the originals of the two plays in hand, then why may not the resembling passages collated by Mr. Dyce have been a part of the very matter referred to in Greene's "upstart crow beautified with OUR feathers"? It is remarkable that, with the exception of the resemblances pointed out by Mr. Dyce, those who have concurred with Malone in taking the old plays from Shakespeare, have added nothing to Malone's arguments. And it is equally remarkable that those who agree that Shakespeare did not write them are at considerable odds amongst themselves as to who did. Malone at first thought that either Greene and Peele wrote them conjointly, or that Greene wrote the one and Peele the other; but afterwards he was "inclined to believe that Marlowe was the author of one, if not of both." Mr. Collier, speaking of the Contention, says, — “By whom it was written we have no information;" and of the True Tragedy he says, "Although there is no ground whatever for giving it to Marlowe, there is some reason for supposing that it came from the pen of Robert Greene." Mr. Hallam says, "It seems probable that the old plays were in great part by Marlowe, though Greene seems to put in for some share in their composition." And in another place he speaks thus: "The greater part of the plays is, in the judgment, I conceive, of all competent critics, far above the powers either of Greene or Peele, and exhibits a much greater share of the spirited versification, called by Jonson the mighty line' of Christopher Marlowe." Concurrent with this latter is the judgment of Mr. Dyce: "Greene may have contributed his share; so also may Lodge, and so may Peele have done: but in both pieces there are scenes characterized by a vigour of conception and expression, to which, as their undisputed works demonstratively prove, neither Greene, nor Lodge, nor Peele could possibly have risen." The other part of the question may be despatched with comparative brevity and ease; the main points of the argument having been some of them stated, and all of them suggested in our Introduction to the preceding play. For the conclusion, urged from the Epilogue to Henry V. in case of the First Part, holds equally strong in reference to the Second and Third. The three plays have a common subject, namely, the showing how, in the reign of Henry VI., "so many had the managing, that they lost France, and made his England bleed.” The losing of France is the special matter of the First Part; the making England bleed, of the Second and Third; both of which, the Poet, when writing that Epilogue, took upon him to say, "oft our stage hath shown." And with what propriety could he beg the audience to accept a play of his making, because they had already accepted plays not of his making? Would he ask them to smile on what he had written, inasmuch as they had been wont to smile on what he had stolen? Or, to put the thing more fairly, their having liked some plays that he had merely enlarged was surely an odd reason why they should like a play originated by him. So that we seem to have from the Poet himself an implied claim of authorship in the case. We have another point of external evidence, perhaps equally strong, in the simple fact of the plays' being given to the world as Shakespeare's, by those who had every opportunity to know the truth, and no apparent motive to put forth any thing as his, which was known to be from another. Their Preface shows that the editors of the first folio knew well what they were about, and why. Nor may this argument be so easily nonsuited by supposing their action in this case to have stood on the ground of Shakespeare's acknowledged additions. For the quartos were at hand, their authorship apt to be known; and any careful reader might see that the entire conception and more than half the execution of the plays in question were there. And when the editors speak of "divers maimed and deformed copies," as being " now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbs," what more likely than that those very quartos may have been among the copies meant? At all events, their purpose, as it ought to have been, manifestly was, to set forth none but perfect copies of what they knew Shakespeare to have written. Malone's argument from the internal evidence views the plays separately and without any reference to one another. As what strength it has seems chiefly owing to this mode of viewing them apart, so it may doubtless be best met by viewing them together. If, then, we take the three parts of Henry VI. together with Richard III., we shall find them all to be so connected that each for mer play of the series is a necessary introduction to the following, and each later one a necessary sequel to the preceding; that is, they will appear to be four plays only because too long to be one, or two, or three. Perhaps the force of this argument may be best approved by trying it in another case. Now, it is quite manifest that Richard II. is essentially a play to be continued: it was evi. dently written with the matter and design of the following play in mind. Hence the several forecastings and givings-out which it has, concerning events and passages that are left unrepresented in the play itself. These are as germs thrown in with purpose of future development: the Poet is not content to set forth the transactions of the play clearly for what they are in themselves, but takes care that we shall also regard them as the first beginnings of things yet to be, thus awakening an expectation of something further, and preparing the reader's mind for his intended sequel. Such, it scarce need be said, are the prophetic remonstrances of the intrepid Bishop, in Act iv. sc. 1: "And if you crown him, let me prophesy, The blood of English shall manure the ground; And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars