APPENDIX C

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAY

I. SHAKESPEARE'S CONCERN IN IT

With regard to the connection of Shakespeare with 1 Henry VI four different opinions have been put forward:

(1) Shakespeare had no part in the play. This was apparently the view of Richard Farmer, who says (Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, 1767): 'Henry the sixth hath ever been doubted; and [Nashe's allusion in Pierce Penniless] may give us reason to believe it was previous to our Author. .

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I have no doubt but Henry the sixth had the same Author with Edward the third.' Malone1 and Drake2 took the negative position strongly, and Collier flirted with it, while more recently Dowden (Shakspere: His Mind and Art, 173; Shakspere Primer, etc.) and Furnivall (Introduction to Leopold Shakspere) have virtually denied any real trace of Shakespeare in the work.

(2) Shakespeare wrote the entire play. Samuel Johnson favored this hypothesis, arguing that 'from mere inferiority nothing can be inferred; in the productions of wit there will be inequality.' He was supported by his colleague Steevens, who remarks:

1 Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, 1823, v. 246: 'I am therefore decisively of opinion that this play was not written by Shakspeare'; ibid., xviii. 557: Part I is 'the entire or nearly the entire production of some ancient dramatist.'

2 Shakspeare and his Times, 1817, ii. 293: "The hand of Shakspeare is nowhere visible throughout the entire of this "Drum-and-Trumpet-Thing," as Mr. Morgan [Maurice Morgann] has justly termed it.'

3 Annals of the Stage, 1831, iii. 145: 'It is plausibly conjectured that Shakespeare never touched the First Part of Henry VI as it stands in his works.'

"This historical play might have been one of our author's earliest dramatick efforts; and almost every young poet begins his career by imitation. Shakspeare therefore, till he felt his own strength, perhaps servilely conformed to the style and manner of his predecessors."1 Charles Knight in the Pictorial Shakspeare (1867) asserted with much greater positiveness that all the three parts of Henry VI ‘are, in the strictest sense of the word, Shakspeare's own plays,' and was followed by the American critics, Verplanck (1847) and Hudson.2 Such has been the view almost unanimously of the Germans: Schlegel, Bodenstedt, Delius, Ulrici, Sarrazin, Brandl, Creizenach (Gervinus is the honorable exception). The only recent British scholar to espouse this cause is, I believe, Courthope,3 who in a remarkable Appendix 'On the Authenticity of Some of the Early Plays Assigned to Shakespeare and their Relationship to the Development of his Dramatic Genius' (History

1 Capell also should apparently be included among the believers in Shakespeare's exclusive authorship. In his introduction he anticipates and very quaintly develops the idea of Steevens's second sentence: 'We are quite in the dark as to when the first part was written; but should be apt to conjecture, that it was some considerable time after the other two; and perhaps when those two were retouched. . . . And those two parts, even with all their retouchings, being still much inferior to the other plays of that class, he may reasonably [sic] be supposed to have underwrit himself on purpose in the first, that it might the better match with those it belong'd to.'

2 'I can but give it as my firm and settled judgment that the main body of the play is certainly Shakespeare's; nor do I perceive any clear and decisive reason for calling in another hand to account for any part of it.'

8 Note, however, the historian Gairdner's passing remark (Studies in English History, 1881, 65): 'I dismiss altogether the hypothesis which some have advanced, that the First Part of Henry VI was not really Shakespeare's. So far as internal evidence goes, if in ability it be not equal to Shakespeare's best, it is too great for any other writer.'

of English Poetry, vol. iv, 1903) goes even farther than Knight.

(3) Shakespeare collaborated with other dramatists to produce the play. Grant White (Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, 1859) supposes that 'It is not improbable that Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and Shakespeare were all engaged upon it,' and suggests that within two or three years of Shakespeare's arrival in London, that is, about 1587 or 1588, he was engaged to assist Marlowe, Greene, and perhaps Peele, in dramatizing the events of King Henry the Sixth's reign.' Ingram (Marlowe and his Associates, 1904) writes that 1 Henry VI 'furnishes but slight evidence of containing much of the handiwork of the two men, Marlowe and Shakespeare, who are now believed [sic] to have jointly remodelled it'; and Hart (Arden Shakespeare, 1909) reasons: 'We are at liberty to place Part I, in so far as it is Shakespeare's, as his earliest work with a date of about 1589-90. . I see no reason, therefore, to look for an imaginary earlier completed play. . We can imagine very easily that Shakespeare was invited to lend a hand to Greene and Peele.'

