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Title: The Critics Versus Shakspere
A Brief for the Defendant
Author: Francis A. Smith
Release Date: December 10, 2008 [EBook #27485]
Language: English
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THE CRITICS
Versus
SHAKSPERE
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENDANT
By
FRANCIS A. SMITH
The Knickerbocker Press
New York
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907
BY
FRANCIS A. SMITH
THE CRITICS
_versus_
SHAKSPERE
A BRIEF FOR DEFENDANT.
By FRANCIS A. SMITH,
of Counsel.
Many years ago, I was retained in the great case of THE CRITICS AGAINST
SHAKSPERE, the most celebrated on the calendar of history during three
centuries. Unlike other cases, it has been repeatedly decided, and as
often reopened and reheard before the most eminent judges, who have
again and again non-suited the plaintiffs. Appeals have availed nothing
to reverse those decisions. New actions have been brought on the ground
of newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony from
all lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury of
mankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action.
Ben Jonson said that Shakspere "wanted art"; the highest appellate court
decided that "Lear" was a greater work than Euripides or Sophocles ever
produced. Voltaire, the presiding Justice in the court of French
criticism, decided that Shakspere was "votre bizarre sauvage;" the world
has reversed his decision, and everywhere, except perhaps in France, the
"Henriade" is neglected for "Hamlet."
During the seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumont
and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and
even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary
to the memory of the "immortal" Cowley,--
"By Shakspere's, Jonson's, Fletcher's lines,
Our stage's lustre Rome's outshines.
* * * * *
Old Mother Wit and Nature gave
Shakspere and Fletcher all they have;
In Spencer and in Jonson, art
Of slower Nature got the start.
But both in him so equal are,
None knows which bears the happiest share."
One knows not which to admire most, the beauty of the poetry or the
justice of the encomium.
James Shirly, whom Shakspere has not yet been accused of imitating, said
in 1640 that he had few friends, and Tateham, an obscure versifier, in
1652, that he was the "plebeian driller."
Philipps, the pupil of Milton, refers to Shakspere's "unfiled
expressions, his rambling and undigested fancies, the laughter of the
critical." Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarely
observed the Aristotelian laws of the three unities," but was good
enough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "He
is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches,
his serious swelling, into bombast."
Thomas Rymer, another disciple of the unities, in 1693, declared
"Othello" to be a "bloody farce without salt or savor," and says that
"in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff there is a
meaning, there is a lively expression, and ... more humanity, than many
times in the tragical flights of Shakspere." How much humanity may be
shown in the neighing of a horse or the growling of a mastiff may be
left to the impartial judgment of the jockey or the dog fancier, but the
world has got beyond the criticism of Rymer. In his view, "almost
everything in Shakspere's plays is so wretched that he is surprised how
critics could condescend to honor so wretched a poet with critical
discussions."
John Dennis and Charles Gildon, whose books are forgotten under the dust
of more than two centuries, in 1693 and 1694 denied that Shakspere's
plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to
nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far
below the ancients in all essential points,--in composition, invention,
characterization.
Dennis says Shakspere paid no heed to poetic justice ... "the good and
bad perishing promiscuously in the best of his tragedies, so that there
can be either none or very weak instruction in them." Gildon sums up his
opinion by the sententious remark that "his beauties are buried beneath
a heap of ashes, isolated and fragmentary like the ruins of a temple, so
that there is no harmony in them."
Against all this arraignment by the imitators of the French drama, we
have that loving tribute of the great Milton:--
"Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy Name.
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a live-long monument."
Pope could not resist the charm of his unacknowledged master. But Pope
praises Dryden, Denham, and Waller,--never a word of commendation for
Shakspere: "he is not correct, not classic; he has almost as many
defects as beauties; his dramas want plan, are defective and irregular
in construction; he keeps the tragic and comic as little apart as he
does the different epochs and nations in which the scenes of his plays
are laid; the unity of action, of place, and of time is violated in
every scene."
The eighteenth century was notable for its corrections and remodellings,
reducing the grandeur of the originals to the levels of the critics.
Lord Lansdowne degraded Shylock into the clown of the play; it was
"furnished with music and other ornamentation, enriched with a musical
masque, 'Peleus and Thetis,' and with a banqueting scene in which the
Jew," dining apart from the rest, drinks to his God, Money. Gildon
mangled "Measure for Measure" and provided it with "musical
entertainments." The Duke of Buckingham divided "Julius Cæsar" into two
tragedies with choruses. Worsdale reduced "The Taming of the Shrew" to a
vaudeville, and Lampe "trimmed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' into an
opera." Garrick adapted "Romeo and Juliet" to the stage of his time, by
allowing Juliet to awake before Romeo had died of the poison, "The
Tempest" by furnishing it with songs, "The Taming of the Shrew" by
cutting it down to a farce in three acts.
Even the great Samuel Johnson said that Shakspere "sacrifices virtue to
convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct that
he seems to write without any moral purpose." ... "His plots are often
so loosely formed that a very slight consideration may improve them, and
so carelessly pursued that he seems not always fully to comprehend his
own design."
"It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is
evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and
in view of his reward, he shortened the labor to snatch the profit. He
therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them,
and his catastrophe is improbably produced and imperfectly represented."
And so it may be said that in England, after Shakspere's death, the
Drama was devoted to the imitators of ancient models, under the
leadership of Ben Jonson, and later, beyond the middle of the
seventeenth century, to the imitators of French taste, for the amusement
of Charles the Second, "Defender of the Faith," and the correct Nell
Gwynn. Under the guidance of such imitators, from Davenant to Cibber,
many of Shakspere's plays were reconstructed for the stage, until _The
Tatler_ quotes lines from Davenant's mangled version of "Macbeth," and
N. Tate, in his edition of "Lear" "revived with alterations, as acted at
the Duke's Theatre," refers to the original play as "an old piece with
which he had become acquainted through a friend." Davenant and Dryden in
1670 improved "The Tempest"; Davenant corrected the errors of "Measure
for Measure" and "Much Ado" in 1673; Sedley cut out the immorality from
"Antony" in 1677; Shadwell, in the following year, reformed the
character of "Timon"; Tate restored "Lear" to his kingdom and Cordelia
to life, and even made "Henry VI.," "Richard II.," and "Coriolanus"
conform to the rules of dramatic art which Shakspere had so defiantly
violated. Durfey corrected the imperfect plot, characterization, and
diction of "Cymbeline," and administered just punishment to Iachimo; and
finally, Betterton and Cibber, in 1710, added elegance to the wit of
Falstaff and refinement to the bloody cunning of Richard.
"All these versions," as Ulrici says, "were essentially the same in
character; as a rule, only such passages as were most effective on the
stage were left unaltered, but in all cases the editors endeavored to
expunge the supposed harshnesses of language and versification; powerful
passages were tamed down and diluted, elegant passages embellished,
tender passages made more tender; the comic scenes were provided with
additional indelicacies, and it was further endeavored to make the aim
of the action more correct by the removal of some supposed excrescences,
or by the alteration of the scenic arrangement and the course of the
action."
Yet, in spite of all these distortions of the great originals, in
conformity with the taste of corrupt courts, the love and admiration of
the English people for the dramas as Shakspere wrote them was attested
by more than twenty complete and critical editions of his works before
the end of the eighteenth century; and the high estimate of his genius
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was never questioned
until 1904, when Professor Barrett Wendell, in his "Temper of the
Seventeenth Century in English Literature," discovered and revealed to
the world that Shakspere, except as a "phrase-maker" and except as the
inventor of "historical fiction" in "Henry IV." and "Henry V.," was "the
most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan
dramatists," and "remained till the end an instinctively imitative
follower of fashions set by others."
It had taken nearly three centuries of time and the researches of
countless scholars to make the discovery, and they had all failed except
Professor Wendell. During Shakspere's life and after his death, none of
his contemporaries ever accused him of imitating "fashions set by
others"; none of them, except the profligate Greene, of "beautifying
himself with others' feathers."
Edmund Malone, by what may be called digital criticism, undertook to
prove that Shakspere, in the second and third parts of "Henry VI.,"
stole 1771 lines from the "Contention," originally written by another
hand, remodelled 2373 lines, and added 1899 of his own; but even Malone
did not charge that Shakspere imitated the author of the "Contention";
his argument, if it had not been conclusively answered again and again,
would prove that Shakspere was "the most unblushing plagiarist that ever
put pen to paper."
But long before Malone came Lessing, who in 1759 led the successful
attack upon the pseudo-classicism of the French dramatists, proved that
the three unities were but the articles of an outworn creed, and in
1758, that Shakspere was something more than a successful playwright,
more than the successful rival of Marlowe and Kyd and Dekker and
Beaumont and Fletcher, more than "the master of the revels to mankind,"
and led critical opinion to the conclusion that he was the foremost man
of his time and of all time, with power to search the secrets of all
hearts, to measure the abysses of all passion, to portray the weakness
of all human foibles, to create characters who act and speak and are as
much alive to us as the men and women we daily meet, to teach mankind
the profoundest philosophy, the littleness of the great, the greatness
of humility and truth, and to inculcate by immortal examples the highest
and purest morality.
And so England found at last the greatness of her greatest son in the
"father of German literature," and the nineteenth century affirmed the
judgment of Lessing. Among Germans, it needs only to name Wieland,
Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Ulrici, and Gervinus; among Englishmen,
Coleridge, who said, "No one has ever yet produced one scene conceived
and expressed in the Shaksperean idiom"; and Charles Knight, who has
exploded the traditions of Rowe and Stevens about the deer stealing, the
wife desertion and the testamentary insult, and conclusively shown that
"the theory of Shakspere's first employment in repairing the plays of
others is altogether untenable, supported only by a very narrow view of
the great essentials of a dramatic work, and by verbal criticism which,
when carefully examined, fails even in its own petty assumptions."
But English criticism is not conclusive for us without the indorsement
of American scholars. Let me quote what Emerson says:--"He is the father
of German literature. Now, literature, philosophy, and thought are
Shaksperean. His mind is the horizon beyond which we at present do not
see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. He cannot step from
his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspiration. He is
inconceivably wise; the others conceivably. A good reader can, in a
sort, nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence, but not into
Shakspere's."
And Lowell has uttered what seemed the final estimate:--"Those
magnificent crystallizations of feeling and phrase, basaltic masses,
molten and interfused by the primal fires of passion, are not to be
reproduced by the slow experiments of the laboratory striving to parody
creation with artifice.... Among the most alien races he is as solidly
at home as a mountain seen from many sides by many lands, itself
superbly solitary, yet the companion of all thoughts and domesticated in
all imaginations."
All this weight of opinion has not served to settle the question of the
sovereignty of Shakspere. It is hardly needful to mention the action
brought by Ignatius Donnelly to prove that Francis Bacon was the author
of work which excels the "Novum Organum," for that action was laughed
out of court by judge, jury, and audience. It might as well be claimed
that Job wrote "Hamlet"; for, whatever doubt may be raised as to his
personal history, the folio of 1623 and the testimony of his
contemporaries have shown as clearly that Shakspere wrote the dramas
bearing his name as that Macaulay wrote a history of the Revolution of
1688.
But here come Barrett Wendell, Professor of English Literature at
Harvard, and his pupil and disciple, Ashley H. Thorndike, Assistant
Professor of English at the Western Reserve University, with a new case,
or a new brief on the old one, maintaining, with laborious industry and
mutual sympathy, that Shakspere was only an Elizabethan playwright, who
found the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at once
seized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in the
histories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music of
his blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the manner
of Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are but
adaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but an
imitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style of drama
made popular by some contemporary of more original power, he immediately
imitated his style and plot, surpassed him in phrase-making, and so
coined sterling money to build and decorate his house at Stratford.
If not the most formidable, this is the latest attack of the critics. It
should seem from our brief review of former efforts, that this has been
fully answered. But if apology is needful for further defence, let it be
found in this, that when men of eminent position as the instructors of
youth, whose word in these days of careless and superficial reading is
likely to be taken as final, undertake to change the opinion of the
civilized world as to the genius and character of its supreme mind,
their assertions should be supported by something more substantial than
references to each other as authority, more reliable than dramatic
chronology, which they themselves admit to be uncertain, more tangible
than the effort to count the lines of "Henry VIII." written by Fletcher.
The position of Professor Wendell can be most fairly stated in his own
words. After a hasty review of the early drama, he says of Shakspere:--
"The better one knows his surroundings, the more clearly one
begins to perceive that his chief peculiarity, when compared
with his contemporaries, was a somewhat sluggish avoidance of
needless invention. When anyone else had done a popular thing,
Shakspere was pretty sure to imitate him and do it better. But
he hardly ever did anything first. To his contemporaries he
must have seemed deficient in originality, at least as
compared with Lilly, or Marlowe, or Ben Jonson, or Beaumont
and Fletcher. He was the most obviously imitative dramatist of
all, following rather than leading superficial fashion."
Professor Wendell proceeds to give what he is pleased to call examples
of Shakspere's "lack of superficial originality," whatever that may
mean, and assumes that he "had certainly done years of work as a
dramatic hack-writer" before the appearance of "Venus and Adonis." There
is no proof, not even the doubtful authority of tradition, that he was
ever a hack-writer, or ever revised or revamped the dramatic work of
another.
Professor Wendell asserts, upon the authority of Mr. Sidney Lee, that
Shakspere came to London in 1586,--that is, when he was twenty-two.
Aubry, his oldest biographer, says in 1680 that "this William, being
naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about
eighteen (i.e., in 1582), and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and
did act exceeding well." "He began early to make essays at dramatic
poetry, and his plays took well." The date is important, as will soon be
seen.
Professor Wendell proceeds:--"'Love's Labour's Lost' is obviously in
the manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI.,' certainly collaborative, is a
chronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chief
makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost
masterly 'Edward II.' 'Titus Andronicus' ... is a tragedy of blood much
in the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popular
presentation a familiar kind of Latin comedy."
We may differ with some of these assertions because dissent is supported
by the highest authority, both German and English. Ulrici says that
"Lilly's works in fact contain nothing but witty words; the actual wit
of comic characters, situations, actions, and incidents is almost
entirely wanting. Accordingly, his wit is devoid of dramatic power, his
conception of comedy still not distinct from the ludicrous, which is
always attached to one object; he has no idea of a comic whole." "Love's
Labour's Lost" is assigned by the best authority to 1591-92, after the
appearance of "Pericles," "Titus Andronicus," the two parts of the
"Contention," "The Comedy of Errors," and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."
Professor Wendell admits that in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Shakspere
did work of his own. After that, it is not quite "obvious" that "Love's
Labour's Lost" is in the style of Lilly, however clear to the critic may
be its "tedious length."
Lilly wrote "Endymion, or The Man in the Moon," first published in 1591;
it is "one great and elaborate piece of flattery addressed to 'Elizabeth
Cynthia'," that is, the Queen; she instructs her ladies in Morals and
Pythagoras in Philosophy. "Her kiss breaks the spell" which put Endymion
into his forty-years sleep, upon which, and upon his deliverance from
which, "the action principally turns within the space of forty years."
Can any impartial reader trace this "manner of Lilly" in "Love's
Labour's Lost"?
Lilly's "Pleasant conceited Comedy," called "Mother Bombie," appeared in
1594, his "Midas" in 1592, and his "Most Excellent Comedie of
Alexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes" in 1584. "Mother Bombie" represents
four servants, treated partly as English, partly as Roman slaves, who
deceive their respective masters in an "equally clumsy, unlikely, and
un-motived manner." It is difficult to see how "Love's Labour's Lost,"
produced in 1592, could have imitated "Mother Bombie," produced in 1594.
"Alexander and Campaspe" is "taken from the well known story of the
magnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionate
love for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of her
lover Apelles." The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes the
opportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all comers by his
cynical speeches.
Lilly's most ambitious work was his "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, very
pleasant for all Gentlemen to read," "probably printed as early as
1579." Long before Shakspere's time, all "Gentlemen" had read it, and
it had introduced to the fashionable world a new language which nobody
but the high-born could understand.
If "Love's Labour's Lost" is "in the manner of Lilly," it is not so in
Professor Wendell's sense, but only as it ridicules with unsparing
satire Lilly's conceits and puns.
The statement that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative" is
unwarranted, because it has been successfully challenged and disproved
by the eminent critics Hermann Ulrici and Charles Knight; it is
supported only by the guesswork of Clark, Wright, Halliwell and others
who assume to find a divided authorship from assumed divergencies of
style. The result shows the futility of the method. What Shakspere is
assumed not to have written is assigned to Marlowe, Greene, Peele or
Lodge. If style cannot determine between them, what warrant is there for
the conclusion that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative"?
The second and third parts of "Henry VI." are the final form of "The
First Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster,"
and "The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York." Greene, in his savage
attack upon Shakspere, quotes a line which appears in the "Third Part"
and also in "The True Tragedy." His attack proves the sole authorship of
both by the man he maligns, to whom Chettle apologized within a year.
The argument of Knight has been before the critical world for many
years, and its careful arrangement of facts and its logical conclusions
from them, have well-nigh overcome the prejudices of English scholars
who for many years after the appearance of Malone's "Dissertation"
adopted his theory that the two parts of the "Contention" contained
nothing from Shakspere's hand. But because American writers are
constantly seeking reputation for learning by repeating Malone's
argument, it will be useful, in the interest of truth, to state Knight's
answer.
He first takes up Malone's assumption that the two parts of the
"Contention" were not written by the author of the "First Part of Henry
VI.," and proves the identity of authorship by the intimate connection
and unity of action and characterization, and by the identity of manner,
making the three plays one integral whole. In the "First Part of Henry
VI." and in the "First Part of the Contention," Suffolk is the same man,
Margaret the same woman. In both plays, Gloster and Beaufort speak the
same scorn and defiance in the same tongue. The garden scene, with its
red and white roses, is the prologue to the "Contention" and
indissolubly links together the three parts of "Henry VI." as one drama
by the same hand.
Malone's first assumption was therefore without foundation. Even Collier
only claims that "it is _plausibly conjectured_" that Shakspere did
not write the "First Part of Henry VI." but that it is an old play most
likely written about 1589. Who did write it, was before Knight and
Ulrici the theme of endless debate. Hallam was "sometimes inclined to
assign it to Greene." Gervinus in his "Commentaries," took the same
view, but subsequently changed it. Knight has shown that the three parts
of "Henry VI." are "in the strictest sense" Shakspere's own, and Ulrici
agrees with Knight.
It is worthy of note that the "First Part" was acted thirteen times in
the spring of 1592 by Lord Strange's men, under the title "Henry VI."
Greene lived until the 2d of September in that year, and yet in his
"Groatsworth of Wit" he made no claim that the "First Part" was any
portion of his "feathers."
The next point made is that the two parts of the "Contention" were
written by the author of "Richard III." Malone studiously avoided any
comparison between them, and yet it is entirely clear that with the
"first Part of Henry VI." they form one drama. "'Richard III.' stands at
the end of the series as the avowed completion of a long tragic history.
The scenes of that drama are as intimately blended with the scenes of
the other dramas as the scenes that belong to the separate dramas are
blended among themselves. Its story not only naturally grows out of the
previous story,--its characters are not only, wherever possible, the
same characters as in the preceding dramas,--but it is even more
palpably linked with them by constant retrospection to the events which
they had exhibited."
In "Richard III." Margaret is still the same "she-wolf of France" as in
the three previous plays. If Shakspere wrote those terrible lines in
"Richard III.," as all scholars admit,--
"From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept
A hell-hound, that doth hunt us all to death;
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs, and lap their gentle blood;
* * * * *
O upright, just and true disposing God,
How do I thank thee, that this carnal cur
Preys on the issue of his mother's body,
* * * * *
Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge"--
if Shakspere wrote those lines, he wrote those like them from the same
lips, in the second part of the "Contention"--
"Or, where's that valiant crook-backed prodigy,
Dicky, your boy, that with his grumbling voice
Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?
Or, 'mongst the rest, where is your darling Rutland?
Look, York, I dipped this napkin in the blood
That valiant Clifford, with his rapier's point,
Made issue from the bosom of thy boy."
The two parts of the "Contention" are admitted to be by the same hand.
Margaret, Edward IV., Elizabeth his Queen, Clarence and Gloster appear
in the "Second Part" and in "Richard III."
And here, the unity of action and of characterization conclusively shows
the common authorship, precisely as the same resemblance unites the
first part of "Henry VI." and the "Contention."
The "Second Part of the Contention" ends thus:--
"And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs and mirthful comic shows,
Such as befit the pleasures of the court?"
"Richard III." begins with a continuation of the triumphant strain:--
"Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures."
In "Richard III." are repeated references to events in the "Second
Part"; to the murder of Rutland by the "black-faced Clifford"; to the
crowning of York with paper, and the mocking offer of a "clout steeped
in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland." It must not be forgotten that
these striking likenesses, references, unities, are not between "Richard
III." and the portion of the "Contention" assigned to Shakspere, but
between the unquestioned author of "Richard" and that part of the
"Contention" assigned by Malone and his disciples to somebody else,
named only by conjecture.
But the most striking identity of character in these three plays,
showing conclusively the identity of authorship, appears in Richard
himself: Knight justly and forcibly says: "It seems the most
extraordinary marvel that the world, for more than half a century,
should have consented to believe that the man who absolutely created
that most wonderful character, in all its essential lineaments, in the
'Second Part of the Contention,' was not the man who continued it in
'Richard III.'"
To prove the point, it is only necessary to permit Richard to describe
himself.
This picture is from the "Contention":--
"I will go clad my body in gay garments,
And lull myself within a lady's lap,
And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.
Oh monstrous man, to harbour such a thought!
Why, love did scorn me in my mother's womb;
And, for I should not deal in her affairs,
She did corrupt frail nature in the flesh,
And plac'd an envious mountain on my back,
Where sits deformity to mock my body;
To dry mine arm up like a wither'd shrimp;
To make my legs of an unequal size.
And am I then a man to be beloved?
Easier for me to compass twenty crowns.
Tut, I can smile, and murder when I smile;
I cry content to that which grieves me most;
I can add colours to the chameleon;
And for a need change shapes with Proteus,
And set the aspiring Cataline to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get the crown?
Tush, were it ten times higher, I'll pull it down."
And here is the companion portrait from "Richard III.":--
"But I, that am not shap'd for sporting tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty,
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;--
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;--
Why I, in this weak, piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to see my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasure of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the King
In deadly hate the one against the other;
And, if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up."
The pictures that Hamlet showed his mother were not more unlike than
these are like. But Malone's examination was microscopic, and he used so
powerful an instrument that he could not distinguish resemblance or
difference beyond its field of vision. The result is that he counts
among the lines mended by Shakspere those that differ from those in the
"Contention" only by a particle or a conjunction. By this "capricious
arithmetic," only six lines in the scenes with Jack Cade in the "Second
Part of Henry VI." are credited to Shakspere, and we are asked to
believe that the man who was to fix the price of bread at "seven
half-penny loaves for a penny," to give the "three-hooped pot ten
hoops," to "make it felony to drink small beer," was portrayed by
Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or Lilly, or Kyd, or Nash, or somebody
else still more completely forgotten.
If, then, "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative," a "chronicle history
of the earlier kind," as Professor Wendell expressly asserts, it ought
to be shown for our certain instruction who was Shakspere's collaborator
in the three parts of that drama. This neither he nor any other critic
has yet done. Malone says it was Greene or Peele, but, in spite of the
established fact that we have abundant remains of both, he cannot
determine between them from style, or rhythm, or other peculiarities;
Collier "supposes" it was Greene; Dyce "conjectures" it was Marlowe.
On the contrary, it may be conclusively shown that Shakspere is
constantly quoting from the "First Part of Henry VI." and the
"Contention," as from himself,--adjectives, figures of speech,
sentences, phrases. The cardinal in "Henry VI." is called a "scarlet
hypocrite," in "Henry VIII." a "scarlet sin." In one play the sentence
"I am but shadow of myself" becomes in the other "I am the shadow of
poor Buckingham." "My book of memory" in "Henry" is changed to "the
table of my memory" in "Hamlet." "Who now is girded with a waist of
iron" is repeated in "King John"--"That as a waist do girdle you about."
More striking still is the close resemblance between the line in the
"First Part"--"'Tis but the short'ning of my life one day" and the line
in "Henry V."--"Heaven shorten Harry's happy life one day."
In the "First Part of the Contention" the character described "bears a
duke's whole revenue on her back." In "Henry VIII." this is recalled by
the line,--they "have broke their backs with laying manors on them"; and
in "King John"--"bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs." In
"Macbeth" the sentence "Infected minds to their deaf pillows will
discharge their secrets" is but a repetition of the line from the
"Contention" in which Duke Humphrey's assassin "whispers to his pillow
as to him."
"You have no children, devils," is the language of the "Contention"; "he
has no children" of "Macbeth."
"Bring forth that fatal screech owl to our house,
That nothing sung but blood and death"
are the words of the "Contention";
"Out on you, owls, nothing but songs of death,"
of "Richard III."
