or some of Marlowe, Lodge and Peele-were part authors of the Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, in which "Oh Tygres Heart, etc., occurs." This is quite reckless. At the very highest the words quoted need only refer to The True Tragedie. But I disagree with the line of argument entirely. Greene used Shakespeare's line as an appropriate vehicle to enforce his personal attack and make it more personal. Of course if we are to assume that Shakespeare had no hand in The True Tragedy (an impossible assumption), or that Greene thought he had no hand in it when he wrote (which we have no right to imagine) then the quotation must refer to 3 Henry VI., because it is Shakespeare's. This seems to me to be Miss Jane Lee's position, and it is important, because it enables her to put the whole trilogy before the date of summer, 1592. I don't believe she has any right to that argument. But then she does not (or did not, I hope she changed) believe “that any part of The Contention or of The True Tragedy was written by Shakespeare." Here she is constrained to say that Shakespeare did not write the Cade scenes in 2 Henry VI., since they are practically identical with those in The Contention, but the reason she gives is that he was too young. And many passages in 3 Henry VI., must be denied to Shakespeare on the same grounds. Take Clifford's dying speech (3 Henry VI. II. vi.) for example, which is in The True Tragedie word for word: or Gloster's solo in III. ii., at the end, which has most of its best lines identical with those in The True Tragedie; which of the three victims could have written these? And much more the

same.

In a Table, at the end of her careful and most praiseworthy attempt, Miss Lee gives Marlowe's and Greene's shares. The latter has all the Cade scenes, and at least two-thirds of The Contention, Marlowe the remainder. In The True Tragedie she allots the major part to Marlowe and the remainder to Greene, with two or three doubtful ascriptions to Peele, his only innings.

I differ so radically here that I will not further specify these allotments. But it surprises one that after finding certain strong resemblances to and evidences of Peele's work, in her paper (see pages 257-260, footnotes), she should dismiss him so unceremoniously in her Table.

IV. FURTHER VIEWS OF CRITICS.

In my Introduction to Part I., I have given a slight general survey of the views of some of the best-known critics with regard to authorship, especially dwelling upon what seems to me the ablest, the best reasoned, and the most clearly written essay on the subject-that of Grant White (Shakespeare's Works, vol. vii. Boston, 1881). He does what is necessary, except for those who will do it for themselves-he makes copious extracts from the old plays side by side with their resultant forms in the final play. This is done by my collation. He quotes what he deems to be some of the most noteworthy passages in Marlowe's, Greene's and Peele's plays that serve as parallels for passages in the plays in dispute. There is no space for such an exponential method here; but my notes will, I trust, serve instead. He extracts as a sample from Marlowe's best work outside Edward the Second (which is he says without a doubt his best play) the speeches of Barabas in The Jew of Malta beginning "Ay, policy! that's their profession" to appointed me" (Dyce's one-vol. edition, p. 150). And he makes this important statement with regard to Edward the Second, so constantly referred to as affording opposite parallels in this dispute-and erroneously made use of "in which, especially in the scene of Edward's murder, he attained a dramatic power and a freedom of versification not found elsewhere in his own undoubted works or in those of any other of Shakespeare's early contemporaries. But this play affords unmistakable evidence that it was Marlowe's last; and he was killed in a fray in June, 1593, the year in which Edward the Second was entered upon the Stationers' Register. Whereas The True Tragedy had surely been long enough upon the stage when Greene died, in 1592, to be well known-a year or two, we may safely assume; and The True Tragedy was a later play than the First Part of the Contention . . . Edward the Second was written some time after the appearance of The True Tragedy and still longer after that of the First Part of the Contention. . . .

"Peele's plays afford no better lines than these from David and Bethsabe: Cusay. The stubborn enemies to David's peace, ... And bursts with burden of ten thousand griefs'" (Dyce's one-vol. edition, pp. 484, 485). .

b

He

Of Greene, as a "comedian," he says "the following passage .. is cleaner and cleverer than it was his wont to be." quotes from A Looking Glasse for London and England: "First Ruffian. Come on, Smith.. a horse of thine own this seven year" (Dyce's one-vol. edition, pp. 119, 120). And as serious poetry he quotes again from Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragon, the speech of "Belinus. Thus far, my lords, we trained have our camp" (p. 228); and again from A Looking Glasse for London, a passage in his best style, "Rasni. So pace ye on, triumphant warriors" (the first speech). Furnivall gives an abstract of Grant White's arguments and extracts in his Introduction to the 1594 Contention fascimile. Grant White dwells largely on one-his main position. He assigns to Shakespeare all the matter in the two old plays that is obviously by the same hand as the identical matter in 2 and 3 Henry VI. This is a logical and comfortable standpoint. It is based on the view that Shakespeare only took what was his own into the final plays. But to turn this argument the other way, as is his tendency, and assume on the basis of Greene's attack I presume, that all that is quite different from anything in the finished plays which occurs in the old ones is of a necessity by Marlowe, Greene, or Peele-that is where I do not agree. I do not think the Greene attack warrants the idea to start with; and I do think that in many places Shakespeare wrote and altered his own original (Contention) work, with something almost wholly new. I should mention here that at the close of Furnivall's abstract, he seems to identify his views with those of Miss Lee.

