NOTES. MR J. HERBERT STACK ON THE TWO N. K. 113 p. I. My dear L-. Altho' Prof. Spalding says that L. was an early and later friend of his, of great gifts and taste, and that he had visited the New World (p. 108), yet Mrs Spalding and Dr Burton have never been able to identify L., and they believe him to be a creation of the author's.-F. p. 4. Shakspere had fallen much into neglect by 1634. "After the death of Shakspeare, the plays of Fletcher appear for several years to have been more admired, or at least to have been more frequently acted, than those of our poet." Malone, Hist. Account of the English Stage, Variorum Shakspere of 1821, vol. ii. p. 224. And see the lists following, by which he proves his statement.-F. From the Paper with which Mr J. Herbert Stack opend the discussion at our Reading of the Two Noble Kinsmen, he has allowd me to make the following extracts : "To judge the question clearly, let us note how far the author or authors of the Two N.K. followed what was the basis of their drama-Chaucer's Knightes Tale. We have there the same opening incident-the petitions of the Queens, then the capture of the Two, then their sight of Emily from the prison window, the release of Arcite, his entry into Emilia's service, the escape of Palamon, the fight in the wood, the decree of Theseus, the prayers to Diana, Venus, and Mars, the combat, the victory in arms to Arcite, his death, and Palamon's eventual victory in love. But Chaucer is far superior to the dramatists. He has no Gaoler's Daughter to distract our thoughts. The language of his Palamon is more blunt, more soldierlike, more characteristic. His Emilia, instead of being equally in love with two men at the same time, prefers maidenhood to marriage, loves neither, but pities both. At the end of the play we have something coarse and hurried: Emilia, during the Tournament, is ready to jump into anybody's arms, so that he comes victorious; then she accepts Arcite; and on his sudden death, she dries her tears with more than the supposed celerity of a modern fashionable widow; and, before she is the widow of Arcite, consents to become the wife of Palamon. Contrast this with Chaucer, where the poem dedicates some beautiful lines to the funeral of Arcite and the grief of all, and only makes Emilia yield after years to the silent pleading of the woful Palamon and the urgency of her brother. Contrast the dying speeches in the two works. In the play, Arcite transfers Emilia almost as if he were making a will: "Item, I leave my bride to Palamon." In Chaucer, he says to Emilia that he knows of no man 'So worthy to be loved as Palamon, Forget not Palamon that gentil man.' Now here we have a play founded on a poem, the original delicate and noble, where the other is coarse and trivial; and we ask, 'Was this Shakspere's way of treating his originals?' In his earlier years he based his Romeo and Juliet on Brooke's poem of the same name—a fine work, and little disfigured by the coarseness of the time. Yet he pruned it of all really offensive matter, and has given us a perfect love-story, as ardent as it is pure. His skill in omission is remarkably shown in one respect. In Brooke's poem, Juliet, reflecting when alone on Romeo's sudden love, remembers that he is an enemy to her house, and suspects that he 8 SPALDING. 114 NOTES. MR J. HERBERT STACK ON THE TWO N. K. may intend dishonourable love as a base means of wreaking vengeance on hereditary foes. It seems to me that a thought so cunning is out of character with Juliet-certainly would have been felt as a stain on Shakspere's Juliet. That Shakspere deliberately omitted this, is known by one slight reference. Juliet says to Romeo, 'If thy intent of love be honourable, That is all-no cunning caution, no base doubt. Now if in this original, and in this play, we trace the very manner of Shakspere's working—taking up gold mixed with dross, and purifying it in the furnace of his genius--are we to suppose that later in life, with taste more fastidious, even if his imagination were less strong, he carried out a converse process; that he took Chaucer's gold, and mixed it with alloy? That, I greatly doubt. Also, would he imitate himself so closely as he is imitated in certain scenes of the Two N. K. Another point. Love between persons of very different rank has been held by many dramatists to be a fine subject