appears to us to be little less than absurd; and yet it is partially sanctioned by such high authority that we cannot pass it over in silence. Mr. Hallam says "His angry allusion to Shakspeare's plagiarism is best explained by supposing that he (Greene) was himself concerned in the two old plays which have been converted into the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI.'" "'* In a note upon this passage Mr. Hallam speaks more distinctly ::- "Mr. Collier says, Greene may possibly have had a hand in 'The True History of Richard Duke of York.' But why possibly? when he claims it, if not in express words, yet so as to leave no doubt of his meaning." We venture to think that the words of Greene convey no such meaning, and that, if the passage in the 'Groat's Worth of Wit' could be presented to an intelligent judgment thoroughly unacquainted with the inferences that have been drawn from it, it would be found to bear very slightly indeed on the question of the authorship of the plays which we are examining; nor, further, to affect the character of Shakspere at all, in any essential point of his moral or literary reputation. The entire pamphlet of Greene is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary fragments of autobiography that the vanity or the repentance of a sinful man ever produced. The recital which he makes of his abandoned course of life involves not only a confession of crimes and follies which were common to a very licentious age, but of particular and especial depravities, which even to mention argues as much shamelessness as repentance. The portion, however, which relates to the subject before us stands alone, in conclusion, as a friendly warning out of his own terrible example:-"To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." To three of his quondam acquaintance the dying man addresses himself. To the first, supposed to be Marlowe "thou famous gracer of tragedians"—he speaks in words as terrible as came from "that warning voice, which he who saw Th' Apocalypse heard cry in heav'n aloud.” In exhorting his friend to turn from atheism, he ran the risk of consigning him to the stake, for Francis Kett was burnt for his opinions only three years before Greene's death. That Marlowe resented this address to him we have the testimony of Chettle. With his second friend, supposed to be Lodge, his plain speaking is much more tender: “Be advised, and get not many enemies by * History of Literature, vol. ii. p. 379. bitter words." He addresses the third, supposed to be Peele, as one "driven as myself to extreme shifts;" and he adds, "thou art unworthy better hap sith thou dependest on so mean a stay." What is the stay? "Making plays." The exhortation then proceeds to include the three "gentlemen his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays."—" Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths; those antics garnished in our colours." Up to this point the meaning is perfectly clear. The puppets, the antics,-by which names of course are meant the players, whom he held, and justly, to derive their chief importance from the labours of the poet, in the words which they uttered and the colours with which they were garnished,—had once cleaved to him like burs. But a change had taken place: "Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding-is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be, both, of them at once forsaken ?" This is a lamentable picture of one whose powers, wasted by dissipation and enfeebled by sickness, were no longer required by those to whom they had once been serviceable. As he was forsaken, so he holds that his friends will be forsaken. And chiefly for what reason? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you: and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a country." There can be no doubt that Shakspere was here pointed at; that the starving man spoke with exceeding bitterness of the successful author; that he affected to despise him as a player; that, if "beautified with our feathers ' had a stronger meaning than" garnished with our colours," it conveyed a vague charge of borrowing from other poets; and that he parodied a line from 'The True Tragedy of Richard the Second.' This is literally every word that can be supposed to apply to Shakspere. Greene proceeds to exhort his friends" to be employed in more profitable courses." "Let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions.""Seek you better masters." It is perfectly clear that these words refer only to the players generally; and, possibly, to the particular company of which Shakspere was a member. As such, and such only, must he take his share in the names which Greene applies to them, of apes, ‚”—“ rude grooms,"—" buckram gentlemen,"-" peasants," 66 66 -and "painted monsters." It will be well to give the construction that has been put upon these words, in the form in which the "hypothesis" was first propounded by Malone: 6 "Shakspeare having therefore, probably not long before the year 1592, when Greene wrote his dying exhortation to his friend, newmodelled and amplified these two pieces (the two Parts of 'The Contention'), and produced on the stage what in the folio edition of his works are called the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.,' and having acquired considerable reputation by them, Greene could not conceal the mortification that he felt at his own fame, and that of his associate, both of them old and admired playwrights, being eclipsed by a new upstart writer (for so he calls our great poet), who had then first perhaps attracted the notice of the public by exhibiting two plays, formed upon old dramas written by them, considerably enlarged and improved. He therefore in direct terms charges him with having acted like the crow in the fable, beautified himself with their feathers; in other words, with having acquired fame furtivis coloribus, by new-modelling a work originally produced by them and, wishing to depreciate our author, he very naturally quotes a line from one of the pieces which Shakspeare had thus re-written,-a proceeding which the authors of the original plays considered as an invasion both of their literary property and character. This line, with many others, Shakspeare