scene echoes the close of 1 Tamburlaine, Act III; and the burial of Zenocrate is again clearly parodied in the burial of Salisbury (II. ii).1 All this means mimicry, conscious or unconscious. Frequently the imitation degenerates into travesty, as in the weak mouthing of Bedford (I. i. 148-156) and the atrocious rot of the whole scene in which Salisbury is stricken (I. iv). Imagine Marlowe making his chief hero say at the height of passion: 'What chance is this, that suddenly hath cross'd us? Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst speak,' etc. It is easier to conceive the mighty line to have attained the unsurpassable flatness of the messenger's words in II. iii. 29, 30: 'Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my Lady craves The real proof that Marlowe did not write Harry the Sixth is the absence of any passion except in scenes which bear marks of revision. The lines are usually musical and sometimes charming, and the stage action is interesting, but they are not irradiated by the electric intensity that scintillates in Marlowe. Till Shakespeare vivifies him in the fourth act, Talbot himself is but a skeleton in armor. 2. Greene ? Greene has been very often suggested as the author of this play, most recently by Gray, though with reservations, and most positively by Hart. I see nothing that renders such an attribution reasonable: Hart's verbal parallels seem quite without demonstrative value. Greene's essays in the chronicle his 1 Several of these similarities have been noted by Anders, Shakespeare's Books, p. 121. Sarrazin had previously mentioned the resemblance of Joan's appeal to Burgundy (III. iii) and Tamburlaine's appeal to Theridamas (305 ff.). tory drama are notably characteristic, and evidence a method entirely unlike that of this play. He nowhere exhibits any tendency toward patriotic themes or any interest in the facts of history. Rather in his quasi-historic plays, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and James IV (and in George-a-Greene if it be his), he yields to an apparently irresistible devotion for pastoral woodland settings, romantic love stories, quaint supernaturalism, and clownish roguery. Unless one can fancy Joan's brief address to her fiends (V. iii. 1-24) to be akin in atmosphere or purpose to the magic humbuggery of Bacon and the fairy machinery of Oberon, 1 Henry VI is wholly unlike Greene in all these points. It is unlike him both in the inflexibility with which it harps on the historical note, and in its absence of humor, sentiment, or pathos. Greene, of course, may have written the play, but it is less like his avowed work than that of any contemporary dramatist. 3. Peele ? It is not by a process of elimination merely that I arrive at George Peele as the most likely author of the old Harry the Sixth play. Indications of several kinds point in Peele's direction. He was at the time the work was produced distinctly the most conspicuous exponent of jingoistic national pride-a trait of which Marlowe shows absolutely nothing and Greene hardly more. Peele had composed the patriotic masques to celebrate the Lord Mayoralty of Sir Wolstan Dixie in 1585 and of Sir William Web in 1591. His Polyhymnia (1590) lauded in martial strains 'the honourable Triumph at Tilt' when Sir Henry Lea formally resigned his post of Queen's Champion, and he again touched the same theme in Anglorum Feriae (1595), written in honor of the thirty-seventh anniversary of Elizabeth's accession. In 1589 he had twice come forth as the spokesman of the nation: in his Eclogue Gratulatory to the Earl of Essex 'for his welcome into England from Portugal,' and in his fine Farewell, ‘Entituled to the famous and fortunate Generals of our English forces: Sir John Norris and Sir Francis Drake.' Later, again, in 1593, he linked the knighthood of his age with that of the past in The Honour of the Garter.1 His plays of the same period, Edward I and The Battle of Alcazar, are equally filled with the praise of English daring. No known author of 1591 has anything like the same claim on merely extrinsic evidence to be regarded as the author of a play in celebration of the martial exploits of the brave Lord Talbot.2 General similarities between Peele's Edward I and 1 Henry VI have been often noted, particularly the unhappy resemblance in the defamation of the Spanish Eleanor and the French Joan of Arc. One of the most insular of Britons, Peele was incapable of glorifying his countrymen without slandering the races they opposed. The undramatic line put into Joan's mouth (III. iii. 85), 'Done like a Frenchman: turn, and turn again!' is fairly characteristic of his bigotry. The verse of the older portions of the playsaccharine rather than strong, and the loose but animated structure are what one finds in Peele's recognized dramas. The imitation of Marlowe is 1 This poem should be compared with Talbot's speech, 'When first this order was ordained,' etc. (IV. i. 33 ff.). 2 Peele's favorite epigram, which he affixes at least three times to his poems, might well serve as motto for 1 Henry VI: 'Gallia victa dedit flores, invicta leones Anglia, jus belli in flore, leone suum; O sic, O semper ferat Anglia laeta (or 'Elizabetha') triumphos, Inclyta Gallorum flore, leone suo.' equally a feature of those which were produced after Tamburlaine.1 The Countess of Auvergne episode, with its grace and lack of human warmth, seems to me like Peele's work. In its relation to the military plot, and particularly in the military tableau with which it closes, it is very suggestive of the more elaborated Countess 1 Edward I 954: 'It is but temporal that you can inflict.' Edward II 1550: 'Tis but temporal that thou canst inflict.' Edward I 1165 f.: "This comfort, madam, that your grace doth give "These comforts that you give our woeful queen Edward I 2800: 'Hence, feigned weeds, unfeigned is my grief.' Edward II 1964: 'Hence, feigned weeds, unfeigned are my woes.' David & Bethsabe 12-14: "The host of heaven. cast Their crystal armor at his conquering feet.' Tamburlaine 1932: "There angels in their crystal armors fight.' David & Bethsabe 181: 'And makes their weapons wound the senseless winds.' Tamburlaine 1256: 'And make our strokes to wound the senseless air' ('lure' in first edition). Battle of Alcazar 190: "The bells of Pluto ring revenge amain.' Edward II 1956: 'Let Pluto's bells ring out my fatal knell." Battle of Alcazar 250: "Tamburlaine, triumph not, for thou must die.' Tamburlaine 4641: 'For Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God, must die.' (The line numbers for Peele's plays are those of the Malone Society editions.) of Salisbury episode in the anonymous Edward III. I give my adhesion to the conjecture of Farmer, already quoted, that 'Henry the sixth [in its earliest form] had the same Author with Edward the third, and believe that author to have been Peele.1 APPENDIX D THE TEXT OF THE PRESENT EDITION The text of the present volume is, by permission of the Oxford University Press, that of the Oxford Shakespeare, edited by the late W. J. Craig, except for the following deviations: 1. The stage directions are those of the original Folio edition, necessary additional words being inserted in square brackets. 2. The punctuation has been altered in many places, and the spelling normalized in the following instances: French place names in general (e.g., Champagne, Gisors, Poitiers, Bordeaux instead of Champaigne, Guysors, Poictiers, Bourdeaux); antic (antick), everywhere (every where), forfend (forefend), forgo (forego), immortaliz'd (immortalis'd), warlike (war-like). 3. The following alterations of the text have been made after collation with the Folio, readings of the present edition preceding and those of Craig following the colon. Except in the one case otherwise marked the changes all represent a return to the Folio text: I. v. 16 hungry-starved: hunger-starved 1 Cf. The Shakespeare Apocrypha, p. xxiii. |