Shall kin with kin, and kind with kind confound; "— the predictions of Richard to Northumberland in Act v. sc. 1: The time shall not be many hours of age And he shall think that thou, which know'st the way Being ne'er so little urg'd, another way To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne; and above all the dialogue touching Prince Henry in Act v. sc. 3, closing up with Bolingbroke's happy forecast of his son : "As dissolute as desperate; yet, through both, I see some sparks of better hope, which elder days Now these are manifest impertinences but that they look to a fur ther representation. It were hardly possible for the Poet to give out promise of a sequel in clear terms. Viewed in this light, the things are great beauties; otherwise, they are blemishes altogether. Of course the anticipations thus raised are met and answered in Henry IV., which in turn has many minute and careful references to events set forth in the foregoing play. Such are Hotspur's mad snappish retrospections of Bolingbroke in Act i. sc. 3; his reference in Art iv. sc. 3, to the circumstances of the king's first landing, "when his blood was poor, upon the naked shore at Ravenspurg;" the king's recurrence, in Part II., Act iii. sc. 2, to the forecited prophecy of Richard; and especially the alternate riotings, repentings, and heroisms of the prince. Thus the two plays are closely connected by a variety of reciprocal allusions; insomuch that, if Henry IV. had come down to us as Shakespeare's, and Richard II. as anonymous, there could be almost as little doubt, it should seem, as to the authorship of the latter, as of the former. So much, then, might be reasonably inferred from the mere logical adjustment and correspondence of the plays to each other. Still stronger were the inference from the manifest unity of design and action, running the two plays together as a consistent and continuous whole, the first bespeaking the second, and the second in turn supposing the first. For, granting that the second, though taken up as an afterthought, might be thus logically and dramatically fitted to the first, still there is the forethought of the second pervading the first, which were hardly reconcileable with diversity of authorship. Then, over and above all this, there is an identity of conception and characterization in the two plays, resulting in a vital, organic unity and continuity. And this is the strongest argument of all. For it might be safely affirmed, that none but the beginner of Bolingbroke's character in Richard II. could have thus continued it in Henry IV. Now this argument will hold good in every particular, and, if possible, with still greater force, between Henry VI. and Richard III. Not only is the latter dramatically and logically fitted to the former, but the design and purpose of the latter were evidently in the author's mind while writing the former. And the unity of characterization, in Edward, Margaret, and especially in Richard, is every whit as perfect, as organic, and as strong, as in case of Bolingbroke. We may safely affirm that The Third Part of Henry VI., as it stands in the quarto, is, in its design, structure, and conception, essentially a drama to be continued. But this point needs illustrating, and our specimens shall all be from the original form of the play. Thus in Richard's soliloquy, Act iii. sc. 2: "Ay, Edward will use women honourably. Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all! Thus also in Henry's prophecy to Richard in the Tower, Act v. sc. 6: "That many a widow for her husband's death, And many an infant's water-standing eye, Widows for their husbands, children for their fathers, And in Richard's dark mutterings to himself in the same scene after killing Henry: "Clarence, beware; thou keep'st me from the light; And again the breaking out of his bloody designs in the last scene; the third line of course referring to his head and his hand: "This shoulder was ordain'd so thick, to heave; And heave it shall some weight, or break my back And, above all, the episodical dialogue and prophecy of Henry touching young Richmond, Act iv. sc. 6: "Come hither, pretty lad: If heavenly powers Do aim aright to my divining thoughts, Thou, preuy boy, shalt prove this country's bliss." It were needless to urge how out of place these things are, save as bespeaking a continuation of the subject, and just such a con tinuation, withal, as we have in Richard III. In the latter play the seeds, which had been thus dropped for future bearing, " become the hatch and brood of time." Among the very first things we meet with therein is the avowal of "inductions dangerous already set on foot in fulfilment of the promise touching Clarence. And in Act iv. sc. 2, we have Richard remembering how Henry "Did prophesy that Richmond should be king, And the latter play abounds quite unusually in references to what was said and done in the former. For instance, in Act i. sc. 4, we find that Clarence has been dreaming of his perjury to Warwick, and of his stabbing Prince Edward in the field by Tewksbury; both which events occurred in Act v. scenes 1 and 5 of the preceding play. Again, in the former play, Act i. sc. 4, we have the napkin dipped in Rutland's blood, and given to his father, and York saying to his tormentors, who had mockingly crowned him with paper,Here, take the crown, and with the crown my curse," and when the savage cruelties are over, Margaret says, -"What! weeping-ripe, my lord Northumberland ?" All which things are minutely referred to in Act i. sc. 3, of the latter play, where Margaret is put to a recollection of her cruelty, Buckingham telling her how "Northumberland, then present, wept to see it," and Richard reminding her of "The curse my noble father laid on thee, When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper |