No More Learning

Nine have no further identification.
It appears that, in this instance, Shakespeare did protest; at any
rate, the dramatist Thomas Heywood, from whom Jaggard, in
a later edition, 'lifted' two more poems to add to the original
twenty, says that Shakespeare was ‘much offended'-a little piece
of evidence of a wide ranging effect, both positive and negative,
which, perhaps, has never been quite fully appreciated.
Some of the adespota are quite worthy of Shakespeare; and
his 'offence' would, of course, be quite sufficiently explained by
the imputation to him of plagiarism from such men as the living
Ralegh, and the dead Marlowe. Lastly, there exists a rather
obscure, very curious and, in parts, extremely beautiful, poem
called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which, in 1601, was added to
Robert Chester's Love's Martyr, as a contribution by Shakespeare:
Jonson, Chapman, 'Ignoto' and others contributing likewise. This
was reprinted ten years later, and we hear of no protests on
the part of any of the supposed contributors, though, whatever
Shakespeare might be, neither Jonson nor Chapman could be
described as "gentle' or likely to take a liberty gently. We
may take it, then, that, as regards the two classical pieces, the
Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and The Phoenix and the Turtle,
we have at least the ordinary amount of testimony to genuine-
ness, and, in the case of the first three, rather more than this;
while some of The Passionate Pilgrim pieces are certainly genuine,
and more may be. Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, it should,
perhaps, be mentioned, though they often are separately entered
in the contents of editions, merely form a division, with sub-title,
of The Passionate Pilgrim.
There is nothing, therefore, so far, in what may be called the
external and bibliographical history of the work, which justifies
any special diversion from the study of it as literature. But,
6


## p. 225 (#249) ############################################

225
Dedication of the Sonnets
beyond all question, there is perilous stuff of temptation away
from such study in the matter of the Sonnets. And, unfortunately,
Thomas Thorpe stuck a burning fuse in the live shell of this matter
by prefixing some couple of dozen words of dedication: To the
only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr W. H. all happiness
and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth T. T. It would be rash
to guess, and impossible to calculate, how many million words of
comment these simple nouns and verbs have called forth. The
present writer has never seen any reason to abandon what has
been, on the whole, the view most generally accepted by those
who have some knowledge of Elizabethan literature and language,
that this may be translated 'T. T. , publisher of these sonnets, wishes
to the sole inspirer of them, Mr W. H. , the happiness and eternity
promised by Shakespeare. Moreover, though feeling no particular
curiosity about the identification of Mr W. H. ,' he has never seen
any argument fatal to that identification with William Herbert,
earl of Pembroke, which has also been usual. He admits, however,
the possibility that 'W. H. ' may be designedly inverted for ·H. W. ,
and that this may be Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton,
which would bring the three great poem units into line.
without attempting an impossible summary of theories and argu-
ments on this head, must we omit to mention that there is one,
commanding the support of Sidney Lee, to the effect that 'Mr
W. H. "'s 'begetting' had nothing whatever to do with the inspira-
tion of the Sonnets; and that he himself was merely a sort of
partner in their commercial production. And so, having solidly
based the account of the poems on known facts and known facts
only, let us pursue it in reference to their actual contents and
literary character.
The author could hardly have chosen a happier sub-title for
Venus and Adonis than 'first heire of [his] invention. It is exactly
what a child of youth should be, in merit and defect alike; though,
as is always the case with the state of youth when it is gracious,
the merits require no allowance, and the defects are amply pro-
vided with excuse. In general class and form, it belongs to a very
large group of Elizabethan poetry, in which the combined influence
of the classics, of Italian and, to a less degree, of recent French,
literature are evident. For the particular vehicle, Shakespeare
chose the sixain of decasyllabic lines riming ababcc which had
been used by Spenser for the opening poem of The Shepheards
Calendler. This, like its congeners the rime royal and in its
15
Nor,
a
E. L. V.
CH. IX,


## p. 226 (#250) ############################################

226
Shakespeare: Poems
commonest form) the octave, admits of that couplet, or 'gemell,'
at the end which, as we know directly from Drayton and indirectly
from the subsequent history of English prosody, was exercising an
increasing fascination on poets. It is, perhaps, the least effective
of the three, and it certainly lends itself least of all to the telling
of a continuous story. But Shakespeare's object was less to tell a
story than to draw a series of beautiful and voluptuous pictures in
mellifluous, if slightly conceited,' verse; and, for this, the stanza
was well enough suited. As for the voluptuousness, it stands in
need of very little comment either in the way of blame or in the
way of excuse. The subject suggested it; the time permitted if it
did not positively demand it; and there is evidence that it was not
unlikely to give content to the reader to whom it was dedicated.
If it were worth while it would be easy to show, by comparison of
treatments of similar situations, that Shakespeare has displayed
his peculiar power of 'disinfecting' themes of this kind even thus
early. "He who takes it makes it’ is nowhere truer than of such
offence as there may be in Venus and Adonis.
Its beauties, on the other hand, are intrinsic and extraordinary.
Much good verse-after the appearance of the new poet' (Spenser)
thirteen, and that of his masterpiece three, years earlier—was being
written in this last decade of the sixteenth century. As was
pointed out in the summary of prosody from Chaucer to Spenser,
the conditions of rhythm, in accordance with the current pronun-
ciation of English, had been at length thoroughly mastered. But,
in Spenser himself, there are few things superior—in Drayton and
Daniel and Sidney there are few things equal-at this time, to
such lines as
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty,
6
or as
Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain,
or the passages which have been wisely pounced upon by musicians,
'Bid me discourse,' and 'Lo! here the gentle lark,' with many others.
To pass from mere melody of line and passage to colour and form of
description, narrative, address and the like: the pictures of the hare
and of the horse and of the boar, the final debate of the pair before
Adonis wrenches himself away, the morning quest—these are all
what may be called masterpieces of the novitiate, promising master-
pieces of the mastership very soon. If some are slightly borrowed,
that is nothing. It is usual in their kind; and the borrowing is
almost lost in the use made of what is borrowed. Naturally, this
i See vol. II, chap. XIII.


