Qiatmll lm»et0itg fitbrarg Jtiiaca, ^tm f oth BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE IS9I Cornell University Library PR 2835.R6S Did Shakespeare write "Titus Andronicus" 3 1924 013 142 637 The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013142637 DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE "TITUS ANDRONICUS"? BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ESSAYS TOWARDS A CRITICAL METHOD. NEW ESSAYS TOWARDS A CRITICAL METHOD. MONTAIGNE AND SHAKSPERE. BUCKLE AND HIS CRITICS : a Sociological Study. THE SAXON AND THE CELT : a Sociological Study. MODERN HUMANISTS : Studies of Carlyle, Mill, Emer- son, Arnold, Ruskin, and Spencer. THE FALLACY OF SAVING : a Study in Economics. THE EIGHT HOURS QUESTION : a Study in Economics. THE DYNAMICS OF RELIGION : an Essay in English Culture-History. (By " M. W. Wiseman.") A SHORT HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT, Ancient and Modern. (New edition in the press : 2 vols.) PATRIOTISM AND EMPIRE. STUDIES IN RELIGIOUS FALLACY. AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH POLITICS. WRECKING THE EMPIRE. CHRISTIANITY AND MYTHOLOGY. A SHORT HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. PAGAN CHRISTS. CRITICISMS. 2 vols. TENNYSON AND BROWNING AS TEACHERS. ESSAYS IN ETHICS. ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY. 2 vols. LETTERS ON REASONING. DID SHAKESPEARE WRITE "TITOS ANDRONICUS"? A STUDY IN ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE JOHN M. ROBERTSON London: WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.G. 1905 ERRATA Page 25, note. For " Brahine " read" Brabine.' Pag-e 38, line 2. For " at " read " of." Page 39, line 11 from bottom. For " iv " read " iii, 200-1." Page 73, line 10. For " ii, 3 " read 66. Page 73, last line of text. For " ii " read " 83." Page 77, line 19. Delete "checkered." Page 78, line 7. For " True-succeeding" read "True-divining." Page 93, line 3 from bottom. Add "(III, ii)." Page 122, line 10. "Shipwreck" is wrongly cited as special to Titus in the Shakespeare concordance. Page 173, line 6. For " " read " II." Page 201, line 17. For "ii" read " yo." CONTENTS Prologue CHAPTER I. The Critical Situation CHAPTER n. The External Evidence . CHAPTER HI. Shakespeare's Earlier Work 27 CHAPTER IV. The Alleged Internal Evidence 33 CHAPTER V. The Problem Inductively Considered . § I. Preliminary Scientific Tests § 2. The Traces of Peele § 3. Peele's Vocabulary in " Titus " § 4. " Titus " compared with " Locrine " § 5. Greene's and Kyd's V^ocabulary in " Titus § 6. Marlowe's Vocabulary in " Titus " § 7. Lodge's Vocabulary in " Titus " 58 59 64 77 84 100 116 "7 v"« CONTENTS CHAPTER VI. >"*<== Peele's Unsigned Work . . . ■ .120 CHAPTER VH. Greene's Unsigned Work ..... '4' CHAPTER vni. Lodge's Unsigned Work . . . . .176 CHAPTER IX. The Tests of Metre, Versification, and Diction . 185 CHAPTER X. The Tests of Plot, Structure, and Substance . 217 CHAPTER XI. Summary ....... 237 Epilogue Indexes 240 24s PROLOGUE It may be useful to preface the present treatise with a brief account of its evolution. Always unable to see that Titus Andronicus exhibited any of the characteristics of Shakespeare's work, I was long content to rest on the general consensus of English critics of the same way of thinking. Finding that attitude loudly challenged, however, I undertook, some years ago, to seek for grounds of a fully- reasoned opinion, for or against. Beginning, with that aim, to re-read the Elizabethan drama, I ere long framed the provisional hypothesis that Titus was the work of the " author " of Locrine, and that that writer was the author likewise of the Spanish Tragedy. Finding subsequently that this theory had been put forward in the eighteenth century by so good a critic as Farmer, and endorsed by Ritson, I naturally thought the better of it. When, how- ever, I sought to reduce it to precision, I found it inadequate to the phenomena. The problem had been expanded, not solved. On a wider survey, equally unaware that Mr. F. G. Fleay and Mr. A. W. Verity had suggested Peele as the author of Titus, I found plain proof of Did Shakespeare Write "Titus Andronicus " ? Chapter I. THE CRITICAL SITUATION Two generations ago, Charles Knight was almost the only well-known English critic who confidently maintained that the tragedy of Titus Andronicus is a genuine work of Shakespeare. From Theobald onwards, with an increasing disposition to retract even his concessions as to a " revision " by Shake- speare, the tendency of editors and students had been to exclude the play confidently from Shake- speare's list ; and when Knight, fortifying himself with deliverances by Franz Horn and other Germans, undertook to reverse the standing verdict, he found little countenance. But when, in the discussions of the second Shakespeare Society, Mr. Fleay attempted a generation ago to re-establish the case against the play, he was met by some reiteration of Knight's arguments ; and ever since, probably, there has been an English minority of Knight's opinion, kept in countenance by a virtual unanimity 2 THE CRITICAL SITUATION of support from the critics of Germany, who have always, with barely an exception, taken that view. It is not merely the German influence, however, that keeps up among English readers a belief in Shakespeare's authorship of Titus. Professor Boas, who upheld it in his work on Shakespeare and his Predecessors (i8g6), may have been so influenced ; but he had also the notable support of Mr. Halli- well-Phillipps ;' and Professor Churton Collins, who affirms it much more confidently in a recent essay entitled "Shakespearean Paradoxes,"" con- fesses to having ignored German writings on his own side. Other critics, including Mr. H. Bellyse Baildon, who edits the play in the "Arden " edition, have with similar confidence maintained the Shake- spearean authorship ; Dr. Edmund Gosse inci- dentally avows the same opinion ;3 and though the majority, probably, of critical readers in this country remain unbelievers, it cannot be said that there is at present any clear prospect of agreement among students on the old footing. This putting in doubt of a matter long ago com- monly held to be settled, means a state of confusion in Shakespearean scholarship. Since the dissolu- tion of what Dr. Furnivall has called " the second Victorian school of Shakespeareans," there has been something like an arrest of all general pro- gress towards a settlement of the outstanding disputes on the authorship of the plays. That school, typified by Spedding and Fleay, did settle, ' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 5th ed., pp. 91, 247, 581. ' In the National Review, Dec, 1902 ; reprinted in Professor Collins's Studies in Shakespeare, T904. 3 French Profiles, 1905, p. 345. THE CRITICAL SITUATION 3 to the satisfaction of at least a majority of students, the share of Fletcher in Henry VIII and the share of Shakespeare in Pericles, Timon, and the Taming of the Shrew, thus making important steps towards a critical edition of the Master. But beyond this it would be hard to show that anything has been achieved towards a further consensus. The author- ship of the Henry VI group, though the problem was advanced by Miss Jane Lee, remains undecided; and the traditionally-accepted works, as a whole, continue to be indiscriminately reprinted, and to be read by millions of people, whose taste is, in multitudes of cases, vitiated by the habit of reading as the work of a great artist that of inferior artificers. Now that a considerable number of professed students ascribe to Shakespeare a play once confi- dently excluded from some editions of his works, it becomes necessary to take up the whole problem afresh. On the face of the matter, the solution is bound to be difficult — more difficult, indeed, for those who dispute the Shakespearean authorship than for those who affirm it. The former, as a rule, start from a strong impression of the extreme unlikeness of the technique of the play to that of Shakespeare's un- challenged works. From the first line, this impres- sion is for many as unequivocal as their revolt from the action ; and in youth, when conviction comes easily, zealous readers so impressed are apt to think it is as simple a matter to demonstrate what is or is not genuine in the plays as to see the immense inequalities which set up the sense of an alien presence. The reason for this confidence is, broadly, that the strongest impression left by 4 THE CRITICAL SITUATION Shakespeare's style comes from its weightier and maturer forms, which are so utterly aloof from the manner of the disputed plays. It is only when we fully realise the inferiority of the style in parts of the earlier plays which are not commonly disputed, that we perceive the manifold difficulty of proving with any scientific force the justice of our assthetic impressions. At that stage, some critics, like Professor Delius, give up the problem as insoluble ; and the fashion in which some others go about to impose their con- victions, by force of asseveration and disparagement, is apt to bring recruits to the side of scepticism. The late Richard Grant White, for instance, ren- dered to the study of Shakespeare services for which many of us will always be grateful ; but his way of disposing of opposition to some of his ascriptions was not persuasive. Scientifically considered, the kind of problem involved is really very complex. There is, however, ground for hope in the per- ception that thus far it has never been fully brought to exact tests, and that those critics who have pro- nounced for Shakespeare's authorship have, as a rule, least of all attempted such tests. ' It seems obvious that one of the first conditions of a critical appreciation is a comparison of Titus Andronicus with the work of all the other known English playwrights of Shakespeare's early years. Despite, however, some allusions by them to what has been " Unfortunately they have been kept in countenance by so good a scholar and critic as the late Dr. Ingleby, who roundly affirmed that " the author of Titus Andronicus it is now impossible to deter- mine." (Shakespeare: the Man and the Book, 1877, Pt. i., p. 49.) For such peremptory affirmation there is no warrant. Dr. Ingleby had not contemplated the means of ascertainment THE CRITICAL SITUATION 5 said by critics on the other side as to non-Shake- spearean hands in Titus, neither Professor Churton Collins nor Mr. Bellyse Baildon seems to have attempted independently any such comparison. Both disparage or dismiss other men's theories without any such investigation as could alone entitle them to hold confident opinions of their own. Professor Schroer, who, writing in 189 1, had less provocation to it, made much more of an attempt to look at the problem all round ;' but still did not come near compassing it. And all alike, with Professor Boas, are so easy of assent to their view, making so little of the immense aesthetic difficulty felt by so many readers, putting so much weight on such inconclusive evidence, that the doubter is at least encouraged to think his own surmise may be valid. The conviction of his opponents is certainly not in the ratio of their argumentation. Professor Collins, aware that the great majority of English critics for a hundred and fifty years had either grave doubts or entire dis- belief as to Shakespeare's authorship of Titus, thinks fit to impute to those who now think with them "a spirit of paradox," in the popular and perverted sense of that term, and to charge upon opponents a species of wilful perversity. It is his opinion that certain successful questionings of common literary fame, as in the case of works wrongly attributed to Chaucer, have " unhappily " given " a great impulse to the paradoxical ingenuity and sophistry on which illegitimate criticism relies" ; ' Ueber Titus Andronicus, von Dr. M. M. Arnold Schroer, Marburg', 1891. 6 THE CRITICAL SITUATION and he speaks of the arguments against his view as "comprehensively illustrating the methods dis- played by these iconoclasts for the attainment of their paradoxical purposes." When a professor of English literature thus manipulates the literary record, it becomes necessary to explain at the outset that Theobald, Farmer, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Chalmers, the younger Boswell, Coleridge, Hallam, and the rest, were in no way moved to their conclusion by anyone else's success in dis- proving current ascriptions, and that the "higher" criticism of Chaucer's works was not in their day in existence. The charge of "iconoclasm," in such a connection, reads somewhat like burlesque. Apparently, Professor Collins would charge with iconoclasm those of us who do not believe that it was Shakespeare who, in Richard III, made the ghost of Henry VI say to Richard : — When I was mortal, my anointed body By thee was punched full of deadly holes. Mr. Bellyse Baildon, too, has a somewhat "high priori way" of disposing of hostile views. He sees fit to describe as " anti-Shakespeareans " those who do not think Titus to be Shakespeare's ; brackets them with the " Baconians " ; and passes judgment on all together in this fashion : — I have never seen it remarked, though the fact seems obvious enough, that the scepticism with regard to Shakespeare's authorship of the \sic\ works at one time universally attributed to him, is part of that general sceptical movement or wave which has landed us first in the so-called " Higher Criticism " in matters of Religion, and finally in Agnosticism itself. The Baconian and the anti-Shakespearean, whether they know it or no, are THE CRITICAL SITUATION 7 merely particular cases of critical "Agnosticism." All so-called scepticism has always been based on a kind of conceit, and is the work of persons with whom wisdom was born. Surely the world might by this time accept Kant's great proof of the futility of Pure Reason ! It is, at any rate, the use of an almost b. priori form of reasoning which leads to the sceptical, or, if you like, "higher critical " views on the Bible, Shakespeare, or any other subject whatever. The position of the man who declines to believe that the Stratford Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him is precisely the same as that of Hume on Miracles.' It is not quite clear whether Mr. Baildon means this impressive indictment to apply to all who dispute the Shakespearean authorship of Titus as well as to the Baconians. So far as I am aware, not a single one of the former has ever held the Baconian position, which has no more in common with theirs than has Mahatmism with the system of Spencer. Doubtless Mr. Baildon's line of approach will secure him some respectable suffrages, on the quality of which he is to be congratulated ; but inasmuch as some other respectable persons are likely to be caused some painful perturbation by the hint that if they deny Titus to be the work of Shakespeare they will end in denying miracles with Hume, it is only humane to explain to them that Johnson and Hallam, Malone and Coleridge, were really not Agnostics ; while, on the other hand, Mr. W. Watkiss Lloyd, who was very much of Mr. Baildon's opinion,'' incurred much suspicion of heresy by his work on Christianity in the Catacombs. ' Introduction to Titus Andronicus in "Arden" edition of Shakespeare (Methuen), 1904, pp. xx-xxi. ' See his Critical Essays on the Plays of Shakespeare, ed. 1875, p. 349 sq. 8 THE CRITICAL SITUATION If Mr. Baildon did not mean his terrible theological indictment to cover those who call Titus non-Shakespearean, it is difficult to see why he raised the question ; and if he did so intend it, his further and quasi-rationalistic argu- mentation seems supererogatory, to say nothing of the doubt he arouses as to his fitness for a species of demonstration to which he is so avowedly antipathetic, and in which he has pre- sumably had small experience. A study of evidences in which Kant is cited at the outset to discredit the process of rational proof, is apt to raise even in orthodox circles more perplexities than it can easily allay. Those of us charged by him a priori with a priori proclivities can but leave it to the general jury of the public to say whether the "sceptical" case, either as now presented or in its earlier forms, is or is not less respectful to inductive canons than that which Mr. Baildon declares to be at once philosophically and critically orthodox. As for the pleasant charge of "conceit," Mr. Baildon must just be allowed to enjoy the authority he earns by it. C'est sa maniere de modestie, no doubt.' Coming to the concrete issues, we have first to note (i) that the chronological case as put by Professor Churton Collins and the majority of the German critics is irreconcilable with the external evidence ; (2) that Professor Collins and Professor Boas fatally contradict themselves ; (3) that some ' At a later juncture Mr. Baildon writes : "Now, having tried to write nearly every known form of English verse and experi- mented in new ones, I think I may without vanity claim to be an expert in regard to versification " (p. Ixxviii). Such versatility of dialectic is embarrassing. THE CRITICAL SITUATION 9 recent critics who like them affirm the Shake- spearean authorship, take up a position as to the date of the play which clashes violently with theirs; and (4) that Mr. Baildon is finally " in the air " as to chronology, remaining undecided over the argu- ment of Mr. Crawford, which brings the play down to 1594, ^""^ thus breaking company with Mr. Collins and the Germans ; but at the same time refusing to give effect to evidence which, by his own admissions, would tie him down to the latter date. The affirmative case, in short, is a chaos. That, on the other hand, the negative case — the case against the ascription of the play to Shake- speare — should in its earlier states present a variety of hypotheses, was inevitable. It is the writer's belief, however, that those hypotheses can now be reduced to unity by giving full effect to all the evidence which separately suggested them ; and by further enlarging the survey. The inquiry involves two processes — the purely negative or destructive, and the constructive. It is one thing to show reasons for not believing that the play is Shakespeare's : it is another thing to establish the real authorship ; and the second process must be carried at least some way before the results of the first can be regarded as broadly secure. The following essay accordingly attempts both, setting forth a theory of the authorship in the light of all the evidence. But the first step must be an examination of the affirmative position. Chapter II. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE § I. The case for Shakespeare's authorship of Titus has been most comprehensively put by Pro- fessor M. M. Arnold Schroer of Freiburg in his essay Ueber Titus Andronicus. In respect of painstaking it puts to shame the slight paper of Professor Churton Collins, who avows that he did not see fit to read it. Save, however, in so far as Dr. Schroer deals lengthily with the contrary arguments of Mr. Fleay, and greatly widens the scope of the aesthetic debate, he does not put the affirmative much otherwise than do Mr. Collins and Mr. Baildon, who both substantially repeat the pleas of Charles Knight ; so that, for the purpose of a condensed discussion, a study of their pleas may serve. Professor Collins's position is that " if Shake- speare was not the author of Titus Andronicus, there is an end of circumstantial testimony in literary questions ; for the evidence external and internal is as conclusive as such evidence can possibly be." The word " circumstantial " appears to have been used at haphazard ; for no evidence so describable is cited ; and what circumstantial evidence there is tells the other way. Apart from alleged internal evidence, the whole case put is that : (i) Meres ascribed Titu^ to Shakespeare in THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE II his list in Palladis Tamia in 1598; and (2) that it is inserted in the first folio — circumstances per- fectly well known to all who deny Shakespeare's authorship. § 2. It may be well, before going further, to remove from the field the false issue raised by some of the earlier doubters in respect of the pseudo-testimony of the playwright Edward Ravenscroft. That writer, who made an adapta- tion of Titus, mentions in the preface to his pub- lished verson (1687) a report made to him " by some anciently conversant with the stage," that Titus was not originally written by Shakespeare, " but brought by a private writer to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters." On the face of the case, such late and loose testimony in itself counts for nothing, and it was used by Malone merely as confirming a disbelief which was already so strong as not to need fresh justification. Charles Knight, however, noted that in his original pro- logue to his play Ravenscroft had spoken of Titus as really Shakespeare's ; and Mr. Baildon, follow- ing Knight, charges Malone with being " so dis- ingenuous as to suppress this bit of evidence," and further finds Ravenscroft and Malone together " convicted of a suppressio veri of the first magni- tude." All this is but supererogatory strife, as is Professor Collins's similar denunciation of Ravens- croft.' Ten years had elapsed between the produc- tion and the printing of the play in question. Ravenscroft might very well have heard his tradition ■ Studies in Shakespeare, p. 106. 12 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE after the production ; and his citation of it in his published preface remains worth just as much and as little as it would have been if there were no prologue. But in reality it is valueless, save as testifying to a current doubt, in 1672, of Shake- speare's authorship of Titus. Mr. Baildon, con- structing his transcendental case, follows Mr. Crawford" without inquiry in the assertion that the sceptical view is " founded upon " the remark of Ravenscroft ; and contends that if " the anti- Shakespearean " rejects Ravenscroft, " he has no foothold for any anti-Shakespearean theory what- ever."= I will not charge Mr. Baildon with "a suppressio veri of the first magnitude," preferring to suppose that when, as often happens, he omits to deal with material evidence, he is either unaware or oblivious of its existence. He and Mr. Craw- ford alike have simply failed to pay proper atten- tion to the documents. Shakespeare's authorship was disbelieved-in by Theobald and Johnson, ^ who both rejected Ravenscroft's tradition ; and the series of critics who have respectively suggested one or another well-known contemporary dramatist as the real author of the play have naturally, as a rule, paid no heed to it, inasmuch as the legend of a " private author " does not harmonise with their theory, and is, further, too late to be of any evidential force. Dr. Grosart, who cited Ravens- croft in connection with his thesis that the play ' "All who doubt the genuineness of the tragedy accept without hesitation the tradition reported by Ravenscroft." C. Crawford, art. on " The Date and Authenticity of ' Titus Andronicus ' " in tiiejahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 1900, p. no. " Ed. cited, pp. xxii, Ixxi. 3 As is mentioned by Professor Collins, p. 106. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 1 3 was " substantially " the work of Greene, has obviously worsened his case by assuming that Greene could be spoken of as a " private author." The primary ground for doubting whether Shake- speare had any hand in the play, let it be here said once for all, is simply the quality of the workmanship and the matter from first to last. There are probably many who, like the present writer, never had the sensation of reading Shake- speare's verse in a single line of it. The sifting and testing of that spontaneous impression of its spuriousness, however, is a task to be gone about with rather more circumspection than is brought to the justification of his faith by Mr. Baildon ; and the next step is to deal with the external evidence before noted. § 3. Concerning the testimony of Meres, it was long ago pointed out' that his lists of plays, like some of his lists of poets, are very artificially drawn up in sixes, six tragedies being named to balance six comedies. Lists so framed are prima facie open to suspicion, whatever might be the good faith of the maker ; and in declaring that whoever refuses to accept the bare assertion of Meres " is deliberately giving himself over gagged and bound to the anti- Shakespeareans," Mr. Baildon^ is merely substi- tuting vociferation for argument. Meres is not known to have had any personal acquaintance with Shakespeare before 1598. Mr. Baildon's statement' that " Shakespeare read his MS. sonnets to him " is a pure fiction on Mr. Baildon's part. If Malone ■ By Dr. R. B. Nicholson, in the New Shakespeare Society's Transactions for 1874, Pt. I, p. 123. ' Ed. cited, p. xx. 3 Id. p. xix. 14 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE had made so explicitly such a baseless statement, we should have had a pretty string of epithets to his address from Mr. Baildon. It is quite true that, were there no strong counter-evidence, external or internal, the statement of Meres would be decisive ; but, to say nothing at this point of the internal evidence, there are two items of external evidence against him, the weaker of which balances his as regards Shakespeare's having written the Titus of 1594, and one of which is quite decisive against Mr. Baildon's case. § 4. The weaker of the two items in question is the fact that, in the 1594 edition (a copy of which has recently been found') as in that of 1600, Titus is described as having been played by the servants of the Earls of Derby, Pembroke, and Sussex ; and that Titus and Andronicus, as appears from Henslowe's Diary, was originally played by Sussex's men. Now, as Mr. Fleay insists, " there is no vestige of evidence that Shakespeare ever wrote for any company but one."° This company was at first known as that of Lord Strange, who became Lord Derby in September, 1593, and died in April, 1594 » whereafter it entered the service of the Lord Chamberlain (Hunsdon), whose title it bore henceforth. 3 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, taking it for granted that Shakespeare wrote Titus for Sussex's company, in effect assumes that " he left Lord Strange's men, who in 1593 enjoyed the highest position of any then existing, and after having been a member successively of two of the ' See the Athenaum, Jan. zi, 1905, p. 91. ° Life of Shakespeare, p. 115. 3 Id., pp. ZI, 114-116. There has been much confusion on the point. * THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 1 5 obscurest companies, returned to his former posi- tion within a few months."* This theory is by Mr. Fleay justifiably pronounced " utterly unten- able." It would indeed never have been raised save for the presupposition that Shakespeare wrote Titus. But it is needed for the support of that opinion ; and by reason of the lack of record as to Shakespeare's early life, it passes as plausible. § 5. Apart from this and further considerations we may note that the argument from Meres proves too much. On no grounds can we say that a bare ascription by him counts for much more than an ascription by a contemporary publisher. Now, as is well known, the First Part of Sir John Oldcastle, printed in 1600, has Shakespeare's name in full on the title-page ; and A Yorkshire Tragedy is similarly ascribed to him on the title-page of the quarto of 1608. On Mr. Baildon's principles, we " deliver ourselves gagged and bound to the anti-Shakespeareans " if we decide that these plays are not Shakespeare's. Yet we all do so decide. Now, it may very well have been that Meres's ground for ascribing Titus to Shakespeare was a knowledge that he had corrected for the press the 1594 edition of the play. In the same year, we know, there was entered on the stationers' books the tragedy of Locrine, and in 1595 we have an edition of that play "newly set foorth, overseene, and corrected by W. S." As we shall see, Locrine is in all likelihood a play planned or recast and partly written by Peele, with later additions by Greene ; and that " W. S." was * Fleay, Life of Shakespeare, p. 115. Cp. Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines, sth ed., pp. 79, 91. 1 6 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE Shakespeare is the view finally reached by Mr. Fleay, after he had for a time rejected it.^ It is known from Peele's own statement, in his letter of 1595-6 to Lord Burleigh, that he was then suffering from a long illness, and Mr. Fleay makes the reasonable surmise that Shakespeare revised Locrine for publication by way of helping an old colleague in distress. If then the thesis of the present essay — that Peele is the primary author of Titus in its present form — should be held to be established, there is no antecedent difficulty in supposing that Shakespeare similarly revised Titus and was vaguely known to have done so. § 6. In any case, whatever may have happened in that connection, the fact that Titus is accurately printed without Shakespeare's name in the editions of 1594, 1600, and 161 1 is a strong support to the negative case. This grave difficulty Mr. Collins meets by citing the facts that "his name was not on the title-pages of the first quartos of Richard II, of the quartos of the First Part of Henry IV, or of Henry VI (sic: should be V), or of either of the first three quartos of Romeo and/uliet."" Observe the questions implicated. It is only on the first of the quartos of Richard II (1597), pirated by Simmes, that Shakespeare's name is lacking ; the second and later quartos have it; and the play has traces of an earlier hand. The first quarto of Romeo and Juliet, again, is spurious ; and in that play he admittedly worked over a draught by other men. The 1600 quarto of Henry V, and even those of ^Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, ii, 321. Cp. his Life of Shakespeare, 1886, pp. 24, 120, 291. " Work cited, p. 105. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE l^ 1602 and 1608, which equally lack Shakespeare's name, are visibly pirated, the text being extremely corrupt and imperfect. The First Part of Henry IV, again, is in the same case with Richard II: the second quarto, by a second printer, has Shake- speare's name. But in the case of Titus we have two careful reprints, evidently from the first or theatre copy, in Shakespeare's life, without his name ; though as early as 1600 his name had so much selling-power as to induce the ascription to him of published plays that he certainly had not written. On the view that he wrote Titus, the absence of his name from the three quartos is inexplicable ; and the negative force of such a fact countervails in part the statement of Meres. § 7. A further reason for surmising that Meres ascribed Titus to Shakespeare on the strength of a false or misleading report is the fact that he does not mention any of the Henry VI plays. Here, indeed, the argument is not obvious and not conclusive, but it counts, inasmuch as the facts square with our hypothesis. Meres names, "for tragedy," Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus, and Romeo and Juliet. Now, the folio ascribes to Shakespeare the three Henry VI plays equally with these ; and all three must be dated long before 1598. Certainly all three proceed upon and embody pre-Shakespearean work ; and in / Henry VI there is nothing clearly Shakespeare's, though much of Marlowe and Greene. But in the other plays his revising hand is often to be traced ; and these plays collectively appear to have been more popular than either Richard II or King John. Why, then, are they c l8 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE not cited in preference to the last named? The natural inference is that it is because Meres in 1598 had no printed clue to them : there were no quartos in existence apart from the old Contention and True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, whereas he had the second quartos of Richard II and Richard III (1598), bearing Shakespeare's name. To be sure, he had not that name on the quartos of Romeo and Juliet and / Henry IV, or on that of the old Troublesome Raigne of K. John, the only form of King John then printed ; but as a collector he would naturally seek to learn who were the authors of all the plays in print, and he would thus hear Shakespeare named as author or reviser of the three in question. In 1599 / Henry /F appeared in the same text with Shake- speare's name, and his authorship would doubt- less be known to many in 1598. On this view, Meres had had some trouble in making up his list of six Shakespearean tragedies ; and, as it happens, he has named all of Shake- speare's comedies which we can suppose to have been then in existence, with the exception of the Taming of the Shrew, which is certainly an adapta- tion of an older work. If, then, he were to make out his list of six tragedies, he stood a fair chance of making a wrong attribution, in the then vague state of theory and practice as to dramatic author- ship. The strongest countervailing argument is, of course, the fact that he made out his list of comedies mainly from theatrical report. Love's Labour's Lost being the only one in print ; and since he was well-informed as to that list, he is not lightly to be disregarded as to the other. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 1 9 But reason has been shown why, as against other external evidence (such as the absence of Shake- speare's name from the 1594, 1600, and 161 1 quartos of Titiis), and strong internal evidence, his testi- mony falls. § 8. All the while, there is a conclusive rebuttal of the whole external case for Shakespeare's primary authorship of Titus. Henslowe's diary gives "Titus and Ondronicus" as " ne " (=new) on 23rd January, 1593-4; and as we now know with certainty from the recovered copy, Titus Andronicus was printed in 1594. It might seem safe to assume that Henslowe's play and that preserved are the same ; but there is some puzzling evidence going to show that the publisher's rights in a printed play called " Titus and Andronicus " remained for long in different hands from those of the publishers of Titus Andronicus.^ On these grounds Professor Baker, of Harvard, watchfully following up the investigation of Mr. H. De W. Fuller^ as to the originals of the Dutch and German versions of Titus current in the seventeenth century, agrees with Mr. Fuller that "two plays. Tittup and Vespacia, the original of G. [the German version], and Titus Andronicus \sic : query Titus and Andronicus?], the original of D. [the Dutch version], in the hands of the Chamberlain's com- pany by perhaps late June, 1594, were made over by Shakespeare at some time after June, 1594, and before September 7th, 1598 [date of entry of ' See Professor Baker's note on " Tittus and Vespacia and Titus Andronicus in Henslowe's Diary " in Publications of the Modem Language Association of America, 1901, vol. xvi, p. 75; and Mr. Arthur Symons as there cited. " Publications cited, art. before Professor Baker's. 20 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE Meres's book], into the play which stands under his name."' Here is a theorem which entirely negatives that of Shakespeare's having written his play at Stratford. The old play must be that alluded to with Jeronimo in the Introduction to Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, as being twenty-five or thirty years old. That allusion, on the face of it, almost completely excludes the idea that Jonson held for Shakespeare's either of the plays he is treating as utterly antiquated. Such an estimate would be an enigma in face of his praise of Shake- speare in the folio. We can now be sure that he was talking of a play about as old as the Spanish Tragedy, which probably appeared about 1585 or 1586. Whatever may have been the peculiarities of "Titus and Andronicus," it is made clear by Mr. Fuller, despite his sudden conclusion as to Shakespeare's having written the existing play, that the latter is only a development on the older basis of Henslowe's Tittus and Vespacia (played in 1591), with the difference, among others, that Lucius in our preserved English play takes the place of an equally unhistorical Vespasian in the earlier, as preserved in the continental version. It is out of the question, then, to suppose that " Titus and Andronicus " was anything more than a recast of the older play, not identical with the later revision preserved as Shakespeare's work. On our hypothesis that the 1594 Titus was revised for the press by Shakespeare as was Locrine, the ' Compare the details of the stage-history of the play given by Mr. Fleay in his Life of Shakespeare and Biog. Chron. The dis- covery of the 1594 edition limits the proposition to that year. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 21 double publishing rights would be a matter of mere distinction between that literary revision and the dramatic revision which made Titus and Andronicus "new" for Henslowe in 1594. As Professor Baker remarks, "Anyone who has carefully studied the Diary [of Henslowe] knows that the mysterious ' ne' most often means nothing more than an old play revised to make it pass as a novelty."' On the Professor's own showing, then, Shakespeare had at most merely revised a recast. And that this is the only form in which the maintainers of Shakespeare's authorship can claim to hold their belief is made clear, finally, by Shake- speare's own testimony. Mr. Baildon, who so lightly imputes suppressio verito a laborious scholar, virtually ignores Shakespeare's prefatory descrip- tion of his Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, as "the first heir of my invention." With this declaration on record, and with the research of Mr. Fuller and Professor Baker lying before him, Mr. Baildon speaks of Titus as written by Shake- speare "between 1589 and 1593." And Mr. Collins, who protests so loudly his respect for external evidence, simply declines to let Shake- speare's own assertion stand for anything I^ ' Art. cited, p. 69. ° I am aware that at this point the traditionalist school can claim the support not only of many conservative critics of stand- ing, German and Eng^lish, but of so open-minded an inquirer as Mr. Fleay, who, in his Manual, put the writing of Venus and Adonis as early as 1588. I am glad to learn from Mr. Fleay, how- ever, that he no longer stands to that chronology, which was framed by him in accommodation to that prevailing before his time. He now places the commencement of Shakespeare's independent dramatic authorship not earlier than iS93i though he holds that Shakespeare added the Talbot scenes to i Henry VI in 1592. 22 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE § 9. The fashion in which that explicit and authoritative testimony has been overridden by a whole series of critics, German and English, who profess to stand or fall by " external " evidence, is instructive. Mr. Collins declares it to be "certain, as we know from Greene and Chettle, that he [Shakespeare] was writing plays before 1593." This is quite unwarranted. Neither Greene nor Chettle ever named Shakespeare or any of his plays. We are fully entitled to infer from the " Shake-scene " passage in Greene's Groatsworth 0} Wit that he had had a hand in plays before 1593 ; but certainly not that he had written one. On the latter head his own declaration is surely final. Seeking to override that declaration, Mr. Collins insists that "either Venus and Adonis was written long before it was printed," adding that he thinks it " highly probable that it was composed at Strat- ford before he came to London, as early perhaps as 1585," "or that for some reason he did not regard his early dramas as heirs of his invention." When we find Mr. Collins forgetfully avowing that Venus and Adonis is plainly modelled on Lodge's Scilla's Metamorphosis,^ we might hold ourselves dispensed from discussing the former alternative. Lodge's poem was published only in 1589. Mr. Collins has not even taken the trouble to reconcile his assertions — and this in an essay in which he imputes to his gainsayers perversity, paradox, sophistry, and illegitimate criticism. § 10. Irrespective of the fatal admission as to ' Here Mr. Collins follows Mr. Sidney Lee (Life of Shakespeare, p. 75), who follows Dr. Gosse (introd. to Lodge's works). THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 23 the poem of Lodge, however, the proposition that Venus and Adonis was written at Stratford-on- Avon is a significant sample of the evidential methods of the traditional school. The structure of the passage should be noted. " I do not wish to indulge in conjecture," writes Professor Collins, " but it seems to me highly probable that it [V. and A.] was composed at Stratford before he came up to London, as early perhaps as 1585, or that for some reason he did not regard his early dramas as heirs of his invention. What is certain is, as we know from Greene and Chettle, that he was writing plays before 1593." It is thus put as equally highly probable that " for some reason " Shake- speare thought his poems were his inventions, while his original plays were not ; and that he had produced at Stratford an elaborate poem, carefully calculated for popularity, which he kept in manu- script through eight years of struggle for existence. Both propositions are improbable to the last degree. That Shakespeare wrote Venus and Adonis before he came to London is a hypothesis which would never have been broached but for the need of saving the presupposition that he wrote plays as early as 1589. What should have induced him to withhold from the press for all those years so readily saleable a poem, when he was actually in need of whatever money he could come by ? The surmise will not bear a moment's investigation. When the " certain " turns out to be mere miscon- struction, the "highly probable," naturally, is sheer fantasy on its merits, to say nothing of its being disallowed in advance by the propounder. And yet this illicit dating, by a critic professedly 24 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE unwilling to indulge in conjecture, is concurred in by many of the German critics who stickle for the most literal acceptance of one part, and one only, of the "external" evidence in regard to Titus Andronicus. §11. As for the alternative proposition, in which Mr. Collins is supported by eminent critics — for instance, Dr. Furnivall — who do not agree with him about Titus, it must here suffice to say that no one who professes to stand by testimony has the right to put it. The plain force of Shakespeare's declaration is that before 1593, if he meddled in drama at all, he was merely a collaborator with other men, or a reviser of other men's plays. By " invention " he cannot mean merely that he had not invented his plots ; for in that sense he did not invent the story of Venus and Adonis: he must have meant that he did not regard as originally his any play in which he had thus far collaborated. Mr. Collins, however, like Elze' and other Germans, seems to hold that Shakespeare wrote or began Titus at Stratford f while Mr. Boas, after reasonably deciding that Shakespeare in London " started with theatrical hack-work, touch- ing-up old plays and collaborating with writers of established repute in stagecraft, "^ and that his first independent work was in comedy, proceeds accom- modatingly to accept the view that Titus was " written by Shakespeare immediately after leaving Stratford."* Thus, as might have been expected, ' William Shakespeare, Eng. trans., pp. 66, 96, 314, 348-9. ' " During or about the time he was engaged on Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece " are Mr. Collins's words. (Studies, pp. 108-9.) 3 Shakespeare and His Predecessors, 1896; p. 134. * Compare pp. 137, 139. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 25 we find flat self-contradiction in the positions of the critics who attempt to fix on Shakespeare the authorship of Titus in disregard of his own testimony. § 12. The case for the affirmative now falls back on its last line — the bare fact of the inclusion of Titus in the first folio. When, however, that is analysed, it is found to give way as does the argument from Meres. Meres, it will be remem- bered, does not credit Shakespeare with the Henry VI plays, though they had been much played long before 1598 ; the folio includes them as Shakespeare's, even as it ascribes solely to him the Henry VIII, of which so much is visibly Fletcher's. The folio further omits Pericles, which had been printed with Shakespeare's name in 1609, and which, from internal evidence, we gather to be partly his, partly not. Yet further, we know that the first copies of the folio even omitted the Troilus and Cressida, which is similarly composite, but in large part Shakespeare's. The argument from the folio, then, like the argument from Meres, proves too much. We are driven to conclude that the action of the editors was in part determined by considerations of theatrical property in the plays they printed, and to infer that, when any play had become theirs and been merely revised by Shake- speare, they could best assert their right by print- ing it as his. That there was a feud between mere players and scholar-writers' is made clear by Greene's death-bed pamphlets and by the later ' Compare the verses of Thomas Brahine prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, in which the players are taunted with inability to pro- duce such an effect as Greene there does. 26 THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE dialogue in The Return from Parnassus (Part II), where a player boasts how "our fellow Shake- speare " gave a " purge " to Jonson of the writers' party. In such a state of things the players were in the habit of claiming whatever they could as against the authors ; and to father on Shakespeare every possible piece in their repertory was for Heminge and Condell a way of maintaining their own interest. Professor CoUins's argument that, seeing Titus was notoriously popular, " neither Meres nor Heminge and Condell would have been likely to assign it to Shakespeare " without solid ground, is thus a clear non sequitur. If the play were the work of several hands, with Shakespeare for final corrector, its popularity was rather a reason why it should be mentioned by Meres, who was no dis- criminating critic ; and further a reason why Heminge and Condell, whose company owned it, should put it in the folio, where most readers would expect to find it, after Meres's mention. The traditionist argument, then, has thus far broken down. The external evidence not only does not prove Shakespeare's authorship of Titus : it presents an irreducible balance of matter irrecon- cilable with that view ; and to reach a conclusion we must come to the internal evidence. Chapter III. SHAKESPEARE'S EARLIER WORK Before, however, we take up the argument from internal evidence, it is expedient to ascertain so far as may be the biographical facts as to Shakespeare's beginnings in play-writing. We have seen that he himself clearly disclaims any original or inde- pendent work before 1593. Not only, however, those who ascribe to him Titus, but many critics who do not, insist upon crediting him with a whole series of original plays antedating Venus and Adonis. The principles on which Dr. Furnivall,' summing up and pronouncing on the labours of his predecessors, dates no fewer than five Shake- spearean plays before 1593, are somewhat startling to an awakened critical sense. Love's Labour's Lost is dated 1588-9 because (i) Dr. Furnivall has "no hesitation " in pronouncing it the earliest play in view of its abundance of rhyme, stanza-forms, and word-play, and lack of plot and pathos ; and because (2) the Comedy of Errors is held to lie between 1589 and 1591 in respect of its allusion to France as " arm'd and reverted, making war against her heir." Yet that allusion — which in any case might be retrospective, since the time of a play may be any period prior to the production — would hold ■ Introduction to the " Leopold " Shakespeare. 27 28 Shakespeare's earlier work good till 1594. Then, though in the Dream there is an allusion to abnormal rains and floods, which would fit both the years 1594 and 1595, Dr. Furnivall " cannot let the possible allusion break through the other links of the play" (that is, his arbi- trarily-selected " links oilikeness and difference" in themes and character-types), and places it in 1590-1. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in turn, is placed immediately afterwards, because it is sesthetically a " link-play " to the " passion-group," which is made to begin with Romeo and Juliet; and that is dated 1591-3, on the ground of the nurse's lines : — Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years And she was wean'd upon that day. That is to say, we are to take it for granted that Shakespeare makes the life of Juliet in the play date from the great earthquake of 1580, adjusting the nurse's speech to the occasion, though the story of Romeo and Juliet was notoriously an old one. Mr. Dyce — who called the inference of the date of the Dream from the floods of 1594 "ridiculous" — might almost have said as much here. Shake- speare might in the year 1591 have heard an English nurse use just such a phrase, and might years afterwards reproduce it just as he heard it. Yet this is the sole specific ground for dating Romeo before the year of its first publication, 1597. For the rest Dr. Furnivall " inclines " to " put it before FewMJ and Adonis rather than after it," though, as regards Shakespeare's recast of it, most people will hesitate to do any such thing. In calling attention to the insecurity of such chronology, I do not deny that there are assthetic SHAKESPEARE S EARLIER WORK 29 grounds for Dr. Furnivall's general order ; nor do I maintain that the dates are positively wrong, though I think they very well may be. There is ahother way of reconciling such dates with the avowal in the dedication to Venus and Adonis, which, being actually signed with Shakespeare's name, is an irreducible datum, whence all chrono- logy of his plays should start. Whether or not Dr. Furnivall and the rest are right in their previous dates, they are plainly wrong in not reckoning with that avowal. One and all, they are unduly reluctant to draw the proper conclusion from the obvious probability — admitted by Professor Boas — that Shakespeare's playwriting in his earlier years was by way of collaboration in or adaptation of other men's work. And on no other assumption can their dates stand, down to 1593. If the plays in question are earlier than that year, they are not of Shakespeare's " invention." The oddly worded proposition of Professor Collins, that it is "highly probable" that "for some reason " Shakespeare did not regard his plays as his inventions, need only be reduced to intelli- gible form in order to carry the day, to the discom- fiture of his main thesis. Shakespeare for the best of reasons would not regard as heirs of his invention plays in which he used other men's drafts or shared with others the task of composition. Such plays, by general consent (Professor Collins dissenting), were the Henry VI group. Why then should we refuse to believe that he had either collaborators or draughtsmen for The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, the Comedy of Errors, the Midsummer Nighfs Dream., and Richard II, even 30 Shakespeare's earlier work as he was refashioning other men's work in Romeo and Juliet and King John and some later plays ? Nothing that is said by Greene and Chettle is incompatible with this rational solution, which alone accords to Shakespeare's own precise avowal a natural interpretation. On the face of the case, it does not appear that Shakespeare had done more than take a share in the chronicle plays as late as 1592, the date of Greene's allusion to him in the preface to A Groatsworth of Wit. ' This view, it should be explained, is not argued for in the hope of facilitating the true ascription of Titus. On the contrary, it complicates the problem. If we could be sure of a whole play of Shakespeare's before 1594, we could much more easily decide as to what is and what is not in his early manner of blank-verse. When we grant, for instance, that there may be survivals of other men's work in Richard II (as to some of us there appear to be), we are further embarrassed as to our primary tests. And there remains the possibility that he lent a hand in some of the works planned and finished by other men. Several good critics, including Mr. Fleay and Professor Ward, hold that he had a share in Edward III. On the other hand, the difficulty arising from the habit of collaboration affects the works assigned to the men who shared in some of those ascribed to Shakespeare. This has not been sufficiently " The allusion to writers born to the trade of Noverint in Nash's epistle prefatory to Greene's Menaphon (1589) is most satisfactorily explained as a reference to Kyd. See Fleay, Life of Shakespeare, p. 100, followed in Schick's ed. of The Spanish Tragedy, in " Temple Dramatists " series, pref. pp. ix-xvi, and Professor Boas's pref. to his ed. of Kyd's Works, 1901. Shakespeare's earlier work 31 recognised by the editors of Marlowe, Greene, Kyd, and Peele, who tend to credit those writers respectively with the whole of the plays assigned to them in their day, merely noting the more obvious tamperings with those of Marlowe.' The resort to collaboration was finally unavoidable in the economic conditions of the Elizabethan theatre, inasmuch as plays were constantly being com- missioned from playwrights whose initiative had been exhausted, and who had to produce a drama by a given date. By pooling their ideas, they facilitated their work. And to primary collabora- tion there has to be added the factor of revision ; for there are many proofs that plays were repeatedly eked out or recast by way of freshening their appeal to the public, or giving new opportunities to actors. Such a case of revision is seen in The Massacre of Paris, ascribed to Marlowe. His latest editor'' admits that only one part of the play, the soliloquy of Guise, is up to Marlowe's normal level ; but he has not suggested the most probabje solution — that that soliloquy is only a surviving fragment of Marlowe's Tragedy of Guise, preserved in a recast of the play by another hand, in which the main theme is no longer the fortunes of Guise, but the general episode of the Massacre. And the obvious transformation of plot to which Edward II has been subjected — the complete alteration of the characters of the Queen and ' Mr. Fleay, as usual, has g^one furthest in clearings up the case, pointings out how much of Faustus is not Marlowe's work. (Ch. on "Metrical Tests" in Ingleby's Shakespeare : the Man and the Book, Pt. ii, p. 70, and in Prof. Ward's ed. of Faustus.) ' A. H. BuUen, Introd. to his ed. of Marlowe, 1885, i, p. xlvii. 32 Shakespeare's earlier work Mortimer in the course of the action — does not appear to have suggested to Marlowe's editors that there also there is cause to infer an alien hand or hands, though one such hand, as we shall see in the sequel, is not hard to identify. All these considerations obviously increase the difficulty of dealing with, say, the frequently advanced theory that Marlowe is the author of Titus. The difficulty, however, must just be faced. And whatever opinions may be come to by students as to the authorship of any particular play, it may be claimed with confidence that some of those who ascribe Titus to Shakespeare have by their own admissions countenanced the conclusion that his earliest works were collaborations, and that accord- ingly Titus, which they represent as early and yet homogeneous, cannot as such be his. The most reasonable part of Professor Collins's essay, criti- cally speaking, is that in which he courageously affirms that Shakespeare's early work is markedly imitative — " servile imitation " is his repeated phrase,^ which may bring upon himself, from some, the charge of iconoclasm. The phrase, " followed at first, with timid servility, the fashion," is indeed overcharged : youth is spontaneously imitative, without timidity or servility. But the very instinct of imitation would naturally lead the beginner to take the ordinary course of collabora- tion ; and for this Mr. Collins makes no allowance. ' studies in Shakespeare, pp. 104, 120, Chapter IV. THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE § I. Alleged Shakespearean Parallels. Over the internal evidence for his claim, Professor Collins is as confident as over the external, declaring that a number of touches in the play " point indisputably to Shakespeare " — a pleasing way of quashing the contrary convictions of the great majority of English critics during a hundred and fifty years. By way of proof, he first draws comparisons between phrases in Titus and phrases in the undisputed plays or poems of Shakespeare, going on, however, to cite from the other disputed plays, and so to prove the doubtful by the doubtful. Like others, he sets out with the parallel passage about the mercifulness of the Gods (T. A., I, 1 16-7 ; ■M, of v., IV, i). This was a current Ciceronian commonplace, and is to be found also in the play of Edward III, which Mr, Collins has not pro- posed to ascribe to Shakespeare. Next, he pro- fesses to find an evidential parallel between this passage in Titus (I, 144) : The sacrificing fire Whose smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky and this in Cymbeline (V, v) : — Laud we the Gods ; And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils. 33 D 34 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE Had he thought of comparing, as in such an inquiry is so obviously necessary, the play before him with the work of Shakespeare's early contem- poraries, he might have found in Peele's Arraign- ment of Paris (Prologue) this much closer and more significant parallel : Flaming fire Whose thick and foggy smoke, piercing the shy ; also, in the same author's Battle of Alcazar (V, i, 183), the peculiar phrase "sacrific^w^ fire," found nowhere else in Shakespeare apart from Titus; and yet again, in the same play (II, i, 32-3), the passage : Give and sacrifice her son Not with sweet smoke of fire and sweet perfume, where all the ideas of the phrase in Titus are further echoed, in specific context with the idea (here metaphorical) of the sacrifice of a son in his mother's presence. As against such identities of phrase there is no force whatever in the previous loose comparison, or in that of the passage in Titus (I, 150) beginning " Repose you here in rest "(quoted by Mr. Collins without the "in rest," which reduces it to bathos) with the dirge in Cymbeline and Macbeth's lines on Duncan. Next Professor Collins cites, as so many have done before, the lines {Titus, II, i) : — She is a woman, therefore to be woo'd ; She is a woman, therefore to be won ; of which variants occur in / Henry VI (V, iii) and Richard Illi)., iii), plays both held by other critics, on general grounds, to be wholly or partly non- Shakespearean. Had Mr. Collins paid due attention ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN PARALLELS 35 to previous literature on the authorship of Titus, he would have known that this tag, which he in effect represents Shakespeare as having run to death, is shown by Dr. Grosart' to be the property of Greene, who used it twice in early prose works, to > wit in the Planetomachia (1585) and the Perimedes (1588), besides echoing it in yet other passages.'' That duplication, and the further identities of vocabulary between Titus and the works of Greene, give Dr. Grosart a better ground for ascribing the play "substantially" to Greene than Mr. Collins can give for ascribing it to Shakespeare. They further add to the reasons for ascribing to Greene a share in the Jlenry F7 group, in which Mr. Collins notes the double use of the term " blood-drinking," found also in Titus. It does not. appear to occur to him that the absence of the word from the undis- puted plays of Shakespeare tells rather against than for his thesis. Similarly, he does not realise that the allusion to gnats flying at the sun, doubled in Titus and j Henry VI, and the allusion to the swiftness of swallows, occurring twice in Titus and once in Richard III, but nowhere else in Shake- speare, should have given him ground for suspicion rather than for confidence. As we shall see, the latter item points pretty clearly to Peele. Again, citing from Titus (II, 2) the phrase, "The morn is bright and grey," he affirms that "this is ■ Article, "Was Robert Greene substantially the author of ' Titus Andronicus ' ?" in Englische Studien, Bd. xxii, 1896. ' Readers %vho possess only Dyce's i-vol. edition of Greene and Peele will find one such echo in the extract there given, p. 41, from Pandosto, and another, p. 97, col. ij, in Orlando Furioso. Compare further Greene's Philomela (Works, ed. Grosart, xi, 128) ; Orpharion (xii, 78) j and Never too Late (viii, 88). 36 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE Shakespeare's favourite and constantly-repeated epithet for the morning and the morning sky, occurring in Sonnet 132, in Romeo and Juliet, II, iii, and in Henry IV(sic) I, iii." Thus he offers only three citations — one of them wrong — to prove a " constant repetition," though Shakespeare refers to the morning more than a hundred and fifty times in his other plays. It is hardly necessary to add that the epithet " grey" for the morning is common to a dozen other poets of the period. Had Mr. Collins found in Titus the phrase " the grey-eyed morn," and the line, Shall make the morning haste her grey uprise, he would doubtless have felt sure they were Shakespeare's. They occur in Dido, by Marlowe and Nash.' Not only the same epithet, but that which accompanies it, in a singularly exact dupli- cation of the rhythm and structure of the passage in Titus, is found in Peele. In Titus we have : The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey ; The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green. In Peele's Old Wives' Tale (350-1) we havfe : The day is clear, the welkin bright and grey,. The lark is merry, and records her notes. If there there be any reasonable inference open, it is that Peele wrote both passages. For the rest, Mr. Collins cites from Venus and Adonis an unimportant parallel to the phrase about blood on flowers in Titus (11, iii), and the phrase "engine of her thoughts," also occurring ' Mr. Fleay, in his paper on Queen Elizoheth, Croydon, and the Drama, 1898, pp. 9-10, argues that the naming of Nash on the title-page is a mystification. ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN PARALLELS 37 in the play (III, i) ; and from Sonnet 128 the rather commonplace conceit (pronounced by him "exquisitely Shakespearean") about the jacks kiss- ing the player's hand, in comparison with Make the silken strings delight to kiss them (Titus II, iv). Of these the first and third parallels are hardly worth reckoning, while the second, as we shall see, is to be found in Peele. As to the passage in Titus beginning, I am the sea : hark, how her winds do blow — She is the weeping welkin, I the earth, which Mr. Collins declares to reproduce "exactly the note of Richard II's soliloquy in Pomfret Castle (V, v)," it may be left to the reader to say whether he can detect any resemblance whatever. It is scarcely worth while to discuss further slight parallels such as "kill'st my heart" and "killed his heart"; " thick-lipp'd and "thick lips"; "sad stories"; "babbling gossip." Such phrases, when used only once in each of two plays, one of which is in dispute, have no characteristic quality : any two playwrights might make a character refer to "babbling gossip," or speak of a Moor or negro as "thick-lipped"; and even "kill'st my heart" has the air of an every-day phrase. If it be not so, however, it is not to Shakespeare that it points us. To begin with, we find it twice in the old play Arden of Feversham, published in 1592 — "thou hast killed my heart"; and "it kills my heart" (I, i ; V, i: Bullen's ed., pp. 4, 85). In Peele's Edward I, sc. x and xxv, we have " slain my wretched heart"; and "slays my heart with grief"; in David and Bethsabe, "Thou wound'st 38 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE thy kingly sovereign's heart " (sc. xiii) ; in The Massacre of Paris, II, iii, "thou kill'st thy mother's heart"; in Edward III, IV, iv, 58, "it kills his heart "; in the First Part of the Contention of York and Lancaster, published in 1 594, " kill my woful heart" (speech of Dame Eleanor in penance scene), and " my heart is killed with grief" (king to queen in Parliament scene) ; and in Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany (ascribed to Chapman, but certainly not by him) no fewer than four uses of the phrase : " Kills my heart " (I, ii) ; " killed my heart " (II, iii); "although my heart be slain" (IV, i) ; "kill his dastard heart " (V, iv). If it should turn out that these thirteen instances are all from one hand, and that, apart from Titus, no contemporary playwright, save Shakespeare in Henry V (II, i), uses the phrase, we shall indeed see reason to attach weight to the expression ; but not in Mr. Collins's sense. It would in that case appear to be one of the mannerisms of another author more likely than Shakespeare to have written Titus. Concerning "babbling gossip," it seems hardly worth while to inquire. Suffice it to note that Greene, in his play Alphonsus, King of Arragon, has "babbling tongue," and in his late Tully's Love "babbling eloquence." Mr. Collins further cites these parallels between Titus and Shakespearean plays : Marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot (Titus, III, ii) ; Sitting His arms in this sad knot (Tempest, I, ii). Two may keep counsel when the third's away (Titus, IV, ii) ; ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN PARALLELS 39 Two may keep counsel putting one away (Borneo and Juliet, II, iv). Here again we are dealing with a common phrase and a proverb. The latter is found in Greene's early prose work Mamillia (Works, ed. Grosart, iii, 30) — "Two might best keep counsel where one was away "; and the former is closely paralleled in Peele's phrase : " sadness with wreathed arms" (David and Bethsabe, sc. iv, 5), and again in his line " With folded arms and all amazed heart " {Id., sc. iii, 77). Mr. Collins might as fitly have quoted Lome's Labour's Lost, where (IV, iii, 135) we have "wreathed arms," or The Two Gentlemen of Verona (II, i, 19) — "To wreathe your arms like a malecontent." As it happens, there is good reason to regard both Romeo and Juliet and the Tvoo Gentlemen as redactions by Shakespeare of older plays ; but were it not so, it would still be unwarrantable to argue his author- ship of Titus from such a detail. And just as inconclusive is the parallel between the Titus lines : Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood As fresh as morning's dew distill'd on flowers (II, iv) and the line in Venus and Adonis (665) : Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed. Here indeed there is an approach to identity of expression, the reference in one case being to fresh blood on flowers, in the other to blood on fresh flowers. But the idea is a dramatic and poetic commonplace. In Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragon (I, 84), we have the passage — Where is the knight become Which made the blood besprinkle all the place ? 40 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE and in one of the poems in his Mourning Garment (ed. Dyce, p. 304) the metaphor : As if lilies were imbru'd With drops of blood to make the white Please the eye with more delight. Such parallels, in short, are non-significant apart from better evidence. Apart from such obviously inconclusive cases, we shall find a number of characteristic because unusual uses of words, besides types of phrase and rhythm, common to Titus and the undisputed works of Peele. As for the "sad stories," if there be any significant coincidence between I'll to thy closet and go read with thee Sad stories chanced in the times of old (Titus, III, ii) and Let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings {JRich. //, III, ii), what shall we make, again, of this in Peele ? Now, sit thee here, and tell a heavy tale Sad in thy mood, and sober in thy cheer ? {Old Wives' Tale, 182-3). And though, on the other hand, there is some significance in the parallel between The eagle suffers little birds to sing Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody (Titus, IV, iv) and A falcon towering in the skies Coucheth the fowl below with his wing's shade (Lucrece, 506-7) here again Dr. Grosart had cited a parallel passage from Greene's prose (Works, v, 72) : When the eagle fluttereth, doves take not their flight ; ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN PARALLELS 4I to which may be added another from the prose romance Menaphon (Works, ed. Grosart, vi, 36 ; ed. Arber, p. 23) : " birds make wing as the eagle flies ";' and yet another from the old True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York^ : Neither the king^ nor hitn that loves him best The proudest bird' that holds up Lancaster Dare stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells. This, indeed, is little more than a poetical common- place ; and were it otherwise, the inference would necessarily be that the author of Titus had echoed Greene or the old playwright, whose phrases date before 1592, whereas Lv^rece belongs to 1594. Similar imitation, again, must be imputed if we ascribe to Shakespeare the line in Titus (II, iii, 46): And wash their hands in Bassianus' blood on the strength of the line in Coriolanus (I, x, 27) : Wash my fierce hand in's heart. In the old play Selimus, warrantably ascribed by Dr. Grosart to Greene, and in any case certainly to be dated before 1590, we have the line (2379) : Go, wash thy guilty hands in luke-warm blood. The trope was evidently common ; and in this case it is to the line in Selimus that the rhythm of that in Titus corresponds. If Shakespeare's, then, it is a mere echo : and, what is more, an echo from the man who had jeered at him as "Johannes factotum," ' Compare, in the same work, the poem on the Eag'le and the Fly with the lines in Titus. ' Not to be confused with the worthless True Tragedy of Richard the Third. 3 In Greene's prose work Greene's Farewell to Folly, ag^ain (Works, xi, 269), we have : " dare the proudest bird bear wing' ag-ainst the eagle?" 42 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE " in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in the country," and a purloiner of other men's ideas. The same conclusion is forced on us when we follow up the parallel between the lines : Is the sun dimm'd that gnats do fly at it ? (Titus, IV, iv, 82) and And whither fly the gnats but to the sun ? (j Henry VI, II, vi, 9). The latter line, with almost the whole of the speech in which it occurs, is found in Richard Duke of York, which was certainly in existence before 1592, being quoted by Greene in his Groatsworth of Wit ; and if Shakespeare is to be credited with all that is identical in that play and j Henry VI, there must be framed a new argument, in which " external evidence " will go for little, while the First Part of the Contention must similarly be claimed for Shakespeare, on Knight's lines, with all its imperfections on its head. As regards the lines last cited from Richard Duke of York, Dyce would doubtless have argued that it was Marlowe's, on his principle that the best scenes are above the reach of both Greene and Peele. On that head it must here suffice to say that while there is much reason to credit Marlowe with matter in the Henry VI plays and in Richard III, the bulk of the evidence from phraseology and vocabulary in Richard Duke of York points to Greene ; and that allusions to gnats are common in Greene's works. Here once more then, if Titus be ascribed to Shakespeare, the presumption must be that he is weakly copying a previous dramatist. To this inference, in other cases, Mr. Collins ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN POETRY 43 could offer no objection, seeing that he declares Shakespeare to have " followed at first, with timid servility, the fashion," and pronounces Titus to be "full of reminiscences of the play on which it is founded, recalling particularly the Spanish Tragedy, Selimus, and The Jew of Malta ." As we shall see, it is much more reminiscent of the works of Peele. Yet, immediately after these sweeping and indeed extravagant admissions, which really destroy his own case, Mr. Collins claims that "the moment" Titus is compared with the dramas on which he holds it to have been modelled in " timid and servile imitation," "its immeasurable superiority to all of them becomes instantly apparent." Passing over the significant incoherence of the doctrine, let us check the evidence for the last-cited claim. § 2. Alleged Shakespearean Poetry. In going about to prove further, from quality of style and substance, the "essentially" Shakespearean character of Titus, Mr. Collins set out with a bold claim that "in Titus we have undoubtedly an adumbration of Lear " — a claim which we may be content to leave undiscussed. The next argument runs : Could anyone doubt the touch of Shakespeare's hand in such a passage as this : — I am not mad : I know thee well enough ; Witness this wretched stump, these crimson lines ; Witness these trenches made by grief and care ; Witness the tiring day and heavy night ; Witness all sorrow, that I know thee well {Titus, V, 2). Some of us, did we allow ourselves to proceed a priori, would be disposed to deny energetically 44 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE that Shakespeare ever imagined such diffuse and infelicitous diction ; and we are sufficiently confirmed in doubt when we find in Selimus (177 sq.) the lines : Witness these handless arms ; Witness these empty lodges of mine eyes ! Witness the gods Witness the sun whose golden-coloured beams Your eyes do see, but mine can ne'er behold ; Witness the earth that suckM up my blood ; and in Locrine (v. i) these : Witness the fall of Albioneus' crew, Witness the fall of Humber and his Huns. Here, as usual, we find that the other plays are presumptively older than Titles. Another pair of such lines occurs in Marlowe's Edward //(I, iv): Witness the tears that Isabella sheds ; Witness the heart that, sighing for thee, breaks. And yet another sample occurs in the First Part of the Contention: Witness my bleeding heart, I cannot stay to speak. The balance of presumption is in favour of ascrib- ing this type of line to Greene, since we find in a set of verses in his Groatsworth of Wit the line : Witness my want, the murderer of my wit. Mr. Collins proceeds {a) to credit Titus with an "admirably-proportioned, closely woven plot," in contrast with the " rambling, shambling, skimble- skamble of the Spanish Tragedy" the plot of which Professor Boas in turn pronounces to be "well sustained,"' and Professor Schick to be "developed ' Shakespeare and his Predecessors, p. 65. ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN POETRY 45 with remarkable artistic insight."' In truth the plot of Titus is exactly of the type of that of the Tragedy, only heightened in point of horror — a chain of revenges in which the central personage partly feigns madness. As to the " unity " ascribed to the former, one can but say that such criticism ignores the facts. A play more devoid of moral unity it would be hard to name. The first Act is spent in alienating our sympathies from Titus, who offers up as a human sacrifice one of the sons of Queen Tamora whom he has captured, and in a passion slays one of his own sons. The fourth and fifth Acts are occupied with securing our sympathy for him ; and in the midst of the effort there is introduced a preposterous sub-plot, to enable him to bake the heads of the two sons of Tamora, whose throats he has cut, in a pie for their mother to eat. As we shall see, there is reason to infer in the latter Acts the presence of a revising hand, which might well have been called- in to struggle with the hopeless situation created by those which had gone before. But whether we ascribe the play to one hand or to three, its plot must be pronounced a moral imbecility. Mr. Collins further presses his case (3) by arguing (i) that Aaron in Titus is a prototype of Richard III, lago, and Edmund; Chiron of Cloten ; and Tamora of Margaret; (2) that a number of passages in the play suggest scenes of nature which " must ' Introduction to ed. in "Temple Dramatists" series, p. xxxvii. Similarly Professor Courthope judges that " Kyd, vulgar as he was, had a truer idea of the structure necessary for a drama than any of his immediate associates. His masterpiece has an intel- ligible and stirring plot." History of English Poetry, iv (1903), p. 17. 46 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE have been very familiar to a resident at Stratford- on-Avon " ; (3) that there are many references to Ovid's Metamorphoses, which had been read by Shakespeare for the Venus and the Lucrece; (4) that in this play as in a number of the undisputed plays there are a number of legal allusions. Not one of these arguments has the slightest conclusive force, (i) The character of Aaron is admitted to resemble closely those of Marlowe's Barabas and Ithamore ; and is further duplicated in that of Eleazar in Lust's Dominion, which appears to proceed on a pre-Shakespearean play ; the Margaret of the Henry VI plays, also non-Shakespearean in inception, is only in the vaguest sense a parallel to Tamora ; the figure of Richard III was handled by other dramatists before Shakespeare ; and the evil personalities of lago and Edmund are a world removed from the crude daub in Titus. (2) The allusions to natural scenes count no more in favour of Shakespeare's authorship than of any other : Greene and Peele alike abound in such touches ; and there are rivers and meadows in other parts of England as at Stratford-on-Avon. (3) Greene and Peele and Marlowe and Kyd smack of the classics much more than Shakespeare ever does in his acknowledged plays ; and nowhere in these do we find so many tags of Latin as in Titus ; whereas the other playwrights have many such allusions and quotations. (4) As has been repeatedly shown, legal allusions abound in other dramatists of the period ; Peele's Arraignment of Paris (1584) is full of them ; and, as will be shown in detail in a subsequent section, they are to be found easily in other early plays. ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN POETRY 47 Next (c) we are asked to contrast the " measured and dignified rhetoric of Titus" with " the boisterous fanfaronade of the worst parts of Tamburlaine ; its fine touches of nature and occasionally piercing pathos with anything which had appeared on the English stage before"; and Professor Collins cites, as being possible to none but Shakespeare, the following passages : When will this fearful slumber have an end ? Where life hath no more interest but to breathe ! O brother, speak with possibilities, And do not break into these deep extremes ; Blood and revenge are hammering in my head ; No vast obscurity or misty vale ; We worldly men Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes ; This goodly summer with your winter mixt ; and the " noble " passage beginning : — King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name. Finally, quoting from Act V, sc. iii, the speeches of Lucius and Marcus over Titus' body, beginning, O take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips, he demands : — " If anything more simply pathetic exists in dramatic poetry, where can it be found?" To this question we may at once answer : " In a dozen genuine plays of Shakespeare ; and in several of Marlowe, Greene, Marston, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, to name no others," postponing for the moment the demonstration of the essential weakness of the passage in question. First we have to note that the " hammering " line has twice over been shown, by Professor Schroer 48 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE and Dr. Grosart, to be but a slight variant of one used by Greene and Lodge in previous plays ; ' and that the line on summer and winter had long ago been shown by Richard Simpson to be a variant of one in The Play of Stucley." It may here be added that it is closely paralleled in two lines in the Spanish Tragedy (III, xiii, 146-7) : — But suffer'd thy fair crimson-coloured spring With wither'd winter to be blasted thus. The same idea, indeed, occurs twice again in the Tragedy : — My summer's day will turn to winter's night. (II. i. 34-) In the harvest of my summer's joys Death's winter nipped the blossoms of my bliss. (I, Prol.) Only less close is the parallel between the second of the group of lines above quoted by Mr. Collins and one at the end of the Second Part of Tamburlaine : — Leading a life that only strives to die. And hardly less close, yet again, is the resemblance between the lines in Tifus about " deep extremes " and these from Greene's George-a-Greene : — I'll draw thee on with sharp and deep extremes O deep extremes : my heart begins to break. The term "extremes," it may be noted, occurs four times in the Spanish Tragedy ; and Greene, ■ Hope and revenge sit hammering in my heart (Lodge, Wounds of Civil War). For such as still have hammering in their heads But only hope of honour and revenge (Greene, Orlando Furioso). The tag is further frequent in Greene's prose. ' Mix not my forward summer with sharp breath (The Play ofStucley, 1., 754). ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN POETRY 49 further, has " deep extremes " in Orlando Furioso (ed. Dyce, p. 96) and in the poem A Maiden's Dream {id. p. 279). As usual, Mr. Collins takes no account of these rebuttals of his thesis. Doubtless he would at a pinch dispose of them by his formula of "timid and servile imitation " — the express negation of his whole argument from " Shakespearean " quality. By this alternation of contrary proposi- tions he makes out Shakespeare alternately the most and the least original writer of his day. For the present, the thesis of imitation is hung up ; and originality is affirmed when we find ourselves, as it were, in Echo's cave. The argument now virtually proceeds on the assumption that no pre- Shakespearean dramatist was capable of producing a sonorous, sententious, or nervous line. Now the sixth line above cited is of a type often pro- duced in the pre-Shakespearean drama. For instances : Within a hugy dale of lasting night (Spanish Tragedy, III, 2). Through dreadful shades of ever-glooming night {Id., I, I, 56). The dreadful vast (Lodge's Wounds of Civil War). To bare and barren vales with floods made waste {David and Bethsahe, sc. 3). Vast Grantland, compassed with the Frozen Sea {Second Pait of Tamburlaine, I, i). Similarly the meagre measure of pathos in Titus may be matched from the earlier Spanish Tragedy : Ay, now I know thee, now thou nam'st thy son : Thou art the lively image of my grief : Within thy face my sorrows I may see. Thy eyes are gummed with tears, thy cheeks are wan, E 50 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE Thy forehead troubled, and thy mutt'ring hps Murmur sad words abruptly broken off; By force of windy sighs thy spirit breathes, And all this sorrow riseth for thy son ; and again : To wring more tears from Isabella's eyes Whose lights are dimmed with over-long laments. Heaven covereth him that hath no burial. In a later section we shall see not merely analogies but parallels in the Tragedy to passages in Titus ; but in the present connection we may note the eulogy unconsciously given by Mr. Baildon to one of its strokes, not hitherto selected for praise. In his introduction to his edition of Titus he speaks of " splendid dramatic touches " in the treatment of the titular character, and affirms that " his sudden laughter, his half hysterical ' Ha ! ha ! ha ! ' for swift and tremendous effect can perhaps only be paralleled by the ' Knocking in Macbeth ' for profound and startling dramatic force." If it be so, Kyd was a great dramatist ; for in one of the original scenes of the Spanish Tragedy (III, ii, end ;• as well as in the additions to Act II, sc. v) the student will find those three " Ha's " thrice over. Further, in Mr. Fuller's careful investiga- tion of the Dutch and German versions of Titus — an essay to which Mr. Baildon refers with praise and acquiescence — it is shown that the " Ha, ha" business occurred in the early play which has been preserved in the Dutch.' The Ha-ha school is thus pre-Shakespearean ; and it is to be hoped that Mr. Baildon will transfer his liberal encomium to the proper quarter. ' Art. cited, p. 49. ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN POETRY 5 1 If he is concerned to be impartial, he will distri- bute his largess yet further. From Locrtne, struc- turally and aesthetically a worse play than the Tragedy, may be cited lines (probably Greene's) musical enough to recall Marlowe, and one or two passages sententious enough to have passed securely as the young Shakespeare's had they been found in any of his earlier dramas. For instances: You gracious fairies which at eventide Your closets leave with heavenly beauty stored, And on your shoulders spread your golden locks (V, iv). Hard-hearted death, that, when the wretched call. Art furthest off, and seldom hear'st at all. But in the midst of fortune's good success Uncall'd for com'st and shear'st our life in twain {lb.). Madam, where resolution leads the way. And courage follows with emboldened pace. Fortune can never use her tyranny : For valiantness is like unto a rock. That standeth in the waves of ocean ; Which though the billows beat on every side Yet it remaineth still unmovable (Id., ii, i). He is not worthy of the honeycomb That shuns the hive because the bees have stings. That likes me best that is not got with ease. Which thousand dangers do accompany {Id., HI ii). The passage in Titus which contains the lines : The birds chaunt melody on every bush ; The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun ; The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind ; is pronounced by Mr. Baildon "Shakespearean in its extreme and rare poetic and rhythmic beauty." Had he found them in Titus he would 52 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE doubtless have said the same of a similarly monotonous group of lines in Locrine (II, i) : The airy hills enclosed with shady groves, The groves replenish'd with sweet chirping birds, The birds resounding heavenly melody," and of these in David and Bethsabe (so. i) : The brims let be embraced with golden curls Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make For joy to feed the fount with their recourse ; Let all the grass that beautifies her bower Bear manna every morn instead of dew. And could he but have supposed it Shakespeare's he would doubtless have found superlatives for the passage in the Spanish Tragedy cited with mode- rate applause by Professor Schick : Our hour shall be, when Vesper 'gins to rise. That summons home distressful travellers : There none shall hear us but the harmless birds ; Haply the gentle nightingale Shall carol us asleep ere we be 'ware, And, singing with the prickle at her breast. Tell our delight and mirthful dalliance. Certainly the better passages in Locrine are embedded in masses of rubbish; but so are the presentable passages fished out of Titus by those who seek to have it accepted as Shakespeare's. And it is in the recognition of the kindred quality of the rubbish in Titus and in a number of the plays of the school to which it belongs that we shall find the clue to its authorship. It is in such inept attempts at pathos as this : Shall thy good uncle and thy brother Lucius, And thou and I, sit round about some fountain, Looking all downwards, to behold our cheeks, ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN LEGAL ALLUSIONS 53 How they are stain'd, as meadows, yet not dry, With miry slime left on them by a flood ? {Titus, III, i) that we see the average strength of the workman- ship ; and it is only by consideration of the mass of the matter that we can reach any just conclusion. But our method must be more circumspect, our tests more scientific, than those we have been examining. § 3. Alleged Shakespearean Legal Allusions. So much stress is laid by Professor Collins on his argument from the legal allusions in Titus that it may be worth while to show in some detail how nugatory is his contention. It runs : — And lastly, we have in the diction one of Shakespeare's most striking characteristics. All through his writings, but more particularly in the poems and earlier dramas, his fondness for legal phraseology and his profuse employment of it are so marked that its absence would be almost conclusive against the authenticity of a work attributed to him. But Titus Andronictis will sustain this test. Thus we have " aJFy in thy uprightness " (i, i) ; "true nobility warrants these words" (i, 2); " Suum cuique is our Roman justice" (i, 2); "the Prince in justice seizeth but his own " (i, 2) ; "rob my sweet sons of their _/fee" (ii, 3); "purchase us thy lasting friends" (ii, 4) ; "let me be their bail" (ii, 4) ; "the end upon them should be executed" (ii, 4); "do execution on my flesh and blood" (iv, 2); "do shameful execution on herself" (v, 3); "and make a mutual closure of our house" (v, 3); "the extent of legal (sic) justice" (iv, 4); "a precedent ssiA. lively warrant'^ (v, 3); "will doom her death " (iv, 2). Nor must we forget the masterly touch in the fifth Act, which is peculiarly characteristic of Shakespeare — the fine irony which identifies Tamora and 54 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE her two sons with revenge, rape, and murder just before retribution falls on them." I quote the entire paragraph lest any of the Pro- fessor's pleas should be evaded ; but I may be excused for dismissing the last sentence with the remark that if the habitual extolling of ineptitudes and commonplaces as " fine " and " Shakespearean" would settle the question, he and Mr. Baildon would have done so many times over. That such darkening of critical counsel should be a part of the plea for Shakespeare's authorship of Titus is an additional reason why we should seek to clear up the issue. The general thesis as to Shakespeare's legal knowledge or proclivities, maintained by Professor Collins in a special essay, " Was Shakespeare a Lawyer?" in his volume oi Studies in Shakespeare, was exhaustively dealt with five years before by Mr. Devecmon in a treatise^ to which the Professor makes no allusion. As had been previously pointed out by Mr. Sidney Lee, " Legal termino- logy abounded in all plays and poems of the period ";3 and Mr. Devecmon points out that in Webster's The Devil's Law Case there are " more legal expressions (some of them highly technical, and all correctly used) than are to be found in any single one of Shakespeare's works." It is more to our present purpose, however, to note that legal allusions — especially in the extravagantly wide sense in which Professor Collins interprets the ' studies in Shakespeare, pp. 118-119. ' "In re Shakespeare's ' Legal Acquirements,'" by William C. Devecmon. Publications of the New York Shakespeare Society, No. 12. London, Kegan Paul, 1899. 