XXII. SEJANUS. (?)

1. Jonson tells us that in the first form of this play as acted on the public stage "a second pen had good share; in place of which I have rather chosen to put weaker and no doubt less pleasing of mine own than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation." This second pen was usually, until lately, supposed with good reason to be Shakespeare's. Most critics now reject this hypothesis: but no other likely name has been advanced in his place, unless we admit Dr. Nicholson's view that Sheppard was the "second pen." I cannot think so.

2. Founded on Tacitus, Suetonius, Seneca, &c.

3. Produced in 1603.

4. As the early form of the play is lost, the question of authorship is of little importance.

XXIII.-MEASURE FOR Measure.

1. Undoubted.

2. Founded on Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra, 1578, printed in Six Old Plays on which Shakespeare founded, &c. Nichols, 1779. 3. Generally and rightly dated 1603. It apologises for King James' ungracious entry into England.

"I'll privily away. I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement."

"The general subject to a well-wisht king,

Act i. Sc. I.

Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offense."

Act ii. Sc. 4.

'Beaumont did not begin to write till 1606, nor Fletcher till 1607, as far as we know. Chapman and Marston wrote commendatory verses on the play. Surely none of these can have been the second hand,

James had issued a proclamation forbidding the people to resort to him.

"What with the war, what with the sweat peace!"-Act i. Sc. 2.

... •

Heaven grant us

The war with Spain still existed in 1603: but James had shown he meant to end it, as he did on 19 August 1604. In 1603 there was a plague, which carried off more than 30,000 in London.

The list of prisoners, Act iv. Sc. 3, contains four stabbers; the roaring boys, bravados, roysters, &c., were so outrageous in 1603 that the statute of Stabbing was passed in the first half of 1604.

4. This play is the central one for the metre of the third period; it has more lines with extra syllables before a pause in the middle of a line than any other. It is freer in rhythm than any play in the first and second periods.

XXIV.-ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

1. Undoubted.

2. The main plot is founded on Painter's Giletta of Narbonne, in the Palace of Pleasure Vol. I. The comic part with Parolles, &c., is Shakespeare's.

3. Dated by Malone and Chalmers, 1606; by Drake and Delius, 1598; I assign it to 1604, as near to Measure for Measure as possible. It contains some parts of very early work (1591-2), perhaps remains of Love's Labour's Won, namely, the rhymed parts of—i. 1, 230— 244, i. 3, 133-142; ii. 1, 130-214, ii. 3, 80-210, ii. 3, 130— 150; iii. 4; sonnet, and end of scene.

4. The scene Act iii. Sc. 5, should be compared with Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act iv. Sc. 2); the device by which Bertram is deceived into meeting Helen, his wife, with that in Measure for Measure.

XXV.-OTHELLO.

1. Undoubted.

2. Founded on a novel by Giraldi Cinthio (Decade iii. Novel 3).

3. Date earlier than November 1604. This used to be looked on as one of the latest of Shakespeare's plays.

4. The names Othello and Iago occur in Reynolds' God's Revenge against Adultery. The date of the action is 1570. Mustapha, the general of Solymus II. attacked Cyprus in May in that year. The Turkish fleet first sailed towards Cyprus, then went to Rhodes, met another squadron, and resumed its course for Cyprus; which was taken in 1571. The accounts of the cannibals and " men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders" are taken from Sir Walter Raleigh's narrative of the Discovery of Guiana (1600); he says, "I am resolved they are true." For the passion of jealousy compare Othello with Troylus, Leontes, Ford, and Posthumus.

XXVI.-LEar.

1. Undoubted.

2. Founded on Holinshed's Chronicle and The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three Daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella (entered 1594, printed 1605). This is contained in Steevens' reprint of the Quarto editions of Shakespeare; also in Six Old Plays, &c. The episode of Gloster and his sons is taken from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in Sidney's Arcadia, reprinted in the Variorum Shakspeare, 1821. It also often alludes to Harsnet's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, 1603.

3. The date must lie between 1603 and 1606. The play was entered November 1607 as having been played in December 1606. It was probably produced early in 1605, as the old play was then reprinted and entered 8th May, as lately acted," in order to deceive the public.

66

stands

"I smell the blood of a British man " (Act iii. Sc. 6 end),

"I smell the blood of an English man,"

in Nash's pamphlets, 1596. England and Scotland were united in name and James proclaimed king of Great Britain, 24 October, 1604.

4 Compare Hamlet and Ophelia with Lear, for the phenomena of madness.

XXVII.-MACBETH.

1. Messrs. Clark and Wright reject as Middleton's—i. I, i. 2, i. 3, 1-37'; ii. 3 (Porter's speech); iii. 5; iv. 3, 140—159; v. 2, v. 8 last forty lines, besides many rhyming tags: I reject also (but not, in all, forty lines) various other rhyming tags: but retain i. 2; ii. 3; V. 2. I must refer to my essay on the subject in Part II., the reasons cannot be condensed here.

2. Founded on Holinshed's Chronicle, and Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft.

3. Dated almost without exception 1606 (Middleton's revision being much later). In Act ii. Sc. 3. "The expectation of plenty.” Wheat was lower in Windsor market in 1606 than for thirteen years afterwards, also lower than the year before. So were barley and malt. The "equivocators” in the same year must mean the Jesuits, specially Garnet their superior, who was tried for gunpowder treason on 28 March, 1606 (see Malone). Again the "stealing out of a French hose" implies that they were at that time short and strait. Now in 1606, in Anthony Nixon's Black Year we find that tailors took more than enough for the new fashion's sake. In 1605 King James at Oxford was addressed by three students of St. John's College in Latin verses founded on the weird-sisters' predictions to Macbeth. It is not likely they would choose this subject after Shakespeare had treated it. Middleton's Witch was certainly produced after 1613. There are two passages from Plutarch's life of Antony alluded to in this play.

"The insane root that takes the reason

prisoner," Act i. Sc. 3, 1. 84, and "My genius is rebuked as it is said Mark Anthony's was by Cæsar," Act iii. Sc. 1, 1. 57. Shakespeare was then probably reading for Anthony and Cleopatra, which was produced before May 1608.

4. For treatment of Ghost compare Hamlet; for Witches in Act iv. Sc. 2, compare Middleton's Witch, the Witch of Edmonton by Ford, Dekker, and Rowley (Witch-part by Ford), and Jonson's Masque of Queens and The Sad Shepherd.

XXVIII.-TIMON OF ATHENS.

1. By two authors. Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote i. 1 (verse part); ii. 1, ii. 2 (verse part); iii. 6 (verse part); iv. I, iv. 3 ; v. I, v. 2, v. 4. Cyril Tourneur I think (Delius says Wilkins) wrote the rest. Shakespeare's part was certainly written first, though C. Knight denies this.

2. Founded on a passage in Plutarch's Life of Antonius, and the 28th novel in vol. I of Painter's Palace of Pleasure; also on Lucian's Dialogues.

3. Evidently to be dated between the great tragedies (which it closely resembles in tone), and Anthony and Cleopatra, in reading for which Shakespeare met with the story. I assign it therefore to 1606, a year before the other plays left unfinished by Shakespeare, Pericles and Troylus and Cressida. Delius says 1608, others 1610. The date of the completion of the play is doubtful; it may have been 1608, or 1623, when the Folio was printed.

XXIX.-TROYLUS AND CRESSIDA.

1. Nearly the whole of the fifth Act has been suspected as spurious, so has the Prologue.

2. Founded on Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide for the love story; Caxton's Troy Book for the story of Hector and Ajax; Thersites, Patroclus, &c, are taken from Chapman's Homer.