Malone suppresses the obvious resemblance between these passages and
others like them, and is guilty of the same uncritical conduct in
disregarding the classical allusions in the "Second and Third Parts of
Henry VI." which he admits were added by Shakspere,--allusions as
numerous and striking as those in the "First Part."
Mr. Richard Grant White, after reviewing the argument of Knight, reaches
the conclusion that he "demolished Malone's theory," and this conclusion
is a sufficient answer to Professor Wendell's unsupported assertion that
"Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative."
But Professor Wendell further says that "Greene and Peele were the chief
makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost
masterly 'Edward II.'" We are therefore asked to believe that Shakspere,
in the historical plays bearing his name, imitated them or one of them.
Examination of the record will best show whether this latest critic has
discovered any evidence to support his new charge, that Shakspere "was
the most obviously imitative dramatist of all, following rather than
leading superficial fashion."
Malone, in his "Chronological Order," says: "'The First Part of King
Henry VI.,' which I imagine was formerly known by the name of the
'Historical Play of King Henry VI.,' had, I suspect, been a very
popular piece for _some_ years, before 1592, and perhaps was first
exhibited in 1588 or 1589." Collier states "that it is merely the _old_
play on the early events of that reign, which was most likely written in
1589." Knight concludes that "there can be no doubt that the composition
of this play preceded that of the two parts of the 'Contention.'" That
these had been upon the stage before Greene died in 1592 is proven
beyond dispute by Greene's savage attack, at that time Shakspere was
twenty-eight years old and for at least three years had been a
shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, and, if Mr. Sidney Lee is right,
had been in London six years; if old Aubry was better informed, he had
been "acting exceeding well" and making "essays at dramatic poetry which
took well" for ten years.
The theory of "imitation" rests upon the assumption that Shakspere did
not begin to write for the stage before 1592; Collier asserts, without
the slightest support from known facts, and against the hostile
testimony of Greene, that he wrote the "tiger's heart lines" before
September, 1592, that "the 'History of Henry VI.,' the 'First Part of
the Whole Contention,' and the 'True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York,'
were all three in being before Shakspere began to write for the stage";
and Mr. Hallam says, more cautiously, that "it seems probable that the
old plays of the 'Contention' ... were in great part by Marlowe."
And so, we find Shakspere in London, from six to ten years connected
with its principal theatre, but writing nothing for its stage, not even
as a "hack-writer." We respectfully dissent from this conclusion because
it lacks support either in fact or probability. The man who, from utter
penury, had in 1589 won his way to a lucrative share in the theatre he
made illustrious, and who wrote "Romeo and Juliet," which first
appeared, according to Ulrici's investigation, in 1592, was more capable
of writing, and more likely to have written, the three original pieces
than Greene or Marlowe, to one of whom, or to some other writer, the
authorship is assigned by mere conjecture, from a fancied but confused
and indeterminate likeness of style or metre or classical quotation.
Marlowe was killed in a brawl with one Francis Archer, at Deptford, on
the first day of June, 1593. The only dramas that can be certainly
called his are the "Two Parts of Tamburlaine," "The Massacre of Paris,"
"Faustus," the "Jew of Malta" and "Edward II." His merits and his faults
have been discussed by many scholars; his style is characterized as the
"mighty line"; he is said by many to have invented and introduced blank
verse as the vehicle of the drama, although "Gorboduc," acted before the
Queen in 1561 and published in 1565, Gascogne's "Jocasta," played in
1566, and Whetstone's "Promos and Cassandra," printed in 1578, were
wholly or partly in blank verse. But it is admitted by all editors and
critics that Marlowe's only historical plays are "The Massacre" and "the
almost masterly Edward II.," as Professor Wendell somewhat ambiguously
calls it. The "Massacre" ends with the death of Henry III. of France,
who was assassinated on the 1st of August, 1589; "it cannot, therefore,
have been written earlier than about 1590." Whatever its true date, it
is not claimed to bear any likeness to either part of the "Contention."
On the contrary, "it was a subject in which Marlowe would naturally
revel; for in the progress of the action, blood could be made to flow as
freely as water." The resemblance is sought in his Edward II., which, as
all the facts tend to show, was his latest work, written after the
"Massacre" and certainly not published in his lifetime. It was entered
at Stationer's Hall in July, 1593, a little more than a month after
Marlowe's death. But here stands the "Contention" with a fixed date,
proved to have been in existence "in or close upon the first half of
the decade commencing in 1585," and the admission of all scholars that
it preceded Marlowe's "Edward II." If, therefore, Marlowe wrote one or
both parts of the "Contention," the extravagant assumption must be made
"that his mind was so thoroughly disciplined at the period when he
produced 'Tamburlaine,' 'Faustus' and the 'Jew of Malta' that he was
able to lay aside every element, whether of thought or expression, by
which those plays are characterized, adopt essentially different
principles for the dramatic conduct of a story, copy his characters from
living and breathing models of actual men; come down from his pomp and
extravagance of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry with
familiar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaring
and fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ...
but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the
common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,--pride,
and envy, and ambition, and revenge,--most fearful, from their alliance
with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was what
Marlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustained
scene of either part of the 'Contention'; before he could have depicted
the fierce hatreds of Beaufort and Gloster, the never-subdued ambition
of Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends and
reviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity,
the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and the
passionless ferocity of Richard."
Does it need more to show that Marlowe was not the author of the
"Contention"? Here is the proof, and it does not rest upon conjecture,
or inference from disputed facts, but upon records that have survived
the waste of three centuries. The "First Part of the Contention" was
printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, in 1594; "The True
Tragedy of Richard," the old name of the "Second Part of the
Contention," by "P. S." for Thomas Millington, in 1595. The title page
gives the name of no author for either play, and it is claimed by
eminent authority that both were piratical editions; but if Marlowe was
the unquestioned author, were not his friends and associates still
living, three years after his death, to claim the honor of creating two
dramas which immeasurably surpassed any other he ever wrote? If it be
asked why Shakspere's friends did not claim the authorship for him, it
is answered that as soon as another edition appeared, they did. In 1619,
three years after his death, a new edition of these very plays appeared,
with Shakspere's full name on the title page, and enlarged by additions
from the second and third parts of "Henry VI." And this proof is further
supported: In an entry in the Stationer's Registers under date of April
19, 1602, appears the following remark:--"Thom. Pavier: By assignment
from Th. Millington _salvo jure cujuscunque_: the First and Second
Parts of 'Henry VI.', two books." This entry refers to the two plays first
published in 1594 and 1595, the first of which is always called "The
First Part of the Contention," and both of which in the edition of 1619
were under the title of "The whole Contention between the two famous
Houses of Lancaster and York," by the same Th. Pavier who had received
them "by assignment" from the original publisher of the editions of 1594
and 1595,--_Thomas Millington_. _Pavier_ knew in 1619, and therefore put
his name on the title page of his edition, that Shakspere was the author
of the two parts of the "Contention," but instead of giving them the
extended titles of the former editions, briefly and inaccurately
designated them as "The First and Second Parts of Henry VI." It results
from these facts, that when Malone was attempting to show that Shakspere
was imitating Marlowe's "Edward II." in the lines--
"Scorning that the lowly earth
Should drink his blood, mounts up to the air,"
and--
"Frown'st thou thereat, aspiring Lancaster?"
he forgot the important and established truth that Marlowe was imitating
Shakspere in the "Contention."
For two centuries, until Malone's "Dissertation," nobody had claimed
that Marlowe wrote any portion of the "Contention"; for nearly two
centuries, the "Second and Third Parts of Henry VI." had appeared as the
sole work of Shakspere, embodying act for act, scene for scene, event
for event and character for character, the whole "Contention," and
nobody had claimed that he was not the sole author of both. We therefore
respectfully submit that Professor Wendell has no warrant for his
assertion that "to his contemporaries he must have seemed deficient in
originality, as least as compared with Lilly or Marlowe." "Henry VI."
was not "collaborative." Marlowe did not develop the type of chronicle
history into his "almost masterly Edward II."
But Professor Wendell further asserts that "Greene and Peele were the
chief makers of such plays" before Marlowe, and the implication is that
Shakspere, in his historical plays, "followed the superficial fashion"
set by them.
Of Greene's dramas, only two purport to have been his work,--"Friar
Bacon and Friar Bungay" and "The Scottish History of James the Fourth."
"Orlando Furioso," generally assigned to him, has no name on its title
page; "Alphonsus, King of Aragon," is probably his, as it bears the
initials "R. G."; "The Looking Glass for London and England" bears the
joint names of Lodge and Greene; "The pleasant conceyted comedy of
George-a-Green, the Pinner of Wakefield," sometimes assigned to him, is
of doubtful authorship.
"Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" is characterized by Knight as "the old
story of the Brazen Head. There is here, unquestionably, more facility
in the versification, much less of what we may distinguish by the name
of fustian, and some approach to simplicity and even playfulness. But
whenever Greene gets hold of a king, he invariably makes him talk in the
right royal style which we have already seen; and our Henry III. does
not condescend to discourse in a bit more simple English than the Soldan
of Egypt or the King of Nineveh."
This play was first printed in 1594.
The old popular tradition of Friar Bacon and his magic arts is
interwoven with the loves of Prince Edward and Earl Lacy. Legend and
love story have nothing in common, and their connection is merely
accidental. The Friar's design fails through the stupidity of his
servant, but no explanation is given of the folly of entrusting such
weighty matters to a fool. The love story turns upon the retirement from
the amorous contest in favor of Lacy, but no reason is assigned for the
resulting trials of the successful party. There is no glimpse of history
or of historical chronicle in the piece. Of one thing we may be certain:
With all his wonderful power, Shakspere was incapable of imitating "The
honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay."
"James the Fourth" appeared in print in 1598 under the title "The
Scottish Historie of James the Fourth, slaine at Flodden, intermisted
with a pleasant Comedie &c." Of this drama Ulrici says that "Greene, led
astray perhaps by Marlowe, ventured upon a task quite beyond him. He as
yet obviously had no idea of the dignity of history, of an historical
spirit, of an historical conception of the subject, or of an historical
form of the drama. History with him resolves itself into a romance."
This opinion is fully sustained by the play itself; James falls in love
with Ida, the daughter of the Countess of Arran, but in spite of his
disloyalty, his Queen is faithful. James repents for the very good
reason that Ida spurns him, but not until he has ordered the Queen to be
killed. The murder is unsuccessfully attempted, and after her partial
recovery, she rushes between the armies, disarms the hostility of her
father, the English King, and wins back her husband's love. The chief
characters are Oberon, King of Fairies, and Rohan, a "misanthropic
recluse." Rohan has this veracious "history" enacted before Oberon, and
so justifies himself for having withdrawn from a bad world. This is the
"pleasant Comedie" which is connected with the main action by Slipper,
Rohan's son, who plays the part of clown. It is not strange that the
impartial critic summed up the review with the remark that "the
atmosphere of history was evidently too pure and cool for Greene's
taste." The play is a romance from beginning to end; it has no
pretension to the character of an historical drama. Mr. Dyce says of it:
"From what source our author derived the materials of this strange
fiction I have not been able to discover; nor could Mr. David Laing of
Edinburg, who is so profoundly versed in the ancient literature of his
country, point out to me any Scottish chronicle or tract which might
have afforded hints to the poet for its composition."
The play originally called in 1599 "The Chronicle History of Alphonsus,
King of Aragon" is based upon a semi-historical foundation, and yet, as
the highest authority has pronounced, Greene "has erected such a
romantic and fantastic structure upon this foundation, that it would be
doing him an injustice to judge his work from the standpoint of an
historical drama."
It is plainly an imitation of "Tamburlaine." Alphonsus, singly and
alone, conquers the crown of Aragon and half the world in addition,
accompanied by monotonous noise and blood. The ghost of Mahomet is
introduced as if to give variety to the scene, but fails utterly, and,
nobody can guess why, refuses to give the required oracle, but finally,
importuned by the attendant priests, gives a false one. Even the
marriage of Alphonsus with Iphigenia fails to enliven the style of the
poet. But the machinery that moves the action is all wonderful and
striking and quite un-historical. Venus and the Muses recite the
Prologue and act the dumb shows, representing at the beginning of each
act a retrospection of the Past and a forecast of the Future. And Venus
herself, with the help of Calliope, writes the play, "not with pen and
ink, but with flesh and blood and living action." "This ... indicates
the fundamental idea of the piece. Wherever the all-powerful goddess of
love and beauty herself plans the actions and destinies of mortals,
there extraordinary things come to pass with playful readiness and
grace."
