There is therefore no proof that Shakspere imitated Kyd, and Professor Wendell's assertion that "Titus Andronicus" is "much" in his manner is utterly without support.
"The Comedy of Errors" was unquestionably suggested by the "Twins" of Plautus. Is it therefore an imitation?
What is literary imitation? Did Dante imitate Virgil because Virgil's ghost was the guide through the "Inferno"? Did Milton imitate Dante in "Paradise Lost" because he describes the same scenes in different words? Did he imitate the author of Genesis because he reproduces the Garden of Eden in majestic poetry? "Paradise Lost" seems to Professor Wendell "almost superhuman," but when any suggestion of transcendent power is applied to Shakspere, it assumes an "unnecessary miracle." Shakspere, whom ten generations of great men have failed to imitate, is in the opinion of Professor Wendell but an imitator, because while, as he says, "he could not help wakening to life the stiffly conventional characters which he found, as little more than names, in the tales and the fictions he adapted for the stage," he wrote chronicle plays, comedies, romances, tragedies, after others had worked in the same fields.
Milton was born in 1608. "That was the year," says Professor Wendell, "when Shakspere probably came to the end of his tragic period, and, with the imitativeness which never forsook him, was about to follow the newly popular manner of Beaumont and Fletcher."
But let us turn to Professor Wendell's opinion of Milton and quote his language: "With Milton, the case is wonderfully different. Read Scripture, if you will, and then turn to your 'Paradise Lost.' Turn then to whatever poet you chance to love of Greek antiquity or of Roman. Turn to Dante himself.... Then turn back to Milton. Different you will find him, no doubt, in the austere isolation of his masterful and deliberate Puritanism and learning; but that difference does not make him irrevocably lesser. Rather you will grow more and more to feel how wonderful his power proves. Almost alone among poets, he could take the things for which he had need from the masters themselves, as confidently as any of the masters had taken such matters from lesser men; and he could so place these spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they seem as truly and as admirably part of it as they seemed of the other great works where he found them." "'Paradise Lost' transcends all traces of its lesser origins, until those lesser origins become a matter of mere curiosity."
And so it appears that [Professor] Wendell applies one definition of the word "imitation" to Shakspere, another to Milton. If Shakspere found chronicle plays in the theatre, and transformed them into the most vivid and truthful history ever written, "those lesser origins become a matter of mere curiosity," and the charge of imitation fails. If the "Comedy of Errors" is an "imitation" of Plautus, "Paradise Lost" is an "imitation" of Moses. If "Paradise Lost" is not an "imitation" but "something utterly apart," "something almost superhuman ... in its grand solitude"; if Milton has "so placed the spoils of masterpieces in his own work that they seem truly and admirably a part of it," then "Love's Labour's Lost" is not an "imitation" of Lilly, nor "Henry VI." of Greene or Peele or Marlowe, nor "Titus Andronicus" of Kyd.
But this indictment against Shakspere is made more definite in form, and may therefore be more conclusively answered. This is the charge as stated by Professor Wendell:
"A young American scholar whose name has hardly yet crossed the Atlantic,—Professor Ashley Horace Thorndike,—has lately made some studies in dramatic chronology which go far to confirm the unromantic conjecture that to the end Shakspere remained imitative and little else. Professor Thorndike, for example, has shown with convincing probability that certain old plays concerning Robin Hood proved popular; a little later, Shakspere produced the woods and outlaws of 'As You Like It.' The question is one of pure chronology; and pure chronology has convinced me, for one, that the forest scenes of Arden were written to fit available costumes and properties.... Again, Professor Thorndike has shown that Roman subjects grew popular, and tragedies of revenge such as Marston's; a little later, Shakspere wrote 'Julius Cæsar' and 'Hamlet.' With much more elaboration Professor Thorndike has virtually proved that the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher—different both in motive and in style from any popular plays which had preceded them—were conspicuously successful on the London stage before Shakspere began to write romances. It seems likely, therefore, that 'Cymbeline,' which less careful chronology had conjectured to be a model for Beaumont and Fletcher, was in fact imitated from models which they had made. In other words, Professor Thorndike has shown that one may account for all the changes in Shakspere, after 1600, by merely assuming that the most skilful and instinctive imitator among the early Elizabethan dramatists, remained to the end an instinctively imitative follower of fashions set by others."
Again, he says: "The likeness of their work to the romances of Shakspere—in subject, in structure, in peculiarities of verse,—has been often remarked; and they have consequently been supposed to have begun by skilful superficial imitation of his spiritually ripest phase. The question is one of chronology not yet fixed in detail; but as I have told you already, the studies of my friend Professor Thorndike have virtually proved that several of their plays must have been in existence decidedly before the dates commonly assigned to 'Cymbeline,' the 'Tempest' or the 'Winter's Tale.' If he is right,—and I believe him so,—the relation commonly thought to have existed between them and Shakspere is precisely reversed. Shakspere was the imitator, not they; indeed, as we have seen, he was from the beginning an imitator, not an inventor. And here his imitations are not in all respects better than his models."
Here the grave accusation is distinctly made that Shakspere imitated Beaumont and Fletcher, and to support it, reference is made to one man only, Professor Thorndike, his pupil and disciple.