No More Learning

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. Simpson claimed for it act 11, sc. 3 and 4, 1-172;
act III, SC. 2 and 3. Subsequent investigators have detached some
of these scenes, and the latest opinion that of G. F. Warner,
the keeper of MSS in the British Museum—is that only act II,
SC. 4, 1-172 are in this hand. Since this passage is also
that on which the literary claim for Shakespearean authorship
mainly rests, a close examination of it is necessary. It tells the
story of the insurrection of London citizens against the Lombard
merchants settled in their midst, and contains the long and spirited
speech with which More quells the riot. The talk of the rioters in
the opening lines of the scene resembles, but is inferior to that
of Jack Cade's followers in Part II of Henry VI (act iv, sc.
2 and 3, and 6–8), and there was more than one dramatist in
the last decade of the sixteenth century who, having the Jack Cade
episode in mind, might have written these lines. The speech of More
which follows is full of vigour, and is of peculiar interest as giving
expression to the theory of the divinity of kings, which, in the
late Tudor period, had come to be a widely accepted tenet of
political faith. "God,' says More,
hath not only lent the king his figure,
His throne and sword, but giv’n him his own name,
Calls him a god on earth. What do you, then,
Rising gainst him that God himself installs,
But rise gainst God ? . . .


## p. 249 (#273) ############################################

Sir Thomas More and The Birth of Merlin 249
It may be said that a similar view as to the divinity of the
royal office is put forward by the aged bishop of Carlisle in
Richard II; but can it seriously be contended that this was Shake-
speare's own view? A scorner of democracy, he was far from being
a believer in the divinity of kings. He treats the theory with
mordant irony in Richard II, placing it on the lips of the
hapless king and proving its insufficiency by the remorseless
logic of subsequent events. In Henry V, he returns to the same
theme, and, in words which give forth no uncertain sound, makes
his hero declare: 'I think the king is but a man, as I am. . . all his
senses have but human conditions ; his ceremonies laid by, in his
nakedness he appears but a man? . '
The fact that Sir Thomas More was probably written about
the same time as Richard II, and only a few years before Henry V,
makes it hard to believe that such varying views as to the nature
of the kingly office could have been held by the same man. Nor
can escape from the difficulty be found by regarding More's speech
as merely dramatic. It is more than this : it is lyrical in tone and
doctrinaire in purpose ; and was probably intended to appease the
master of the revels, who, when the first draft of the MS had been
submitted to him, had demanded the excision of the whole of the
insurrection scene.
The Birth of Merlin: Or, The Childe hath found his Father
was first published in 1662 by the Restoration bookseller, Francis
Kirkman, who ascribed it to William Shakespear and William
Rowley. The play is a medley in which legendary history, love
romance, sententious praise of virginity, rough and tumble clown-
play, necromancy and all kinds of diablerie jostle each other, and
where British kings and English nobles, a hermit and a wizard,
the wraiths of Hector and Achilles, the devil, Lucina and the
three Fates, “a little antick spirit' and Joan Go-to-'t, the mother
of Merlin, are warring atoms contending for mastery over the
spectator's attention, and combining to produce a play which
defies classic rule utterly, but keeps at arm's length Pope's 'cloud-
compelling queen,' Dulness.
It is almost certain that more than one hand was engaged in
weaving this particoloured vesture; but Kirkman's association
of the play with the name of Shakespeare may be lightly dismissed.
At no point in the course of the five stirring acts are we
tempted, by plot construction, characterisation or style, to believe
in Shakespearean workmanship. On the other hand, it is highly
1 Act 111, sc. 2 and 3.
? Act 1v, sc. 1, 105–110.
!


## p. 250 (#274) ############################################

250
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
probable that William Rowley was one of its authors; the comic
scenes, alike in their coarseness and racy humour, exhibit his
manner, and it is also possible that some of the serious scenes
are his. The question of authorship involves a comparison of the
play with Middleton's Mayor of Quinborough, of which The Birth
of Merlin, in its main plot, is both a sequel and a copy. An
American scholar, F. A. Howe, has clearly shown that many of the
scenes of the Merlin play were written in imitation of similar
scenes in The Mayor, and that there is just as close an imitation
in the elaboration of some of the leading characters. The de-
pendence of the one play upon the other is certain; but, in spite
of occasional resemblances of style, it is hard to believe that a
dramatist of Middleton's acknowledged inventive power would
have repeated himself in so abject a manner as he has done, if
The Birth of Merlin be partly his work.
However this may be, it is probable that yet another hand may
be detected in its composition. A notable feature in the play is
the sacrifice which, in deference to the popular demand for realism,
has been made of the romantic elements in the Arthurian legend.
Yet, here and there, we are made aware of a certain consciousness
on the dramatist's part of the glamour and magic beauty of the
material under treatment. We feel this most in the presence of
Uther Pendragon, the prince who, when we first encounter him,
has disappeared mysteriously from his brother's court, in order to
follow through forest wastes the quest of the unknown lady whose
beanty has him in thrall:
a
How like a voice that echo spake, but O!
My thoughts are lost for ever in amazement.
Could I but meet a man to tell her beauties,
These trees would bend their tops to kiss the air,
That from my lips should give her praises up . . .
As I have seen a forward blood-hound strip
The swifter of the cry, ready to seize
His wishëd hopes, upon the sudden view,
Struck with astonishment at his arriv'd prey,
Instead of seizure stands at fearful bay;
Or like to Marius' soldier, who, o'ertook,
The eyesight-killing Gorgon at one look
Made everlasting stand; so feard my power,
Whose cloud aspir'd the sun, dissolv'd a shower 1.
In this and in other passages, drama is sacrificed to poetry, the
verse grows lyrical and falls insensibly into rime. This romantic
and lyrical strain is as foreign to Middleton as it is to Rowley,
1 Act 11, sc. 2.