3 Life of Shakespeare, p. 32, note. ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN LEGAL ALLUSIONS 55 term — are equally abundant in the works of Shake- speare's predecessors. In 'P&^^'s^^s Arraignment of Paris (1584) we have the following : Aiders in her suit Do observance Sentence of a judge A hard and doubtful case Answer his offence The court of Jove Plead his case Plead his cause Answer his indictment To plead or answer by attorney Allow the man his advocate Arraigned of partiality (twice) Sentence partial and unjust My tongue is void with process to maintain A daysman chosen by full consent Judged corruptly Reverse my sentence by appeal Law and right Equity and law (twice) Quitted by heaven's laws Indifferent sentence Licensed according to our laws ; also the terms "doom " = judgment (eight times), "bequeathed" (four times), "bail," "pledge," "fee," and "attaint." In Peek's Battle of Alcazar, again, we have the following " legal " expressions : Honour's fee Pay satisfaction with thy blood Sealed with blood True succession of the crown Intitle him true heir unto the crown ; and in his Edward I these : — Heavenly ordinance decrees (twice) 56 THE ALLEGED INTERNAL EVIDENCE Yearly fee Death doth seize andlsummon all alike By doom of heavens it is decreed Seized [in the legal sense] with honourable love Seize desire Invested in his rights Lawful line of our succession Make appeal Submit to your award Stand to our award To execute on me Benevolence (= gift). And in the Spanish Tragedy of Kyd, who as one " born to the trade of Noverint " had a right to be legal, we have, in addition to the common "doom," the following phrases : Valour's fee Breach to common law Laid my heart to gage Place of execution See this execution done Compass no redress The court is set I had a suit with her The law discharged Hear my suit Bankrupt of my bliss An action of battery An action of the case An ejectione firmce by a lease Plead your several actions, etc. Here's my declaration Here's my hand Here's my lease Cross my suit. Sorrow and despair hath cited me To hear Horatio plead with Rhadamanth In Greene, yet again, we have in one short scene ALLEGED SHAKESPEAREAN LEGAL ALLUSIONS 57 of Orlando Furioso the phrases : " put in their pleas," "enter such a plea," "nonsuits your evidence," "set a supersedeas of my wrath." It seems unnecessary to carry further this particular issue. Solvuntur tabulae. Chapter V. THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED The alleged external and internal evidences for the Shakespearean authorship of Titus having thus alike collapsed on examination, it behoves us, not to give judgment by default, but to make an independent survey of the whole case in order to have a right to a final judgment. In forming our opinion it is well to face at the outset the main issue. By common consent Titus is the most horrible play in the whole Elizabethan drama. Besides a string of assassinations, it includes a human sacrifice ; the slaying of a son by his father ; a brutish rape committed by two princes with the consent of their mother ; the cutting-out of the tongue and lopping-off of the hands of the victim, who appears on the stage immediately with her violators ; the cutting off, by a trick, of one hand of her father, the central character; who in turn, having caused the violators to be bound and gagged, cuts their throats (their victim holding with her arms the basin for their blood) ; whereafter their heads are baked by him and his daughter in pies, of which their guilty mother partakes. To complete the odious circle, the ravished heroine had beforehand found the 58 PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC TESTS 59 Other woman, the Empress of Rome, in the com- pany of a Moor, and had commented on the situation in the language of the pot-house ; whence the manner of the revenge. If this play be the first work of Shakespeare, we are shut up to the conclusion that he who of all the dramatists of his age developed the most exquisite taste, began by exhibiting the very worst ; that he who most pro- foundly spiritualised tragedy began by brutalising it beyond the utmost measure of his competitors. Is it probable ? § I. Preliminary Scientific Tests. Certainly the a priori improbability must not determine the issue. Let us then, having seen how entirely inconclusive is the evidence put forward for Shakespeare's authorship, examine the whole drift of the internal evidence. As against the random tests applied by the tradi- tionalists, let us formulate all the tests that the problem admits of, first putting a few necessary caveats. 1. The presence even of one or two "superior" passages would not prove original authorship by the superior hand. That may have merely made additions. 2. By the admission of the traditionalists, bare resemblances of idea between a few passages in Titus and passages even in undisputed Shake- spearean plays prove nothing. If Shakespeare is at times imitative in other plays, he may have echoed phrases from so popular a play as Titus. (Not that any such thesis is here maintained.) But parallels between Titus and other disputed 6o THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED plays are evidence rather against than for Shake- speare's authorship. 3. Those who argue that a few passages in the play are discernibly Shakespearean, cannot go on to claim that the whole play is so. On the other hand, the authorship of any anonymous or disputed drama is not to be settled by mere occasional parallels of epigram or saw. Such parallels abound in Elizabethan literature, the tags of Lyly's Euphues, in particular, being current in all directions. We have to inquire how far a given writer is wont to echo others, and how far to echo himself. Greene, for instance, does both in an uncommon degree; frequently repeating (as does Lodge) many of the saws of Euphties,^ and as frequently formulas of his own. Peele, again, is not a vendor of saws, but is notably given to repeating turns of expression of his own which have no epigrammatic quality. Marlowe, in com- parison, is but slightly repetitive. Greene and Peele, again, were clearly much impressed by Marlowe, and imitate his manner as well as adopt some of his terms. The sound means of identification are, broadlyspeaking, frequent use of particular phrases, general or frequent notes of manner and mannerism, peculiarities of versification and vocabulary, tics of style, and forms of phrase which are not noticeably epigrammatic in character. It has been contended, I am aware, by Professor Schroer," that "verbal coincidence between two poems speaks rather against than for identity of ' One phrase of Lyly's about the high soaring- of the hobby hawk is repeated ad nauseam by Greene and Lodge, ' Ueber Titus Andronicus, p. 73. PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC TESTS 6l authorship." But while that opinion is intelligible as an a priori theory, and may in some instances be ostensibly justified, it is unintelligible to me that it can be held as a general principle after an inductive study of Elizabethan literature. Greene and Lodge repeat phrases and aphorisms in the same tale, sometimes on the same page, in signed publications as to which there arise no questions of mixed authorship. Peele's reiterations, as distinct from the repetitive effects of phrase noted below, occur throughout his signed poems and plays, and so justify, when they concur with a contemporary citation, the ascription to him of the Battle of Alcazar, which contains a number of phrases used in his signed poems. Clearly we must look out for echoes of one man by another, knowing that these certainly occur ; but that men in those days' verbally echoed themselves many times over is also certain, and the fact is of prime importance in investigations of authorship. Turning, then, to the concrete inquiry, we begin with vocabulary, and in that regard we have specially to consider : — 1. Words found in Tittis and nowhere else in "Shakespeare." 2. Words found there and in other disputed or composite plays inserted in the first folio, in which other hands are known or believed to have entered. 3. Words used in Titus and in Shakespearean plays, but with a different sense or accentuation. ■ The habit is of course not obsolete. In Professor A. D. White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology I find the phrase " German honesty " repeated thrice, with no iterative purpose, in a few pagres (ii, 255, 257, 259). The fact that, as the context shows, there is nothings speciaUy German in the case, sug^g-ests the dominion of the " tsig." 62 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED It will be seen on reflection that while the discovery of words of any or all of these classes in the works of an early contemporary of Shakespeare would certainly not be conclusive as to his author- ship of the play, it would give on the one hand a strong ground for a hypothesis, to be otherwise tested, and on the other hand strong confirmation to other evidence pointing in the same direction. The first test should be a search for the same words in other contemporaries ; and we shall find that this promptly checks a sweeping inference in the present inquiry. But if such further discovery is reconcilable with a wider hypothesis in which the first is included, and which endures the remain- ing tests, we shall have reached an inference incomparably better founded than the slightly coloured pre-suppositions which we have hitherto examined. In this connection it may be well to point out that the commonly-endorsed argument of Mr. Richard Simpson against any inference from "once-used words," on the score that every play contains such, is a statistical fallacy. Mr. Simpson claimed' to negative all inferences from the occur- rence of any word in one Shakespearean play only. Taking all the words so indicated in Mrs. Cowden Clarke's concordance, and finding in every play a number of words peculiar to it, he concluded that nothing could be inferred from any case. But of the words so singled out many are parts of verbs of which other parts appear often in other plays ; or ' In the Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society, 1874. Dr. Elze ( William Shakespeare, Eng^. trans., p. 348, note) endorses this argument without discrimination, as does Professor Schroer, Ueber Titus Andronicus, p. 26. PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC TESTS 63 adverbs or adjectives of which the correlatives are elsewhere used ; or compound nouns of which the elements are elsewhere common. Thus, e.g., "abhorr'dst" appears in one play only, while " abhorred " is used in fifteen ; " abominably " occurs only in Hamlet, while "abominable " occurs more than a dozen times ; and " abbey-gate " figures as a once-used word, while " abbey-wall " occurs in three plays, " abbey " in three, and " gate " in many. To base an indiscriminate numerical argument on such instances is idle. The word " abbess " may be used in only one play because in only one play does an abbess figure. But when general terms or idioms appear in only one play, or only in plays otherwise arraigned as in large part non-Shakespearean, they constitute an item in a reasonable presumption. And when we find in Titus the forms " patient thyself" (fairly common in Elizabethan writers, but not seen else- where in the alleged works of Shakespeare) and the verb " to passionate " (which is in similar case), we are so far supported in our surmise that the play is not his. Many of the "once-used words," further, are proper names ; and here, clearly, there can be no general inference. But where proper names are introduced by way of random classical allusion, their recurrence may be ground for a certain presumption. Now, there are some fourteen or more classical proper names, allusively used in Titus, which appear in no other play ascribed to Shakespeare, and one or two more which occur only in disputed or admittedly composite plays. If all or nearly all of these are found in the works 64 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED of one or two contemporaries, who are otherwise indicated by the evidence as sharers in - the authorship of Titus, the argument is still further strengthened. And if, finally, the great majority of the words special to Titus among his reputed plays are found in the works of one or two contem- poraries, th.Q prima facie presumption that they are the authors is obviously great. § 2. The Traces of Peele. All instances, obviously, are open to discussion on their merits ; and we can but submit them to criticism. To begin with, there occurs in Titus the term " palliament," found in no other play ascribed to Shakespeare. Steevens observed that he had " not met with it elsewhere in any English writer, whether ancient or modern," and that it " must have originated from the mint of a scholar." Steevens is sometimes far from accurate ; but this word is undoubtedly rare ; and when we find it in Peele's poem. The Honour of the Garter (1, 92), published in 1593, we have clear ground for examining the hypothesis — if it be otherwise supported — that Peele had a share in writing the play. When, yet further, we note that in Titus the palliament is described as "of white and spotless hue "; and that in the Honour of the Garter, further on (lines 314-315), the same badge is alluded to as Weeds of spotless white Like those that stood for Rome's great offices, we are shut up to the conclusion that there is some connection between the two works. At the outset we are met by the argument of Mr. THE TRACES OF PEELE 65 Charles Crawford,' a vehement maintainer of the Shakespearean authorship of Titus, that Shake- speare in the play has copied the expressions of Peele. Here the play is at once brought down to the latter part of the year 1593, and there is a complete schism between the chronology of Mr. Crawford and that of Professor Collins, who, as usual, knows nothing about the other theory. Mr. Baildon, after comfortably dating the play between 1589 and 1593, helplessly suggests that both Peele and Shakespeare may have copied some third poet. But Mr. Crawford, in turn, takes no heed of a series of objections to his conclusion that Shakespeare wrote the play in 1593 ; and in particular has failed to note a multitude of coincidences between Titus and others of Peele's works than the Honour of the Garter. When we collate these we shall find that Mr. Crawford's solution is quite untenable. To make the issue clearer, let us take another parallel in which an uncommon term is used in Titus and in a Peele play, in a passage which is also a partial duplication. The noun "chase," meaning "park" or "game preserve," occurs twice in Titus and nowhere else in any play ascribed to Shakespeare.^ It also occurs four times in Peele's early Arraignment of Paris, ^ a line of which we have already seen echoed in ' Article on Tht Date and Authenticity of " Titus Andronicus,'' in ihejahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 1900. ' On the word " chase " in Titus, II, iii, 255, Mr. Baildon in his edition has the note : " See the Two Gentlemen, I, ii, 116," which I cannot understand. The word does not occur there, or, in this sense, an3rwhere else in Shakespeare. 3 Reference below, § 2. F 66 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED Titus. Thrice, again, in Titus, but in no other play ascribed to Shakespeare, we have reference to the panther ; and this word also occurs twice in Peele.' In our play (II, ii) we have the phrase : The proudest panther in the chase. In the Arraignment (I, i, 7) we find the line : The fairest, fattest fawn in all the chase. The alliterations standing alone would count for nothing ; occurring in lines ending with the same uncommon term, which thus form parallel pictures, they at once infer either identity of source or imitation. Can we then suppose that Shakespeare is here weakly imitating his predecessor? If so, how comes it that never again in his works does he mention either a panther or a " chase "? How should such a lavish imitator so suddenly cease to imitate ? Another instance of unquestionable echoing will further serve to test from both sides the theory that in such coincidences there has been imitation of one poet by another. In Titus we have the lines : And faster bound to Aaron's charming eyes Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus, which point to two separate lines in Peele's Edward I {sc. iv, 21 ; x, 201) : To tie Prometheus' limbs to Caucasus Fast by those looks are all my fancies tied. In Titus the two figures are combined in one eminently grotesque trope. Are we then to suppose either (i) that Shakespeare made this absurd combination immediately after reading ' References below, § 2. THE TRACES OF PEELE 67 Edward I (published in 1593), or that Peele got his ideas yet again from hearing Titus played in the theatre, and frugally turned one stolen trope to account by making two uses of it ? Are not both inferences alike fantastic? Is not the natural explanation this, that Peele, writing the two plays about the same time, used up his own rhetoric twice over, one of his lines with "tie" in it recalling to him the other ? Next let us take the moderately rare word "zodiac," which occurs once in Titiis and only once in all the other plays abscribed to Shake- speare. In the latter case {M. for M., I, ii, 172) it is used very loosely indeed in the line : So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round — with the mere force of "a year." In the unques- tionable works of Peele, on the other hand, not only do we find the word used at least four times, and that with full comprehension of its meaning {Honour of the Garter: Ad. Mcecen., 9; David and Bethsdbe, sc. i, 108-9 ; Anglorum Ferice, 24; Descensus Astrcece, 4); but one of the passages is found almost to duplicate the line in Titus. That says of the sun that he Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach. In the Anglorum Ferice (1595) we have : Gallops the zodiac in his fiery wain ; again in the Descensus Astrcece (1591) we have : Gallop the zodiac, and end the year; and yet again in David and Bethsabe : Climbs The crooked zodiac with his fiery sphere. Are we then to suppose that Peele, having heard 68 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED in the theatre the first-cited of these lines, adapted it twice in separate poems and yet again in a play? Is it not obviously more probable that he, who has in all four allusions to the zodiac, is the originator, and not Shakespeare, who (apart from Titus) uses the term once only, and then inaccurately ? And when we note further that " glistering " is one of Peek's common epithets (occurring at least twelve times in his plays and poems), and that in the Tale of Troy (461) he speaks of the sun's "glister- ing chariot,"' is not the probability heightened? Again Mr. Crawford meets us with the claim that Shakespeare was simply copying Peele. Shake- speare, writes this admirer, "copied Greene, Peele, and Marlowe in Titus Andronicus as well as in other pieces"* — a vigorous support to Pro- fessor Collins's formula of "timid and servile imitation." On that view we are to suppose that Shakespeare, having once used Peele's favourite phrase about the zodiac — and this in what Mr. Crawford confidently asserts to have been "one of Shakespeare's favourite plays "^ — nevertheless forgot afterwards what the zodiac precisely was, and referred to it in Measure for Measure as if it simply meant a year. Doubtless the traditionalists will accept that as "highly probable." But we have already seen that in Titus there is a close echo of two lines in Peele's Old Wives' Tale, which was doubtless acted before 1593, but was not published till 1595. Was Shakespeare then copy- ing lines he had heard (or, it may be, spoken) in ' In the ed. of 1589 thCipassage reads simply, "the glorious sun his chariot." " Glistering" is a later change. ' Article cited, p. 112. 3 J^,^ p. 121, THE TRACES OF PEELE 69 the theatre? Either Mr, Crawford must add that to his list of cases of plagiarism by the Master, or he must now decide that Peele in the Tale was copying Shakespeare. When, further, we find parallels to Titus in David and Bethsabe, which was registered for publication in May, 1594 (though only the 1599 edition is now known), we can take our choice of the same alternatives. In short, to gratify the determination of critics who have pre-judged the cause, we are to credit the young Shakespeare not only with a hundred plagiarisms, none of them worth his while, but, as we shall see later, with a close imitation of the rhythms and cadences of the least inspired of his three leading competitors. When we compare the " zodiac " passage in Titus with that in David and Bethsabe we find " slavish imitation " indeed. The latter runs : As heaven's bright eye burns most when most he climbs The crookfed zodiac with his fiery sphere, Aitd shineth furthest from this earthly globe. So, since thy beauty scorched my conquered soul, etc. The other runs : As when the golden sun salutes the morn. And having gilt the ocean with his beams. Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach, And overlooks the highest-peering hills. So Tamora. On Mr. Crawford's theory, either (i) Shakespeare must be held not only to have imitated once more in one passage two of Peele's — one taken from a printed poem, the other from a play perhaps not then printed — but to have artificially woven his borrowings in a period elaborately and minutely imitated from the play ; or (2) Peele must be held 70 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED to have revised David and Bethsabe after 1594, and to have therein imitated his imitator, working his favourite figure into just such a period as the imitator has framed it in. Is not common sense shut up to the conclusion that Peele was repeating himself, here as in a score of other places ? In view of such unquestionable parallelisms of style in Titus and the signed works of Peele, we are even entitled to trace similar repeti- tions in passages where the resemblance is not pronounced enough to leap to the eyes. In Peek's signed poem TTie Tale of Troy, in which we shall find yet other clues to Titus, there is a passage (1. 400 sqq.) about Sinon's stratagem, in which occur the lines : While subtle Grecians lurk'd in Tenedos And so bewitched King Priam, and his court That now at last, to Troyaxis' fatal hurt They 'greed to hoise this engine of mischance. Compare with the lines of Marcus in Titus (V, iii, 84-86) : When subtle Greeks surprised King Priam's Troy. Tell us what Sinon hath bewitcVd our ears, Or who hath brought ^^ fatal engine in. In the first line quoted, as it happens, the words " subtle Grecians " are an emendation of the (post- humous) second edition of the Tale of Troy, that of 1589 having "traytrous Greekes." Here once more, then, on Mr. Crawford's theory, Peele was echoing Shakespeare after Shakespeare had echoed him ! In one case of single mimicry the theory of imitation might pass, for once in a way ; but before a long series of reciprocities it becomes futile. Why should Shakespeare so determinedly THE TRACES OF PEELE 7 1 echo one third-rate contemporary, who echoed him in return? As we shall see, such an obstinate presupposition is quashed once for all by a comparison of the versification of Titus with that of either JLove's Labour's Lost or the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, both reasonably to be assigned to Shakespeare's earlier years. The technique is vitally different. But even if this consideration were not before us, we might justly refuse to solve the problem of the countless coincidences between Titus and the work of contemporaries by arbitrarily assuming an end- less series of weak plagiarisms on Shakespeare's part, with an equally arbitrary resort to the contrary solution when the parallel passage occurs in a work printed after Titus. It is arguable that Peele some- times copied Shakespeare, or Shakespeare Peele ; but to argue that Shakespeare constantly aped Peele down to his most trifling peculiarities, and that on his part Peele freely parroted no less trifling peculiarities of Shakespeare, zealously copying his copyist, is to multiply difficulties instead of solving them. If on the contrary we make the hypothesis that Peele had a main share in Titus, all the difficulties disappear at once : the whole data come into line. Peele is of all dramatists of his day the man who oftenest repeated himself in his avowed works.' The moment we apply the hypothesis that he is doing so in Titus our problem begins to grow trans- parent. This will appear anew when we take next one of ' Greene repeats himself endlessly in his prose, but not so much in his dramas. 72 tHE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED the types of phrase picked out by Professor Collins from Titus as particularly Shakespearean : As swift as swallow flies. Run like swallows o'er the plain. Other allusions to the swiftness of swallows in the plays ascribed to Shakespeare occur in Richard III, one of the chronicle group in which, on general grounds, Peele has been supposed by several critics to have had a share, and in a jest of FalstafFs. Here there is indeed no clear primary presumption against Shakespeare's origination of the phrase in Titus. But when again we find in Peele the two phrases : As swift as swallow flies (^Ed. I, sc. ix)j Swift as the swallow {Polyhymnia, 169), we are at least set inquiring as to dates. Poly- hymnia was published in 1590, and Edward I in 1593, after having been for some time acted. Titus was first published in 1594. Are we here again to suppose that Peele was echoing a line he had heard in the theatre? Such assumptions become increasingly inadmissible with each new test case. And still the cases multiply. The word "suc- cessful," for instance, might be supposed to be common enough, yet it occurs only once in an undisputed Shakespearean play, the late Wintet's Tale, while it is found twice in the disputed Henry VI group, and twice in Titus. Peele, on the other hand, uses it at least four times in the Battle of Alcazar alone (I, i, 58 ; ii, 132, 135, V, i, 189); he also frequently has "success," and thrice "successless" {Arr. of Paris, I, ii, 21; THE TRACES OF PEELE 73 Farewell, 240; Anglor. Ferice, 82) ; also "succes- sively " {Battle) with the sense attached to " suc- cessive " in Titus I, i. But the Battle of Alcazar was not published till 1594. When then we find in this connection one more approach to a duplica- tion of lines in the Battle and Titus : Successful in thy (the ?) work thou undertakes {Battle, I, ii, 135), Successful in the battles that he fights (Titus, I, ii, 3); the presumption of his presence in the latter play- becomes still stronger. We are here dealing not with a phrase that could readily pass current as a tag, but with a tic of style, a habit of repetition, seen running throughout Peele's whole work. So it is, again, with the nearly duplicated lines : The venomous malice of my swelling heart ' {Titus, V, iii); The fatal poison of my swelling heart {Battle, II, iii, 3). Even such phrases as " The hollow prison of my flesh " {Titus, III, ii) ; " The painful prison of my soul " {Ed. I, Sc. 25) ; " The prison of my breast " {Battle, V, i), and "My soul released from prison on this earth "^ {Id., ib.) ; "their latest home" = the grave {Titus, I, ii) and their "longest • Compare the line in i H. VI, III, i, 26 : From envious malice of thy swelling heart, and yet another in the First Part of the Contention, sc. i : The big-swoln venom of thy hateful heart. All save the last are presumptively Peele's ; and even that may be his, altered by him later in i H. VI. ' This again is echoed in the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York: Now my soul's palace is become a prison. Oh, would she break from compass of my breast. Again the presumption is for Peele. 74 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED home" {Battle, I, 125) ; "Fortune's shot" {Titus, II, i) and "envy's shot" {Garter, 411) — though they might have currency as stage tags, may reasonably be reckoned with the stronger instances on the side of the inference that Peele had a main share in TitVrS. So with the use of the peculiar phrase " sacrificing fire " found in Titus (I, 144) and in the Battle (V, i, 183), but nowhere in Shakespeare. Every additional instance progres- sively strengthens the thesis. And when we add these to the previously cited lines : — The hunt is up ; the morn is bright and grey (Tittis, II, ii), The day is clear : the welkin bright and grey (Old Wives' Tak), Whose smoke, like incense, doth perfume the sky {Titus, I, 14s), Whose thick and fogg^ smoke, piercing the sky {Arr. of Paris, 12) — noting that in the first parallel the lines which follow in each case have the same cadence, and that in the second there is reference in each context to " sacrifice " — the inference is yet further reinforced. Given such a strong general case, our business is, as aforesaid, to apply to it all the tests that the problem admits of. To be finally valid, our infer- ence must be borne out by a general survey of Peele's vocabulary, style, versification, sentiment, and dramatic methods ; and the chronology, of course, must be corroborative. On the last head there is no trouble. Peele was alive in 1595 ; and his first published work, The Arraignment of Paris, appeared in 1584. This, probably a spon- taneous production, shows no traces of collabora- ion ; neither does his David and Bethsabe ; and THE TRACES OF PEELE 75 though there are somewhat obvious interpolations in his Edward I, which he signed, and possibilities of collaboration or interpolation in his Battle of Alcazar, a good deal of his collected work consists of his signed poems. There is thus a considerable body of Peele's work as to the homogeneity of which we can be practically certain. The Battle of Alcazar, though anonymous, has been so generally accepted as his on the strong grounds put forward by Dyce, and is so clearly in the manner of his Edward I and David and Bethsabe, that I shall here take his authorship for granted. Concerning Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, which is ascribed to him on the strength of an inscription of his name on the old edition in a contemporary hand, his latest editor, Mr. Bullen, expresses' strong doubts as to its being Peele's, adding : " I suspect that it was written by some stich person as Richard Edwards (author of Damon and Pythias) when Peele was in his teens." I venture to say that the style and diction are not at all those of Edwards ; and as it has a large number of words and phrases which appear to be favourites with Peele and Greene respectively, I shall here treat it as a work by Peele, probably revised or added to by Greene. The antique form of the verse is no bar to such a conclusion. It was a form that had long been popular ; and Peele, who is often archaic in his rhymed work, not only has a quantity of long verse tolerably like this in his Arraignment of Paris, but has there a number of the very touches of rustic dialect found in this play. Such an exercise in verse was perfectly possible to both • The Works of George Peele, 1888, introd., p. xlii. 76 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED poets ; and it seems to me visibly the performance not of " rhyming mother wits " like Edwards, but of scholars, taking to the archaic with half humorous, half heedless zest. Some of its coincidences with Peele's special vocabulary will appear in the next section ; and the clues to Greene will be indicated in Chapter VII. Meantime we may note the frequent use in it of the words "sacred" and "sacrifice," as well as " hugy," "maugre," and "vital," all common to Peele and Greene ; the further occurrence of Peele's favourite words " policy " and "drift "; of "engines " (twice), which he frequently employs ; of the form " gratu- lation," from his frequent verb "gratulate"; and of such nouns as " propound," " expect," and "suspect," which are very much in his manner. Such an uncommon word as " needly," found in his Tah of Troy (127) and thrice in Sir Clyomon, is a clue that cannot be neglected.' Finally we may note " faltering tongue " as occurring in Sir Clyomon (ed. Dyce, p. 517) and in Edward I (sc. xxv). Beyond these assigned works, there is another mass of anonymous matter as to which we can be nearly certain that it is his ; but the proving of this is one of the more difficult parts of our inquiry ; and the proper procedure is to make clear first, in addition to the decisive duplications of phrase already noted, the significant identities of his vocabulary, as found in his actually signed and assigned works, with Titus. Such identities would not of themselves establish his authorship, and it • The passagre in which this word occurs in Romeo and Juliet (III. ii, 117) is notably un-Shakespeareati in style. PEELE'S vocabulary in " TITUS ■ 77 need hardly be said that each item is open to revision insofar as a word is to be found in other contemporary playwrights ; but collectively they form an important part of the cumulative proof. § 2. Peelers Vocabulary in "Titus." The list of words and accentuations special to Titv^ in the Shakespeare concordance, excluding common flections of words otherwise used in other plays, is as follows : — Anchorage Alphabet Architect Aries Bear-whelp Battle-axe Blowze Candidatus Chase (= park) Checkered Cimmerian Cocytus Codding Crevice Dreary Devoid Emperess Egal (= equal) Enacts (noun) Enceladus Entreats(=:entrea- ties) Execrable Fere Gleeful Grammar Gratulate (verb) Honey-dew Hymenaeus Loaf Maintain Man-of-war Miseltoe Mightful Meshed (in brew- ing) Metamorphoses' Patient (vb. imp.) Palliament Pantheon Panther (thrice Passionate (verb) Prometheus Philomela (twice) Popish Progne Re-salute Reproachful (twice) Rapine Remunerate Shive Stanch (vb.) Somewhither Scarred Sprawl 'surance Sequestered Spleenful Sumptuously Sustenance Self-blood Solon Typhon Triiimpher Tully' 'Ticed (^ enticed) Uncurls Unappeased Unrelenting Unrecuring Unsearched Venereal {= amo- rous) Virginius Wind (vb. to scent) Wreaks (noun) Wreakful • The use of such familiar names has of course no significance. They are here included merely to make the list complete. 78 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED There are also a number of compounds special to the play, as : Counsel-keeping Rude-growing Gibbet-maker New-shed Shallow-hearted Deadly-standing New-transformed Lurking-place Sad-attending Highest-peering True-betrothed White-lined High-resolved True-succeeding Raven-coloured Blood-drinking Fatal-plotted Sorrow-wreathen In addition to the foregoing we have to note a number of Latin words and quotations nowhere else occurring in a Shakespearean play, and further a number of words found in Titus and, it may be, in other disputed or divided plays, but seldom or never in an undisputed and undivided play of Shakespeare's. The list of the latter is as follows : ^tna, once in Titus, once in Merry Wives. AfFy, once in Titus, once in Taming of the Shrew. Blood-drinking, once in Titus, once in i H. VI, once \mH. VI. Braves (noun), once in Titus, once in Taming of the Shrew, once in Troilus, once in / H. VI. Caucasus, once in Titus, once in Richard II. Checkered, once in Titus, once in 2 H. VI. Coffin (of a pasty), once in Titus, once in the Shrew. Faint-hearted, once in Titus, once in i H. VI, once inj^. VI. Guileful, once in Titus, once in / H. VI. 'joy = enjoy,' once in Titus, once in 2 H. VI, once in Richard II. Meanwhile, once in Titus, once in H. VIII. Numb, once in Titus, once in i H. VI; "numb-cold " in Richard III. Miry, once in Titus, once in the Shrew. Re-edify, once in Titus, once in Richard III. Represent, once in Titus, twice in the H. VI plays. Sapling, once in Titus, once in R. Ill, once in Pericles. ' A different force from that of the verb joy = rejoice, which is more common. PEELE'S vocabulary in " TITUS " 79 Semiramis, twice in Titus, once in the Shrew. Youngling, twice in Titus, once in the Shrew. Of the first list the following occur in Peele : Architect. Desc. Astrcece, 59; Battle, II, prol. 5; *V David and Bethsahe, sc. xv, 99 ; Anghr. Fence, 143. Battle-axe. Honour of the Gutter, 147 ; Anglor. Ferice, 167 ; Locrine, I, i ; V, i. Chase (= park). Arr. of Paris, I, i, 5, 122, 147, 189. Cimmerian. Edward I, sc. xxv, 148. Dreary. D. and B., sc. i, 115. Egal.' Arraignment of Paris, IV, i, 281 ; V, i, 5. Emperess. Anglor. Ferice, 9. Enceladus. Gatter, 46. Fere (pheere). Arr. of Paris, I, i, 20; IV, i, 282; V, 149. (Also five times elsewhere. ) Gratulate. Arr. of Paris, I, i (song) ; Ed. I, sc. v, end ; Battle, II, i, 20 ; Desc. Astr., 12, 126; Gaiter, 372, 435- Honey-dews. D. and B., sc. iii, 163. Men-of-war. Ed. /, 1. 4 ; Battle, III, i, 55 (doubtful). Patient (vb.). Ed. I, sc. i, 42. Panther. Tale of Troy, 305 ; Praise of Chastity, 42. Palliament. Gatter, 92. Prometheus." Arr. of Paris, I, ii, 42 ; Ed. I, sc. iv, 21. Philomela. 3 Arr. of Paris, I, ii, 37. Reproachful. Tale of Troy, 198; Locrine, V, ii, IV. Remunerate. Ed. I, sc. i, 139 ; xiv, 13 ; Battle, I, i, 24 ; II, i, 24. Re-salute. Honour of the Garter, 372. S6questered. D. and B., sc. xv, 259. Stanch. " Unstanched" in D. and B., sc. iii, 13. 'ticed. Edward I, sc. vii, 85. Triiimpher. Battle, III, iv, 24. " This occurs in the first folio in M. of V,, III, iv, 13, but not in Q. i. In the folio it appears to be a misprint. ° Shakespeare twice has " Promethean " (L. L. L. and Othello). Both passages partially echo Peele's phrase, " Prometheus' life infusing: fire " in Anglorum Feria, 180. ' Shakespeare twice has " Philomel " (M. N. D. and Cytnieline), which occurs four times in Tittis. 8o THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED Wreak. Battle, II, prol., 21 ; D. and B., sc. vi, 13. Wreakful. D. and B., sc. vii, 50, 102. Of the second list we find in Peele the following : ^tna. Garter, 79. AfFy. "Affiance" (= trust) in Battle, II, Hi, 52. Braves. Ed. I, sc. v, 61 ; sc. x, 210 ; sc. xiii, 69 ; Farewell, 19, 69. Caucasus. Ed. I, sc. iv, 21. 'joy. D. and B., sc. i, 94 ; sc. iii, 19 ; Id. Chorus, 21 ;' Ed. I, sc. xiii, 98. Numb. Old Wives' Tale, 364. Numb'd; Id. 843; Battle, I, i, 21. Miry. D. and B., sc. xiii, 72. Meanwhile. Arr. of Paris, V, i, 123. Youngling. Ed. I, sc. vi, 48 ; Battle, I, ii, 68. When it is noted that a number of these words occur in the Henry VI plays and the Taming of the Shrew, in which so many critics have recog- nised the presence of other hands, and among them Peele's, the force of the evidence is increased. For the rest, " raven-coloured " is akin to Peele's " black" as the raven's-wing " {Polyhymnia, 105) and " like to ravens' feathers " {A nglorum Ferice, 215-6) ; " re-edified " (found in Locrine) to his " re- salute," and " re-obtain " {Ed. I, sc. xiii, 52 ; Battle, I, i, 83 ; II, iv, 10) ; "vaunters" and " devourers " to his "forbearers" {Arr. of Paris, IV, i, 73); " love-day " to his " love-holidays " {Ed. I, sc. vii, 97) ; " sorrow-wreathen knot " {i.e., folded arms) to ' In all three instances in David and Bethsahe "'joy" has the same application as in Titus, and in one the phrase is " 'joy her love," duplicating " 'joy her raven-coloured love " in Titus. ' Peele also has " black as jet " (Polyhymnia, 83), which occurs in Titus (V, 2) and nowhere else in the Shakespeare concordance. But this is common enough, being found in Marlowe's and Greene's signed work, as well as in the First Part of the Conten- tion. PEELE'S vocabulary in " TITUS " 8r " sadness with wreathed arms " {David, sc. iv, 5 ; see also sc. iii, 77), and " popish " to his " popery " (Farewell, 36). The phrase " weighed her anchor- age)" again, seems to be a construction entirely in Peele's manner from the phrase " weigh anchor " (also found in the Farewell, 51, and the Battle, III, iii, 41, but not in any Shakespearean play), some- what as in Locrine (I, i) we have " Left unto him for an inheritage " — a mere adaptation of the word to fill the line. So, too, we may surmise that the curious phrase, " our empress with her sacred wit " (Titus, II, i), which the commentators have taken to be a Latinism, but which might as well be a Gallicism, suggested by sacre, is in all probability a mere case of line-filling by Peele, seeing that the very phrase "sacred wit" occurs in The Arraign- ment of Paris (IV, i, 285), and " sacred " is one of his most overdone epithets. So, again, "sharp revenge " is presumptively his ; since among over a hundred and fifty instances of " revenge " in the Shakespeare concordance the epithet " sharp " does not once occur save in Titus (I, ii), and the phrase is one of Peele's (David, sc. vii, 185 ; Battle, I, i, 88), though also found in Greene and Kyd. As for the words beginning in "un," they are of a type in which he abounds, as "unpeople," "unarm'd" (vb. trans.), "unpartial," "unclothed" (vb. trans.), "untwine," "unloosen," "unpardoned," "unvanquished," "unhonourable," " unconstant" ; and "unrecuring" is a likely construction on his part from "recure," which he has in common with Greene, Kyd, Marlowe, Lodge, and others. In Edward I, sc. xxv, 132, he has "recureless." So, again, he abounds in compound epithets, as : — G 82 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED Twenty-coloured, Britain-sea, new-formed, new- ripe, true-succeeding, anchor-hold, wide-command- ing, bloody-crested, silver-shining, angry-sound- ing, etc., etc. Such noun-forms, further, as "enact" and "entreat" are in the manner of his nouns " imagine " and " encumber " ; and to the construc- tion " 'surance " he has many analogies, as : " 'beisance," " 'nointed," " 'bests," " 'bash." The majority of the terms in our lists being thus directly or by analogy traced to Peele, it might be argued that no difficulty arises from the absence of such chance formations as rolled (intrans.) ; self- blood, guileful, gleeful ; such terms as alphabet, grammar, loaf, and sapling ; and the vulgarisms ; or such classic names and words as Aries, Candi- datus, Hymenaeus, Typhon, Virginius, Progne. The latter sort of terms, we might argue, would come readily to Peele, who has such classical allusions by the hundred ; and he, like other men, would use a certain number of words once only. But we are finally debarred from such an imperfect solution. We shall find reason to conclude that Peele had one or more associates or revisers alike in Titus and in Locrine ; thus accounting for a number of the terms special to the latter play, and not otherwise traced to him in the former. Meantime it should be noted that his specially large share in Titus is to be further established by a general comparison of vocabularies, taking into account a number of words not special to Titus in the Shakespearean plays, but specially common in Peele. There are certain words recurring in Titus which are common in the Henry VI group, but only once or seldom found in genuine works, PEELE'S vocabulary in " TITUS " 83 and these again we find frequently in Peele. For instances : Ruthless, twice in Titus; Arr. of Paris, prol. ; David, sc. vii, 18; xiii, 60; Battle, II, prol. i ; V, i, 94, 115. Empery, thrice in Titus; Arr. of Paris, V, i, 41; Battle, II, ii, 29 ; iv, 44 ; Praise of Chastity, 12. Entrails, twice in Titus; Arr. of Paris, IV, i, 114; Battle, II iii, 5 ; David, sc. ix, 8. Phoebe, once in Titus; once in L. L. L.; once in M. N. D.; Arr. of Paris, nine times. Coal-black, thrice in Titus ; Gaiter, 146 ; Polyhymnia, 99. Consecrate, thrice in Titus; Polyhymnia, twice ; Honour of the Garter, thrice. And here again we have obvious echoes in Titus and the works of Peele : The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate {Titus, I, i, 14) ; To villainy and vengeance consecrate {Id., II, i, 121) ; To Virtue or to Vesta consecrate (Polyhymnia, 280) ; In deeds to fame and virtue consecrate {Honour of the Garter, 384). So, too, the intransitive use of the verb "dazzle," occurring in Titus and in Venus and Adonis (1064), but nowhere else in Shakespeare, is found in Peele {Speeches at Theobald's, ii, 34, ed. Bullen) — also, however, in Greene {Alphonsus King of Aragon, 1. 