"The Historie of Orlando Furioso," issued from the London press in 1594,
is a light production hastily sketched for a Court Festival, based upon
the great romance of Ariosto, "but the superstructure presents the most
extravagant deviations from Ariosto's plan. The pomposity of the diction
is not amiss in the mouths of such stately personages as the Emperor of
Africa, the Soldan of Egypt, the Prince of Mexico, the King of the Isles
and the mad Orlando."
It may not be amiss to quote an example:
"Discourteous woman, nature's fairest ill,
The woe of man, that first created curse,
Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins,
Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust,
Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles,
Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds;
And in their hearts sit shameless treachery,
Turning a truthless vile circumference!
O, could my fury paint their furies forth!
For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts,
Too simple devils to conceal their arts;
Born to be plagues unto the thoughts of men,
Brought for eternal pestilence to the world."
It is difficult to think of Shakspere "bombasting out a blank verse"
like this.
* * * * *
The dramatic characters recite passages from the classic authors; the
enchantress Melissa gives a whole speech in Latin hexameters; Orlando
bursts into Italian rhymes to utter his rage against Angelica,--"a want
of taste," says the commentator, "which brings the already unsuccessful
scene, the centre of the whole action, down to the sphere of the
ridiculous."
Nobody has been able to determine how much of the "Looking Glass for
London and England" was written by Lodge, how much by Greene. Knight
thinks the poetry should be assigned to Greene. The whole piece is made
up of an extraordinary mixture of Kings of Nineveh, Crete, Cicilia, and
Paphlagonia; of usurers, judges, lawyers, clowns, and ruffians; of
angels, magi, sailors, lords, and "one clad in Devil's attire." The
Prophet Hosea presides over the whole performance, with the exception of
the first and last scenes,--a silent, invisible observer of the
characters, for the purpose of uttering an exhortation to the people at
the end of each scene, that they should take warning from Nineveh. There
is a flash of lightning which kills two of the royal family, and then
another which strikes the parasite, Radagon. Both admonitions are
equally futile. At last an angel prays repeatedly, and in answer Jonah
is sent to preach repentance. His mission is successful, and at last
Jehovah himself descends in angelic form and proclaims mercy. It has
been thought that the piece was written to silence the Puritan zealots
who claimed that the secular drama had demoralized the stage, and
forgotten the purity of the Moral and Miracle plays; but it has never
been suggested that this was a "chronicle history."
"George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield," is not generally credited to
Greene, but Ulrici, from the style, assigns it to him. It makes no claim
as an historical drama, but is based upon two popular legends and some
events during the reign of King Edward, without specifying which king of
that name, and "without regard to chronological order or historical
truth."
Such is a brief and fair summary of the works, whether authentic or
doubtful, of Robert Greene. Let us turn to those of Peele, the friend of
Greene and Marlowe.
Dyce assigns to him "The History of the two valiant Knights, Syr
Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, sonne of the King of Denmark, and
Syr Clamides the White Knight," printed without the author's name in
1584.
The subject, a chivalrous romance, with dragons and sorcerers and lost
princesses, is more a narrative in dialogue than a drama. It is full of
long speeches without any real action. It resembles the "Moralities":
the clown is called "Subtle Shift," sometimes "Vice." "Rumour" and
"Providence" appear, the one to tell Clyomon what has happened during
his absence, the other to prevent Clyomon's mistress "from committing
rash and unnecessary suicide." The clown calls the piece a "pageant"; it
cannot be called "a chronicle history."
Peele's "Arraignment of Paris, a Pastorall" is a court drama in the
style of Lilly, intended to flatter the Queen, "poor in action but all
the richer in gallant phrases, provided with songs, one in Italian, and
with all kinds of love scenes between shepherds and shepherdesses,
nymphs and terrestrial gods"; the diction is interesting, because it
shows revolt from the prevailing "euphuism," and therefore Peele must
be given the praise of first opposing Lilly's affected style.
The subject and action are as far removed from history as earth from
heaven; Paris is accused by Juno and Pallas before the assembled gods,
for having pronounced an unjust sentence; he is released without
punishment, but as the fair plaintiffs persist in their appeal, the
decision is left to Diana, who then awards the fatal apple, not to any
of the three goddesses, but to the wise nymph Eliza, who is as chaste as
she is beautiful and powerful. Juno, Pallas, and Venus of course agree
to this decision and lay all their gifts at the feet of the Queen. At
the end, even the three Fates appear, in order, in a Latin chant, to
deliver up the emblems of their power, and therewith the power itself,
to the exalted nymph.
"The Old Wife's Tale, a pleasant conceited Comedie," published in 1595,
is a dramatized old wife's story told to three erring fancies, Frolic,
Antic and Fantastic, quite in the style of a fairy tale, "always
wavering in the peculiar twilight, between profound sense and nonsense,
between childish play and matured humor." Two brothers who have lost
their sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering with a
double-edged sword and attended by an enamored fool, and finally a
knight-errant devoting his fortune to pay the stingy sexton for the
burial of a victim of poverty; they are now hunting for the princess,
the sisters, and the beloved lady, and to free them from the sorcerer;
none of them succeed in the effort, except the knight, "and he only by
the help of the ghost of the poor Jack whose body he buried."
"The Battel of Alcazar fought in Barbarie" is attributed to Peele and
was published in 1586, soon after Marlowe's "Tamburlaine," after which
it is modelled and to which it expressly refers. The commentator says:
"It is a mere battle piece, full of perpetual fighting and noise, of
which the action almost exclusively consists." There is nothing to show
that it had any connection with history or chronicle, or was anything
better than a hurriedly written, spectacular drama.
The "Edward I." of Peele bears this title: "The famous Chronicle of King
Edward the First, surnamed Edward Longshanks, with his Return from the
Holy Land. Also the life of Llewellen Rebell in Wales. Lastly, the
sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunk at Charing-crosse, and rose again at
Pottershith, now named Queenshith."
The title itself proves that it is not a "chronicle" but an unhistorical
fiction. The events pass by in one straight, continuous line, the
dramatic personages are characterized almost solely by their actions,
the language is a mere sketch. The Queen murders the Lady Mayoress, and
on her death-bed confesses a double adultery; she commits perjury by
denying the murder and calls upon Heaven to sink her into the depths of
the earth if she had spoken falsely. "That she 'sunk at Charing-crosse'
before it was erected to her memory, is a sufficiently remarkable
circumstance in Peele's play, but it is more remarkable that, assuming
to be a 'famous Chronicle,' and in one or two of the events following
the Chronicle, he has represented the Queen altogether to be a fiend in
female shape,--proud, adulterous, cruel, treacherous and bloody." The
play contradicts the Chronicle, and therefore cannot be called a
chronicle history. Hollinshed, the source of all Shakspere's histories,
says of Queen Eleanor: "She was a godly and modest princess, full of
pity, and one that showed much favor to the English nation, ready to
relieve every man's grief that sustained wrong, and to make those
friends that were at discord, so far as in her lay."
Mr. Hallam has characterized this violation of historical truth as a
"hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile.... The
'Edward I.' of Peele is a gross tissue of absurdity with some facility
of language, but nothing truly good." Nobody but Professor Wendell has
ever even intimated that Shakspere imitated it.
It is hardly necessary to consider "The Love of King David and Fair
Bethsabe," published in 1599, because, in the deliberate opinion of
those who have studied the subject most deeply, it was not written till
"Romeo and Juliet" was upon the stage in 1592. In it there are distinct
traces of Shakspere's influence. "The love scenes, and the images and
similes describing the charms of the beauty of nature, remind one of
those incomparable pictures in 'Romeo and Juliet.'" In Peele's other
plays he has made but feeble attempts to depict love, beauty, or grace;
in "King David" he has "depicted them with a remarkably high degree of
success."
These are all the works of Peele which have come down to our time, and
after this review of his and of Greene's dramas, it does not seem that
"Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays," that is, of
"chronicle histories," before Marlowe. The truth is, that all the
supporters of Malone's theory have taken Malone's unsupported statement
as indisputable fact; they have not sufficiently examined the works of
Greene and Peele, but have assumed, as Malone assumed, that Greene's
charge in his "Groat's Worth of Wit" was conclusive proof that Shakspere
did not write the two parts of the "Contention," and that Greene, or one
of the friends he addresses, was in fact the author.
This assumption has again and again been shown to be without foundation.
There was no point in Greene's dying sarcasm if he merely quoted a line
written by himself; if he quoted one written by Shakspere, the whole
argument of Professor Wendell, that "Henry VI." was "certainly
collaborative," that his early work was "hack-writing," that "he hardly
ever did anything first," that "to his contemporaries he must have
seemed deficient in originality," falls to the ground.
Having done what Malone failed to do, and what Professor Wendell seems
not to have done,--having reviewed at some length the works of
Shakspere's contemporaries to whom the older chronicle plays are
attributed by Malone,--we invoke, in support of the position we have
taken, the opinion of Mr. Charles Knight in his "Essay on Henry VI. and
Richard III."
"The dramatic works of Greene, which were amongst the rarest treasures
of the bibliographer, have been rendered accessible to the general
reader by the valuable labors of Mr. Dyce. To those who are familiar
with these works we will appeal, without hesitation, in saying that the
character of Greene's mind, and his habits of composition, rendered him
utterly incapable of producing, not the Two Parts of the 'Contention,'
or one Part, but a single sustained scene of either Part.
"And yet a belief has been long entertained in England, to which some
wise and judicious still cling, that Greene and Peele either wrote the
Two Parts of the 'Contention' in conjunction; or that Greene wrote one
Part and Peele the other Part; or that, at any rate, Greene had some
share in these dramas. This was the theory propagated by Malone in his
'Dissertation'; and it rests not upon the slightest examination of these
writers, but solely on the far-famed passage in Greene's posthumous
pamphlet, the 'Groat's Worth of Wit,' in which he points out Shakspere
as 'a crow beautified with our feathers.' The hypothesis seems to us to
be little less than absurd.... He parodies a line from one of the
productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home,
to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most
justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line
parodied had not been that of the very writer attacked."
"Titus Andronicus" is a "tragedy of blood" written by Shakspere,
according to the highest authority, when he was twenty-three or
twenty-four years of age. Ben Johnson says, in his "Bartholomew Fair"
(1614), that it had been on the stage for twenty-five or thirty years.
It was doubtless a very early work, but whether "much in the manner of
Kyd," as Professor Wendell asserts, can be best determined by reference
to Kyd's works. The claim has been made by other critics that "Titus"
was "collaborative," but Professor Wendell's is that it was an
"imitation."
"The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda," first printed in 1599, is of
doubtful authorship, but has sometimes been credited to Kyd. "The piece
still bears a striking resemblance to the old Moral Plays and thereby
proves its relatively early origin. A chorus consisting of the
allegorical figures Love, Happiness, and Death opens the play and each
separate act, and ends it with a controversy in which all the
personified powers boast of their deeds and triumphs over the others,
till at the end of the fifth act Death remains the victor, and the whole
concludes with a eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, the only mortal whom Death
does not venture to approach." "Titus Andronicus" will be searched in
vain for "much" or little of this "manner of Kyd."
"The First Part of Jeronimo, with the Warres of Portugal and the Life
and Death of Don Andrea," not published till 1605, is not an authentic
work of Kyd, but is attributed to him by some because, judging from the
subject, it belongs to "The Spanish Tragedy" and is regarded by Henslowe
as the first part of it. A. W. Schlegel says that "both of these parts
are full of absurdities, that the author had ventured upon describing
the most forced situations and passions without being aware of his want
of power, that especially the catastrophe of the second part, which is
intended to surpass every conceivable horror, is introduced in a trivial
manner, merely producing a ludicrous effect, and that the whole was like
a child's drawings, wholly unmindful of the laws of proportion."
Ulrici maintains that "Jeronimo" itself may be treated as a play in
three parts connected only externally: first, the war between Portugal
and Spain; second, the life and death of Don Andrea, and third the acts
of Jeronimo, who is, however, only a subordinate character. But whether
the play be treated as a whole or as composed of substantially separate
parts, its action and interest are centred in the story of the love of
Don Andrea and Bellimperia; Lorenzo, her brother, persecutes both
because he is jealous of Andrea's success. Andrea is finally killed; at
his funeral, his ghost appears for no assigned reason, except to
exchange greeting with his friend Horatio. "Revenge" and Charon also
appear, the one "to forbid Andrea's ghost from divulging the secrets of
Hell, the other to accompany him back to the lower regions," and the
learned critic adds that "this allegorical by-play is inserted so
arbitrarily, so inappropriately and so unmeaningly, that it forms the
best standpoint for judging the piece as regards its composition and
poetical character. _In this respect its value is next to nothing._"
If Kyd wrote "Jeronimo," of which there is no satisfactory proof, and
if Shakspere wrote "Titus," "much in the manner of Kyd," which we
venture to think more doubtful than the authorship of "Jeronimo," then
Shakspere's supposed imitation was much "better" than the original
"popular thing."
