To which the fool adds: 'Ay, I'll be his surety but do you hear, wenches, she that brings the first tidings, howsoever it fall out, let her be sure to say the child's like his father, or else she shall have nothing'. In strict accordance with this artful precept the old lady in Shakespeare, who bears the message of the queen's delivery, proclaims the likeness in the strongest terms: 'Tis like you As cherry is to cherry The amount of the recompense is not mentioned by Rowley. ...Shakespeare's old lady receives a hundred marks." Other Professor Elze's list is by no means exhaustive. points of similarity are mentioned in the notes. The allusion in v. 3. 30 is explained at once by reference to Rowley: Much bloodshed there is now in Germany With Lutherans, Arians, and Anabaptists, Is with their tumults almost quite destroyed (pp. 56, 57). The letter to the chamberlain (ii. 2. 1-8) may have been suggested by Another citizen there is, complains Of one belonging to the cardinal, That in his master's name hath taken up Most interesting of all is Wolsey's criticism of Katharine Holy Saint Peter shield his majesty, If she be queen, the protestants will swell, (M 548) In Henry VIII. this is Wolsey's criticism of Anne Bullen (see note iii. 2. 99); while the remarks on Latimer and Ridley correspond with Gardiner's taunt at Cranmer and Cromwell (v. 3. 80, &c.). 3. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAY. By far the most difficult question presented by Henry VIII. is that concerning its authorship. What may be called the orthodox view nowadays is that it is the joint- Three Main work of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and perhaps Theories. of even another dramatist; but a strong number still maintain the old opinion that it is wholly Shakespeare's, while a third party do not consider it to be Shakespeare's at all. The question is entirely one of internal evidence. As early as 1758, Roderick pointed out1 three peculiarities in the versification of Henry VIII.: (1) the uncommonly frequent redundant syllable; (2) the remarkable character of the cæsura; and (3) the clashing of the emphasis with the cadence of the metre; but he confessed himself unable to draw any conclusion from them. The matter received only passing attention till 1850, when the late Mr. Spedding investigated it in a paper entitled "Who wrote Shakespeare's Henry VIII.? " 2 The weak and disappointing 1. Joint Authoreffect of the play as a whole, the want of unity ship of Shakein both spirit and action, and the metrical peculiarities, led him to undertake the examination, to which he was further prompted by a casual remark of the late Lord Tennyson, that 'many passages in Henry VIII. were very much in the manner of Fletcher'. He first criticised the play on æsthetic grounds, 'with an eye open to notice the larger differences of effect, but without staying to examine small points', and he then verified his results by metrical tests. As his method has been the "2 1 In Thomas Edwards's Canons of Criticism, sixth edition, 1758. speare and Fletcher-Spedding's Argument. 2 First published in the Gentleman's Magazine of August, 1850; reprinted in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874. (M 548) B • pioneer and model of further investigations on the authenticity of other plays usually ascribed to Shakespeare,1 the following lengthy quotation may not be out of place. "The opening of the play, the conversation between Buckingham, Norfolk, and Abergavenny,—seemed to have the full stamp of Shakespeare, in his latest manner: the same close-packed expression; the same life, and reality, and freshness; the same rapid and abrupt turnings of thought, so quick that language can hardly follow fast enough; the same impatient activity of intellect and fancy, which having once disclosed an idea cannot wait to work it orderly out; the same daring confidence in the resources of language, which plunges headlong into a sentence without knowing how it is to come forth; the same careless metre which disdains to produce its harmonious effects by the ordinary devices, yet is evidently subject to a master of harmony; the same entire freedom from book-language and commonplace; all the qualities, in short, which distinguish the magical hand which has never yet been successfully imitated. "In the scene in the council-chamber which follows (Act i. Sc. 2), where the characters of Katharine and Wolsey are brought out, I found the same characteristics equally strong. "But the instant I entered upon the third scene, in which the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Sands, and Lord Lovel converse, I was conscious of a total change. I felt as if I had passed suddenly out of the language of nature into the language of the stage, or of some conventional