200, ed. Grosart). Yet again, the common term "beautify," occurring in Titus and in several plays in which Shakespeare had fellow-workers, but expressly derided by him in Hamlet, is common in Peele, who uses it at least eight times — thrice in David and Bethsabe alone. It is also common, however, in Greene and Marlowe. Further scrutiny would probably yield still 84 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED further evidence ; but the foregoing may suffice to establish, as regards vocabulary and phrase, the pervasive presence of Peek's hand in Titus. We have next to trace, by the primary test of vocabu- lary, the other hand or hands not accounted for, leaving for later application the tests of versifica- tion, mannerisms, and sentiment. The former task, however, can be best approached by collating Titus with an earlier play several times herein- before cited — the old tragedy of Locrine. § 3. "Titus" compared with "Locrine." Concerning Locrine, the late Mr. Richard Simpson mentions that it was " written, according to Sir George Buck, by Charles Tylney, who was executed for treason in September, 1586 — with interpolations from Peele (pointed out by Dyce), and imitations from Greene, and perhaps from Marlowe."' The first of these statements appears to be drawn from a manuscript source, which is not specified ; but as Buck was licenser of plays in 1608, in succession to Edmund Tylney, whose deputy he had been,^ it must be allowed consider- able weight. At the same time, it is quite clear that much of the play was written after 1586 ; and there are correspondences between it and Titus, as well as the works of Greene and Peele, which are of obvious importance. Mr. Fleay has suggested^ that for " by " Charles Tylney we should under- stand " concerning " him. But it is difficult to see ' Shakespeare Allusion Books, Ft. I, p, xlvii. ' Art. on Sir Georg-e Buc or Buck in Diet, of Nat. Biog. 3 Biog. Chron. of the English Drama, ii, 321. " TITUS " COMPARED WITH " LOCRINE " 85 how the play can be regarded as written " concern- ing " Tylney. It is a pseudo-historical drama, based on the legends made current by Higgins,' and pointing at nobody in particular, but con- structed on the " revenge " model common to Peele and Kyd. On the other hand, Mr. Fleay has shown from various allusions — such as that to the " private amours " of Mary Queen of Scots in the epilogue — that the play originally dates from about 1586 ; but we shall see reason to regard it as having been recast by Greene a little later, inasmuch as it has imitations, apparently by him, from Marlowe, whose Tarnbur- laine can hardly be dated before 1587. And that the play has not been merely " interpolated from Peele " with " imitations from Greene " can be shown in various ways. Let us first note the Peele passages : I. In Act III, sc. ii, we have the lines : To arms, my lord, to honourable arms ; Take helm and targe in hand ; which are echoed by these in Peele's i^arewe// (ii and 50) : — Take helm and targe To arms, to arms, to honourable arms. On the fact that both in Locrine and in the Battle of Alcazar ghosts cry Vindicta! Dyce observes that " such trifling coincidences afford us no ground for supposing that Peele was concerned in the composition of that intolerably stilted and pedantic piece." But on this duplication of phrase, which he himself notes, he offers no comment : and we ' See Fleay, Biog, Chron., i, 18, 86 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED must reject his general argument. Peele, surely, can be stilted, and is abundantly pedantic. Some of the pedantries of Locrine are among the clues to him. Thus the line (II, vi, 2) : Thund'ring alarums, and Rhamnusia's drum, points to the " thund'ring drums " and " 'larums " of Nemesis and "the thunder of Rhamnusia's drum " in the Battle of Alcazar (I, i, 47 ; II, 15, 24) ; and in both plays we meet further with Alecto, Rhadamanth, Tisiphone, Erebus, Pluto, and Phlegethon. Compare again the rant of Humber (Zoc, III, vi) : Where may I find some desert wilderness Where I may breathe out curses as I would Where may I find some hollow uncouth rock Where I may damn, condemn, and ban my fill with one in the Battle (V, i) : Where shall I find some unfrequented place. Some uncouth walk where I may curse my fill ; and the " revenge " lines in the rant of Corineus' ghost {Loc, V, iv) with those of Rubin Archis and Abdelmelec in the Battle (I, i). Yet again there is a somewhat close correspondence" between the lines of Estrild {Loc, II, i) : The plains, my lord, garnished with Florals wealth And overspread -with parti~coloui'd flowers The airy hills enclosed with shady groves Are equal to the groves of Thessaly, Where Phoebus with the learned ladies nine Delight themselves The silent springs dance down with murmuring streams, • Noted by Mr. A. F. Hopkinson in his Essays on Shakespeare^s Doubtful Plays, 1900. " TITUS " COMPARED WITH " LOCRINE " 87 and some in the Arraignment of Paris (I, i), where Flora speaks : These fields and groves and sweetest bowers Bestrew'd and deck'd with paiti-cohut''d flowers, Along the bubbling brooks and silver glide That at the bottom doth in silence slide Where sacred Phoebe may delight to be. Such echoes are substantially of the order of those we have above noted as between Peek's works and Titus; and Peele's Arraignment (1584) antedates Locrine. Of course Tylney or another might in 1586 have echoed him ; but when we have seen how much he is given to echoing himself there is at least a presumption of that kind here ; and it becomes important to note how far the vocabulary of Locrine coincides with the non-Shakespearean terms in Titus. That the same hands have been concerned in the two plays is made fairly clear by various phrases and speeches. In the former there are preliminary allusions to wars against the " barbarous Gauls "; in the latter it is the "barbarous Goths"; and, still in the first Act, we have the echo : Remaineth nought, but to inter our brethren {T.A., i, i); It resteth now that we inter his bones (Locr., i, 2). Yet again, each play exhibits the peculiarity of names varied in form for metre's sake. Thus "Saturnine" and "Saturninus," "Philomel" and "Philomela," "empress" and "emperess," in Titus, are paralleled by " Locrine " and " Locrinus," "Estrild" and " Estrilda," in Locrine. Finally, the two plays correspond so closely in the manner of their conclusion that were there no other evidence we should there be led to infer for them some 88 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED community of origin. The closing speech ot Lucius runs : Some loving friends convey the emperor hence, And give him burial in his fatlitr's grave: My father and Lavinia shall forthwith Be closed in our household's monument. As for that heinous tiger, Tamora, No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weeds. No mournful bell shall ring her burial ; But throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey : Her life was beast-like, and devoid of pity ; And being so shall have like want of pity. In Locrine the victorious Guendolen made a similar arrangement : And as for Locrine, our deceased spouse Because he was the son of mighty Brute, To whom we owe our country, lives, and goods — He shall be buried in a stately tomb, Close by his aged father Brutus' bones. With such great pomp and great solemnity As well beseems so brave a prince as he. Let Estrild lie without the shallow vaults. Without the honour due unto the dead, Because she was the author of this war. The hand in both speeches is probably that of Peele. If the first were written by Shakespeare he was a servile imitator indeed. And, whether it regard Peele or others of his school, there is so much imitation in Titus of tricks of manner met with in Locrine and in Peele's plays that it becomes considerably simpler to assign Titus to that school than to charge it bodily upon Shakespeare. A general comparison of some of these characteristics may usefully precede the collation of vocabularies. I. One of Peele's most obvious mannerisms is that of alliteration. It was indeed a vice of the " TITUS " COMPARED WITH " LOCRINE " 89 whole pre-Shakespearean drama, setting-in with Ferrex and Porrex ; and it is equally flagrant in the prose of the Euphuistic school ; but Peele outgoes all competitors in the extravagance of his resort to it in his dramas. He has literally hundreds of lines such as this : Brandishing bright the blade of adamant {Ed. I, sc. v). Often it reaches burlesque, as in the rant of the Moor in the Battle (V, i) : Ye elements of whom consists this clay, This mass of flesh, this cursed craz&d corpse. Destroy, dissolve, disturb, and dissipate ; in the lines : With men and ships, courage and cannon-shot To finish fainting Dido's dying life ; and again in David and Bethsabe : Then let my presence with my sighs perfume The pleasant closet of my sovereign's soul. Apart from burlesque effects, the practice is normal in David: And shoot forth shafts as thick and dangerous As was the hail that Moses mixed with fire And threw with fury round about the fields Devouring Pharaoh's friends and Egypt's fruits (sc. ii). Thou and thy sister, soft and sacred Air ; Goddess of Life, and governess of health (sc. i). And makes their weapons wound the senseless winds (sc. ii). And suffered sin to smite his father's bones. Gives us the hook that hales our souls to hell. Which with a rusty weapon I will wound. And make them passage to my panting heart go THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED On whose sweet beauty I bestow my blood. So merely consecrate to her content. And views the passage with such piercing eyes That none can 'scape to cheer my pining cheeks, But all is thought too little for her love. (sc. iii). And fill the face of every flower with dew. Droop, drown, and drench ifi ■ Hebron's fearful streams (sc. v). Of this sort of thing there is an infinity in Locrine : And fill'd his furious heart with fretting ire Passed the greedy gulf of ocean My sinews shrink, my numbM senses fail A grateful gift given by a gracious king Where murmuring rivers slide with silent streams A savage captain of a savage crew The cursed captain of that damned crew 2. Another of Peele's tics in his signed work is that of reiteration, whether by way of (a) groups of lines beginning with one word, or (b) of repetition of words and phrases. In this fashion also he is apt to be absurd : But follow to the gates of death and hell. Pale death and hell, to entertain his soul {Battle, I, ii, 122-3). Thus Europe, rich and mighty in her kings. Hath feared brave England, dreadful in her kings {£<£. /, sc. i). Yet were their lives valued at thousand worlds They cannot 'scape th' arrest of dreadful death. Death that doth seize and summon all alike (ib). O fortune cruel, cruel and unkind, Unkind in that we cannot find our sister. Our sister, hapless in her cruel chance {Old Wives' Tale, 141-3). So thoroughly did the habit possess him that it entered into his later non-dramatic verse : " TITUS " COMPARED WITH " LOCRINE " 9I And be that day Englahd's high holiday, And holidays and high days be they all, High holidays, days, minutes, months, and hours. That multiply the number of her years ; Years that for us beget this golden age. Wherein we live in safety under her. Wherein she reigns in honour over us (Angiorum Fence, 11. 46-52). To slip remembrance of those careful days. Days full of danger, happy days withal,' Days of her preservation and defence ; Behold the happiest day, the holiday That young and old and all don celebrate, The day of joy, the day of jollity. The best of all the days that we have seen (/rf., 11. 67-73). In his plays, the mannerism is seen everywhere. For instances : What warlike nation, trained in feats of arms, What barbarous people, stubborn, or untam'd, What climate under the meridian signs (Ed. I, sc. i). Welcome, sweet queen, my fellow-traveller. Welcome, sweet Nell, my fellow-mate in arms (Id., ib.). Follow the man that means to make you great ; Follow Fluellen, rightful Prince of Wales {Id., sc. ii). Thy sin, thy shame, the sorrow of thy soul : Sin, shame, and sorrow swarm about thy soul (Z>. and B., sc. iv). Traitor to heavpn, traitor to David's throne. Traitor to Absalon and Israel {Id., sc. iii). And in the morning sound the voice of war. The voice of bloody and unkindly war {Id., sc. x). But Absalon, the beauty of my bones. Fair Absalon, the counterfeit of love. Sweet Absalon, the image of content {Id., sc. xv). 92 THE PROBLEM INDUCTIVELY CONSIDERED Of these devices, again, we have countless examples in Locrine : Brutus, that was a glory to us all ; Brutus, that was a terror to our foes...... We'll either rent the bowels of the earth, Searching the bowels of the brutish earth If all my care, if all my grievous wounds. If all my diligence were well employed Where'er Aurora, handmaid of the sun, Where'er the sun bright guardian of the day, Where'er the joyful day with cheerful light, Where'er the light illuminates the world Thus in the morning of my victories, Thus in the prime of my felicity So perish they that are our enemies ! So perish they that love not Humber's weal. The Hun shall die, had he ten thousand lives : And would to God he had ten thousand lives. This sword shall reave his master of his life, That oft has saved his master's doubtful life. For now revenge shall ease my lingering grief. And now revenge shall glut my longing soul. In Titus, the alliterations start with the first line: Noble patricians, patrons of my right Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right Princes, that strive by factions and by friends So begin the first three speeches. Of the scores of instances which follow, a handful may suffice : Safe out of fortune's shot, and sits aloft Secure Clear up, fair queen, that cloudy countenance, Though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer Therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness, " TITUS " COMPARED WITH " LOCRINE " 93 Imperious, and impatient of your wrongs Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge Woe to her chance, and damn'd her loathed choice That woe is me to think upon their woes For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands With revengeful war Take wreak on Rome The story of that baleful burning night When subtle Greeks surprized King Priam's Troy It is the same with the trick of iteration. In Titus we have many instances, as : These, that survive, let Rome reward with love ; These, that I bring unto their latest home (I, ii). In peace and honour rest you here, my sons ! In peace and honour live Lord Titus long (/ as Mr. Fleay notes, is one of his supereroga- tory phrases {Ed. /, sc. xiii, 6i ; Battle, V, i, 217 ; Anglor. FericB, 29); its " true-succeeding prince" (pp. 384, 399) occurs thrice in the Battle of Alcazar ; it repeats several times his word " wreak " ; and its " sacrifice of thanks " (p. 408) is a note on which he harps. Finally, it gives two clues to Titus. The closing line : Where we'll repose and rest ourselves all night, taken with one in Edward I (sc. iii, 6) : Now then let us repose and rest us here, shows that the phrase in Titus (I, i, 151) "repose you here in rest," sometimes treated as corrupt, is no tautology, but Peele's deliberate diction. And when we note in Jack Straw the lines (Act IV, p. 408) : Sith mercy in a prince resembleth right The gladsome sunshine in a winter's day, we have a fresh reason for crediting him with the " mercy " lines in Titus, of which the third runs : Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge. It may be further interesting to note that in Jack Straw is found the line (Act I, p. 384) : The multitude, a beast of many heads, 122 PEELE'S unsigned WORK which occurs also in The Troublesome Raigne of King John (Pt. II, sc. iii). In that play, Peele is to be traced by such words as popelings (five times) and popery (twice) ; and of the three Titus-worAs found in it — languor, execrable, and remunerate (" Tully " is non-significant) — the third at least points to him, while the two others go to complete our list. The whole question of the authorship of the Troublesome Raigne, the Contention, and Richard Duke of York cannot of course be handled here ; but we may note that, while the style at times points to Marlowe, there are verbal traces of Peele and Greene in all three, and that those plays again give clues to the Henry VI group and Richard III. It is to Greene, however, that the majority of the verbal clues lead. Only in one other of the tragedies which Shakespeare superseded — the old Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters — is the evidence of vocabulary much in favour of Peele's claim. It has eight of the words special to Titus in the Shakespeare con- cordance — ruthless, sequestered, meanwhile, remu- nerate, devoid (four times), sustenance (thrice), shipwreck, and re-salute ; as well as further terms, and phrases pointing to Peele: e.g., "unpartial," " longest home " (also in the Raigne), " suspect " (noun), "dazzle" (vb. intrans.). Here also, how- ever, there are special clues to Greene : for instance, the words " nutriment " and " common- weal," and the phrase " sweet content," all common with him, occur in one speech of Cordelia (sc. xiii), quite in his manner. And as " devoid " occurs in this speech, and is common in his prose, it is PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK 1 23 probable that the word is his in Locrtne and in the rest of this play. So with " shipwreck " ; his common phrases " labyrinth of love " (sc. vii) and " gallant girls " (sc. iv : op. Alph. K. of Arr. Ill, Dyce, p. 2376 ) ; and his idiom " with child " =eagerly interested (sc. i : cp. Works, ix. 107 ; xi. 145), Yet further, Leir has his "for to" at least seventeen times. Mr. Fleay has pointed out' that the line (sc. vi) She'll lay her husband's benefice on her back is nearly duplicated in 2 H. VI (I, iii, 83) and in Edward II (I, iv, 406), adding : " But the work is too poor for Marlowe. I would suggest Kyd, his known imitator, and date his part 1588, Lodge's 1589." Kyd and Lodge may very well have had a hand in the work ; but the dating, I submit, is irreconcilable with the abundance of double- endings in the play, which brings it at least to 1591 ;' and we shall see reason for connecting Greene rather than Lodge with Edward III. It remains to examine Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, concerning which Mr. Fleay writes : — The external evidence is certainly in favour of Peele's authorship of this play. It was published as Chapman's in 1654 by Moseley, who attributed authorship in a most reckless way. See my Life of Shakespeare, pp. 358-360. On the other hand, Wood and Winstanley, "misled by former catalogues," says Biog: Dram., attribute it to Peele. Surely the former catalogues are a better authority than Moseley. The play is palpably an old one, dating c. 1590. It was revived May sth, 1636, at Blackfriars "for the Queen and the Prince Elector." Chapman died in 1634, and therefore had nothing to do with the revival. ' Biog. Chron., ii, 52. ' See below, ch. ix, as to the evolution of the double-ending. 124 PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK This is a revenge-play, and would seem to be the "Richard Conqueror" alluded to in the Taming- of the Shrew, Ind., which has given the commentators so much trouble : cf. V, i, " If we be conquerors or conquered." As it was in 1636 a King's men's play (chosen for per- formance before the Prince Elector on account of the Teutonic part in it), it probably was originally produced by the Lord Strange's men for presentation before some Ambassador from Deutschland.' Professor Ward, without pronouncing on the attri- bution to Peele, decides that Beyond all doubt the tragedy as we possess it exhibits very marked differences from the dramatic works which are unquestionably Chapman's If. it is supposed to be his workmanship, it cannot be anything but a juvenile tragedy which he afterwards laid aside It is as a whole in no respect worthy of his genius, and in truth but an indifferent piece of literary work.' As usual, there is dispute. Dr. Karl Elze, who has edited the play, writes : In our opinion the tragedy of Alphonsus was one of the latest works of its author, and in all probability was not written before 1622, if not later. It could not pos- sibly have been written before 1620 if, as I strongly suspect, the poet owed part of his acquaintance with German politics to the English translation of the Golden Bull, which appeared in 1619.3 In attributing the play to Chapman's old age, Dr. Elze is following an article in the Retrospective Review, iv, 337. But the arguments in support are significantly strained. The play is admittedly written in the style of the earlier drama ; and Dr. Elze is reduced to arguing that " the archaic dis- solution of the final ion and of similar terminations ' Siog. Chron. of the Eng. Drama, ii, 156. ' Hist, of Eng. Dram. Lit., ii, 427-9. 3 Ed. cited, 1867, pp. 35-36. peele's unsigned work 125 in the end (sometimes even in the body) of the line is intentionally and almost religiously observed." Here we have the usual procedure of a violent hypothesis to save the tradition in the teeth of the reasonable inference. Dr. Elze admits that in Chapman's other plays these " archaic dissolutions " are very rare ; and he resorts to the plea that such a reversion to archaic diction is common in elderly writers, citing as examples Klopstock and Voss. Yet he can show no trace of the same process in any other of Chapman's later plays. Again he argues that "the frequent display of classical learning seems more indicative of an old than of a younger poet."' As every student will remember, the balance of fact is exactly the other way. Greene, Peele, and Marlowe all abound in classical allu- sions and quotations from the first. Shakespeare has fewer in old age than in youth. Ben Jonson is pedantic all along. While, however, thus tacitly admitting that the play deviates from Chapman's normal style alike in its archaisms and its archaeology, Dr. Elze claims^ that "the play is written throughout in Chapman's well-known manner, and no critic has doubted its authenticity." If the latter clause was true at the date of his writing, it can only have been because the critics had not yet taken up the problem ; but, if it be true, how came Dr. Elze to argue so laboriously for the authenticity ? As for the clause italicised, it is contradicted by his own admissions, and is completely astray. The play is simply not at all in Chapman's manner, as any ' / 73)' Suspect (noun; four times in Alphonsus", thrice in Ed-ward I). Triumph and Triumphing (III, i; V, i, iv. See above, p. 79). Underbear peele's unsigned work 127 (IV, i, near end ; Garter, prol. 26 ; Anglor. Ferice, 202). Wreak (noun, V, iii. See above, p. 80). Zodiac (IV, ii, 3. See above, p. 67). 4. Alphonsus Emperor of Germany has several phrases found in Peele's accepted plays : Bloody banquet, V, i, 37. Battle, IV, 1. 6. Vital blood, V, i, 39. D. and B. sc. ii, 45 ; sc. iii, 14. 5. It also exhibits the mannerisms with which we have become familiar, though, being in respect of its metrical peculiarities a later work, it runs considerably less to alliteration than do Locrine, David and Bethsabe, and the Battle of Alcazar : Till then I'll pine with thoughts of dire revenge. And live in hell until I take revenge (I, ii, end). Thou must imagine nothing but revenge ; And if my computation fails me not Ere long I shall be thoroughly revenged (IV, ii, end). My father's yelling ghost cries for revenge His blood within my veins boils for revenge O give me leave, Caesar, to take revenge (V, ii). This shameful guilt and our unguiltiness (V, iv). In the same style we have a group of five lines beginning with " How " (ib.). 6. Without making anything of the iteration of the phrase " Kill'st my heart," which we have seen so often used by Peele elsewhere, we may note that the line And fiU'd thy beating veins with stealing joy (III, i) is an echo of one in the Arraignment of Paris (II, i, 176) : To ravish all thy beating veins with joy. 7. In the last instance not only the expression but the application is the same. For the rest, the 128 peele's unsigned work versification of the bulk of Alphonsus is as close to Peele's manner as it is different from Chapman's ; and we shall see later, in examining the plot of Titus, that the two plays are obviously akin in structure. Meantime, taking the authorship of Peele as tentatively established, we have to note the plain traces of one hand — or, let us rather say, of the same hands — in the two pieces. 1. In Alphonsus, Alexander, accepting the em- peror's counsel as to his revenge, says : I do subscribe unto your sound advice (II, ii). In Titus (IV, ii, 130) Demetrius says to Aaron : Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done. And we will all subscribe to thy advice. 2. A few lines earlier in Titus occurs the epithet " shallow-hearted " — not found in any Shake- spearean work.' In Alphonsus (I, i, 7) we have " shallow-brained. " 3. In Titus we have the compound "counsel- keeping." In Alphonsus we have "counsel- keepers" and "counsel-breaking" (I, i, 151, 186 — prose not counted). In 2 H. /f we find " counsel- keeper " — one of several links between Titus and that play which give ground for inquiry in regard to it. 4. In Titus we have "map of woe " (III, ii, 12), and in Alphonsus "map of misery," and both phrases are applied to women in distress. 5. In Titus (V, iii) there are two allusions to the slaying of his daughter by Virginius ; and to this classical reference we have thus far found no ' " Shallow-rooted " occurs in ^ H. VI — another sigfnificant detail. peele's unsigned work 129 parallel in Greene, Marlowe, or Peele. But in Alphonsus (IV, iii, 60) we have the same allusion : Then, like Virginius, will I kill my child ; and the action is in both cases suited to the phrase. 6. Another parallel occurs in Alphonsus to some of the lines of Aaron's avowal of his crimes in Tiius (V, i). The general situations are equivalent ; and where Aaron speaks of Complots of mischief, treason, villainies, Alexander has the lines (V, iv) : All plots and complots of his [Alphonsus'] villany Of every mischief that hath troubled you. In the light of these proofs of kinship we can see the significance of the slighter echo in the phrases about the " faltering " tongue hesitating to tell a story of guilt in Alphonsus (same scene) and in Edward I (sc. xxv) ; and of the occurrence in Alphonsus of Titus-w^ovdiS such as gratulate, wreak, emperess, zodiac, entrails, etc. As in the case of Titus, however, we find in Alphonsus traces of other hands. The opening scene can hardly be Peele's. It suggests Marlowe, but is much more likely to be by Greene writing in Marlowe's later manner, as he does in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay ; and there are other items, both of phrase and vocabulary,' which point towards Greene and Kyd. (i) Our old friend "hammering in the head " is here too : Unprincely thoughts do hammer in thy head (IV, iii). • Thus " counsel-keeper " in the opening scene points to Greene as author of the speech in Titus mentioning a " counsel-keeping cave." K 130 PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK (2) The line Hath from my knife's point suck'd his deadly bane (III, i) recalls one in Soliman and Perseda (I, iii, 32), which, suggesting as it does the " point en- venom'd " of Hamlet, is one of the reasons for surmising Kyd's part authorship of the old form of that play, as well as of Soliman : His weapon's point empoisoned for my bane. (3) In Alphonsus we find three times the word "complots," which we have seen to be common to Kyd (that is, The Spanish Tragedy) and Greene, but is not found in Peele's accepted plays or poems. (4) " Map " appears to be a specialty of Greene's — copied at times by Lodge. (5) The word "ambodexter '" (II, ii, 51) appears to be Greene's, occurring as it does in his prose (A Quip for an Upstart Courtier; Works, xi, 252), and again in Sir Clyonion and Sir Clamydes, in a section otherwise ascribable to him. See below, p. 142. These details point, albeit not very insistently, to the probable factor of collaboration, without affecting the inference that Peele did a good deal if not the bulk of the work. As to the large quantity of accurate German dialogue and accurate allusion to German life, there is no more difficulty in Peele's case than in Chapman's. Neither dramatist can have done the German dialogue : it must have been contributed either by an Englishman who had lived in Germany (as had " The name of the "Vice" in the old play Cambyses (1569). peele's unsigned work 131 the two actors Thomas Pope and George Bryan, of Shakespeare's company, whom Peele would be pretty sure to know) or by a German who knew English. The former hypothesis is of course the likelier.' In any case, the cumulative effect of all the above-noted parallels to Titus, as of those already noted in Peele's unquestioned works, can be countervailed only by finding similar parallels, in similar numbers, in plays by other writers ; and it must be left to objectors to discover such. So far as my own recollection goes, I have met with only those already cited from Greene, Kyd, and Marlowe. But before we can proceed to assign, even on prima facie grounds, Marlowe's share in Titus, it is necessary to look more closely into some of the plays assigned to him. It has been held by many critics that he collaborated with Peele in the Henry VI plays : may not Peele then have shared in some of those credited to Marlowe, or recast them after his death ? I have already pointed to the obvious transformation effected in the characters of the Queen and Mortimer in Edward II — a transfor- mation wholly for the worse, and destructive of all nobility of effect so far as those characters are concerned. Now, this change is wholly in the spirit of Peele, who in his Honour of the Garter (219 sq.) has the lines : And Mortimer, a gentle trusty lord, More loyal than that cruel Mortimer ' It is just arguable that the German work may have been by Nash, whose works tell of his having- travelled in Germany. On that view, this^lzy may have been the "comedy" by himself and Nash to which Greene alludes in the Groatsviorth. But we have no proof that Nash learned to write German. 132 PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK That plotted Edward's death at Killingsworth : Edward the Second, father to this king, Whose tragic cry even now methinks I hear. When graceless wretches murder'd him by night. The motive was, of course, the obtrusion of loyal sentiment as regards the crown at a time when the succession was felt to be doubtful. In the same way, the apparent transformation of Marlowe's Tragedy of Guise into a play whose main theme is the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the wickedness of Papists, is quite in Peele's spirit. If then we find in Ed-ward II and the Massacre verse that is notably in Peele's manner and not in Marlowe's, we have good ground for inferring his intervention. And such verse we do find. In Edward II (III, iii), to begin with, there is a line that duplicates one in Edward I (sc. v) : It is but temporal thou canst inflict. Now, there can be no question that Peele was prone to imitate ; and the natural first surmise is that he did so here. In David and Bethsabe he imitates Du Bartas in one passage and Spenser in another. In Alphonsus we find him echoing one of Marlowe's " mighty lines ": Brave horses bred on the white Tartarian hills (/ Tamh., Ill, iii) in a characteristically forcible-feeble verse : Water from forth the cold Tartarian hills (Alph., IV, ii). Here there can be no question as to which came first. In his Tale of Troy, again, we find him copying Ferrex and Porrex. There we have the lines : peele's unsigned work 133 The noble prince, pierced with the sudden sound. Out of his wretched slumber hastily start. Peele {J'ale, 430-2) has Th' unhappy Priam, mazed with frights and fears, Out of his wretched slumber hastily start. But, to say nothing of the religious sentiment in the line before cited from £dward I and JSdwardll, we have to look to the quality of the verse in the latter play before we decide that words in it which belong to Peele's vocabulary had really been used by Marlowe. The Titus-words in it, as before noted, are : Tully, libelling, architect, sustenance (twice), and the doubtful "numbed." They form a narrow basis on which to found an opinion ; and the result is doubtful. " Tully " (a negligible item) and " libelling " occur in the first and second Acts, where there is small sign of descent from Marlowe to Peele, though the lines (II, iv) Whose pining heart her inward sighs have blasted, And body with continual mourning wasted, are bad enough for the latter ; and " foreslow " is one of his words (Battle, IV, ii, 40). In the third Act his hand seems to enter at the lines Long live my sovereign, the noble Edward, In peace triumphant, fortunate in wars ; and though the passage in which occurs the line so much in his manner, Are to your highness vowed and consecrate, is above his average, there are further touches of his iterative habit. In the fourth Act he seems to have a large share ; and there (sc. iii) we have the line Gallop apace, bright Phoebus, through the sky, 134 peele's unsigned work which recalls his three lines (before cited) begin- ning with " gallop " and conveying the same idea ; and suggests that the "gallop apace" speech in Romeo and Juliet may have been originally his. In scene iv we have his word "architect" in a passage stamped with his manner, sentiment, and mannerism, his tic-word " successful " occurring in it twice : Successful battle gives the God of Kings To them that fight in right, and fear his wrath. Since then successfully we have prevailed Thank&d be heaven's great architect and you Deal you, my lords, in this, my loving lords, As to your wisdoms fittest seems in all. Such diffuseness and tautology cannot well be Marlowe's. In this scene and the next, also, we have two uses of the noun " suspect," found several times in Peele's signed plays. As to the fifth Act, in which " sustenance " occurs twice, it is hard to come to any conclusion. Some of it varies widely from his manner, and passes high above his ordinary pitch : some of it is quite worthy of him, and like him. In fine, we are left nearly satisfied that he had a hand in the play as it stands ; and that where its vocabulary points to Titus it is partly through his work ; but that for the rest Marlowe is still indicated as a possible collaborator in the latter play. In the play of Dido, known to have been begun by Marlowe and said to have been finished by Nash,' we find, as might now be expected, almost none of the words special to Titus in " Shake- speare," and no resemblance to its versification. ' See above, p. 36, note. PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK 1 35 The only words are " Prometheus " and " 'tice " (" 'ticing " three times) ; and the only parallel phrase is "map of weather-beaten woe" — not applied to a woman.' But in the Massacre at Paris, as already noted, the case is otherwise ; and here, as in Edward II, there arises the question of Peek's cooperation. His hand is suggested in the first lines : Prince of Navarre, my honourable Lord Prince Cond6, and my good Lord Admiral ; again and again the impression is renewed at the beginnings of scenes ; and in the first scene we have an echo of one of his phrases, already noted : To stop the malice of his envious heart. The only definitely Marlowesque scene in the play is the second ; much of the rest has the weak ring of the thin coinage of Peele : Methinks the gloves have a very strong perfume, The scent whereof doth make my head to ache. My noble son, and princely Duke of Guise, Now have we got the fatal straggling deer Within the compass of a deadly toil. How fares it with my Lord High Admiral? Hath he been hurt with villains in the street ? My lords of Poland, I must needs confess. The offer of your Prince Elector's far Beyond the reach of my deserts ; For Poland is, as I have been informed, A martial people worthy such a king As hath sufficient counsel in himself To lighten doubts, and frustrate subtle foes — and so on, ad libitum. The idea of " kill'st my heart," certificated for pathos by Professor Collins ' This item suggests Lodge, employing a tag of Greene's. 136 peele's unsigned work because it occurs in Titus, is here imbedded in a death scene as devoid of pathos as any in the Elizabethan drama. The dying King Charles says : Oh ! hold me up, my sight begins to fail, My sinews shrink, my brain turns upside down, My heart doth break : I faint and die. [Dies. The Queen Mother then expresses herself as follows : What, art thou dead, sweet son ? Speak to thy mother ! Oh no, his soul is fled from out his breast. And he nor hears nor sees us what we do ! My lords, what resteth now for to' be done ? But that we presently despatch ambassadors To Poland, to call Henry back again. To wear his brother's crown and dignity ? There is unanimity in pronouncing the Massacre Marlowe's worst play. The surprising thing is that such writing as this should ever have passed as Marlowe's. It is excessively bad even for Peele ; if it be really his, it is Peele at his worst : the hack-writer at the end even of his rhetoric. And it is in this scene that we have an allusion to "the popish power," repeated in the phrase " popish prelates " at the end of the play, and echoed in "papal monarch " in Act II, sc. vi, and " popery " and " papal " in the closing scene. In view of the constantly effusive Protestantism of Peele — who speaks of " popery " in the Farewell — there can be little hesitation in assigning the word to him. His, too, is the use of " irreligious " in ' This form, so common in Greene, suggests his early work- manship, but it occurs once in Peele's Arraignment, and five times in Edward I, though not in David and Bethsabe, peele's unsigned work 137 Act III, sc. iv. Mr. Baildon has bestowed one of his free-handed panegyrics on the line O cruel, irreligious piety ! in Titus. The phrase is simply the converse of Peele's other phrase, "religious piety" (^Farewell, 26) ; as the " irreligious Moor " and " misbelieving Moor " in Titus are only variants of the " unbeliev- ing Moor " in the Battle of Aleazar (I, i, 32).' The lines on " popery " in the Farewell run as follows : Even to the gulf that leads to lofty Rome ; There to deface the pride of Antichrist, And pull his paper walls and popery down — A famous enterprise for England's strength, To steel your sword on Avarice' triple crown. It is reasonable to ascribe to the same hand these in the Massacre (III, v) : Which if I do, the papal monarch goes To wrack, and \h' Antichristian' kingdom falls. These bloody hands shall tear his triple crown. And fire accurs&d Rome about his ears ; I'll fire his crazM buildings, and enforce The papal towers to kiss the lowly earth, etc. ; and to ascribe to Peele's revision the introduction of a partly identical passage in Edward II (I, iv), where it is a ludicrous anachronism : Proud Rome ! that hatchest such imperial grooms, With these thy superstitious taper-lights, ' Though Greene and Lodge have " irreligious zeal " in the Ij)oking-Glass for London. ' Greene has the line He hated Antichrist and all his trash in A Maiden's Dream (ed. Dyce, p. 281) ; he uses the word frequently also in The Spanish Masquerade ; and " Romish Antichrist" occurs in the third line from the end of the Looking- Glass for London, in which he collaborated with Lodge, 138 peele's unsigned work Wherewith thy AntichrisUan churches blaze, I'll fire thy crazfed buildings and enforce The papal towers to kiss the lowly ground ! Comparing vocabularies, one is inclined, further, to suspect Peele's hand in the old Taming of a Shrew, where his common word "gratulate" occurs thrice (ed. Hazlitt, Sh. Lib. Pt. II, vol. ii, pp. 496, 530> 532). Peele's application of the word, how- ever, differs from Greene's ;' and it is the latter's use that we find in The Taming of a Shrew : To gratulate the favours of my son (p. 532) ; But friendly gratulate these favours found {Orl. Fur. ed. Dyce, p. 99). There remains one more pre-Shakespearean play for scrutiny. Seeing that Peele wrote the bulk of Edward I, and had a hand in Edward II, may he not have had a share in Edward III? Here we take up one of the most important of our problems. Peele, it is quite certain, did not and could not write the bulk of Edward III : the parts in which the Countess of Salisbury appears are beyond him in every respect, and are utterly alien to his manner. By a number of the most competent critics they are assigned to Shakespeare. Professor Ward pronounces it "a play in which I cannot help thinking that Shakespeare had a hand";" Collier, Ulrici, and others, assigned it wholly to him ; and Mr. Fleay, more cautiously, assigns to him only the episode of the Countess : In my opinion, only the love story, Act I, Sc. ii, Act II, is his. Mr. Tennyson tells me, however, that he can trace the master's hand throughout the play at intervals. ■ Peele thrice has " gratulate to," a form not found in Greene. ' Hist. ofEng. Dram. Lit, ed. 1899, i, 401. peele's unsigned work 139 Unlike Shakespeare's undoubted historical plays in containing a love story and involving the principal per- sonage in unhistorical adventures. In these and other respects it is like Peele's Edward I ; but the flow of metre is not like Peele's. Did Shakespeare finish and correct this play as he did Richard III? The metre is like that of this play as corrected. Or is it by Lodge ? ' In his later works, Mr. Fleay, while maintaining his ascription of the Countess episode to Shake- speare, thus developes his theory of the play : The Shakespearean part of this play (I, iii, II, i, ii which contains lines from the then unpublished Sonnets, II, i, 10, 450, and an allusion to the recently published Lucrece, II, ii, 194) was clearly acted in 1594, after May 9th, when Lucrece was entered on S.R. Edward III was entered December ist, 1595. This love-story part is from Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The original play is by Marlowe, and was acted in 1590, and is thus alluded to in Greene's Never too Late, c. December in that year : ' ' Why Roscius, art thou proud with /Esop's crow being prankt with the glory of others' feathers ? Of thyself thou canst say nothing ; and if the cobbler hath taught thee to say Ave Ccesar, disdain not thy tutor because thou protest in a king's chamber." Ave Ccesar occurs in I, i, 164 ; but not in any other play of this date have I been able to find it. There are many similarities between the Marlowe part of this play and Henry VI.' It is with the greatest diffidence that I ever reject an attribution of Mr. Fleay's ; but in this case, while agreeing with him that Marlowe wrought over the Henry VI plays and Richard III, I am unable to assent as to Marlowe's having originally written Edward III, or, what is more serious, to the opinion of Messrs. Fleay and Ward and Lord ■ Shakespeare Manual, 1876, p. 27. ° Life of Shakespeare, p. 282. Same positions in Biog, Chron. , ii, 62. 140 PEELE S UNSIGNED WORK Tennyson that the strongest part of the play was written by Shakespeare. To upset the decision of such judges would be a bold undertaking ; and I do not confidently venture upon it. The parts of the play assigned to Shake- speare by Mr. Fleay are so far worthy of him, in comparison with his other early work, that if there had been much of such matter in Titus the present debate could hardly have arisen. But I venture to submit some considerations which do not appear to have been present to the minds of the eminent critics who have maintained Shakespeare's author- ship, of whom Tennyson is, on such a question, not the least authoritative. That the bulk of the play was written by Greene can be shown, I think, with something like certainty. Whether the love-episode is from another hand is indeed a more difficult problem. Chapter VII. GREENE'S UNSIGNED WORK Of Greene, quite as certainly as of Peele, it may be said that he "wrote in many plays now lost": at least we may confidently say " not now assigned to him." In his Repentance of Robert Greene he speaks of play-writing as having been for years his " continual exercise."' In his Groatsworth of Wit, again, written in 1592, the year of his death, he protests to his fellow-craftsmen Marlowe, Peele, and Nash (or Lodge) : " Unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs [the players] to cleave "; and Nash describes him as "chief agent for the company " [of Queen's players], " for he writ more than four other."^ Yet there have been ascribed to him only seven plays : Alphonsus King of Arragon, Orlando Furioso, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, James IV, A Looking-Glass for London (with Lodge), George-a-Greene : the Pinner of Wakefield, and Selimus — the last being only recently assigned to him by Dr. Grosart. By many critics, however, he has been reasonably credited with some share in the Henry VI group ; and we have seen reason to ascribe to him parts of several anonymous plays. The fact that he died in 1592, ' Cited by Dyce, ed. of Greene and Peele, p. 25. ' Nash's Strange Newes, etc., 1592, Sig. C. 2, 3, cited by Dyce, p. 65, note, 141 142 GREENE S UNSIGNED WORK while Peele lived till 1596 or 1597, would indeed account for his doing no more dramatic work than Peele ; but it is clear that up to 1 592 he had done much more. His share in Locrine we have already noted ; and his share in Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes is to be surmised from a number of words and phrases otherwise associated with him, all occurring in four successive scenes': "ambo- dexter" (see above, p. 130); "King or Keysar" (four times in Alphonsus King of Arragon) ; " faint-hearted " (above, p. 99) ; " Venery " (above, p. 98) ; " vital breath " (song in Menaphon : " You restless cares"); and "princox" {Locrine, II, iv, IV, ii ; Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 84 ; and Quip for an Upstart Courtier: Works, xi, 225). And we shall find many traces of him in yet other plays, as already in Alphonsus Emperor of Germany and the old Leir. A dislike of Greene's character is natural to the students of the Elizabethan drama, for though he never wrote in his signed plays anything so base as Peele's wretched calumny on Queen Elinor in Edward I, his self-portrayed vices, his enviousness and faithlessness, set up a repulsion to him as a man.