That Kyd wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end of
Don Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo,"
first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology for
Actors," and there is good authority for the opinion that it was acted
as early as 1588. We quote the summary of the plot:
"It is not wanting in absurdities, for the play opens and is connected
with 'Jeronimo' by a conversation between Andrea's ghost and 'Revenge';
both remain continually on the stage as silent, invisible spectators, in
order, at the end of every act, to add a few words, in which Andrea
laments over the delay in the revenge of his death upon the Infanta
Belthazar, and 'Revenge' admonishes him to be patient; at the end of
the fifth act both return satisfied to the lower regions. Then
Bellimperia suddenly falls in love with Horatio, who now steps into
Andrea's place, and is persecuted by Lorenzo, at first without any cause
whatever, and is finally assassinated. By some means which remain
perfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimo
from the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation against
the murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness,
which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudent
action. The conclusion of the piece is a general massacre, in which
Jeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabs
the Duke of Castile, and then himself with a penknife."
It can hardly seem strange that the critic should add: "This at once
explains why no piece was more generally ridiculed by contemporary and
younger poets, than "The Spanish Tragedy.""
If Shakspere imitated Kyd in "Titus," from such stuff as this, he was
surely wise in his "sluggish avoidance of needless invention."
We are tempted to suggest, however, that "The Spanish Tragedy" affords a
rich and ample field to modern critics who are solicitous to save the
life and work of "the gentle William" from the imputation of being
"superhuman": Is it not clear that "Hamlet" was only an imitation of
"The Spanish Tragedy"? Did not Hamlet have a friend whose name was
Horatio? Was not Hamlet, like Jeronimo, "essentially mad," and did not
his madness "turn into a well calculated and prudent action"?
Kyd was the undoubted author of another work, under the following title:
"Pompey the Great, his fair Cornelia's Tragedie: effected by her
Father's and Husband's downe-cast Death and fortune, written in French
by that excellent Poet, R. Garnier, and translated into English by
Thomas Kyd." This translation was printed in 1595. The play is thus
summarized: It is "a piece which is constructed upon a misunderstood
model of the ancients; it is altogether devoid of dramatic action, in
reality merely lyrics and rhetoric in dialogue. The whole of the first
act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate
condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility,--a
jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in
rhymed stanzas. In this tone it proceeds without a trace of action
through the whole of the succeeding act, till maledictions and outbursts
of grief on the part of Cornelia conclude the piece at the same point at
which it had commenced."
It has never been claimed that "Cornelia" was the model for "Titus."
"Cornelia" and "The Spanish Tragedy" are the only dramas that can be
certainly called Kyd's. Comparison between these, or either of the
others doubtfully attributed to him, and "Titus Andronicus," shows
beyond question that the only similarity between the most similar is
that both are "tragedies of blood." There is no likeness of plot,
characterization, action or diction. There is in "Titus" none of Kyd's
"huffing, bragging, puft" language. A ghost concludes "Jeronimo" whose
"hopes have end in their effects" "when blood and sorrow finish my
desires," "these were spectacles to please my soul." In "Titus," even
the Satanic Aaron, "in the whirlwind of passion," "acquires and begets a
temperance" that "gives it smoothness."
When Tamora proposes crimes to her sons, that fiends would refuse to
execute, Lavinia does not shriek, nor rant, nor call upon the gods, but
speaks what nobody but Shakspere could have uttered,--
"O Tamora! thou bear'st a woman's face."
It is not necessary to consider the claim sometimes made, that Kyd wrote
an old "Taming of the Shrew" or an old "Hamlet." "It is a mere arbitrary
conjecture" that he was the author of either.
There is therefore no proof that Shakspere imitated Kyd, and Professor
Wendell's assertion that "Titus Andronicus" is "much" in his manner is
utterly without support.
"The Comedy of Errors" was unquestionably suggested by the "Twins" of
Plautus. Is it therefore an imitation?
What is literary imitation? Did Dante imitate Virgil because Virgil's
ghost was the guide through the "Inferno"? Did Milton imitate Dante in
"Paradise Lost" because he describes the same scenes in different words?
Did he imitate the author of Genesis because he reproduces the Garden of
Eden in majestic poetry? "Paradise Lost" seems to Professor Wendell
"almost superhuman," but when any suggestion of transcendent power is
applied to Shakspere, it assumes an "unnecessary miracle." Shakspere,
whom ten generations of great men have failed to imitate, is in the
opinion of Professor Wendell but an imitator, because while, as he says,
"he could not help wakening to life the stiffly conventional characters
which he found, as little more than names, in the tales and the
fictions he adapted for the stage," he wrote chronicle plays, comedies,
romances, tragedies, after others had worked in the same fields.
Milton was born in 1608. "That was the year," says Professor Wendell,
"when Shakspere probably came to the end of his tragic period, and, with
the imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newly
popular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher."
But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote his
language: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. Read
Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then
to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn
to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find
him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate
Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him
irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how
wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the
things for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidently
as any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and he
could so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they
seem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the other
great works where he found them." "'Paradise Lost' transcends all traces
of its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter of
mere curiosity."
And so it appears that Professer Wendell applies one definition of the
word "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere found
chronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vivid
and truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matter
of mere curiosity," and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy of
Errors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation"
of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "something
utterly apart," "something almost superhuman ... in its grand solitude";
if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work that
they seem truly and admirably a part of it," then "Love's Labour's Lost"
is not an "imitation" of Lilly, nor "Henry VI." of Greene or Peele or
Marlowe, nor "Titus Andronicus" of Kyd.
But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, and
may therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge as
stated by Professor Wendell:
"A young American scholar whose name has hardly yet crossed the
Atlantic,--Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike,--has lately made some
studies in dramatic chronology which go far to confirm the unromantic
conjecture that to the end Shakspere remained imitative and little else.
Professor Thorndike, for example, has shown with convincing probability
that certain old plays concerning Robin Hood proved popular; a little
later, Shakspere produced the woods and outlaws of 'As You Like It.' The
question is one of pure chronology; and pure chronology has convinced
me, for one, that the forest scenes of Arden were written to fit
available costumes and properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike has
shown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such as
Marston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Cæsar' and 'Hamlet.'
With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has _virtually proved_
that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher--different both in motive and
in style from any popular plays which had preceded them--were
conspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began to
write romances. It seems likely, therefore, that 'Cymbeline,' which less
careful chronology had conjectured to be a model for Beaumont and
Fletcher, was in fact imitated from models which they had made. In other
words, Professor Thorndike has shown that one may account for all the
changes in Shakspere, after 1600, by merely assuming that the most
skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists,
remained to the end an instinctively imitative follower of fashions set
by others."
Again, he says: "The likeness of their work to the romances of
Shakspere--in subject, in structure, in peculiarities of verse,--has
been often remarked; and they have consequently been supposed to have
begun by skilful superficial imitation of his spiritually ripest phase.
The question is one of chronology not yet fixed in detail; but as I have
told you already, the studies of my friend Professor Thorndike have
virtually proved that several of their plays must have been in existence
decidedly before the dates commonly assigned to 'Cymbeline,' the
'Tempest' or the 'Winter's Tale.' If he is right,--and I believe him
so,--the relation commonly thought to have existed between them and
Shakspere is precisely reversed. Shakspere was the imitator, not they;
indeed, as we have seen, he was from the beginning an imitator, not an
inventor. And here his imitations are not in all respects better than
his models."
Here the grave accusation is distinctly made that Shakspere imitated
Beaumont and Fletcher, and to support it, reference is made to one man
only, Professor Thorndike, his pupil and disciple.
And so, in this new case, we have two judges, and the curious fact that
the instructor refers to the student and the student to the instructor
as the sole authority for the soundness of the decision.
The "Introduction" of Professor Thorndike to his "Influence of Beaumont
and Fletcher on Shakspere" sufficiently shows the animus of his essay:
he cites the libel of Greene, and intimates that it is an accusation of
plagiarism which we have rejected, but which "contains an element of
truth worth keeping in mind"; he repeats in positive words the charge of
Professor Wendell that Shakspere began by "imitating or revamping the
work of others"; that "Titus Andronicus" and "Henry VI.," "so far as
they are his, are certainly imitative of other plays of the time," and
adds that "Richard II." and "Richard III." show the influence of
Marlowe's tragedies, and "Love's Labour's Lost" of Lilly's comedies.
We have sufficiently answered as to "Henry VI.," "Titus Andronicus," and
"Love's Labour's Lost." There is no proof offered as to the histories of
the two Richards. The assertion is made without authority or example,
without even the application of the usual "verse-tests" by which
authorship is so conveniently determined.
Having repeated the erroneous and unsupported statements of his master,
Professor Thorndike announces that after these early "imitations" little
attention has been given to Shakspere's subsequent indebtedness to his
contemporaries, for the reason that "to most students it has seemed
absurd," while to him it is clear that "Hamlet" and "Lear" "contain
traces of the 'tragedy of blood type'"; that "a closer adherence to
current forms can be seen in the relation between the 'Merchant of
Venice' and the 'Jew of Malta,'" "or in the many points of similarity
between 'Hamlet' and the ... tragedies dealing with the theme of blood
revenge," and that "characters ... are often clearly developments of
types familiar on the stage," "as for example, Iago is a development of
the conventional stage villain." He is certainly correct in saying that
to most students these assumptions "seem absurd." Let us examine them
briefly, for the purpose of learning whether they deserve any more
serious adjective.
Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" appeared about 1589. As the author announces in
the prologue, it is based upon Machiavel's theory of life--pure
selfishness. The Jew makes war upon all the world, for the gratification
of his passion for revenge; he poisons his daughter "and the entire
nunnery in which she had taken refuge"; he kills, he betrays, he
prepares a burning caldron for a whole garrison,--"tragedy such as this
is simply revolting. The characters of Barabas and of his servant, and
the motives by which they are stimulated, are the mere coinage of
extravagance; and the effect is as essentially undramatic as the
personification is unreal." The conduct of the drama is in keeping with
the character of this incomprehensible monster of vindictiveness; he is
"without shame or fear, and bloodthirsty even to madness." His bad
schemes are always successful; but the action proceeds without
connection, the characters come and go without apparent cause; the three
Jews, the monks and nuns, the mother of Don Mathias "appear and
disappear so unexpectedly, and are interwoven with the action in so
entirely an external manner, that the defects of the composition are at
once apparent."
If this seems a good model for Shakspere's Shylock, it will seem
impossible, when Barabas shows us his own portrait:
"As for myself, I walk abroad a-nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls;
Sometimes I go about and poison wells;
And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves
I am content to lose some of my crowns;
That I may, walking in my gallery,
See 'em go pinion'd along by my door.
Being young, I studied physic, and began
To practice first upon the Italian;
There I enriched the priest with burials,
And always kept the sexton's arms in use,
With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells;
And after that was I an engineer,
And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems.
And after that was I an usurer,
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,
I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals,
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hung himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll,
How I with interest tormented him.
But mark how I am bless'd for plaguing them;
I have as much coin as will buy the town.
But tell me now, how hast thou spent thy time?"
And the servant answers in sympathetic lines:
"Faith, master, in setting Christian villages on fire,
Chaining of eunuchs, binding galley slaves.
One time I was an ostler in an inn,
And in the night-time secretly would I steal
To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats;
Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd,
I strewed powder on the marble stones,
And therewithal their knees would rankle so
That I have laughed a-good to see the cripples
Go limping home to Christendom on stilts."
Undoubtedly, the "groundlings" shouted with delight when this fiend was
plunged into the boiling caldron which he had heated for others. Barabas
dies, "in the midst of his crimes, with blasphemy and cursing on his
lips; everything is the same at the end as it was from the beginning."
To the unlearned reader, there is no "relation" between this wild drama
and the perfect art shown in Shakspere's Jew, who utters no curse when
the gentle Portia pronounces sentence, but retires with dignity from her
court, because "he is not well."
Professor Thorndike tells us that the "traces" of blood revenge in
"Hamlet" and "Lear" have been frequently "remarked." What those traces
are we are not informed, but he assures us that "they have not led to
any careful investigation of Shakspere's indebtedness to his
contemporaries." That investigation was reserved for his research, and
we hope to show how successfully he has performed his great task.
