While there is every indication that in 1611 Shakespeare abandoned dramatic composition, there seems
little doubt that he left with the manager of his company unfinished drafts of more than one play which others were summoned at a later date to complete. His place at the head of the active dramatists was at once filled by John Fletcher, and Fletcher, with some aid possibly from his friend Philip Massinger, undertook the working up of Shakespeare’s unfinished sketches. On September 9, 1653, the publisher Humphrey Moseley obtained a license for the publication of a play which he described as ‘History of Cardenio, by Fletcher and Shakespeare.’ This was probably identical with the lost play, ‘Cardenno,’ or ‘Cardenna,’ which was twice acted at Court by Shakespeare’s company in 1613—in May during the Princess Elizabeth’s marriage festivities, and on June 8 before the Duke of Savoy’s ambassador. [258a] Moseley, whose description may have been fraudulent, [258b] failed to publish the piece, and nothing is otherwise known of it with certainty; but it was no doubt a dramatic version of the adventures of the lovelorn Cardenio which are related in the first part of ‘Don Quixote’ (ch. xxiii.-xxxvii.) Cervantes’s amorous story, which first appeared in English in Thomas Shelton’s translation in 1612, offers much incident in Fletcher’s vein. When Lewis Theobald,
the Shakespearean critic, brought out his ‘Double Falshood, or the Distrest Lovers,’ in 1727, he mysteriously represented that the play was based on an unfinished and unpublished draft of a play by Shakespeare. The story of Theobald’s piece is the story of Cardenio, although the characters are renamed. There is nothing in the play as published by Theobald to suggest Shakespeare’s hand, [259a] but Theobald doubtless took advantage of a tradition that Shakespeare and Fletcher had combined to dramatise the Cervantic theme.
‘Two Noble Kinsmen.’
Two other pieces, ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ and ‘Henry VIII,’ which are attributed to a similar partnership, survive. [259b] ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ was first printed in 1634, and was written, according to the title-page, ‘by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen.’ It was included in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher of 1679. On grounds alike of æsthetic criticism and metrical tests, a substantial portion of the play was assigned to Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, and Dyce. The last included it in his edition of Shakespeare. Coleridge detected Shakespeare’s hand in act I., act II. sc. i., and act III. sc. i. and ii. In addition to
those scenes, act IV. sc. iii. and act V. (except sc. ii.) were subsequently placed to his credit. Some recent critics assign much of the alleged Shakespearean work to Massinger, and they narrow Shakespeare’s contribution to the first scene (with the opening song, ‘Roses their sharp spines being gone’) and act V. sc. i. and iv. [260] An exact partition is impossible, but frequent signs of Shakespeare’s workmanship are unmistakable. All the passages for which Shakespeare can on any showing be held responsible develop the main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’ of Palamon and Arcite, and seems to have been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, ‘Palæmon and Arcyte,’ by Richard Edwardes, was acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called ‘Palamon and Arsett’ (also lost), was purchased by Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue of ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ is disfigured by indecency and triviality, and is of no literary value.
‘Henry VIII.’
A like problem is presented by ‘Henry VIII.’ The play was nearly associated with the final scene in the history of that theatre which was identified with the triumphs of Shakespeare’s career. ‘Henry VIII’ was in course of performance at the Globe Theatre on June 29, 1613, when the firing of some cannon incidental to the performance set fire to the playhouse, which was burned down. The theatre was rebuilt next year, but the
new fabric never acquired the fame of the old. Sir Henry Wotton, describing the disaster on July 2, entitled the piece that was in process of representation at the time as ‘All is True representing some principal pieces in the Reign of Henry VIII.’ [261] The play of ‘Henry VIII’ that is commonly allotted to Shakespeare is loosely constructed, and the last act ill
coheres with its predecessors. The whole resembles an ‘historical masque.’ It was first printed in the folio of Shakespeare’s works in 1623, but shows traces of more hands than one. The three chief characters—the king, Queen Katharine of Arragon, and Cardinal Wolsey—bear clear marks of Shakespeare’s best workmanship; but only act i. sc. i., act ii. sc. iii. and iv. (Katharine’s trial), act iii. sc. ii. (except ll. 204-460), act v. sc. i. can on either æsthetic or metrical grounds be confidently assigned to him. These portions may, according to their metrical characteristics, be dated, like the ‘Winter’s Tale,’ about 1611. There are good grounds for assigning nearly all the remaining thirteen scenes to the pen of Fletcher, with occasional aid from Massinger. Wolsey’s familiar farewell to Cromwell (III. ii. 204-460) is the only passage the authorship of which excites really grave embarrassment. It recalls at every point the style of Fletcher, and nowhere that of Shakespeare. But the Fletcherian style, as it is here displayed, is invested with a greatness that is not matched elsewhere in Fletcher’s work. That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty once and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to the alternative conclusion that the noble valediction was by Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versatility by echoing in a glorified key the habitual strain of Fletcher, his colleague and virtual successor. James Spedding’s theory that Fletcher hastily completed Shakespeare’s unfinished draft for the special purpose of enabling the company to celebrate the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, which