## p. 251 (#275) ############################################

Faire Em. The Merry Devill of Edmonton 251
but it is singularly like what we meet with in the romantic
work of Dekker. The passage quoted above is characterised not
only by its lyricism, but, also, by frequent use of inversion,
irregularity of verse and prevalence, of rime; and, in each of
these respects, it is thoroughly representative of the style of
the more romantic scenes of the play, while, at the same time,
it bears a marked resemblance to the authentic work of Dekker.
The hand of the same dramatist can be detected in the Merlin
scenes. Rowley may very well have created Joan Go-to-'t and
her brother, and have acted as midwife to the marvellous boy
prophet; but, when born, Merlin becomes the property of Dekker,
and reveals his creator in the light-hearted bravura with which
he performs his deeds of magic, no less than in the exercise of
that strong moral sense by virtue of which he punishes the lust
of his father the devil, makes a converted Bellafront of his mother
and sends her to Salisbury plain, to waste away her offending
flesh in groans and solitary sighs.
The sources of The Birth of Merlin, apart from The Mayor
of Quinborough, are somewhat obscure. The story of Merlin
was, of course, familiar enough in Elizabethan times, and a drama
entitled Uter Pendragon is entered in Henslowe's diary under
date 29 April 1597; the difficulty lies in determining what warrant,
if any, the author had for degrading the circumstances of Merlin's
birth.
The evidence in favour of the Shakespearean authorship of
Faire Em, Mucedorus and The Merry Devill of Edmonton is of
the slenderest. Francis Kirkman, the Restoration bookseller,
having found in the royal library the three plays bound together
in a volume on the back of which was the name of Shakespeare,
accepted the word of the original owner-or the binder of the
volume without demur. The internal evidence of all three plays
is strongly against the theory that Shakespeare had anything to do
with their composition.
Faire Em is the work of some member of that early school
of dramatists who, under the leadership of Greene, delighted in
the union of fictitious English history with love romance. There
are two distinct plots in this play, and they have almost nothing
in common. That which furnishes the title is the story of the
.
courtship by three knights of Fair Em, the daughter of an English
noble who, robbed of his lands at the Norman conquest, is now
plying the trade of a miller at Manchester. A ballad, entered
on the Stationers' register on 2 March 1581, and entitled The


## p. 252 (#276) ############################################

252 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
6
Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is the probable source of this
portion of the play. The second plot is taken from Henry Wotton's
Courtlie Controversie of Cupids Cautels (1578), a collection of five
stories translated from Jacques Yver's Le Printemps d'Iver. This
relates the unhistoric adventures of William the Conqueror, who, in
order to win the hand of the Danish king's daughter, visits his
court disguised as a knight and pursues his amours there under
strange changes of fortune. The workmanship of the play is very
poor, but certain allowances must be made for its early date. It
seems to have been in existence in 1587, for, in Greene's intro-
duction to his Farewell to Folly, registered in that year, he makes
a satiric reference to Faire Em, and quotes, in a slightly altered
form, two lines from the closing scene of the play.
The Merry Devill of Edmonton, although the earliest known
edition of it is dated 1608, was certainly written by 1604, when
T. M. (? Thomas Middleton) alludes to it, in company with A Woman
Kilde with Kindnesse, in his Blacke Book; twelve years later, in
the prologue to The Divill is an Asse, Jonson describes it as the
'dear delight' of the theatre-going public. The popularity which
the play enjoyed was not unmerited; in the words of Charles
Lamb, it'seems written to make the reader happy. ' In its blend-
ing of scenes of magic and the black art with a romantic love
comedy, standing out against a pleasant background of English
rural life, The Merry Devill recalls Frier Bacon and Frier
Bongay. But the magic element in the play is little more than
& sop to the popular taste of the day. After an induction,
which is a serio-comic imitation of the famous closing scene in
Dr Faustus, we hear little more of the doings of Peter Fabell,
the Edmonton magician, and give ourselves up to the main story,
which shows by what devices youth and true love overcome the
treasonable counsels of age and prudence. The lovers are lightly
conceived; but in their veins there flows the youthful spirit and
romantic ardour of the early school of Elizabethan comedy, and
Millicent, the heroine, who is willing to dare much lest love be
‘smothered in foggy gain,' is worthy of a place not far below the
early heroines of Shakespeare. The play is not Shakespeare's;
but its author, alike in his love romance and in the humorous and
realistic scenes in which Blague the host, Smug the smith and
Sir John the priest appear, is one of Shakespeare's imitators.
The character of the host of the George tavern at Edmonton
is modelled, as Hazlitt pointed out, on that of the host of The
Merry Wives of Windsor; and this fact furnishes us with a clue as
6


