before us stands alone, in conclusion, as a friendly warning out of his own terrible example:-"To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." To three of his quondam acquaintance the dying man addresses himself. To the first, supposed to be Marlowe "thou famous gracer of tragedians"-he speaks in words as terrible as came from

"that warning voice, which he who saw Th' Apocalypse heard cry in heaven aloud."

In exhorting his friend to turn from atheism, he ran the risk of consigning him to the stake, for Francis Kett was burnt for his opinions only three years before Greene's death. That Marlowe resented this address to him we have the testimony of Chettle. With his second friend, supposed to be Lodge, his plain speaking is much more tender: "Be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words." He addresses the third, supposed to be Peele, as one "driven as myself to extreme shifts; and he adds, "thou art unworthy better hap sith thou dependest on so mean a stay." What is the stay? "Making plays." The exhortation then proceeds to include the three "gentlemen his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays."-" Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths: those antics garnished in our colours." Up to this point the meaning is perfectly clear. The puppets, the antics,-by which names of course are meant the players, whom he held, and justly, to derive their chief importance from the labours of the poet, in the words which they uttered and the colours with which they were garnished,—had once cleaved to him like burs. But a change had taken place : "Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding-is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be, both, of them at once forsaken?" This is a lamentable picture of one whose powers, wasted by dissipation and enfeebled by sickness, were no longer required by those to whom they had once been serviceable. As he was forsaken, so he holds that his friends will be forsaken. And chiefly for what reason? "Yes, trust them not for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you: and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." There can be no doubt that Shakspere was here pointed at; that the starving man spoke with exceeding bitterness of the successful author; that he affected to despise him as a player; that, if "beautified with our feathers" had a stronger meaning than "garnished in our colours," it conveyed a vague charge of borrowing from other poets; and that he parodied a line from "The Contention." This is literally every word that can be supposed to apply to Shakspere. Greene proceeds to exhort his friends "to be employed in more profitable courses."—"Let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.""Seek you better masters." It is perfectly clear that these words refer only to the players generally; and possibly, to the particular company of which Shakspere was a member. As such, and such only, must he take his share in the names which Greene applies to them, of " apes,' "-"rude grooms,"-" buckram gentlemen,""peasants," and "painted monsters." It will be well to give the construction that has been put upon these words, in the form in which the "hypothesis" was first propounded by Malone :

"Shakspeare having therefore, probably not long before the year 1592, when Greene wrote his dying exhortation to his friend, new-modelled and amplified these

two pieces (the two parts of the 'Contention'), and produced on the stage what in the folio edition of his works are called the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI., and having acquired considerable reputation by them, Greene could not conceal the mortification that he felt at his own fame, and that of his associate, both of them old and admired playwrights, being eclipsed by a new upstart writer (for so he calls our great poet), who had then first perhaps attracted the notice of the public by exhibiting two plays, formed upon old dramas written by them, considerably enlarged and improved. He therefore in direct terms charges him with having acted like the crow in the fable, beautified himself with their feathers; in other words, with having acquired fame furtivis coloribus, by new-modelling a work originally produced by them and wishing to depreciate our author, he very naturally quotes a line from one of the pieces which Shakspeare had thus re-written, a proceeding which the authors of the original plays considered as an invasion both of their literary property and character. This line, with many others, Shakspeare adopted without any alteration. The very term that Greene uses,-'to bombast out a blank-verse,'—exactly corresponds with what has been now suggested. This new poet, says he, knows as well as any man how to amplify and swell out a blank-verse. Bumbast was a soft stuff of a loose texture, by which garments were rendered more swelling and protruberant."

Thus then, the starving and forsaken man-rejected by those who had been "beholding" to him; wanting the very bread of which he had been robbed, in the appropriation of his property by one of those who had rejected him; a man, too, prone to revenge, full of irascibility and self-love-contents himself with calling his plunderer an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers "-" A Johannes factotum" "The only Shake-scene in the country." "He could not conceal his mortification!" It would have been miraculous if he could. And how does he exhibit it? He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home-to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of the very writer attacked.† Be this as it may, the dying man, for some cause or other, chose to veil his deep wrongs in a sarcastic allusion. He left the manuscript containing this allusion to be published by a friend; and it was so published. It was "a perilous shot out of an elder gun." But the matter did not stop here. The editor of the posthumous work actually apologised to the "upstart crow: "- "I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself hath seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." This apology was not written by Chettle at some distant period; it came out in the same year with the pamphlet which contained the insult. terms which he uses-"uprightness of dealing," and "facetious grace in writing”— seem as if meant distinctly to refute the vague accusation of "beautified with our feathers." It is perfectly clear that Chettle could not have used these terms if Shakspere had been the wholesale plunderer, either of Greene or of any other writer, that it is assumed he was by those who deprive him of the authorship of the two Parts of the "Contention." If he had been this plunderer, and if Chettle had basely

The

* Malone gives here a special application to the term bombast, as if it were meant to express the amplification of the old plays charged against Shakspere. The term had been used by Nashe five years before:-"Idiot art-masters, that intrude themselves to our ears as the alchymists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blank-verse." (Epistle prefixed to Greene's "Menaphon," 1587.)

"Edin. Review," July, 1840.

apologised for a truth uttered by his dying friend, would the matter have rested there? Were there no Peeles, and Marlowes, and Nashes in the world, to proclaim the dishonour of the thief and the apologist?

There was an indistinct echo of Greene's complaint, by some "R. B." in 1594 :

"Greene gave the ground to all who wrote upon him.

Nay, more; the men that so eclips'd his fame
Purloin'd his plumes,-can they deny the same?"

We believe that there never yet appeared any great author in the world who was not reputed, in the onset of his career, to be a plagiarist; or any great literary performance produced by one whose reputation had to be made that was not held to be written by some one else than the man who did write it :-there was some one behind the curtain-some mysterious assistant-whose possible existence was a consolation to the envious and the malignant. Examples in our own day are common enough. "R. B." was probably one of these small critics. If he is held for any authority, we may set against him the indignant denial of Nashe that he had anything to do with "Greene's Groat's Worth of Wit," which he denounces as a “scald, trivial, lying pamphlet." Nashe, be it remembered, was the friend and companion of the unfortunate Greene.

It appears to us that Greene, in his attack on the reputation of our great poet, has rendered to his memory the most essential service. He has fixed the date of the "Second Part of the Contention." However plausible may be the conjectures as to the early production of two or three of Shakspere's comedies, the "Romeo and Juliet," and even the first "Hamlet," there is no positive landmark on them for our direction. But in the case of the First Part of "Henry VI.," and the two Parts of the "Contention," we have the most unquestionable proof, in Greene's parody of a line from the Second Part (the third of the series), that they were popularly known in 1592. The three Parts are so dependent each upon the other, that the order of their production must have been the order of the historical events. They either belonged, therefore, to the first half of the decad between 1585 and 1595, or they touched very closely upon it. Important considerations with reference to Shakspere's share in the original building up of that mighty structure, the drama of Elizabeth, depend upon the establishment of this point, in connexion with the proof that these dramas were originally written by one poet-that the three Parts of "Henry VI," and the "Richard III." emanated from the same mind.

This is not the place for the examination of this question, which is purely critical. A full "Illustration" of the unity of these four dramas will be found in a subsequent volume.

It is highly probable that, when the First Part of "Henry VI" was originally produced, the stage had possession of a complete series of chronicle histories, rudely put together, aspiring to little poetical elevation, and managed pretty generally after the fashion described by Gosson, in a pamphlet against the stage printed about 1581 :-" If a true history be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, longest at the rising and falling of the sun, shortest of all at high noon; for the poets drive it most commonly into such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical speeches, or set the hearers agog with discourses of love, or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts, or bring in a show to furnish the stage when it is bare: when the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of a cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it out." The truth is, that up to the period when Shakspere reached the age of manhood, there were no artists in existence competent to produce an historical play superior to these rude performances. The state of the drama generally is thus succinctly, but most

correctly noticed by an anonymous writer:-"From the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed, the drama lingered in the last stage of a semi-barbarism. Perhaps we do not possess any monument of the time except Whetstone's 'Promos and Cassandra;' but neither that play, nor any details that can be gathered respecting others, indicate the slightest advance beyond a point of development which had been reached many years before by such writers as Edwards and Gascoyne. About 1585, or Shakspere's twenty-first year, there opened a new era, which, before the same decad was closed, had given birth to a large number of dramas, many of them wonderful for the circumstances in which they rose, and several possessing real and absolute excellence." Of the poets which belong to this remarkable decad, we possess undoubted specimens of the works of Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Lodge, Greene, Kyd, and Nashe. There are one or two other inferior names, such as Chettle and Munday, connected with the latter part of this decad. We ourselves hold that Shakspere belongs to the first as well as to the second half of this short but most influential period of our literature. Of those artists to whom can be possibly imputed the composition of the First Part of "Henry VI," there are only five in whom can be traced any supposed resemblance of style. They are- Peele, Marlowe, Greene, Lodge, and Kyd. The First Part of "Henry VI." was therefore either written by one of these five poets, or by some unknown author whose name has perished, or by Shakspere. We believe that it was written by Shakspere in his