## p. 227 (#251) ############################################

Lucrece
227
a
use does not, as yet, include much novelty of condition, either in
point of character, or of what the Greeks called dianoia-general
cast of sentiment and thought. It is a stock theme, dressed up
with a delightful and largely novel variety of verse and phrase, of
description and dialogue. But it is more charmingly done than
any poet of the time, except Spenser himself, could have done it;
and there is a certain vividness—a presence of flesh and blood
and an absence of shadow and dream-which hardly the strongest
partisans of Spenser, if they are wise as well as strong, would
choose, or would in fact wish, to predicate of him.
It has been usual to recognise a certain advance in Lucrece;
which was thus entitled at its publication, though it had been
licensed as The Ravishment of Lucrece and has, later, been
generally called The Rape of Lucrece. The reasons for this
estimate are clear enough. There is the natural presumption that,
in the case of so great a genius, there will be an advance; and there
is the character, and, to some extent, the treatment, of the subject.
This latter still busies itself with things 'inconvenient, but in the
purely grave and tragic manner, the opportunities for voluptuous
expatiation being very slightly taken, if not deliberately refused.
The theme, as before, is a stock theme; but it is treated at greater
length, and yet with much less merely added embroidery of descrip-
tion and narrative, which, at best, are accidentally connected with
the subject. There is little pure ornament in Lucrece and a great
deal of the much desiderated and applauded high seriousness,'
‘thoughtfulness' and the like. Moreover, to suit his more serious
subject, Shakespeare has made choice of a more serious and
ambitious vehicle—the great rime royal, which had long been the
staple form of English poetry for serious purposes. The special
qualities of this stanza, as it happens, are especially suited to such
a theme as that of Lucrece; for, while it can do many things,
its character of plangency-not for monotonous wailing but for the
varied expression of sorrow and passion-had been magnificently
shown by Chaucer and by Sackville. Nor is Shakespeare unequal to
the occasion. The first two stanzas weave the more complicated
harmony of rhythm and rime in which the septet has the advantage
over the sixain to excellent effect; and there are fine examples
later. The length of the piece—1854 lines—is neither excessive
nor insufficient; the chief, if not the only, episode (Lucrece's sad
contemplation of the painted tale of Troy) is not irrelevant, and is
done almost as vigorously as the best things in Venus and Adonis.
And, if the unbroken sadness of the piece, which is not disguised
15_2


## p. 228 (#252) ############################################

228
Shakespeare: Poems
even in the overture, is oppressive, it can hardly be said to be
unduly oppressive.
On the whole, however, while allowing to it an ample success of
esteem, it is difficult to put it, as evidence of genius and as a
source of delight, even on a level with Venus and Adonis, much more
to set it above that poem. It is a better school exercise, but it is
much more of a school exercise, much more like the poems which
were being produced by dozens in the hotbed of late Elizabethan
poetic culture. Though it is half as long again, it contains far fewer
single lines or line batches of intense and consummate beauty than
the Venus. Though there is more thought in it, there is less imagery,
and even less imagination; the prosodic capacities (higher as they
have been granted to be) of line and stanza are less often brought
out; the greater equality of merit is attained by lowering the
heights as well as by filling up the depths. What is specially
remarkable, in the work of the greatest character monger and
character master of all time, Lucrece is still very little of a
person-rather less (one feels inclined to say) than either the
lovesick goddess or her froward lover. She is a pathetic and
beautiful type; she does and says nothing that is inappropriate
to her hapless situation and much that is exquisitely appropriate;
but she is not individualised. In short, the whole thing has rather
the character of a verse theme, carefully and almost consummately
worked out according to rule and specification by a very clever
scholar, than that of the spontaneous essay of a genius as yet
unformed. From Venus and Adonis alone, a cautious but well
instructed critic might have expected either its actual later sequel
of immensely improved work or, perhaps, though less probably,
nothing more worth having. From Lucrece, the legitimate critical
expectation would be, at best, a poet something like Drayton,
but, perhaps, a little better, a poet whose work would be marked
by power sometimes reaching almost full adequacy and competence,
but rarely transcending, a poet somewhat deficient in personal
intensity himself and still more in the power of communicating it
to his characters and compositions.
Almost everyone who has any interest in literature is more or
less acquainted with the interminable theories and disputes which
have arisen on the subject of the Sonnets. Yet it should not be
very difficult for anyone who has some intelligence to divest him-
self sufficiently of this acquaintance to enable him to read them
as if they were a new book-uncommented, unintroduced, with
nothing but its own contents to throw light or darkness upon it.


## p. 229 (#253) ############################################

The Sonnets
229
-
If they are thus read, in the original order (for long after Shake-
speare's death this order, purposely or not, was changed, though
modern editions usually, and rightly, disregard this change), certain
things will strike the careful reader at once. The first is that, by
accident or design, the pieces composing the series are sharply, but
very unequally, divided in subject, design being, on further inspec-
tion, pretty clearly indicated by the fact that the dividing point,
sonnet 126, is not a sonnet at all, but a douzain. In this reading,
it will, also, have become clear that the direct and expressed
object of most of the first and far larger batch is a man, and
that those of this batch which do not specify person or sex fall
in with the others well enough; while the main object of the last
and smaller batch is a woman. The first score or so of the earlier
group, though containing expressions of passionate affection, are
mainly, if not wholly, occupied with urging the person addressed
to marry. Both batches contain repeated complaint—though it is
not always exactly complaint—that the friend has betrayed the
poet with the mistress and the mistress with the friend. (It is,
however, perhaps possible to argue that the identity of friend
and mistress in the two batches is not proved to demonstration. )
A large portion of the whole-perhaps nearly a third—is full of that
half abstract, and almost impersonal, meditation on the joys and
sorrows of love which is the special matter of the sonnet. One or
two special and particular points, however, emerge—such as the indi-
cation of jealousy of other poets in respect of the friend, expressions
of dissatisfaction with the writer's ‘public means' of living or pro-
fession (which, most probably, is the actor's, but, it must be observed,
far from necessarily so), and, in regard to the mistress, special, and
repeated, insistence on the fact of her being a 'dark lady' with black
eyes and hair. There is a good deal of wordplay on the name 'Will,'
which, of course, it would be absurd to overlook, but which had
rather less significance in those days than it would have now.
All these things are quite unmistakable. That the friend was
a 'person of quality' is generally admitted, and need not be much
cavilled at, though it must be observed that the words ‘so fair a
house,' in sonnet 13, do not necessarily bear the meaning of
'family. ' But everything beyond is matter of doubt and question;
while the very points just enumerated, though unmistakable in
themselves, suggest doubt and question, to those who choose to
entertain them, almost ad infinitum. Who was the friend? Pem-
broke, Southampton, or another? Who was the lady? Mistress
Mary Fitton (who seems to have been a love of Pembroke, but
9
6