Meanwhile, we may be allowed to say that if "Lear" contains any "trace"
of the tragedy of blood, it is utterly undiscoverable to the ordinary
reader, in the action, character or fate of the victims; and as for
"Hamlet," so far is he from any idea of blood revenge, that he doubts
and disobeys the message from the other world, doubts indeed the
existence of any other world, and dies at last not a bloody death, but
by a foil "unbated and envenomed."
If Iago is but the development of the conventional stage villain, his
origin and some of the missing links of his evolution ought to be shown;
they have never been guessed, and no critic can produce a single member
of his kindred.
From such premises, Professor Thorndike concludes that "it is only
natural to expect that the genius who brought many of these forms to
their highest perfection should not have been so much an inventor as an
adapter"; "We may naturally expect," he says, "that Shakspere's
transcendent plays owe a considerable debt to the less perfect but not
less original efforts of his contemporaries." This "natural expectation"
is not disappointed, in Professor Thorndike's opinion, by a comparison
between some of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays and those he calls the
"romances" of Shakspere,--"Cymbeline," "The Tempest," and "Winter's
Tale." The argument is circuitous, but must be carefully followed in
order to estimate the validity and weight of the conclusion.
In the first place, it is assumed as probable that Shakspere and
Fletcher wrote "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and that Fletcher wrote part of
"Henry VIII." It is admitted that this last assumption is "at odds with
the weight of authority" and rests mainly, if not wholly, upon
Spedding's essay, in 1850. The only additional suggestion is the new and
original test, the so-called "em-them" test. A laborious table is made,
purporting to show that in the part assigned to Shakspere "them" is used
seventeen times, "'em" only five; that in the part assigned to Fletcher
"them" is used but four times, "'em" fifty-seven. We are not told from
what source this table was made, but "Henry VIII." was first published
in the folio of 1623. Professor Thorndike says that later editions have
strictly followed it, and in Knight's edition, which he certifies to be
a reprint of the first folio, "'em" as a contraction for "them" occurs
just once and no more. Thus far, then, the new "test" seems to give us
no satisfactory aid.
It may be permitted an ordinary reader to wonder how any critic can
persuade himself that Fletcher wrote the speech of Wolsey on his
downfall, or the prophecy of Cranmer at the christening of Elizabeth.
Why is it not a permissible hypothesis that "Henry VIII." was written
during the reign of the great Queen, and subsequently revised by
Shakspere, after her death, and presented as a "new play," as Wotten
calls it?
The only external evidence that Shakspere wrote any portion of "The Two
Noble Kinsmen" is the quarto of 1634. On the contrary, all the previous
external evidence is against that guess, for it was left out of the
First Folio, and Heminge & Condell's positive knowledge is certainly of
more weight than the opinion of Professor Thorndike's sole authority,
Mr. Littledale. Moreover, the play was not included among Shakspere's
works in the folio of 1632, and did not appear among them until, with
six other doubtful plays, the editions of 1664 and 1685. In view of this
proof, it is admitted that the question of collaboration is likely to
remain forever unsettled, "because it does not admit of complete
demonstration." Nevertheless, collaboration is assumed, and the
"em-them" test is applied to the text so as to credit 1034 lines to
Shakspere, 1486 to Fletcher.
German criticism has taken up the subject with minute care, and, we may
assert with confidence, has settled beyond doubt that Shakspere never
wrote a single line of "The two Noble Kinsmen." And it may be added with
equal certainty that if the citations from that play are correctly
credited to Fletcher, he never wrote a line of "Henry VIII." Professor
Thorndike is not consistent with himself. On one page he calls his
theory conjectural, on another, a "reasonable conclusion." The play
itself ought to convince any fair mind that Shakspere had no share in
it, for it contains an obvious imitation of Ophelia's madness in
"Hamlet," which in some points "is a direct plagiarism." But it was
important for Professor Thorndike to show what he calls a "probability"
that Shakspere and Fletcher collaborated, in order to establish his
theory that Fletcher "influenced" Shakspere. With the vanishing of the
"probability" the "influence" vanishes.
The second step in the argument is a review of the chronology of the
plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, among which only _seven_ are
immediately important. "The Woman Hater," licensed 20th May, 1607,
published in quarto 1607, as lately acted, again in 1648, and assigned to
Beaumont and Fletcher. Its first representation is put by Mr. Fleay on
April 5th, 1607. Professor Thorndike conjectures that this play was
produced in 1606. "Philaster," the most important in connection with our
subject, was first published in 1620. Mr. Fleay dates its composition in
1611; Professor Thorndike, in 1608. The "Four Plays in One" he likewise
assigns conjecturally to the same year. The fact is, it was first
printed in the folio of 1647, and no authority fixes the date of its
production. "Thiery and Theodoret" was first published in 1621, without
giving the name of any author. The quarto of 1648 credits Fletcher as
the sole author; that of 1649, Beaumont and Fletcher as the joint
authors. Fleay places the date about 1617; Oliphant maintains that it
was written about 1607 or 1608, and afterwards revised in 1617 by
Fletcher and Massinger; Professor Thorndike ventures the guess that it
was written in 1607.
"The Maid's Tragedy" he places doubtfully in 1609. It was first
published in 1619 without naming its authors. The only evidence as to
its date is that it was licensed October 31st, 1611.
"Cupid's Revenge" was acted at Court in 1612, and first published in
1615. Professor Thorndike thinks it was an effort to repeat the success
of "Philaster," and therefore assigns it to 1609 or 1610.
"A King and No King" he puts without hesitation in the year 1611, and
this is supported by authority. Professor Thorndike remarks that this is
the only play (of Beaumont and Fletcher), "acted before 1612, the year
of whose production is fixed."
The only reason for referring to "The Woman Hater" is to fix the date of
Beaumont and Fletcher's appearance. There is absolutely no proof that
they were known to literature before that play was licensed by Sir
George Buc on the 20th May, 1607. Yet Professor Thorndike, in spite of
this, assigns "The Woman's Prize," first printed in 1647, and first
acted, so far as the record shows, November 28th, 1633, to the year
1604.
It is to be noted that of the six other plays referred to by Professor
Thorndike, and claimed to have been in existence before the end of 1611,
the dates of all except "A King and No King" are only conjecturally
given.
Compared with these, the chronology of "Cymbeline," "Tempest" and
"Winter's Tale" is reviewed. "Cymbeline," according to Dr. Simon
Forman's Diary, was acted between April 20th, 1610, and May 15th, 1611;
it must therefore have been written before the last named date. Mr.
Fleay fixes the date in 1609, Malone in 1605, and both Chalmers and
Drake substantially agree with Malone. Ulrici assigns the date of
composition to 1609 or 1610.
"The Tempest," according to Professor Thorndike, cannot be dated earlier
than October 13th, 1610, nor later than 1613, and was probably written
and acted late in 1610 or early in 1611. Ulrici agrees with this.
"The Winter's Tale," as appears by Forman's Diary, was acted May 15,
1611. Ulrici says: "It is now a matter of certainty that it must have
been brought upon the stage between August, 1610, and May, 1611." It has
been suggested with some plausibility that this play was an early
production by Shakspere which he remodelled. A play called "A
Winternyght's Pastime" is entered at Stationer's Hall as early as 1594.
Professor Thorndike fixes the date between January 1st and May 15th,
1611 and assumes that the drama is imitated from Jonson's "Masque of
Oberon." He suggests that as in the "Masque" the chariot of Oberon is
drawn by two white bears, "perhaps here, as in the dance, costume and
actor reappeared in the play, in the bear who chases Antigonus."
Anything to show that Shakspere imitated anybody.
The argument is based upon this chronology and the alleged similarity
between the enumerated dramas: the issue is made upon the respective
dates of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster" and Shakspere's
"Cymbeline." There is no claim that Shakspere imitated Beaumont and
Fletcher or was influenced by them, except in his three "romances," and
of these, "Cymbeline" is placed first. Professor Thorndike undertakes to
prove that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610, and this
is his reasoning:
"In the 'Scourge of Folly' by John Davies of Hertford, entered in the
Stationer's Register October 8th, 1610, occurs an epigram referring to
this play." Let us examine this statement first. On the next page he
says: "The '_Scourge of Folly_' furnishes no further clue in regard to
the date of the epigram." On page 59 of the same essay, referring to
another play, "Don Quixote," the statement is made that it was "entered
S. R. 1611 and printed 1612." The entry was therefore in the nature of a
"license to print." It is clear that in this instance the actual
printing or publication was after the entry. The same rule must apply to
other plays of the same period. The date of entry affords no proof
whatever of the date of publication or of presentation. Therefore the
date of the entry of "The Scourge of Folly," October 8th, 1610, as
Professor Thorndike states, "affords no clue in regard to the date" of
Davies's "epigram." The "epigram" may have been written long after the
entry in the Stationer's Register, and probably was, because it is not
to be assumed that the "epigram" appeared in the entry of the play, and
Davies cannot be assumed to have had any knowledge of the existence of
"Philaster" until it appeared upon the stage, a date entirely uncertain.
Further, Professor Thorndike says: "There is no reason why 'Philaster'
may not have been produced before Burbage took up the Blackfriar's lease
in 1608. There is in fact no early limit that can be set for the date;
the final limit is of course fixed by Davies' epigram." Of what value is
the final limit "fixed by the epigram" when there is no proof of the
date of that? What ground is there, beyond mere arbitrary assumption,
for assigning "Philaster" to 1608? That play was not printed till 1620.
Mr. Fleay, Professor Thorndike's constant authority, says it was written
in 1611, after "Cymbeline" was upon the stage. There is absolutely no
proof, therefore, that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610,
no proof when it was entered, licensed or first acted; and so it is
clear, as Professor Thorndike says, that "the date, 1608, adopted by
Dyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay, is no more than a conjecture." On the
other hand, as we have shown, the external evidence is conclusive that
"Cymbeline" was upon the bills before May 15th, 1611, and therefore the
argument that "Philaster" preceded "Cymbeline" finds no better support
than the opinion of Dyce, Leonhardt, and Macaulay. It is mere
conjecture.
Professor Thorndike expressly admits that of the six plays which are
claimed as "romances," "A King and No King" "is the only one acted
before 1612 the year of whose production is fixed," but he states
without qualification that "Winter's Tale" and the "Tempest" were not
acted until after "Philaster." As we have seen, "Winter's Tale" was
acted May 15th, 1611, and Professor Thorndike himself says that "'The
Tempest' was probably written and acted late in 1610 or early in 1611";
"Cupid's Revenge" "was acted the Sunday following New Year's 1612; 'A
King and No King' in December, 1611." These are the only two of the six
of which the date of acting is given. Nowhere does Professor Thorndike
pretend to give any date whatever when "Philaster" was acted; the only
question discussed is as to the year of authorship, and that is left
uncertain. The statement that "Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" were
"not acted until after 'Philaster'" is utterly without warrant or
authority. If Shakspere is to be adjudged the "imitator" of Beaumont and
Fletcher, the judgment must rest upon facts or inference from facts, and
not upon the unsupported opinion of Professor Wendell's pupil.
Professor Thorndike in fact admits that "we cannot be certain about the
date of 'Cymbeline,'" but yet assumes that "Philaster" preceded it, both
in date of production and public appearance, and proceeds to draw a
long parallel between the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher and those
of Shakspere, for the purpose of showing that the "romance" or the
heroic "romance" was a new style of drama, "created" by Beaumont and
Fletcher and probably adapted and improved by Shakspere.
Whether there is any difference in definition between the "romance" and
the "heroic romance" seems immaterial, since Professor Thorndike uses
one term as synonymous with the other. He gives "the most noticeable
characteristics of the romances": "A mixture of tragic and idyllic
events, a series of highly improbable events, heroic and sentimental
characters, foreign scenes, happy denouements." This definition is
elaborated in connection with the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher:
1st. They took the plots from any source.
2nd. The plots are ingenious and improbable.
3rd. The plots lack realism.
4th. The plots deal with heroic persons and actions.
5th. The characters are not historical.
6th. The plays are located far off, for example, in Milan, Athens,
Messina, Lisbon.
7th. The action has little to do with the real life of any historic
period, but with "romance."
8th. The story is of sentimental love, as contrasted with gross, sensual
passion.
9th. There is variety of emotional effect.
10th. There is always a happy denouement.
All these elements of the definition are applied to "Cymbeline," "The
Tempest" and "Winter's Tale," and it is maintained that none of
Shakspere's previous dramas present the same features. This is a
convenient method of showing that Beaumont and Fletcher "created the
romantic drama" and that Shakspere was "influenced" in writing
"Cymbeline" by "Philaster," but it is not criticism; it is rather an
attempt to "create" a definition and apply it to "Philaster," and then
to deny its application to "Midsummer Night's Dream," "Much Ado About
Nothing," "The Merchant of Venice," "Twelfth Night" or "Measure for
Measure."