= By his own confession, he was a forsworn liar and the companion of thieves. He was indeed something of an English Villon — a very English Villon, with a passion for preaching. With his character, however, we have strictly nothing to do in this inquiry ; and a caveat on that ' Scenes iv, v, vi, vii, Dyce's ed. pp. 498-503. = Prof. Raleig-h writes (The English Novel, znd ed. p. 60) ; " It is easy to condemn the man, impossible not to love him." Such love may come at first sight : it can hardly survive a detailed study. Greene's unsigned work 143 head is a proper preamble to an investigation which turns upon his poetic and dramatic faculty. § I. Mr. Fleay, in his vigilant scrutiny of Edward III, notes in the vocabulary of the supreme episode " expressions such as hugy, vasture, muster men, via, imperator, encotich, which are either of frequent occurrence in Shakespeare, or have the true ring of his coinage in them." On the other hand he cites the following, found in other parts of the play, as non-Shakespearean : Bonny (thrice). Found in i H. VI, and 3 H. VI (Bonnier \n III, i). Patronage (vb. infin.), Ill, iii. Found twice in z H. VI. H6rizon. V, i. Ave Csesar. I, i. Whinyard. I, ii. Bayard. Ill, i. Plate (= silver). I, ii ; IV, iv.' Nemesis. Ill, i. Martialist. Ill, iii. Solitariness. Ill, ii. Quadrant. V, i. Ure. I, i. Battle-'ray. Ill, iii ; IV, iii {grayed in a non-Shake- spearean part of the Taming of the Shrew). Burgonet. IV, iv, 83. Thrice in 2 H. VI. Once in Antony and Cleopatra, but in no other Shakespearean play. Expulsed. Ill, ii. Found in 2 H. VI. Quittance (vb. infin. ). Found in i H. VI. "Cataline," he adds, "in the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, has been replaced by Machiavel in j Henry VI, but remains undethroned in Act III, sc. i, of our play."'' ' This, however, is really frequent in Shakespeare. " Shakespeare Manual, pp. 305-6. 144 Greene's unsigned work Now, " hugy " is found in no Shakespearean play, and is common to Greene, Marlowe, Peele, and Kyd, all of whom could find it frequently in Ferrex and Porrex; " vasture " is equally absent from the Shakespearean concordance ; so is " encouch "; whereas we have " the dreadful vast " in a Greene-ish passage of Lodge's Wounds of Civil War (II, i, 9) ; and in Soliman and Perseda, in the line Nay, that was love, for I couched myself (III, vi, 4) the metre seems to need "encouched." "Via" is certainly frequent in Shakespeare ; but we find it also in the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York; and, though we have " muster men " in both Richard II and Richard III, that locution is ordinary enough. It is common in Greene, who in his death-bed letter to his wife writes : " All my wrongs muster themselves about me" — a fairly " Shakespearean" expression. It seems summary, finally, to credit " imperator " to Shakespeare on the strength of its one appearance in Love's Labour's Lost. Turning to the list of non-Shakespearean words, we find that every one of them points to Greene. As thus : To patronage. Four times in Greene's prose : Fran- cesco's Foitunes, Ep. Ded. ; Euphues his Censure, Ep. Ded. and text ; The Royal Exchange : To the Citizens of London ; Alcida : Greene's Metamorphosis, Ep. Ded. (Works, ed. Grosart, vi, 151, 236; vii, 226; ix, 6, 117). H6rizon. Orlando Furioso, 1. 20. Whinyard. James IV, Induction, thrice. Bayard. Euphues his Censure (Works, vi, 209, 264) ; Mamillia, Ep. Ded. (ii, 6) ; Greene's Vision (xii, 212). Nemesis. Thrice in Orlando Furioso. GREENE'S UNSIGNED WORK I45 Solitariness.' Groatsworth of Wit, Ed. New Sh. Soc, p. 17, 1. 5 ; Card of Fancy (Works, iv, 97) ; Mamillia (". 43)- Martialist." Four times in Greene's prose (Euphues his Censure, 1587, Ep. Ded. to Philautus — Works, Grosart's ed., vi, 152, and p. 201 ; Greene's Farewell to Folly, 1591 — Works, ix, 247, 249). Also twice in the induction to the Spanish Tragedy, 11. 46, 61. Query, Greene's ? Quadrant. Menaphon: Nash's Epistle "To the Gentle- men Students " (Works, vi, 14). Expulsive. Peiimedes (Works, V, ii, 20). (Expulse. Spanish Tragedy, III, ii, 107.) To Quittance.3 Greene's Vision (xii, 246) ; Philomela (xi, 117) ; Orlando Furioso, twice (ed. Dyce, pp. 95, 108). Quittanced. Life and Death of Ned Browne; and Repentance of Robert Greene (Works, xi, 34 ; xii, 179). Bonny. Perimedes, twice (vii, 83, 92) ; George-a- Greene, I, i ; James IV, I, iii (twice) ; IV, near end ; Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, four times (ed. Dyce, pp. 153, 160, 163, 174) ; also in Doron's jig in Menaphon ; in one of the sonnets in Perimedes twice ; and in the Hexametra Alexis in The Mourning Garment (ed. Dyce, pp, 287, 293, 305)- Bonnier. Friar Bacon, 1. 49. Battle 'ray. James IV, V, vi ; Alphonsus of Arragon, IV, near end (Dyce's ed. p. 242, col. i). Ure. Alphonsus, Induction : Speech of Venus ; also Act III (Dyce, p. 236). Plate. Groatsworth, ed. cited, p. 9, 1. i : Friar Bacon, ed. Dyce, p. 165, col. 2, 1. 2 ; Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 33 ; Never too Late (cited by Dyce, p. 6). As to Am Ccesar, Mr. Fleay has noted that the phrase occurs in Greene's Never too Late ; and he ' Echoed from Sidney, who works it hard (Arcadia, B. II, last poem), or from Suphues (Arber' s ed. pp. 117, 118). Greene has also " solitarily" in the Card of Fancy (p. 45), and in the Tritam- eron of Love (Works, iii, 55). ' Also a word of Lyly's — The Woman in the Moon, II, i. 3 Greene has also the form " to acquittance " (Never too Late : Works, viii, 16), found in Richard III, III, vii, 233. L 146 Greene's unsigned work infers that a reference is there meant to this play. But why should it be so ? The point of the remark cited lies in the ^sopism about the crow figuring at court, not in any literal suggestion as to an actor saying " Ave Cassar " in a play. As a matter of fact, a phrase about " crying * Ave ' to his majesty " while " aiming Cassar's death " occurs in Greene's own Orlando Furtoso (Dyce, p. 94), which is certainly to be dated before 1590 ; and the sentence "Caesar's crow durst never cry Ave, but when she was perked on the capitol " is found in the Epistle Dedicatory to Pandosto, published 1588. Are we not rather forced to infer, then, that it was one of Greene's recurring thoughts, and that, with all the other non-Shakespearean modes above noted as coming from him, it points to his author- ship of the bulk of this play? And again, seeing that the reference to Lucrece is in the phrase " the vain endeavour of so many pens," are we entitled to think that it must refer to Shakespeare's poem in particular ? Is it likely, further, that Shakespeare would gratuitously introduce such an allusion to his own poem ? Burgonet, again, seems to be a favourite term of Greene's: My spear and shield Resounding on their crests and sturdy helms Topt high with plumes, like Mars his burgonet (Orlando Furioso, 11. 30-32). Engrave our prowess on their burgonets (JSelimus, 2430). And crack my lance upon his burgonet {Locrine, II, ii). As each of these passages expresses the same idea, the passage in Edward III (IV, iv, 82-83) : Greene's unsigned work 147 My tongue is made of steel, and it shall beg My mercy on his coward burgonet is likely to be from the same mint as the others ;' and as the tag is not to be found in Peele's signed works we are led to ascribe it to Greene both in Locrine and Selimus. Without going into the question of the authorship of the First Part of the Contention, we may note in passing that this is one of the clues to Greene's hand in that play, since in a single scene we have " burgonet " thrice ; one of the lines running : And that I'll write upon thy burgonet. If the inference be not otherwise upset, it would follow that the equivalent passages in 2 Henry VI are his, though the word " burgonet," used as a metaphor, occurs in Coriolanus. And so with the words " bonny " and " bonniest " in the same plays, though Shakespeare has " bonny " elsewhere.'' In Greene they are common. But even in the second Act of Edward III, claimed as Shakespeare's, there are a number of words and names found in no other play ascribed to him. The following are probably not all : Besiege (noun), i, 416. Delineate, ii, 91. Flankers, i, i8g. Foragement. ii, 400. (Forage in V. and A.) Inwired. i, 418. ' Yet again in Alcida, Greene's Metamorphosis, Ep. Ded., we have " registered his valour on the helm of his enemy " (Works, ix, 5). ° In no case does the word seem to be his. In Much Ado and Hamlet it occurs in old songs ; in the Shrew it is taken over from the old play ; \m H. VI it is in the same case ; and in R. Ill the passage is plainly non-Shakespearean. As for " bonny " in As You Like It (II, iii, 8), surprisingly retained in the Globe ed., it is clearly a misprint for " bony. " 148 Greene's unsigned work Judith. 1, 171. Leprous. 1,424. {" Leperous" in Hamlet.) Love-lays, i, 98. Sarah, i, 258. Sots (vb.). i, 81. Further, we have "ventages" (ii, 70), found only in Hamlet, and there with a different force ; " sati- rical," also found only in Hamlet; " star-chamber " (ii, 169), here used metaphorically, applied literally in the Merry Wives, and nowhere else occurring in Shakespeare ; "heart-blood, "found in Richard II, and thrice in the Henry VI group, but not else- where ; " conventicle," found only in 2 Henry VI; "wistly," found only in Richard II ; "intellectual soul," found only in the Comedy of Errors; "en- damagement," found only in King John; and "cynic," found only in Julius Ccesar, where it is used with its stricter application, not as here in a metaphor. Here again we have clues to Greene : Conventicle. Never too Late (Works, viii, 61). Also in the Troublesome Raigne, in a scene which has Greene's word "deathsman," found m Menaphon, the Groatsworth, and Tully's Love, and twice in Alcida (Works, vi, 143 ; vii, 14s; ix, 110, 112; xii, 145). Cynic. Tuliys Love (Works, vii, 172). Menaphon (ed. Arber, p. 49. Cynical, id. p. 48). Endamage. Euphues his Censure to Philautus (Works, vi, 221). Endamaged. Philomela (Works, xi, 150). Selimus, 1378- . Inwired. This seems to be the true reading of the word printed as "invironed" in Euphues his Censure to Philautus (Works, vi, 220), which as it stands is unintel- ligible. Love-lays. James IV, I, ii. Satirical. Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 25 ; Euphues his Censure (Works, vi, 169) ; Second Part of Tritameron (iii, 117). Greene's unsigned work 149 Sotted. Planetomachia (Works, v, 58) ; Mamillia (ii. 32); Tritameron of Love (iii, 78, 79) ; Debatebetween Folly and Love (iv, 210). If we look next to the tags, we are led to the same surmise. In II, i, 390-1, for instance, we have the passage : The poets write that great Achilles' spear Could heal the wound it made. The same common Euphuistic trope is found in 2 Henry VI, V, i, 100 : Like to Achilles' spear Is able with the change to kill or cure, but nowhere in the whole range of the genuine Shakespeare, who, indeed, never names Achilles save once in Love's Labour's Lost, and as a character in Troilus and Cressida. But the same formula is found in Greene's Orlando Furioso (ed, Dyce, p. 95, col. i) : As those that with Achilles' lance were wounded Fetched help at self-same pointed spear ; and it is common in his prose ; for instance : " pierced with Achilles' lance must be healed with his spear " (Orpharion, ad init. — Works, xii, 9) ; " wounded with Achilles' lance must be healed with his truncheon " {Philomela, Works, xi, 141). Equally typical of him is the passage (II, i, 286-9) : O that I were a honey-gathering bee. To bear the comb of virtue from his flower ; And not a poison-sucking envious spider. To turn the vice I take to deadly venom. The figure of the spider sucking poison from the most precious flowers occurs in his Repentance (Works, xii, 180) ; and when we find it in Soliman ISO Greene's unsigned work and Perseda (II, i, 130) we have a fresh reason for surmising his presence there. Again, the line (», 74) : For poets term the wanton warrior blind has reference to the " blind Bayard " referred to in the four passages of Greene above cited, and in the parallel line in the third Act (i, 58) Then Bayard-like, blind over-weening Ned ; while the passage (i, 122-3) Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul Upon this voluntary ground of love, is a reproduction of an idea very common in Greene's prose. In Shakespeare we find " descant " twice as verb, and twice as noun ; but (save one instance in Lucrece) all occur in plays not drafted by him — Richard III anA the Two Gentlemen of Verona. The phrase in the latter play gives the word the exact musical application so common in Greene : A humorous descant of their prattle. Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 55 ; Works, vi, 88. Ran so merry a descant on the pride of scholars. Farewell to Folly ; Works, ix, 252. Playing most cunningly upon a lute certain lessons of curious descant. Philomela ; Works, xi, 174-5. You run descant upon this word. Penelope^s Web ; Works, V, 197. Peratio at the first sight began thus to descant. Second Part of Tritameron ; Works, iii, 168. You men have your shifts of descant, to make sundry points upon one plain song. Id. p. 122. Can so cunningly run a point of descant that, be the plain song never so simple, thou canst quaver to please both parts. Mamillia ; Works, ii, 226. Upon poor Lentulus' plain song they all began to descant. Tully's Love ; Works, vii, 156. § 2. Another tag occurring in Edward III (III, Greene's unsigned work 151 iii, 112), at first sight seems to lead to a similar conclusion : Before the sickle's thrust into the corn. In Selimus (1. 497) we have : And thrust my sickle where the corn is reaped. It is indeed arguable that this is a proverbial phrase, since we find it in Soliman and Perseda (IV, i, 223) : That thrust his sickle in my harvest corn, and again in the Spanish Tragedy (II, vi) : The sickle comes not till the corn be ripe. Now, we have repeatedly seen reason to question whether Greene had not a hand in the Tragedy and in Soliman and Perseda; and there is a temptation to solve the problem summarily by referring to him the phrase under notice. But there is a piece of evidence which discountenances that solution. One of the notable Elizabethan tragedies which preceded Titus is Arden of Feversham (1592), assigned by Mr. Fleay to Kyd. I have nowhere been more impressed by the value of his ascrip- tions. Arden sets out with a versification which is certainly not Greene's, and is not recognisably Peele's; and in the first Act we find in it an accentuation never met with in their verse — "jealous" pronounced as a tri-syllable. There can be no mistake about the intention. At first the word is spelt "jelyouse"; afterwards it goes "jelious"; and, though in one instance it may be read in two syllables, in four others it has clearly three.' Now though this pronunciation is ' Act I. Bullen's ed. 1S87, pp. 3, 7, 10, 17, 18. 152 GREENES UNSIGNED WORK found in some plays in or after 1592, notably in Richard III, in a quite un-Shakespearean passage" (I, i, 92) : Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous, it never occurs in earlier plays, so far as I remember, save in the Spanish Tragedy in the line (II, ii, 56): Ay, danger mixed with jealous despite. The spelling, indeed, is "jealous" in the 1594 quarto, followed by Professor Boas in his edition of Kyd's works ; but in the prose tract The Murder of John Bremen (1592), assigned to Kyd by a note in contemporary handwriting, we have the spelling "ielious."" Here then we have a very clear though a slender clue, justifying, so far as it goes, Mr. Fleay's ascription. In Arden, too, we have the line (III, i, p. 45) : What dismal outcry calls me from my rest ? closely echoing that in the Tragedy (II, v, i) : What outcries pluck me from my naked bed ? Nowhere, I think, does that locution occur in Greene ; and to Kyd, accordingly, we seem bound • Pointing to the presence of Kyd in Richard III — a hypothesis which clears up several difficulties as to the composite authorship of that play. "The gelyous comodey" figures as"ne"inHen- slowe's Diary on 5th January, 1592(3). ' Ed. of Prof. Boas, p. 291, 1. 26. It may be noted that the spelling " jealious " is found several times in Lyly's The Woman in the Moone as reprinted in Fairholt's ed. from the quarto of 1597 (ed. cited of Works, ii, 168, 183, 184) ; but in the two instances in which the word occurs inverse (pp. 168, 182) it scans perfectly as a dissyllable, and in the second of these it happens to be spelt "jealous." In Greene's prose the word is spelt in many ways. In Philomela alone (Works, xi, 137, 143, 156, 169, 172, 182, 183, 197) I find seven different spellings : ielous, gelous, iellouse, iealous, ielouse, ieliouse, and ielious (twice). As the word never scans with three syllables in his verse, we may take it that the last two spellings at least are the printer's. Greene's unsigned work 153 to ascribe not only that but the tag we have just been considering, which occurs thus in Arden (IV, i, p. 69) : Why should he thrust his sickle in our corn ? So far as I remember, the formula never occurs in Greene's prose, where he repeats so many proverbs and catch-words. If then we find it (i) in no signed work of his, but only in Selimus,^ and there with a difference of turn and application which consists with a separate authorship ; (2) in the Tragedy ; and (3) in Soliman and Perseda, which on any view is only in part Greene's, and which is so closely associated with the Tragedy, the fair inference is that in three if not in all four cases it is Kyd's. Of course Greene may have adopted it in several plays without introducing it in his prose; but the natural presumption is against that conclu- sion. We have now, then, a clear if not a conclusive ground for ascribing to Kyd a share in Soliman and in Arden, and a justification of Mr. Fleay's suggestion that he may have had a share in Edward III. But to delimit the share is difficult, in all three cases. In Arden, as in Soliman, there are several words and phrases which seem to belong to the special vocabulary of Peele. The old tag "kills my heart," as before noted, occurs twice in the former play ; and we find in it also the words " 'ticing," "fore-slowed," "'joy" = enjoy, "bedes- man" (found in his signed Speeches at Theobald's, i, 83 ; in Edward I, i, 130, and in the Sonnet "His golden locks time hath to silver turned"); • In a rhyming passage, which certainly appears to be Greene's. 154 Greene's unsigned work "long home " (the metre calling for "longest home ") ; " complices " (found in the Massacre at Paris); and the form "patient yourself." On the other hand, the presence of Greene in Arden seems to me obvious. In the second Act (p. 36) there suddenly emerges a new hand where Black Will, who had formerly spoken in prose, in blank verse speaks of Alice Arden, of whom he has hitherto heard nothing in the dialogue ; and the versifica- tion seems to me to be unmistakably Greene's. Immediately, too, we find clues to his vocabulary, as : the verb " to quittance," special to him. And though the phrase " buckler thee " points also to Marlowe, since it occurs twice in what seem genuine scenes of Edward II, and again in a powerful speech in the Contention, it may be here echoed from Marlowe by Greene. Later we have (III, v) Greene's frequent term " copesmate," and " insinuate " = wheedle ; also his " bonny " (V, i); and all the passages that have been discussed by critics and editors as quasi-Shakespearean appear to me to be distinctly his. § 3. Returning to Edward III, we find yet further grounds for connecting it with Greene. 1. In the first scene occurs the line (47) : But now doth mount with golden wings of fame, which echoes two above cited (p. 97) from Locrine and Selimus. 2. The tag about the nightingale with the prickle at its breast, above noted (p. 108) as occurring in his prose and in the Spanish Tragedy, is worked up in this play (I, i, 109-111). 3. The word " impall " (III, iii, 180) = encircle is frequent in his prose, in the same sense. GREENE'S Unsigned work 155 4. The line (IV, ii, 33) : The lion scorns to touch the yielding prey, echoes one in James IV (V, iii, 24) : The king of beasts, that harms not yielding ones ; and the application of both recurs in the latter play in the same scene : I, eagle-like, disdain these little fowls. And look on none but those that dare resist ; while in the first and last citations the speaker is the king of England. 5. The phrase " patterns of despair and woe " (IV, ii, 12) in the scene of Edward III last cited, like the equivalent phrases formed on " map " and "platform," occurs in Greene's prose (Works, viii, 41) and in Leir. 6. The phrase cited below (p. 159) about decking an ape in tissue points to one about apes in cloth of gold in the Epistle Dedicatory to the Tritameron of Love (Works, iii, 48). Of these six instances the first, as it happens, takes us back again to Soliman and Perseda; and it may be well here to group the main data for the inference that Greene had a hand in that play. 1. "Golden wings" occurs twice (II, ii, 38; iii, 13)- 2. The tag of the spider sucking poison from flowers occurs also (II, i, 130) : As in the spider good things turn to poison. 3. As before noted, the tag about choosing the least of two evils occurs here and in Greene's prose. 4. The line (IV, ii, 7), And where a man lives well, that is his country, 156 Greene's unsigned work is nearly duplicated in Greene's Mourning Garment (xi, 132), in the phrase : "Tully said, every country is a wise man's home." 5. The not very common use of " dazzle " as an intransitive verb, above noted in Greene, occurs here (II, i, 244). 6. The line, IV, i, 50, And tears suppressed will but increase my sorrow, is a variant of a tag which we have seen (p. 104) to be a favourite with Greene. 7. The word " passions," occurring several times in this play, is found hundreds of times in Greene. These parallels, however, though of considerable cumulative force, when taken with the previously noted clues from vocabulary, are singly slight. Not so are the following. 8. As regards structure, not only is the situation of Soliman's love for Perseda (as we shall see) of a type constantly recurring in Greene's tales, and in his James IV and Friar Bacon : the violent veer- ings of Soliman, and his absolute recoil from a pledged course, are peculiarly characteristic of Greene. They are also partly paralleled in Edward III. 9. Soliman's description of Perseda's charms (IV, i, 67 sq.) might almost be said to be stamped with Greene's sign manual, so signally does it correspond with a dozen other descriptions of female beauty scattered through his works. Let it be compared with the following passages, cited from Dyce's edition — the Description of Silves- tro's Lady, from the Tritameron of Love (p. 285) ; Doron's Description of Samela, from Mena- phon (p. 287) ; Menaphon's Eclogue (p. 289) ; GREENE S UNSIGNED WORK 1 57 Melicertus' Eclogue (p. 290) ; Francesco's Ode, from Never Too Late (p. 296) ; the Canzone (p. 297) and Francesco's Roundelay (p. 298), from the same tale ; the Hexametra Alexis, from the Mourning Garment (p. 305) ; the description of the Lady Massia and the lines translated from Guazzo (both p. 309) in the Farewell to Folly ; the Shepherd's Ode (p. 313) from Tully's Love ; and finally Orlando's description of Angelica in Orlando Furioso (p. 102) — and it will hardly be disputed that the passage in question is peculiarly in Greene's taste and manner. Until equally nume- rous and significant parallels from other authors be pointed out, the presumption of Greene's pre- sence in Soliman stands reasonably justified. It may be added that this play too has a line ot a type we have seen reason to ascribe to him : Witness the heavens of my unfeigned love (IV, i, 168); and that the allusion to Sara in Edward III echoes one in the closing speech of Kate in the old Taming of a Shrew — a play in which there are several traces of Greene, though the speech in question is hardly like his verse. Finally, Greene twice in his prose mentions the story of Erastus and Perseda {Card of Fancy and Mamillia : Works, ii, 61 ; iv, 53), and was evidently interested in it. § 4. Returning again to Edward III, and seek- ing to make a final decision, let us take up the difficult task of applying the higher tests. We may begin by considering some good examples of the style and substance of the second Act, for instance (i) those lines of the Countess : 158 Greene's unsigned work That love, you offer me, you cannot give ; For Caesar owes that tribute to his queen : That love you beg of me I cannot give ; For Sarah owes that duty to her lord. He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp Shall die, my lord ; and will your sacred self Commit high treason against the King of heaven. To stamp his image in forbidden metal, Forgetting your allegiance, and your oath ? In violating marriage' sacred law You break a greater honour than yourself. To be a king, is of a younger house Than to be married ; your progenitor, Sole-reigning Adam on the universe. By God was honour'd for a married man. But not by him anointed for a king : (2) those lines of her father, Warwick : The poets write that great Achilles' spear Could heal the wound it made : the moral is What mighty men misdo, they can amend. The lion doth become his bloody jaws And grace his foragement by being mild When vassal fear lies trembling at his feet. The king will in his glory hide thy shame ; And those that gaze on him to find out thee Will lose their eyesight, looking in the sun. What can one drop of poison harm the sea, Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill. And make it lose his operation ? (3) those lines of the Countess's reply : No marvel, then, though the branches be infected When poison hath encompassed the root : No marvel though the leprous infant die. When the stern dam envenometh the dug. Why, then, give sin a passport to offend And youth the dangerous rein of liberty : Blot out the strict forbidding of the law ; And cancel every canon that prescribes A shame for shame, or penance for offence : Greene's unsigned work 159 (4) those of Warwick's reply : Why, now thou speak'st as I would have thee speak, And mark how I unsay my words again. An honourable grave is more esteem'd Than the polluted closet of a king ; The greater man, the greater is the thing. Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake. An unreputed mote, flying in the sun. Presents a greater substance than it is : The freshest summer's day doth sooner taint The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss. Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe : That sin doth ten times aggravate itself. That is committed in a holy place : An evil deed, done by authority, In sin, and subornation ; deck an ape In tissue, and the beauty of the robe Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast. A spacious field of reasons could I urge. Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame. That poison shows worst in a golden cup ; Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash ; Lilies, that fester, smell far worse than weeds ; And every glory that inclines to sin, The same is treble by the opposite. So leave I, with my blessing in thy bosom ; Which then convert to a most heavy curse. When thou convert'st from honour's golden name To the black faction of bed-blotting shame ! Here we have to reckon with the important facts (i) that the line "Lilies that fester" occurs in Shakespeare's sonnet 94, even as (2) "scarlet ornaments " (II, i, 10) occurs in sonnet 142 ; and (3) that the phrase about the sun kissing carrion is echoed in Hamlet; and though those who insist on Shakespeare's habitual imitation of Greene and Peele can argue nothing from such circumstances, they must be reckoned, on the principles followed in i6o Greene's unsigned work this investigation, a ground of prima facie pre- sumption that he had a share in Edward III. But the primary presumption must undergo further tests. The passages above cited are perhaps not the most poetic parts of the Act, but they give a good idea of its style and intellectual substance. Now, if we turn to the third and fourth Acts, which Mr. Fleay assigns to another hand, we find, not indeed the same style throughout, but speeches pretty much on a level with those above cited, at least as to manner and sententiousness. For instance, the speech of the second Frenchman in Act III, sc. ii : Ay, so the grasshopper doth spend the time In mirthful jollity 'till winter come ; And then too late he would redeem his time When frozen cold hath nipped his careless head. He, that no sooner will provide a cloak, Than when he sees it doth begin to rain, May, peradventure, for his negligence. Be throughly wash'd when he suspects it not. We, that have charge, and such a train as this. Must look in time to look for them and us, Lest when we would, we cannot be relieved ; and the speech of Audley to the Prince in Act IV, sc. v : To die is all as common as to live ; We do pursue and hunt the time to die ; First bud we, then we blow, and after, seed ; Then, presently, we fall ; and, as a shade Follows the body, so we follow death. If then we hunt for death, why do we fear it ? If we fear it, why do we follow it ? If we do fear, with fear we do but aid The thing we fear to seize on us the sooner ; If we fear not, then no resolved proffer Can overthrow the limit of our fate : Greene's unsigned work i6i For whether ripe or rotten, drop we shall, As we do draw the lottery of our doom. Here we have the same compression and brevity, the same accumulation of sententious dicta, the same nervous versification as in the second Act. If the same poetic height be not maintained it is partly because the level of the action falls from that of a highly individualised situation to the ordinary drum-and-trumpet purport of a chronicle-drama. And there are other passages in the fourth and fifth Acts which equally justify Tennyson's verdict that the hand which wrote the second wrought in other parts of the play. Its presence, indeed, is clear enough to make it intelligible that even some good critics should ascribe the play as a whole to Shakespeare. Even if, however, we assign to the " superior " hand more than the episode of the Countess of Salisbury, we have still to settle whose the hand was. Is there not, let us ask, substantially the same touch here : Did we not taste the bitterness of war How could we know the sweet effects of peace ? Did we not feel the nipping winter's frosts How should we know the sweetness of the spring ? Should all things still remain in one estate ? Should not in greatest arts some scarres be found ? Were all upright and changed, what world were this ? A chaos, made of quiet, yet no world. Because the parts thereof did still accord ; This matter craves a variance, not a speech. Did each man know there were a storm at hand Who would not clothe him well, to shun the wet ? The higher the tree the sooner is his fall. That tree is fertile which ne'er wanteth fruit ; That year is rare that ne'er feels winter's storms. M i62 Greene's unsigned work What, do you think that if the tree do bend It follows therefore that it needs must break ? A wresting power that makes a nose of wax Of grounded law ; a damned and subtle drift In all estates to climb by others' loss ; An eager thirst of wealth, forgetting truth : Might I ascend unto the highest states, And by descent discover every crime, My friends, I should lament, and you would grieve To see the hapless ruins of this realm. These passages are all from Greene — the first two and the last from James IV; the others from the induction to Alphonsus King of Arragon. They indicate a quality in his work which we miss if we merely run through Orlando Furioso, taking it as typical. Greene developed in his few years of dramatic work as markedly if not so rapidly as Marlowe ; he is truly " both as a dramatist and a novelist a man of many styles."' Already in AlphonsiAS King of Arragon we see his turn for sententious, Euphuistic sayings in nervous verse — a development of the same Euphuistic vein so constant in his prose, from Mamillia onwards ; and in James /Fwe find him striking a psycho- logical note never sounded by Peele or even by Marlowe. In that play, too, and yet again in George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, we have a handling of the precise problem dealt with in Edward III, the virtuous lady (a wife in George-a- Greene ; Bin unmarried woman in James IV) resisting the advances of the King ; and the appeal made by the character of Countess Ida in James IV is doubled with that of the figure of Queen ' Professor Ward, Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit. i, 393. Greene's unsigned work 163 Dorothea, who is forgiving love personified, as Ida and the other Countess stand for sheer chastity. It has been very justly surmised' that in Queen Dorothea Greene meant to picture his own wronged wife, Dorothea, on whose forgiveness he relied on his deathbed ; and critics who pay him small tribute are at one with those who prize him more highly in admitting that he was " the first of our playwrights to feel and express the charm of maiden modesty upon the public stage. "^ It is the old story : the blackguard poet had in him a seed of genius, which the stress of life at last ripened. This is indeed denied by some who in effect place him high ; for instance, Professor Courthope, who writes that Peele's " vast intellectual supe- riority to Greene " is seen when we compare David and Bethsabe with the Looking-Glass for London. I am fain to regard this judgment as framed without due consideration of such a play as James IV. The Looking-Glass is a moral chaos, a bad composite, doubling the defects of both Greene and Lodge, and as a whole worthless from every point of view. But David and Bethsabe, though a coherent and careful piece of work, is finally worthless in another way. From first to last it is mere unctuous, intoned rhetoric ; and the • So Professor Brown and Professor Storojenko (Grosart's ed. of Greene, I, p. xxxix) ; and Professor Courthope, Hist, of Eng, Poetry, ii, 396. ' J. A. Symonds, Shakespeare's Predecessors, 1884, p. 560. To the same effect Professor Ward, Hist, of Eng. Dram. Lit., i, 218 ; Dr. Grosart, introd. to his ed. of Greene's Works, Huth Library, vol. i, p. xli ; and Professor Courthope, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, ii, 396. Professor Courthope remarks that Greene created "the prototype of Viola and Imog'en. " 164 Greene's unsigned work ascription to it of " tenderness and poetic beauty " by Dyce must be pronounced a symptom of an obsolete conception of poetry. Greene's Orlando and Alphonsus represent rhetoric of an even cheaper sort ; the product of a vagabond scribbler who took nothing seriously ; but in his later Friar Bacon and George-a-Greene he does succeed in what Peele never attains to save once, and that faintly, in his slight Old Wives' Tale. He succeeds, that is, in reproducing at times the vibration of living voices ; and in James IV, work- ing on an extravagant motive in an ill-balanced plot, he so wakes it as to arrest once for all the ear of every attentive reader. The extravagance and the want of balance belong to his unhappy character : in every one of his tales we have the same effects of heedless inven- tion, the same lack of moral sanity, the same strange perversity of action.' It is as if the boundless fluency which is his outstanding characteristic were let play at haphazard, unruled by moral judgment or sense of fitness. But, though at a long interval and in a much narrower world, the congenital fluency of Greene at last evolved into a faculty for intensive utterance, somewhat as that of the poet of Venus and Adonis deepened into the incom- parable power that pulses through his tragedies. Through the darkened and degraded life of the debauched hack there gleamed fitfully a strange vision or memory of noble womanhood, which at • It is this that makes him the likeliest first draughtsman of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But a certain falseness of draw- ing', a moral incoherence, marks in a less degree the romances of Lyly and Lodge. Euphues is fundamentally odious, despite the championship of Kingsley. Greene's unsigned work 165 last kindles into the figure of Dorothea, a forecast of Imogen, one of Shakespeare's women born out of due time. It was only in his dramatic poetry that he thus at last found himself; the women of his stories are at best Euphuistic talking-machines of the egregious brood of Lyly, reciting volubly through conventional masks. Lodge in his Rosa- lynde comes nearer to making real women than does Greene in his prose romances : it was the stage, which he would fain have abjured, that put upon him the stress needed to transform his lay figures of the chaste woman and the wronged wife into human beings, whom we can remember as we do those of flesh and blood. He thus typifies in his person the aesthetic evolution through which the drama, under the pressures alike of actors and of audiences, moved towards naturalness at once in action and diction, and at length forced a similar movement on the novel,' so long given up to didactic tedium and puerile improbability. § 5. It is this measure of success in his signed work that entitles us to pronounce Greene capable of writing all Edward III, where the motives are so near akin to those employed in James IV. A com- parison of the dialogue between King James and Countess Ida with that of Act II of Edward III will further show the affinity between Greene's work and what has been assigned to Shakespeare in the play in question. On the lower and duller plane, further, of his prose tales, which have neither moral nor artistic merit, we find the situa- tion recurring again and again, as in the Tale ' It was near the end of his life that he wrote his realistic stories of vice and roguery, so much more arresting than his romances. i66 Greene's unsigned work of Cosimo in the Farewell to Folly, and in the Second Part of Never too Late, where the virtuous Semiramis and Isabel respectively meet their lawless suitors — one a king, the other a magistrate — with appeals and arguments entirely in the vein of those of Ida and the Countess.' And King Ninus, in the Tale of Cosimo, employs his secre- tary in his suit (with a difference) as does the king in Edward III. Yet again, the situation set up in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Prince Edward's love for the rustic maiden Margaret, who has fallen in love with his deputy. Earl Lacy, is closely akin to that created in the play before us. In the former. Prince Edward finally addresses himself : So in subduing fancy's passion Conquering thyself, thou gett'st the richest spoil ; in the latter the king asks himself : Shall I not Master this little mansion of myself ? I go to conquer kings ; and shall I then Subdue myself, and be my enemy's friend ? and yet again in the fifth Act (i, 50 sq.), he pro- claims : It shall be known that we As well can master our affections As conquer other by the dint of sword. This idea, again, comes up in Greene's prose, as in the Farewell to Folly, where we have the remark (Works, ix, 299) that "Alexander made a conquest of his thoughts" in a similar situation. And in this connection, once more, in a speech of Soliman in Soliman and Perseda (IV, i, 144-6) : ' In the early Mirror of Modesty Susanna answers the Elders in the same style. Greene's unsigned work 167 My word is passed, and I recall my passions What should he do with crown and empery That cannot govern private fond affections ? we see reason to ask whether Greene had not a hand in that play. It is in any case clear that the situation of the virtuous woman, unlawfully solicited by a powerful lover, was constantly recurring to Greene's mind as a literary theme. Again and again he rings the changes on the situation dealt with in Edward III. The handling in that play is indeed by far the best ; but such a consummation, occurring near the close of his life, is quite in keeping with the develop- ment we have noted in his whole work. It is simply the best of many attempts. In Philomela, the suspicious husband urges his friend to make love to his wife ; in the tale of Cosimo, the king attempts to make the husband, Msenon, persuade the wife to yield to his purpose, and, setting no bounds to his passion, slays him when he refuses ; in Edward III, the king orders the father, Warwick, to command his daughter to yield ; and Warwick, revolting from the order, goes through the form of obeying it. In James IV, finally, the villain Ateukin fans James's passion and seeks to secure his end for him. Here again the dialogue has some of the nervous and incisive quality met with in Edward III: Ateukin. — These lets are but as motes against the sun Yet not so great ; like dust before the wind Yet not so light. Tut, pacify your grace : You have the sword and sceptre in your hand ; You are a king, the state depends on you ; Your will is law. Say that the case were mine, i68 Greene's unsigned work Were she my sister whom your highness loves, She should consent, for that our lives, our goods. Depend on you : and if your queen repine. Although my nature cannot brook of blood. And scholars grieve to hear of murtherous deeds — But if the lamb should let the lion's way By my advice the lamb should lose her life. Here the use of the noun " lets," very rare in Shake- speare, points back to Edward III, where it occurs several times. And again, in the dialogue between Dorothea and Douglas, we have a quality of style and substance which would probably have passed unchallenged as " Shakespearean " had it been found in an early Shakespearean play. Dorothea. — Ah father, are you so estranged from love. From due allegiance to your prince and land. To leave your king when most he needs your help? The thrifty husbandmen are never wont, That see their lands unfruitful, to forsake them ; But when the mould is barren and unapt. They toil, they plough, and make the fallow fat : The pilot in the dangerous seas is known : In calmer waves the silly sailor strives. Are you not members, lords of commonweal. And can your head, your dear anointed king, Default, ye lords, except yourselves do fail ? Oh stay your steps, return and counsel him. Douglas. — Men seek not moss upon a rolling stone, Or water from the sieve, or fire firom ice. Or comfort from a reckless monarch's hands. Madam, he sets us light that serv'd in court, In place of credit, in his father's days. If we but enter presence of his grace. Our payment is a frown, a scoff, a frump ; Whilst flattering Gnatho pranks it by his side. Soothing the careless king in his misdeeds ; And if your grace consider your estate His life should urge you too, if all be true Greene's unsigned work 169 Dorothea. — Should we disdain our vines because they sprout Before their time ? or young men if they strain Beyond their reach? No, vines that bloom and spread Do promise fruits, and young men that are wild In age grow wise. Some of Ida's lines, though probably written earlier and in a less inspired mood, might form part of a speech of the Countess ; for instance : O, how he talks, as if he should not die ! As if that God in justice once could wink Upon that fault I am ashamed to think ! Some of her dialogue with Eustace, again, may compare with the rhymed lines at the end of the first Act of Edward III : Ida. — Good sir, look on : how like you this compact ? Eust. — Methinks in this I see true love in act : The woodbines with their leaves do sweetly spread ; The roses blushing prank them in their red ; No flower but boasts the beauties of the spring ; This bird hath life indeed, if it could sing. And parts of her dialogue with her mother (II, i) would have passed very well with the rest of the rhymed dialogue, had they been found there : Might you have wealth and fortune's richest store ? Ida. — Yet would I, might I choose, be honest-poor ; For she that sits at fortune's feet a-low Is sure she shall not taste a further woe, But those that prank on top of Fortune's ball Still fear a change, and, fearing, catch a fall Madam, by right this world I may compare Unto my work, wherein with heedful care The heavenly workman plants with curious hand, As I with needle draw each thing on land," Even as he list ; some men, like to the rose ' The lines of this couplet, I think, have been transposed. 