sheep, chickens', wrens, drones, caterpillars 10, calves 11, sucking lambs 12, harmless doves 12, hateful ravens 12, mournful crocodiles 14, snakes in flowery banks 14, empty eagles', hungry kites7 & 15, labouring spiders 15, sharp-quilld porcupines 16, basilisks 17, scorpions 18, 4 new. ♦ The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.—2 Hen. VI, III. i. 55. But when the fox hath once got in his nose, n. n. n. n. ท. n. 0. He'll soon find means to make the body follow.—3 H. VI, IV. vii. 25. 7 Were't not all one, an empty eagle were set To guard the chicken from a hungry kite ... So the poor chicken should be sure of death. Suf. Madam, 'tis true and were't not madness, then, To make the fox surveyor of the fold?-2 Hen. VI, III. i. 248–253. * But what a point, my lord, your falcon made. 2 Hen. VI, I. 15. (see 12) See too 1. 12. old. Came he right now to sing a raven's note . . 0. a. And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight.-2 H. VI, III. ii. 52. See note', 9 Drones suck not eagle's blood, but rob bee-hives.—2 H. VI, IV. i. 109. (This must be the cur and lion aphorism man of III. i. 19, 20. p. 280, and note1, p. 283.) And care not who they sting in his revenge.-2 H. VI, III. ii. 125. 10 Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, And caterpillars eat my leaves away.-2 H. VI, III. i. 90. n. "And as the butcher takes away the calf, n. n. And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays, Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house.-2 H. VI, III. i. 210. n. Then is sin struck down like an ox, and iniquity's throat cut like a calf. 2 H. VI, IV. ii. 29. 12 Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent From meaning treason to our royal person, As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove.—2 H. VI, III. i. 71. Queen. Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrow'd, (see 3) Is he a lamb ? his skin is surely lent him, (see ") For he's inclined as is the ravenous wolf.—2 H. VI, III. i. 75-8. Gloucester's show Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile n. With sorrow snares relenting passengers, n. N. a. 0. 0. Or as the snake roll'd in a flowering bank, With shining checker'd slough doth sting a child.—2 H. VI, III. i. 226. 15 Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh, And sees fast by, a butcher with an axe, But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter? 0. Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, a. But may imagine how the bird was dead, 0. Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?-2 H. VI, III. ii. 188-193 Were almost like a sharp-quill'd porpentine.—2 H. VI, III, i. 363. heifers, partridges, puttocks 15, screech-owls 17, lizards 17, adders 20, serpents 21 & 16, snakes 22, and lastly, loud-howling wolves 3 & 12, to say nothing of bears, are laid under sudden contributions to express the motives, designs, and misfortunes, of the dramatis persona. these, and you would reduce the play (2 Hen. VI) by one half.” Excise Who then is this farmyard and menagerie man who often indulges in aphorisms? He is in 3 Hen. VI too.1 Is he one, or two or new." Their chiefest prospect, murdering basilisks! old. Their softest touch as smart as lizards' stings! 0. 0. a. n. 18 Their music frightful as the serpent's hiss! And boding screech-owls make the concert full ! 2 H. VI, III. ii. 324-7. (? Marlowe) See p. 254-5, note, above. Seek not a scorpion's nest, Nor set no footing on this unkind shore.-2 H. VI, III. ii. 86. n. 19 My brain more busy than the labouring spider, n. Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.-2 H. VI, III. i. 339. n. n. 20 What! art thou, like the adder, waxen deaf?-2 H. VI, III. ii. 76. 21 Were there a serpent seen, with forkèd tongue, That slily glided towards your majesty . . they will guard you, whether you will or no, พ. N. n. From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is. 2 H. VI, III. ii. 259-266. 22 I fear me you but warm the starvèd snake.-2 H. VI, III. i. 343. And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades.—2 H. VI, IV. i. 3. This is the shepherd beaten from thy side, n. N. a. a. And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first. 2 H. VI, III. i. 192. He certainly comes in in II. ii, if not before, and is there the man of the cur and lion and drones', above. Who 'scapes the lurking serpent's mortal sting?... 15 9 a. a. As venom toads or lizards' dreadful stings. II. ii. 138. a. 0. 0. 0. For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt, And whither fly the gnats but to the sun? II. vi, 8, 9. II. vi. 56. II. vi. 94-5. The new lines on the greyhounds and hare, at the end of II. v. 130-1, look very like Shakspere's. Among earlier passages are:— [new] such safety finds [new] The trembling lamb, environèd with wolves. I. i, 242. So looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch [new] That trembles under his devouring paws. I. iv. three? If he's Shakspere, if he's Greene', if he's Marlowe, or all of 'em, let him be recognizd, and parallel passages from him2 produced or referrd to. But I cannot consent to consider as final, any opinion on the authors of 2 and 3 Hen. VI which passes over in silence a staring characteristic of this kind3, and refuses to notice it when challengd so to do. Further, when the critic I want, comes, I expect he will confess that, though he can say certainly of a speech like Humphrey Duke of Gloster's in 2 Hen. VI, I. i. 79-103, or King Henry's in 3 Hen. VI, II. v., 'This is Shakspere's', yet he soon loses the feeling that the revision of the play bears marks of Shakspere's hand. I expect he will agree with Miss Lee—and with me, for it was a conviction that I expresst in my first lecture on 2 Hen. VI, long before Miss Lee wrote me hers that Marlowe, or some one of his school, helpt in the revision of the plays; and I should not be surprisd if the said critic held that there were-indeed, I feel sure that he will hold that there are,-parts of the finisht plays for which neither Shakspere nor Marlowe is responsible, so rough, ranty, or poor are they. I could willingly accept as many hands in the Folio 2 and 3 Henry VI as there are in 1 Henry VI. Every fresh time I read 2 and 3 Henry VI, the less share in them am I inclind to set down to Shakspere, [new] Or lambs pursu'd by hunger-starvèd wolves. I. iv. 5. a. old. 0. n. 0. So doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons. I. iv. 41. (raven's: old.) O, ten times more, than tigers of Hyrcania. [new] Or as a bear encompasst round with dogs, I. iv. 155. The rest stand all aloof, and bark at him *. II. i. 13—17. 