for the stage. Shakspere never introduces it. Ophelia loves a Prince, and Violet a duke, and Rosalind a Squire's son ; but gentlehood unites all. Helena in All's Well is a gentlewoman. With anything like levelling aspirations Shakspere had clearly no sympathy. In no undoubted play of his have we, so far as I remember, any attempt to make the love of the lowly born for the high a subject of sympathy: there is no Beggar maid to any of his King Cophetuas. Goneril and Regan stoop to Edmund through baseness; Malvolio's love for Olivia is made ridiculous. The Gaoler's Daughter of the Two N. K. stands alone: like the waiting-maid in the Critic, she goes mad in white linen, and as painfully recalls Ophelia, as our cousins the monkeys remind us of men. In some other respects the poem is far superior to the play. Chaucer introduces the supernatural powers with excellent effect and tact-so as to soften the rigour of the Duke's decrees. In the Temple, Palamon, the more warlike in manners of the two, is the more reckless and ardent in his love: of a simpler nature, Venus entirely subdues and, at the same time, effectually befriends him. He prays to her not for Victory: for that he cares not: it matters not how events are brought about 'so that I have my lady in mine arms.' Arcite, the softer and more refined knight, prays simply for Victory. If it be true that love changes the nature of men, here we have the transformation. The prayer of each is granted, though they seem opposed-thus Arcite experiences what many of those who consulted old oracles found, 'the word of promise kept to the ear, broken to the hope.' Then in the poem Theseus freely forgives the two knights, but decides on the Tournament as a means of seeing who shall have Emilia. In the play he decides that one is to live and marry, the other to die. The absurdity of this needless cruelty is evident: it was possibly introduced to satisfy the coarse tastes of the audiences who liked the sight of an executioner and a block. In fact I would say the play is not mainly Shakspere's because of its unShaksperean depth. Who can sympathize with the cold, coarse balancing of Emilia between the two men-eager to have one, ready to take either; betrothed in haste to one, married in haste to another-so far flying in the face of the pure NOTES. MR J. HERBERT STACK ON THE TWO N. K. 115 beauty of the original, where Emilia never loses maidenly reserve. Then the final marriage of the Gaoler's Daughter is as destructive of our sympathy as if Ophelia had been saved from drowning by the grave-digger, and married to Horatio at the end of the piece. The pedantry of Gerrold is poor, the fun of the rustics forced and feeble, the sternness of Theseus brutal and untouched by final gentleness as in Chaucer. Another argument against Shakspere's responsibility for the whole play is the manner in which the minor characters are introduced and the underplot managed. A secondary plot is a characteristic of the Elizabethan drama, borrowed from that of Spain. But Shakspere is peculiar in the skill with which he interweaves the two plots and brings together the principal and the inferior personages. In Hamlet the soldiers on the watch, the grave-diggers, the players, the two walking gentlemen, even Osric, all help on the action of the drama and come into relation with the hero himself. In King Lear, Edmund and Gloster and Edgar, though engaged in a subsidiary drama of their own, get mixed up with the fortunes of the King and his daughters. In Othello, the foolish Venetian Roderigo and Bianca the courtesan have some hand in the progress of the play. In Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse and the Friar are agents of the main plot, and the ball scene pushes on the action. In Shylock, Lancelot Gobbo is servant to the Jew, and helps Jessica to escape. I need not multiply instances, as in Much Ado about Nothing, Dogberry, &c. As far as my own recollection serves, I do not believe that in any play undoubtedly Shakspere's we have a single instance of an underplot like that of the Gaoler's Daughter. It might be altogether omitted without affecting the story. Theseus, Emilia, Hippolyta, Arcite, Palamon, never exchange a word with the group of Gaoler's Daughter, Wooer, Brother, two Friends and Doctor; and Palamon's only remembrance of her services is that at his supposed