld to ods." Instead of inventing, Shakespeare has simply shifted the original matter from one context to another. Another instance of the same procedure is found at the beginning of Act V, scene iii, of 3 Henry VI : " Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course, And we are grac'd with wreaths of victory." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 201 These lines are quite different from those in the corresponding passage in the True Tragedy. Moreover, since the second line is identical with a verse in the Massacre at Paris, 1 the couplet has even been cited by Miss Lee as proof that Marlowe collaborated with Shake- speare in revising the plays subsequent to the composition of the text preserved in the Contention and Trve Tragedy. However, the precise lines in question are found in an earlier part of the True Tragedy (p. 39, 1. 30). Again the Mario vian material has merely been transferred in the Folio text from one scene to another. The passages from 3 Henry VI just instanced illustrate the difficulty of determining with absolute precision the respective amovnts of Marlovian and Shakespearean verse in the plays we are discussing. In the case of 2 Henry VI, where Millington's text is particularly imperfect, the problem is yet more obscure. Exactly how many lines Shakespeare added from his own imagination and how many he altered from the manuscript of Marlowe must doubt- less remain unsettled. There are, however, in both plays a number of passages in which the impact of Shakespeare's mind upon the conceptions of Marlowe can be clearly traced. The study of these passages throws very valuable light upon the character of Shake- speare's early verse and' upon the ideals by which he was governed in his first attempts at dramatizing English history. An excellent example of the contrasted styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare is furnished by the soliloquy of York at the close of the first scene of 2 Henry VI. In the Contention this fine speech runs as follows (Facsimile, p. 7, 1. 143 ff.) : " Anioy and Maine both giuen vnto the French, Cold newes for me, for I had hope of France, Euen as I haue of fertill England. A day will come when Yorke shall claime his owne, And therefore I will take the Neuels parts, And make a show of loue to proud Duke Humphrey : And when I spie aduantage, claime the Crowne, For thats the golden marke I seeke to hit : Nor shall proud Lancaster vsurpe my right, Nor hold the scepter in his childish fist, Nor weare the Diademe vpon his head, Whose church-like humours fits not for a Crowne : Then Yorke be still a while till time do seme, Watch thou, and wake when others be asleepe, 1 See above, p. 168, parallel 21. 202 C. F. Tucker Brooke, To prie into the secrets of the state, Till Henry surfeiting in ioyes of loue, With his new bride, and Englands dear bought queene, And Humphrey with the Peeres be falne at iarres, Then will I raise aloft the milke-white Rose, With whose swete smell the aire shall be perfumde, And in my Standard beare the Armes of Yorke, To graffle with the House of Lancaster : And force perforce, ile make him yeeld the Crowne, Whose bookish rule hath puld faire England downe." Bad as the text of the Contention often is, the student of Marlowe will hardly refuse to accept every syllable of this speech as the genuine work of the poet. More distinctly Marlovian verse, in melody and in sense, it would, indeed, be hard to point out. The reviser, Shake- speare, evidently found no fault here, for he was content to retain the lines quoted without any change except the characteristic metrical alteration of " fertile England " into " fertile England's soil," which has been mentioned above. 1 However, it would seem that the fine lines and the fine situation challenged the imaginative powers of the later writer and made him insert, as a supplement to the old passage, twenty-one new lines as typically Shakespearean as are the others Marlovian. After quoting with a trifling change the first verse of Marlowe, " Anjou and Maine are given to the French," the reviser continues in the strain most natural to him at this period (2 Henry VI, I, i, 216-236) : " Paris is lost ; the state of Normandy Stands on a tickle point now they are gone. Suffolk concluded on the articles, The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleas'd To- change two dukedoms for a duke's fair daughter. I cannot blame them all : what is't to them ? 'Tis thine they give away, and not their own. Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage, And purchase friends, and give to courtesans, Still revelling like lords till all be gone ; W r hile as the silly owner of the goods Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands, And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof, While all is shar'd and all is borne away, Ready to starve and dare not touch his own : 1 See p. 179. The Authorship of "King Henry VI." 203 So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue While his own lands are bargained for and sold. Me thinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood As did the fatal brand Althaea burn'd Unto the prince's heart of Calydon." 