## p. 253 (#277) ############################################

Mucedorus
253
to the period at which the play was written. The source of the
story is unknown, but the adventures of Peter Fabell, who, in
the district round about Enfield Chase, enjoyed something of the
reputation of a Dr Faustus, had been already recorded. There
was a poem, now lost but known to Warton, entitled Fabyl's
Ghoste, written in octave stanzas and printed by John Rastell
in 1533, which may be the same as The Merry Pranks of
Fabyl mentioned by Weever; and, in the same year as that in
which the play was published, Thomas Brewer's prose tract, The
Life and Death of the Merry Devill of Edmonton, with the
Pleasant Pranks of Smug the Smith, Sir John and mine Host
of the George about the stealing of Venison, was entered at
Stationers' Hall. These Fabell stories, doubtless, furnished the
dramatist with some of the materials for the comic by-plot, but
not for the romantic love story.
The popularity of The Merry Devill of Edmonton was as
nothing compared with that of A Most pleasant Comedie of
Mucedorus, the kings sonne of Valentia and Amadine the kings
daughter of Arragon, with the merie conceites of Mouse. The
earliest known edition of this play is dated 1598; but the words,
'newly set foorth,' on the title-page, indicate that it was first
produced at some earlier date; numerous reprints followed, and
W. W. Greg has succeeded in tracing no less than seventeen quarto
editions of the play up to the year 1700. This popularity is the
more remarkable since, as the epilogue makes clear, it was not
written for popular representation, but for a performance at
court. And, having delighted queen Elizabeth, it was revived,
with numerous additions and an altered epilogue, for a Shrovetide
performance at Whitehall early in the reign of James I. The text,
thus enlarged and amended, was first published in 1610. The
vogue of this 'very delectable' comedy, while it illustrates the
uncritical temper of the age, is somewhat hard to understand;
for the play, though doing credit to the infancy of Elizabethan
romantic comedy, is, in respect of plot construction, characterisa-
tion and metric art, a very primitive piece of work. It teems,
however, with action and romantic adventure, and these, with the
crude wit and cruder folly of Mouse the clown, seem to have been
deemed sufficient by courtier and groundling alike. A Spanish
prince, who, in the prosecution of his love, disguises himself first
as a shepherd and then as a hermit; a wild man of the woods, who
combines cannibal instincts with a nice taste for romance; a rustic
clown; and a bear that instructs the princess Amadine how to


## p. 254 (#278) ############################################

254
Plays attributed to Shakespeare
distinguish between the hero lover and the coward—these are the
most notable ingredients of the play. The appearance of such
morality figures as Envy and Comedy in the induction and epilogue
is a sign of an early date of production, and it is hard to believe
that the drama, in its original form, is later than 1590. The name
Mucedorus, and the disguise of that prince as a shepherd, recall
one of the two heroes of Sidney's Arcadia, and the probability is
that the plot is taken from some half chivalrous and half pastoral
romance of Spanish or Italian literature.
The London Prodigall and The Puritane, as already stated,
are examples of realistic city comedy. At the hands of Heywood
and Dekker, realism associated itself with romance; but, with
Middleton and his successors, the romantic element was purged
away, and nothing was allowed to interfere with the realistic, and
often satirical, representation of contemporary manners. The
authorship of these two plays is not easy to determine; but it can
be stated without hesitation that neither is the work of Shake-
speare, who, while interested in bourgeois comedy, rarely allowed
it to force its way into the foreground. Both plays, probably,
were written early in the seventeenth century, when Heywood and
Middleton were making this type of drama acceptable to popular
taste, and when Ben Jonson was also engaged in a close inspec-
tion of the social types of London life and in the discovery of
humours.
The London Prodigall was first published in 1605, and the
title-page of this edition informs us that the play was acted by
the Kings Majesties servants' and that its author was William
Shakespeare. It is full of bustling life, but is wholly wanting in
the higher elements of dramatic art, and, also, in poetic beauty.
The most striking feature in the plot is the resemblance,
pointed out by A. W. Ward, which it bears to the Charles Surface
story of Sheridan's School for Scandal. The wealthy father,
Flowerdale senior, who has just returned to England after long
years of absence, and who, under the disguise of a servant, attaches
himself to his prodigal son and, in the end, pardons his excesses,
is a crude prototype of uncle Oliver. But the author of the
Elizabethan play fails, where Sheridan succeeds, in winning the
reader's sympathy for the prodigal. Flowerdale junior's career
of riot and neglect has no redeeming feature in it, and his final
repentance, so far from convincing us of its reality and endurance,
only deepens our pity for the outraged and extravagantly patient
wife, Luce, who takes the repentant sinner to her bosom. The


