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KING HENRY VI.

PART SECOND.

NEVE

66

[EVER printed that we know of, with its present title or in its present form, till in the folio of 1623. The folio copy, however, is but an alteration and enlargement of an earlier form, which was published in quarto in 1594, and entitled The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster. No author's name is there given, nor is it stated by what company the play had been performed. And the facts touching The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth are so nearly the same, that it seems best to speak of the two together. This, also, as given in the folio, is but an alteration and improvement of an earlier form, which was issued in 1595, in quarto, and entitled The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York. In this case, however, the name or title of the company is given : As it was sundry times acted by the Right-Honourable the Earl of Pembroke's Servants." Both pieces were issued again in 1600, the text, the titles, and the publisher being all the same as in the former. A third edition of both plays was put forth by another publisher in 1619, in the title-page of which " William Shakespeare" is printed as the name of the author. It is not to be supposed that either the withholding of the author's name in the first two issues, or the giving of it in the third, proves any thing as to the real authorship one way or the other; for, on the one hand, several of Shakespeare's plays were first issued without his name, and, on the other hand, his name was repeatedly given in the case of plays that he had no hand in writing.

For convenience of thought and language, I shall henceforth designate The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy as the quarto editions of The Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth. For, in these plays as given in the folio, with a few trifling exceptions the entire plan, arrangement, concep

tion, character, and more than half the language word for word, are all the same as in the corresponding earlier editions. Mr. Grant White, in his Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, has elaborated the theme with great minuteness and care; and his account of the matter foots up as follows: The Second Part contains 3057 lines, of which 1479 are adopted or altered from the quarto, thus leaving 1578 lines as original in the folio; while the Third Part has 2879 lines, of which 1931 are adopted or altered from the quarto; so that here we have but 948 new lines in the folio. Or, taking the two Parts together, we have in all 5936 lines, of which only 2526 are new in the folio, thus leaving 3410, or nearly two thirds of the whole, as adopted or altered from the quartos. And of the alterations a large part, certainly not less than half, are very slight, often not going beyond a change of epithet or a verbal transposition, and nowise effecting the sense. In many cases, moreover, the folio presents a judicious elaboration and expansion of old thoughts, with little or no addition of new ones. In the Second Part, again, the alterations and additions are in the main diffused pretty equally through the whole play; while in the Third Part the additions come much more in large masses, some entire scenes being mostly new in the folio, and others nearly the same as in the quarto. All together, therefore, it may be safely affirmed, that of the two plays the whole conception and more than half the execution are precisely the same in the quarto and folio copies.

This brings me to the question of the authorship of the two plays as printed in 1594 and 1595. And here, again, as in case of the First Part, we have a wide diversity of opinions. Stated in the briefest terms, one theory is, that Shakespeare had no hand at all in the original composition; another, that he was the sole author of the plays in their original form; while a third finds them to be the joint workmanship of Shakespeare, Robert Greene, and Christopher Marlowe. These theories have each their advocates, who support them with a formidable array of arguments; Malone being the principle one for the first, Knight for the second, and Grant White for the third. The arguments, even in the briefest possible statement of them, would stretch far beyond my present limits; so that I can do little more than

set forth the conclusion I have reached upon the whole matter. As I have no fourth theory to offer, nor any ambition to excogitate one, I am content to tie up substantially with Mr. White: That the two plays were originally written conjointly by Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, the latter doing much the larger portion; that afterwards, for reasons unknown to us, Shakespeare rewrote them, throwing out most of what the other two had contributed, and replacing it with his own matter, and otherwise improving them; that this joint authorship was the reason of no author's name being given in the first two editions; and that Greene's share in them, perhaps Marlowe's also, sufficiently accounts for the use made of them, or of one of them, by "the Earl of Pembroke's Servants," a theatrical company with which Shakespeare is not known or believed to have had any connection.