170 Greene's unsigned work Are fashion'd fresh ; some in their stalks so close, And, born, do sudden die ; some are but weeds, And yet from them a secret good proceeds ; I with my needle, if I please, may blot The fairest rose within my cambric plot ; God with a beck can change each worldly thing. The poor to rich, the beggar to the king. What then hath man wherein he well may boast. Since by a beck he lives, a lour is lost ? If it be still impossible, after reading such work of Greene's later years, to be sure that the second Act of Ed-ward III is not the young Shakespeare's, it is at least permissible to say that, if it be, Shake- speare was learning to speak with Greene's voice, cadence, and thought. Apart from this issue, it has been truly said, by the writer who first did critical justice to the lesser dramatist's faculty, that "In style Greene is father of Shakespeare."' On the other hand, there are inferiorities even in the second Act of Edward III which distinctly recall Greene, and do not at all suggest Shakespeare. Let us take, for instance in Edward III, one of two groups of repetitive lines, and compare it with a group in the early Locrine. The first runs : And let me have her liken'd to the sun ; Say, she hath thrice more splendour than the sun. That her perfection emulates the sun, , That she breeds sweets as plenteous as the sun, That she doth thaw cold winter like the sun. That she doth cheer fresh summer like the sun, That she doth dazzle gazers like the sun, And, in this application to the sun, Bid her be free and general as the sun. ' Professor J. M. Brown, art. " An Early Rival of Shakespeare " in the New Zealand Magazine, No. 6, April, 1877, p. loi, quoted by Grosart, as cited. Greene's unsigned work 171 That in Locrine (V, ii) is as follows : For Locrine hath forsaken Guendolen ; Behold the heavens do wail for Guendolen, The shining sun doth blush for Guendolen, The liquid air doth weep for Guendolen, The very ground doth groan for Guendolen, Ay, they are milder than the Britain king. For he rejecteth luckless Guendolen. Effects of this kind Shakespeare reserves for a humorous situation in comedy, where they had their contemporary effect from their amusing contrast with heroics in the same mould ; never once does he employ them in a quite serious scene. They belong to the school of his predecessors ; and the presumption here once more is that in Edward III, Act II, we are reading Greene. As for the parallels in the Sonnets, they must on this view be regarded as real echoes by the young Shakespeare of lines current on the stage ; and as we find in Greene's prose the phrase " let lilies wither on the stalk fair but unsavoury" {Tully's Love: Works, vii, 165), there is no difficulty about assigning the line on lilies and weeds to him. § 6. As the case stands, we are entitled, I think, to say that the evidence for Greene is overwhelming as regards the portions of the play pronounced non-Shakespearean by Mr. Fleay ; and with regard to the rest at least as strong as that for Shakespeare ; and'that, on any view, it is idle to argue that any part of Titus is above Greene's scope when he is seen to vie with Shakespeare at far higher levels. Greene, be it remembered, has left the field of history altogether in James IV, giving that king an imaginary queen and father-in-law. He has in fact simply transferred to Scottish ground the plot 172 Greene's unsigned work of a novel of Cinthio,' patriotically changing a good Scottish king into an English one, and making a bad Irish king into a Scottish. This is thoroughly in the spirit of the author of the love- episode in Edward III, which, as Mr. Fleay notes, is " not taken from the chronicles of Holinshed but from Painter's Palace of Pleasure." For the rest, we find in Edward III the word "anchorage," which we have already seen to be used by Peele ; and it occurs in a scene that is partly in his manner (III, i, 22). But only doubtfully, and in a few scenes, can he be traced ; and the pre- sumption is that as it stands the play represents a late recasting by Greene of one of his own to which Peele had slightly contributed. As in Titus, there remains some ground for surmising the presence of Kyd ; but here also the problem is very obscure, and the few traces of the vocabulary of the Tragedy and of Cornelia — signiory, passport (thrice), martialists, forged, map (of infamy), and misconster — being all likewise words of Greene's, rather revive the question as to whether Greene did not have a hand in the Tragedy. Unless a case can be made out for Lodge, it is to Greene, writing at different periods, that we are led to assign the bulk of Edward III, if we do not give the love-episode to Shakespeare. If that episode be Greene's, it is on the whole the best thing he did ; and when we come to metrical tests we shall see that its versification marks it as belonging to his last years. § 7. The problem of Greene's connection with ' Dec. Ill, Nov. i. See art. by P. A. Daniel in Athenceum, Oct. 8, 1881, cited in Grosart's Introd. to Greene's Works, p. xli. Greene's unsigned work 173 Kyd arises again over the resemblance between two lines in the scene of the Tragedy before quoted (II, vi): On whom I doted more than all the world Because she loved me more than all the world, and these two lines in Titus (I, i, 71-72) : I care not, I, knew she and all the world, I love Lavinia more than all the world. A little earlier in the Tragedy (II, v, 99) occurs the line : Sweet lovely rose, ill-pluck'd before thy time, which is found also in Soliman and Perseda; and again we have the parallel between two lines in Greene's y"«7wej IV QM, v) : And Aristotle holdeth this for true Of evils needs [that] we must choose the least, and one in Soliman (IV, i, 237) : In two extremes the least is to be chosen. Here also there can be no solution without further evidence ; but when we note that alike as to versi- fication, vocabulary, and phrases, the scene-section quoted froih in Titus suggests Greene, the first presumption is in favour of his having written the parallel lines in the Tragedy. In this scene occur (i) the Greene-tag: "She is a woman," etc.; (2) the Greeneish line "Full well I wot," etc., and another beginning " Full well"; (3) the accentua- tion " maintain," found in his George-a-Greene ; (4) the adjective "cleanly " found in his Alphonsus King of Arragon; (5) two proverbs much in his taste, one of which we have found twice in his prose ; (6) the word " braves, " common to him and Peele ; and (7) the words " youngling," " reproach- ful," and " broach'd," which are in the same case. 174 Greene's unsigned work § 8. To Greene also I am inclined to ascribe, as aforesaid, the Titus phrase "vain suppose," which is found twice in the first part of the Troublesome Raigne of King John, but nowhere in Shakespeare ; who, indeed, uses the noun " suppose " only once, in Troilus and Cressida. The two scenes in the Raigne (Hazlitt, Sh. Lib. Pt. II, vol. i, pp. 240, 277) are certainly not in Peele's style. The first includes the words "youngling" and "Icarus," the latter a common term of Greene's, ascribable to him, on other grounds, in / Henry VI, which has his verbs "to acquittance " and "to patronage"; the second has the transitive verb "fear "= frighten, common to him and Peele ; and in the first we have another echo of one of his tags : Confusion catch the brain That hammers shifts to stop a prince's reign. To him, again, seems assignable in Titus the word "faint-hearted," which occurs several times in Locrine in the form "faint-heart," and in the same form in the First Part of the Contention, last scene, where also we find "buckle with," which occurs in his Alphonsus (IV. Dyce, p. 242). And to him, finally, though there is no means of deciding, there is some reason to assign "blood-drinking," which is in the taste of " blood-sucking " in Locrine, and "blood-sucker" in the Raigne. It occurs, however, in / Henry VI, in the roses scene, which is more likely to be Marlowe's than Greene's' ; as well as in 2 Henry VI, where the line Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs cannot be Shakespeare's, and could be written by Greene only when at the end of his inspiration. ' See below, ch. ix. GREENE'S UNSIGNED WORK 1 75 Many more clues, doubtless, remain to be noted ; but enough has been done to show that Greene's vocabulary enters into Titus further than appears from his signed work, which in itself, however, supplies a good prima facie case as to vocabulary, and a strong one as to phraseology. And before we proceed to other tests it will be necessary to examine the possible claims for Lodge, which in some instances have to be weighed against Greene's. Chapter VIII. LODGE'S UNSIGNED WORK Seeing that Lodge in 1589 professed to renounce the stage, though such a declaration is not to be taken as proof of his having done so,' we are at least not led to look for any such quantity of unsigned work by him as may be inferred in the cases of Peele and Greene. But there is no ante- cedent presumption against his collaborating with Greene in other plays as he did in the Looking- Glass for London, or with other men after Greene's death ; and Mr. Fleay's ascriptions to him of shares in Leir, the Troublesome Raigne, and (more doubtfully) the ' Larum for London and the Warning for Fair Women, deserve to be carefully weighed in connection with Titus and Edward III. As we have seen, Leir has seven of the non- Shakespearean words in Titus, and nearly all of them point to Peele ; but it also has two phrases noted by Mr. Fleay as occurring in the Wounds of Civil War: "cooling card" and "razor of Palermo " ; as well as some we have seen to be probably Greene's. But " cooling card " also occurs in / Henry VI (V, iii, 83), in a scene which the tag " She is a woman," etc., invites us to ascribe to Greene ; and in any case such a phrase as " cooling card " might be common slang to the ' Fleay, Biog. Chron. ii, 45. 176 lodge's unsigned work 177 two men, who would both find it in Lyly ("A Cooling Card for Philautus" in Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit; and in Euphvss and his England, Arber's ed., pp. 106, 312). In point of fact, it occurs in Greene's prose work at least six times (see Grosart's Index). In the cited scene in / Henry VI, again, we have " gorgeous beauty," which points to Greene, who uses "gorgeous" constantly, and applies it at least ten times to the beauty of women (Card of Fancy, Mamillia, Tulles Love, Orpharion, and the Tritameron of Love — Works ii, 188 ; iii, 190 ; iv, 84 ; vii, 106, 144 ; xii, 29 ; see also Menaphon, ed. Arber, p. 31 ; Alphonsus, III, ed. Dyce, p. 236 ; poems from Never too Late, pp. 297, 301 ; and Friar Bacon, I, i). Yet again we have " captivate," which is one of his common words. Here, then, the claim for Lodge is indecisive : we are still left surmising the presence of Greene ; and in any case we have had no fresh light on Titus. In the ^Larum for London, however, we find some notable clues. It has three of the non-Shakespearean words in Titus : crevice, blowse, and guileful ; the first two not yet traced elsewhere ; the third occurring twice in one of Greene's poems. Further it has "map of sad destruction"; "successful"; " foreslow " ; and several words and phrases found in Edward III, as " swilling epicures " (twice in the 'Larum : applied in both cases to the Dutch, as in Edward III), " plate "= silver, and "passport." The play was entered for publication in 1600, and is otherwise undatable ; but the siege of Antwerp, with which it deals, was in 1576 ; and as there are only some 100 double-endings to the whole play, N 178 lodge's unsigned work as against some 2 10 in Leir — a much longer play, however — it may have been written, so far as that test goes, before 1593.' Plate, passport, and Epicure, too, are words used by Greene in his prose. Unless, then, Greene can be excluded by other tests, there is still open the solution that he wrote the 'Lamm, perhaps in collaboration with Lodge, as he did the Looking-Glass, though the former is by far the more sanely constructed piece, and is clearly the later. One item, however, points pretty clearly to another hand. In the 'Larum (Simpson's ed., P- 53) we find once more the "sickle in the corn " tag, artificially expanded : A thousand sickles thrust into a field Of summer-ripened and resistless corn. Here, again, the style is unlike Greene's ; and the passages in which occur " blowse " and " crevice " are also unlike Greene's manner. Now, those words in Titus both occur in speeches of Aaron in the fifth Act ; and there is a resemblance in the lines : I pry'd me through the crevice of a wall (Titus) ; They'll hide them in the crevice of their walls ('Za/w»»). Further, the line in Titus nearly duplicates one in the additions to the Spanish Tragedy (III, sc. xii a), not printed till 1602 : I pry through every crevice of each wall. Such a line, of course, might be an echo by the writer from a play he had seen or read ; but if the ' See next chapter as to the g-eneral evolution of the double- ending. LODGE S UNSIGNED WORK 1 79 additions to the Tragedy published in 1602 were all Ben Jonson's, as is commonly supposed,' the diffi- culty of that solution is great. From the revised edition of Henslowe's Diary we know that the Tragedy was produced in 1597 as " new " — that is, as freshened-up ; and the scene-section in question may have been inserted then or earlier. It may then have been the work of Lodge ; or it may have been the work of another, say Marston, to whom Mr. Simpson confidently attributed the 'Larum for London, and whose style is not unlike that of some of the additional scenes in the Tragedy, But while Lodge might have made an addition to Titus in 1593 or 1594. Marston could hardly have done so, having taken his B.A. degree only in the former year. On the other hand, Marston was likely enough to echo a current play ; as he imitates Shakespeare in style no less than Lodge does Greene in phrase. Unless, however, the ^Larum can decisively be shown to have been written after Marlowe's death, I should be strongly disposed to assign it in the main to him, so often does it suggest his rhythm and style. And if it be demonstrably later, I should much more readily assign it to Marston, on the score ot style, than to Lodge. In any case, there is thus seen to be a certain arguable ground for Charles Lamb's suggestion that the author of the additions to the Tragedy had a hand in Titus ; though beyond suggesting Lodge we are hardly warranted in going. As regards the Warning for Fair Women, which • Mr. Fleay is satisfied that they are not (Biog. Chron. ii, 30). i8o lodge's unsigned work may very well be a late work of Lodge's, there is little to be said in connection with Titus. It has Lodge's much-reiterated "hammer in the head" (Act I, end ; Simpson's School, II, p. 269), also "complot," " 'ticing," "Cimmerian," and "unrest" — words and phrases already accounted for through Greene and Peele. In the second Act (p. 303) occurs the odd phrasing : Thus lawless actions and prodigious crimes Drink not alone the blood of them they hate ; which again recalls Greene ; and on the same page we note " immanity " = inhumanity, a word found in I Henry VI (V, i, 13), in a scene more in the style of Lodge or of Kyd than in that of either Greene or Peele. Mucedorus, again — a worse piece than even the Looking-Glass — gives us no clues to Titus ; and if Lodge had a hand in the first as in the second, which yields us so little, the circumstance tells against the hypothesis of his collaboration in Titus. There are, however, one or two clues which do, so far as they count, point to him ; and they have now to be noted, (i) In our lists of TzVwj-words there has not been included " closure," which occurs in Richard III axidi (in the phrase "closure of my breast ") in Venus and one of the sonnets. But, as it happens, the word is used in Titus with a quite different force, in the line (V, iii, 134) : And make a mutual closure of our house. In Richard III it has the customary force of "enclosure." But by Lodge, and by him only among the playwrights, so far as I remember, the word is used as in Titus — " closure of the evening " {Forbonius and Prisceria, p. 64 of rep. in Dr. lodge's unsigned work i8i Gosse's ed. of Works, vol. i). (2) In Lodge's Wounds of Civil War, again, occurs the line : Content to live, yet living still to die, which comes as close as the parallel before cited (p. 1 16) from Marlowe to the Tiius-WnQ : Where life hath no more interest but to breathe. 3. The Titus-\me, (IV, iv, 82), Is the sun dimmed that gnats do fly at it ? is slightly echoed in Lodge's phrase (equally pro- verbial), "A moth (=mote) is soonest spied in the sun " {Euphiies' Shadow, rep. p. 15 : Works, vol. ii). Further resemblances I have not noted ; and these — with the clues from " crevice " and " blowse " — are just sufficient to set up a tantalising sugges- tion, which cannot carry us beyond surmise, though enough to induce us to admit Lodge's possible inter- vention in Titus, but rather in the Aaron scenes of the fifth Act than in the " hammering " passage to which the most frequently reiterated phrase in the Wounds would prima facie point. Apart from Titus, it remains to note some further verbal clues which, pro tanto, support Mr. Fleay's suggestion that Lodge may have had a hand in Edward III. 1. Lodge has in his prose {Reply to Gossan's School of Abuse, p. 35 of rep. in Gosse's ed. of Works, vol. i) the tag about the bee gathering honey and the spider poison. 2. He more than once uses the word "solitari- ness " {Forbonius and Prisceria, as cited, p. 67 ; Life of Robert of Normandy, p. 8 of rep. in Works, vol. ii). It should be added that he too has a number of 1 82 lodge's unsigned work descriptions of female beauty {e.g., poem in Forbonius and Prisceria, pp. 70-76 ; and the last poem in the Scillaes Metamorphosis collection), somewhat in the manner of that above ascribed to Greene in Soliman and Perseda. If there is any- thing certain about Lodge's work, however, it is that he imitates alike Greene and Lyly — their common model. A word or mode occurring in all three, then, bears no inference. In conclusion, note should be taken of Mr. Fleay's important suggestion that The Taming of the Shrew is substantially by Lodge — a re-writing of the old Taming of a Shrew — and that Shake- speare wrote in it only the Katherine-and-Petruchio scenes. That Shakespeare did not write the bulk of the play we may be sure ; the only difficulty is to find his hand anywhere in it. That it is Lodge's is a solution to which I can see no serious objec- tion, though I incline to surmise an intermediate recast between the two plays, mainly done by Greene. If the original A Shrew be Kyd's, as Mr. Fleay holds — and its over-elaborated plot points to him more clearly than to anyone else — it is still, I think, revised by Greene even as it stands ; and The Shrew has several further traces of his vocabulary: notably (i) three instances in one scene (I, i) of "achieve" with the special force noted in his prose by Dr. Grosart ; (2-4) the non- Shakespearean words "meacock," "youngling," and " braves," all common with him ; (5) " lovely " = loving (III, ii, 125), found in James IV (I, i, 13) and in JLeir (Hazlitt, p. 327) ; (6) his frequent " bonny " — taken over from the first play ; (7) his " buckler thee "; (8) his " for to "—the three last all lodge's unsigned work 183 in one scene-section (III, ii, 229, 241, 249) ; (9) his frequent "cony-catching"; (10) his "affied"; (11) the line "Such war of white and red within her cheeks " (IV, v, 50) — an echo of a dozen pas- sages in his works ; and much of the diction — notably that of Petruchio's speech in IV, iii, 171- 190. But all this does not decisively exclude the imitative Lodge, who also uses "for to,"' and often copies Greene's pet words and phrases ;' and a good deal of the versification fails to suggest Greene. With regard therefore to the one or two clues which this play affords to Titus, it seems to be an open question whether they hint of Greene or of Lodge. In Kate's speech, IV, v, 45-49, occur the phrases " mistaking eyes " and " mad mistaking." If this speech be, as Mr. Fleay holds, by Shakespeare, the poet was echoing the phrase "miserable, mad, mistaking eyes" from Titus (V, ii, 66). If it be not Shakespeare's, we seem shut up to the inference that it was either Greene's or Lodge's — I should surmise, Greene's. But if, as Mr. Fleay contends, the play in its present form cannot be dated before 1594, then there remains room for the presumption that the passage is Lodge's ; and it is his hand that we must surmise in the passage in Titus. And there is still another problem in our special inquiry which turns in the same way on the author- ' Saladyne's Sonnet, in Rosalynde, ' E.g., "A chaos of confused passions," "map of his age,"' "map of his meaning" (=the face), "sweet content," "labyrinth of love," "lukewarm tears," "bonny" — all in Rosalynde (Hazlitt's Sh. Lib. Pt. I, vol. ii, pp. 13, 19, 30, 47, 53, 62, 133, 134). The ordinary current coin of Euphuism he uses with untiring repeti- tion : " map " and " labyrinth " recur again and again. 184 lodge's unsigned work ship of The Shrew. There only, in the Shake- spearean concordance, occurs the word " coffin " (" custard-coffin " — IV, iii, 82) in the culinary sense in which it is used in Titus. Now " coffin " and " mad mistaking eyes " occur in Titus in one and the same scene, and in The Shrew in the same Act. The first word serves so merely accidental a purpose that no stress could be laid on it singly ; but the occurrence of both words in these two plays, with so many others which point to Greene but leave Lodge unexcluded, emphasises strongly for us the possibility that the latter had a hand in Titus as Mr. Fleay thinks he must have had in The Shrew. If Mr. Fleay be right as to the Katherine-and- Petruchio scenes, both clues lead to Shakespeare, but without making a whit more acceptable the theory that he wrote Titus. But if Lodge be the main author, he may have written the scenes in question as well as the rest. Of course, those who insist on regarding The Shrew as Shakespeare's because it is included in the folio will refuse to recognise the existence of the problem here considered. It must suffice to say (i) that, wholly apart from the issue as to Titus, it has been pronounced non-Shakespearean (save for scenes or passages) by a long series of critics ; (2) that " external " evidence is here lack- ing, since Meres makes no mention of the play, though, if the writing be Shakespeare's, it must be dated long before 1598 ; and (3) that here as in Titus the pedantic Latin tags, to say nothing of the style, plot, and versification, tell loudly of another hand than his. Chapter IX. THE TESTS OF METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION The presumption thus far established is that Peele, to whom we have found in Titus by far the larger number of clues both of vocabulary and phrase, wrote the bulk of the play ; that Greene, to whom there are fewer but still many clues of the same kind, collaborated with him or revised his work ; that Marlowe, in whose case the verbal clues are fewer and clues of phrase lacking, may have had some small share in the piece ; that Lodge may have had as much or more ; and that Kyd, whose work is the hardest to identify, seeing that his only signed work is a translation, is also indicated in a small measure by the same tests. To reach any more precise assignment we must now apply the tests of (a) metre, (d) versification, (c) diction and mannerism, and (d) plot and action. §1- By the first of these tests, it is seen to be once for all aesthetically impossible that Titus as it stands can be one of the early works of Shakespeare. Every close student of the Elizabethan drama has noted in it a certain technical progression in the matter of double-endings. Retrospectively, the evolution can be seen to have been inevitable ; but i8s l86 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION the Steps are none the less interesting. The original model of English blank verse, as cast by Surrey, Sackville, and Norton, is a simple copy of the normal rhymed line, each verse being a clause, as was in general necessary to secure the effect of the rhyme. The primary result is a rhythmic monotony as great as that of rhyme, without the charm of consonance. It was doubtless by way of a compensating relief that Sackville and Norton, in Ferrex and Porrex (1562), reverted so freely to the early English device of alliteration, in which they were followed by the popular playwrights of the next age. Even in their drama there are occasional double endings : And that most cruel hand the wretched weapon (IV, ii). No, no : then parliament should have been holden (V, ii). With fire and sword thy native folk shall perish (V, ii). But these accidents are not improved upon ; and when Marlowe came on the scene the double- ending had still only an accidental footing. The early date of The Spanish Tragedy and Locrine, for instance, might almost be established from their paucity of double endings, were external and other internal evidence lacking. In the former there are not in all twenty lines which can be read as having the feminine ending ; and of these three may be alexandrines ; four end with "heaven," which may at choice be taken as a monosyllable ; one ends with "spirit," which is frequently so scanned ; and two more, ending with "thickest" and "fairest," coming together, suggest a wish to rhyme. Thus METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 1 87 there are not ten certain instances. In Locrine there are only seven. Accordingly, the authors of these plays, which are otherwise dated on external grounds 1585-6 and 1586 respectively, are apparently entitled to the distinction so often awarded to Marlowe, of having written the first blank-verse drama for the popular stage.' Nor is it warrantable to say, as do so many critics, that the credit of creating blank verse as an effective dramatic instrument belongs solely to Marlowe.^ As regards mere verse movement, poetry apart, Marlowe in his plays makes no new departure save the freer use of the double ending, and this he does not so develop as to effect any vital improvement in rhythm. His greatest advance in rhythm is made in his posthumous translation of the first book of Lucan : in his dramas his verse remains structurally akin to that of the Tragedy and Locrine, greatly surpassing them indeed by its bounding energy and continuity of flow, but still remaining in the main a succession of end-stopped lines. At times he makes a line run on ; but so does the Tragedy ; and so does Ferrex and Porrex. In the last-named play, for instance, we have the following lines (IV, ii) : But what of these we will resolve to do Shall yet remain unknown. Thou in the mean Shalt from our royal presence banished be ' So J. A. Symonds, Blank Verse, 1895, pp. 20-21 ; Professor Boas, Shakespeare and his Predecessors, p. 38 ; T. Seccombe and J. W. Allen, The Age of Shakespeare, 1903, ii, 33. ' So Mr. A. W. Verity, The Influence of Christopher Marlowe on Shakespeare's Earlier Style, i886, p. 92 ; and Mr. A. H. Bullen, who writes : " The rest of Shakespeare's predecessors are shadows ; Marlowe alone lives." Introd. to ed. of Marlowe, 1885, vol. i, pp. ix-x. l88 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION Until our princely pleasure further shall To thee be showed. Depart, therefore, our sight, Accursed child — where there emerges not only the run-on line but the varied pause. In this case the impelling force would almost seem to be the poet's indigence. Kyd, who certainly did not lack fluency, rarely carries his clause beyond his line ; and when he does it is without any change in the rhythm, as : To knit a sure inextricable band Of kingly love and everlasting league (III, xii, 44-45). There is a much more marked advance towards variety of pause in Thomas Hughes's Misfortunes of Arthur (1587), where we have such lines as these : All Britain rings of wars ; no town nor field But swarms with armed troops ; the mustering trains Stop up the streets ; no less a tumult's raised Than when Hengistus fell, and Horsa fierce. With treacherous truce did overrun the realm. Each corner threateneth death : both far and near Is Arthur vexed. Marlowe in his dramas does not get so far, his dramatic advance after Tamburlaine consisting mainly in intension of phrase, as in Edward II: The haughty Dane commands the narrow seas. While in the harbour ride thy ships unrigged Libels are cast against thee in the street. Ballads and rhymes made of thy overthrow When wert thou in the field with banners spread ? But once ; and then thy soldiers marched like players, With garish robes, not armour : and thyself. Bedaubed with gold, rode laughing at the rest [? head]. Nodding and shaking of thy spangled crest Where women's favours hung like labels down. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 1 89 His occasional run-on lines are but chance expe- dients, not improved upon, as : Stir not, Zenocrate, until thou see Me march victoriously with all my men (i Tamb., Ill, iii). It is in his translation of the first book of Lucan that he first developes variety of pause, besides resorting freely to the double ending. Apart then from his undoubted poetic superiority, and his substitution of natural action, whether epic or dramatic, for the conventional plots of his prede- cessors, he is not entitled to the praise above cited. His advance is, broadly speaking, as that of a swift runner over pedestrians. The effect is memorable ; but he is still far from creating the true or final dramatic blank verse ; though we see him within his five crowded years making a marked approach to it. It is Greene who, although never making a free use of the varied pause, comes nearest to the new movement we find consummated in Shakespeare. Only in some of the most vivid passages in Edward II does Marlowe reach the rapid vibration that we find repeatedly in Greene's James IV ; and it is from Greene that Shakespeare takes, as it were, his flight into the higher air in his best comedies, where he first developes the potentialities of the medium. Marlowe's contribution, with all its energy of phrase and poetic splendour, is only a stage in the evolution : in him the old pedestrian movement, with its occasional rapidities, has be- come that of the bounding runner : in Shakespeare, following and transcending Greene, there is a vital transmutation : the movement has become igo METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION winged. Thenceforth there is no advance. He alone — with his occasionally successful imitator Marston — so manages the double-ending and the varied pause as to set up a continous flow of living rhythm. Jonson, who used the double-ending freely from the first, never attained to fluidity for long together. Fletcher and Massinger, starting from the faulty model of Jonson despite of Beau- mont, who so visibly prefers that of Shakespeare,' by mere unbroken recurrence of double-endings reduce their verse chronically to a worse because a more marked monotony than that of the school before Marlowe. Milton instinctively rejects their manner, and, having little need of the double ending for his epic purpose, finds his triumph in long-drawn variation of pause and flow. Marlowe's principal contribution, then, is the definite introduction of the double-ending. In the 700 lines of his translation of Lucan Mr. Fleay has counted 109, or over 15 per cent ; in the Jew of Malta, 70, or 3.5 per cent.° But even in the First Part of Tamburlaine I have counted sixty in the 2,277 lines, or 2.64 per cent. The innovation, once made, was irresistible. Peele and Greene at their outset seem to make the double-ending only by accident, or — in Greene's case — by way of accom- modating a recurrent proper name ; and Lodge does as much at the outset of The Wounds of Civil War. It has been suggested by Collier^ that he ' See a very good criticism of the rhythms of Beaumont and Fletcher in the old introduction by George Darley, a critic of uncommon delicacy for his time ; and compare Mr. Fleay's Manual as to the division of their work. ° Reckoning 1,978 lines of blank verse. 3 Hist, of Eng. Dram. Poetry, ed. 1879, iii, 39-40. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION IQI seems anxious to shun the trochaic ending, actually curtailing such words as "resistance" and " repen- tance " to avoid the effect : And will you fly these shadows of resist Their valour, Tuditanus, and resist A wrathful man not wasted with repent But such formations of nouns from the infinitive of a verb are common in the verse of the time ; "repent," for instance, being frequently so used by Greene even in his prose ; as are " suspect " and other forms by Peele in his verse. And as Lodge has the noun " resist " in his prose {The Divell Conjured, ist par.), as well as " impeach " for impeachment. Collier's inference falls to the ground. In point of fact, though Lodge goes so far as to write : What means this peasant by his great rejoice' ? he has some dozen double-endings such as : But I have haste, and therefore will reward you, and some dozen more in lines ending with proper names. The just inference seems to be that he was ijot wilfully resisting the double-ending, but was writing in the 'eighties, before it had been fully adopted by Greene, Kyd, and Peele. Any such positive reluctance on Lodge's part would be the more remarkable seeing that in his rhymed verse he has freely and even exuberantly used the double- ending, which was obtruded on the English poets of his day by the verse-models alike of Italy, Spain, and France, and had been much employed by Sidney, who even resorts to rhymed treble-endings. Lodge's rhymed poem Scillaes Metamorphosis, or • This noun also occurs in his rhymed verse — Eclogue in Rosa- lynde, as cited, p. 46. 192 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION the History of Glaucus and Silla (1589), has scores of double-endings ; in the sonnets which compose his Phillis (1593) there are many; An Ode has nothing else ; The Complaint of Elster has a number ; and they recur in A Fig for Momus (1595)- Peele and Greene, in turn, avail themselves gradually of the new facilities opened up to them by Marlowe. Peele, we know, preceded Marlowe in his use of blank verse ; while Greene, even after employing it, protested against its encroachments. But though Peele was the readier to acknowledge Marlowe's greatness, Greene also soon learned to imitate him ; and as regards the double-ending Peele and he developed concurrently. Peele in the first act of his David and Bethsabe has nearly 7 per cent of double-endings to blank-verse lines ; and in the first act of his Battle of Alcazar nearly 6 per cent. In Alphonsiis Emperor of Germany, as we saw, the proportion has greatly risen. Greene latterly developed more rapidly in this as in other directions. If George-a-Greene be his last play, as it is held to be by Storojenko and Grosart, it can hardly be his last piece of dramatic work." Having many corrupt lines, it is difiicult to count ; but I make out 74 double-endings to 1029 blank-verse lines, or over 7 per cent. If, however, the second Act of Edward III be his, as above suggested, we must put that later still, for it has 69 double-endings in 658 blank-verse lines, or over 10^ per cent, as against only 5 per cent in the ' It is not unlikely that this is the comedy to which Greene refers in his Groatsworth of Wit as having' been latterly written by him in conjunction with " young- Juvenal " that is, Nash. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION I93 first Act, less than 2 per cent in the third, 7 per cent in the fourth, and only i per cent in the fifth. The second Act, therefore, if Greene's, repre- sents either a revision by him at high-pressure or — what seems not unlikely — an entirely new section in a play mainly his which formerly had no such episode. And even this, it may be, is not the furthest development of Greene as regards mere double- endings, though it must be reckoned his high-water mark as to style and dramatic power. One of the problems of Shakespeare-study which cannot be solved without resort to metrical tests is that of the authorship of the First Part of Henry VI. Critics who assign nothing else of that to Shakespeare (as Mr. Fleay), ascribe to him the Talbot scenes and that of the rose-plucking in the Temple Garden (II, iv). For our present purpose we may restrict ourselves to the latter. It has no fewer than 34 double-endings to 130 lines of blank verse; or over 26 per cent. If then it be Shakespeare's, it must be placed, metrically, in his third period — the period of Hamlet and Othello — for only then does he reach any such percentage of double-endings in his unchallengeable work. On the other hand, the verse is rhythmically quite inferior even to that of his second period, being wholly end-stopped, unvaried, and wanting in concision. Let it be compared with, say, the speech of Young Clifford in the scene of 2 Henry VI (V, ii), in which he finds his father's body — a scene in which the young Shakespeare, though but revising other men's work, is already mastering his great instrument — and it will be realised that the roses scene cannot be from his hand. The Clifford speech has only 194 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 3 double-endings in 30 lines ; but it has a variety of pause and rhythm of which the roses scene has no trace, and even the second Act of Edward III only a trace. There rises again the question of Greene's possible presence. Here, however, thereare contrary considerations. The rhythmic movement, though not of Marlowe's best, is much more like Marlowe than Greene ; and the only word-clue pointing to the latter is " blood-drinking," which he may have taken from Marlowe as he did other resonant terms. On the whole, it is much more likely that Marlowe, who virtually introduced the double-ending, should first have reached so free a use of it, than that Greene should in this one scene have reached so high a percentage. The first hundred lines of Marlowe's translation of Lucan's first book yield 24 double-endings — nearly the pro- portion found here ; and nowhere in any confi- dently assignable work of Greene's have we nearly so high a proportion. What is clear is that the scene is late. It may indeed have been this parti- cular addition that constituted the play " new " for Henslowe on March 3rd, 1592. But if it be not Marlowe's, it is to Lodge rather than to Greene that we are pointed by the style, in our search for the author. A similar progression as to technique was made by Greene's other contemporaries. Kyd, who in the Spanish Tragedy has so few double-endings about 1586, is found using them freely in his trans- lation of Garnier's Comelte, published in 1594.' " The SoUman and Perseda, which he may have drafted, equally shows the progression ; but, as above noted, it is very doubtful whether it be more than partly his. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION IQS The last Act, which is wholly in blank verse, has 490 lines, with 57 double-endings, or nearly 12 per cent. Lodge, again, if he be the author of A 'Larum for London and A Warning for Fair Women, clearly did not remain opposed to the innovation ; for the first Act of the latter play has 65 double- endings to 558 lines of blank verse, or over 12 per cent ; and the former has about 15 per cent. In the case of these plays we are in the dark as to dates ; but at least each of the other likely collabo- rators in Titus had before or about 1594 approxi- mated to the practice seen in the later portions of it in the matter of verse-endings, while Shake- speare had not.' It remains to examine from the side of the metrical test the old assumption that Shakespeare wrote whole plays, whether or not Titus, before 1593' The zealous students who more than a generation ago did so much to determine the sequence of the plays were withheld by that pre- supposition from reaching a coherent chronology, and left on the very face of the case a series of unsolved anomalies. Dr. Furnival, for instance, printed in parallel columns'" a passage from the Comedy of Errors and one from Henry VIII to show, among other things, that the early Shake- speare had next to no double-endings, while the late Shakespeare had many. But while the first scene of the Comedy has only three double-endings ' Professor Schroer's industrious handling of the question in his Ueber Titus Andronicus seems to me to miss final relevance through his not facing the fact of the evolution all round. In any case his argument, being directed against Mr. Fleay's statement of the Marlowe hypothesis, does not obstruct mine. ' Introd. to the " Leopold " Shakespeare, pp. xix, xx. igS METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION to 152 lines of blank verse, or 2 per cent, the second scene has 21 to 103 lines of blank verse, or over 20 per cent. The difficulty is not merely left unsolved, it is not even recognised. Equally ignored is the problem set up by the fact that in the T-voo Gentlemen of Verona, commonly dated about 1589, we have a high proportion of double-endings — in one scene 18 per cent ; in another 20 — while in the verse part of the first scene of Romeo and yw/^e^ (usually dated 1591) there is only one double- ending to over 100 lines of blank verse ; and not one in Juliet's " Gallop apace " soliloquy of 33 lines, or in Mercutio's " Queen Mab " speech of 42. And in the brilliant Manual of Mr. Fleay, which went so far towards establishing scientific principles in Shakespeare criticism, the same pre-supposition led to the positing of a number of dates which that acute critic has since seen to be untenable," but which still pass current. Thus he agreed with Malone in bracketing the Midsummer Nighfs Dream and the Comedy of Errors as being written in 1592, though he counted in the former play only 59 double-endings,^ and in the second 178.3 He was consistent in so far as he put Love's labour's Lost, • In his paper on " Metrical Tests " in Dr. Ingleby's Shake- speare : the Man and the Book (Pt. II, pp. 62-63) '^'■- Fleay rejected as fallacious the notion that percentage of double-endings progresses with the time order of production, though he affirms such a progression in percentages of blank to rhyme. Other metrical characteristics he then held to be " for the most part suddenly adopted or resigned." I surmise, however, that this view was dependent on the acceptance of former chronology, and falls with that. If not, I must venture to demur to it. ' Revised metrical table appended to paper on " Metrical Tests " in Dr. Ingleby's Shakespeare : the Man and the Book, 1877, Part II. The Manual counts only 29 double-endings in the Dream. 3 In the Manual, the number was put at 137. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 197 with only 26 double-endings,' in 1591 ; but Romeo and Juliet, in which he counted 118 double-endings among 2174 lines of blank verse — 5 per cenf" — he placed in 1596 (describing it, however, as a revision of Peele), four years later than the Comedy, in which his first figures worked out at nearly 12 per cent. Such results force us once more to the inference, either (i) that in the earlier plays Shakespeare was collaborating or adapting, and that in the Comedy the work of another hand or hands predominates ; or (2) that he greatly re-wrote that play in later life — a conclusion not easily to be accepted. The dating of Titus in 1589, again, as is done by Delius and several of the critics before cited, is still more irreconcilable with the metrical phenomena. If we count the double-endings in the play on Professor Schroer's principle of noting alike treble- endings and dissyllables which might or might not be slurred, they amount in all to 203,^ or nearly 9 per cent. : as against 6j^ per cent of double- endings to blank verse lines in Love's Labour's Lost,* and 6 per cent, in A Midsummer Nighfs Dreamt In the fifth act of Titus, further, there are 68 double-endings to 575 blank verse lines, or ' Nine in the Manual. " This percentage is doubled in the revised table. I am unable to find more than some i6o double-endings in Romeo and Juliet. 3 As illustrating the inexactness of the earlier commentators on such points, it may be noted that Steevens spoke of Titus as being non-Shakespearean in that it had neither double endings nor plays upon words. It has an abundance of both. * Mr. Fleay counts 617 blank lines (revised table. The earlier has 579) i Professor Schroer 553. I count 38 double-endings. 5 Mr. Fleay counts 729 blank lines. I count 46 or 48 double- endings (two are doubtful) and 760 blank lines. The differences do not greatly affect the percentages. 1 98 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION nearly 12 per cent. The rhyme test is equally decisive. Titus has only 144 rhymed lines to 2,338 blank ; while the two comedies have respectively 1082 of rhyme (excluding songs) to 579 blank, and 869 rhyme to 878 blank. It has also a much smaller quantity of prose (43 lines) than any other play ascribed to Shakespeare, exceptHichard III and Henry VIII, which have only a little more. In all of these respects Titus closely resembles Peele's David and Bethsabe and the Battle of Alcazar. Romeo and Juliet, the first tragedy in which Shake- speare is certainly known to have a hand, has some 405 lines of prose and 486 of rhyme. By the double-ending test, further, Titus in its present form is seen to be late for any of the three writers to whom we have been led to ascribe it. It not only cannot be an early work of Shakespeare's: it is in parts late for Greene ; late for Kyd ; and comparatively late for Peele. If the first Act of Alphonsus Emperor of Germany were wholly Peele's — which, however, it is not — it would inferribly be his latest play, as it has 69 double-endings to 461 lines of blank verse, or nearly 15 per cent — a higher rate than we find in any signed play of Greene's, or even in the second Act of Edward III. If, further, Ed-ward III be dated 1594, as it is by Mr. Fleay (it was published in 1596 as having been "sundry times played"), it can be brought within the scheme of Shakespeare's metrical evolu- tion only, as we saw, by dating Love's Labour's Lost 1 59 1 and the Midsummer Nighfs Dream 1592, whereas Mr. Fleay now dates them 1593 and 1595. The arrangement, besides, would still break down in regard to King John, in which Mr. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION IQQ Fleay counts only 2 per cent of double-endings ; and also in regard to / Henry IV, in which he finds less than 4 per cent.' The versification of the best part of Edward III, again, is greatly superior to that of King John, which Mr. Fleay dates 1595 (Delius putting it in 1596) ; and its psychology is no less superior to that of Richard III (dated 1594 by Mr. Fleay and also by Delius), of which the opening scene is in some respects the crudest presentment of character in all the plays ascribed to Shakespeare. Inasmuch as it has ten times as many double-endings as King John, the rational inference is that one or other, or both, can be only partially Shakespeare's work — ^the opinion spontaneously formed by many of us as regards much of Richard III, and parts of King John, on the first critical reading. That Marlowe, at different periods, had a hand in both, and that the double- endings in Richard III are largely his, seems highly probable. In fine, Titus Andronicus cannot with any regard to its metrical phenomena be assigned to Shake- speare. Its double-endings, intelligible as coming from Peele, or Greene, or Kyd, are unintelligible as coming from him before 1596; while its other characteristics are inconceivable as coming from him in 1594. If there were any satisfying evidence of other kinds that the play is his work, we might indeed set aside as a strange enigma such a singular deviation from the otherwise recognisable order of his artistic development ; but when all the other internal evidence, and a clear balance of the external, point wholly away from him, the confirmation ' About 6 per cent in the revised table. 200 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION afforded by the metrical test to the negative view is strong indeed. We have now to apply the test of rhythm. To a critical eye, the rhythmical parallel presented by the two pairs of lines : The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey ; The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green (Titus, I, ii, 1-2) ; The day is clear, the welkin bright and grey ; The lark is merry, and records her notes (Old Wives' Tale, 350-1) ; is as real as the parallel in the phrasing of the first line. A blank-verse line, of course, permits of no great number of permutations in rhythm ; but absolute coincidence of rhythm for lines together, when it occurs, reasonably raises question of possible identity of authorship ; and a poet's normal type of rhythm is for all attentive readers as significant of his identity as is his diction. Let us illustrate. Blank verse, apart from pause- variation, admits of certain general differences of flow in respect of tendency to trochaic, spondaic, and iambic beginnings. A few samples will make the point clear : To be or not to be, that is the question. What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba ? Led by a delicate and tender prince. Courage, ye mighty men of Israel. Mourn Bethsabe, bewail thy foolishness. O proud revolt of a presumptuous man. Proud lust, the bloodiest traitor to our souls. The last four lines are from Peele's David and Bethsabe, and they represent his prevailing fashions METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 20I of opening a blank-verse speech. In the first Act of that play he has 109 speeches in blank verse, of which 31 begin with trochees (as "courage"); 32 with iambs (as " To be ") ; and 46 with spondees (as " Proud lust "). This is not at all the bias of the young Shake- speare. I n the first Act of Lovers Labour's Last there are 32 speeches in blank verse, of which 19 begin with iambs ; and in the second Act, of 45 blank verse speeches 24 so begin. Of markedly spondaic beginnings he has hardly any. In the first Act of Titus, again, there are 107 blank verse speeches ; and of these 36 begin with trochees, 34 with spondees, and 37 with iambs — a fairly close approxi- mation to the trochaic and spondaic overplus of David and Bethsabe. We are thus led tentatively to assign to Peele, in Titus (I, ii), the speech beginning : Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds. That, it will be seen, has almost exactly the rhythm of a score of Peele's, such as : Brave sons, the worthy champions of our God in Edward L (sc. i, 48) ; and we find in the latter speech the line : With tears of joy salutes your sweet return, which so closely approaches to a line in the speech in Titus: To resalute his country with his tears ; and yet again, in the Battle (I, i), the lines. All hail, Argard Zareo, and ye Moors, Salute the frontiers of your native home — the same verse-movement, and the same thought. In the same connection, we find thrice in Peele {Battle, I, ii, 20 : David, sc. iii, 87 ; Locrine, V, i) 202 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION the phrase " mourning weeds," which is found twice in Titus, but in no other play ascribed to Shakespeare. Here, the test of mere vocabulary- is controlled by others. The phrase in question is common to Peele, Greene,' and Marlowe ;" but in this case we prove it Peele's by the secondary tests. The Tittts speech further contains the word Styx, found in no Shakespearean play save in a non- Shakespearean scene in Troilus and Cressida, but common in Peele ; another confirmation. This also is repeatedly found in Marlowe and Greene ; but the general test excludes them here also. The previous speech, again, contains the Peelish line: Successful in the battles that he fights ; and seeing that the opening scene has the line : The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, the second clause of which we have seen to be a Peelian formula, and that the whole Act has sub- stantially the same rhythmic movement, we are entitled to ascribe to him the bulk of it. Certainty, of course, we cannot have as to whether he is here a draughtsman or a reconstructor. In parts the versification quickens ; and we have a cut-and- thrust dialogue which is not like him. Thus, after the exit of all but Titus, the re-entry of his brother and sons leads to a supererogatory scene of dispute over the burial of the slain Mutius ; and here not only the mode of the dialogue but some of the clues of vocabulary point to Greene. The words "sumptuously re-edified" are both non- ' See Orlando Furioso, 1. 142 1, ed. Grosart ; and A Maiden's Dream, 304. ' 2 Tamb. I, i, 44. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 2O3 Shakespearean ; " re-edified " being found only in a non-Shakespearean scene in Richard III, and the other word nowhere. As Greene has the phrase " sumptuously entomb'd " in Pandosto, and uses the word repeatedly, and again has "sumptuous tomb " in Alcida (Works, ix, 1 16), and " sumptuous sepulchre " in the Tritameron of Love (iii, 53), there is a presumption that it is his here ; though the speech in which it occurs is in a rhythm that might be Peele's, as is the dialogue in Richard III, where there occurs the term " re-edified " — found, as above noted, in Locrine. Towards the close of the Act, again, we have one or two slight verbal clues to Greene — as, the phrase "vain suppose," the noun "entreats" (twice), and " love-day." They all occur in the closing part of the scene, in which Tamora persuades Saturninus to dissemble — an action hardly likely to have been conceived by the dramatist who had just before made her plead in vain to Titus for the life of her son sacrificed in her presence. Indeed the gross incoherence of the whole scene, morally con- sidered, forces the inference that there has been a reconstruction. Greene's early blank verse, too, approximates so much to Peele's that the lack of marked difference in the rhythm is no argument against his intervention here. As to the remaining parts of the Act, however, save for possible revision, there seems no reason to ascribe them to anyone but Peele, to whom point the clues alike of phrase, vocabulary, and rhythm. Since, too, it includes the unique word "palliament," found in a signed poem of Peele's, we may fairly conclude that even the rare word "accited" is here from his pen. 204 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION though we do not find it elsewhere in his works, but twice in 2 Henry IV. It is further to be noted, however, that in the entire first Act of 495 lines there are only 19 double-endings, or less than 4 per cent. It is thus highly probable that this part of the play is of older date than the fourth and fifth Acts as they now stand, since, although they have much that is in Peek's manner, they contain a far larger propor- tion of double-endings. And some signs of a change of versification appear early in the second Act. The opening speech, which contains the before-noted line : Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach, is absolutely in Peele's manner ; and, as we saw, contains a further Peelian parallel in the phrase " Prometheus tied to Caucasus " which is echoed in Edward I {sc. iv, 21): "To tie Prometheus' limbs to Caucasus " ; while the lines : Safe out of fortune's shot, and sits aloft, Secure of thunder's crack, or lightning's flash : Advanced above pale envy's threatening reach anticipate the line : Out of Oblivion's reach or Envy's shot in the Honour of the Garter (41 1). But in the next scene there is a somewhat different movement, in the speeches of Demetrius and Chiron, in one of which occurs the passage we have referred to Greene, "She is a woman," etc. The lines which follow : What, man ! more water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of ; and easy it is Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know : are not in Peele's manner ; and as the proverb of METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 205 the water and the mill actually occurs twice in Greene's prose,' and both are said to be Scotch, the use of the second also is consistent with the know- ledge of Scotch matters shown by Greene in parts oi James IV. Peele's manner, however, is resumed in the next long speech of Aaron, which, beginning with " For shame, be friends" after the youths have already been persuaded by him to cease quarrelling, indicates that there has been an interpolation. Yet again, the speech of Aaron in hiding the gold smacks more of Kyd or Greene than of Peele ; and the dialogue of Aaron and Tamora, in which occurs the " hammering " tag of Greene, is certainly more in Greene's style than in Peele's. And here again there is some concurrent evidence. In Edward III (IV, vii, 3) occurs the compound "counsel-giver." The scene is in Greene's manner, not in Peele's ; whence we are led to surmise that the similar com- pounds in Alphonsus Emperor of Germany may be his, and also the " counsel-keeping " in this scene in Titus. The word " Venereal " in the same passage is on the same grounds presumptively his in Locrine, in the form " Venerean " ; as also the word "checkered," which belongs to his signed plays and poems. The Peele manner seems to recur in the scene with Bassianus and Lavinia, of which the moral stupidity, further, seems to make it almost impos- sible for Greene ; and in Tamora's account of the "barren detested vale," with its allusion to the " nightly owl or fatal raven," there is a noteworthy echo of similar passages in David and Bethsabe : ' See above, p. 104. 206 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION To bare and barren vales with floods made waste (sc. iii, 81) ; Night-ravens and owls to rend my bloody side (ib., 88) ; Night-ravens and owls shall ring his fatal knell (sc. xiii, 98). In all three of the passages in question the psycho- logical process consists in associating a painful state of mind, or a contemned person, with repul- sive surroundings — an idea seen again in those of Peele's rants in which a defeated personage demands some " uncouth vale " or other appropriate spot to curse in. The hand seems to be on the whole Peele's down to the entry of Tamora's sons ; and most of the verbal clues point to him ; though for the rare word " mistletoe " we have an instance only in Greene, which leaves room for doubt. In the pit scene, further, the verbal clues and the diction alike seem to point to Greene ; and the dialogue of Chiron and Demetrius seems to be generally his. Act III, again, begins entirely in Peele's manner; and the action of Titus in throwing himself on the ground and professing to water it with his tears is noticeably similar to that of the king in David and Bethsabe. The rhythms are also similar : Season this heavy soul with showers of tears, And fill the face of every flower with dew. Weep, Israel, for David's soul dissolves. Lading the fountains of his drowned eyes, And pours her substance on the senseless earth (D. and B., sc. viii). For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears. Let my tears stanch the earth's dry appetite ; My sons' sweet blood will make it shame and blush (Titus, III, i, 12-15). METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 2O7 It is true that the one dramatic use we have noted of the word " languor " occurs in the Troublesome Raigne of King John (Pt. I, sc. of Hubert and Arthur). The passage is one quite beyond the power of Peele, and strongly suggests Marlowe, as do various parts of the play ; but the passage in Titus, on the other hand, is entirely beneath Mar- lowe, though the " languor " line was pronounced Shakespearean by so good a critic as the late James Thomson, in disregard of the flaccid context. In all likelihood it is by Peele, making a single use of an unusual word.' With the entrance of Aaron, however, there supervenes another style. Whether it be Greene's or another's it is hard to say ; but it is to Greene that we are pointed by the clues of vocabulary and phrase, in the line "Writing destruction on the enemy's castle," and those on "deep extremes." Titus's speech beginning : If there were reason for these miseries has a suggestion of Greene ; and though such a phrase as " wat'ry eyes " has small significance, it may be noted that it occurs in Locrine (V, iv) ; in Menapkon (ed. Arber, p. 91),^ and in Edward III (v, 153) ; and that "watery" is one of his common epithets. But it occurs also in Peele {Battle, I, i, 52) ; and it cannot be said that there is any certainty as to the diction in these scenes. Some of it could ' It should be noted that " languor " had at that period a much greater force than at present. Thus in the Raigne the phrase runs : " And of the languor tell him thou art dead." It had then this force in French — e.g., in Rabelais. ' This phrase, like others, he seems to have taken from Lyl^s Euphues (ed. Arber, pp. 36, loi) ; but it is found also in Sidney's Arcadia (B. II, third sentence). 208 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION conceivably be Kyd's ; and we cannot say that it could not be the work of Lodge, whose collabora- tion with Greene in the Looking-Glass for London justifies, from the present point of view, Mr. Fleay's suggestion that he may have had a hand in Edward III. A fresh problem arises with the second scene of Act III, which is lacking in the quartos of 1600 and 1611, but found in the first folio. Here, in Titus's second speech, there is a return to the more nervous versification which suggests Greene. As the scene in no way advances the action, it is possible that it existed in the manuscript, but was dropped by the actors. Certainly it cannot have been written by Shakespeare after 1600. As we have seen, the phrase " sorrow-wreathen knot," suggesting the " arms in this sad knot " of the Tempest, has been pronounced Shakespearean ; but we have found it paralleled in Peele's "Sadness with wreathed arms," and in a line of Kyd's trans- lation of Garnier's Cornelie. The archaic verb " to passionate," too, found nowhere else in Shake- speare, and probably copied from the Faerie Queene (B. I, Canto xii — published in 1590), is distinctly in Peele's taste; and the "hollow prison of my flesh " we have seen to be one of his formulas, though that also is found in the Cornelia. But the " map of woe " appears to be a Euphuistic tag of Greene's as well as Lodge's ; and though the lines of advice to Lavinia to make a hole against her ' No reprint of the 1 594 quarto, so far as I am aware, has yet been published ; but as Mr. Ljung^gren has stated in the Athenceum that " the text is substantially the same as that of the quarto t6oo," there is presumably no difference at this point. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 209 heart that she may drown it with her tears is an imbecility very much in Peele's taste, the other clues of phraseology in the speech point to Greene. Again, however, there suggests itself the possible intervention of Kyd. The pseudo-pathetic pas- sage about "hands," containing the line O handle not the theme, to talk of hands, recalls that in the Spanish Tragedy (III, xiii) ending : Talk not of chords, but let us now be gone, For with a cord Horatio was slain. As before, we are left in doubt whether the writer in both cases is Greene or Kyd ; or whether one has copied the other. The last word-clue in the scene is the use of the intransitive verb "to dazzle," common to Shakespeare, Greene, Lodge, and Peele. It cannot be said that the scene is notably in Peele's manner ; but the poverty and crudity of the pathos is more suggestive of his or Kyd's hand than of Greene's. The long fourth Act opens in a manner that is not noticeably Peele's, and the verbal clues are slight. "Tully" has no significance; "fere," common in Peele, is common likewise in Greene, who has also " gad " and " Sybil " (twice in Menaphon) ; and to Greene we might assign the whole of the first two scenes down to the entrance of the nurse ; were it not that the line from the Spanish Tragedy, But let her rest in her unrest awhile, raises afresh the problem whether Greene had a hand there, or Kyd here. The scene with Aaron's child, again, distinctly recurs to the style and rhythm of Peele ; but again the relative rapidity of p 2IO METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION parts of the dialogue is unlike him ; and the proverb on two keeping counsel, though it occurs in Romeo and Juliet, points here to Greene, who has it in Mamillia (Works, ii, 30). The third scene, again, reverts to the more nervous and dramatic manner which we have associated with Greene ; and here we have his word " big-bon'd " — found also in Soliman and Perseda (I, ii, 59). In the same enigmatic play, however, we find the phrase " rejoice in happiness " (IV, i, 60), at once sug- gestive of the " repose you here in rest " which we have assigned to Peele in Titus; and the phrase " Take her and use her at thy pleasure " (IV, i, 74), which echoes Tamora's mandate to her sons in Titus (II, iii, 166) — a speech which we have surmised to be Peele's." The clown scene again points to Peele and Greene. Professor Collins has confidently claimed for Shakespeare the clown's answer to Titus : " Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter : I never drank with him in all my life." Had he turned to Locrine he would have found in one of the clown scenes of that play a slight variant of the same visibly venerable jest : " O alas, sir, you are deceived. I am not Mercury, I am Strumbo." If Shakespeare saw fit to steal such witticisms, he was a humble imitator indeed ! Thus far the only line which in respect of poetic content suggests Marlowe is the one before noted : Where life hath no more interest but to breathe ; ' In Soliman, however, the scansion of " pleasure " as a. tri- syllable points to Kyd, since we have " treasure " so scanned twice in the Tragedy (I, iii, 35, 36) ; and, as we have already seen, Kyd there and elsewhere scans "jealous " in three syllables. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 211 but that suffices to raise the question of his presence. We are not indeed entitled to suppose that he could not write poorly at a pinch. If he wrote much of Richard III near the end of his life, he was not then advancing in his art. Seeking, however, for distinct clues, we can but say that the scene-action in which this line occurs (III, i, 234- 300) has something of his energy ; and that the line Now let hot iEtna cool in Sicily is in his manner ; though we have found "^tna " also in Peele, and in the Spanish Tragedy ; and it is a common allusion of Greene's. But the device, in the same scene, of making Lavinia carry her father's hand in her teeth suggests Peele, and could have been planned by Greene only in his most heedless mood. It is in the fourth scene ot the fourth Act that we meet with versification in Marlowe's later dramatic manner, such as is found in some of the genuine scenes of Edward II ; and here we note the word " libelling," which occurs in one of his scenes in that play. But in Tamora's speech beginning : King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name, we return to the sententious manner of Greene, who seems to be indicated by the lines about the eagle and gnats — both common subjects of allusion in his plays and prose-writings. In the fifth Act, again, we revert obviously to the epic and undramatic manner of Peele ; to whom we may safely assign further the allusion to " popish tricks and ceremonies." Mr. Baildon, commenting on the "ruinous monastery," writes : Another anachronism ; but Shakespeare is persis- tently careless on such points. But as we do not know 212 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION in the least the date of the play's historic action, the anachronism may be the other way on in making Titus and the other Romans still pagans. Our dry investigation is relieved by such a stroke of conscientious apologetic. Since the period of a non-historical play is to be determined, if at all, from its action, the effect of the plea, if any, is to suggest that in the Christian period the Romans may have practised human sacrifice ad manes — a somewhat gratuitous enormity from so avowed an enemy of agnosticism. Over the subsequent allusion to "popish tricks" Mr. Baildon again sighs : Another anachronism for which Shakespeare must be held responsible ; for, however little or much he wrote of this play, he stood godfather, if not father, to it, and could easily have removed these flaws, some of which may have been actors' gag to raise a smile or draw a cheer from the audience. This is a somewhat pathetic collapse for an intro- duction of 76 pages which, after somewhat stronger affirmations, ends with an expression of belief that Titus is " essentially and substantially the work " of Shakespeare. It is perhaps of no great impor- tance to relieve the " persistently careless " Master of the charge of anachronism ; but as we are apt to suppose him exceptionally lax in such matters, it may be worth while to note that not only does Peele, the Master of Arts, introduce panthers and Protestant sentiment at Rome in the period of the pagan empire, and again set up Protestantism in the reign of Edward II ; but the no less academic Lodge in his Wounds of Civil War makes " Pedro, a Frenchman," speak broken English in the period of Marius and Sylla — that is, if Lodge be the METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 2I3 author of the scene. And Marlowe himself trans- lates Lucan's exiguum asylum by "one poor church." In any case, the allusion before us is probably not actors' gag : it is apparently the deliberate writing of Peele. As for the speeches of Aaron, their resemblance to those of Ithamore and Barabas in the yew of Malta is one of the grounds of the hypothesis of Marlowe's authorship ; and it is impossible to say with perfect confidence that the three crude sketches are not from the same over- hasty hand. But it is to be noted that in Alphonsus Emperor of Germ,any the villain Alex- ander avows his crimes very much in the fashion of Aaron, as if the situation had become an established one. And although Aaron is nearer Barabas and Ithamore than Alexander, he too is conceivably a mere imitation by Peele. In any case, if Marlowe's be the hand in the speeches of Aaron, it disappears in the second scene, which is substantially in the style of Peele, though not without suggesting possibilities of Kyd. In this scene the double-endings are few — only 12 in 205 lines, or 6 per cent, whereas in the previous scene there are 32 in 165 lines, or 20 per cent. On the whole, there is a presumption of revision and retouching throughout the Act ; and though Peele is frequently recognisable, the work is certainly not homogeneous. §3- Taking the handiwork of Peele, Greene, and Kyd in Titus to be indicated, in different degrees, by all the foregoing tests, we shall find, if we revert to a general comparison of the play with the 214 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION composite Locrine, with Peele's signed work, and with the Spanish Tragedy, that the result is much the same, the case for Peele and Greene being still the clearest. Titus has been already shown to be thoroughly akin to Peele's work, to Greene's, to Locrine, and to the Tragedy, in point of flaccidity of diction, tics of repetition, and poverty of feeling. It is precisely in the scenes in which we find Greene's tags that there emerges most clearly another hand or hands than Peele's. All through, the work is impossibly bad for the Shakespeare of 1594, Even if we suppose it to have been possible for him in 1584. As against the samples of "superior" work cited by those who maintain his authorship, it may suffice to quote some specimens of the prevailing ineptitude of the diction. We may begin with a speech commonly cited as "Shakespearean," the speech of Titus over the grave of his sons : In peace and honour rest you here, my sons : Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest,^ Secure from worldly chances and mishaps. Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned grudges ; here are no storms. No noise, but silence and eternal sleep : In peace and honour rest you here, my sons ! Of course there are flatter things than that, as : And at thy feet I kneel, with tears of joy. Shed on the earth, for thy return to Rome ; Androriicus, would thou wert shipped to hell, Rather than rob me of the people's hearts — another Peelism ; thus paralleled : Crying for battle, famine, sword, and fire, ' This tautology, sometimes treated as an error of the press, is, as we have seen, characteristic of Peele. METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION 215 Rather than calling for relief or life {Battle, II, iii, 34-5) ; Rather than that this murder were undone {Locrine, III, vi, end). With voices and applause of every sort. My lord, you are unjust ; and, more than so, In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son. If thou be pleased with this my sudden choice, Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride. Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan's face. Blushing to be encounter'd with a cloud. This last is said to the mutilated and bleeding Lavinia by her uncle, as is the following : Come, let us go and make thy father blind ; For such a sight will blind a father's eye : One hour's storm will drown the fragrant meads ; What will whole months of tears thy father's eyes ? These latter fatuities are sufficient to remind us that in all the certain work of Peele there is no touch of true pathos. When he attempts it, as here, the result is apt to be grotesque ; and there is the stronger reason to suppose that the more pathetic speeches in the fourth and fifth Acts, and those in the last Act of Locrine, are Greene's or Kyd's. But even in the best of those in Titus we are far from mastery. The favourite citation of the traditionalists is the following : Come hither, boy ; come, come, and learn of us To melt in showers : thy grandsire lov'd thee well : Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee, Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow ; Many a matter hath he told to thee, Meet and agreeing with thine infancy ; In that respect, then, like a loving child, Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring 2l6 METRE, VERSIFICATION, AND DICTION Because kind nature doth require it so : Friends should associate friends in grief and woe. Not only is this indigent pathos well within the reach of Greene : it is within the reach of Kyd. Titus, in short, alike on particular scrutiny and on general comparison, is seen to belong to the early Peele-Greene-Kyd school, showing the same raw art, with at best some late additions by Greene on his lower plane, a speech or two that might be Marlowe's, and some that might be Kyd's. Chapter X. THE TESTS OF PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE It is when we apply the final tests of plot and structure that Marlowe is most clearly acquitted of any serious share in Titus, while Peele, Kyd, and Greene are more or less certainly implicated. The play is, broadly, an artificial composition on the lines of the Spanish Tragedy, with a superfoetation of crimes and horrors, involving a chain of revenges, on the lines of the Tragedy, Selimus, and David and Bethsahe. The whole sequence is the conception of men academically trained, proceeding as it does on the Aristotelian maxim, received by them through Seneca, that the spectacle of a good man suffering without cause is unnatural. On this view every destined victim has to begin as a wronger or slayer in order to qualify for assassina- tion ; and the presence of such motives in the history of David seems to have recommended it to Peele for dramatic purposes. David betrays Urias, whereupon Amnon violates Thamar, Absalon kills Amnon, and Joab Absalon ; as in Locrine hero after hero in turn is slain and avenged, their ghosts and the figure of Ate playing leading parts. So in Selimus the villain-hero makes war on his father, who nevertheless, on his submission, makes him his heir ; whereupon another son, Acomat, 217 2l8 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE makes war on both ; while Selim in turn poisons Bajazet, strangles his brother Corcut, and conquers and kills Acomat. It is on this principle that there is committed, in the first Act of Titiis, the gross moral blunder of making him sacrifice the son of Tamora in cold blood — a deed which entirely dis- qualifies him for sympathy when he suffers in turn. Yet it appears to result from the investigation of Mr. De W. Fuller" that the sacrifice is an addition to the older play — so blinded was the reviser by his theory of dramatic construction. Even Lavinia, before being mutilated, duly earns the hate of Tamora by a speech of which the hard immodesty excludes any sympathetic conception of her character, though a German Professor" contrives to frame of her a pleasing abstraction, and Mr. Bellyse Baildon does his best to bear him out.^ And as the aesthetic theory of these early tragedies is the same, they hold in common their aesthetic machinery. Their fundamental moral motive is revenge ; the word pervades the dialogue to the point of burlesque ; and the action is com- monly moved to its end by a personification of Ate or Revenge ; or by the ghost of a victim, or by both. And both devices, again, are borrowed from Seneca. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, which certainly proceeds upon an older play (in all likelihood by • Art. cited, p. s?. = Professor Schroer, Ueber Titus Andronicus, p. 86. 3 See Mr. Baildon's Introduction, where he challenges Mr. Arthur Symons to say what Lavinia as a modest woman ought to have said to Tamora. In a note on II, iii, 74, he sugfgests that Mr. Symons, in pronouncing' (like every critic before him) Lavinia's speech to be in execrable taste, must have been think- ing of the speech of Bassianus. The reader need but glance over the scene to be enabled to make the fitting comment. PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 21 9 Kyd),' we see the apparatus which best appeals even to the modern spectator — the Ghost of the victim urging on his avenger, who employs certain devices to convict or slay the criminal, or to do both ; and in Hamlet we see still preserved the idea of a double revenge, the chief avenger himself incurring the vengeance of another. Ghosts being freely employed in the Spanish Tragedy, Locrine, and the old Hamlet, it may have been thought necessary in Titus to do without them ; but the further plan of pretended madness on the part of the avenger, which occurs in the Tragedy and in the old Hamlet, figures also in Titus. Finally the device of a play-scene — a development from the more primitive " dumb-show " as we have it in Locrine, which also occurs in the Tragedy, and presumably figured in the old Hamlet — is aban- doned in Titus in favour of an absurd masquerade of the guilty persons. There has also taken place a progression in atrocity. Locrine has no attempt to transcend the simple effects of slaughter, extreme hunger, and suicide. In the Spanish Tragedy, the effect of the chain of assassinations had been heightened by Jeronimo's feat of biting off his own tongue. Selimus, a more sophisticated performance than Locrine, probably following on Tamburlaine, but still an early play, has no artifice of plot, but adds to the horrors of Kyd those of the tearing- out of eyes and cutting-off of hands, as David and Bethsabe adds that of a violation. Tancred and Gismunda, as revised in 1592, has a scene in ' Cp. Fleay, Biog. Chron. ii, 32-33 ; Sarrazin, Thomas Kyd und sein Kreis, 1892, p. 94 sq. This view is now generally accepted. 220 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE which the heroine kisses the pierced heart of her husband, sent her in a cup by her father. And whereas, in the fragment preserved of the first version, Tancred at the close says he will enter the tomb and pierce his heart, in the revised play he tears out his own eyes. The horrible had come into fashion.' Titus, in turn, combines the horrors of all its predecessors, outgoing Jeronimo's burlesque achievement by making Lavinia's violators cut out her tongue as well as lop off her hands ; adding a sickening scene of throat-cutting and a Thyestean banquet ; making Titus slay his wronged daughter ; and flavouring the whole action with the open grossness of the amour of Aaron and Tamora. The complication tells of a process of evolution. Professor Baker is probably quite right in his conclusion that " Even as far back as 1585 the story of Titus had been staged, "° though the phrase of Ben Jonson in Bartholomew Fair, making Titus Siadjeronimo 25 or 30 years old in 1614, is a somewhat insecure basis for certainty. Mr. H. De W. Fuller, after his minute study of the old German and Dutch forms of Titus and Vespasian and Titus Andronicus, comes, as we have seen, to the conclusion that they were founded on two different versions of the story. This may well be so ; but in avowing that he believes " Shakespeare to be the author of practically every ' There is some cause to suspect that the scene of Bajazet's burlesque suicide in i Tamburlaine, V, ii, is an addition to the first draft, by another hand. ' Note after Mr. De W. Fuller's paper on "The Sources of ' Titus Andronicus ' " in Publications of the Modem Language Association of America, vol. xvi, pt. i, 1901, p. 76. PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 221 line of the play we possess, and that it belongs to the year 1594,'" Mr. Fuller proceeds in total disregard of the whole aesthetic phenomena. To say nothing of the manifold proofs that it is not Shakespeare's, the play as it stands is not all of one period ; and Mr. Fuller has in effect shown that its plot underwent a gradual complication. As regards plot and substance, Peele is specially indicated by the sexual element, which is prominent in his David and Bethsabe and Edward I; and of which there is hardly any savour in Kyd. But the complication and artifice of the whole suggests Kyd (considered as author of The Spanish Tragedy) much more strongly than either Peele or Greene, neither of whom has separately shown any great notion of plot elaboration apart from Alphonsus Emperor of Germany ; or than Marlowe, whose plot remains relatively incomplex even in The Jem of Malta. The woodenness of the figure of Lavinia, too, seems impossible to Greene, and suggests the draughtsman of that of Bellimperia in the Spanish Tragedy, though the hand may quite well be Peele's. In any case, the plot gives us still further reason to look to Peele and Kyd when we compare it with that of Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, which we have seen, by other tests, to be in the main Peele's. Its central motive is notably in his taste ; his animus — whether religious or commercial — against everything Spanish and Catholic being here exhibited still more elaborately than in his base treatment of the Queen in Edward I. Like David and Titus, Alphonsus includes a violation ' Paper cited, p. 76. 222 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE (in this case by fraud) ; and the sexual motive is freely played upon. To the horrors of previous plays it adds that of the dashing out of an infant's brains by its grandfather, who, likening himself, as does Titus, to Virginius, slays likewise its mother, his daughter ; and further suggests Titus by recommending its putative father, who is starving, to eat the body. No less significant is the duplication in Alphonsus of one of the crudest plot-expedients in Titus. Even Mr. Baildon is moved to protest by the absurdity of the forged letter given by Tamora to Saturninus in Act II, sc. iii. It seems to mean, writes Mr. Baildon, that if the writer fails to meet Bassianus and kill him himself, the receiver of the writ is to kill Bassianus and bury him in the said pit. Anything clumsier than such a letter between conspirators, naming the person plotted against twice in full, cannot be conceived. Fancy an anarchist writing to another and designating his victim as the "Empress of Austria" or the "Czar of Russia"! I cannot help thinking that in this scene we have, more than in almost any other part of the play, relics of an older and cruder version of the story. That is to say, Shakespeare preserved an extremely primitive absurdity, on which any intelligent novice might have improved. The guess is not warranted by dramatic history. No earlier play presents such a device ; and in this scene-section there are six double-endings in 47 lines, a rate of over 12 per cent. What is more, a closely similar device, only, if possible, more grossly absurd, occurs in Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, where the villain announces : By letters which I'll strew within the wood I'll undermine the boors to murder him. PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 223 This episode too is in a scene where double-endings abound ; and, like the other, belongs to Peele's closing period. It is certainly not a stroke which Kyd's admirers need care to claim for him ; but though Peele in the Old Wives' Tale shows a certain tendency to plot-complication, we are led by such machinery to think of Kyd, seeing that in the old Hamlet there seems to have been a resort to a "plotted scroll," retained or adapted in the play as left us by Shakespeare. And all this seems alien to Marlowe, whose own development is so notably independent, and so rapid as between Tamburlaine (1587) and The Jew (1588). If we should consider only the former we might say, with Professor Schroer, that Marlowe's genius was epic, not dramatic' Dramatic power of a new kind, however untrained, The Jew surely discloses ; and the essential originality of the man is seen in his disregard, in both plays alike, of the methods of his predecessors. The Jew is already in a higher aesthetic world than Locrine and the Spanish Tragedy ; and the style alters in sympathy with the change of theme. But this very origi- nality, seen once again in Faustus, and yet again in Edward II and Dido, excludes the possibility of such a complete surrender to other men's worse and weaker modes as would have happened had Marlowe written Titus. On that view, we should have to regard him as not merely writing a long and elaborate play without a single "mighty line," but lapsing into the feeblest devices and the most vacuous mannerisms of Peele, and combining them ' Ueber Titus Andronicus, p. 95. 224 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE with the primitive revenge-mongering of Peele and Kyd. Mr. Bullen backs the suggestion that Marlowe wrote Titus by citing the speech begin- ning "Now climbeth Tamora Olympus' top," which actually contains a duplicate of a Peele line. Mr. Bullen, it may be remarked, had not at the time of his putting that opinion edited Peele's works, in which there is so much pseudo- Marlowese. Doubtless Marlowe in his outset echoed at times the phraseology of the men then in possession of the boards ; but he took his own way. What he seems to have had in common with them all is the tendency to rant, though it is not certain that the close resemblances of this kind in the plays of the period are not partly the result of adaptations by actors. But revenge and rant went naturally together ; and it is to the pre-Shake- speareans, not to Shakespeare, that we must attri- bute such an effect as this in Titus (IV, iii) : Pluto sends you word If you will have revenge from hell, you shall : Marry for justice, she is so employ'd He thinks, with Jove, in heaven, or somewhere else I'll dive into the burning lake below, And pull her [Justice] out of Acheron by the heels. Compare it with the following : Though on this earth justice will not be found I'll down to hell, and in this passion, Knock at the dismal gate of Pluto's court, Getting by force, as once Alcides did, A troop of furies and tormenting hags (S. 7-., Ill, xiii). I'll pass the Alps to wat'ry Meroe I'll overturn the mountain Caucasus PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 225 I'll pull the fickle wheel from out her hands, And tie herself in everlasting bands {Locr., ii, 6). I'll pass the Alps and up to Meroe And pull the harp out of the minstrel's hands, And pawn it unto lovely Proserpine (Orlando Furioso, ed. Dyce, p. 104). I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus, With all the threatening band of Typhon's brood, Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war. Shall seize the prey out of his father's hands (Titus, IV, ii). I hold the fates bound fast in iron chains And with my hand turn fortune's wheel about (7 Tamb., I, ii). Not aged Priam, king of stately Troy, Grand emperor of barbarous Asia, When he beheld his noble-minded son Slain traitorously by all the myrmidons. Lamented more than I for Albanact (Locr., Ill, ii). As has been already remarked, the play further belongs to the same school in point of its Latin tags, Seneca quotations, and classical allusions. Peele, Greene, Marlowe, and Kyd, alike abound in these ; and it is probably due to its being pre- served only in a late and revised edition that we find no quotations in Alphonsus of Germany in addition to its classical allusions, which include Ate, Athamas, Aristotle, Apollo, Achilles, Mene- tiades, Laocoon, Lysander, Patroclus, Phalaris, Plato, Cancer, Scorpion (reminiscent of the con- stellations in Titus and Peele's frequent " zodiac "), Virginius, and -(Eneas's pilot. But there are special reasons for ascribing to Peele certain classical allusions in Titus. The traditionalists have not succeeded in turning the point of two Q 226 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE annotations by Theobald and Steevens, to the effect (i) that the allusion in Titus (I, 137-8) to Hecuba's "sharp revenge" upon the " Thracian tyrant " " in his tent " (a clear error of the press for " her tent," as Theobald suggested), is to be found only in the Hecuba of Euripides, which had not been translated in Shakespeare's time ; and (2) that the subsequent allusion to the burial of Ajax points only to the Ajax of Sophocles, also un- translated in Shakespeare's day. With regard to the first, Mr. Baildon boldly alleges that the story of Hecuba's revenge on Polymnestor "is told in Virgil's j^neid, where Shakespeare could read it for himself, or in Phaer's translation." There is no such passage in the ^neid: Virgil tells nothing of Polymnestor's death. The story is briefly told in Ovid's Meta- morphoses (xiii, 549-564) ; but that version does not fully yield the allusion. Steevens, in his per- verse way, sought to upset Theobald's reference to Euripides on grounds which would equally have upset his own to Sophocles ; and, referring to the Metamorphoses, argues that " The writer of the play, whoever he was, might have been misled by the passage in Ovid, 'vadit ad artificem,' and there- fore took it for granted that she found him in his tent." How anyone should infer "tent" from " ad artificem " is hard to divine. It would have been a little more plausible to cite the phrase " colloquiumque petit." But, in point of fact, Ovid expressly says: "Credidit Odrysius in secreta venit" which excludes the inference of " his tent " without specifying hers ; while in Euripides the tent is expressly mentioned twice {avoarrivai So/itov, PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 227 980 ; aXX ?p7r' ig otKovc, 1019), and the apprehensive entrance of Polymnestor is the outstanding feature of the scene. The writer of Titus, then, had that scene in view ; and that Peele knew his Euripides is not a mere inference from his status as M,A. : it is proved by the Latin verses addressed to him by Dr. Gager, testifying to his having translated one of the two Iphigenias of Euripides into English verse.' The traditionalists will fall back, of course, on the thesis that Shakespeare read the Greek tragedies in the original — a thesis maintained by Professor Collins with a confidence that is in the inverse ratio of his evidence. Mr. Baildon, for his part, gets over the reference to the funeral of Ajax by the plea that " Many of us know something of books we have never read from the talk of others," which is a mere evasion of the problem set up by the peculiarly specific character of the allusion in Titiis (I, i, 379-81) : The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax That slew himself ; and wise Laertes' son Did graciously plead for his funerals. This is not the kind of " general acquaintance " that men get with the contents of books they have not read : it is the express pedantry of a scholar. For the rest, Peele alludes specifically and lengthily to the quarrel and suicide of Ajax in the Tale of Troy (349-375), where he also mentions the murder of Polydore by Polymnestor (393-399) ; and that he had read Sophocles as well as Euripides might be taken for granted even if we did not possess his ' MS. Brit. Mus, printed by Dyce and by Bullen in their intro- ductions to Peele. 