A line of Marlowe's Hero and Leander is quoted (iii. 5, 83); this poem was published 1598.

4. Shakespeare played Adam in this play; he continued to act till 1603, when he played in Sejanus; he also acted the Ghost in Hamlet, &c.

XIX.-TWELFTH NIGHT.

1. Undoubted.

2. See under the Two Gentlemen of Verona for the story of Viola; that of Malvolio is Shakespeare's own.

3. Used to be dated as one of the last of Shakespeare's plays on the ground of allusions to "undertakers," Dekker's Westward Ho! Sir Robert Shirley coming as ambassador from the Sophy; and the internal evidence of perfection of style, &c. It is now certain that it was produced before February 1602; and there are clear indications in the metre that some parts of the Viola story were written much earlier-about 1594. I date the completion 1601. The early parts are, I think, traceable all through the verse scenes, specially in Act iii. Sc. 1, and Act v. Sc. 1.

4. The Count in this play is called Duke in Act i. Sc. 2 and Sc. 4, just as the Emperor is called Duke in Two Gentlemen of Verona and the King is called Duke in Love's Labour's Lost. The second name of the play, What You Will, is a strange one; it is very like that of As You Like It. Mr. Staunton's conjecture that Shakespeare not having named these plays answered hurriedly to the inquiring manager, "Call it what you will; name it as you like it," is the most plausible explanation of their origin. Marston took the name What You Will for a play of his own in 1607. The name Twelfth Night ✔ was probably that of the date of the first production of the play.

XX.-HAMLET,

1. Undoubted.

2. Founded on an older play now lost; and on the Hystorie of Hamblett (black letter; date of earliest edition unknown), which was translated from one of Belleforest's novels. He took it from "Saxo Grammaticus."

3. Dated by Malone, 1600; Chalmers, 1598; Drake, 1597 (revised 1600); Delius (more rightly), 1602. Steevens mentions a reference to Hamlet in Gabriel Harvey's handwriting as made in 1598, which may have been written any time before 1620; and the reference to the inhibition of the players (Act ii. Sc. 2, 1. 346) is not necessarily to be applied to the first order of the Privy Council for the restraint of the immoderate use of playhouses (made 22 June, 1600), for this order proved ineffectual; but rather to their second order, made 31 December, 1601. The Fortune and the Globe were allowed to remain open; the others were closed owing to the personal allusions indulged in by some of the companies. The play was probably revised in 1603.

4. The allusion in Nash's epistle to "whole Hamlets or handfuls of tragical speeches" must allude to the old play now lost; and so must Lodge's allusion to the Ghost that cried, "Hamlet, revenge! so miserably." Shakespeare's play was entered 26 July, 1602. I should place the first draft in 1601, the complete play in 1603. I have little doubt that the early Hamlet of 1589 was written by Shakespeare and Marlowe in conjunction; and that portions of it can be traced in the First Quarto as Corambis" Hamlet.

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XXI. TAMING OF THE SHREW.

1. Declared spurious by Dr. Warburton.

Dr. Farmer assigned

only the Induction and the character of Petruchio to Shake

speare, with occasional touches elsewhere. Mr. Collier advocated the same opinion. I assign to the second writer the following parts:--i. I, i. 2; ii. I, except l. 168—326; iii. 1, iii. 2, 129—150; iv. 2, iv. 4; v. I, and perhaps, v. 2, 176–189. This second hand was probably T. Lodge. It is observable that in all these parts there is scarcely a trace of the old play The Taminge of a Shrewe; while in the other parts, plot and even language is freely borrowed; exactly in the way in which Shakespeare revised his first drafts of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet. See Part II.

2. Founded on the play mentioned above and on the Supposes of Gascoigne "englished" from Ariosto, 1566.

3. Dated by Drake and Delius, 1594; Chalmers, 1599; Malone, 1596; Collier, I think rightly, 1601-2

The play is not mentioned in Meres' list (1598). The line,

"This is the way to kill a wife with kindness,"

seems to allude to Heywood's play, A Woman Killed with Kindness, the date of which is 1602. The play of Patient Grissel by Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton, was brought out in 1599; this play of Shakespeare's is clearly a rival piece, in opposition to which again came out Dekker's Medicine for a Curst Wife (July 1602).

4. The old play, The Taming of a Shrew, was probably written by Marlowe and Shakespeare in conjunction in 1589. Shakespeare certainly wrote much, if not all the prose in it. This early drama, along with the old Hamlet, 2 and 3 Henry VI., and Titus Andronicus, almost certainly came into the possession of the Chamberlain's company in 1600. They previously belonged to the Earl of Pembroke's.