moment of execution he generously leaves her the money he had no further need of to help her to get married to a remarkably tame young man who assumes the name of his rival in order to bring his sweetheart to her senses. If this underplot is due to Shakspere, why is there none like it in all his works? If these exceedingly thin and very detached minor characters are his, where in his undoubted plays are others like them-thus hanging loosely on to the main machinery of a play? Nor must we forget that if this underplot is Shakspere's, it is his when he was an experienced dramatist—so that after being a skilful constructor and connecter of plot and underplot in his youth, his right hand forgot its cunning' in his middle age. Two other arguments. In the Prologue of the play, written and recited when it was acted, there are two passages expressing great fears as to the result, – -one that Chaucer might rise to condemn the dramatist for spoiling his story, -another that the play might be damned, and destroy the fortunes of the Theatre1. Is this the way in which a play partly written by Shakspere-then near the close of his successful stage career-would be spoken of on its production? Another argument is, if Shakspere, using Chaucer's poem as a model, spoiled it in dramatising it2, then as a poet he was inferior to Chaucer-which is absurd. 1 Does not this as much imply that Fletcher knew he had spoiled what Shakpere would have done well?-H. L. 2 But this is confessedly the case with Chaucer's Troilus.-F. [Not quite. In 116 NOTES.-MR J. HERBERT STACK ON THE TWO N. K. Following high authorities, anybody may adopt any opinion on this play and find backers-the extremes being the German Tieck, who entirely rejects the idea of Shakspere's authorship, and Mr Hickson, who throws on him the responsi bility for the whole framework of a play and the groundwork of every character. I should incline to the middle opinion1, that Shakspere selected the subject, began the play, wrote many passages; had no underplot, and generally left it in a skeleton state; that Fletcher took it up, patched it here and there, and added an underplot ;—that Fletcher, not Shakspere, is answerable for all the departures from Chaucer, for all the underplot, and for the revised play as it stands. There is nothing improbable in this. After Shakspere retired to Stratford, Fletcher may have found the play amongst the MSS. of the Theatre, and then produced it after due changes made-not giving the author's name. At that time it was the custom that a play remained the property of the company of actors who produced it. That the Blackfriars Company did not regard the play as Shakspere's is pretty plain-for in the edition of 1623, published by Heminge and Condell of that company, Shakspere's own fellow-players, the play is not included. Nor does the part authorship account for the omission, as plays with less of Shakspere's undoubted authorship are there included. But the omission is intelligible if the play had been so Fletcherised that it was, when acted, generally regarded as Fletcher's. Fletcher was alive in 1623 to claim all as his property; but in 1634 he was dead. Then the publisher, knowing or hearing that Shakspere had a share, printed his name, after Fletcher's, as part dramatist. Thus I return to the older verdict of Coleridge and Lamb, that Shakspere wrote passages of this play, perhaps also the outlines, but that Fletcher filled up, added an underplot, and finally revised. Troilus the travestie is intentional: in the Two N. K. Chaucer is solemnly Cibberised.-J. H. S.] 1 Also my view-though I hesitate to express a firm opinion on the matter--PERHAPS Shakspere worked on the 1594 play as a basis?---H. L. INDEX. ALFIERI. His intensity, p. 91. As you like it, 75, 100. Beautiful, the, in Art, 85, 89. Bridal Song in Two Noble Kinsmen, 27. of pleasure,' 42, 102; popularity, 4; plots Folios, Shakspere's first and second, 6-9. Greek arts of design, poetry contrasted Henry VIII, 109. Classical allusions in contemporary writers, Hamlet, 94, 104, 106. Date of the Two Noble Kinsmen 1634, 4. Editors, Shakspere's first, 6-8. Epic poetry, 92. Evidence as to authorship of the Two N. K., Historical, 3—5; Internal, 10—25. FLETCHER. His co-authors, 5, 6; diffuse- Invention defind by Alfieri, 92 n. JONSON, BEN. Comparative failure in de- LYLY. His faults, 22. |