Peele; that Marlowe was the original plotter and constructor of all three plays." With regard again to 2 Henry VI. he selects Beaufort's death speech (III. iii.) and places it alongside Marlowe's Faustus's death with the remark that "not even in Shakespeare is there a death scene of despair like either of these two"-both are therefore Marlowe's. (But see Marlowe's parallels from King John and Macbeth.)

I am glad to find that I arrived at agreement with Fleay with regard to Peele and Greene. I merely replace Marlowe by Shakespeare, speaking very generally, and only with regard to 1, 2 and 3 Henry VI. But there is so much in Fleay that rouses opposition that I will not inflict myself upon him much longer. He entirely agrees with Mr. Simpson that the Groatsworth refers to Shakespeare only as a player. That I maintain is not demonstrable by Fleay, Simpson or any other critic. But Fleay is so positive that one cannot reason with him. He finds "a little point" in the position of the quoted line in the

Groatsworth which is not in the paragraphs addressed to Mar with

lowe or Juvenal, but comes closest to that addressed to Peele -an argument that the line may be Peele's—the line not being taken from Shakespeare according to Fleay's views. And it cannot certainly be his (Greene's own) says Fleay. "This little point seems to indicate Peele as one of them (authors of The Contention) and Greene as not one of them. Peele and Marlowe are therefore (a great leap from a little point) so far the winning horses for the authorship of The Contention, and all three for that of Henry VI." "The Contention" here is the two plays Contention and True Tragedy (i.e., the First and Second Contention, the two old plays, issued in 1600 as The Whole Contention). That is the result of Fleay's external evidence, which includes, besides the passage in the Groatsworth, an examination into the connection of those three writers with the various companies of players (Lord Strange's, Earl of Pembroke's and the Admiral's or Chamberlain's) and their rights of possession in the plays and their copyrights. I set no great faith in this evidence. It is built upon sandy plains of presumption and probabilities. But his conclusion on this evidence must be quoted, that it "simply goes to exclude Shakespeare from any authorship of The Whole Contention as he was never in connection with any company but the Cham

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berlain's (afterwards the King's, 1603), and perhaps Lord Strange's; and even in the title-page of The Whole Contention in 1600 only the Earl of Pembroke's servants, and not the Chamberlain's, are mentioned. A sackful of this evidence will

not weigh with me against a handful of what the writings themselves advance. None of the writers about it agree amongst themselves in any detailed or hard-and-fast platform. All their "facts" are open to contingencies or built on probabilities. So is Fleay's paper continuously in this part. It is a matter of "What can be traced."

One final word on Fleay's position. He opens his paper with the words: "I shall merely promise that there is no evidence whatever for Shakespeare's having any share in either the early or late editions, except the solitary fact that the editors of the first Folio included Henry VI. in their collection." And he closes: "But there is a greater difficulty behind. There is such a similarity between parts of 2 and 3 Henry VI. and Richard III. as distinctly to show a unity of authorship. Phrases not occurring elsewhere in Shakespeare are frequently repeated in these plays and there is continuity in the plot, and in the character of Richard III., that is unmistakable." After some special pleading and an assumption or two that are useful to his argument, if argument it be, he gets out of this dilemma by the following structure. Peele wrote a play of Richard III. which he left unfinished (to complete the trilogy of 2 and 3 Henry VI) and Shakespeare hurriedly revised and finished it into the 1597 Quarto of Richard III. There is one pleasing note in all this-a tribute to Peele's powers. I see little else but increasing confusion and weariness of soul. I notice in the Introduction to this last play in the Arden edition that Fleay is stated to ascribe the early Richard III. to Marlowe, and I find in Fleay's Chronicle History of Shakespeare (1886, p. 279) that he believes "the anterior play was Marlowe's"; with no apology for the words (Macmillan, p. 60) quoted about Peele of whom he seems to have wearied. But Marlowe is given far too big a burthen for his working years these days. The date of Marlowe's death (1593) is not suitable for the above ascription.

With respect to the allotment of parts to Marlowe above, in 2 Henry VI., Fleay gives little or no proof. Two or

three quotations and a metrical note on a supposed extra syllable in the mid-line. A similar remark might be made (with all due apologies) about Miss Jane Lee's attributions to Greene dealt with specifically. In both cases they are no more than personal opinions.

For the late Mr. Craig's views, see Introduction to Part III.