## p. 230 (#254) ############################################

230
Shakespeare: Poems
6
who, they say, was fair, not dark) or somebody else? Who was the
rival poet? When the list of uncertain certainties is overstepped,
and men begin to construct out of the Sonnets a history of the
course of untrue love in both cases, and endeavour to extend this
history into something like a cipher chronicle of a great part of
Shakespeare's life, we have, obviously, passed into cloudland.
There is no limit to the interpretations possible to a tolerably
lively fancy; and the limitless becomes more infinitely unlimited
in respect to the criticisms and countercriticisms of these inter-
pretations themselves.
On the other hand, it is possible to lay rather too much stress
on the possibility of there being no interpretation at all or very
little, of the Sonnets being merely, or mainly, literary exercises.
It is, of course, perfectly true that the form, at this time, was an
extremely fashionable exercise; and, no doubt, in some cases, a
fashionable exercise merely. It is further true that, great as are
the poetical merits and capacities of the sonnet, historically it has
been, and from its nature was almost fated to be, more the prey
of
'common form' than almost any other variety of poetic composi-
tion. The overpowering authority of Petrarch started this common
form; and his Italian and French successors, enlarging it to a
certain extent, stereotyped and conventionalised it even still more.
It is perfectly possible to show, and has been well shown by Sidney
Lee, that a great number, perhaps the majority, of sonnet phrases,
sonnet thoughts, sonnet ornaments, are simply coin of the sonnet
realm, which has passed from hand to hand through Italian, French
and English, and circulates in the actual Elizabethan sonnet like
actual coin in the body politic or like blood in the body physical.
All this is true. But it must be remembered that all poetry deals
more or less in this common form, this common coin, this circu-
lating fluid of idea and image and phrase, and that it is the very
ethos, nay, the very essence, of the poet to make the common as if
it were not common. That Shakespeare does so here again and
again, in whole sonnets, in passages, in lines, in separate phrases,
there is a tolerable agreement of the competent. But we may,
without rashness, go a little further even than this. That Shake-
speare had, as, perhaps, no other man has had, the dramatic faculty,
the faculty of projecting from himself things and persons which were
not himself, will certainly not be denied here. But whether he could
create and keep up such a presentation of apparently authentic and
personal passion as exhibits itself in these Sonnets is a much more
difficult question to answer in the affirmative. The present writer


## p. 231 (#255) ############################################

The Dramatic Element in the Sonnets 231
is inclined to echo seriously a light remark of one of Thackeray's
characters on a different matter: 'Don't think he could do it.
Don't think anyone could do it. '
At the same time, it is of the first importance to recognise
that the very intensity of feeling, combined, as it was, with the
most energetic dramatic quality, would, almost certainly, induce
complicated disguise and mystification in the details of the pre-
sentment. It was once said, and by no mere idle paradoxer, that
the best argument for the identity of the dark lady and Mary Fitton
was that Mistress Fitton, apparently, was a blonde. In other words,
to attempt to manufacture a biography of Shakespeare out of
the Sonnets is to attempt to follow a will-o'-the-wisp. It is even
extremely probable that a number, and perhaps a large number,
of them do not correspond to any immediate personal occasion
at all, or only owe a remote (and literally occasional) impulse
thereto. The strong affection for the friend; the unbounded,
though not uncritical, passion for the lady; and the establishment
of a rather unholy 'triangle' by a cross passion between these two-
these are things which, without being capable of being affirmed as
resting on demonstration, have a joint literary and psychological
probability of the strongest kind. All things beyond, and all the
incidents between, which may have started or suggested individual
sonnets, are utterly uncertain. Browning was absolutely justified
when he laid it down that, if Shakespeare unlocked his heart in
the Sonnets, the less Shakespeare he. ' That the Sonnets testify
'
to a need of partial unlocking, that they serve as 'waste' or over-
flow, in more or less disguised fashion, to something that was not
unlocked, but which, if kept utterly confined, would have been
mortal, may be urged without much fear of refutation. We
see the heart (if we see it at all) through many thicknesses of
cunningly coloured glass. But the potency and the variety of its
operation are, however indistinctly, conveyed; and we can under-
stand all the better how, when the power was turned into other,
and freer, channels, it set the plays a-working.
To pass to more solid ground, the Sonnets have some me-
chanical, and many more not mechanical, peculiarities. The chief
of the first class is a device of constantly, though not invariably,
beginning with a strong caesura at the fourth syllable, and a
tendency, though the sonnet is built up of quatrains alternately
rimed with final couplet, to put a still stronger stop at the end of
the second line (where, as yet, is no rime), and at each second line
of these non-completed couplets throughout. The piece is thus


## p. 232 (#256) ############################################

232
Shakespeare: Poems
6
elaborately built up or accumulated, not, as sonnets on the octave
and sestet system often are, more or less continuously wrought in
each of their two divisions or even throughout. This arrangement
falls in excellently with the intensely meditative character of the
Sonnets. The poet seems to be exploring; feeling his way in the
conflict of passion and meditation. As fresh emotions and medita-
tions present themselves, he pauses over them, sometimes entertain-
ing them only to reject them or to qualify them later; sometimes
taking them completely to himself. Even in the most artificial,
such as sonnet 66, where almost the whole is composed of succes-
sive images of the wrong way of the world, each comprised in a
line and each beginning with 'and,' this accumulative character
is noticeable; and it constitutes the strongest appeal of the
greatest examples. While, at the same time, he avails himself
to the full of the opportunity given by the English form for a
sudden "turn'-antithetic, it may be, or, it may be, rapidly sum-
marising-in the final couplet. Of course, these mechanical or
semi-mechanical peculiarities are not universal. He varies them
with the same infinite ingenuity which is shown in his blank verse;
so that, as for instance in the beautiful sonnet 71, the first two
quatrains are each indissoluble, woven in one piece from the first
syllable to the last. But the general characteristics have been
correctly enough indicated in what has been said above.
Still, the attraction of the Sonnets, almost more than that of
any other poetry, consists in the perpetual subduing of everything
in them—verse, thought, diction—to the requirements of absolutely
perfect poetic expression. From the completest successes in which,
from beginning to end, there is no weak point, such as
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
or
Let me not to the marriage of true minds,
through those which carry the perfection only part of the way,
such as
When in the chronicle of wasted time,
>
down to the separate batches of lines and clauses which appear in
all but a very few, the peculiar infusing and transforming power
of this poetical expression is shown after a fashion which it has
proved impossible to outvie. The precise subject (or, perhaps,
it would be more correct to say the precise object) of the verse
disappears. It ceases to be a matter of the slightest interest
whether it was Mr W. H. or Mistress M. F. or anybody or nobody