## p. 255 (#279) ############################################

The Puritane
255
humour of the play is chiefly to be sought among the serving-
men of the wealthy city knight, and in the persons of Sir Launcelot
Spurcock, Weathercock the parasite and the Devonshire clothier
Oliver, whose west country talk and manners have the homely
honesty of the rough kersey cloth which he makes and wears.
The disguise of Luce as a Dutchwoman, and the pigeon English
by which, when thus disguised, she conceals her identity, may,
very possibly, have been suggested by the similar disguise of
Lacy in Dekker's highly popular play, The Shoemaker's Holiday.
The Puritane Or The Widdow of Watling-streete was one of the
plays acted by the choristers of St Paul's, and it was published in
1607 as 'written by W. S. ' It is a realistic comedy of intrigue,
bordering, at times, upon farce, and its main object is ridicule
of the puritan party and of London citizens. The scenes are
mainly in prose, and the few passages in verse are wholly wanting
in poetic feeling. The five acts are constructed out of a number
a
of episodes of shrewd knavery, which follow one another in swift
succession, but hardly form a plot. The moving spirit in these
knavish tricks is a certain George Pyeboard, who makes the
puritan family in Watling street his dupes up to the very last scene
of the play, when the intervention of the nobleman as a deus ex
machina exposes the chain of fraud. At least one of Pyeboard's
knaveries is taken from the so-called Merrie Conceited Jests
of George Peele', and it has long since been pointed out that,
under the name of George Pyeboard, George Peele was intended?
There is no reason whatever for associating the play with
Shakespeare; but its author, doubtless, was familiar with that
dramatist's work, and refers in act iv, sc. 3 to the appearance
of Banquo's ghost in Macbeth. It has been argued, with con-
siderable show of reason, that it was written either by an Oxford
student, or by a dramatist newly come from that university. The
hero of the play is a student adventurer, who is acquainted with
the academic phraseology of his university, while the author
exhibits a fondness for Latin phrases, and lays much stress on the
fact that a university scholar is a gentleman. Tucker Brooke
ascribes the play to Middleton, and compares it with Eastward
Hoe.
The only other play which calls for notice in this chapter is
The Two Noble Kinsmen, the question of Shakespeare's share
a
· See Dyce's introduction to Peele's Works, p. viii.
? • Peel' and 'pieboard' are synonymous terms for the flat wooden shovel used in
taking pies out of a brick oven.


## p. 256 (#280) ############################################

256 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
in which has evoked more discussion than all the remaining
doubtful plays together. It was first published in 1634 as the
work of 'the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher
and Mr William Shakespeare, Gent,' and the title-page of this
edition also informs us that it had been performed by the king's
players at the Blackfriars theatre. The famous Palamon and Arcite
story which it reproduces had been dramatised before. Richard
Edwards had written a Palamon and Arcyte as early as 1566,
which was performed before Elizabeth by Oxford students on the
occasion of the queen's visit to the university in that year; but
the account of this lost academic comedy, preserved in Anthony
à Wood's manuscripts and published in Nichols's Progresses of
Elizabeth, suggests that it was very different in character from
The Two Noble Kinsmen. Nothing is known of the Palamon
and Arsett mentioned by Henslowe as having been acted at the
Newington theatre in 1594.
The Two Noble Kinsmen follows Chaucer's Knight's Tale
as closely as an Elizabethan play can be expected to follow a
fourteenth century verse romance; but the dramatists, deferring
to the seventeenth century taste for a realistic underplot to a
romantic theme, have added the story of the gaoler's daughter,
of which there is but the faintest hint in The Knight's Tale.
The element of divine caprice which lurks in Chaucer's romance
is by no means eliminated from the play. In the closing speech
of the last scene, Theseus would fain convince us that, of the two
rival kinsmen, Palamon has the better right to the lady-because
he saw her first ! --but the enduring impression which the play
leaves upon the reader's mind is that man is but the puppet of
fortune. And if the dénouement of the play is unsatisfactory,
so, also, are the characters. Palamon and Arcite, except in the
scene in which they first appear, are not well distinguished from
each other; Theseus, though he discourses fine poetry, is a stilted
and a vacillating figure, and Emilia, a poor faded copy of Chaucer's
Emelye the sheene,' would be more in her place as Hotspur's
comfit-maker's wife than as a warrior's bride. Finally, the under-
plot, the author of which endeavours to make up for his lack of in-
vention by imitating familiar incidents in the plays of Shakespeare,
is both unskilful and indelicate. Yet, with all these shortcomings
-shortcomings which are largely due to the fact of double author.
ship—The Two Noble Kinsmen abounds in elements of greatness.
It is a play which needs to be seen in order that the masque-like
splendour of some of its scenes may be fully realised; bụt a mere


