thin embellishment with which it was disguised by Shakespeare, and especially in the first and second Scenes of the first Act; - that traces of Marlowe's furious pen may be discerned in the second and third Scenes of Act II. ; and I should be inclined to attribute the couplets of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Scenes of Act IV. to Peele, (for their pathos is quite like his in motive, and it must be remembered that Shakespeare has retouched them,) were it not that Peele could hardly have written so many distichs without falling once into a peculiarity of rhyme which constantly occurs in his works, and which consists in making an accented syllable rhyme with one that is unaccented.* But perhaps Shakespeare amended the passage in this respect as

* As in these instances, which are all from one play, (though far from being all that occur in it,) and the first three of which occur in four, and two others in two, consecutive couplets:

"Flo. Where Phoebe means to make this meeting royal, Have I prepar'd to welcome them withal.

Pom. And are they yet dismounted, Flora, say,

That we may wend to meet them on their way?

Flo. That shall not need—they are at hand by this,

And the conductor of the train, hight Rhanis.*
Juno hath left her chariot long ago,

And hath returned her peacocks by her rainbow."

Arraignment of Paris, Act I. Sc. 2.

"Ven. But wend we on; and Rhanis, lead the way, That kens the painted paths of pleasant Ida."

Idem. Act I. Sc. 4 [and passim.]

"Ven. But pray you tell me Juno, was it so, As Pallas told me here the tale of Echo?"

Idem. Act II. Sc. 1.

"Juno. If then this prize be but bequeath'd to beauty, The only she that wins this prize am 1."

"Jun. And for thy meed, sith I am queen of riches, Shepherd, I will reward thee with great monarchies."

Idem. Ibid.

Idem. Act II. Sc. 2.

"Merc. If, as my office bids, myself first brings To my sweet madam these unwelcome tidings."

Idem. Act III. Sc. 6.

"Ven. And crave this grace of this immortal senate,
That ye allow the man his advocate.

Pal. That may not be; the laws of heaven deny
A man to plead or answer by attorney."

Idem. Act IV. Sc. 4.

[ My ingenious friend Mr. Q. Nunc will be glad to have his attention directed to this evidence of the antiquity of railways.]

well as in others; and indeed, as he quite surely did add to and improve this play, all attempts to parcel out its authorship must be sheer conjecture.

XII.

As to the period at which all this writing and rewriting was done, we cannot expect to determine it with the certainty with which astronomers calculate a past conjunction of planets. But there are five dates, as to only one of which can there be any doubt, that enable us to decide the question with at least a high degree of probability. The first is the date of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, 1592; the second, that of Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse, in which the Talbot of the First Part of King Henry the Sixth is mentioned as "embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least," 1592; * the third, that of a remonstrance or petition of the Blackfriars company, in which the name of Shakespeare appears as a shareholder in that theatre, 1589; + the fourth, that of Greene's Funeralls, in which are the verses upon those that so " eclipst his fame," 1594; the fifth, that of an entry in the books of the Stationers' Company, London, by which The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy

"Pal. I grant ye may agree, but be content To doubt upon regard of your agreement.”

Idem, Ibid.

"Jup. We here dismiss thee hence, by order of our senate: Go take thee hence, and there abide thy fate."

Idem. Ibid.

"Jup. Then, dames, that we more freely may debate, And hear th' indifferent sentence of this senate."

Idem. Ibid.

"Ven. Behold I take thy dainty hand to kiss And with my solemn oath confirmed my promise."

Idem. Act V. Sc. 1.

"How would it have joy'd brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeare in his tombe he should triumph againe on the stage; and haue his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least, (at seuerall times) who in the tragedian that represents his person behold him fresh bleeding." Pierce Pennilesse, his Supplication to the Devil. P. 69, Shak. Soc. Reprint.

This is clearly a reference to the pathetic scenes of Talbot's last interview with his son, and his death, in Act IV. Sc. 6 and 7 of the First Part of King Henry the Sixth.

The authenticity of this document has been called in question.
Quoted on p. 411 of this Essay.

are assigned to Thomas Pavier as the First and Second Parts of King Henry the Sixth, 1602.*

For as Greene, in the sneer at his successful rival, quoted in August, (if not earlier,) 1592, a line from The True Tragedy, and in a manner which shows that that play then was well known to the public, it is clear that it could hardly have been written before the end of the preceding year; and as it was manifestly preceded, in historical order, by the First Part of King Henry the Sixth in its original form, and The First Part of the Contention, the composition of the former play, the first of the series both in the order of writing and in the historical order, cannot with probability be placed later than 1590.† And a limit at least as early, and I think earlier, is fixed for the production of this Part by the passage cited from Pierce Pennilesse. For, making all reasonable allowance for hyperbolical phraseology, a play which about the middle of 1592 had drawn the tears of "at least ten thousand spectators" in the small theatres of that day, must have been on the stage quite two years; which places the production of the First Part not later than 1589. But even in 1589 Shakespeare had attained a position altogether inconsistent with his writing plays with Greene and Marlowe for the Earl of Pembrooke his servants; for whatever may have been the looseness of the notions and practices then prevalent in regard to dramatic copyright, it is quite incredible that a shareholder in the Blackfriars company desired to contribute to the gains and the reputation of another company by writing for it as the colaborer of its principal maker of plays, or that

The entries in the Stationers' Register, relative to The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy, as given by Malone, are as follows:"12 March 1593-4.

