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XV.—The Purport of Shakespeare's Contribution to 1 Henry VI
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
There is a fairly general agreement among the critics that the First Part of Henry the Sixth was not originally written by Shakespeare, but was revised by him, that it is the play which Henslowe recorded as “new” on March 3, 1591/2, and frequently enough thereafter to attest that it was one of the most popular pieces of the day, and that it was this same popular piece to which Nashe referred in the always quoted passage in Pierce Penilesse (1592): “How would it have ioyed braue Talbot (the terror of the French), to think that after he had lyen two hundred yeare in his Toomb, he should triumph againe on the Stage and haue his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times) who in the Tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding.” There seems no sufficient reason for doubting these natural conjectures. The play was included in the First Folio, which indicates that it was at least in part Shakespeare's work; it was not mentioned by Meres, which seems to imply that it was not fundamentally his; it was acted by Lord Strange's company, which would accord with its being revised rather than originally written by Shakespeare. It is such a play as, judging by the other notable successes of the time, would be immensely popular; and it answers perfectly to Nashe's reference.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1917
References
1 See “The Authorship of Titus Andronicus,” Flügel Memorial Volume, p. 115.
2 Ibid., p. 123, n.
3 I quote from Mr. H. C. Hart's Arden Edition of the play before us the first four reminders of Spenser which he finds. Of course these are not to show Spenser's authorship but his influence, since Spenser is naturally not a candidate; but let the reader compare these with the first four in any list by which Greene's authorship of one play or another has been “established”:
I, i, 11-13: His arms spread wider than a dragon's wings; His sparkling eyes replete with wrathful fire More dazzled and drove back his enemies. Compare with Faerie Queene, I, xi, 14-18: “His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shields, Did burne with wrath and sparkled living fyre. As two broad Beacons … warning give that enemies conspyre. … So flamed his eyne with rage and rancorous yre… . Then with his waving wings displayed wyde.“
I, i, 64: burst his lead and rise from death. Compare with Shepheards Calendar, June: “Nowe dead he is and lyeth wrapt in lead.” And idem, October: “all the worthies liggen wrapt in leade.”
I, i, 104: laments … bedew King Henry's hearse. Compare Faerie Queene, III, i, 16: “they did lament … And all the while salt teares bedeawd the hearers cheaks.”
I, i, 124: Here, there, and everywhere, enrag'd he flew. Compare Faerie Queene, III, i, 66: “Wherewith enrag'd she fiercely at them flew … Here, there, and everywhere, about her swayd Her wrathful Steele.”
4 An indication of authorship which I have not seen mentioned might perhaps be found in Shakespeare's remarkable adjective groupings. Thus we have:
“Shall lay your stately and air-braving towers”
“Thou ominous and fearful owl of death”
“Lo, there thou stand'st, a breathing valient man”
“Shall see thee withered, bloody, pale, and dead”
“O, negligent and heedless discipline”
“But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags”
—all these in a scene of fifty-six lines (IV, ii). I have never found in Greene or Peele a grouping of words which requires of us a sudden expansion of the imagination,—of adjectives each appropriate but not belonging together until combined in a line of great poetry. Hamlet's
“—why the sepulchre …
Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws“
gives us this perfect combination of dissimilars; but when in the play before us we read
“This speedy and quick appearance argues proof” (V, iii, 8), we have a combination of words which it is not at all necessary to attribute to Shakespeare!
5 The scanning here of Henry as a trisyllable required in the line
“Long after this, when Henry the Fifth” (II, iv, 82)
suggests another interesting test which has been too often overlooked. Though this is not Shakespeare's usual way, still he has the line
“So stood the state when Henry the Sixth”
in Richard III (II, iii, 16), and the same pronunciation of the name is frequently required in the second and third parts of Henry VI, as it is in both parts of the Contention. Note, for example: “Crowned by the name of Henry the Fourth” (2 Henry VI, II, ii, 23) and
“Resigned the crown to Henry the Fourth” (3 Henry VI, I, i, 1390).
Sometimes both pronunciations occur in the same passage:
“You told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost
All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten“
(3 Henry VI, III, iii, 89, 9).
In the present play we have the line
“O my good lords and virtuous Henry” (III, i, 76)
which would tell against the claim of any dramatist who used the name frequently and always as a dissyllable. But such a test, if it should count at all, must be used with extreme caution. In this play, Gloucester is scanned as a trisyllable in act I, scene iii (four times). Peele has the name twenty times in Edward I, and always with only two syllables; his claim to I, iii, which was made for him by Fleay, would therefore look doubtful. But Marlowe has emperess ten times in Tamburlaine to empress four times, and emperess occurs frequently in the non-Shakespearean portions of Titus Andronicus; yet it would be most hasty to suspect Marlowe on this count. Shakespeare has children over a hundred times as a dissyllable, and as a trisyllable just once (Errors, V, i, 360). Often such words may be scanned in either way.
6 I note the following adjective groupings, which I offer for exactly what they are worth and no more:
“With other vile and ignominious terms”
“For though he seem with forged quaint conceit
To set a gloss upon his bold intent“
“When for so slight and frivolous a cause”
“With this immodest clamorous outrage”
“In France, amongst a fickle, wavering nation”
7 Unless momentarily in act III, scene i.
8 In Mr. Hart's edition, to which I have already referred, he states of act I, scene iv: “This scene is by Shakespeare. Nashe seems to have assisted” (Introduction, p. xv). Now since Nashe was not Mr. Bernard Shaw, his complimentary allusion to the play practically rules him out from any claim to part authorship in it; and there is no particular evidence of him anyway, so far as I can see. Of Shakespeare in this scene I am able to find no trace in any particular. I resent being told without qualification and without argument that it is Shakespeare's.
9 It may be argued that this indicates collaboration rather than revision; but revision is precisely what is evident in the very scenes I am now considering.
10 Boswell-Stone shows that Edmund not John Beaufort is referred to (Shakspere's Holinshed, p. 218).
11 Ibid., p. 252.
12 Ibid., p. 287.
13 “Not again in Shakespeare… Greene made it a sort of hallmark of his work” (Hart, p. xix).
14 For a proof that this scene is by Greene and not by Lodge, see my “Greene as a Collaborator” in Modern Language Notes, December, 1915.
15 In each of Greene's plays there is some introduction of the supernatural. He has devils in Friar Bacon and the Looking-Glass, fairies and antics in James IV, Venus and the Muses in Alphonsus, and a dance of Satyrs in Orlando. The minister who acted the pinner's part himself did not introduce this element in George-a-Greene.