## p. 233 (#257) ############################################

Lesser Poems
233
at all, so that we have only an abstraction which the poet chooses
to regard as concrete. The best motto for the Sonnets would be
one taken from not the least profound passage of the Paradiso of
Dante
Qui si rimira nell'arte ch' adorna
Con tanto affetto.
And this admiration of the art of beautiful expression not only
dispenses the reader from all the tedious, and probably vain,
enquiries into particulars which have been glanced at, but positively
makes him disinclined to pursue them.
The lesser poems, if only because of their doubtfulness, may be
dealt with more shortly. A Lover's Complaint, by whomsoever
written, must have been an early poem, but shows good powers in
its writer. The rime royal, of which it is composed, is of the same
general type as that of Lucrece, but has a few lines superior to any
in the larger and more certain poem, such as the well known last
And new peryert a reconciled maid,
or the fine, and quite Shakespearean, second line in
O father! what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!
The jilted and betrayed damsel who is the heroine and spokes-
woman has sparks of personal character. Of The Passionate
Pilgrim pieces, not already known as Shakespeare's, or assigned
to others, the two Venus and Adonis sonnets might be either
suggested by the authentic poem to someone else or alternative
studies for a different treatment of it by Shakespeare himself;
and it is hardly possible to say of any of the rest that it cannot
be, or that it must be, his. There are flashes of beauty in most of
them; but, considering the way in which such flashes of beauty are
shot and showered over and through the poetry of 1590-1610,
this goes but a little way, or, rather, no way at all, towards identifi-
cation. As for The Phoenix and the Turtle, the extreme meta-
.
physicality of parts of it-
Property was thus appalled
That the self was not the same; etc. -
is by no means inconceivable in the Shakespeare of Love's Labour's
Lost and of some of the Sonnets. The opening lines, and some of
those that follow, are exceedingly beautiful, and the contrast of
melody between the different metres of the body of the poem and
the concluding threnos is 'noble and most artful. '


## p. 234 (#258) ############################################

234 Shakespeare: Poems
Inasmuch, moreover, as some of these minor and doubtful pieces
draw very close to the songs in the plays, and actually figure in their
company under the thievish wand of Hermes-Jaggard, it cannot be
very improper to take them slightly into account, with the songs and
certainly assigned poems, as basis for a short connected survey of
Shakespeare's poetical characteristics in non-dramatic verse. One
of these, which is extremely remarkable, and which has been also
noted in his dramatic verse, is the uniform metrical mastery. This,
when you come to compare the two classical narratives, the Sonnets
and the songs with their possible companions among the doubtful
minors, is extraordinary. Neither Chaucer nor Spenser was good
at light lyrical measures, admirable and beyond admiration as both
were in regard to non-lyrical verse, and accomplished, as was at
least Spenser, in the more elaborate and slowly moving lyric. In
fact, it may almost be said that neither tried them. Shakespeare
tries them with perfect success; while his management of the
sixain and septet is more than adequate, and his management of
the English form of sonnet absolutely consummate. This lesser
exhibition (as some would call it) of his universality-this univer-
sality in form—is surely well worth noting; as is, once more, the
unusually lyrical character of some of his stanza work itself, and
the likeness to his blank verse lines of not a few things both in
stanza and in sonnet. This polymetric character has since become
more and more common because poets have had examples of it
before them. But it is first strongly noteworthy in Shakespeare.
Of the matter that he put into these forms, perhaps the first
thing that ought to be remarked is that most of it certainly, and
nearly all of it (except the later play songs) probably, dates from
a very early period in his literary life; and the second, that the
range of direct subject is not large. From this, enough having been
said of the other productions, we may pass to the third observa-
tion: that in the Sonnets the absolute high water mark of poetry is
touched, at least for those who believe with Patrizzi, and Hazlitt,
and Hugo, that poetry does not so much consist in the selection of
subject as in the peculiar fashion of handling the subject chosen.
What their exact meaning may be is one question, with, as has
been shown in practice, a thousand branches to it. It is a 'weary
river,' and, probably, there is no place where that river "comes safe
to sea' at all. Whether or not we wish, with Hallam, that they had
never been written must be a result of the personal equation. But
that, in the Longinian sense of the Sublime, they 'transport' in their
finest passages as no other poetry does except the very greatest,
<


## p. 235 (#259) ############################################

The Passion of the Sonnets 235
and as not so very much other poetry does at all, may be said to be
settled. If anyone is not transported by these passages, it is not
impertinent to say that he must be like the heavier domestic
fowls' of Dr Johnson's ingenious and effective circumlocution-
rather difficult to raise by external effort and ill furnished with
auxiliary apparatus for the purpose.
The poems other than the Sonnets are either tentative essays
or occasional 'graciousnesses' for a special purpose; the Sonnets
themselves have such an intensity of central fire that no human
nature, not even Shakespeare's, could keep it burning, and sur-
round it with an envelope able to resist and yet to transmit the
heat, for very long. Fortunately, experiment and faculty both
found another range of exercise which was practically unlimited;
fortunately, also, they did not find it without leaving us record
of their prowess in this.


## p. 236 (#260) ############################################

CHAPTER X
PLAYS OF UNCERTAIN AUTHORSHIP ATTRIBUTED
TO SHAKESPEARE
THE foundations of the Shakespearean apocrypha were laid
while the dramatist was still alive, when a number of plays, in the
composition of most of which he could have had no hand, were
entered upon the Stationers' register as his, or were published
with his name or initials on the title-page. Against the laying of
these foundations Shakespeare, so far as we know, raised no protest.
In any case, it is upon them that the ascriptions of publishers and
others in the generation that followed his death, and the theories
advanced by students of the Elizabethan drama during the last two
centuries, have built up a superstructure so massive that the total
of the plays of more or less uncertain authorship attributed to
Shakespeare already equals in quantity that of the accepted canon.
Disregarding those plays—six in all—which were claimed by
their publishers as Shakespeare's, but which have since been lost,
we may attempt the following classification. First, plays which
were published during Shakespeare's lifetime with his name, or
initials, upon the title-page: Locrine (published in 1595); The
first part of the . . . life of Sir John Oldcastle (1600); The whole
life and death of Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602); The London
Prodigall (1605); The Puritane (1607); A Yorkshire Tragedy
(1608); Pericles (1609). Two of these plays do not concern us here:
Sir John Oldcastle, part I, has been assigned, on the evidence of
an entry in Henslowe's diary, to the joint authorship of Munday,
Drayton, Wilson and Hathwaye; and certain parts of Pericles have
been almost universally recognised as the work of Shakespeare.
A second class comprises three plays which were published after
Shakespeare's death with his name, as sole or joint author, upon the
title-page : The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England
(published as Shakespeare's in 1622, after having been issued anony-
mously in 1591); The Two Noble Kinsmen (published as the work
of Fletcher and Shakespeare in 1634); and The Birth of Merlin
(“written by William Shakespear and William Rowley,' 1662).