2 AND 3 HENRY VI.

1. The Quarto editions have always been regarded as earlier works than the Folio. They are quoted under the names of The Contention and The True Tragedy. The full titles are The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York. The theories that have been held as to the authorship are-1, Malone's,

that Marlowe, Greene, &c., wrote The Whole Contention (that is, both Quartos), and that Shakespeare enlarged and completed them into 2 and 3 Henry VI.; 2, Knight's, that Shakespeare was author of both Quartos and Folio; 3, Grant White's, that Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Greene, wrote the Quartos from which Shakespeare transferred his own work to the Folio, the additions also being his; Hudson, Steevens, Johnson, Hazlitt, Ulrici, and the Germans generally, hold the Shakespearian authorship of the Quartos in more or less entirety. Other critics (except myself) hold the additions to be his. I believe the whole of 2 and 3 Henry VI. to be by Peele and Marlowe : the latter writing Act iii. Sc. 3 and Act iv. Sc. 1 of 2 Henry VI. and Acts ii. v. of 3 Henry VI. and Peele, the rest.

N.B.-3 Henry VI. iv. 8 should form part of Act v.-The grounds of my view, æsthetic, artistic, and metrical, are given in a paper by me in Macmillan's Magazine (Nov. 1875). Of course Shakespeare revised (though he did not write) these plays about 1601.

2. Founded on Hall's Chronicle; not Holinshed's; but follows him loosely. See the blunders as to the side espoused by Lady Grey's husband; the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Warwick's eldest daughter, &c., &c.

3. Written not later than 1592. See the quotation of "A tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,” in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit.

4. The Quarto editions are merely piratical versions taken down in shorthand (in my opinion) at a theatrical representation. There is scarcely anything in the Quartos not in the Folio; and what little there is seems to be introduced for the groundlings. Malone's numbers are altogether deceptive, from the manner in which they are evolved. The plays were written for Pembroke's company, and the earliest notice of them in connexion with the King's is on the title-page of The Whole Contention in 1619, three years after Shakespeare's death. There are in the Quartos, and in the parts peculiar to the Folio, many classical allusions, similes, and expressions in the styles of Marlowe and Peele. Malone's dissertation is the store from which most of the modern arguments concerning authorship have been taken.

TITUS ANDRONICUS.

1. In 1687 there was a tradition reported by Ravenscroft that this play was only touched by Shakespeare. Theobald, Johnson, Farmer, Stevens, Drake, Singer, Dyce, Hallam, H. Coleridge, W. S. Walker, reject it entirely. Malone, Ingleby, Staunton, think it was touched up by him. Capel, Collier, Knight, Gervinus, Ulrici, and many Germans, think it to be Shakespeare's; R. G. White, that it is a joint work of Greene, Marlowe, and Shakespeare! The fact that it was acted by the companies of Sussex, Pembroke, and Derby, and printed as so acted before it came into the possession of the Chamberlain's company, is far more important than the mention of it in Meres, or the reception of it in the Folio. It was not published with Shakespeare's name as author in his lifetime. Halliwell thinks Shakespeare's play (? Titus and Vespasian) is lost, and was the one entered by J. Danter in 1594. I hold this play to be Marlowe's. See my paper in Macmillan's Magazine (Nov. 1875).

2. May have been founded on a ballad. The story was known to Painter, who alludes to it in his Palace of Pleasure.

3. Probably 1590. See Jonson's allusion to it in Bartholomew Fair (1614) as some 25 or 30 years old. He couples it with Kyd's Feronimo. Certainly written before 1592, when it was acted at the Rose.

4. A stilted, disagreeable play with a few fair touches. It has many classical allusions in it; many coincidences in the use of words and phrases with Marlowe's work, and with Henry VI.; in style and metre it is exactly what a play of Marlowe's would be if corrected by Shakespeare as he corrected Richard III. of Peele's.

A play called Titus and Vespasian was also acted at the Rose, which appears from a German translation to have treated of the same story as Titus Andronicus (see Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany). In this form of the play Vespasian is a friend of Titus. It is very likely a remnant of the form into which Shakespeare cast his play, with or without the aid of Marlowe. Our present play is not Shakespeare's; it is built on the Marlowe blank-verse system, which Shakespeare in his early work opposed and did not belong to Shakespeare's company till 1600.

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