The Critics Versus Shakspere Part 2

The theory of "imitation" rests upon the a.s.sumption that Shakspere did not begin to write for the stage before 1592; Collier a.s.serts, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ill.u.s.trious, 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 authors.h.i.+p is a.s.signed by mere conjecture, from a fancied but confused and indeterminate likeness of style or metre or cla.s.sical 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 Ma.s.sacre 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 Ca.s.sandra," 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 Ma.s.sacre" and "the almost masterly Edward II.," as Professor Wendell somewhat ambiguously calls it. The "Ma.s.sacre" ends with the death of Henry III. of France, who was a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 "Ma.s.sacre" 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sionless 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sociates still living, three years after his death, to claim the honor of creating two dramas which immeasurably surpa.s.sed any other he ever wrote? If it be asked why Shakspere's friends did not claim the authors.h.i.+p 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.signment 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 t.i.tle of "The whole Contention between the two famous Houses of Lancaster and York," by the same Th. Pavier who had received them "by a.s.signment" from the original publisher of the editions of 1594 and 1595,--_Thomas Millington_. _Pavier_ knew in 1619, and therefore put his name on the t.i.tle page of his edition, that Shakspere was the author of the two parts of the "Contention," but instead of giving them the extended t.i.tles 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," n.o.body 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 n.o.body had claimed that he was not the sole author of both. We therefore respectfully submit that Professor Wendell has no warrant for his a.s.sertion 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 a.s.serts 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 fas.h.i.+on"

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 a.s.signed to him, has no name on its t.i.tle page; "Alphonsus, King of Aragon," is probably his, as it bears the initials "R. G."; "The Looking Gla.s.s 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 a.s.signed to him, is of doubtful authors.h.i.+p.

"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 a.s.signed 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 t.i.tle "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 p.r.o.nounced, 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, n.o.body 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 G.o.ddess of love and beauty herself plans the actions and destinies of mortals, there extraordinary things come to pa.s.s 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 s.e.x, 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 circ.u.mference!

O, could my fury paint their furies forth!

For h.e.l.l's no h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sages from the cla.s.sic 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."

n.o.body has been able to determine how much of the "Looking Gla.s.s for London and England" was written by Lodge, how much by Greene. Knight thinks the poetry should be a.s.signed 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, a.s.signs 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 a.s.signs to him "The History of the two valiant Knights, Syr Clyomon, Knight of the Golden s.h.i.+eld, 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 s.h.i.+ft," 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 G.o.ds"; 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 a.s.sembled G.o.ds, for having p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.ddesses, 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 s.e.xton 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 t.i.tle: "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 Potters.h.i.+th, now named Queens.h.i.+th."

The t.i.tle itself proves that it is not a "chronicle" but an unhistorical fiction. The events pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance in Peele's play, but it is more remarkable that, a.s.suming 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 b.l.o.o.d.y." 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 G.o.dly 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." n.o.body 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 a.s.sumed, as Malone a.s.sumed, 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sage 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."

"t.i.tus 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 a.s.serts, can be best determined by reference to Kyd's works. The claim has been made by other critics that "t.i.tus"

was "collaborative," but Professor Wendell's is that it was an "imitation."