0. like the night-owl's lazy flight, o. a. Or like a lazy thrasher with a flail. II. i. 130-1. For later instances see V. vi., &c. 1 "Many of [Greene's] dramas breathe in some degree that indescribable freshness, that air blown from over English homesteads and English meads, which we recognise as a Shaksperean characteristic, and which belongs to none but a wholly and truly national art."-Prof. Ward, Hist. Dram. Lit., i. 225. I agree with Prof. Ward in his praise of Greene-the man with best claim to be Shakspere's predecessor in comedy-as heartily as I disagree with him in thinking "that Greene had no share in the old plays on which the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI were founded."-i. 224. 2 See the lion above, p. 259. 3 You might as well pass over the ryme of one writer in 1 Hen. VI. It's a stronger feeling than comes over one in reading The Two Noble Kinsmen. ? This by Shakspere from the bear-baitings he saw when 11 at Kenilworth or afterwards in Paris Gardens, Southwark, As to his share in The though I cannot shut him out of them. Contention and True Tragedy: if I could make up my mind that the first sketch of Cade-with which I put the first sketch of Grumio in the Taming of A Shrew '-was not Shakspere's, I should gladly agree with Miss Lee, as I even now strongly incline to do, that Shakspere had no hand in these sketch-plays. The man who could write the first Grumio, Sander,-which is too the name of the 'Poore man' or cripple in the Contention, p. 22, old Sh. Soc. ed.—could write the first Cade, I think, or vice versa. There are few things that I regret more in Shakspere's career than this, that he didn't turn back to the superb subject of these Henry VI plays, and write a fresh set on it. To an old Arthur man like myself, the reproduction of the Lancelot and Guinevere love in Suffolk and Queen Margaret, though with bitterer end, gives a strange interest to the drama. And when this thread is woven with the others of Margaret's ambition cutting down Gloster, the sole support of her and her husband's throne; the working out of her punishment for this, through the quarrels of the nobles and the insidious Richard's schemes; when one sees this Queen of 'peerless feature. . . valiant courage and undaunted spirit', robbd of her love, her kingdom, and her child; the current of her being changd; the woman turnd into a demon and a fury; then, dethroned, uttering the dread curse of Fate and Vengeance on the crafty cynical Richard in the pride of his success, and then witnessing the fulfilment of that curse on him defiant, fearing Death as little as he feard Sin, I say you have a combination of personal and political passions and motives which, had Shakspere gone back to it later in life, would have given the world the finest historical dramas it will ever own1. Miss Lee has kindly undertaken to edit the Contention and True Tragedy for us in parallel columns with 2 and 3 Henry VI. In the course of this work, I hope and believe that she will be able to come to even more definite results than she has yet attaind. And though my remarks may seem to imply ungratefulness for all the time and thought she has devoted to the subject for us, it is not so. I do admire her power and care-let any one contrast her Paper with the mere reproduction of Mr Grant White's view in the late Cambridge Prize-Essay on the same subject, and see what the difference between them implies-I envy her the advance that she, so young, has made, after her start under her brilliant leader, Professor Dowden. But I am sure that she will not stand still where she is; I cannot doubt that she will give us hereafter even a clearer and better judgment than she has yet deliverd on this Henry VI question, the most difficult of all Shakspere problems. ' And I am sure that in them would not have been wanting the picture of our old Furnivall, 'the great Alcides of the field, Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury' (1 Hen. VI, IV. vii, 60), which Nash recorded as so moving the Elizabethans. (A.D. 1592. Pierce Penilesse, p. 62, old Sh. Soc.) Miss Lee's edition for us may have to be a 3- or 4-Text one, with the 4to of 1619, and perhaps a revis'd text. Such alterations as occur in some parts of the 1619 Quarto-even allowing that the main ones are only four or five-must be notict and accounted for in any complete view of the plays. Here are the 4 strongest changes, from Mr Halliwell's Preface and Notes in the old Shakespeare Society's edition : Who is responsible for the italic and clarendon parts of the 1619 edition? who for the small-capitals part of the 1623? As Mr Halliwell says: "It will be at once seen that these differences (between the 1594 and 1619 versions) cannot be the result of" such "emendation" as produced "the differences of the second Folio" from the First. "I will produce another and a stronger instance. sc. ii, the edition of 1594 has these two lines: But ere it be long, I'll go before them all, In Act I. In the Quarto of 1619 and the Folio of 1623, "instead of these two lines, we have a different speech, an elaboration of the . . . two" lines of the 1594 Quarto (the spelling is modernizd) : 1619. Contention, Act I. sc. ii. I'll come after you, for I cannot go before, As long as Gloster bears this base and humble mind: ... 1623. 2 Henry VI, Act I. sc. ii. FOLLOW I MUST: I cannot go before, WHILE Gloster bears this base and humble mind: |