## p. 237 (#261) ############################################

The Evidence mainly Internal 237
Again, three plays have been attributed to him on the very
slender evidence that they were discovered bound up together in
a volume in Charles II's library, labelled 'Shakespeare, vol. I.
'
These are Mucedorus (first published, anonymously, in 1598); The
Merry Devill of Edmonton (1608); and Faire Em (1631)'. None
of these was included in the third folio edition of Shakespeare's
works, which appeared in 1664, and which added to the thirty-six
plays of the first folio the seven plays first mentioned above.
The last class of plays of uncertain authorship attributed to
Shakespeare will comprise those which have been assigned to him
since the beginning of the eighteenth century on the basis of internal
evidence. The number of plays which could be brought under this
heading is very large, but only three of them-Edward III,
Arden of Feversham and Sir Thomas More-can be included here.
Two other plays—The First Part of the Contention and The True
Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke—also fall into this division;
but these, like The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England
mentioned above, have been treated in a preceding chapter?
In considering the question of Shakespeare's share in any
of
the above plays, it is unfortunate that our main evidence has
to be sought in the plays themselves. The appearance of his
name on the Stationers' register, or on the title-page of a play,
is of interest as showing the extent of his popularity with the
reading public of his time, but is no evidence whatever that the
play is his. On the other hand, it is uncritical to reject a play
as Shakespeare's solely because it does not find a place in the
first folio of 1623. Valuable as that edition is as a standard of
authenticity, it does not include Pericles, portions of which are
almost unanimously claimed for Shakespeare, while it includes
The First Part of Henry VI, portions of which are just as
unanimously believed not to be his. There remains, therefore,
the evidence furnished by the plays themselves-evidence which,
for the most part, consists in the resemblances which these plays
bear, in respect of diction and metre, characterisation and plot
construction, to the accepted works of Shakespeare. Such evidence,
confessedly, is unsatisfactory and leaves the whole question under
the undisputed sway of that fickle jade, Opinion.
But the question of Shakespearean authorship is not the only
point of interest presented by the doubtful plays. So varied in
1 There is an undated quarto edition of Faire Em which C. F. Tucker Brooke
considers older than that of 1631 . by perhaps a generation or more' (Shakespeare
Apocrypra, p. xxxviii).
· Chap. vi.
1


## p. 238 (#262) ############################################

238
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
character are the works which go to form the Shakespearean
apocrypha, that they may fairly be said to furnish us with an
epitome of the Elizabethan drama during the period of its
greatest achievement. Almost every class of play is here repre-
sented, and one class—that of domestic tragedy-finds, in Arden
of Feversham and in A Yorkshire Tragedy, two of its most
illustrious examples. The Senecan tragedy of vengeance is repre-
sented by Locrine; the history or chronicle play by Edward III,
The First Part of the Contention, The True Tragedie, The
Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, Sir Thomas More
and Cromwell, and, less precisely, by The Birth of Merlin and
Faire Em. The romantic comedy of the period is illustrated by
Mucedorus, The Merry Devill and The Two Noble Kinsmen,
while The London Prodigall and The Puritane are types of that
realistic bourgeois comedy which, in Stewart days, won a firm hold
upon the affections of the play-going community.
Of the apocryphal tragedies, the earliest in date of composition
was, probably, Locrine, which, when published by Thomas Creede,
in 1595, was described as 'newly set foorth, overseene and corrected,
By W. S. ' The initials, probably, were intended to convey the
impression of Shakespearean authorship, but nowhere in the five
acts is there the faintest trace of Shakespeare's manner. The
words 'newly set foorth, overseene and corrected' indicate that
Locrine was an old play revised in 1595; and in the number of
revised passages must be included the reference in the epilogue to
queen Elizabeth as
that renowned maid
That eight and thirty years the sceptre swayed.
A feature of the play, pointed out by Crawford? and by Koeppel? ,
and discussed in an earlier chapter, is that some of its verses
reappear almost unchanged in Selimus (1594), and, also, that both
of these plays have imported a number of verses from Spenser's
Ruines of Rome, published in 1591. But, if Locrine, as verse,
diction and plot construction lead us to suppose, was written
before 1590, it is probable that the lines borrowed from Spenser
do not belong to the original edition, but only to the revised
version of 1595.
The play, while yielding to popular taste in respect of stage
action, neglect of the unities and the mingling of kings and
1 Notes and Queries, 1901, Nos. 161, 163, 165, 168, 171, 174, 177.
2 Locrine und Selimus,' Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol. XLI, pp. 193—200. As to the
relations between Locrine and Selimus, see ante, chap. iv.


## p. 239 (#263) ############################################

Locrine
239
clowns, is, in its main outlines, a Senecan revenge tragedy; and, in
its adaptation of a theme drawn from early British history to the
Senecan manner, it is the direct successor of Gorboduc and The
Misfortunes of Arthur. The story of Locrine, which is also told
by Lodge in his Complaint of Elstred and by Spenser in his
Faerie Queenel was found by the playwright in Geoffrey of
Monmouth's Historia Britonum and the Chronicles of Holinshed.
Weak in characterisation, and somewhat loose and episodic in
plot construction, the play, however, is by no means the caput
mortuum which Lamb declared it to be. It is full of youthful
vigour, and, amid much turgid declamation and a too ready in-
dulgence in Senecan horrors, contains passages of splendid rhetoric.
Sabren's lament to the mountain nymphs, the 'Dryades and light-
foot Satyri,' and the
gracious fairies which at evening tide
Your closets leave, with heavenly beauty stored? ,
is a noble anticipation of Comus, and Locrine's farewell to Estrild
in the same scene-
Farewell, fair Estrild, beauty's paragon,
Fram'd in the front of forlorn miseries;
Ne'er shall mine eyes behold thy sunshine eyes.
But when we meet in the Elysian fields,
advances with the pomp and rhythmic splendour of a legionary
march. The comic scenes, too, are full of vitality, and there are
elements in the character of Strumbo the clown that foretell both
Don Armado and Falstaff.
At different times, the play has been ascribed to Marlowe,
Greene and Peele respectively, and, of late, opinion has veered
strongly in the direction of Peele. But, while there are certain
resemblances of style to The Battell of Alcazar-if, indeed, that
anonymous play be Peele's—there are still more striking re-
semblances to the tragedies of Kyd, past master of that type of
Senecan revenge tragedy to which Locrine very closely approaches.
A comparative study of Locrine and The Spanish Tragedie
brings so many points of resemblance to light as to make it seem
probable that they are the works of the same author; and, in
support of this view, it may be noticed, incidentally, that the
two plays are coupled together in the ridicule which Jonson
metes out to Kyd in Poetaster: Locrine resembles The Spanish
Tragedie in the introduction of the goddess of Revenge, before
each act, in the notable use which is made of the Senecan
1 Book 11, canto 10, stanzas 13-19. 2 Act v, sc. 4. 3 Act II, sc. 1.


