O, tyger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide!
This attack on our untiger-like Shakespeare turns poor Greene into an enraged wasp, peevish and mortified at the Shakespearian hand which had often larded his leanness, or scarified his tumidities. Greene charges Shakespeare with altering the plays of himself, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, and then claiming all the merit of the work![6]
Our great bard was not insensible to the fancy of his querulous libeller, since it was on Greene’s “Dorastus and Fawnia” Shakespeare founded his Winter’s Tale, as he took his As You Like It from Lodge’s “Rosalynd,” whose very name he preserved. Thus borrowing from the writings of his unfortunate and reckless brothers of Parnassus, he has made immortal works which have long expired.
The active employment of Shakespeare among the old plays was so well known at the time, that when his name became familiar to the public, the printers were often eager to obtain the original neglected plays in their meagre condition, to avail themselves of the popularity of the Shakespearian rifacimentos. Fraud and deception were evidently practised on the uncritical readers. One of these cunning publishers issued the old play of The Contention of the Two Houses, &c., as newly corrected and enlarged by William Shakespeare; which was true as it was acted on the stage, but false in the copy of the elder dramatist which was republished. In this manner several plays not only bear the consecrating name of Shakespeare, but seven which are now discarded from his works appeared in the edition of Rowe; in some of these the hand of Shakespeare appears to have been discerned; and it has been suggested by Mr. Collier, an experienced critic in the history of the drama, that it is possible that all the plays of Shakespeare have not yet been given to the world.
In the second and third parts of King Henry the Sixth, for the first was placed in his volume merely to complete the historical series, Shakespeare made ample use of several dramas; and Malone, whose microscopic criticism obtained for him the sarcastic cognomen of Minutius Felix, by an actual scrutiny, which we may well believe cost him the most anxious pains, computed the lines of these dramas, and has passed his word, that of six thousand and forty-three lines, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-one were written by some author who preceded Shakespeare; two thousand three hundred and seventy-three were formed by him on the foundation laid by his predecessors, and one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine lines were entirely our poet’s own composition. Malone has even contrived to distinguish them in the text; those which Shakespeare adopted are printed in the usual manner; the speeches which he altered or expanded, are marked by inverted commas; and to all the lines entirely composed by himself, asterisks are prefixed. A critical reader may derive a curious gratification by attending to this novel text of our national poet; the only dramatist to whom this singularity has ever occurred, and on whose writings this anomalous operation could have been performed.
Shakespeare was more conversant with these preceding dramatists, most of whose writings have perished, than we can ever discover; but it is fortunate for us that his creative faculties brooded over such a world of chaotic genius. He scrupled not to appropriate those happier effusions which were not only worthy of his own genius, but are not distinguishable from it. Sometimes he only retouched, sometimes he nobly amplified, expanding a slight hint into some glorious passage, and elevating a creeping dialogue into an impassioned scene. His judgment was always the joint-workman of his fancy.
Who by the interior evidence could have conjectured that the following Shakespearian effusion, musical with his own music, was, in truth, a mere transcription from an old play of Richard Duke of York, whose author remains unknown? I mark by italics the rejections of Shakespeare. In the slight emendations, we may observe that our poet consulted his ear; but in the first verse he has chosen a more expressive term.
| ————Doves will peck in rescue (safeguard) of their brood. Unreasonable creatures feed their young; And though man’s face be fearful to their eyes, Yet, in protection of their tender ones, Who hath not seen them even with those same wings Which they have sometimes used in fearful flight, (Which sometime they have used with fearful flight,) Make war with him that climb’d unto their nest, Offering their own lives in their young’s defence? |
The speech of Queen Margaret, in the third part of Henry the Sixth, Act V. Scene IV., in the old play, consisted of a single metaphor included in twelve lines. The single metaphor was not rejected, but it is amplified and nobly sustained through forty lines in the queen’s animated address to the lords:—
| The mast but now blown overboard, The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, &c. |