228 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE lines to his friend Watson, who had published a Latin translation of the Antigone, there referred to, in 1581. It was in all likelihood from the Hecuba that he drew the unhappy idea of the human sacri- fice ad manes fratrum in Titus. It is unnecessary for our purpose to go into the sources of the scene of the arrows, which has been dubiously traced to Byzantine sources.' Suffice it that such an episode also points to any of the academic group rather than to Shakespeare. As regards the story of Philomela and Progne, he might, as Professor Schroer points out,'" find it in George Gascoigne's Complaint of Philomene {1^62- 1576), where, indeed, there are some slight verbal parallels to Titus ;^ but so well-known a myth is not a ground for raising the question of classical knowledge. What is obviously non-Shakespearean is the classicism of the passages above discussed, and of the Senecan and other quotations. The astonishing assertion of Professor Schroer* that these are peculiarly Shakespearean (so echt shak- spereisch wie nur irgend etwas) is justified solely by references to the Shrew, which is based on a previous play ; to j Henry VI, which Shake- speare merely worked over ; to Timon, which is his only in part ; to Love's Labour's Lost, where the classical matter clearly points to a second hand ; to the bare mention of Ovid's captivity in ' As to these see Professor Schroer's Ueber Titus Andronicus, p. 19 sq., and refs. ° Id., p. 27, noie. 3 One of these is the use of " fact " as = deed or crime. But this is common in Greene, and is found in other writers. " Bloody fact" occurs in Perrex and Porrex. Greene has "bloody fact" (twice), " heinous fact," " devilish fact," " filthy fact," etc. * Id., p. 31. PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 229 As You Like It; and to the passage on "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling " in the Dream, which is gravely cited as an echo of the amabilis insania of Horace, who in Shakespeare's day was not. trans- lated. Finally, it is suggested that the initials W. S. on a copy of the Metamorphoses in the Bodleian, somehow connected with the Hall family, prove Shakespeare to have been a reader of the "classics." Such pleas need no answer. The pedantries of Titus are as alien to the spirit and method of Shakespeare's real work as are its atrocities and moral stupidities. But indeed the case constructed by Professor Schroer is substantially irrelevant to the proofs before cited of the non-Shakespearean character of most of the play under examination. He argues learnedly and elaborately to explain away " parallels " of no importance, such as the use of " capitol " in Peele's Edward I ; a. detail devoid of significance, seeing that the word appears many times in Lodge's Wounds of Civil War and in Kyd's Cornelia. He seems indeed to have seen every sort of parallel except those which do decisively prove Peele's and Greene's presence in the play. It is those parallels that must be faced by conservative criticism if it would maintain a semblance of scientific justification for the con- tinued ascription of Titus to Shakespeare. When the thesis of his authorship is thus negatived by such a mass of internal evidence, and a counter theory is seen to consist with such a multitude of details, it seems unnecessary to argue at any length on the abstract " aesthetic " problem. It is enough to say that those who could 230 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE not believe in the Shakespearean derivation of such a play as Titus are abundantly justified. In the foregoing inquiry no argument whatever has been drawn from the glaring unlikelihood of the theory that the greatest of dramatists began by writing the most detestable of plays. It was necessary to meet with irreversible evidence those who could maintain such a hypothesis. But it may now be urged, as against those who find psychological solutions for the inconceivable, that aesthetics is after all a specialisation of common sense. We have been in effect asked by the traditionalists to believe that Shakespeare, whom we find laughing genially at the " Ercles vein " of Peele and Marlowe and Kyd as early as / Henry IV, had only a few years before been performing at their most banal level, imitating their weakest mannerisms, employing their cheapest devices, and outdoing their grossest barbarities. We may now put aside without misgiving so grotesque a "paradox." Youth, as we have said, is spontaneously imitative ; but youth of genius imitates what it admires ; and its admiration must needs be not less but more discriminative than that of the uninspired. Shakespeare in 1593 — when, according to the critics who latterly justify the traditional view by investigation, he must have written Titus Andronicus — was in his thirtieth year : older, that is, than was Marlowe when his work was done ; and within a few years of writing the Merchant of Venice. We are to suppose him writing at that point the most brutal tragedy of the era. Simple common-sense would endorse Mr. Fleay's summary decision that " the introduction of rape as a subject PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 23I for the stage would be sufficient to disprove Shake- speare's authorship."' Mr. Baildon's reply is memorable : A more ridiculous and fatuous remark it would be impossible to find in the annals of criticism. Did Mr. Fleay forget that about the time this play must have been written Shakespeare had it in his mind, as we see FROM THE PLAY ITSELF, to devote his utmost poetic powers — which he then regarded with infinitely greater reverence than he did his dramatic powers — to writing the Rape of Liicrece? If Shakespeare thought this subject fit for a poem, which was to gain him the favour of the highest in the land, he could have no possible SCRUPLE AGAINST TREATING SUCH A SUBJECT DRAMATI- CALLY. = The italics are Mr. Baildon's, the small capitals the present critic's. It may be left to the reader to find countervailing epithets for so perfect a specimen of the argument in a circle, presented by way of convicting a ripe student of unparalleled fatuity. Mr. Fleay has not Mr. Baildon's faculty of forgetting the main facts of his case ; and his argument plainly turned on the very fact so idly trumpeted. In the Rape of Lucrece, as in Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare has treated at great length an action which would have been abso- lutely IMPOSSIBLE on the stage. Mr. Baildon goes on to allude to the " very revolting " theme of Venus and Adonis: and his argument commits him to the proposition that Shakespeare " could have no possible scruple " against putting on the stage the action of that poem. In the struggle with assthetic obscurantism we are finally forced to dwell on the ' Life of Shakespeare, p. 280. ' Introd. to ed. cited, p. xxvii. 232 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE fact, "gross as a mountain, open, palpable," that he could not have done so in any theatre in Europe. Even the writer of Titus Andronicus did not venture to stage such an action as Shakespeare treats of in the Rape of Lticrece: it was impossible for any public assembly. What he did was to thrust on the audience as far as he could the sheer physical horror of the event ; and, finding that insufficient, to add the utmost admissible horrors of mutilation. The method of Shakespeare in his poem is at the other psychological extreme. He has written at astonishing length of one atrocious act, with the effect of making its psychic or spiritual aspect absolutely overlay the physical. Even in the other poem, the amount of psychic commentary and poetic discourse is so great as to overlay the action. And on the strength of these poems we are told that he was the very man to flaunt on the stage, to the utmost verge of endurable brutality, the physical atrocity which, even for his readers, he had put in the background of a long-drawn psycho- logical excursus. On Mr. Baildon's principles, any poet who should treat in his poetry of the subject of cannibalism would feel free to put on the stage a cannibal banquet. The authors of Titus have gone as far in that direction as they dared. Byron, according to Mr. Baildon, could have "no possible scruple " about going further. Mr. Baildon's aesthetics compel to silence those who do not care to borrow his epithets. Yet even this is not the limit of the criticism which insists upon ascribing Titus to Shakespeare. Mr. Baildon once gets so far as to avow that the line, PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 233 Brewed with her sorrow, mesh'd upon her cheeks, is "a very clumsy and offensive conceit from the operation of brewing " ; and over another nauseous passage he is slightly apologetic. But concerning the throat-cutting, at which the maimed Lavinia holds the basin (a species of horror which only Zola has ventured to handle in a realistic novel), while he reluctantly admits its "gruesomeness," he alleges — by implication — that in this as in other plays, Shakespeare soared above the ' ' Tragedy of Blood " school, not by excising the horrors from his plots, but by treating them in so noble and elevated a manner that we forget the physipal horrors in the awe and pity with which his marvellous handling of his themes inspires us. This of one of the most grossly horrible scenes of bestial revenge in all drama. And even this is transcended by the critic when, in his introduction,' he thus disposes of the hideous scene in which Tamora eats of a dish in which her sons' heads have been baked by Titus and Lavinia : Is it then so unjust, is it even so gratuitously horrible, to make this woman eat the flesh and blood of her own offspring? For the woman, indeed, who was the moral murderer of her two sons, in encouraging them to comnjit the vilest of crimes, and who was in intention an infanticide, could there he any rrmre appropriate horror of punishment? If we could have Mr. Baildon as licenser of plays, with his notions of "making the punishment fit the crime," we might see some sensational aesthetic developments. " Something with boiling oil in it " would probably be frequent. Comment is super- ' As cited, p. Ixii. 234 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE fluous. His argument, like the abominable play which he glorifies, attains the effect of burlesque. Otherwise edifying is the more guarded yet self- confuting plea by which Professor Boas seeks to meet the aesthetic dilemma. Having accepted the German verdict on the "external evidence," he proceeds to find that A breeze from the Warwickshire glades blows fresh at times through the reeking atmosphere, and amidst the festering corruption of a decadent society we have glimpses of nature that make us less forlorn. The constant allusions, however, to animals and birds in " Titus Andronicus," as in other of the early plays and poems, are due not only to Shakespeare's familiarity with the country but to the influence of Euphuism, one of whose most notable features is the persistent use of illustra- tions from the natural world.' That is to say, the hand of Shakespeare is to be traced inasmuch as he writes like other people. As Professor Boas has thus disposed of his own case, it is hardly necessary to add that every species of " illustration from the natural world " in the play is common to the school of Greene, Peele, and Kyd. One of the animals thrice mentioned is the panther, never found in a Shakespearean play, but here made to be hunted in the neighbourhood of Rome, even as Lodge introduced the lion into the forest of Arden. Like every other animal alluded to, he belongs to the menagerie of Greene and Peele, who speak of lions, tigers, boars, bears, whelps, wolves, dogs, eagles, birds, falcons, serpents, as well as flowers, times without number. It is needless to add a comment on the cesthetic which finds in zoological allusions, alleged to be • Shakespeare and his Predecessors, p. 139. PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE 235 partly derived from Euphuism, a ground for com- pliment to the society of Elizabethan Warwickshire, while ascribing to the Warwickshire youth of the theory the deliberate invention of the chain of utterly unhistorical horrors which forms the story of Titus. Even Professor Herford, one of the ablest and best equipped of our English professors of native literature, offers in part a similar, though tentative, support to the traditionalist view, remarking that the bookish allusions to the play are " tempered with many touches caught from the open-air life of nature such as nowhere fail in the young Shake- speare. A woodland brake — a ' pleasant chase ' — is the scene of the most tragic deed in the whole play."' In point of fact there is much more of " open-air " suggestion in this play than in any of the genuine plays of the young Shakespeare, which do not abound in such touches ; and these sugges- tions are entirely in the spirit of Peele and Greene, whose works are full of them. Peele's Arraign- ment of Paris is a pastoral ; his David and Bethsabe is full of imagery from nature ; and his Sir Clyom,on has a dozen open-air scenes. Greene's Orlando Furioso treats of clouded moons, private walks, shady lawns, and "thickest-shadowed groves"; the plot turns on the engraving of the names of Medor and Angelica on the bark of trees ; there is a song which in two lines names groves, rocks, woods, watery springs, cedar, cypress, laurel, and pine ; the mad Orlando speaks of " woods, trees, leaves"; Angelica disguises herself as a shep- ■ Introd. to the " Eversley " ed. of Tittts Andronicus, p. 292. 236 PLOT, STRUCTURE, AND SUBSTANCE herdess, and " wanders about in woods and ways unknown." Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay in- volves a rustic romance, in which the heroine is first pictured "among the cream-bowls," and half the talk is of country life ; George-a-Greene is a village drama, wherein men fight about the putting of horses into corn ; in James IV, Queen Dorothea, wounded in the woods, is there healed of her wound. Even in the Spanish Tragedy, the lover is slain in a pleasant bower. But it is needless to multiply instances. There is something wrong with a critical method which thus employs ccsthetics, not as a scientific means of discovering truth, but as a mere source of tropes to eke out a proposition irreconcilable with any fundamental cesthetic. All • aesthetic inference is indeed hard of reduction to logical fixity ; but in the present inquiry, it is submitted, the incurable incongruities are associated with the thesis com- bated. Chapter XI. SUMMARY In such an inquiry, it is apt to be at times too " hard to see the wood for the trees"; and a sum- mary may avert some confusion. The argument may be succinctly stated thus : 1. The external evidence for Shakespeare's authorship of Titus, though it might be sufficient were it reconcilable with the internal evidence, is in itself quite inconclusive ; and the circumstantial evidence strongly contradicts that of literary record. 2. The publication of three editions of the play, evidently from the theatre copy, in Shakespeare's lifetime, without his name, tells strongly on the other side ; and Ben Jonson's manner of reference to an early form of the play almost excludes the belief that he held it for Shakespeare's. 3. The existing play bears to have been originally in the possession of a theatrical company with which Shakespeare had no connection. 4. The principle of theatrical property in the play would suffice to account for its being claimed by Shakespeare's company as his, if he had merely revised the versification, as he seems to have done in the case of Locrine. 5. It is substantially proved that there was an old play on the same theme, and that that play was repeatedly recast. 237 238 SUMMARY 6. The majority of those who affirm Shake- speare's authorship date the present play in or before 1589. Those who have really investigated its history, and still maintain that authorship, date it 1594. 7. In respect of the metrical phenomena, it must be later than 1589, and cannot have been written by Shakespeare before 1594. 8. In respect of the plot and diction, it cannot conceivably have been written by him in 1593. 9. The whole mass of the internal evidence is overwhelmingly against the traditionist view. To the full extent to which aesthetic demonstration is possible, it is demonstrated by comparative evidence that much of the play is written by Peele ; and it is hardly less certain that much more was written by Greene. ID. The probability is that between 1590 and 1592 Greene revised or expanded an older play, in which Peele had already a large share ; but there is the alternative possibility that Peele revised an old play by Greene and Kyd. The fresh matter, or revision, which in 1594 caused the play to figure as new, may again have been by Peele, or by Kyd, or by Lodge ; but the amount contributed by either of the two last named to the present play is small, though it is somewhat likely that Kyd had a hand earlier in shaping the plot. 1 1. Thereis abundant proof that Elizabethan plays were in this way frequently re-cast ; and that Peele and Greene in particular frequently collaborated, or eked out each other's plays. 12. The argument from alleged internal evidence of Shakespeare's authorship breaks down at every SUMMARY 239 point, the proposed tests invariably recoiling against the thesis. 13. There is no more evidence of structural revision or amendment by Shakespeare in Titus than in Locrine. Any revision he gave it appears to have been limited to making the lines scan ; and even this is not carefully done. The case is thus proved against his authorship independently of the extremely strong presumption that the most coarsely repulsive play in the entire Elizabethan drama cannot have been the work of the greatest and most subtle of all the dramatists of the age. EPILOGUE That such a discussion as this should have been necessary is, I think, a sufficient proof that the scientific criticism of literature in general and oi Shakespeare in particular has not latterly gone forward among us. After a generation in which much was done to reach exactness of method and rationality of test, we seem to be in large part given over to the merest intuitionism. When Charles Knight justified his support of the tradi- tionalist view concerning Titus Andronicus by passages of absurd assthetic argumentation from Franz Horn, to the effect that, from a youth of genius so circumstanced and so slightly educated as Shakespeare, we were bound to have a first drama marked by "colossal errors,"' it did not seem that there was much danger of a general conversion of English opinion to the German opinion. But we have seen latterly evolved among ourselves an aesthetic which reaches, a posteriori, less plausible results than Horn reached a priori, and this at even less philosophic cost. The expla- nation seems to be, not that the faculty for scientific thought is falling away, but that it is now being employed in other fields, leaving the survey of the ' " Not merely sing'le errors," the philosopher goes on. " No, we should have a whole drama which is diseased at its very root, which rests upon one single monstrous error. Such a drama is this Titus." EPILOGUE 241 aesthetic field to students not scientifically disposed. At a time when "higher criticism" is being zealously and successfully applied by a multitude of investigators in directions formerly blocked to such methods, the criticism of some developments of secular literature has reverted to pre-scientific forms. It is with some hope of promoting a revival of better methods that the foregoing investigation has been set about. If its shortcomings lead to its correction, so much the better : we shall be in the way of substituting argument and evidence for the mere swagger which has latterly come in fashion. The first requisite is a return towards the analytic and comparative methods of the sciences. We have seen a number of Professors of literature, English and German, pronounce on a question of literary morphology without attempting any methodic comparison of the possible sources of type ; for even the painstaking Professor Schroer has but glanced at them. Professor Collins, for his part, avows that he has not read Professor Schroer because, as he explains, " I abominate German academic monographs, and indulge myself in the luxury of avoiding them, wherever it is possible to do so ; being moreover insular enough to think that, on the question of the authenticity of an Elizabethan drama, an English scholar can dispense with German lights."' The trouble is that Professor Collins dispenses with all lights. On the one hand he dismisses the German critics as unreadable, though his special thesis may be ' Studies in Shakespeare, pref., p. xii. 242 EPILOGUE said to have been "made in Germany"; on the other hand the whole line of English critics who are against him are dismissed by him, without argu- ment, as paradoxers, iconoclasts, and illegitimate practitioners. All the while it has not occurred to him, in the exercise of his special functions, to collate Tittis critically with the contemporary Elizabethan drama, any more than he has thought of comparing Shakespeare's prose with the other prose of the time in pronouncing on its special merits. I cannot promise him that he will find such collation a " luxury," but he had better attempt it or else abandon the discussion. Simple brow- beating will hardly avail him beyond the circle of his co-believers. It is true that German specialists have not advanced the study of Shakespeare in proportion to their admirable exertion of industry ; though it was left to Professor Sarrazin, after Mr. Fleay, to make the first careful investigation as to Kyd ; and German monographs on questions of English literature are generally helpful by their attention to detail. What is too often lacking in German work of this kind is the due operation of critical judgment. In the current edition of Schmidt's Shakespeare-Lexikon, revised and edited by Pro- fessor Sarrazin, there remain uncorrected the most monumental of the absurdities exposed by Richard Grant White a generation ago — the " squeaking Cleopatra-boy," the explanation of the crocodile in Hamlet's rant as being a " mournful animal," and a score of other "howlers." If the circulation of such follies is persisted in as a propagation of scholarly knowledge, the hope of useful contribution EPILOGUE 243 by German experts to the deeper questions of English literary history will indeed dwindle. But at present, in view of the contributions of Professor Collins and Mr. Baildon, it cannot be said that native criticism would be well advised to throw stones at the alien. The investigation seems quite as likely to be carried on elsewhere as in England. Professor Kellner, of Czernowitz, who knows English literature with peculiar intimacy, spon- taneously recoils, in his comprehensive volume on Shakespeare,' from the belief that Titus is of Shakespeare's invention. And German professors do at least work at their business. When Mr. Fleay in the second edition of his Manual sug- gested that Peele wrote Titus, he met with no countenance from native critics ; and Professor Schroer, having seen only his alternative theory naming Marlowe, dealt with that, which was at least more than his English fellow-students did. When Mr. A. W. Verity, in 1890, put on record as " worth a thought " his suggestion that Titus was " precisely the type of work that Peele might have written," it seems to have met with almost no attention in England, being indeed entombed in an edition de luxe which no student was likely to handle. Dr. Grosart's thesis of Greene's author- ship, in its turn, was published in the Englische Studien, apparently in the knowledge that no English periodical would print it. And the present thesis in its turn is fully as likely to be examined by German scholars as by English, with whatever result. ' Shakespeare, Berlin, etc., igoo, p. 24. 244 EPILOGUE On the whole, the position of Shakespeare-study appears to be most hopeful in the United States, whence have latterly come the only important contributions to the problem hereinbefore treated of. I can but trust that Professor Baker and his students will carry their scholarly investigations further. If only the field be scientifically examined, there will be plenty of work for another generation. Should the foregoing results in the main stand criticism — as distinct from denunciation — they will be in large part applicable to the whole series of problems set up by the earlier plays ascribed to Shakespeare. With those problems, however, I have only incidentally dealt, preferring so to limit the discussion as to avoid all appearance of an argument in a circle. The present thesis logically stands or falls by the main issues raised ; and those who find the survey of the single problem an undue demand on their time would not be likely to forgive the addition of half-a-dozen more. GENERAL INDEX Aaron, character of, 45-6, 213, 220 Agnosticism and criticism, 6-7 Ajax, the, of Sophocles, 226 Alliteration in Elizabethan drama, 88 sq., 186 Anachronisms in Elizabethan drama, 21 1-2 Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, 38, 123 sq., 221-3, 225 Alphonsus King of Arragon, 39 Animals, allusions to, 205, 234 Aristotelian canon in tragedy, 217. Arden of Feversham, 37, 151 sq. Arraignment of Paris, 46, 74, 75 Baconian theory, 6-7 Baildon, H. B., 2, 5, 50, 65, 226, 243 on " anti-Shakespeareans," 6-8 on chronology of the pro- blem, 9 on Ravenscroftand Malone, II on the evidence of Meres, 13 on the date of Titus, 21 on Grosart, 100-2 on Shakespeare's anachro- nisms, 211 surrender of case by, 212 on plot of Titus, 222, 230, 233 Baker, Professor, cited, 19, 20, 21, 220, 244 Battle of Alcazdr, 34, 73, 75, 89 Beaumont and Fletcher, verse of, 190 Boas, Professor, on Titus, 2, 8 on its date, 24 on its plot, 234 , on the Spanish. Tragedy, 44 on Marlowe, 187, note Boswell, A. , 6 Brabine, 25, note Brown, Professor J. M., cited, 163, 170 Bullen, A. H., cited, 75, 115, 187, note Cambyses, 113, 130, note Chalmers, 6 Chapman, 123 sq. Chaucer, 5 Chettle, 22, 30 Circumstantial evidence, 10 Classical allusions in Elizabethan drama, 46, 1 25, 225 sq. Coleridge, 6, 7 Collaboration, early, 31 Collier, cited, 138, 190 Collins, Professor, on German criticism, 2, 241 on opponents, 5-6 contradicts himself, 8 on Ravenscroft, 1 1 on chronology, 21, 22-24 on Shakespearean style, 33 sq., 43 sq. on the Spanish Tragedy, 44 on Shakespeare's classical knowledge, 227 Comedy of Errors, date of, 27, 19s sq. Contention of York and Lancas- ter, 38, 44, 73, 122 24s 246 GENERAL INDEX Cornelia, Kyd's trans, of Gar- nier's, 114 Courthope, Professor, on Kyd, 45, note ; on Greene, 163 Crawford, C., on T. A., 9, 65, 68 on Ravenscroft, 12 on Shakespeare's imita- tions, 68 Daniel, P. A., cited, 172 Darley, G., cited, ^go, note David and Bethsabe, 37, 39, 49, 52, 69, 74, 89, 163, 217 Delius, 4 Devecmon, 54 Dido, 36, 134 Double-endings, evolution of, 184 sq. Dumb-shows in Elizabethan drama, 219 Dyce, cited, 28, 42, 164 Edmund, character of, 46-6 Ed-ward I, 37, 75 Ed-ward II, alterations of, 31, 131 words and phrases in, 44, 131 sq. Ed-ward III, phrases and words in, 30, 38 authorship of, 138 sq. double-endings in, 192, 198 versification of, 199 Edwards, Richard, 75 Elze, on date of Titus, 24 on word-test, 62, note on Alphonsus Emperar of Germany, 124 sq. Euphues, 164, note ; cited, 60, ^, 105, 145, note, 177 Farmer, ix, 6 Ferrex andPorrex, 89, 94, 1 86, 1 87 Fleay, ix, i, i. onShakespeare'scompany, 14-1S on the editing of Locrtne, 16, 84 on Ed-ward III, 30 on Marlowe'shand in Titus, "S on Peele's hand in Titus, ix, 115, 243 Fleay, on Alphons-us Emperor of Germany, 123 on authorship of Ed-ward III, 138-9 on Lodge's unsigned work, 176 on the additions to the Spanish Tragedy, 179, note services of, to Shakespeare- study, X, 186 on plot of Titus, 230 Fletcher, 3, 25, 190 Fuller, H. de W., 19, 220-1 Furnivall, cited, 2, 27-28, 195 George-a-Greene, 48, 192 German criticism, i, 2, 8, 240-3 Ghosts in Elizabethan drama, 219 Gosse, 2 Greene, his share in Locrine, iS.9Ssq., 114 on Shakespeare's early work, 22, 30, 41-2 parallels from, in Titus, 35, 39. 40> 41. 44. 48 share of in Richard Duke of York, 42 share of in Henry K/group, 17, 141 author of Selimus, 41, 105, no — — his literary fecundity, 141 his early use of " for to," 107 his clinging to rhyme, 1 10 his rapid dramatic develop- ment, 162 legal terminology in, 57 repetitiveness of, 60, 61 unsigned work of, 141 sq. his opinions, no his character, 142 and Lodge, 118 traces of, in King Leir and his three Daughters, 122 in Alphons-us Emperor of Germany, 130 in Ed-ward III, 140, 144 sq., 156, 170 — — in Sir Clyomon, 142 GENERAL INDEX 247 Greene, traces of, in The Spanish Tragedy, 173, 209 in Soliman and Per- seda, 155 sq., 173 in Ardenof Feversham, '54 in Taming ofh Shrew, 157, 182 in Taming of the Shrew, 182 Grosart, on Ravenscroft's testi- mony, 12-13 on Greene's authorship of Titus, X, 35, 40-41, 100, 243 on Selimus, 41, 1 10 Hallam, 6, 7 Halliwell-Phillips, 2, 14-15 Hamlet, 218 Hecatompathia, Watson's, 114 Hecuba, the, of Euripides^ 226 sq. iHenrylV,afisxU>s of, 16, 17, 18 Henry V, quartos of, 16-17 Henry VI group of plays, authorship of, 3, 17, 80, 122 1 Henry VI, authorship of, 17, 176, 193 2 Henry VI, Shakespeare's hand in, 193 Henry VIII, Fletcher's share in, 3. 25 Henslowe's diary, 14 Herford, Professor, cited, 235 Higher criticism, the, 6-7 Hopkinson, A. F., cited, 86, raofe Horn, Franz, i, 240 Horrors in Elizabethan drama, 219 lAGO, character of, 45-6 Iconoclasm, charge of, 6 Ingleby, Dr., cited, 4 Jack Straw,\20, 121 James IV, 162 sq., 167 sq., 171 Jests, hackneyed, in Elizabethan plays, 210 Jew of Malta, The, 213, 223 Johnson, Dr., 6, 12 Jonson, Ben, evidence of, 20,220 Johnson, Ben, additions by, to Spanish Tragedy, 179 versification of, 190 Kant, 7, 8 Kellner, Professor, 244 King John, 199 King Leir and his Three Daughters, 112, 122, 123, 176 sq. Knight, Charles, i, 10, 11, 240 Kyd, 30, 44-5, 107, ii4sq. legal terminology in, 56 share of, in Arden of Fever- sham, 151 sq. trace of, in Richard III, 152 in Soliman and Per- seda, 153 probable author of Taming of a Shrew, 182 supposed connection of, w'lih Edward III, 172 evolution of his technique, 194 possible share of, in Titus, 107, 114 sq., 209, 213, 216, 223 probable author of the old Hamlet, 219 Lamb, cited, 179 'Larum for London, A, 176, 177 sq. Lavinia, character of, 218, 221 Lee, Miss J., 3 Sidney, cited, 54 Legal allusions in Elizabethan drama, 46, 53 sq. Lloyd, W. W., 7 Locrine, 15, 44, 51, 52, 186, 217, 219 compared with Titus, 84 sq. authorship of, 84 sq. Lodge, Shakespeare's imitation of, 22 repetitiveness of, 61, 119 imitated Greene, 182, 183 vocabulary of, in Titus, 117 sq., 177 sq., 183 supposed share in Leir,i23 248 GENERAL INDEX Lodge, his Rosalynde, 165 his unsigned work, 176 sq. — — share of, in The Shrew, 182 his use of double-endings, 190 sq., 19s Love's Labour's Lost, date of, 27, 196, 198 Lusfs Dominion, 46 Lyly, imitations of, 60, 182, 207 work of, 164, note, 165 Madness in Elizabethan drama, 219 Malone, 6, 7 Margaret, character of, 45-6 Marlowe, share of, in H. VI plays, I, 7, 42, 131, 139, 174. 194. 199 editing of, 31, 221 supposed share of, in Titus, X, 32, IIS, 217. 223 his vocabulary in Titus, 116 imitated by Greene and Peele, 60, 129 imitated by Kyd, 123 his devotion to blank verse, no, 187 sq. his literary evolution, 187 sq., 223 share of, m Richard III, ijQ semblance of style of, i n A 'Larum for London, 179 Marston, 179 Massacre at Paris, The, 31, 38, 132. '3S sq- Massinger, verse of, 190 Meres, evidence of, lo-ii, 13, 17, 18, 184 Metre and versification in Eliza- bethan drama, 184 sq. Midsummer Nigh fs Dream, date of, 28, 196, 198 Milton, verse of, 190 Misfortunes of Arthur, The, 188 Mosely, 123 Mucedortis, 180 Nash, alleged share of, in Dido, 36 travels of, in Germany, 131, note ; cited, 141 ; connec- tion of, with Greene, 192, note Nature, allusions to, in Eliza- bethan drama, 46 Nicholson, Dr., 13 Oldcastle, Sir John, 15 Old Wives' Tale, 68 ; possible share of Greene in, 105 Pathos, alleged, in Titus, 49 Peele, an author of Titus, 16, 71 an author of Locrine, 15- 16 parallels from, in Titus, 34, 36. 37. 64 sq., 128, 214, 221 style of, in 'Titus, 201 sq. legal terminology in, 55-6 repetitiveness of, 60 imitativeness of, 132 probable author of Sir Clyo- mon and Sir Clamydes, 75-6 vocabulary of, in Titus, 77 sq. mannerisms of, 88 sq. unsigned work of, 120 sq. traces of, in Locrine, 85 sq. ; in Selimus, in ; in Soli- man andPerseda, in sq.; in Leir, 122 ; in Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, 126 sq.; in Edward II, 131 sq.; in Arden of Feversham, 153 his calumny on Queen Elinor, 142 his literary evolution, 190 sq. devoid of pathos, 215 his poetry rhetorical, 163 a student of Euripides and Sophocles, 227 Pericles, 3, 25 Plays within plays, in Eliza- bethan drama, 219 Polymnestor, story of, 226 Property, theatrical, 25-26 Quartos, the, publication of, 16-17 Raleigh, Professor, cited, 142 Rants, duplicated, 97-8, 224 GENERAL INDEX 249 Ravenscrofit, testimony of, 1 1 sq. Revenge-motive in Elizabethan drama, 218 Rhythm, test of, 200 Richard II, quartos of, 16 Richard III, non-Shakespearean work in, 6, 199 Richard Conqueror, 124 Richard Duke of York, 40, 42, 122 Romeo and Juliet, quartos of, 16, iS ; date of, 28 ; words and phrases in, 39 ; ori- ginal authorship of, 39, 196 Sacrifice, human, in Titus, 228 Sarrazin, 242 Schick, 44-s, 52 Schmidt's Shakespeare-Lexikon, 242 Schroer, 5, 10, 47, 60, 62, note, 195, note, 223, 228, 241 Seccombe and AUen, cited, 187, Tiote Selimus, 41, 95, 105, 217 Shakespeare, styles of, 3 wrote for only one com- pany, 14 may have revised Titus for the press, 16 his earlier work, 17 sq., 71, 19s, 228-9 alleged classical know- ledge of, 46, 228 alleged legal knowledge of, S3sq. supposed part author of Edward III, 138 sq., 170, 171 influenced as to style by Greene, 170 ; as to verse form by Lodge, 22 versification of, 189, 193, 197, 201 attitude of, to rants of his predecessors, 230 Sidney, 145, note, 191 Simpson, cited, 48, 62, 84 Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, 75' ''^^ , „ , Soliman and Perseda, no, in, 130. 151. iS3> iSS. 166 Spanish Tragedy, The, 44, 48,49, so, 52, 107, 114, 179, 186, 209, 217 Spedding, 2 Steevens, 6, 64, 226 Storojenko, Professor, cited, 163 Strange, Lord, company of, 14 Sussex, Lord, company of, 14 Symonds, cited, 163, 187 Tamburlaine, 49, 190, 223 Taming of the Shrew, 18, 80 Taming of a Shrew, 138, 157 Tancred and Gismunda, 94, 219 Tennyson, on Edward III, 138, 140, 161 Tests of authorship, scientific, 59 sq. Theobald, i, 6, 12, 226 Timon, 3 Tittus and Vespacia, 19, 20, 22a Titus and Andronicus, 19, 20 Titus Andronicus, general opin- ion as to authorship of, 3 external evidence as to, iosq.,237 technique of, 3, 13, 197 sq. plot of, 44, 45, 58, 202, 203, 217 sq., 221 Shakespeare's name not on quartos, 16, 19 extent of Shakespeare's revision of, 239 alleged Shakespearean touches in, 43 sq. Senecan structure of, 217 • horrors of, 217 sq. Troublesome Raigne of King John, The, 18, 122 Troynovant, 95 Two Gentlemen of Verona, date of, 28 ; words and phrases in, 38 ; authorship of, 38, 164, 196 Tylney, Charles, 84, 94 Ulrici, 138 United States, Shakespeare study in, 244 2SO INDEX TO WORDS CITED Venus and Adonis, date of, 22- 23 Verity, A. W., on Peele's author- ship of Titus, ix, 100, 243 ; on Marlowe, 187, note Villains, in Elizabethan drama, 213 Virg-inius, references to, 128-9, 222 Ward, Professor, cited, 30, 124, 138 Warning for Fair Women, A, 179 sq. White, R. G., 4, 242 Wilmot, 94 Wisdom of Doctor Doddypoll, 120 Wounds of Civil War, 48, 49, 118 Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 15 INDEX TO WORDS CITED Aby, 109 Accited, 203 Achieve, 182 Acquittance (vb.), 14s. 174 Adamant, 106 ^tna, 78, 80, 117 Aify, 78, 80, 103, 183 Abominated, 95 Alphabet, 77, loi, 102, 112 Ambodexter, 130 Anchorage, 77, 172 Anthropophag-i, 95 Antichrist, 137 Architect, 77, 79, loi, 102, 103, 116, 134 Aries, 77, 102 Arm-strong, 95 At^, 126 Battle-axe, 77, 79, 103 Battle-' ray, 143, 145 Bayard, 143, 144, 150 Bearwhelp, 77, loi Beautify, 83 Bedesman, 153 Besiege (n.), 147 Big-boned, 77, 103, Blood-drinking, 35, 78, 174, 180, 194 Blowse, 77, 177 Bonny, 143, 145, 147, 154, 182 Bonnier, 143, 144 Braves, 78, 80, 99, 103. 173. 182 Broach'd, 173 Burgonet,96, 143, 146 Candidatus, 77 Capitol, 229 Captivate, 95, 106, 109, 177 Cataline, 143 Caucasus, 78, 80 Chase, 65, 79 Checkered, 78, 98, 99. 103 Cimmerian, 77, 79 Cinders, 104 Cleanly, 106, 173 Closely, 106 Closure, 180 Coal-black, 83, 116 Cocytus, 166 Codding, 77 Coffin, 78, 184 Commonweal, 122 Complices, 154 Complot, 106, 109, 129, 130, 180 Consecrate, 83, 133 Continence, loi Conventicle, 148 Cony-catching, 183 Copesmate, 154 CoHsive, 108 Counsel - keeping, 128, 129, note, 205 Counsel - breaking, 128 Crevice, 77, 177 Cut (to sail), 96 Cynic, 148 Dandle, ioi, 102, 103 Dazzle (vb. intr.), lot, 102, 103, 109, 117, 122, iss, 209 Delineate, 147 Descant, 150 Devoid, 77, 99, 117, 122 Devourers, 77, loi Ding, 106 Doom, 126 Dreary, 77, 79, 116 Echinus, iio INDEX TO WORDS CITED 251 Egal, 77, 79 Emperess, 77, 79, 116, 126 Empery, 83, 103, 116 Enceladus, 77, 79, lOI Encouch, 143, 144 Endamag'e, 148 Entrails, 83 Entreats (n.), 77, 103, 109, 117, 203 Epicures, 177, 178 Execrable, 77, 103, 122 Expulsed, 143, 145 Extent, loi Extremes, 47, 48-9 Fact (= deed), 228 Faint-hearted, 78, 99, 109, 174 Fear(=frig:hten), 77, 106, 174 Fere, 77, 78, 79, 209 Flankers, 147 Foragement, 147 Foreslow, 133, 153, 177 Forg-ed, 1 10, note, 172 Gad, ioi, 209 Gleeful, 77 Gratulate, 77, 79, 103, no, note, 117, 126, 138 Grammar, 77 Guileful, 78, 117, 177 Ha-ha, 50 Headless, loi, 102 Heart-blood, 148 Honey-dews, 77, 79 Horizon, 143, 144 Hugy, 106, 126, 143 Hymenaeus, 77, loi Icarus, 174 Immanity, 180 Impall, 154 Imperator, 143, 144 Insinuate, 103, 116, 154 Inwired, 147, 148 Insinuate (= whee- dle), 103, 116, 154 Jelious, 151-2 Joy(=enjoy), 78, 80, n6, 117, 120, IS3 Judith, 148 Knot, 38, 80, 115, 208 Languor, 122, 207 Lavolto, 109 Leprous, 148 Lets (n.), 168 Libel, libelling, 116, 211 Loaf, 77 Love-day, 77, 80, 103, 203 Love-lays, 148 Lovely (= loving), 182 Man-of-war, 77, 79 Manly, 126 Mdintain, 77, 106, 173 Map, 96-7, 108, 128, 130. 13s. 172, 177 Martialist, 108, 172 Massacre, 126 Maugre, 103 Meacock, 182 Meanwhile, 78, 80, 103 Metamorphoses, 77 Miry, 78, 80 Misconster, 106, 172 Mistletoe, 104, 143, 206 Muster, 143, 144 Needly, 76 Negromancy, no Nemesis, 143, 144 Nutrimented, no, 122 Numb, 78, 80, 99, 116 OccisiON, 95 Oven, 104 Overslip, no Overshade, 103 Palliament, 64, 77, 79, 203 Pantheon, 77 Panther, 66, 77, 79, 103 Passionate (vb.), 77, IOI, 208 Passport, 108, 172, 177, 178 Patient (vb.), 77. 79. 154 Patronage (vb.), 143, 144, 174 Pattern, 155 Philomela, 77, 79, IOI, 103 Phoebe, 83 Pittering, 95 Plate, 143, 145, 177, 178 Platform, 155 Policy, 126 Polypus, no Popery, etc., 77, 81, 116, 122, 136, 137 Princox, 142 Progeny, 126 Progne, 77, loi, 103, 116 Prometheus, 77, 79, 13s Quittance ( vb. ), i 43 , HS. IS4 Rapine, Recureless, 81 Re-edify, 78, 99, 116, 203 Rejoice (n.), 191 Remunerate, 77, 79, 99. "2 Re-salute, 77, 79, 103 Resist (n.), 191 Represent, 78 Reproachful, 77, 79, 99. 173 2S2 INDEX TO PHRASES CITED Reveng-e (phrases on), 126 Ruthless, 83, 106, 122 Sacred, 126 Sacrificing-, 34, 126 Sapling, 78, 106 Sara, 148, 157 Satirical, 148 Semiramis, 79, 99 Sequestered, 77, 99, 122 Shipwreck, 104, 122, 123 Shive, 77 Shot, 74, 204 Sibyl, 106, 209 Signiory, 172 Solemnised, 126 Solitariness, 143, 145, 181 Sot (vb.), 148, 149 Spleenful, 77 Star-chamber, 148 Stanch, 77, 79 Styx, 1 16, 202 Successful, 72, 134, 177, 202 Successive, 106, 126 Sumptuously, 77,103, 203 Surquedry, 109 Suspect (n.), 122, 126 Sustenance, 77, 104, 116, 122, 134 'TiCE, 77, 79, 116, 13s. '53 Transfreting, 95 TriiSmpher, etc., 77, 79, 106, 126 TuUy, 77, 122, 133 Typhon, 77, 116 Unappeased, 77 Uncurls, 77 Underbear, 126 Unrecuring, 77, 81 Unrelenting, 77 Unsearched, 77 Ure, 143, 14s Vast, 47, 49 Vasture, 143, 144 Venerean, etc., 77, 98, 99, loi, 142, 205 Ventages, 148 Via, 143, 144 Virginius, 77, 128-9 Watery, 207 Whinyard, 143, 144 Wind (to scent), 77 Wistly, 148 Wreak, 77, 79, 117, 126 Wreakful, 77, 79 Youngling, 79, 80, 99. '73. '74. 182 Zodiac, 67-69, 126 INDEX TO PHRASES CITED Achilles' spear, 149 Armstrong darling, etc., 95 Ave Cssar, 139, 145-6 Babbling gossip, 38 Beating veins, etc., 127 Bee and spider (phrases on), 149, 181 Blind Bayard, 150 Blood on flowers, 36, 39-40 Bloody banquet, 127 Buckler thee, 154, 182 Buckle with, 174 Burgonet — trope alluding to, 9^7, 146-7 Chaos of confused mishaps, 98, 183 Conquering oneself, 166 Cooling card, 176 Cursed charms, 96 Cut loaf, shive of, 204 Deep extremes, 47, 48, 207 Distilling tears, 1 13 Eagle and birds, 40-41, 155 Engine of her thoughts, 36-7 Evils, of two, choose the least, 173 Faltering tongue, 76, 129 "For to," 107, 109, 113, 123, 182, 183 Fortune tied in a chain, 96-7 Full well I wot, etc., 113, 173 INDEX TO PHRASES CITED 2S3 Gallant girls, 123 Gallop apace, etc., 133-4, '9^^ 204 Gnats flying at the sun, 35, 42, 181 Golden wings, 97, 154. '55 Gorgeous beauty, 177 Grey morn, 35-36 Hammering in the head, 47-8, 1 17-9, 129, 174, 180 Intellectual soul, 148 Jacks kissing player's hand, 37 KiLL'ST my heart, 37-8, 135, 153 King or Keysar, 142 Lion and yielding prey, 155 Lukewarm blood, etc., 98, 183 Labyrinth of love, 123, 183 Lilies that fester, etc., 159, 171 Map of magnanimity, etc., 96-7, ip8, 128, 13s, 177, 183, 208 Mad mistaking eyes, 183 Mercy of the Gods, etc., 33, 121 More water floweth by the mill, etc., 104, 173, 204 Mourning weeds, 105, 116, 201, 202 Multitude, a, beast of many heads, 121-2 Never-ending perpetuity, iii, 112 Nightingale with prickle at her breast, 108, 154 Pattern of despair, 155 Patient thyself, 63, 154 Popish tricks, etc., 211 Prime and pride of all, etc., 107 Prison of the soul, etc. , 73, 208 Quiet unquietness, 107 Razor of Palermo, 176 Rest in unrest, 106, 209, 210, 214 Repose in rest, 34, 121 Rejoice in happiness, 210 Sacred wit, 81 Sad stories, 40 Sacrificing fire, 33, 34 Shallow-brained, 128 Shallow-hearted, 128 Sharp revenge, 81 Sickle in the corn, 151, 153, 178 Sorrow concealed, etc., 104-5, 156 Sorrow-wreathen knot, 38, 80, 115, 208 Spider's poison, 149, 155 Sprung from the loins, etc., iii Subscribe to advice, 128 Sumptuously re-edified, 202-3 (see " List of Words") Summer and winter mixed, 47, 48, 108 Sweet content, 105, 122, 183 Swelling heart, 73 Swift as swallows, 35, 72 Swilling Epicures, 177 Triple crown, 137 Two may keep counsel, etc., 38-9, 210 Uncontented content, 107 Vain suppose, 105, 174, 203 Vital blood, 127 Wash hands in blood, 41 Wat'ry eyes, 207 Weapon's point empoisoned, 130 With child (= eager), 123 Witness this, etc., 43-4 Woman, therefore to be wooed, etc., 34-5, 173, 176, 204 Where a man lives well, etc.. Writing on castle, 42, 207 Wrong the first and truest fere, 97 INDEX TO PASSAGES DISCUSSED IN "TITUS ANDRONICUS " II, i, I page 92, 200 II, ii, 24 page 72 9 92 iii, 8 „ 106 14 83 12-14 >. 5' 18 92 46 » 4« 66 „ 73 93-97 .. 20s 70 20I ill, 122-6 „ 53 75 201 166 210 82-3 93 194 66 83 73 200 „ 36.39 116-7 » 33 255 65 "9 » 121 IV, 31-2 „ 2'5 137-8 226 46 » 37 144 33 „r . S2-5 .. 2'5 145 ^ 33.74 Ill, 1, 4-5 93 150-6 » 214 "4-5 93 151 34. 121 17° .. 112 156-7 93 215-6 47.48 161-2 „ 214 227-9 93 182 64 239 93 206-7 .. 214 241 >. 211 230 215 250 „ 47, 116,210 263-4 92 253 .. 47 292-3 215 264 „ 50 318-9 „ ^1§ ", 4 » 38 493 66 10 „ 73 2 „ 92 12 „ 128 5-9 69,204 29 93 7 67, 204 33-4 .. 93 16-17 " 66, 204 37-8 "3 20-23 „ 93 38 233 48 93. "3 „, .. 82-3 40 71-2 » 173 IV, 11, 31 „ 106 82-3 34 78 93 103 „ 20s 94-7 225 120 „ 81 lOO-I „ 93 121 „ 83 131 .. 128 1-2 „ 35.74 144 38 21 „ 65,66 172 .. 72 254 INDEX TO " TITUS ANDRONICUS 2SS r. Hi, 32-3 page 93 V,ii, 65-6 37-44 224 66 83 210 172 iv, 81 82 83-6 211 42 40 iii, 13 29 36,50 V,i, 6 114 .?i 83 84-6 ii. 21-25 36 43 47 160-9 page 47 47.48 73 93 128 93 70 47 21S watts and co., pmnters, 17, Johnson's court, fleet street, London, e.c