Why does Professor Wendell call the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" a
"romantic comedy," if Beaumont and Fletcher "created" the type which
Professor Thorndike pronounces "romance"? He deliberately classifies
"Much Ado" and "Twelfth Night" as "romantic comedies." Is not
"Philaster" a "romantic comedy"? Then, as "Much Ado" was probably
written in 1599, "Twelfth Night" in 1598, when Beaumont was twelve or
thirteen and Fletcher twenty-two or twenty-three, it seems quite
"probable" that they were "influenced" in writing their "romances" by
Shakspere. If there is any fundamental difference between "romantic
comedy" and "romance," what is it? This is a difficult question, which
Professor Thorndike has attempted but failed to answer. He admits that
"Philaster" has some generic resemblance to "Measure for Measure," but
says that "No one would think of finding close resemblance between it
and anyone of the 'romances.'" If the resemblance is generic, does it
matter whether it is "close"? If "Measure for Measure" falls within the
laborious definition of a "romance," or of a "tragi-comedy," as both
that play and "Philaster" are called, why shouldn't we think of "Measure
for Measure," produced in 1604, four years before the wildest conjecture
puts the date of "Philaster," as the model upon which Beaumont and
Fletcher built?
"Measure for Measure" answers every detail of the definition: the plot
is taken from "Promos and Cassandra"; it is ingenious and improbable,
lacks realism, deals with heroic persons and actions, a sovereign duke
and his rascal brother; the characters are not historical; the location
is far off; the action has little to do with the real life of any
historical period; the story involves sentimental love, as distinctly
contrasted with sensual passion; there is variety of emotional effect;
the denouement is happy. If therefore the definition of "romance" is
correct, "Measure for Measure" is as much of that type as "Philaster";
Beaumont and Fletcher did not "create" it, and there is no reason for
supposing that Shakspere imitated them in "Cymbeline," "Tempest," or
"Winter's Tale."
But certain traits of construction are named as peculiar to the six
"romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher and those of Shakspere, and it is
sought to show that Beaumont and Fletcher set the fashion in these also.
1st. They did not observe the unities.
2nd. They disregarded the chronicle method.
3rd. They left out battles and armies.
4th. They presented a series of contrasted and interesting situations
leading up to a startling climax.
5th. The by-plots assist the main action.
6th. There is the use of tragi-comedy.
Does any attentive reader of Shakspere's comedies, whether called
romantic or tragi-comic, or by whatever other name, need to be told that
many of them contain all these traits? General review is impossible, but
take "The Merchant of Venice" as an illustration:
The unities are not observed. We think it is generally thought that
Shakspere was in the habit of disregarding them. The chronicle method is
ignored. We are not aware that Shakspere ever followed it except in
writing historical plays. Battles and armies are left out. This comedy,
like others by the same cunning hand, presents a series of contrasted
and interesting situations leading up to a startling climax. Need we
call to mind the rash contract of the merchant, and its almost tragic
result, the game of the caskets, the trial and defeat of the clamorous
Shylock? The by-plot assists the main action, else why does Jessica keep
house for Portia while she goes to play "A Daniel come to judgment"?
There is the use of tragi-comedy in the ruin of the merchant, in the
whetting of the Jew's knife for the heart of his assured victim. If
these "traits" characterize the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher,
they are possibly more likely to have been the "imitators," because
"Shylock" was created in 1596 or 1597, some years before "Philaster" was
exhibited as a stage decoration.
It is urged further that in the "romances" of Beaumont and Fletcher "the
characters are not individuals, but types," and that those types are
repeated until they became conventionalized. There is always a very bad
and a very good woman, a very generous and noble man and one so bad as
to seem a monster. There is the type of the "love-lorn maiden," of "the
lily-livered" hero, of the faithful friend, of the poltroon. It is
supposed by many that such types repeated in play after play do not mark
the highest original power, but rather poverty of invention, weak and
shadowy conception, indistinctness of coloring. Professor Thorndike,
however, cannot too much commend this style, because it gives such wide
scope for intense passion, startling situation, and successful stage
effect, and proceeds to seek for similar types in Shakspere's "romances"
as further proof that he "imitated" "Philaster." In his view, the
characters show "surprising loss of individuality." Imogen's character
"fails to supply really individual traits"; "Perdita and Miranda have
even less marks of individuality than Imogen." They are like Beaumont
and Fletcher's heroines who appear in the same stage costumes, wearing
the same masks, differing only in stage postures and dialogue. More than
this: Professor Thorndike would reduce the "creations" of Viola and
Rosalynd to the conventional type of the "love-lorn" maiden, to mere
adaptations for the stage, because they dressed in boy's clothes; of
Perdita, to an "imitation" of Lady Amelia in "Palamon and Arcyte"
because she gathered flowers prettily and was commended by the Queen. He
makes the surprising statement that the three heroines in "Cymbeline,"
the "Tempest" and "Winter's Tale" have on the stage "few qualities to
distinguish them from almost any of Beaumont and Fletcher's." It is
difficult to discuss such generalizations with the temperance of
criticism. They can be true only if Professor Thorndike's theory is
correct,--that the delineation of character is solely for stage effect.
There is another theory announced and recorded by Shakspere himself, and
illustrated in every drama he wrote,--that the sole end and aim of the
stage itself and of the characters it represents, is "to hold the mirror
up to nature," and therefore his characters are not "types"; they are
men and women who were born, not manufactured; each is a separate,
individual human being; each different from every other. We know them,
for they have entered our houses, sat at our tables, talked with us,
laughed and wept with us, made us shudder at crime and exult in the
triumph of virtue.
Therefore, there is but one "Lear": his madness was never imitated
outside of Bedlam; but one Lady Macbeth, and we have seen her walking in
her awful dream. Beaumont and Fletcher in six romances delineate
"love-lorn maidens," "conventionalized types," who differ little from
each other, except that three of them "masquerade in boy's clothing" and
three do not. They have "little individuality," "are utterly romantic,"
"utterly removed from life"; all are presented to produce novel
situations leading up to a startling climax.
Imogen is not like Miranda or Perdita; neither is a "type" of the
"love-lorn" maiden; all are living, acting individuals, differing from
each other like those we know, resembling each other only as one
beautiful and pure woman resembles another. Professor Thorndike, who is
the advocate of Beaumont and Fletcher, may keep his personal opinion
that Imogen lacks "individual traits," but we respectfully decline to
take his opinion as a critic that she is like Arethusa in "Philaster."
For us and for all men and women, Shakspere has _created_ the character
of Imogen, as of Perdita and Miranda, and her "individual traits" are
clear enough, to those who have had the happiness of her acquaintance,
to show that neither in feature or dress, neither in manners or morals,
did she "imitate" any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher. But even
as a critic we must differ from Professor Thorndike; he accuses Miranda
of unpardonable indelicacy, and says she "proposed" to Ferdinand! He
gives her language from "Tempest," and remarks with satisfaction that it
sounds "very much like one of Beaumont and Fletcher's heroines," meaning
of course Arethusa, and so draws the obvious conclusion that Shakspere
in this remarkable instance clearly "imitated" the "creators" of the
"heroic romantic drama." The difficulty with this statement first of all
is, that it is not true: Miranda does not "propose" to Ferdinand; before
her sweet confession of love, Ferdinand had given all lovers the best
form of proposal ever spoken, in this language:
"I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' the world,
Do love, prize, honor you."
Arethusa does "propose" to Philaster, and therefore her "proposal" does
not "sound very much like" the proposal in "Tempest," or, if it does, it
tends strongly to show that Beaumont and Fletcher attempted an
"imitation" from "The Tempest." Professor Thorndike the critic has here
been misled by his zeal as the partisan: isn't it just possible that the
like zeal has misled him in the conclusion that "Cymbeline" was an
imitation of "Philaster"?
The second class of "types," as shown by the dramas of Beaumont and
Fletcher, is the "evil woman"--Evadne in the "Maid's Tragedy," Bacha in
"Cupid's Revenge," Megra in "Philaster," Brunhalt in "Thierry and
Theodoret" and Arane in "A King and No King." Professor Thorndike says
that "four of them brazenly confess adultery, and four attempt murder,"
and that "the resemblance ... is unmistakable ... and on the stage even
more than in print" these characters "must have seemed to all intents
identical."
The only parallel to this in Shakspere's "romances," as drawn by
Professor Thorndike, is that the "wicked Queen in 'Cymbeline' is very
like the wicked queens of Beaumont and Fletcher," and that "there are
other characters ... who show resemblances to Beaumont and Fletcher's
stock types." What the resemblances are we are not told, and we need not
inquire until we learn which "type" is the original, which the
"imitation." Meanwhile, we may rest upon the fact that, so far as queens
are concerned, there is no "stock type" in Shakspere; they differ from
each other as widely as Hamlet's mother from Imogen's mother-in-law. If
any of them resemble Beaumont and Fletcher's queens, it is clear that
Beaumont and Fletcher were the "imitators," not Shakspere.
Further similarities are suggested between the "type" of the "faithful
friend" as shown in five of Beaumont and Fletcher's "romances" and
Gonzalo in "Tempest," Camillo in "Winter's Tale," and Pisanio in
"Cymbeline." The "lily-livered heroes" and the "poltroons" are left out
of the laborious comparison, perhaps because none of either can be found
in Shakspere sufficiently like the original types in Beaumont and
Fletcher. The examples of the "faithful friend" are not happy. For
Gonzalo sets Prospero adrift in a crazy boat and Camillo betrays one
patron to save another.
Still following the assumption that "Philaster" was earlier than
"Cymbeline," we find Professor Thorndike asserting that "Cymbeline"
"shows a puzzling decadence" in style, "an increase in the proportion of
double endings," "a constant deliberate effort to conceal the metre";
"the verse constantly borders on prose"; "Shakspere's structure in
general is like Fletcher's, particularly in the use of parentheses and
contracted forms for 'it is,' 'he is,' 'I will.'" There is a "loss of
mastery" in "Cymbeline," "an apparently conscious and not quite
successful struggle to overcome the difficulties of the new structure."
An apologetic phrase that all this does not impute any "direct
imitation" of Fletcher does not redeem it from the imputation that
Shakspere was not content with copying Fletcher's plot, characters,
situations, but he deliberately departed, when "Philaster" met his eye,
from the methods he had used for more than twenty years, and carefully
copied the mannerisms of a contemporary who, according to established
chronology, had been known to the public hardly three years. The merits
of the charge, whether of direct or indirect imitation, must be
determined solely by the priority in date of the two plays. Meanwhile,
the critic's argument would have more force if he had told us how
"Cymbeline" shows a "puzzling decadence," how "the structure is like
Fletcher's," how the struggle to overcome the difficulty of its novelty
appears. As the argument stands it reminds one of Lowell's remark in
relation to this style of criticism: "Scarce one but was satisfied that
his ten finger tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of
poise and counterpoise ... in his metres; scarce one but thought he
could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may
have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless
roots of Being and Consciousness, mock the plummet."
Professor Thorndike takes the further point, in his review of the Drama
from 1601 to 1611, that during that period "There are almost no romantic
tragi-comedies"; that in fact, including "Measure for Measure," there
are only five which offer the slightest generic resemblance to the
heroic tragi-comedies like "Philaster" and "Winter's Tale"; that when
"Philaster" appeared, there had been "no play for seven or eight years
at all resembling it"; and draws the conclusion that Shakspere, who had
been writing "gloomy tragedies" for several years, suddenly left that
style and wrote "Cymbeline" in imitation of "Philaster," because
"Philaster" had "filled the audience with surprise and delight." The
uncomplimentary and uncritical remark is added that perhaps "Timon" and
"Coriolanus" had not achieved great success on the stage--at any rate
the success of "Philaster" aroused his interest.
"Timon" is assigned by most critics to the last of Shakspere's life, by
many to the year 1612. "Cymbeline," as we have seen, was acted before
May 15th, 1611; it is therefore difficult to understand, if the date
assigned to "Timon" is correct, how its failure could have "influenced"
the production of "Cymbeline."
But Professor Thorndike's statement is incorrect. During the decade
named, "Measure for Measure" was acted at Court in 1604; his conjectural
date of "Philaster" is 1608. As we have shown, "Measure for Measure"
fully answers his definition of the "romance" or "heroic tragi-comedy,"
and he admits that it bears a generic resemblance to "Philaster." His
statement that for seven or eight years before "Philaster" "no play had
appeared at all resembling it" is therefore without support, and
contradicts his own admission. He assumes much more, and to support his
conclusion argues that "Philaster" was perhaps produced before 1608. The
importance of the point justifies deliberate attention. Against the
opinion of most scholars, against the express statement of Dryden, he
assigns "Pericles" to the year 1608; credits Shakspere with the
authorship of the "Marina story;" admits that "the plot is ... like
those of the romances, and particularly like that of the 'Winter's
Tale,' in dealing with a long series of tragic events leading to a happy
ending," but endeavors to escape the inevitable conclusion, by the
statement, utterly inconsistent with his own chronology, that, "if the
play was as late as 1608, there is a possibility of Beaumont and
Fletcher's influence just as in the romances."
