A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen Part 14

[50:2] The thought here is frequent in Shakspeare's dramas: and the expression of it closely resembles some stanzas in the Lucrece, especially those beginning, "Oh, comfort-killing night!"

[51:1] Cp. Beatrice on Don John and Bened.i.c.k, in _Much Ado_ II. i.

[51:2] page 53

[52:1] page 54

[52:2] It may be well to mention, that this scene contains allusions, extending through several lines, to the every-way luckless jailor's daughter. If I conceal the fact from you, you will, on finding it out for yourself, suspect that I consider it as making against my hypothesis, which a.s.signs those episodical adventures to a different author from this scene. Be a.s.sured that I do not regard it in that light. It is plain that the underplot, however bad, has been worked up with much pains; and we can conceive that its author would have been loth to abandon it finally in the incomplete posture in which the fourth scene of this act left it. Ten lines in this scene sufficed to end the story, by relating the cure of the insane girl; and there can have been no difficulty in their introduction, even on my supposition of this scene being the work of the other author. If the two wrote at the same time, the poet who wrote the rest of the scene may have inserted them on the suggestion of the other; or if the drama afterwards came into the hands of that other, (which there seems some reason to believe,) he could easily insert them for himself. In any view these lines are no argument against my theory.

[53:1] ? Shakspere and one daughter.

[53:2] Cf. p. 54-5.

[53:3] page 55

[53:4] The description which we have read of Mars's attributes reminds one strongly and directly of the fine speech in the poem, where old Saturn, the G.o.d of time, enumerates his own powers of destruction. It is far from unlikely that the one pa.s.sage suggested the other. The rich can afford to borrow.

[54:1] page 56

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[57:1] Beaumont's style is unluckily not characterized. F.

[57:2] page 59

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[66:1] The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

[66:2] page 68

[66:3] Weber's Beaumont and Fletcher. Henslowe MSS. published by Malone:--Boswell's Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 303. [See Appx. I. to my Harrison _Forewords_.]

[67:1] page 69

[68:1] page 70

[68:2] N.B. The Gower choruses in _Pericles_ are NOT Shakspere's.--F.

[69:1] page 71

[69:2] With Knowledge comes the retreat to Invention.

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[83:1] It would be unfair not to state, that I quote and refer to the translation of the Laoc.o.o.n published by Mr. De Quincey, in Blackwood's Magazine for November 1826; and that I am not otherwise acquainted with that or any other work of Lessing.

[83:2] page 86

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[87:1] page 90