"Tho. Millington.] A booke intituled the firste parte of the contention of the twoo famous Houses of York and Lancaster, with the Deathe of the good Duke Humphrey and the Banishment and Deathe of the Duke of Sufk. and the tragical Ende of the prowd Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade and the Duke of Yorks first clayme unto the Crowne." "19 April 1602.

"Tho. Pavier.] By assignment from Tho. Millington, salvo jure cujuscunque, the 1st and 2d parts of Henry the VI.: ij. books."

The order of writing and the historical order are not necessarily the same; for, as Mr. Collier has remarked in a note on a passage in Middleton's Widow, (Dodsley's Old Plays, Vol. XII. p. 270, Ed. 1827,) it has been ascertained in more than one instance that the first part of a successful play was written after the second had met with applause.

he would have been allowed to do so. Shakespeare's work, then, upon The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy must have been performed before 1589. And it is clear that he must have done something before that date which showed that his services were well worth securing, in order to make him a proprietor in the leading theatre of London within four years from the time when he arrived there, a penniless youth, to seek his fortune.*

But in 1594, R. B., the author of Greene's Funeralls, writes, in the past tense, of men who had eclipsed Greene's fame by purloining his plumes. Now, there was but one man who at that date had eclipsed Greene's dramatic fame, and that man was William Shakespeare. It appears, then, that as early as 1594 Shakespeare's superiority as a playwright was so far beyond cavil, that even Greene's friends were obliged to admit it publicly, and save his reputation by taking a hint from him, and claiming that he had furnished his rival with the materials out of which he made his success. But as far as the plays under consideration are concerned, Shakespeare's superiority could not have been so established by performances in which Greene had so large a share as he had in The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy; by which joint composition neither could Shakespeare have been charged with purloining Greene's plumes. When, however, he had worked those plays over, and made them all his own, according to the custom of the time, then the case of Greene's friend, Mr. R. B., was at least speciously made out; and therefore we must place the date of that rewriting of The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy before 1594. And finally by the entry in the Stationers' Register we find that these two plays had become part of the series of three, and were known as Parts of King Henry the Sixth, before 1602.

* I believe, too, that it is to Shakespeare as well as to Marlowe that Greene alludes in the following passage in the Address to the Gentlemen Readers' prefixed to his Perimedes, published in 1588: "If there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blancke verse, I thinke either it is the humor of a nouice that tickles them with self loue, or to much frequenting the hot house (to vse the Germaine proverbe) hath swet out all the greatest part of their wits," &c. (Apud Rev. A. Dyce. Greene's Works, Vol. I. p. xlvi.) It seems to me that Shakespeare is the novice referred to, and Marlowe the debauchee. Both preferred blank verse to couplets. This opinion may have been previously expressed without my knowledge.

If, therefore, we may conclude, that within two or three years of Shakespeare's arrival in London, that is, about 1587 or 1588, he was engaged to assist Marlowe, Greene, and perhaps Peele, in dramatizing the events of King Henry the Sixth's reign for the Earl of Pembroke's servants, or on a venture; - that by the facility with which he wrote, as well as by the novelty and superiority of his style, he gradually got most of the work into his own hands, and at last, in the course of a year or two, achieved such a marked success in The True Tragedy (which seems to be chiefly his) as to provoke the envy and malice of one at least of his senior colaborers, and be offered a share or more in the Blackfriars Theatre if he would write for that company exclusively; - and that after he had accepted this offer and had been for a short time a shareholder, he undertook to rewrite the three plays in the composition of which he had taken so remarkable, and, to him, so eventful a part, and work them into a form in which he might not be unwilling to have them regarded as his own; - and that he accomplished this about 1591 with so great applause as to embitter still more the jealousy of the playwrights whom he had deposed, and thus gave occasion, if not reason, for a charge of plagiarism which soon was stilled by the death of both his colaborers, and yet more by the fertility of his own surpassing genius, we have arrived at a solution of the question which reconciles all the circumstances connected with it in a manner entirely accordant with the theatrical customs of Shakespeare's day and the probable exigencies of his early career. And we have had the pleasure of finding that the Three Parts of King Henry the Sixth, instead of being plays foisted upon us as his, either by his own want of probity, or the hardly less culpable indifference of his fellows and first editors, are doubly interesting as containing some of the earliest productions of his genius wrought into a contemporary monument of his initial triumph.