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heard of it till July, 1593: so that while writing it the influence, or the inspiration, of Shakespeare may well be supposed to have been something strong upon him; there being withal only two months' difference in their ages.

Matters, I believe, are now ready for what may be justly regarded as the most important item of evidence that has come down to us touching this question. - Greene, after a brief bad life, died, forsaken, repentant, and miserable, at the house of a poor shoemaker in London on the 3d of September, 1592. It appears that his latest work was in writing a pamphlet entitled A Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance, which, soon after his death, was given to the public by Henry Chettle. Near the close of this tract, Greene makes an Address "to those Gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays." The names of these " gentlemen are not mentioned, but are well understood to be Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, and George Peele, all popular playwrights of the time. After exhorting each of them in turn, he proceeds with the following addressed to the three in common:

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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 garnish'd in our colours. 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? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt 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 Shake-scene in a country. O, that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions! "

It is well understood on all hands, that the words upstart crow and Shake-scene refer to Shakespeare. And it is evident that this spiteful squib, while touching others only as players, was meant to hit him both as a player and as a writer. For, as the

three whom Greene is exhorting are regarded only as authors of plays, so what is said about "bombasting out a blank-verse" must refer to Shakespeare as an author. Now it is generally admitted that Marlowe was the first to make use of blank-verse in dramatic composition for the public stage. So that a part of the slur on Shakespeare is, that he is rivalling or trying to rival Marlowe in this his most judicious and most fruitful innovation. And the words "beautified with our feathers" naturally infer the charge upon Shakespeare of having stealthily enriched or adorned his workmanship as an author from what Greene and Marlowe had written. And all this meaning is aptly driven home and clinched by the parody of one of Shakespeare's own lines in The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, i. 4, “O, tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!" which would naturally suggest the plays now in hand as the particular matter wherein the writer supposed himself to have been wronged. And with all this agrees a passage in a tract called Greene's Funerals, 1594:

Nay, more; the men that so eclipsed his fame

Purloin'd his plumes; can they deny the same?

So that my conclusion upon the whole subject is this: That as early, perhaps, as 1590, Shakespeare, in conjunction with Greene and Marlowe, had written the original form of the two plays in question; and that some time before Greene's death he had withdrawn from all partnership or joint authorship with those worthies, and had rewritten the plays into the form they now bear, throwing out the most of what the others had done, but retaining or slightly altering more or less of their work; enough to give some colour at least to the charge of having beautified himself with their feathers. I think this view fairly meets all the known facts and all the clear aspects of the case, and that it is the only one at all reconcilable with the poetical and dramatic characteristics of the plays in their later form, both in themselves and as compared with the same in their earlier form.

The action of this play extends from the arrival of Queen Margaret in England, May, 1445, till the first battle of St. Alban's, May, 1455. Except in one instance, the leading events of the drama come along in their actual order. That exception is

the proceedings in the case of Dame Eleanor, which really occurred several years before the opening of the play. Her crime and disgrace, however, are properly represented here, as they had a large share in bringing about the fall of her husband, while his fall had in turn much to do in kindling the fierce domestic wars that form the main subject of this and the following play. Besides, the matter in question furnishes occasion for a most characteristic passage between the Duchess and the Queen, though in fact they never met; thus giving an early taste of the haughty and vindictive temper, the indomitable energy, and the fire-spouting tongue, which marked the whole course of Margaret, fitting her to be, as in truth she was, the constant provoker and stirrer-up of hatreds and strifes.

In all other points the opening of the present play takes up the thread of history precisely where it was left at the close of the First Part. And the proceedings of the Second Part, in the main, grow forth naturally and in course from the principles of the First; the two plays being as closely interwoven as any two Acts of either. The passages of humour interspersed through the scenes of Cade and his followers are nearly the same in the quarto form of the play as in the folio. As these abound in the right Shakespeare flavour, it is out of the question for Greene or Marlowe to have written them, neither of whom seems to have had any humour at all in his composition. And it is remarkable that the strong instinct and impulse of humour seem in this case to have put the Poet upon blending together the elements of two widely-separated passages of history; the persons and events being those of the insurrection known as Jack Cade's, while the sentiments and designs are the same, in part, as became matter of history some seventy years before in the rebellion of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. After the quelling of Cade's insurrection, which was in July, 1450, the Poet overleaps the events, with one exception, of more than four years, and enters upon the preliminaries of the battle of St. Alban's, which was the first ripe fulfilment of the presage and promise given out far back in the scene of the Temple Garden, and the forethought of which is more or less apparent in the whole preceding matter of the dramatic series.

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RICHARD PLANTAGENET, Duke of HUME and SOUTHWELL, Priests.

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A Sea-Captain, Master, and Master's MARGERY JOURDAIN, a Witch.

Mate.

Wife to Simpcox.

Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; a Herald; Petitioners, Aldermen, a Beadle, Sheriff, and Officers; Citizens, Prentices, Falconers, Guards, Soldiers, Messengers, &c.

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SCENE I. · London. A Room of State in the Palace.

Flourish of trumpets: then hautboys. Enter, on one side, King HENRY, the Duke of GLOSTER, SALISBURY, WARWICK, and

Cardinal BEAUFORT; on the other, Queen MARGARET, led in by SUFFOLK; YORK, SOMERSET, BUCKINGHAM, and others following.

Suf. As by your high imperial Majesty I had in charge at my depart for France, As procurator to your Excellence,

To marry Princess Margaret for your Grace;

So, in the famous ancient city Tours,

In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil,

The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne, and Alençon,
Seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops,
I did perform my task, and was espoused :

And humbly now, upon my bended knee,
In sight of England and her lordly peers,
Deliver up my title in the Queen

To your most gracious hands, that are the substance
Of that great shadow I did represent;

The happiest gift that ever marquess gave,

The fairest queen that ever king received.

King. Suffolk, arise. - Welcome, Queen Margaret:

I can express no kinder sign of love

Than this kind kiss. · O Lord, that lends me life,

Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!

For Thou hast given me, in this beauteous face,

A world of earthly blessings to my soul,

If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

Queen. Great King of England, and my gracious lord, The mutual conference that my mind hath had,

By day, by night, waking and in my dreams,

In courtly company or at my beads,

With you, mine alder-liefest1 sovereign,

1 Alder-liefest is dearest of all; from alder, all, and liefest, the superlative of liefe or lieve, dear. The word, though pretty much obsolete in

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