## p. 240 (#264) ############################################

240 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
ghost, in the constant appeal to, or tirade against, Fortune
and in the countless references to the horrors of the classic
underworld, with its three judges, Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanth.
The Senecan rodomontade of The Spanish Tragedie, with its
lurid imagery and wild cries for vengeance, reappears, if possible
with heightened colours, in Locrine, together with the introduction
of Latin verses and even a stray phrase in the Spanish tongue.
There is, too, an affinity between the two plays in situation and
sentiment: just as, in The Spanish Tragedie, Horatio and Lorenzo
strive against each other for the possession of the captured prince
of Portugal, so, in Locrine, two soldiers dispute over the captured
Estrild; while the outraged Hieronimo's appeal to nature to
sympathise with him in his sorrow is echoed in the speech of the
ghost of Corineus? .
Arden of Feversham, apparently the earliest, and, beyond all
question, the highest, achievement of the Elizabethan age in the
field of domestic tragedy, was first claimed for Shakespeare by
Edward Jacob, a Faversham antiquary, who re-edited the play in
1770. Since then, it has passed through numerous editions, and,
engaging the notice of almost every Shakespearean critic, it has
called forth the most divergent views as to its authorship. The
play was entered on the Stationers' register as early as 3 April
1592, and was published anonymously in the same year with the
title, The Lamentable and True Tragedie of M. Arden of Fever-
sham in Kent; later quarto editions, also anonymous, appeared
in 1599 and 1633. The tragic incident upon which the drama is
based took place in 1551, and left so lasting a mark upon the
minds of men, that Raphael Holinshed, in the publication of his
Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, twenty-six years
later, devoted five pages to the story and recorded the details with
considerable dramatic power. The dramatist, although he makes
a few slight alterations and adds the character of Franklin, follows
Holinshed's narrative in all its essential aspects with scrupulous
fidelity. Writing, too, at a time when the exuberant style of
Marlowe and Kyd was in the ascendant, he exercises a marked
self-restraint. Here and there, the spirit of the age lifts him off
his feet-as, for instance, where he makes the ruffian Shakebag
discourse in superb poetry3; but, for the most part, he preserves that
austerity of manner which, he felt, the sordid theme demanded.
The exercise of this self-restraint, which often amounts to a
1 Act 1, sc. 2.
> Act v, sc. 4. As to Locrine, cf. ante, chap. IV.
3 Act II, 80. 2, 1-9.


## p. 241 (#265) ############################################

Arden of Feversham
241
cynical indifference to the principles of art, pertains to much
besides diction. The plot of the play, judged by the standard of
Shakespearean tragedy, is singularly devoid of constructive art; it
advances not by growth from within but by accretion from with-
out. One murderous plot against Arden's life follows another in
quick succession, and, as we see each attempt baffled in turn,
our sense of terror is changed to callousness, and the tragic effect
of the actual murder is, thereby, blunted. The repeated attempts
at murder, again, are merely so many episodes, and, as the drama
proceeds, we are not made to feel that the meshes of the con-
spirators' net are closing upon their prey. Except for the
exigencies of a five-act play, and the author's determination to
abridge none of the details of Holinshed's story, the murder of
Arden might very well have occurred at the end of the first act.
If our sense of terror is blunted by the nature of the plot, so,
also, is our pity for the victim. By reason of his stupidity and
insensate credulity, his avarice and his cruelty to Bradshaw and
Reede, Thomas Arden fails altogether to win our sympathy. The
dramatist, it is true, leaves unnoticed some of the charges brought
against him by Holinshed; but he makes no attempt whatever to
render him attractive, or to awaken our pity at his death. In all
this, we recognise the contrast to the manner of Shakespeare as
displayed, for example, in Macbeth Holinshed's Duncan arouses
as little sympathy as Holinshed's Arden, but Shakespeare, in his
regard for tragic pity, has made of Macbeth’s victim a hero and
a saint. Apart from the work of mere journeymen playwrights,
there is no play in the whole range of Elizabethan dramatic
literature which disregards tragic katharsis, alike in its terror
and its pity, so completely as Arden of Feversham.
But are we to ascribe this neglect of tragic katharsis to
obtuseness of dramatic vision? The marvellous power which the
playwright reveals in the handling of certain situations and the
deftness with which he introduces, now a touch of grim humour
and now a gleam of tragic irony, are sufficient indications that his
treatment of the story was deliberate. And, if any doubt remains
in our minds, we have only to turn to the closing words of the
play, in which the author defends his craftsmanship against all
attack:
Gentlemen, we hope you'll pardon this naked tragedy,
Wherein no filed points are foisted in
To make it gracious to the ear or eye;
For simple truth is gracious enough,
And needs no other points of glosing stuff.
E. L. V.
16
CH. X.


## p. 242 (#266) ############################################

242 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
The author of Arden of Feversham is not only the creator of
English domestic tragedy; he is, also, the first English dramatic
realist, and the first who refused to make nature bend beneath
the yoke of art. Delighting in the ‘simple truth' of Holinshed's
narrative, he refused to alter it-refused to reduce the number of
attempts on Arden's life or to make the victim of the tragedy a
martyr. And, in all this, he stands as a man apart, neither owning
allegiance to the recognised masters of English tragedy, Kyd
and Marlowe, nor claiming fellowship with the rising genius of
Shakespeare. It is impossible to believe that the author of Arden
is the author of Romeo and Juliet. True, there are lines, some-
times whole speeches, in the play which have something very
like the Shakespearean ring in them; and it is also true that
the play reveals, especially in the famous quarrel scene between
Alice Arden and Mosbie', a knowledge of the human heart
which the Shakespeare of 1592 might well have envied. But, in
1592, the temper of Shakespeare was not that of the austere
realist: he was ardent and romantic, a lover of rime and of
‘taffeta phrases,' a poet still in his pupilage, well content to follow
in the steps of his masters; and, in each of these respects, he
differs widely from the creator of Arden. Nor, finally, was it the
principle of Shakespeare, either in 1592 or at any other period of
his life, to place the record of history above art in the way that
the Arden dramatist has done. There is no rigidity in the materials
out of which Shakespeare has fashioned his plays; to him, all
things were ductile, and capable of being moulded into whatever
shape the abiding principles of the playwright's craft demanded.
A Yorkshire Tragedy resembles Arden of Feversham in its
unflinching realism, as well as in being a dramatisation of a tragic
occurrence in the annals of English domestic life. The event
which it memorises took place at Calverley hall, Yorkshire, early
in 1605, and was recorded very fully by an anonymous pamphleteer,
very briefly by Stow in his Chronicle, by a ballad writer and,
lastly, by two dramatists—the authors of The Miseries of Inforst
Mariage and A Yorkshire Tragedy respectively. The former
play, which was first published in 1607, was by George Wilkins;
the latter, after being acted at the Globe theatre, was entered
on the Stationers' register on 2 May 1608, as 'by Wylliam
Shakespere,' and published in the same year with his name upon
the title-page. Wilkins, appalled by the tragic 'gloom of the
story, alters the facts and brings his play to a happy ending; but
the author of the ten short, breathless scenes which make up
1 Act III, sc. 5.