1 After this line is then printed the whole of Marlowe's speech, " Anjou and Maine both given unto the French ! Cold news for me, for I had hope of France," etc. Unquestionably, the Shakespearean insertion here weakens the effect of the passage. The new matter is in this case so completely discordant from the old as to leave no doubt of its different author- ship. The fiery expression of York's iron resolution, which in the original lines forces itself from the speaker's mouth in language of the directest self -revelation, contrasts sharply with the rambling sentimentalism of the Shakespearean part, where five lines of mere statistical recapitulation are followed by a far-away metaphor of pirates and an affected simile relating to Althaea's brand. Divided authorship can hardly have produced many more complete perver- sions than this, where Marlowe's confident, calculating York, flushed with the sense of power and the promise of supreme triumph, is represented by Shakespeare as a " silly " merchant in the grasp of pirates, weeping over his lost goods and wringing his hapless hands ; shaking his head and standing aloof, " While all is shar'd and all is borne away," or sitting and fretting and biting his tongue, " While his own lands are bargain'd for and sold." In writing this score of lines, Shakespeare was impelled not by the desire of voicing more truly the real character of York, but merely by the ambition of the young poet to express a couple of pretty notions or, in Greene's phrase, " to bumbast out blank verse " with the great master of that metre. In the soliloquy of Hume at the end of the next scene(2 HenryVI, I, ii), it is equally clear that Shakespeare is somewhat tastelessly padding out the lines of Marlowe. Instead of the sober presen- tation of the state of affairs which the Contention gives in thirteen lines, the 1623 edition fills twenty-one with feeble plays on words 1 Something has been made of the fact that the correct version of the Althaea story here disagrees with the incorrect allusion in 2 Henry IV, II, ii, 98 ff. It should be remembered that when Shakespeare wrote the latter passage, his recollection of the mythology learned in his school-boy days had become some six years dimmer. 204 C. F. Tucker Brooke, and other jocularities quite out of keeping with the character of the speaker. The hand of the young Shakespeare is easily recognizable in verses like the following (U. 100 ff.) : " They say, ' A crafty knave does need no broker ;' Yet am I Suffolk and the Cardinal's broker. Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near To call them both a pair of crafty knaves," etc. The first lines of Act II, scene iv (2 Henry VI) again offer an insight into Shakespeare's revisionary method. In the Contention, the passage is brief and direct, the one object being to show Hum- phrey's keen feeling of the degradation of his wife (Contention, p. 7, U. 1-10) : " Humph. Sirra, whats a clocke ? Serving (Man). Almost ten, my Lord. Humph. Then is that wofull houre hard at hand, That my poore Lady should come by this way, In shamefull penance wandring in the streetes. Sweete Nell, ill can thy noble minde abrooke The abiect people gazing on thy face, With envious lookes laughing at thy shame, That earst did follow thy proud Chariot wheeles, When thou didst ride in tryumph through the streetes." The 1623 version omits three of these lines (35), retains the rest without any noteworthy change, and adds ten new verses expressing a conspicuously different mood. I give the passage as it occurs in the later text, italicizing the lines which seem to be original with Shakespeare : " Glo. Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud ; And after svmmer evermore succeeds Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold : So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet. Sirs, what's o'clock ? S erv (ing-man) . Ten, my lord. Glo. Ten is the hour that was appointed me To watch the coming of my punished duchess : Uneath may she endure the flinty streets, To tread them with her tender- feeling feet. Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook The abject people, gazing on thy face With envious looks still laughing at thy shame, The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 205 That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets. Bvt, soft \ I think she comes ; and I'll prepare My tear-stain' d eyes to see her miseries." Here there is no question that the tone of the new matter is quite opposed to the tone of the old, and that the added lines, though in themselves excellent poetry, decidedly weaken the effect of the whole. The four introductory lines of sententious moral, conceived in the spirit of many of Shakespeare's sonnets, form a feebler opening to the scene which follows than the curt question with which the Contention version begins. The new lines, 8 and 9, are positively unfortunate, for they divert attention from the humiliation of Eleanor's "noble mind," of which Marlowe's Gloucester thinks alone, to the rather ludicrous image of the duchess's physical discomfort as she walks barefoot over the flinty pavement. So trifling a detail could at such a time hardly have occupied the attention either of the sufferer or of her husband. To give it special notice seems both bad art and bad psychology. The addition of the last two lines is no less injurious. The purpose of the speech is the exhibition of Gloucester's fine stoical refusal to allow personal feeling to assert itself in opposition to the execution of justice. The sentimental allusion to his tear-stained eyes, together with the lachrymose tone fo the other inserted lines, distinctly weakens this impression of noble austerity. 1 The soliloquy of York at the end of Act III, scene i (2 Henry VI) again shows the contrast between the clear-cut method of Marlowe, bent always upon the expression of some one mood in its highest intensity, and the medleys of changing emotion, rich in poetical truisms and fine-wrought figures, which Shakespeare at the beginning of his career loved to put into the mouths of his characters. The quotation of the first lines of the speech in the two versions will sufficiently illustrate the opposition. Again I italicize the lines which are entirely original in the 1623 version : Contention, p. 34, 1. 