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(4) Shakespeare, working by himself, revised an earlier play of different authorship. Theobald seems first to have formulated this theory: "Though there are several master-strokes in these three plays [of Henry VI], which incontestably betray the workmanship of Shakspeare; yet I am almost doubtful whether they were entirely of his writing. And unless they were wrote by him very early, I should rather imagine them to have been brought to him as a director of the stage; and so have received some finishing beauties at his hand." Such is the opinion of Coleridge, Gervinus, Staunton, Halliwell-Phillipps,

1 This is the sense also of Maurice Morgann's wild obiter dictum on the play, referred to in the quotation from Drake above. He alludes to Sir John Fastolfe, ‘a name for ever

and Dyce, the last of whom definitely repudiates the Grant White theory: 'not written by Shakespeare in conjunction with any other author or authors, but a comparatively old drama, which he slightly altered and improved.' Fleay gives precise, but highly dubious, details (Life and Work of Shakspere, 1886): 'About 1588-9 Marlowe plotted, and, in conjunction with Kyd (or Greene), Peele, and Lodge, wrote 1 Henry VI for the Queen's men. In 1591-2 the Queen's men were in distress and sold, among other plays, 1 Henry VI to Lord Strange's men, who produced it in 1592 with Shakspere's Talbot additions as a new play.' Rives (1874) argues that Shakespeare revised and expanded an old play dealing exclusively with the wars in France, and Henneman (1901) comes to much the same conclusion. Gray (1917) allows Shakespeare's revisionary labor a somewhat less wide, but still very extensive scope. Herford (Eversley Shakespeare), Rolfe, and Sir Sidney Lee limit the signs of his hand to a couple of scenes; while Ward, Gollancz and Schelling stress their belief that Shakespeare was not properly a reviser, but a 'contributor' of 'additions' to the original work.

This last theory, with its differing implications, has vastly the largest number of upholders at the present time, and is indeed the only one that can be brought into reasonable harmony with the evidence. In regard to the particular scenes to be ascribed to Shakespeare there has been no radical variation among good critics. Nearly all credit Shakespeare dishonoured by a frequent exposure in that Drum-andtrumpet Thing called The first part of Henry VI., written doubtless, or rather exhibited, long before Shakespeare was born, tho' afterwards repaired, I think, and furbished up by him with here and there a little sentiment and diction.' (Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff, 1777.)

with II. iv (the Temple Garden dispute); a large majority also with II. v (the death of Mortimer), which naturally links itself with the foregoing, and with the whole or most of IV. ii-vii (Talbot's death). With less assurance V. iii. 45-195 (Suffolk's wooing of Margaret) is added. In all these there are strong indications of Shakespeare. Note the plays on words: 'I love no colours, and without all colour' (II. iv. 34); 'And in that ease, I'll tell thee my disease' (II. v. 44); 'And they shall find dear deer of us' (IV. ii. 54), together with the technical deer-hunting allusions in the last passage and the hawk, dog, horse references in II. iv. 11-14.

Compare also the bold use of transferred adjectives, quite Shakespearean and quite unlike the general style of the play as a whole: 'In dumb significants' (II. iv. 26), 'this pale and maiden blossom' (II. iv. 47), 'this pale and angry rose' (II. iv. 107), 'my blooddrinking hate' (II. iv. 108), 'death and deadly night' (II. iv. 127), 'feet whose strengthless stay is numb' (II. v. 13), 'sweet enlargement' (II. v. 30), 'the dusky torch of Mortimer' (II. v. 122), 'your stately and air-braving towers' (IV. ii. 13), 'the process of his sandy hour' (IV. ii. 36), 'sleeping neglection' (IV. iii. 49), 'That ever living man of memory' (IV. iii. 51), 'bring thy father to his drooping chair' (IV. 5), 'bold-fac'd victory' (IV. vi. 12).

V.

Especially Shakespearean are the fanciful metaphors and similes which abound in these scenes: 'Were growing time once ripen'd to my will' (II. iv. 99); 'I'll note you in my book of memory' (II. iv. 101); 'these gray locks, the pursuivants of Death' (II. v. 5); 'These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent' (II. v. 8); 'pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine That droops his sapless branches to the ground' (II. v. 11, 12); 'Just death, kind umpire of men's miseries' (II. v. 29); 'But now thy uncle is removing hence, As princes do their courts, when