## p. 257 (#281) ############################################

The Two Noble Kinsmen
257
perusal of it suffices to reveal its imaginative power, the ripeness
and energy of the thought and the luminous colour of high
romance in which it is steeped. Into it are poured the riches
of classic legend, medieval romance, Elizabethan comedy and
Jacobean masque, and, in the union of these varying elements,
we recognise the genius of a dramatist who could subdue all
things to harmony.
The problem of authorship is beset with difficulties, for, while
it is certain that the play is the work of more than one author,
it seems also probable that the workmanship of the two men is
not sharply sundered, but that, in places, the hand of the one has
been engaged in revising what the other had written. With the
exception of Delius, who propounded the fanciful theory that
The Two Noble Kinsmen is the work of an anonymous dramatist
who deliberately set himself to imitate now the manner of
Shakespeare and now that of Fletcher, critics are agreed that
one of the two authors was Fletcher, and that to him may be
allotted most of acts II, III and iv, including the whole of the
underplot, with the possible exception of the two prose scenes',
but only a small, and comparatively unimportant, part of the
main story.
The whole of the first act, the first scene in
act II, and almost the whole of the last act are clearly not by
Fletcher in the first instance, and in the determination of the
authorship of these scenes lies the chief problem of the play.
The choice seems to lie between Massinger and Shakespeare;
it has been argued by Robert Boyle that the handling of the
characters in these scenes is singularly unlike that of Shakespeare
and singularly like that of Massinger, and that the frequent
medical allusions, and the echoes of passages in Shakespeare's
authentic works, furnish further evidence in favour of Massinger
and against Shakespeare. Arguments such as these, though not
without force, are outweighed by others on the opposite side.
A comparison of the play with Massinger's scenes in The Lover's
Progress, & play which introduces the similar theme of the
love of two friends for one woman, shows the greatest variance
in the application of the principles of dramatic art. The resem-
blance, too, between the verse of Massinger and that of the non-
Fletcherian portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, on which Boyle
lays considerable stress, is only superficial. In the mechanical
elements of poetic rhythm, Massinger comes very near to Shake-
speare; but, when we look deeper, and come to the consideration
1 Act u, sc. 1 and act iv, so. 3.
17
R. L. v.
CA. X.


## p. 258 (#282) ############################################

258 Plays attributed to Shakespeare
of those features of style which do not admit of tabular analysis,
we find the widest difference. The diction of Massinger is, above
all things, orderly and lucid. He shows, at times, passion and
imagination; but he never allows these to check the stately decorum
and even flow of his verse. Now, the diction of The Two Noble
Kinsmen is of a peculiar nature, and Spalding, in his famous
Letter, with others after him, naturally directed his attention to
this, above all other things, in attributing these non-Fletcherian
scenes to Shakespeare. In the profusion of striking metaphors,
the copious outpouring of profound thoughts and the extreme
concision, often involving harshness and obscurity, of the utterance,
these scenes bear a marked resemblance to the plays of Shake-
speare's final period, and to nothing else in literature. Moreover,
the very defects of these scenes are the same defects which we
meet with in Shakespeare's so-called romances.
The sacrifice of
dramatic probability to the attainment of magnificent spectacular
effects, the intrusion of the deus ex machina to cut the Gordian
knot which human effort cannot disentangle and the triumph of the
poetic and intellectual interests over the strictly dramatic-these
are all features common to The Two Noble Kinsmen and the
products of Shakespeare's genius in the last phase of his dramatic
career.


## p. 259 (#283) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE
THE text of Shakespeare is as uncertain as are the facts of his
life. In neither case are we in possession of any real authori-
ties. But, while there is evidence to establish the certainty of
some of the incidents in his career, we cannot be sure of the
accuracy of a single line in his plays. Not only are we without
Shakespeare's manuscript, but we do not even possess an authorised
edition of any play, such as we have of Venus and Adonis and
Lucrece. The conditions under which plays were produced in the
Elizabethan age supply us with two reasons for this, at first sight,
extraordinary fact. Shakespeare, like his fellow dramatists, wrote
for the stage and not for publication. The playwright's sole
ambition was to see his play on the stage. Hardly any play was
published by its author without some apology. Marston, in his
preface to The Malcontent (1604), actually complains that he is
detracting from the value of his work by publishing it; and he goes
on to state that his reason for consenting to this is that, if he did
not publish it, others would, thus inflicting upon him still greater
injury. All rights in a play were tacitly, if not legally, sur-
rendered to the acting company, and the author's interest in it
ceased. No more striking proof of this attitude could be desired
than the fact that Shakespeare himself described Venus and
Adonis as 'the first heire of my invention,' at a time when he had
certainly written several plays.
On the other hand, companies refrained from publication.
They sought by this means to increase the profit from their per-
formances. Thus, Thomas Heywood speaks of some of his plays
being 'still retained in the hands oi some actors, who think it
against their peculiar profit to have them come in print. ' But
a
1 The references throughout are to The Cambridge Shakespeare, ed. Wright, W. Aldis,
1894.
17-2


