and Professor Thorndike says "it sounds like a bit from an old revenge play." It is a distinct imitation from "Hamlet" where the King is seen at his prayers.
In the "Scornful Lady" there is one certain and one possible slur at "Hamlet."
In "Cupid's Revenge" there is an imitation from "Antony and Cleopatra."
In "Philaster" Arethusa imitates Lear when he awakens from insanity to consciousness.
Upon the Wendell-Thorndike theory, we have a few undisputed facts bearing upon the "plausibility" of the conclusion that Beaumont and Fletcher "influenced" Shakspere, the likelihood that "Philaster" was the original, "Cymbeline" the "copy." Shakspere at the age of forty-six, long after he had portrayed the real insanity of Lear, the simulated insanity of Hamlet, the confessional dream of Lady Macbeth; long after he had "filled the audience with surprise and delight" by the romantic realities of Hero and Portia, of Viola and Rosalind; years after he had anticipated the heroic "romance" in the romantic adventures of Marina; long after he had depicted the heroic triumph of Isabella over the lustful Angelo—this man, Shakspere, condescended to imitate a youth of twenty-two, whose name was Beaumont, to steal from him much of the plot, characters, action, and denouement of "Philaster" and to make the theft more open and unblushing, presented "Cymbeline" upon the same stage within a year of the original "type," and assigned the parts to the same actors who had won remarkable popular applause for the drama from which he had "cribbed" his imitation. And this imitation was not from friendly authors, but from those of a hostile school, who had during their whole career borrowed from his plots, parodied his phrases, and ridiculed his masterpieces by slurs and burlesques. We respectfully dissent from the assertion that these facts "create a strong presumption that 'Philaster' was the original," "Cymbeline" the "copy." On the contrary, it seems to us that they are utterly inconsistent with any such presumption, and with the whole theory and teaching of Professors Wendell and Thorndike.
That theory, as we have shown, is based upon the assumption that Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or somebody else, wrote most of "Henry VI"; the assumption that Fletcher helped Shakspere write "Henry VIII"; the assumption that Shakspere assisted Fletcher in the composition of "The Two Noble Kinsmen"; the unsupported, the admitted conjecture that "Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610; the unwarranted assertion that Beaumont and Fletcher "created the romance" in spite of the admission that the date of creation depends upon the priority of "Cymbeline" or "Philaster," which is likewise admitted to be wholly uncertain; the suppression of the proof from "Measure for Measure" that, years before "Philaster," Shakspere, within the proposed definition, had produced a romantic tragi-comedy; the guess as to priority in favor of Beaumont and Fletcher, in spite of repeated imitations by them from previous plays of Shakspere. And so the argument in support of the theory is a pyramid of ifs, supporting an apex that vanishes into the thin air of an invisible conclusion.
To us, after all this latest effort to depose the sovereign of English literature from the throne where he [has] worn the crown for more than three centuries, and seat there a pretender, having no title, either by divine right or the suffrages of mankind, Shakspere is the sovereign still.
He needed and he sought no allies to win his realm; he imitated no fashions of other courts to maintain his own; he took good care that the records of his universal conquests should be kept,—written by his own hand, and fortunately preserved by his friends,—secure from the interpolations and imitations of his contemporaries and successors.
Much has been written of Shakspere's impersonality, and we have been taught to think that his dramas are utterly silent as to his own experience. But now and then one finds in them a glimpse of it, as the lightning flash in the darkest night for an instant shows the heavens and the earth. That others attempted to imitate him is clear enough; that he imitated others, and least of all Beaumont and Fletcher, nobody can reasonably believe who reads his opinion of the imitator in "Julius Cæsar":
"A barren spirited fellow; one that feeds
On objects, arts, and imitations,
Which, out of use, and stal'd by other men,
Begin his fashion."