earliest connection with the dramatic art. We hold that the First Part of "Henry VI.," in all the essentials of its dramatic construction, is, with reference to the object which its author had in view of depicting a series of historical events with poetical truth, immeasurably superior to any other chronicle history which existed between 1585 and 1590. It has been called a drum-and-trumpet thing." The age in which it was produced was one in which the most accomplished of its courtiers said, "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet: and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar!"+ He who made the " drum-and-trumpet thing" desired to move men's hearts as Sydney's was moved. He saw around him thousands who crowded to the theatres to witness the heroic deeds of their forefathers, although "evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age ;" and it was he who first seized upon the great theme for his own, and "trimmed" it in his own gorgeous eloquence." And what, if the music which he first uttered had a savour of the rough voice and the rude style which had preceded him? What, if his unpractised hand sometimes struck the notes of timidity and unskilfulness? What, if he now and then hurried away even from the principles of his own art, and appeared to start at "sounds himself had made?" He did what no other man up to that day had done, and long after did,he banished the "senseless and soulless shows" of the old historical drama, and at once raised up a stage "ample and true with life." To understand the value of the First Part of "Henry VI.," we must have a competent knowledge of the chronicle histories which had preceded it. We must also have a knowledge of the productions of those dramatists who were the contemporaries of Shakspere's first period. The dramatists are briefly indicated in another place.‡ We have something to add with reference to him who was unquestionably the next in intellectual rank to "the greatest in all literature." He alone makes any approach to the peculiar merits of the three dramas of "Henry VI.," in their original form. * "Edin. Review," July 1840, p. 469. Sir Philip Sydney's "Defence of Poetry." "Studies," Book I., Chap. VI.

It has long been the fashion to consider Marlowe as the precursor of Shakspere ; to regard Marlowe as one of the founders of the regular drama, and Shakspere only as an improver. We may say a few words as to the external evidence for this belief, before we proceed to the internal evidences. Marlowe was killed in a wretched brawl on the 1st of June, 1593. He was then in his thirty-first year, being born in February, 1563-4. He was only two months older than Shakspere. We owe this discovery of Marlowe's age to the Rev. A. Dyce, whose labours in connection with the old Drama are so valuable and meritorious.* A native of Canterbury, he was educated at the King's School in that city; and was matriculated as a pensioner of Corpus-Christi College, Cambridge, in 1580-1. He took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1583; and that of Master of Arts in 1587. Phillips, in his "Theatrum Poetarum," thus speaks of him :-" Christopher Marlowe, a kind of a second Shakspere (whose contemporary he was), not only because like him he rose from an actor to be a maker of plays, though inferior both in fame and merit," &c. We have no distinct record of Marlowe as an actor. We know that he was early a maker of plays. He probably became a dramatic writer about the time he took his Master's degree in 1587. "Tamburlaine" is mentioned by Greene in 1588. But "Hamlet" is mentioned by Nashe in 1589, in his address prefixed to Greene's "Menaphon : "+ "It is a common practice now-a-day, among a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse if they should have need; yet English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as Bloud is a Beggar, and so forth: and, if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole 'Hamlets,' I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches." This quotation is held to furnish the external evidence that Shakspere had been an attorney, by the connection here implied of "the trade of Noverint" and "whole Hamlets." Noverint was the technical beginning of a bond. It is imputed, then, by Nashe, to a sort of shifting companions, that, running through every art and thriving by none, they attempt dramatic composition, drawing their tragical speeches from English Seneca. Does this description apply to Shakspere? Was he thriving by no art? In 1589 he was established in life as a sharer in the Blackfriars' theatre. Does the use of the term "whole Hamlets" fix the allusion upon him? It appears to us only to show that some tragedy called "Hamlet," it may be Shakspere's, was then in existence; and that it was a play also at which Nashe might sneer as abounding with tragical speeches. But it does not seem to us that there is any absolute connection between the Noverint and the Hamlet." Suppose, for example, that the "Hamlet" alluded to was written by Marlowe, who was educated at Cambridge, and was certainly not a lawyer's clerk. The sentence will read as well; the sarcasm upon the tragical speeches of the "Hamlet" will be as pointed; the shifting companion who has thriven by no art, and has left the calling to which he was born, may study English Seneca till he produces "whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches." In the same way Nashe might have said whole Tamburlaines of tragical speeches, without attempting to infer that the author of "Tamburlaine" had left the trade of Noverint. We believe that the allusion was to Shakspere's "Hamlet," but that the first part of *"Some Account of Marlowe and his Writings;" in the Rev. A. Dyce's edition of Marlowe, 1850.

The first recorded edition of Greene's "Menaphon" bears the date of 1589. Nashe in the introductory epistle promises a satirical work called "Anatomy of Absurdities," and in 1589 such a work appears. Mr. Dyce, however, fixes the date of the first edition of "Menaphon" as 1587; but he cites the title from the earliest edition he has met with, that of 1589. It would be satisfactory to know upon what authority an earlier date than that of 1589 is given to Nashe's edition.