Mr. White, I think, clearly and conclusively identifies several passages, one of them extending to twenty consecutive lines, in the quarto form of these plays, as the workmanship of Greene; which passages are entirely excluded from the folio copy. This identification proceeds chiefly by means of a certain trick or mannerism, perhaps I should say vulgarism, of style, as in the line, “And charm the fiends for to obey your wills," which occurs repeatedly in the quartos, but not once in the folio; and instances of which abound in Greene's acknowledged works. What with this, and what with two or three other little idioms of manner, Mr. White, it seems to me, leaves no room for doubt that Greene had a hand in the original writing of the plays. He also urges, and, I think, proves, that the quarto form has a great many passages, some of them including from fifty to a hundred successive lines, which, while confessedly far beyond the reach of Greene, are at the same time so different, in style, imagery, and conception, from all that Marlowe is known to have produced before that time, that no one, with the matter fairly in his eye, could think of ascribing them to him. I say before that time, because, as we shall presently see, the original form of the plays now in hand must have been in being before 1592; whereas Marlowe's Edward the Second, which is much the best of his plays, was in all probability of later production, nothing being

heard of it till July, 1593: so that while writing it the influence, or the inspiration, of Shakespeare may well be supposed to have been something strong upon him; there being withal only two months' difference in their ages.

Matters, I believe, are now ready for what may be justly regarded as the most important item of evidence that has come down to us touching this question. — Greene, after a brief bad life, died, forsaken, repentant, and miserable, at the house of a poor shoemaker in London on the 3d of September, 1592. It appears that his latest work was in writing a pamphlet entitled A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, which, soon after his death, was given to the public by Henry Chettle. Near the close of this tract, Greene makes an Address "to those Gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays." The names of these "gentlemen " are not mentioned, but are well understood to be Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele, all popular playwrights of the time. After exhorting each of them in turn, he proceeds with the following addressed to the three in common:

"Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, those antics garnish'd in our colours. Is it not strange that I to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country. O, that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions!"

It is well understood on all hands, that the words upstart crow and Shake-scene refer to Shakespeare. And it is evident that this spiteful squib, while touching others only as players, was meant to hit him both as a player and as a writer. For, as the

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three whom Greene is exhorting are regarded only as authors of plays, so what is said about "bombasting out a blank-verse must refer to Shakespeare as an author. Now it is generally admitted that Marlowe was the first to make use of blank-verse in dramatic composition for the public stage. So that a part of the slur on Shakespeare is, that he is rivalling or trying to rival Marlowe in this his most judicious and most fruitful innovation. And the words "beautified with our feathers " naturally infer the charge upon Shakespeare of having stealthily enriched or adorned his workmanship as an author from what Greene and Marlowe had written. And all this meaning is aptly driven home and clinched by the parody of one of Shakespeare's own lines in The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, i. 4, “O, tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!" which would naturally suggest the plays now in hand as the particular matter wherein the writer supposed himself to have been wronged. And with all this agrees a passage in a tract called Greene's Funerals, 1594:

Nay, more; the men that so eclipsed his fame

Purloin'd his plumes; can they deny the same?

So that my conclusion upon the whole subject is this: That as early, perhaps, as 1590, Shakespeare, in conjunction with Greene and Marlowe, had written the original form of the two plays in question; and that some time before Greene's death he had withdrawn from all partnership or joint authorship with those worthies, and had rewritten the plays into the form they now bear, throwing out the most of what the others had done, but retaining or slightly altering more or less of their work; enough to give some colour at least to the charge of having beautified himself with their feathers. I think this view fairly meets all the known facts and all the clear aspects of the case, and that it is the only one at all reconcilable with the poetical and dramatic characteristics of the plays in their later form, both in themselves and as compared with the same in their earlier form.

The action of this play extends from the arrival of Queen Margaret in England, May, 1445, till the first battle of St. Alban's, May, 1455. Except in one instance, the leading events of the drama come along in their actual order. That exception is

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