170 ff . : " Now York bethink thy self and rowse thee vp, Take time whilst it is offered thee so faire, Least when thou wouldst, thou canst it not attaine. Twas men I lackt, and now they give them me." 1 The warmer play of feeling in Shakespeare's treatment, which here results injuriously, is in other scenes advantageous to Gloucester's character as has been noted already (p. 198). TBANS. CONN. ACAD., Vol. XVII. 14 JULY, 1912. 206 C. F Tucker Brooke, 2 Henry VI, III, i, 331-345 : " Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts, And change misdovbt to resolution : Be that thou hop'st to be, or what thou art Resign to death : it is not worth the enjoying. Let pale-fac'd fear keep with the mean-born man, And find no harbour in a royal heart. Faster than spring-time showers comes thovght on thovght, And not a thought but thinks on dignity. My brain, more busy than the labouring spider, Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies. Well, nobles, well ; 'tis politicly done, To send me packing with a host of men : I fear me you but warm the starved snake, Who, cherish'd in your breasts, will sting your hearts. 'Twas men I lack'd, and you will give them me." The scene representing Cade's death (2 Henry VI, IV, x) is expanded in the edition of 1623, not only in bad taste, by the introduction of many lines of pure bombast, but also in a tone which shows that the reviser failed utterly to realize the heroic quality in Cade which Marlowe always brings out. The following parallels exemplify both the intrusion of meaningless rant in the later version, and also the change from the tragic view of Cade to the other very different view which regarded him as a mere vulgar upstart, easily overthrown and justly subjected to insult after death : Contention, p. 55, 1. 20 f.: " Eyden . . . Looke on me, my limmes are equall unto thine, and every way as big ; then hand to hand, ile combat thee." 2 Henry VI, IV, x, 48-57 : " I den . . . Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine, See if thou canst out-face me with thy looks : Set limb to limb, and thou art far the lesser; Thy hand is but a finger to my fist ; Thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon ; My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast ; And if mine arm be heaved in the air Thy grave is digg'd already in the earth. As for more words, whose greatness answers words, Let this my sword report what speech forbears." The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 207 Contention, p. 55, 1. 35 f. : " He drag him hence, and with my sword cut off his head, and beare it to the King." 2 Henry VI, IV, x, 82-89 : " Die, damned wretch, the curse of her that bare thee : And as I thrust thy body in with my sword, So wish I I might thrvst thy soul to hell. Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave, And there cut off most ungracious head ; Which I will bear in triumph to the king, Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon." Extended additions, which can be positively ascribed to Shake- speare, are less frequent in 3 Henry VI, for in that play the alte- rations of the 1623 text consist largely of mere changes of single lines. Where longer insertions do occur, however, the relation between the old and new matter is precisely the same as in 2 Henry VI. A good example of the Shakespearean weakening of a simple but strong speech by remote reference and involved rhetoric is found in Clarence's defiance of Warwick (J Henry VI, V, i, 81 ff.) The True Tragedy gives the first part of this address as follows : " Father of Warwike, know you what this meanes. ? I throw mine infamie at thee, I will not ruinate my fathers house, Who gave his bloud to lime the stones together, And set up Lancaster. Thinkest thou That Clarence is so harsh unnatural], To lift his sword against his brothers life ? And so proud harted Warwike I defie thee, And to my brothers turne my blushing cheekes." Instead of these nine lines, the 1623 text prints nineteen. I italicize those which are peculiar to the later version : " Father of Warwick, know you what this means ? Look here, I throw my infamy at thee : I will not ruinate my father's house, Who gave his blood to lime the stones together, And set up Lancaster. Why, trow'st thou, Warwick. That Clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural, To bend the fatal instruments of war 208 C. F. Tucker Brooke, Against his brother and his lawful king ? Perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath : To keep that oath were more impiety Than Jephthah's, when he sacrificed his daughter. I am so sorry for my trespass made That, to deserve well at my brother's hands, I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe ; With resolution, wheresoe'er I meet thee As I will meet thee if thou stir abroad To plague thee for thy foul misleading me. And so, proud-hearted Warwick, I defy thee, And to my brother turn my blushing cheeks." Clearly, the rhetorical question and the allusion to Jephthah detract from the candor of Clarence's avowal of the claims of blood. Clearly, too, the following diatribe against Warwick, who is the offended not the offending party, smacks'of hollow declamation and deprives the speech of the tone of manly frankness which the early version gives it. Throughout this part of the play the reviser robs Warwick's figure of much of the charm which it has in the True Tragedy. Even in trifling details the warmth of the original is frequently lost, as where in recasting Edward's line : " Tis even so, and yet you are olde Warwike still " (V, i, 47; True Tragedy, p. 66, 1. 