## p. 243 (#267) ############################################

A Yorkshire Tragedy
243
a
A Yorkshire Tragedy spares us none of the harrowing details.
Keeping very close to the version of the pamphleteer, he furnishes
a record of the last act in a rake's progress to the gallows,
and, delighting in the relentless analysis of criminality, sacrifices
everything for the sake of the criminal. The wife-a faintly-
outlined Griselda of the Yorkshire dales—the various 'gentlemen,'
and the ‘Master of a College,' are little more than lay-figures
grouped around the central character, the master of Calverley hall.
In him, we encounter a being of strange complexity of
character ; at first sight a mere wastrel and ruffian, we realise,
as the play advances, the tragic fascination that he exercises.
Brought to a sense of his evil ways by the Master of a College,
he expresses in soliloquy thoughts which carry with them a
haunting power: 'O, would virtue had been forbidden! We
should then have proved all virtuous ; for 'tis our blood to love
what we are forbidden. ' The soliloquy ended, a tragic surprise
awaits the reader: remorse, which seems to be driving the husband
to repentance, is suddenly turned in a new direction by the impulse
of ancestral pride; and, instead of a repentant sinner, we are
confronted with a murderer, red-handed with the blood of his own
children, whom he slays lest they shall live 'to ask an usurer
bread. ' The closing scene, though it contains Calverley's infinitely
pathetic speech, made over his children's corpses—
Here's weight enough to make a heart-string crack, . . .
is unequal to what has gone before.
There is no sufficient reason for ascribing the play to
Shakespeare. Powerful as it is, the workmanship is not Shake-
spearean, and the fact that a play written about 1606—7 should
introduce rime into some twenty-five per cent. of the total number
of verses is, in itself, it would appear, ample proof that the
ascription of the title-page is unwarranted!
Of the historical plays attributed to Shakespeare, but not
included in the first folio, the most important is Edward III.
The conjecture that he had a hand in this play was not put forward
during his lifetime, and rests entirely on internal evidence.
Edward III was first published, anonymously, in 1596, and a
second edition followed in 1599; but it was not until Capell
re-edited the play in his Prolusions (1760) that the claim íor
Shakespearean authorship was seriously put forward.
Written in verse throughout, the play opens with a scene which
is similar to the first scene of Henry V; but no sooner are the
1 As to the significance of Arden of Feversham and A Yorkshire Tragedy in the
history of English domestic drama, see post, vol. vi, chap. IV (Thomas Heywood).
16-2


## p. 244 (#268) ############################################

244
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
preparations for king Edward's foreign campaign begun than the
main action is impeded by the introduction of the romantic love
story of the king and the countess of Salisbury, which occupies
the rest of the first, and the whole of the second, act. Then, when
the monarch has at last conquered his adulterous passion, the
narrative of military conquest, with the prince of Wales as its
hero, is resumed, and proceeds, without further break, along the
path prescribed to the dramatist by Froissart and Holinsbed.
But, although the countess episode impairs the little unity of
action which this desultory chronicle play would otherwise have,
it must be remembered that that episode is no extraneous matter
foisted into the play for the sake of dramatic effect; the author
goes to Bandello, or, rather, to Bandello's English translator,
William Painter, for the details of the story, but the main outlines
of it are faithfully recorded by Froissart and subsequent chroniclers
of English history. If, however, the double plot of the play furnishes,
in itself, no reason for assuming double authorship, that assumption
must, nevertheless, be made on other and more substantial grounds.
In diction and verse, in the portrayal of character and in the
attainment of dramatic effect, the author of the love scenes stands
apart from the author of the battle scenes. The number of riming
verses and verses with double endings in the love scenes, is
considerably greater than in all the remainder of the play.
Soliloquy is unknown in the battle scenes, whereas, in the countess
episode, one-sixth of the total number of verses are spoken in
monologue. The love scenes are also distinguished from the rest
of the play by the strain of lyricism in which their author indulges ;
it would, indeed, be difficult to find in the whole range of Elizabethan
drama a passage more completely imbued with lyric feeling than that
in which Edward converses with Lodowick, his secretary! It is not
the tempestuous lyricism of Marlowe which we meet with here, but
the elegiac lyricism of the sonneteers, the unfeigned delight in the
play of amorous fancy and the fond lingering over airy sentiment.
Characteristics such as these isolate the countess episode from the
rest of the play, and, at the same time, associate it with much of
the early work of Shakespeare, above all with Romeo and Juliet.
But, in the absence of all external authority, it would be unsafe
to claim the episode for Shakespeare upon such evidence as this
alone; and the same may be said for the resemblances of idea,
imagery and cadence which many passages in these love scenes
bear to passages in his canonical works. If the claim for Shake-
spearean authorship is to be put forward at all, it must be based
1 Act 11, sc. 1.