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260
Text of Shakespeare
The
this shortsighted policy on the part of the companies did not
prevent others from supplying the demand for printed copies
which naturally existed. In the absence of any strict laws of
copyright? , it is not surprising that publishers were found ready
to snatch a profit by the surreptitious publication of the more
popular plays of so favourite a writer as Shakespeare.
This explains the origin of the quartos, in which form the text
of nineteen plays? first saw the light. As all these plays appear
again in the folio edition (Pericles for the first time in the third
folio), the relative value of the quarto and folio texts becomes
the fundamental question for textual discussion. No generalisa-
tion is possible with regard to the quarto text, owing to its
unequal character. But, for textual purposes, the quarto plays
may be classified as duplicate, variant and doublet. The duplicate
quarto plays are those in which the text of the first folio has been
derived from that of one of the quartos. The first quarto, there-
fore, is entitled to rank as the only authoritative text for these
eight plays. The printing of some of these plays is equal to any-
thing in the first folio; that of A Midsummer Night's Dream is
excellent. Their comparative freedom from corruption and their
adoption by the editors of the first folio suggest that they were
drawn from copies not far removed in date from Shakespeare's
manuscript. The spelling of the quarto text is more archaic than
that of the first folio. In many cases, it resembles that of the first
quarto of the Poems, which may fairly be taken to represent
Shakespeare's own spelling.
The text of the remaining quarto plays diverges to a very large
extent from that of the folio, not only in respect of verbal
differences, but by the addition or omission of passages amounting,
in some cases, to thirty or forty lines, and even to whole scenes. In
Parts II and III of Henry VI, Henry V and The Merry Wives,
the omissions are all made by the quarto, as are also the most
1 Companies gradually had their rights acknowledged, and, in 1637, the lord
chamberlain issued an injunction to the Stationers' company, prohibiting the publica-
tion of plays without consent of the players.
2 Part II of Henry VI (First Part of the Contention, Q, 1594), Part III of Henry VI
(True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, Q. 1595), Richard II (Q, 1597), Richard III
(Q 1597), Romeo and Juliet (Q. 1597), Love's Labour's Lost (Q. 1598), Part I of
Henry IV (Q, 1598), Much Ado (Q 1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Q: Q, 1600), The
Merchant of Venice (Q, Q, 1600), Part II of Henry IV (Q 1600), Henry V (Q, 1600),
Titus Andronicus (Q, 1600), The Merry Wives (Q, 1602), Hamlet (Q, 1603), King Lear
(Q, 1608), Troilus and Cressida (Q 1609), Pericles (Q, 1609), Othello (Q, 1622).
3 Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice,
Part I of Henry IV, Much Ado, Pericles, Titus Andronicus (with exception of one
scene added in F,), Richard II (part of scene added in Qs).


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Length of Texts
261
serious omissions in Part II of Henry IV; in Troilus and
Cressida, King Lear and Othello, they are fairly evenly divided.
The greater completeness of the folio text constitutes it the chief
authority for these variant quarto plays. An exception has to be
noted in the case of Richard III. Here, the omissions in the folio
are trifling, compared with those in the quarto; but textual evidence
conclusively proves that the folio text follows two different quarto
texts and contains systematic alterations. The first quarto, there-
fore, becomes the authoritative text for all except the omitted
passages? Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet are unique in possessing
doublet, quarto texts. The first quarto, in both cases, is very
defective; but, in the case of the former play, the folio text was
derived from the second quarto, while, in the case of the latter,
the folio text was taken from a copy which was considerably less
complete.
The great discrepancies in these texts demand some explanation.
There can be little doubt that they are due, in the main, to the
fact that the defective texts were based on copies which had been
adapted for the stage. From the fact that Shakespeare wrote for the
stage, it must not be inferred that he allowed himself to be bound
by the exigencies of stage performance. The need of adaptation
for stage purposes has always made itself felt in the case of the
texts of plays, even to the present day; and it is highly probable
that none of the longer plays of Shakespeare were ever pro-
duced in the theatre exactly as they were written. There is,
moreover, definite evidence that the plays of other dramatists
were shortened for the stage. It is in this sense that we are to
understand the statement made on the title-page of the second
quarto of Hamlet, 'newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much
againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie,' and
similar statements in the quartos of other plays.
The references in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet to the
two hours traffic of our stage,' and in that of Henry VIII to 'two
short hours,' fix the average length of a performance. The mere
length of such plays as Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,
Troilus and Cressida, Part II of Henry IV, Henry V, necessi-
tated curtailment. Thus, of the long scene in Richard III",
numbering five hundred and forty lines in the folio, nearly eighty
are omitted (including a passage of over fifty lines); the quarto text
of Hamlet omits sixty lines of Hamlet's interview with Rosencrantz
* The genealogy of the text of Richard III is described in an appendix to this chapter,
? Act 19, 80. 4.


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262
The Text of Shakespeare
and Guildenstern concerning the players; and the folio text of King
Lear lacks a whole scene, as well as a passage of nearly fifty lines.
Not only, however, the length of a play, but also the number of
characters called for adaptation. Companies were often so thin
that one player had to act two or three parts. A clear case
of curtailment on this ground is the omission in the folio text of
the dialogue between Hamlet and a lord, who comes to urge him
to the rapier contest with Laertes. This is the only occasion on
which this character appears. The folio text of King Lear omits
the conversation between two servants after the putting out of
Gloucester's eyes, probably for the same reason. Sometimes,
speeches are put into the mouths of other characters, instead of
being omitted altogether. In Henry V, Westmoreland's wish for
ten thousand more men is transferred to Warwick.
A different reason for the omission of passages in the per-
formance of a play was political expediency. Both Elizabeth and
James I frequently witnessed stage performances, and a natural
consequence of this personal patronage was a strict censorship of
plays presented before them. Precarious as is any attempt to point
out political allusions in Shakespeare, the magnificent compliment
paid to the fair vestal throned by the west,' and 'her single
blessedness,' would suffice to show that such allusions were, on
occasion, introduced by him. The suppression of the deposition
scene in the first quarto of Richard II was doubtless made out of
deference to the queen's well known susceptibilities on the subject.
In King Lear, Edmund's allusions to the results of the prediction,'
in which James is said to have had some faith, and the reference
to nobles acting as spies in France may have been suppressed on
similar grounds. Portia's description of the Scottish' lord
contains a satirical allusion to the alliances of Scotland with
France against England. After the accession of James, the
players, instead of omitting the passage, altered 'Scottish lord'
to 'other lord,' which is the reading of the folio.
The legal restrictions with regard to the use of oaths and the
profane use of Scripture account for the excision of a great number
of passages and the modification of many expressions, especially in
Part II of Henry IV. A few seem to be omitted in both quarto and
folio on account of their lewdness. Other passages were struck out
by the players because of their inherent obscurity. The corrupt
passages in Hamlet, containing stars with trains of fire,' dram of
eale,' 'that monster custom,' omitted entirely in the folio text,
very likely owe their corruption to the tampering of the players.


