In fact I would say the play is not mainly Shakspere's because of its un-Shaksperean depth. Who can sympathize with the cold, coarse balancing of Emilia between the two men—eager to have one, ready to take either; betrothed in haste to one, married in haste to another—so far flying in the face of the pure
beauty of the original, where Emilia never loses maidenly reserve. Then the final marriage of the Gaoler's Daughter is as destructive of our sympathy as if Ophelia had been saved from drowning by the grave-digger, and married to Horatio at the end of the piece. The pedantry of Gerrold is poor, the fun of the rustics forced and feeble, the sternness of Theseus brutal and untouched by final gentleness as in Chaucer.
Another argument against Shakspere's responsibility for the whole play is the manner in which the minor characters are introduced and the underplot managed. A secondary plot is a characteristic of the Elizabethan drama, borrowed from that of Spain. But Shakspere is peculiar in the skill with which he interweaves the two plots and brings together the principal and the inferior personages. In Hamlet the soldiers on the watch, the grave-diggers, the players, the two walking gentlemen, even Osric, all help on the action of the drama and come into relation with the hero himself. In King Lear, Edmund and Gloster and Edgar, though engaged in a subsidiary drama of their own, get mixed up with the fortunes of the King and his daughters. In Othello, the foolish Venetian Roderigo and Bianca the courtesan have some hand in the progress of the play. In Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse and the Friar are agents of the main plot, and the ball scene pushes on the action. In Shylock, Lancelot Gobbo is servant to the Jew, and helps Jessica to escape. I need not multiply instances, as in Much Ado about Nothing, Dogberry, &c. As far as my own recollection serves, I do not believe that in any play undoubtedly Shakspere's we have a single instance of an underplot like that of the Gaoler's Daughter. It might be altogether omitted without affecting the story. Theseus, Emilia, Hippolyta, Arcite, Palamon, never exchange a word with the group of Gaoler's Daughter, Wooer, Brother, two Friends and Doctor; and Palamon's only remembrance of her services is that at his supposed moment of execution he generously leaves her the money he had no further need of to help her to get married to a remarkably tame young man who assumes the name of his rival in order to bring his sweetheart to her senses. If this underplot is due to Shakspere, why is there none like it in all his works? If these exceedingly thin and very detached minor characters are his, where in his undoubted plays are others like them—thus hanging loosely on to the main machinery of a play? Nor must we forget that if this underplot is Shakspere's, it is his when he was an experienced dramatist—so that after being a skilful constructor and connecter of plot and underplot in his youth, 'his right hand forgot its cunning' in his middle age.
Two other arguments. In the Prologue of the play, written and recited when it was acted, there are two passages expressing great fears as to the result,—one that Chaucer might rise to condemn the dramatist for spoiling his story,—another that the play might be damned, and destroy the fortunes of the Theatre[115:1]. Is this the way in which a play partly written by Shakspere—then near the close of his successful stage career—would be spoken of on its production?
Another argument is, if Shakspere, using Chaucer's poem as a model, spoiled it in dramatising it[115:2], then as a poet he was inferior to Chaucer—which is absurd.
Following high authorities, anybody may adopt any opinion on this play and find backers—the extremes being the German Tieck, who entirely rejects the idea of Shakspere's authorship, and Mr Hickson, who throws on him the responsibility for the whole framework of a play and the groundwork of every character. I should incline to the middle opinion[116:1], that Shakspere selected the subject, began the play, wrote many passages; had no underplot, and generally left it in a skeleton state; that Fletcher took it up, patched it here and there, and added an underplot;—that Fletcher, not Shakspere, is answerable for all the departures from Chaucer, for all the underplot, and for the revised play as it stands. There is nothing improbable in this. After Shakspere retired to Stratford, Fletcher may have found the play amongst the MSS. of the Theatre, and then produced it after due changes made—not giving the author's name. At that time it was the custom that a play remained the property of the company of actors who produced it. That the Blackfriars Company did not regard the play as Shakspere's is pretty plain—for in the edition of 1623, published by Heminge and Condell of that company, Shakspere's own fellow-players, the play is not included. Nor does the part authorship account for the omission, as plays with less of Shakspere's undoubted authorship are there included. But the omission is intelligible if the play had been so Fletcherised that it was, when acted, generally regarded as Fletcher's. Fletcher was alive in 1623 to claim all as his property; but in 1634 he was dead. Then the publisher, knowing or hearing that Shakspere had a share, printed his name, after Fletcher's, as part dramatist. Thus I return to the older verdict of Coleridge and Lamb, that Shakspere wrote passages of this play, perhaps also the outlines, but that Fletcher filled up, added an underplot, and finally revised.
FOOTNOTES:
[115:1] Does not this as much imply that Fletcher knew he had spoiled what Shakspere would have done well?—H. L.
[115:2] But this is confessedly the case with Chaucer's Troilus.—F. [Not quite. In Troilus the travestie is intentional: in the Two N. K. Chaucer is solemnly Cibberised.—J. H. S.]