The Critics Versus Shakspere / A Brief for the Defendant

by Francis Asbury Smith

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 assumed, as Malone assumed, 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 assumption 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 passage 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."

"Titus 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 asserts, can be best determined by reference to Kyd's works. The claim has been made by other critics that "Titus" was "collaborative," but Professor Wendell's is that it was an "imitation."

"The Tragedy of Soliman and Perseda," first printed in 1599, is of doubtful authorship, but has sometimes been credited to Kyd. "The piece still bears a striking resemblance to the old Moral Plays and thereby proves its relatively early origin. A chorus consisting of the allegorical figures Love, Happiness, and Death opens the play and each separate act, and ends it with a controversy in which all the personified powers boast of their deeds and triumphs over the others, till at the end of the fifth act Death remains the victor, and the whole concludes with a eulogy of Queen Elizabeth, the only mortal whom Death does not venture to approach." "Titus Andronicus" will be searched in vain for "much" or little of this "manner of Kyd."

"The First Part of Jeronimo, with the Warres of Portugal and the Life and Death of Don Andrea," not published till 1605, is not an authentic work of Kyd, but is attributed to him by some because, judging from the subject, it belongs to "The Spanish Tragedy" and is regarded by Henslowe as the first part of it. A. W. Schlegel says that "both of these parts are full of absurdities, that the author had ventured upon describing the most forced situations and passions without being aware of his want of power, that especially the catastrophe of the second part, which is intended to surpass every conceivable horror, is introduced in a trivial manner, merely producing a ludicrous effect, and that the whole was like a child's drawings, wholly unmindful of the laws of proportion."

Ulrici maintains that "Jeronimo" itself may be treated as a play in three parts connected only externally: first, the war between Portugal and Spain; second, the life and death of Don Andrea, and third the acts of Jeronimo, who is, however, only a subordinate character. But whether the play be treated as a whole or as composed of substantially separate parts, its action and interest are centred in the story of the love of Don Andrea and Bellimperia; Lorenzo, her brother, persecutes both because he is jealous of Andrea's success. Andrea is finally killed; at his funeral, his ghost appears for no assigned reason, except to exchange greeting with his friend Horatio. "Revenge" and Charon also appear, the one "to forbid Andrea's ghost from divulging the secrets of Hell, the other to accompany him back to the lower regions," and the learned critic adds that "this allegorical by-play is inserted so arbitrarily, so inappropriately and so unmeaningly, that it forms the best standpoint for judging the piece as regards its composition and poetical character. In this respect its value is next to nothing."

If Kyd wrote "Jeronimo," of which there is no satisfactory proof, and if Shakspere wrote "Titus," "much in the manner of Kyd," which we venture to think more doubtful than the authorship of "Jeronimo," then Shakspere's supposed imitation was much "better" than the original "popular thing."