66 Iph. . . . Shee's gone : Shee's gone. Life like a Dials hand hath ftolne From me the faire figure, e're it was perceiv'd." The Tragedy of Brennoralt, V. i. (in Fragmenta Aurea), ed. 1646, p. 48. ("Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand Steal from his figure and no pace perceived." Shakspere, Sonnet 104.) H. C. HART. THE KINSMEN: Prefented at the Black friers by the Kings Maiefties fervants, Written by the memorable Worthies (Mr. John Fletcher, and Gent. [Device] Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for Iohn Waterfon: and are to be fold at the figne of the Crowne in Pauls Church-yard. 1634 [The Two Noble Kinsmen was entered in the Stationers' Registers on April 8, 1634: "Master Iohn Waterson Entred for his Copy vnder the hands of Sir Henry Herbert and master Aspley warden a Tragi Comedy called the two noble kinsmen by Iohn ffletcher and William Shakespeare vjd." Shaksperean critics are divided into two main camps concerning Shakspere's part-authorship of the play. The Fletcherian parts are well defined, and generally accepted. The un-Fletcherian parts have been of late ascribed to Massinger, and the tendency nowadays is more and more to discredit the ascription to Shakspere of a share in the play's creation. Mr. Tucker Brooke in his Shakespeare Apocrypha, 1908, p. xliii, says: "That portion of The Two Noble Kinsmen which is obviously not Fletcher's contains some of the most brilliant of Jacobean poetry. It is not less certain, I think, that it contains no spark of psychological insight or philosophy of life which can in sober moments be thought either worthy of Shakespeare or even suggestive of him." The play is rich in language and poor in structure. M.] WILLIAM HABINGTON, 1634. To a Friend, Inviting him to a meeting upon promise. May you drinke beare, or that adult'rate wine If you make breach of promise. I have now A health to Shakespeare's ghoft. Castara. 1634. The Second Part. [4to.] 8th Poem, p. 52. Habington refers to William Prynne, the author of the Histrio-Mastix of 1633, from which we have given an extract. He supposes Prynne, under the genial stimulus of his rich sack, to put off the Puritan, and to toast the prince of playwrights. This Prynne is probably the second saint described in Hudibras, Part III. C. ii. ll. 421-4 & ll. 1065-6. There was a former Histrio-Mastix, published in 1610, which is said to contain an allusion to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, 1. iii. 1. 73: but there is evidence to prove that it had, by some years, precedence of Shakespeare's play. Some critics have seen in the expression "mastick jaws" an allusion by Shakespeare to the Histrio-Mastix of 1610: others an allusion to Decker's Satyro-Mastix. Such fancies are wholly without foundation. The word "mastick" in Troilus and Cressida means either slimy, or gnashing, in either case conveying a singularly forcible and offensive image of Thersites' jaws. "Mastick" is either from the Greek paorixn, the gum of the lentisk tree, or from the Latin mastico, the equivalent of the Greek μaorixáw, from μáørak, the jaws : certainly not from mastix, which means a whip or scourge. C. M. I. [See on this subject Mr. R. Simpson's arguments in his School of Shakspere, 1878. Vol. I. p. 9.1 JAMES SHIRLEY, 1634. [Jacintha, after listening to her several suitors who mutually dispraise each other to her, exclaims], Falstaffe, I will beleeve thee, There is noe faith in vilanous man. The Example, 1637, Act II, Sc. i, sign. C 4, back. Shirley's play, The Example, was licensed in 1634, though not printed till later. Jacintha here refers to Falstaff's answer to Prince Hal, 1 Part Henry IV, Act II. sc. iv. "You rogue, here's lime in this sack too: there is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous man." Compare the same sentiment in Romeo and Juliet, III. ii, where the nurse says, "There is no trust No faith, no honesty in men." (See before, p. 283.) |