that the statement in the title-page is not in the slightest degree inconsistent with the belief that, as very early productions, they might have been Shakspere's, and might have been acted originally at his own theatre by "the Lord Chamberlain's men," as well as by "the Earl of Pembroke his servants." Mr. Collier, without reference to this particular question, has settled the point with his accustomed industry and knowledge of the early stage:

use.

"It is probable that prior to the year 1592 or 1593 the copyright of plays was little understood and less recognised; and that various companies were performing the same dramas at the same time, although perhaps they had been bought by one company for its sole The only security against invasions of the kind seems to have been the non-publication of plays, which will account for the few that have reached us, compared with the vast number known to have been written: it will account also for the imperfect state of many of them, especially of those of the earliest dates. A popular play, written for one company, and perhaps acted by that company as it was written, might be surreptitiously obtained by another, having been at best taken down from the mouths of the original performers: from the second company it might be procured by a third, and after a succession of changes, corruptions, and omissions, it might find its way at last to the press. I take it for granted, therefore, that such favourite authors as Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Thomas Kyd, and some few others, furnished dramatic entertainments not for one company only, but for most of the associations of actors in the metropolis prior to 1593; and when we find early in Henslowe's Diary' an entry of 'Tamburlaine,' played by Lord Strange's actors, we may conclude that it was exhibited also by the Queen's, Lord Nottingham's, Lord Oxford's, or any other company that could contrive to get up something like the original performance. The extremely popular play by Christopher Marlowe just named is an instance exactly in point. On the title-page of the printed copy in 1590 we are told that it was played by the servants of the Lord Admiral, yet Henslowe five times mentions its performance by the servants of Lord Strange prior to April, 1592.

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"At a subsequent date the case seems to have been different; and after December, 1597, when Henslowe began to insert the names of authors as well as the titles of plays, we find few notices of pieces which appear distinctly to have been employed by other companies than that acting under the name of the Lord Admiral.” *

*History of the Stage, vol. iii., p. 86.

6

Here is an end then of the theory that the statement of the acting of the two Parts of The Contention' by Lord Pembroke's company is a decisive proof that they were not written by Shakspere. The title-page of The Contention' proves only that the play was in existence before the value of dramatic copyright was very highly estimated, and when consequently the original property in such copyright was not very strictly guarded. It fell into the hands of players who were not Shakspere's "fellows ;" and it was published by men who were not Shakspere's booksellers, and who certainly pirated some of his later works.*

§ VII.

It appears to us that Greene, in his attack on the reputation of our great poet, has rendered to his memory the most essential service. He has fixed the date of 'The Second Part of the Contention.' However plausible may be the conjectures as to the early production of two or three of Shakspere's comedies, the 'Romeo and Juliet,' and even the first Hamlet,' there is no positive landmark on them for our direction. But in the case of The First Part of Henry VI.,' and the two Parts of The Contention,' we have the most unquestionable proof, in Greene's parody of a line from the Second Part (the third of the series), that they were popularly known in 1592. They either belonged, therefore, to the first half of the decad between 1585 and 1595, or they touched very closely upon it. Important considerations with reference to Shakspere's share in the original building up of that mighty structure, the drama of Elizabeth, depend upon the establishment of this point, in connexion with the proof that these dramas were originally written by one poet-that the three Parts of 'Henry VI.' and the Richard III.' emanated from the same mind.

But there is another claimant to the authorship of the two Parts of The Contention,' of much higher pretensions than any one we have noticed. We pass over Kyd; for, although in facility and vigour he is a very remarkable writer, a slight" taste of his quality" would show that he is not the man to deal with a Jack Cade or a Richard. The monotony of Lodge's verse, more wearisome than that of Peele or Greene, would afford no parallel to that of 'The Contention.' No one has ever attempted to fix these dramas upon either Kyd or Lodge; and we may, therefore, be spared any minute

*See 'Henry V.,' p. 313.

examination of their characteristics. But there is one man who, in the force of his genius, and its later direction, was qualified to write at least portions of these plays. We mean Christopher Marlowe. It is to his "mighty line" that we must now address a careful consideration.

6

The earliest example of the application of blank-verse to the drama is exhibited in 'Ferrex and Porrex,' (usually called 'Gorboduc,') written by Sackville and Norton, and acted in the Inner Temple, and before the queen, in 1561. A surreptitious copy of this play was published in 1565; and a genuine edition appeared in 1571. Gascoyne's 'Jocasta,' played at Gray's Inn in 1566, was also in blank-verse. Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra,' printed in 1578, but not previously acted, was partially in blank-verse. Hughes's 'Misfortunes of Arthur,' in blank-verse, was acted before the queen in 1587 at Greenwich. The plays publicly acted subsequent to most of these performances, and up to 1587,—when Nashe, in a passage we have quoted, talks of the "swelling bombast of bragging blank-verse,”—are held by Mr. Collier either to have been written in prose or in rhyming verse. Mr. Collier therefore maintains that the establishment of blank-verse upon the public stage was a great and original effort; and he gives the praise of effecting this revolution to Christopher Marlowe. Tamburlaine,' which he holds to be Marlowe's work, was, he affirms, the first example of a play in blank-verse so acted. Mr. Collier says, "To adduce Tamburlaine' as our earliest popular dramatic composition in blank-verse is to present it in an entirely new light, most important in considering the question of its merits and its defects." Again : "Marlowe did not 'set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse ;'* but he thought that the substitution of blank-verse for rhyme would be a most valuable improvement in our drama." Now, we honestly confess, admitting that "Marlowe was our first poet who used blankverse in compositions performed in public theatres," (and the question is not one which we are called upon here to examine,) we cannot appreciate the amount of the merit which Mr. Collier thus claims for Marlowe. Ferrex and Porrex' had been acted, more than once, before numerous spectators; and it was in existence, in the printed form in which it was accessible to all men, sixteen years before Marlowe is supposed to have effected this improvement. It was not an obscure or a contemptible performance. Sidney describes it as "full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style." At any rate, here was * Greene, in 1588.