"Pericles" contains a sentimental love story, the plot is like that of
the "romances," the variety of the emotional effects is similar, and
there is a contrast of tragic and idyllic elements. The play is founded
upon a "romantic story." All this is admitted, but Professor Thorndike
thinks the love story is not sufficiently prominent, the idyllic
elements are not treated as in the romances, and Marina is therefore not
like any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher, but, while "something
like Portia, more like Isabella." And so "Pericles" is distinguished
from the romances because the "treatment" is "different," and finally,
because Professor Thorndike is committed to the theory that Beaumont and
Fletcher "created" a new type of drama, he asserts that "'Pericles' is
doubtless earlier than Shakspere's romances, but there is no probability
that it preceded all of Beaumont and Fletcher's." Dryden in his Prologue
to Davenant's "Circe" says: "Shakspere's own muse his Pericles first
bore," and the great weight of opinion is that it was a very early
production. The "Story of Marina" is as romantic as "Cymbeline," and is
of the same "type" as "Philaster," and therefore, if Dryden is right,
there is a strong probability that "Pericles" preceded all of Beaumont
and Fletcher's romances, and that in "Cymbeline" Shakspere did not
imitate them.
We come at last to the end of the argument. Professor Thorndike,
premising that the historical portion of "Cymbeline" and the exile of
Posthumous have no parallels in "Philaster," institutes a detailed
comparison between the plots, characters, and composition of the two
plays, and shows that they are so strikingly similar as to justify the
positive conclusion that "Shakspere influenced Beaumont and Fletcher or
that they influenced him." We may admit more than this: If "Cymbeline"
followed "Philaster," he was not only influenced by them, he not only
imitated them, he was a plagiarist; and no apologetic words that, upon
the assumption stated, "Cymbeline" did not owe a very large share of its
total effect to "Philaster," can make less the gravity of the charge,
and if the assumption is groundless or even probably groundless, no
excuse remains to the critic who makes it.
Let us see: After all his learned review of dramatic chronology, after
all his statements conveying the assurance that "Philaster" was the
original "type" of the "romance," Professor Thorndike says in so many
words, which for accuracy we quote: "Some such statement of the
influence of 'Philaster' on 'Cymbeline' could be adopted if we were
certain of our chronology. But the evidence for the priority of
'Philaster' is not conclusive, and its support cannot be confidently
relied upon. Leaving aside, then, the question of exact date, and only
premising the fact that both plays were written at about the same time,
we must face the questions,--which is more plausible, that Shakspere
influenced Beaumont and Fletcher or that they influenced him? Which on
its face is more likely to be the original, 'Cymbeline' or 'Philaster'?"
If "Cymbeline" was first written, then "Philaster" becomes not an
original but a copy, adaptation, imitation, plagiarism, if you will. The
similarities remain the same, the argument is reversed. We have shown
that the evidence is conclusive, in the opinion of the best critics,
that "Cymbeline" preceded "Philaster." Coleridge, Ulrici, Tieck and
Knight think that "this varied-woven romantic history had inspired the
poet in his youth" to attempt its adaptation to the stage; that having
had but a temporary appearance, Shakspere long afterwards, near the end
of his career, may have remodelled it, and Malone, Chalmers, and Drake
assign "Cymbeline" with "Macbeth" to 1605 or 1606. Our argument might be
safely put upon this point alone. Professor Thorndike's is placed solely
upon "plausibility" and "likelihood." To support it, he assumes again
the certainty of "the priority of Philaster"--which he had just admitted
to be uncertain--in order to show "the nature of Shakspere's
indebtedness," and then concludes from "the nature of the indebtedness,"
and from the fact that "Philaster" "was followed immediately by five
romances of the same style in plot and characters" "which mark
Fletcher's work for the next twenty years," that "these facts create a
strong presumption that 'Philaster' was the original," "a strong
presumption that 'Cymbeline' was the copy," and finally ends the
argument as it began, with these flattering words: "We may, indeed,
safely assert that Shakspere almost never invented dramatic types." And
this is the argument which Professor Wendell thinks "virtually proves
that several of their plays (Beaumont and Fletcher's romances) must have
been in existence decidedly before 'Cymbeline,' 'The Tempest' or
'Winter's Tale,'" "that the relation commonly thought to have existed
between them and Shakspere is precisely reversed."
Let us answer both Teacher and Pupil. Suppose, to follow the Thorndike
method, that "Cymbeline" appeared before "Philaster," that six romances
by Beaumont and Fletcher followed in rapid succession, while only two by
Shakspere appeared, but differing essentially from each other and from
"Philaster." Suppose that "Cymbeline" upon its first night "filled the
audience with surprise and delight," that Beaumont and Fletcher,
perceiving "its dramatic and poetic excellence," copied in "Philaster" a
portion of its plot and attempted to copy some of its characters and
situations. Suppose their experiment with this copy took the crowd by
storm--Isn't it reasonable to suppose that they would repeat the
profitable attempt as many times as the applause warranted? Isn't that
just what they did, repeating and imitating themselves over and over,
until Beaumont died? Does the number of repetitions and imitations
increase the "plausibility" or "likelihood" of the theory that
"Philaster" was the original of the type? If Shakspere found his gain
increasing by copying the fable, character, style, and denouement of
"Philaster," why did he not continue to copy in "The Tempest" and
"Winter's Tale," and why is it impossible for Professor Thorndike to
deny originality to either of these plays, except by his careless error
as to Miranda's "proposal" and the reference to Lady Amelia gathering
flowers at Oxford in 1566? Professor Thorndike's argument comes to this
and only this: If Shakspere wrote "Cymbeline" before Beaumont and
Fletcher wrote "Philaster," then Shakspere was the "creator of the
heroic romances." If the question of priority is doubtful, it is just as
impossible to prove the "plausibility" or "likelihood" of priority as it
is to prove the date. There is no proof, therefore, no presumption,
strong or weak, that "Cymbeline" was influenced by "Philaster" or was a
"copy" of it. But there is proof that Beaumont and Fletcher repeatedly
and habitually imitated Shakspere, and we cite it mostly from Professor
Thorndike's essay.
In "The Two Noble Kinsmen" there is a "distinct imitation of the
circumstances of Ophelia's madness and death in Hamlet." In "The Woman
Hater," assigned conjecturally to 1605 or 1606 by Professor Thorndike,
there are "several burlesque imitations of Hamlet."
In "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" (1607-1608) there are burlesque
imitations of passages in "Henry IV." and in "Romeo and Juliet."
In "Philaster" occurs this line:
"Mark but the King, how pale he looks with fear,"
--a distinct parody of the similar line in "Hamlet"; but it will be
remarked that Professor Thorndike calls it an "echo," not an imitation.
In "The Woman's Prize," improbably assigned to 1604, the whole play is
imitated from "The Taming of the Shrew,"--is in fact an attempted sequel
to it, and Professor Thorndike wanders from chronology to indulge a
sneer, by the remark that "The Woman's Prize" was "very well liked,"
the "Taming of the Shrew" only "liked." Possibly that was because then,
as now, some people preferred imitations.
In "The Woman's Prize," there is also a burlesque on "Hamlet" and a
parody on "King Lear." In "The Triumph of Death" these lines occur:--
"No, take him dead drunk now, without repentance,
His lechery enseamed upon him,"
and Professor Thorndike says "it sounds like a bit from an old revenge
play." It is a distinct imitation from "Hamlet" where the King is seen
at his prayers.
In the "Scornful Lady" there is one certain and one possible slur at
"Hamlet."
In "Cupid's Revenge" there is an imitation from "Antony and Cleopatra."
In "Philaster" Arethusa imitates Lear when he awakens from insanity to
consciousness.
Upon the Wendell-Thorndike theory, we have a few undisputed facts
bearing upon the "plausibility" of the conclusion that Beaumont and
Fletcher "influenced" Shakspere, the likelihood that "Philaster" was the
original, "Cymbeline" the "copy." Shakspere at the age of forty-six,
long after he had portrayed the real insanity of Lear, the simulated
insanity of Hamlet, the confessional dream of Lady Macbeth; long after
he had "filled the audience with surprise and delight" by the romantic
realities of Hero and Portia, of Viola and Rosalind; years after he had
anticipated the heroic "romance" in the romantic adventures of Marina;
long after he had depicted the heroic triumph of Isabella over the
lustful Angelo--this man, Shakspere, condescended to imitate a youth of
twenty-two, whose name was Beaumont, to steal from him much of the plot,
characters, action, and denouement of "Philaster" and to make the theft
more open and unblushing, presented "Cymbeline" upon the same stage
within a year of the original "type," and assigned the parts to the same
actors who had won remarkable popular applause for the drama from which
he had "cribbed" his imitation. And this imitation was not from friendly
authors, but from those of a hostile school, who had during their whole
career borrowed from his plots, parodied his phrases, and ridiculed his
masterpieces by slurs and burlesques. We respectfully dissent from the
assertion that these facts "create a strong presumption that 'Philaster'
was the original," "Cymbeline" the "copy." On the contrary, it seems to
us that they are utterly inconsistent with any such presumption, and
with the whole theory and teaching of Professors Wendell and Thorndike.
That theory, as we have shown, is based upon the assumption that
Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or somebody else, wrote most of "Henry
VI"; the assumption that Fletcher helped Shakspere write "Henry VIII";
the assumption that Shakspere assisted Fletcher in the composition of
"The Two Noble Kinsmen"; the unsupported, the admitted conjecture that
"Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610; the unwarranted
assertion that Beaumont and Fletcher "created the romance" in spite of
the admission that the date of creation depends upon the priority of
"Cymbeline" or "Philaster," which is likewise admitted to be wholly
uncertain; the suppression of the proof from "Measure for Measure" that,
years before "Philaster," Shakspere, within the proposed definition, had
produced a romantic tragi-comedy; the guess as to priority in favor of
Beaumont and Fletcher, in spite of repeated imitations by them from
previous plays of Shakspere. And so the argument in support of the
theory is a pyramid of _ifs_, supporting an apex that vanishes into
the thin air of an invisible conclusion.
To us, after all this latest effort to depose the sovereign of English
literature from the throne where he has worn the crown for more than
three centuries, and seat there a pretender, having no title, either by
divine right or the suffrages of mankind, Shakspere is the sovereign
still.
He needed and he sought no allies to win his realm; he imitated no
fashions of other courts to maintain his own; he took good care that the
records of his universal conquests should be kept,--written by his own
hand, and fortunately preserved by his friends,--secure from the
interpolations and imitations of his contemporaries and successors.
Much has been written of Shakspere's impersonality, and we have been
taught to think that his dramas are utterly silent as to his own
experience. But now and then one finds in them a glimpse of it, as the
lightning flash in the darkest night for an instant shows the heavens
and the earth. That others attempted to imitate him is clear enough;
that he imitated others, and least of all Beaumont and Fletcher, nobody
can reasonably believe who reads his opinion of the imitator in "Julius
Cæsar":
"A barren spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations,
Which, out of use, and stal'd by other men,
Begin his fashion."
Matthew Arnold's verdict has not been reversed.
"_Others abide our question. Thou art free._
_We ask and ask--Thou smilest and art still,_
_Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,_
_Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,_
"_Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea,_
_Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,_
_Spares but the cloudy border of his base_
_To the foil'd searching of mortality;_
"_And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,_
_Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,_
_Didst tread on earth unguess'd at.--Better so!_
"_All pains the immortal spirit must endure,_
_All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,_
_Find their sole speech in that victorious brow._"
* * * * *
Transcriber's note
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 14: "a successful playright" changed to
"a successful playwright".
Page 33: "'T is but the short'ning" changed to
"'Tis but the short'ning".
Page 53: "piece was writtin" changed to
"piece was written".
Page 53: "two valiant Kinghts" changed to
"two valiant Knights".
Page 73: "Professer Wendell applies" changed to
"Professor Wendell applies".
Page 87: "German critcism has" changed to
"German criticism has".
Page 108: "is n't it just" changed to
"isn't it just".
Page 126: "throne where he was worn" changed to
"throne where he has worn".
End of Project Gutenberg's The Critics Versus Shakspere, by Francis A. Smith
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