adopted without any alteration. The very term that Greene uses, to bombast out a blank-verse,'—exactly corresponds with what has been now suggested. This new poet, says he, knows as well as any man how to amplify and swell out a blank-verse. Bumbast was a soft stuff of a loose texture, by which garments were rendered more swelling and protuberant." * Thus, then, the starving and forsaken man-rejected by those who had been beholding to him; wanting the very bread of which he had been robbed, in the appropriation of his property by one of those who had rejected him; a man, too, prone to revenge, full of irascibility and self-love-contents himself with calling his plunderer "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers"-" A Johannes factotum"-" The only Shake-scene in a country." "He could not conceal his mortification!" It would have been mira* Malone gives here a special application to the term bombast, as if it were meant to express the amplification of the old plays charged against Shakspere. The term had been used by Nashe five years before:-"Idiot art-masters, that intrude themselves to our ears as the alchymists of eloquence, who (mounted on the stage of arrogance) think to outbrave better pens with the swelling bombast of bragging blankverse." (Epistle prefixed to Greene's 'Menaphon,' 1587.) culous if he could. And how does he exhibit it? He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home-to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of the very writer attacked.* If it were Greene's line, and not Shakspere's, there would have been no point in the quotation. Be this as it may, the dying man, for some cause or other, chose to veil his deep wrongs in a sarcastic allusion. He left the manuscript containing this allusion to be published by a friend; and it was so published. It was "a perilous shot out of an elder gun." But the matter did not stop here. The editor of the posthumous work actually apologised to the "upstart crow:"-" I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself hath seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art." This apology was not written by Chettle at some distant period; it came out in the same year with the pamphlet which contained the insult. The terms which he uses-" uprightness of dealing," and "facetious grace in writing" -seem as if meant distinctly to refute the vague accusation of "beautified with our feathers." It is perfectly clear that Chettle could not have used these terms if Shakspere had been the wholesale plunderer either of Greene or of any other writer that it is assumed he was by those who deprive him of the authorship of the two Parts of 'The Contention.' If he had been this plunderer, and if Chettle had basely apologised for a truth uttered by his dying friend, would the matter have rested there? Were there no Peeles, and Marlowes, and Nashes in the world, to proclaim the dishonour of the thief and the apologist? * Edin. Review, July, 1840. † Preface to Kind-Heart's Dream.' There was an indistinct echo of Greene's complaint, by some "R. B." in 1594: "Greene gave the ground to all who wrote upon him. We believe that never yet any great author appeared in the world who was not reputed, in the onset of his career, to be a plagiarist; or any great literary performance produced by one whose reputation had to be made that was not held to be written by some one else than the man who did write it :-there was some one behind the curtain-some mysterious assistant-whose possible existence was a 6 6 The only intelligible theory that can be possibly propounded of the motive for Shakspere's piracy of the two Parts of The Contention' must assume that the plays in their original state had become the property of the shareholders of the Blackfriars Theatrethe rude grooms, apes, buckram gentlemen, peasants, painted monsters, of Greene; and that Shakspere thrust himself into the capacity of the improver of these plays-the managerial editor. We know that authors were paid, in somewhat later times, to make improvements in old plays. Ben Jonson is held to have written much of the Second Part of Kyd's Jeronymo;' and in Henslowe's papers we find him paid, in 1602, a sum on account of these " additions.' The same papers exhibit payments to Dekker and Rowley for "new additions" to‘Oldcastle,' and 'Phaeton,' and ‘Tasso.' * We have ourselves expressed a belief that Shakspere's 'Timon' was an alteration of an old play, made by him late in life. But the assumption of Shakspere's plagiary from The Contention,' which is sought to be proved by Greene's "his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide," must go on to establish a case of piracy against Shakspere which would be wholly inconsistent with "uprightness of dealing." Greene was accused of having sold the same play to two theatres: "Master R. G., would it not make you blush if you sold Orlando Furioso' to the Queen's players for twenty nobles, and when they were in the country sold the same play to Lord Admiral's men for as much more? Was not this plain coneycatching, M. G.?" Malone, who accuses Shakspere with having built his reputation upon the appropriation of the two plays of The Contention,' furtivis coloribus, tells us that a decisive proof that they were not Shakspere's is furnished by the circumstance that they are said, in their title-pages, to have been "sundry times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants." Putting the two arguments together, then, we find that Shakspere not only appropriated the reputation of another, but stole the plays bodily from the Earl of Pembroke's players, and transferred them to the company to which he belonged. How is this answered? Simply by showing consolation to the envious and the malignant. Examples in our own day are common enough. "R. B." was probably one of these small critics. If he is held for any authority, we may set against him the indignant denial of Nashe that he had anything to do with Greene's Groat's Worth of Wit,' which he denounces as a "scald, trivial, lying pamphlet." Nashe, be it remembered, was the friend and companion of the unfortunate Greene. * Malone, by Boswell, vol. iii., p. 372. + Defence of Coney-Catching, 1592; quoted by Mr. Dyce in his 'Life of Greene,' p. xli. |