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Reasons for Defects in Quarto Texts 263
The process of adaptation caused passages to be added as well
as omitted. The clown's duty was to afford amusement to the
spectators after the play was finished; but he was also expected
to add specimens of his own native wit to his regular part in a play.
This practice is referred to by Hamlet in a well known passage of
his address to the players, to which the first quarto adds samples,
'Cannot you stay till I eate my porridge ? and you owe me a
quarters wages, my coat wants a cullison; And your beere is
sowre. ' The fool in King Lear is no mere clown! It is probable
that for portions of this, and for poor Tom's' parts, buffoonery was
often substituted; which would account for the disturbed state of
the text both in quarto and folio in these passages. The omission
of the prologue to Troilus and Cressida in the folio may be
explicable in the same way. The omission from the folio text of
several other passages seems to confirm doubts as to their
genuineness.
The mangled state of the text in the first quartos of Parts II
and III of Henry VI, The Merry Wives, Henry V, Romeo and
Juliet and Hamlet shows another disintegrating factor at work
besides adaptation. Publishers who could not secure a copy of a
play by any other means would employ a shorthand writer to report
it, while it was being acted. This report, naturally, would be very
imperfect; some poetaster would patch it up as best he could,
and thus it found its way into print? . The numerous mistakes due
to imperfect hearing confirm this view of the origin of these texts,
such as 'tigers of Arcadia' for 'tigers of Hyrcania,' 'Cophetua' for
• Caveto' etc.
The first quartos of these plays have been regarded as earlier
drafts subsequently revised by the poet. This theory is plausible
with regard to The Merry Wives, where the quarto contains
passages which evidently do not go back to the same original as
the corresponding passages in the folio, and to the two parts of
Henry VI, which appear under a different title. But the causes
already enumerated are sufficient to account for the state of the
quarto text; and, wherever this is admitted to be not only an
6
1 The difficulty of acting this part has been often felt on the modern stage. Cf.
Macready, W. C. , Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 97.
? Cf. the well known passage in Thomas Heywood, cited post, vol. vi, ch. iv.
A specimen of the stenographer's' work is to be found in the first quatto version of
Hamlet's famous soliloquy:
To be or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all :
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, eto.


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264
The Text of Shakespeare
adaptation of the supposed earlier draft, but a garbled version of
the adaptation, it is difficult to see how the question of revision
can be fruitfully discussed.
Numerous minor omissions in the quartos are due to careless-
ness in copying either on the part of the players or the printers.
In this way, a whole scene was omitted in earlier impressions
of the quarto of Part II of Henry IV, but restored in later
copies. The very numerous half-lines which still remain in the
text may be attributed to this cause. Sometimes, a passage drops
out owing to similarity of expressions at the beginning and end 1.
The text of the first folio has a more uniform value than that
of the quartos. But, in two respects, it is, on the whole, hardly any
more trustworthy. For the punctuation and metre of the plays,
we are largely dependent on the work of modern editors. In
individual cases, however, the metrical arrangement of the folio is
vastly superior. In King Lear, the verse of the folio, to a large
extent, is represented by prose in the quarto. The duplicate quarto
plays, in which the folio text was drawn from one of the quartos,
afford a test of its conjectural emendations. They are of little
importance and generally for the worse. Where real corruption
exists (eg. 'perttaunt-like,' in Love's Labour's Lost) it is usually
left alone.
Alternative readings are very common in the variant quarto
play. There is sometimes very little to choose between them;
but, in such cases, the folio text is to be preferred, as having better
authority. But, ordinarily, it is better in itself? The quarto text,
though often substituting a more usual word or phrases, occasionally
preserves the unmistakable words of Shakespeare. The in-
imitable 'Love's thrice repured nectarb' appears, in the folio,
as 'reputed'
Some critics have held that Shakespeare was responsible for
6
.
· For an example see Othello, act iv, sc. 2, 74–7.
Thus, the pregnant line in King Lear (act 11, sc. 4, 119) 'O me, my heart, my
rising heart! But down' is, in the quarto, the commonplace 'O my heart, my heart! '
Come unbutton here' (act III, s. 4, 107—8) is, in the quarto, the nonsensical, Come
on, be true,
3 Thus, Othello's striking words (act. v, sc. 2, 13),
I know not where is that Promethean beat
That can thy light relume,
are robbed of their force by the substitution of return' for 'relame. ' Lear's no less
striking epithet, 'cadent' tears, becomes the meaningless'accent' tears.
* Othello's 'She gave me for my pains a world of sighs' (act 1, sc. 3, 159) is, for
instance, turned by the folio into the hackneyed a world of kisses. '
5 Troilus and Cressida, act III, sc. 2, 21.


