The Critics Versus Shakspere / A Brief for the Defendant

by Francis Asbury Smith

Lilly's "Pleasant conceited Comedy," called "Mother Bombie," appeared in 1594, his "Midas" in 1592, and his "Most Excellent Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes" in 1584. "Mother Bombie" represents four servants, treated partly as English, partly as Roman slaves, who deceive their respective masters in an "equally clumsy, unlikely, and un-motived manner." It is difficult to see how "Love's Labour's Lost," produced in 1592, could have imitated "Mother Bombie," produced in 1594. "Alexander and Campaspe" is "taken from the well known story of the magnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionate love for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of her lover Apelles." The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes the opportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all comers by his cynical speeches.

Lilly's most ambitious work was his "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, very pleasant for all Gentlemen to read," "probably printed as early as 1579." Long before Shakspere's time, all "Gentlemen" had read it, and it had introduced to the fashionable world a new language which nobody but the high-born could understand.

If "Love's Labour's Lost" is "in the manner of Lilly," it is not so in Professor Wendell's sense, but only as it ridicules with unsparing satire Lilly's conceits and puns.

The statement that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative" is unwarranted, because it has been successfully challenged and disproved by the eminent critics Hermann Ulrici and Charles Knight; it is supported only by the guesswork of Clark, Wright, Halliwell and others who assume to find a divided authorship from assumed divergencies of style. The result shows the futility of the method. What Shakspere is assumed not to have written is assigned to Marlowe, Greene, Peele or Lodge. If style cannot determine between them, what warrant is there for the conclusion that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative"?

The second and third parts of "Henry VI." are the final form of "The First Part of the Contention between the Houses of York and Lancaster," and "The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York." Greene, in his savage attack upon Shakspere, quotes a line which appears in the "Third Part" and also in "The True Tragedy." His attack proves the sole authorship of both by the man he maligns, to whom Chettle apologized within a year.

The argument of Knight has been before the critical world for many years, and its careful arrangement of facts and its logical conclusions from them, have well-nigh overcome the prejudices of English scholars who for many years after the appearance of Malone's "Dissertation" adopted his theory that the two parts of the "Contention" contained nothing from Shakspere's hand. But because American writers are constantly seeking reputation for learning by repeating Malone's argument, it will be useful, in the interest of truth, to state Knight's answer.

He first takes up Malone's assumption that the two parts of the "Contention" were not written by the author of the "First Part of Henry VI.," and proves the identity of authorship by the intimate connection and unity of action and characterization, and by the identity of manner, making the three plays one integral whole. In the "First Part of Henry VI." and in the "First Part of the Contention," Suffolk is the same man, Margaret the same woman. In both plays, Gloster and Beaufort speak the same scorn and defiance in the same tongue. The garden scene, with its red and white roses, is the prologue to the "Contention" and indissolubly links together the three parts of "Henry VI." as one drama by the same hand.

Malone's first assumption was therefore without foundation. Even Collier only claims that "it is plausibly conjectured" that Shakspere did not write the "First Part of Henry VI." but that it is an old play most likely written about 1589. Who did write it, was before Knight and Ulrici the theme of endless debate. Hallam was "sometimes inclined to assign it to Greene." Gervinus in his "Commentaries," took the same view, but subsequently changed it. Knight has shown that the three parts of "Henry VI." are "in the strictest sense" Shakspere's own, and Ulrici agrees with Knight.

It is worthy of note that the "First Part" was acted thirteen times in the spring of 1592 by Lord Strange's men, under the title "Henry VI." Greene lived until the 2d of September in that year, and yet in his "Groatsworth of Wit" he made no claim that the "First Part" was any portion of his "feathers."

The next point made is that the two parts of the "Contention" were written by the author of "Richard III." Malone studiously avoided any comparison between them, and yet it is entirely clear that with the "first Part of Henry VI." they form one drama. "'Richard III.' stands at the end of the series as the avowed completion of a long tragic history. The scenes of that drama are as intimately blended with the scenes of the other dramas as the scenes that belong to the separate dramas are blended among themselves. Its story not only naturally grows out of the previous story,—its characters are not only, wherever possible, the same characters as in the preceding dramas,—but it is even more palpably linked with them by constant retrospection to the events which they had exhibited."