## p. 245 (#269) ############################################

Edward III
245
-
upon those elements of Shakespeare's genius which ever elude the
grasp of the most skilful plagiarist—the creation of character, the
reaching after dramatic effect and the impalpable spirit of dramatic
art. It is in the person of the countess of Salisbury that the genius
of Shakespeare first seems to reveal itself, and it has been well
said that, without her, his gallery of female characters would be
incomplete. She is a woman as resolute in her chastity as the
Isabella of Measure for Measure, yet far more gracious and far
less austere. We have only to compare her with the Ida of Greene's
James IV to realise the masterly workmanship of the author of
Edward III. The situation in which the two women are placed
is almost identical; but, whereas Ida is a slight, girlish figure who,
for all her purity, has little save conventional commonplace where-
with to rebut the Scottish king's proffers, the countess rises in the
face of trial and temptation to supreme queenliness. And whereas,
in his presentation of the story, Greene wastes every opportunity
of bringing the love suit to a dramatic crisis, the author of the
countess episode displays the highest art of plot construction.
When we compare the dramatic version of the story with that
of the Italian novel, we realise at once the transforming touch of
a master artist. The action in Bandello extends over a considerable
period of time, during which the countess becomes a widow, but
persists, in spite of the importunities of her mother, in rejecting
the king's unlawful suit. At last, dagger in hand, she begs the
king to slay her, or let her slay herself, in order that her chastity
may be preserved. Then the king, impressed now by her fortitude
as before by her beauty, offers her his hand in marriage, and
the countess straightway accepts him as her husband. As we read
the play, we realise. how this Pamela ending offended the finer
taste of the dramatist. Going carefully over the incidents of the
story, he excises here, enlarges there, and, finally, brings his plot
to a crisis and dénouement quite unlike, and infinitely nobler than,
that of Bandello. The one dagger becomes two, and, in the
countess's simple but burning words to the lascivious king, we feel
ourselves in the presence of Shakespeare, and of Shakespeare
rising at one genial leap to the full stature of his divinity:
Here by my side do hang my wedding knives :
Take thon the one, and with it kill thy queen,
And learn by me to find her where she lies;
And with this other I'll despatch my love,
Which now lies fast asleep within my heart:
When they are gone, then I'll consent to love 1.
1 Act 11, sc. 2.


## p. 246 (#270) ############################################

246
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
A prime objection which has been brought against the
Shakespearean authorship of these scenes is that they break in
upon the action of the main story in a way that Shakespeare
would not have tolerated. But a close study of the countess
episode reveals the skill with which the dramatist has lessened
this defect. Throughout the episode we are made aware that the
preparations for the French campaign are proceeding, though the
king is wholly absorbed in his amour. At the beginning of act II,
8C. 2, Derby and Audley appear and inform their sovereign of the
mustering of men and of the emperor's goodwill. The drum
incident which follows, and which leads up to the entrance of the
Black Prince, the hero of the main story, effects, in masterly fashion,
the purpose of keeping the military scenes before the mind of the
spectator. The king's soliloquies, too, as he beholds first his son
all afire with military ardour, and then his secretary returning with
a message from the countess, produce a feeling of true dramatic
tension; and, as we see the monarch borne this way and that by
the impulse of contending passions, we realise once again the hand
of the master.
If we ascribe the countess episode to Shakespeare, there still
remains for consideration the difficult problem of determining the
nature of his task. The choice lies between collaboration of
Shakespeare with another dramatist and revision by Shakespeare
of a play already in existence. The latter theory seems the more
reasonable. The battle scenes, by virtue of their loose, episodic
character, point to a date previous to that reform of the chronicle
play which was effected by Marlowe's Edward II (c. 1590). If,
then, we may conjecture the existence of a pre-Edward III, it
may be further assumed that it contained already some rendering
of the countess episode. Without it, the play would be too brief,
and it is hard to believe that any dramatist, especially if he were
Robert Greene or a member of Greene's school, would have allowed
the romantic love story to pass unnoticed when reading the pages
of Froissart. It is reasonable to believe that, at some time
between 1590 and 1596, Shakespeare found himself engaged upon
a revision of this pre-Edward III chronicle play, and that, in
revising it, he left the story of the king's French wars practically
unaltered, but withdrew entirely the rendering of the countess
episode, substituting for it that pearl of great price which now lies
imbedded in the old chronicle play.
The Life and Death of Lord Cromwell and Sir Thomas More
are among the most notable examples in Elizabethan dramatic


## p. 247 (#271) ############################################

Cromwell and Sir Thomas More 247
literature of what has been called the biographical chronicle play-
an offshoot from the history or chronicle play proper, from which
it differs in that its theme is not the events of a reign but the
record of an individual life. Both of these plays have been
attributed to Shakespeare, the former because on the title-page
of the second edition of the play—that of 1613_stand the words,
written by W. S. ,' and the latter, partly on internal evidence,
and partly on the curious theory, first advanced by Richard
Simpson, that some of the passages in the original manuscript
of the play (Harleian MSS 7368) are in Shakespeare's handwriting.
Cromwell is so devoid of genuine dramatic and poetic power
as to make its ascription to Shakespeare little better than an
insult. The scenes hang loosely together, nowhere is there any
sign of real grasp of character, and only the racy humour of Hodge,
Cromwell's servant, saves it from abject dulness. The desultory
plot is taken from Foxe's Story of the Life of the Lord Cromwell
in the second volume of Actes and Monuments, and there is no
reason to believe that the dramatist went to Bandello for his
account of Cromwell's dealings with the Florentine merchant,
Frescobaldi. Foxe had already borrowed this story from the
Italian novelist, and the dramatic version, throughout, is faithful
to Foxe’s rendering of it. The conception of Cromwell as a popular
hero who, having risen to eminence, delights in remembering the
friends of his obscure youth, is, also, common to the biographer and
the dramatist, and both, again, agree in adopting a strongly, at
times blatantly, protestant standpoint. The studious omission
of Henry VIII from the characters of the play indicates that it
was written before the death of Elizabeth, and the general structure
and versification point to a date of composition anterior by some
years to its entry on the Stationers' register on 11 August 1602.
In every respect, Sir Thomas More is superior to Cromwell.
There is nothing to show that this play was ever published in
Elizabethan times; but the original manuscript is preserved in the
British Museum and was edited by Dyce for the Shakespeare
Society in 1844. The sources of the play, indicated by Dyce, are
Hall's Chronicle, and the biographies of More by his son-in-law,
William Roper, and his great-grandson, Cresacre More. The
dramatist shows considerable skill in the use of his materials, and
the plot, though episodic, approaches much nearer to dramatic
unity than that of Cromwell. The interest of the play lies chiefly
in the masterly and sympathetic portraiture of the great lord
1 The first edition appeared in the year 1602.


## p. 248 (#272) ############################################

248 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
a
chancellor. The idealism, the winning grace and fine sense of
humour, the large humanity and the courage under affliction,
which we associate with the name of Sir Thomas More, are
admirably brought out. The quotations from Seneca and other
Latin writers show that the author was a scholar, and the burden
of some of More's speeches reveals a political thinker of no mean
calibre. The introduction of the play within the play, together
with More's speeches to the actors and his insertion into their
scenes of an extempore speech of his own, is a curious anticipation
of Hamlet. But those who attribute portions of the play to
Shakespeare base their arguments not upon this, but upon the
view that certain scenes are in his handwriting, and that the
thought and diction of these scenes is unmistakably Shakespearean.
As our knowledge of Shakespeare's handwriting is limited to five
autograph signatures, it is difficult to attach great weight to the
theory of Simpson and Spedding that ‘hand D' in the More MS
is the hand of Shakespeare; and there is also a good deal of
difference of opinion among the experts as to how far ‘hand D'
extends.