There is a footnote in Grant White (p. 443) that should be quoted. I had already thrown out a hint to the same effect. He says: "After much consideration of the subject, I have little or no doubt that Greene alludes to other plays besides the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI., to The Taming of the Shrew and perhaps to Titus Andronicus and even A Midsummer Night's Dream and the old King John." This is true in purport even if we disagree with the chosen plays, and it affords a fortunate breach for us in the chain armour of those who insist on Henry VI. alone being referred to by Greene. Indeed Grant White here rather overlooks what he has said on P. 412: "this line is one of the large number in the Third

Part of King Henry the Sixth which are taken bodily from The True Tragedy which was published in 1595. It was to a share in the latter play, therefore, that Greene meant to set up a claim...." So that the critics, in endeavouring to affix certainty where there is the barest vagueness, disagree with themselves as well as each other. Grant White continues here: "We have already seen that The True Tragedy was published as having been 'sundrie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembroke his servants ; and there is this support of Greene's claim, that while Shakespeare is not known to have had any connection with the Earl of Pembroke's servants, we have the testimony of Nashe, in his Apologie for Pierce Penilesse, published in 1593, that Greene was "chief agent of the companie, for he wrote more than four other." And in this paragraph

he concludes with the words "he would show himself either incompetent or foolhardy, I think, who denied that Greene's title to the older versions of those two plays (for one is but the continuation of the other) was thus far more clearly established than Shakespeare's." Grant White says this on the strength of Greene's passage, Chettle's apologia, and R. B.'s lines. At the utmost Greene's title is but a part title. But he quotes one sentence from the body of Chettle's Kind Hart's Dream of interest: "of whom (Greene) however some suppose themselves injured, I have learned to speak, considering he is dead, nil nisi necessarium. He was of singuler plesaunce, the verye supporter, and, to no man's disgrace bee this intended (Chettle was a play-writer) the only Comedian of a vulgar writer in this country." This is a sort of defence of Greene by Chettle against Shakespeare's umbrage.

As Grant White has quoted one paragraph from Pierce Penilesse, another which refers to this subject should be also cited, from Nashe's epistle prefixed to it: "Other newes I am aduertized of, that a scald triuiall lying Pamphlet, called Greens Groatsworth of wit is given out to be of my doing. God neuer haue care of my soule, but vtterly renounce me if the least word or syllable in it proceeded from my penne or if I were any way priuie to the writing or printing of it" (Grosart's Nashe, ii. 7). This should be set beside Chettle's denunciation of Greene's words about Shakespeare.

It is my misfortune to be compelled to differ with Grant

White in his conclusions. I approached the subject in a different manner, arguing rather from the particular to the general and endeavouring to construct a whole piecemeal, from minutiæ and details. Accepting the consensus of opinion that those two old plays, as well as probably the three final parts, have amongst them portions and parcels of the work of Marlowe, Greene and Peele, I studied those authors with as much care as I was capable of. Insensibly I arrived at certain conclusions at first largely in support of Greene's being the major hand, the usual verdict: but by degrees in the play which we are now dealing with (or rather its original The Contention) Peele came more and more to the front and shouldered Greene out of court into a back place. I will now bring forward what evidence I have for this view.

I had written this much when I obtained through Doctor Bowden's kindness (always so helpful to me when the need of a special Shakespearian volume is felt), Fleay's Who Wrote Henry VI.? (Macmillan, Nov. 1875). I have read it carefully and though greatly at variance with it, one or two points are useful. I will specify them first. He decides that Peele is largely concerned in these plays, giving him a more prominent position than any other critic does. He believes the "principal arranger or plotter" of 3 Henry VI. to be Marlowe and Peele his subordinate. But Fleay is very vague; even here, who does the writing? He gives the best poetry in 2 Henry VI. III. iii. and ix. to Marlowe but the Cade scenes are necessarily allotted to Peele, and the wooing scene between Edward and the widow in Part III., as being impossible by Marlowe. He allots Henry VI. to Marlowe with the exception of IV. iv. ; V. i.; V. v. which belong to some one else, not Greene or Peele or Marlowe. And one scene in that play (II. iv.) is certainly by Shakespeare, while another (II. v.) is "neither Marlowe's nor Greene's; is it Shakespeare's?" But this last Marlowe (of 1 Henry VI.) is the Marlowe of Tamburlaine, not of Faustus and Edward II.; while "an inferior hand, exactly in Greene's style has . . . written I. ii.; I. iv.; I. v.; I. vi.; II. i. ; II. ii. ; II. iii.; III. ii.; III. iii.; IV. ii.; IV. iii.; IV. iv.; IV. v. ; IV. vi.; IV. vii.; v. ii. So that Fleay's general conclusion here is "that I Henry VI. is the production of Marlowe and Greene, with a few additions; 2 Henry VI. and 3 Henry VI. of Marlowe and