But it is not only with the general design of the play and its feeble characterization that fault is found, but also with the versification. The earliest criticism on the peculiarity of the metre of the play appeared about 1757. It consists of some remarks, published by Mr. Thomas Edwards, which were made by Mr. Roderick on Warburton’s edition of Shakespeare. Mr. Roderick, after pointing out that there are in the play many more lines than in any other which end with a redundant syllable, continues:
“This Fact (whatever Shakespeare’s design was in it) is undoubtedly true, and may be demonstrated to Reason, and proved to sense; the first by comparing any number of lines in this Play, with an equal number in any other Play, by which it will appear that this Play has very near two redundant verses to one in any other Play. And to prove it to sense, let anyone read aloud an hundred lines in any other Play, and an hundred in this; and if he perceives not the tone and cadence of his own voice to be involuntarily altered in the latter case from what it was in the former, I would never advise him to give much credit to the information of his ears.”
Later on we find that Emerson is also struck with the peculiarity of the metre, and in his lecture on “Representative Men,” observes:
“In ‘Henry VIII.’ I think I see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his (Shakespeare’s) own finer structure was laid. The first play was written by a superior thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines and know well their cadence. See Wolsey’s soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm; here the lines are constructed on a given tune; and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence.”
Now these quotations, it may be urged, were picked out with a view to prejudice a favourable opinion of the play. But disparagements are, none the less, important links in a question of authorship. In fact it was because Shakespearian critics, of undisputed authority, declared that “Henry VIII.” was not a play worthy of the poet’s genius that a few advanced scholars were encouraged to come forward and pronounce that no part of the play had been written by Shakespeare.
In the autumn of 1850 Mr. Spedding, the able editor of Bacon’s works, published a paper in the Gentleman’s Magazine in which he stated it to be his belief that a great portion of the play of “Henry VIII.” was written by Fletcher; a conjecture that indeed had been anticipated and was at once confirmed by other writers. Tennyson, on Mr. Spedding’s authority, had pointed out many years previously the resemblance of the style in some parts of the play to Fletcher’s. In fact, the conclusion arrived at by the advanced critics was that the play has two totally different metres which are the work of two different authors. On this point Mr. Spedding wrote:
“A distinction so broad and so uniform running through so large a portion of the same piece cannot have been accidental, and the more closely it is examined, the more clearly will it appear that the metre in these two sets of scenes is managed upon entirely different principles and bears evidence of different workmen.”
This conclusion, however, was not endorsed by all commentators. It was acknowledged that metrical evidence must not be neglected, and that “there is no play of Shakespeare’s in which eleven syllable lines are so frequent as they are in “Henry VIII.”; and even Swinburne, whose faith in Shakespeare’s authorship was unwavering, asserted “that if not the partial work it may certainly be taken as the general model of Fletcher, in some not unimportant passages.” It was contended besides that the poet’s hand was hampered by a difficulty inherent in the subject, since of all Shakespeare’s plays, “Henry VIII.” is the nearest in its story to the poet’s own time, and that the elliptical construction and the licence of versification, which are peculiar to this play, are necessary in order to bring the dialogue closer to the language of common life. In fact, Mr. Spedding’s opponents, while admitting an anonymous hand in the prologue and epilogue, rejected the theory as to the manner in which the collaboration was carried out, and asserted that the structure of the play, the development of the action and the characters showed it to be the work of one hand, and that Shakespeare’s.
Another challenger of the metre was Mr. Robert Boyle, who endeavoured to show, from a careful and elaborate study of Elizabethan blank verse, that Shakespeare had no share whatever in the composition of the play, and that whoever was the author who collaborated with Fletcher (in Mr. Boyle’s opinion it was Massinger) he certainly did not write before 1612, for the metrical peculiarities of the verse are those of the later dramatic style, of which the earliest characteristics did not make themselves felt in the work of any poet till about 1607. It was after reading this paper that Robert Browning, then the president of the New Shakspere Society, wrote his final judgment on the play which was published in the Society’s “Transactions.”