mode of conversation. The structure of the verse was quite different and full of mannerism. The expression became suddenly diffuse and languid. The wit wanted mirth and character. And all this was equally true of the supper scene which closes the first Act. "The second Act brought me back to the tragic vein, but it was not the tragic vein of Shakespeare. When I compared the eager, impetuous, and fiery language of Buckingham in the first Act with the languid and measured cadences of his 1 So says Dr. Furnivall, N.S.S. Trans., 1874, p. 242. farewell speech, I felt that the difference was too great to be accounted for by the mere change of situation, without supposing also a change of writers. The presence of death produces great changes in men, but no such change as we have here. "When in like manner I compared the Henry and Wolsey of the scene which follows (Act ii. Sc. 2) with the Henry and Wolsey of the council-chamber (Act i. Sc. 2), I perceived a difference scarcely less striking. The dialogue, through the whole scene, sounded still slow and artificial. "The next scene brought another sudden change. And, as in passing from the second to the third scene of the first Act I had seemed to be passing all at once out of the language of nature into that of convention, so in passing from the second to the third scene of the second Act (in which Anne Bullen appears, I may say for the first time, for in the supper scene she was merely a conventional court lady without any character at all), I seemed to pass not less suddenly from convention back again into nature. And when I considered that this short and otherwise insignificant passage contains all that we ever see of Anne (for it is necessary to forget her former appearance) and yet how clearly the character comes out, how very a woman she is, and yet how distinguishable from any other individual woman, I had no difficulty in acknowledging that the sketch came from the same hand which drew Perdita. "Next follows the famous trial scene. And here I could as little doubt that I recognized the same hand to which we owe the trial of Hermione. When I compared the language of Henry and of Wolsey throughout this scene to the end of the Act, with their language in the council-chamber (Act i. Sc. 2), I found that it corresponded in all essential features: when I compared it with their language in the second scene of the second Act, I perceived that it was altogether different. Katharine also, as she appears in this scene, was exactly the same person as she was in the council-chamber; but when I went on to the first scene of the third Act, which represents her interview with Wolsey and Campeius, I found her as much changed as Buckingham was after his sentence, though without any alteration of circumstances to account for an alteration of temper. Indeed the whole of this scene seemed to have all the peculiarities of Fletcher, both in conception, language, and versification, without a single feature that reminded me of Shakespeare; and, since in both passages the true narrative of Cavendish is followed minutely and carefully, and both are therefore copies from the same original and in the same style of art, it was the more easy to compare them with each other. "In the next scene (Act iii. Sc. 2) I seemed again to get out of Fletcher into Shakespeare; though probably not into Shakespeare pure; a scene by another hand perhaps which Shakespeare had only remodelled, or a scene by Shakespeare which another hand had worked upon to make it fit the place. The speeches interchanged between Henry and Wolsey seemed to be entirely Shakespeare's; but in the altercation between Wolsey and the lords which follows, I could recognize little or nothing of his peculiar manner, while many passages were strongly marked with the favourite Fletcherian cadence;1 and as for the famous 'Farewell, a long farewell', etc., though associated by means of Enfield's Speaker with my earliest notions of Shakespeare, it appeared (now that my mind was opened to entertain the doubt) to belong entirely and unquestionably to Fletcher. "Of the 4th Act I did not so well know what to think. For the most part it seemed to bear evidence of a more vigorous hand than Fletcher's, with less mannerism, especially in the description of the coronation, and the character of Wolsey; and yet it had not to my mind the freshness and originality of Shakespeare. It was pathetic and graceful, but one could see how it was done. Katharine's last speeches, however, smacked strongly again of Fletcher. And altogether it seemed to me that if this Act had occurred in one of the plays written by Beaumont and Fletcher in conjunction, it would probably have been thought that both of them had had a hand in it. 1 Spedding quotes in a foot-note, iii. 2. 238-244. |