A Life of William Shakespeare with portraits and facsimiles. Sir Sidney Lee
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Divided authorship of ‘Henry VI.’
The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI was originally published in the collected edition of Shakespeare’s works; the second and third plays were previously printed in a form very different from that which they subsequently assumed when they followed the first part in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in these plays Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, and correct other men’s work. In ‘The First Part of Henry VI’ the scene in the Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political parties (act ii. sc. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of his style. A play dealing with the second part of Henry VI’s reign was published anonymously from a rough stage copy in 1594, with the title ‘The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster.’ A play dealing with the third part was published with greater care next year under the title ‘The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.’ In both these plays Shakespeare’s revising hand can be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in ‘The Contention’ can owe their savour to him alone. After he had hastily revised the original drafts of the three pieces, perhaps with another’s aid, they were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by his own company (Lord Strange’s men), and the third, under some exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke’s men. But Shakespeare was not content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with another writer. ‘The First Part of The Contention’ was thoroughly overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio ‘The Second Part of Henry VI;’ there more than half the lines are new. ‘The True Tragedie,’ which became ‘The Third Part of Henry VI,’ was less drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched; only a third was thoroughly remodelled. [60]
Shakespeare’s coadjutors.
Who Shakespeare’s coadjutors were in the two successive revisions of ‘Henry VI’ is matter for conjecture. The theory that Greene and Peele produced the original draft of the three parts of ‘Henry VI,’ which Shakespeare recast, may help to account for Greene’s indignant denunciation of Shakespeare as ‘an upstart crow, beautified with the feathers’ of himself and his fellow dramatists. Much can be said, too, in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision of which ‘The Contention’ and the ‘True Tragedie’ were the outcome. Most of the new passages in the second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare alone, but a few suggest a partnership resembling that of the first revision. It is probable that Marlowe began the final revision, but his task was interrupted by his death, and the lion’s share of the work fell to his younger coadjutor.
Shakespeare’s assimilative power.
Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that receptivity of mind which impels them to assimilate much of the intellectual effort of their contemporaries and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore into pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been professionally employed in recasting old plays by contemporaries, he would doubtless have shown in his writings traces of a study of their work. The verses of Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were certainly among the rills which fed the mighty river of his poetic and lyric invention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of tragedy, left more or less definite impression on all Shakespeare’s early efforts in tragedy. It was, however, only to two of his fellow dramatists that his indebtedness as a writer of either comedy or tragedy was material or emphatically defined. Superior as Shakespeare’s powers were to those of Marlowe, his coadjutor in ‘Henry VI,’ his early tragedies often reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple of that vehement delineator of tragic passion. Shakespeare’s early comedies disclose a like relationship between him and Lyly.
Lyly’s influence in comedy.
Lyly is best known as the author of the affected romance of ‘Euphues,’ but between 1580 and 1592 he produced eight trivial and insubstantial comedies, of which six were written in prose, one was in blank verse, and one was in rhyme. Much of the dialogue in Shakespeare’s comedies, from ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ to ‘Much Ado about Nothing,’ consists in thrusting and parrying fantastic conceits, puns, or antitheses. This is the style of intercourse in which most of Lyly’s characters exclusively indulge. Three-fourths of Lyly’s comedies lightly revolve about topics of classical or fairy mythology—in the very manner which Shakespeare first brought to a triumphant issue in his ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Shakespeare’s treatment of eccentric character like Don Armado in ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and his boy Moth reads like a reminiscence of Lyly’s portrayal of Sir Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy Epiton in the comedy of ‘Endymion,’ while the watchmen in the same play clearly adumbrate Shakespeare’s Dogberry and Verges. The device of masculine disguise for love-sick maidens was characteristic of Lyly’s method before Shakespeare ventured on it for the first of many times in ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ and the dispersal through Lyly’s comedies of songs possessing every lyrical charm is not the least interesting of the many striking features which Shakespeare’s achievements in comedy seem to borrow from Lyly’s comparatively insignificant experiments. [62]
Marlowe’s influence in tragedy. ‘Richard III.’
Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare’s contemporaries can be credited with exerting on his efforts in tragedy a really substantial influence, was in 1592 and 1593 at the zenith of his fame. Two of Shakespeare’s earliest historical tragedies, ‘Richard III’ and ‘Richard II,’ with the story of Shylock in his somewhat later comedy of the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ plainly disclose a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe’s footsteps. In ‘Richard III’ Shakespeare, working single-handed, takes up the history of England near the point at which Marlowe and he, apparently working in partnership, left it in the third part of ‘Henry VI.’ The subject was already familiar to dramatists, but Shakespeare sought his materials in the ‘Chronicle’ of Holinshed. A Latin piece, by Dr. Thomas Legge, had been in favour with academic audiences since 1579, and in 1594 the ‘True Tragedie of Richard III’ from some other pen was published anonymously; but Shakespeare’s piece bears little resemblance to either. Throughout Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable. The tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, ‘as fiery in passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so inflated in expression, as Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine” itself.’ The turbulent piece was naturally popular. Burbage’s impersonation of the hero was one of his most effective performances, and his vigorous enunciation of ‘A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’ gave the line proverbial currency.
‘Richard II.’
‘Richard II’ seems to have followed ‘Richard III’ without