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à
The First and the Later Folios 265
corrections and additions in the folio text of these plays. This
assumption leaves out of account two important facts. In certain
cases, it is unquestionably the quarto text which has been altered,
and which has received additions. Moreover, it is obvious that
these changes could not have been made for stage purposes. They
must, therefore, have been made with a view to printing the plays ;
but it is surely inconceivable that Shakespeare should have made
these minute corrections without also authorising an edition of the
revised plays.
In the case of the doublet quarto plays, the folio text, as we
have seen, is subordinate to that of the second quarto. The first
quarto of Romeo and Juliet is a valuable corrective. In spite of
its lacunae, it was evidently made by a skilful reporter, for it
contains many unquestionably genuine readings, where all the
rest have gone astray! In Hamlet, when the readings of the first
quarto and folio coincide, they are to be preferred. The intrinsic
value of the first folio lies in the fact that it contains the only
extant text of eighteen plays; but its merits are unequal. The
text of some of the plays is as good as that of the duplicate
quartos; that of the rest recalls the characteristics of the text of
the variant quartos. Measure for Measure, All : Well, Cymbeline,
Coriolanus and Macbeth are among the worst texts in the folio.
It is practically hopeless to determine the metre of Timon, in large
portions of which it is impossible to tell whether verse or prose is
intended. Julius Caesar holds the same position among the folio
plays which A Midsummer Night's Dream has among the quartos.
The text is free from any serious error and might well have been
printed from the original manuscript.
The value of the later folios is comparatively small. They take
great liberties with the text, though, it must be admitted, not
beyond those taken by some of the later editors. When the second
folio makes an alteration, this is, as a rule, perpetuated in the third
and fourth. Where the second or third stands alone, it is nearly
always wrong. The fourth folio is not so free in making altera-
tions, except in order to modernise the spelling. Were it not
for the legacy of errors inherited from the second and third, the
1 Thus, Romeo's wisb (act 1, 86. 4, 113),
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail,
is preserved by it, when the other quartos and the folio read 'sate' for sail. '
Thus, the • fretful porpentine' of the ghost's speech (act I, 80. 5, 20) has greater
textual authority than the fearfull porpentine' of the later quartos, because it is
supported by two independent copies.


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266
The Text of Shakespeare
fourth would often be nearer a modern text than either. The
later folios, however, have all made some happy restorations of
the text'. In the case of the variant quarto plays, where a later
folio agrees with the quarto against the first, we have a better
attested reading. There are some remarkable cases of this co-
incidence?
One cause of variation between the different quarto and folio
texts remains to be noted. It is the most prolific and the most
modern of all the mistakes of editor and printer.
Special causes for these mistakes are to be found, first, in
differences of spelling in vogue in the Elizabethan age, e. g. 'antique’
and 'antick,' rights' and 'rites,' 'symboles' and 'cymbals. ' Again,
an uncommon word sometimes caused the substitution of one more
usual: ‘moe' and 'more'; 'intentively' and 'instinctively'; 'foy-
sons' and 'poisons'; 'prescience and patience”; “unprevented'
and 'unprepared. ' This practice was a thoroughly characteristic
licence at a time when an editor had no hesitation in substituting
a word which he considered more suitable to the context—'unprofit-
able' for 'improbable'; 'the way to study death' for 'the way to
dusty death'; 'phlegmatick' for 'choleric. ' Thirdly, contractions
commonly used in manuscripts often caused variations in the endings
of words : 'h'as’and 'hath'; wº=which ; yº=the; y'= that; y'=thou
or you; I = ay; 'ignomie' and 'ignominy'; 'conster' and 'con-
strue. ' The abbreviation 'L' doubtless accounts for such variations
as 'liege' and 'lord. ' Finally, there were the ordinary misprints
with which everyone is familiar-due to the dropping out of
letters (“contradict' and 'contract'; 'remuneration' and remura-
tion'); to the omission of words (“his trusty Thisby's' Qq, ‘his
Thisby's' F. , ‘his gentle Thisby's' F, F, F. ); to wrong letters ('Loue'
Q. (Duke of Devonshire's copy), 'Ioue' Qı, 'Ioane' F, F. , 'Joan'
F, F. ); to wrong punctuation (the first folio reads Dispatch
Enobarbus. ' As Enobarbus is not present, the second, third and
fourth read 'Dispatch Eros. ' The right punctuation solves the
‘
difficulty: 'Dispatch. Enobarbus! '); to permutation of letters
(‘Athica' for 'Ithaca'); to repetition of letters ('involverable' Fi,
>
6
1)
>
2,
1 One of the best is to be found in Coriolanus (act 11, sc. 3, 18). The third citizen
says: 'not that our heads are, some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but
that our wits are so diversely coloured. ' The fourth folio was the first to suggest
'auburn' for · Abram,' which is read by the first three.
Thus, an uncommon word 'renege' is restored by the second folio in King Lear,
act 11, sc. 2, 73, where the first folio reads Revenge' and the quartos bave 'Reneag. '
In Othello, act v, sc. 2, 350, ‘base Indian,' the reading of the quartos and later folios,
has greater textual authority than the base Judean' of the first folio.
2
4
7


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