Sources and of Suffolk's intrigue with the queen, of which Holinshed says no word. To Shakespeare such a situation was at all times unattractive; but the recent painter of the guilty loves of Isabel the queen and young Mortimer was keenly alive to its tragic force. Admitting the two contentions here urged, that Shakespeare had some share in the text corruptedly reproduced in the Quartos, and that this text was not identical with that of our 2 and 3 Henry VI., it is difficult to avoid a third conclusion: viz. that the text reproduced in the Quartos was itself based upon a yet earlier History mainly the work of Robert Greene. Greene's gibe at the upstart crow, and the anonymous R. B.'s indignant assurance that the men that so eclipst his fame Purloined his plumes; can they deny the same,' compel us to suppose that Greene had done unpopular work on the story of Henry VI. before Shakespeare touched it, and that Greene was not concerned in the revision which made it famous. We should thus have to recognise three stages instead of two in the evolution of our Henry VI., and probably the traces of the earliest were by no means obliterated in the far from perfectly organised structure of the last. The principal source of all three Parts of Henry VI. is the Chronicle of Holinshed, supplemented by details from his authority Halle,1 and a few facts from other sources.2 But this material is adapted with extreme freedom to the needs of the dramatist and the taste of his audience. Many of the deviations from the Chronicle suggest sheer carelessness, confusion or imperfect understanding, such 1 Thus Halle describes in detail, Holinshed only summarily, the debate between Talbot and his son before their death (iv. 7.). 2 Mr. Stone makes it probable that Stowe was consulted (Hol. pp. 253, 261). None of these Chroniclers mention the titles of Talbot (iv. 7.). as we can very rarely bring home to Shakespeare.1 We are here only concerned with deliberate fictions for dramatic purposes. These seem to belong to two classes, due probably to different writers. A whole series of legendary exploits are devised in the interest of the military glory of England, in particular of the popular hero Talbot. When taken. prisoner at Patay, he is made to defy his captors with Marlowesque extravagance of valour (i. 4. 40 f.). Orleans, which the English besieged without success, yields to Talbot (ii. 1.). Immediately afterwards a legendary countess of Auvergne is made to emulate in vain the role of the Scythian queen Tamyris, still to the glory of Talbot, who baffled the cunning to which Cyrus succumbed. If the Pucelle is permitted by a ruse to capture Rouen (which never was captured, but voluntarily opened its gates seventeen years after her death), it is only that Talbot may recover it by sheer valour.2 Joan herself is a counterfoil to Talbot. The national conviction that only witchcraft could have turned back the tide of English triumph is reflected clearly enough in the sober pages of Holinshed; but the author of Henry VI. (in particular of the odious scene v. 4.) has malignantly fastened upon and amplified the worst suggestions of the record, and capped them with others of which even the least friendly tradition was silent. It is only in the drama that she denies her father and receives the old shepherd's curse (v. 4. 1-33); while a lovescene with the Dauphin (i. 3.) suggests that her selfaccusations were not, as in Holinshed, merely desperate subterfuges to save her life. She is credited, moreover, with triumphs in diplomacy as well as in war: in particular, the deadly blow inflicted on the English cause by the reversion of Burgundy (four years after her death) to his natural alliance with France is accounted for by her 'witchery,' exercised in a very matter-of-fact appeal to his patriotism (iii. 3.). Equally determined is the treatment of Fastolfe. This brave officer fell, according to Holinshed and to history, under suspicion of cowardice after the battle of Patay, in consequence of which his Garter was taken from him. Holinshed adds (iii. 601, Stone, p. 229) that 'afterward, by meanes of freends, and apparent (i.e. manifest) causes of good excuse, the same [was] to him againe delivered against the minde of the lord Talbot.' Of this subsequent acquittal of Fastolfe Talbot's zealous advocate on the stage chooses to know nothing. His dismissal (iv. 1.) is final, and he even displays his cowardice, with brazen effrontery, a second time (iii. 2.). Fastolfe's cowardice was, in fact, necessary to account for Talbot's capture, and as the cowardly knight he went down to posterity,—a wrong not ill compensated when Shakespeare's greatest comic creation six or seven years later received his name. A far finer art suggested the parallel episode in the fourth act (iv. 3.) where Somerset's treacherous delays are made the ground of Talbot's death. The ruin of Talbot is thus brought into organic connection with the civil rupture at home, and the epic of heroic exploits acquires dramatic meaning and pathos. It is possible that this stroke was added in order to involve the Talbot play more clearly in the larger movement of the story of Henry VI.; it may be Shakespeare's, and is in any case worthy of him. Other scenes seem to have been introduced with the same aim. The wooing of Margaret, so oddly diapered in the last act with the end of Joan, has no meaning but as a prelude to the great destiny which awaits her in the three following plays; but it has very little title to be considered Shakespeare's work. On the other hand, the most Shakespearean scene of all (the Temple garden scene, ii. 4.), which, in fact, links the first part most signally with the sequel, cannot be conclusively held to have been designed as such a link; for the situation is repeated (with far inferior power) in 2 Henry VI. ii. 2, where Warwick once more listens to the case for York. It is more plausible to suppose that ii. 4. was originally designed to give cohesion to the Talbot play, by explaining the animosity of Somerset to which Talbot owes his fall. The authors of the Second and Third Parts handled the Chronicles on very different principles. They do not hew and slash at facts in the interest of a popular hero; they do not freely invent heroic exploits, or frankly convert failure into triumph. They merely rearrange with some boldness the traditional chronology, and bring historical events. into unhistorical combinations, the characteristic detail of which is necessarily also unhistorical. And these rearrangements generally either conduce to legitimate simplification of plot, or else they serve to accentuate its broad lines of movement. Thus the complicated circumstances of the Kingmaker's defection from the Yorkists are compressed into a single moment. It was in 1464 that the historical Warwick was despatched on his futile embassy to win the hand of Bona for Edward, the first ground of his hostility to the king; in 1469 he joined the revolt of the North and captured Edward. On Edward's escape after a brief detention he made peace with him, but revolted again, in March 1470, and then fled to France, allied himself with Margaret, and returned in the following September to open the fatal campaign which ended at Barnet and Tewkesbury. In the play his alliance with Margaret is the immediate expression of his anger at Edward's duplicity (iii. 3.). A rather bolder rearrangement is that which in the Second Part brings the two ambitious women, Margaret and Eleanor, face to face in deadly rivalry, and makes the terrible Angevine score her first triumph from the sheeted and barefoot shame which closes Eleanor's career. In reality she had disappeared from the arena of English politics (in 1441) four years before Margaret entered it. The relations of the two women are, however, admirably imagined; the fan-dropping incident, though invented, is in the happiest keeping with the character of both. The great personality of Margaret dominates the Second and Third Parts and is the chief source of such imaginative writing as they possess. But her most striking traits were already visible in Halle and Holinshed's prose. She is drawn in the play with something of Marlowe's rigid touch; and the dramatist shows more concern to accentuate her heroic than her womanly qualities. A striking instance of this occurs on the eve of Tewkesbury. Halle relates how, being delayed by storms in the Channel, she and her French force arrived 'the day after the fair'-just in time to hear of the ruin of Warwick at Barnet. Thereupon 'she like a woman |