IV. SOMETHING ABOUT PEELE. PEELE THE AUTHOR of The Life and Death of Jack Straw.

George Peele was about half a dozen years older than Shakespeare. He died probably in 1597. Nashe outlived him three or four years while he (Peele) survived Greene for about five years and Marlowe a year less. It must be remembered here that it does not in the least follow that any of these writers agreed with Greene in his hostility towards Shakespeare. On the contrary his rancour might have been enhanced by their attraction towards him. Nashe had no such feelings. At a later date Marlowe is referred to in almost affectionate terms by Shakespeare (in As You Like It, III. v. 82). Peele gives one a pleasant feeling of amiability in his ways. I believe he was generally beloved and may have been naturally enough a friend, even a useful friend, of Shakespeare's, and worked with him. Peele and Shakespeare had a warm patriotism in common. Peele's love for England and her heroes is constantly cropping up. It is one of the pleasantest points about him. Peele was steeped in Spenser, there was that in common. His Arraignment of Paris, his best piece, shows that to be the case. The Tamburlaine influence, that of Marlowe, was bad for him, yet he had a nice natural gift in ranting of his own according to the method of his days and of earlier days—a gift that is badly lost and badly needed in these prosaic artificial times of critical self-consciousness and introspection. Peele had the saving gift of humour, in a sort of Shakespearian way, such as few of his contemporaries were blessed with. Nashe, in his address prefixed to Menaphon (by Greene) speaks very highly of him when referring to his Arraignment of Paris, and when Peele ventures to tread rather heavily on Gabriel Harvey's sensitive toes, in his Old Wives' Tale, the latter seems to have borne it patiently and made no retort that I can find-evidence of goodwill towards him in an

unexpected quarter-perhaps from a mutual regard for Spenser. He was employed as a civic and state poet and seems to have had influential friends and patrons. He wrote blank verse addresses on public events with ease and grace and dignity. His David and Bethsabe is usually selected as his best piece, or the best to select samples from, but there are passages in his other plays I far prefer, such as the opening of Edward I., or parts of his Arraignment of Paris. David and Bethsabe is an unnatural piece in many ways, full of stilted and unnatural quasi-Biblical writing that becomes wearisome with its load of thous and thees and thys. Peele's natural writing is very good English indeed, as a rule, and often comes nearer, in choice of language, to that of Shakespeare than most of those of his time. Without any great depth of thought or gift of characterisation he has a harmonious method of descriptive writing, coupled with plenty of swing and energy, that carries one along with him.

We have a good deal of signed work of Peele's. In addition to that there is plenty of evidence of his hand in anonymous plays of the time. Chettle has told us of the quantity of matter Greene left unfinished in the booksellers' hands-probably mainly dramatic, as was Greene's latest work. It is likely that Peele revised, expanded, or finished Greene's work on several occasions possibly acquired or supplied to him from such sources. Mr. J. M. Robertson has proved, I think, that he had a share in the final state of Titus Andronicus, no very welcome ascription to "Sweet St. George." Many notes in my pages of these plays will further that belief. Again, I have no doubt, he assisted in the play of Locrine, a very compound production, with a curious blend of excellence and inanity running through its composition in a most puzzling and interesting way. Selimus also had some polish or rearrangement

from him.

Amongst the many shots at a venture that Fleay makes at the authorship of anonymous plays or other identifications— shots which are often as good as they can be, often as bad as they can be he made an undoubted hit when he wrote down Jack Straw as Peele's. It was the parallelism of scenes and situations in this unimportant little play, with some of the Cade work in The Contention that made me feel on sure ground with regard to Peele. I studied Jack Straw when I found the Wat

Tyler rebellion in Cade: and I found Peele at once in the play. It will be appropriate and indeed necessary here to try and establish this. My edition is that of Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. v. It was first printed in 1593. Fleay dates it confidently as written in 1587 on very insufficient evidence. He ascribes it to Peele on the strength of his "sign-manual," the "sandy plain," near the end, but there are plenty more echoes and signs manual of Peele in Jack Straw. In the first place the metre at once strikes the reader with surprise. It begins with lines of irregular length, only to be sorted by their rhymes -lines that give one the feeling they were food for revision and very easily digested, but evidently this play never had a second handling. There is plenty of such unscannable verse in Peele's Edward I. and Arraignment of Paris, dependent for harmony on the rhyme, but usually the lines are long, often fourteeners. Then it breaks into a page or two of lines with four feet or accents, still rhyming and quite musical, just as Peele does in The Old Wives' Tale every now and then. And a little later when dignity comes on the stage in the shape of the "Lord Treasurer, Lord Archbishop and Secretary," we have regular orthodox well-finished blank verse of which there is plenty (see Act IV.) in the Arraignment. Moreover, we get Peele's favourite trochaic endings, as on p. 388, lenity, extremity, injury, courtesy, policy, doing yeoman's work for rhyme. A lesson he learned from the Faerie Queene in its early career. No other writer comes near Peele in this fluidity of verse at this time, and this evidence greatly strengthens Fleay's attribution. It also supports his date, which he places from an allusion in the words "this last benevolence" (p. 384) to the great distress in 1587 in London, when money and ships were raised; the insurrection of apprentices in the previous year, and there being no mention of the Armada. I will give a few parallels. In Jack Straw, here is a parson's character (p. 381):—

What, is he an honest man? The devil he is! he is the parson of the town;

You think there's no knavery hid under a black gown?

Find him in a pulpit but twice in the year,

And I'll find him forty times in the ale-house tasting strong beer.

In the Old Wives' Tale (p. 450) a Friar is introduced "with a chine of beef and a pot of wine," solely for the purpose of these remarks: "Is