VOL. VII.

G

dramatic blank-verse; monotonous indeed, not informed with any bold or creative spirit of poetry, coldly correct, and tediously didactic; but still blank-verse, constructed upon a principle that was imitated by all the early dramatists, till some master arose who broke up its uniformity, and refined the "drumming decasyllabon❞* with variety of measure and of pause. Where was the remarkable merit of introducing the blank-verse of Sackville to the public stage? If Ferrex and Porrex' had not been printed,—if Promos and Cassandra' had not been printed,-if, being known to a few, their memory had perished,—the man who first introduced blankverse into a popular play might have been held in some sense to have been an inventor. But the public stage had not received the dramatic blank-verse with which every scholar must have been familiar, from one very obvious circumstance, the rudeness of its exhibitions did not require the aid of the poet, or at least required only the aid which he could afford with extreme facility. The stage had its extemporal actors, its ready constructors of dull and pointless prose, and its manufacturers of doggrel, which exhibited nothing of poetry but its fetters. Greene himself, who is not to be confounded with the tribe of low writers for the theatre in its earliest transition-state, says, in 1588, that he still maintains his "old course to palter up something in prose." He is as indignant as his friend Nashe against verses jet on the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-bell." This, Mr. Collier says, is pointed at Marlowe. Greene is no doubt sarcastic upon some one who had made mouthing verses, whilst he continued to write prose. Marlowe, very probably, had first made a species of verse popular which Greene had not practised, and which, he says, he was twitted with being unable to produce. It was commendable in any man to adopt an essentially higher style than that with which the stage had been familiar; but it certainly required no great effort in a poet to transfer the style which had been popular in the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn to Blackfriars and the Curtain. The cases appear to us parallel with many cases of publication in another form. The style which was first made popular by 'Beppo,' for example, was previously presented to the English taste in Whistlecraft; but because Whistlecraft was known to a few, whilst 'Beppo' was read by thousands, shall we say that Byron first thought the introduction of the style of Berni would be a most valuable improvement in our poetry? With great respect for Mr. Collier's opinions, it appears to us that the reputation of Marlowe must rest, not upon

66

* Nashe, 1587.

his popular revival of dramatic blank-verse, if he did so revive it, but upon the extent to which he improved the model which was ready to his hand. And here we cannot help thinking that the invective both of Nashe and Greene is not directed so much against the popular introduction of blank-verse, as against a particular species of blank-verse whose very defects had perhaps contributed to its popularity. Nashe bestows his satire upon "vain-glorious tragedians, who contend not so seriously to excel in action as to embowel the clouds in a speech of comparison ;"-art-masters, who "think to outbrave better pens with a swelling bombast," &c. ;— 66 being not extemporal in the invention of any other means to vent their manhood." Greene, on the other hand, is one "whose extemporal vein in any humour will excel our greatest art-masters' deliberate thoughts." Greene himself, although he derides those "who set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse," points especially at verse where he finds "every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow-Bell;" and, he adds, " daring God out of heaven with that atheist Tamburlaine." Mr. Collier has proved, very conclusively we think, that Marlowe was the author of Tamburlaine;' and there can be no doubt that much of the invective of Nashe and Greene may justly apply to this performance. Its very defects Mr. Collier ascribes to the circumstances under which it was written :-"We may assert that, when writing Tamburlaine,’ Marlowe contemplated a most important change and improvement in English dramatic poetry. Until it appeared, plays upon the public stage were written, sometimes in prose, but most commonly in rhyme; and the object of Marlowe was to substitute blank-verse. His genius was daring and original: he felt that prose was heavy and unattractive, and rhyme unnatural and wearisome; and he determined to make a bold effort, to the success of which we know not how much to attribute of the after-excellence of even Shakespeare himself. Marlowe had a purpose to accomplish; he had undertaken to wean the multitude from the 'jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,' which, according to Gosson, were so attractive; and in order to accomplish this object it was necessary to give something in exchange for what he took away. Hence the 'swelling bombast' of the style in which much of the two Parts of 'Tamburlaine the Great' is written." Be this as it may, we greatly doubt whether, if Shakspere had followed in the steps of 'Tamburlaine,' his "after-excellence" would have been so rapidly matured. It was when he rejected this model, if he ever followed it, that he moved onward with freedom to his own surpassing glory.