Chapter Three

THE LATE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKE-SPEARE

N discussing Shake-speare's early authorship, we drew the dividing line between the early plays and those written in the author's maturity, at the year 1592; we now fix upon 1616 to mark the beginning of the period of his late authorship. If it can be shown that one or more of the plays were written, wholly or in part, by the great dramatist subsequently to 1616, at which time William Shakspere of Stratford died, the question at issue, for all excepting those who claim a miracle in the premises, will be set at rest.

The first collective edition of Shake-speare was issued in 1623. The plays included in that edition number thirty-six. If we add 'Pericles,' published with the others in the third folio (1664), and now universally admitted to the canon, the whole number to be accounted for in the proposed line of investigation will be thirty-seven. Of these, two classes may be set aside at once as not available for our purpose; namely,

I. Those that were printed previously to 1616 and that afterwards appeared in the folio without material modifications.

II. Those acted on the stage, entered in the Stationers' Register or mentioned by contemporaries, but not printed, previously to 1616, as to which we have no data to determine whether or not such plays were then completed.1

1 It is practically certain that many of these plays, as well as those that were printed in early quartos, underwent changes during the twenty years,

In the first class—that is, plays known from printed editions to have been written before 1616, substantially in the form in which we now have them are the following, with the respective dates of first publication:

In the second class, as specified above, we find thirteen, as

per list subjoined, with dates and particulars of first mention:

man.

more or less, that they were on the boards, before the publication of the Folio. Bacon is said to have rewritten his 'Essays' thirty times, and the Novum Organum twelve times, making important alterations each time. Indeed, ho says: "I alter ever when I add, so that nothing is finished till all be finished." Lodge quotes the phrase, 'Hamlet, revenge!" from the early 'Hamlet,' though it is not in the version as printed seven years afterwards. 'Twelfth Night' was acted February 2, 1601-2, but it contains an undoubted reference to Coke's brutal speech delivered at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1603.

1 Under title of 'History of Felix and Philiomena.'

2 Supposed to have been indicated under the title of 'Love's Labor's Won.'

We now come to the plays, fifteen in number, which afford materials for use in the present inquiry. These, with the exceptions of 'Coriolanus' and 'Othello,' plays that stand by themselves, may be divided as follows:

I. Those partially printed before 1616, but subsequently appearing, revised and enlarged, in the folio of 1623.

II. Those of which no record, of any kind whatever, previous to the issue of the 1623 folio, is extant.

Under the first head belong the following titles, with date of first quarto appended to each:

1 Under the title of 'The Troublesome Reign of King John,' a product of the author's early youth.

2 Under the title of "The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster.'

3 Under the title of 'The Taming of a Shrew.'

♦ Under the title of 'The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York.'

5 Under the title of 'The Famous Victories of Henry V.,' the first sketch

of the play made in the author's extreme youth.

Mentioned in Elegy to Richard Burbage in 1619, but printed for the first time in folio of 1623,1

Coriolanus.

Under the second head we find two; namely,

Let us now take the plays, named above under the first of these two heads, and examine them seriatim, reserving the two parts of King Henry VI.' and Richard III., however, for consideration at the close.

KING JOHN. This play in two parts was first published, anonymously, in 1591. It was mentioned as a Shakespearean production by Francis Meres in 1598. A second edition, combining the two parts in one volume, but making no important alterations in the play itself, appeared in 1611. The titlepage of this edition bears the plain statement, never controverted by a contemporary," written by W. Sh." Eleven years afterwards-namely, in 1622-came out a third edition similar in all respects to its predecessors, excepting that on its titlepage we now find the unmistakable ascription," written by W. Shakespeare." Here, then, are three successive appearances in print of this early play, with an interval of thirty-one years between the first and the third, all attributed to the author we call "Shake-speare," and the last one printed six years after the reputed author's death at Stratford in 1616. And yet, in the folio of 1623, the play appeared as we now have it, with precisely the same action throughout as before, but under a new title, and, with the exception of a few lines, rewritten from end to end.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. The first edition of this play came out anonymously in 1594, under the title of The Taming of a Shrew.' Two others followed, one in 1596 and the other in 1607, both still anonymous and under the same title as before. These editions were substantially alike.

1 In this Elegy, written soon after Burbage's death, it is implied that sometime during his career he had acted the part of Marcius.

Henslowe's diary records a performance of 'The Taming of a Shrew' on the 11th of June, 1594, and on the next evening of 'Titus Andronicus.' Nothing more is heard of the comedy under any name for sixteen years thereafter, until 1623, when it made its appearance in the Shake-speare folio under a new title and with more than one thousand new lines introduced here and there into it throughout its entire length.

RICHARD II. This great play was first published anonymously in 1597. A second edition, substantially a reprint, but with the name of William Shake-speare as author on the titlepage, followed in 1598; a third, with the famous deposition scene added to it, in 1608; and a fourth, in 1615. The next appearance of the play in print was in the folio of 1623. In the latter are found some minor errors which had previously been peculiar to the quarto of 1615, and which prove beyond question that the editors of the folio based their version of Richard II.' on that quarto rather than upon either of the three that preceded. In other words, the folio version was specially prepared for the press subsequently to 1615.

Furthermore, there are some additions to the play in the folio which conclusively show that this last version was the work of the dramatist himself. The following passage, with the additions referred to in italics, is submitted as proof:

"Give me the glass, and therein will I read.

No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck

So

many blows upon this face of mine

And made no deeper wounds? Oh, flatt'ring glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me. Was this face, the face

That every day, under his house-hold roof,

Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face

That like the sun did make beholders wink?

Is this the face that fac'd so many follies,

That was at last out-fac'd by Bolingbroke?"— iv. 1.

1 "There is no doubt on this point; the quarto errors which have crept into the Folio text, and which prove its connection with the quarto version, are clearly traceable to quarto 4 [1615] as their immediate source.” — F. J. FURNIVALL.