36), the omission of the adjective " olde " takes away the friendliness of the king's implied offer of reconciliation. The death of Warwick is very strongly and pathetically treated in the True Tragedy. It seems to me that the scene (V, ii) is rather spoiled in the revision. Whereas Marlowe has Warwick enter alone, wounded, with the words : " Ah, who is nie ? Come to me, friend or foe, And tell me who is victor, Yorke or Warwike ? " Shakespeare, in the interests of stage effect, has Edward himself drag in the fallen warrior and speak four heartless lines over his body (V, ii, 1 ff.) : " So, lie thou there : die thou, and die our fear ; For Warwick was a bug that fear'd us ah 1 Now Montague, sit fast ; I seek for thee, That Warwicks' bones may keep thine company." The new lines given to \Varwick in this scene are all superfluous, and the most important added speech, conceived in a tone of weak sentimentality, is, I think, glaringly unbecoming (11. 3339) : The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 209 " Ah ! Montague, If thov be here, sweet brother, take my hand, And with thy lips keep in my soul awhile Thou lovs't me not ; for, brother, if thou didst, Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood That glues my lips and will not let me speak. Come quickly, Montague, or I am dead." A good final example of the extent to which the immature Shake- speare sometimes distorted the natural words of Marlowe's speakers in his ambition to work out an elaborate tissue of metaphor and allusion, appears in the revised version of Queen Margaret's address to her followers in J Henry VI, V, iv. In the True Tragedy, this speech consists of eleven lines, all quite appropriate to the occasion : " Welcome to England, my loving friends of France, And welcome Summerset, and Oxford too. Once more have we spread our sailes abroad, And though our tackling be almost consumde, And Warwike as our maine mast overthrowne, Yet warlike Lords raise you that sturdie post, That beares the sailes to bring vs vnto rest, And Ned and I as willing Pilots should For once with carefull mindes gvide on the sterne, To beare vs through that dangerous gulfe That heretofore hath swallowed vp our friends " This passage served only as a foundation for the reviser, who rewrote the speech, nearly quadrupling its length and elaborating every suggested figure to such a degree that the feelings of the ill- starred queen are hidden beneath the profusion of ornament. This is the speech as printed in the Folio : " Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. What though the mast be now blowne overboard, The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, And half our sailors swallowed in the flood ; Yet lives our pilot still : is't meet that he Should leave the helm and like a fearful lad With tearful eyes, add water to the sea, And give more strength to that which hath too much; Whiles in his moan the ship splits on the rock, Which industry and courage might have saved ? 210 C. F. Tucker Brooke, Ah ! what a shame ? ah, what a fault were this. Say, Warwick was our anchor ; what of that ? And Montague our top-mast ; what of him ? Our slaughter'd friends the tackles ; what of those ? Why, is not Oxford here another anchor ? And Somerset, another goodly mast ? The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings ?. And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I For once allow'd the skilful pilot's charge ? We will not from the helm, to sit and weep, But keep our course, though the rough wind say no, From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wrack. As good to chide the waves as speak them fair. And what is Edward but a rvthless sea ? What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit ? And Richard but a ragged fatal rock ? AH these the enemies to our poor bark. Say you can swim ; alas ! 'tis but a while : Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink: Bestride the rock ; the tide will wash you off, Or else you famish : that's a three-fold death. This speak I, lords, to let you understand, In case some one of you would fly from us, That there's no hop'd-for mercy with the brothers More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks. Why, courage, then ; what cannot be avoided 'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear." It is quite possible that injustice is done to Shakespeare in the study of these parallels. The reviser, working upon material so homogeneous and so firmly moulded, was necessarily at a disadvantage. His failures to preserve the tone and purpose of the original quickly rise to convict him. But where he may have succeeded in main- taining or improving the decorum of Marlowe's conceptions, his additions are less easily distinguished from the earlier matter. Cer- tain details in which the adapter was able to broaden the range of character interest of the original plays have been pointed out. On the whole, however, there seems no reason to doubt the justice of the impression, based on many careful readings and comparisons of the different texts, that in spite of probable curtailments and corruptions, the Marlovian versions preserved in the Contention and True Tragedy are intrinsically better plays than those which resulted The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 211 from the Shakespearean alteration more powerful in plot-interest and more impressive in psychological portraiture. At the period during which these plays seem to been written and revised be- tween 1590 and 1592 Marlowe was undoubtedly a maturer and a more effective dramatist than Shakespeare. The very traits upon which Shakespeare's later unapproachable superiority was founded his broad impartial view of human character and his wealth of poetic fancy make his earlier style appear diffuse and muddy in contrast with the forceful clarity of Marlowe's more restricted outlook. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below OEC 191949 FEB 7 RECO APR 1 2 1955 a RETDBOOK REfii JUL2 6 LOS ANGELES LIBRARY 4 DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARDS University Research Library AA 000354578