Edwardes, which had been acted before Queen Elisabeth at Christmas, 1564-51-and that this was the Palamon and Arsett performed at Newington Butts in 15942. The Shaksperean alterations and additions to this play he supposed Fletcher to have used for the play as printed in 1634. But if we are to assume Shakspere to have been the author of the passages attributed to him in this play, there is much force in Dyce's observation that they are everywhere 'stamped with the manner of Shakspere's later years,' and quite unlikely to have been composed by him at as early a date as 1594.

Attempts have indeed, as already observed, been made, while adhering to the theory of a bipartite authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, to assign the scenes and passages not written by Fletcher to a hand which was neither his nor Shakspere's. Charles Knight suggested Chapman, but the conjecture has met with no support. Far more to the point is the elaborate argument of Mr. R. Boyle in favour of Massinger 3, who, as he points out, was associated with Fletcher in the authorship of several plays,' who was fond of classical allusions and has continual touches showing that some passage of Shakspere was running in his mind,' and who, 'to crown all, has a metrical style which may be regarded as the continuation and legitimate developement of Shakspere's.' All this is well, and Mr. Boyle is justified in vindicating the great qualities of Massinger against the influence of Charles Lamb's criticism; but it hardly suffices to bring home to Massinger the rare imaginative power of some at least among the disputed passages. Finally, Mr. Fleay has put forward, but not apparently with much confidence, a plea on behalf of Beaumont who, as he insists, was unwilling to be known as a playwright; whence the Prologue speaks of 'a writer,' ignoring the duality of authorship.

The ordinary result of a prolonged reflexion on the problem of the authorship of the doubtful portions of The Two Noble

1 Cf. ante, vol. i. p. 211.

2 See Henslowe's Diary, p. 41, and Collier's note.

3 On Massinger and The Two Noble Kinsmen in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1882.

Kinsmen seems to be either an increased unwillingness, or at least a diminished willingness, to decide it in favour of the only specious claim-that which has been advanced on behalf of Shakspere. Even the use of some of the metrical tests fails to secure conviction from authorities specially skilled in applying them1. A very uncertain sound is virtually all that oracles, usually responsive 2, can be prevailed upon to emit on the subject. Amidst so embarrassing an ebb and flow of opinion, I feel unable to abandon the twofold conviction, strengthened rather than impaired by a repeated perusal of this, notwithstanding its defects, irresistibly attractive play, that Fletcher either was not author of the whole, or (which is far less probable) wrote its several parts at very different periods of his career as a dramatist; and again, that the supposition of Shakspere's authorship of the passages which have, with more or less of variation, been ascribed to him remains both improbable and unprovedunless by the negative argument that the claims of no other contemporary dramatist call for comparative consideration. Last in date of publication—and holding the very humblest The Birth position as to pretensions to Shaksperean authorship-stands of Merlin The Birth of Merlin, or The Childe hath found his Father 3. This production was published by the booksellers Kirkman and Marsh, in 1662, as the joint work of Shakspere and William Rowley. The latter co-operated with several other writers in the composition of plays, among them notably with Middleton, whom Mr. P. A. Daniel accordingly suggested as the joint author of The Birth of Merlin. I am not aware that this conjecture rests on any substantial basis *; and William Rowley's claim to the paternity of the play calls for no discussion here. Shakspere, at any rate, may be 1 1 See the observations at the close of the paper by Dr. J. K. Ingram on The Light and Weak-Ending Test in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874, pp. 454 seqq.

* Such as Professor Dowden and Dr. Furnivall; and the late Professor ten Brinck; see Jahrbuch, 1878, vol. xiii. p. 93.

Reprinted by Delius in vol. i of Pseudo-Shakspere'sche Dramen (1854); by Moltke in the Tauchnitz Doubtful Plays (1869); and edited, together with The Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell, by T. E. Jacob (1889).

It seems to be ignored by Mr. A. H. Bullen in the Introduction to his edition of Middleton.

Cf. Barron Field's Introduction to Thomas Heywood and William

(pr. 1662)

acquitted of any share in the imputation. The Birth of Merlin is a dramatic version-very possibly based on an earlier attempt on the same subject of the legend which attributed Merlin's gift of prophecy to direct inheritance from his father, the Devil. In the play the father and the son finally contend for the mastery; and the former is duly worsted, being shut up in a rock by means of a terrific curse couched in fairly elegant Latinity 2. After thus disposing of his sire, Merlin promises to his still-vext mother a quiet, though repentant, old age, and after her death a monument upon Salisbury Plain. The story of the wanderings of 'Uter Pendragon' is mixed up in the main action; the result being a strange medley of romance and farce, containing, indeed, occasional touches of vigorous character-drawing and signs of decided originality, but altogether of so rough and rude a texture that the possibility of Shakspere's participation in the piece is altogether out of the question. A certain poetic beauty cannot be denicd to attach to the figure and the conduct of the Prince; but the conflict exhibited in his person between duty and passion displays none of the psychological depth which on such an occasion Shakspere must have revealed. I see no necessity for any lengthy remarks on the treatment of a subject closely connected with that of Spenser's masterpiece by a dramatist whose design seems to have fallen short of the poetic conception of a poetic theme, while his execution, though vigorous, is so coarse as to give a burlesque air to much of his drama. Shakspere at least could never have taken part in a work which after so rude and coarse a fashion ventured on the same kind of ground as Rowley's Fortune by Land and Sea, printed for the (Old) Shakespeare Society, 1846, p. vii. The earliest record of William Rowley as a playwright appears to belong to the years 1607-9 (Fleay, English Drama, vol. ii. p. 95), so that if the play was by him, it was probably composed long after the publication of Spenser's Faerie Queene. Cf. Barron Field, u. s., p. vi. Thomas Heywood was familiar with the theme; see his Merlin's Prophecies and Predictions interpreted, and their truth made good by our English Annals, with The Life of Merlin, 1651.

16 Uterpendragon' had a run in 1597. See Henslowe's Diary, pp. 87 seqq.

2 Act v. sc. 2.

that familiar to his own airy step, both in his early and in his late adventures upon it. The merits of this brisk and bustling play are undeniable; there is a certain genuine freshness in the character of the marvellous boy Merlinborn with the beard and the wisdom of a man. But had Shakspere addressed himself to this part of the Arthurian legend, he would hardly have contented himself with dressing it up in this way for the gratification of the groundlings 1. Finally, this play contains no passage where, as in passages of Arden of Feversham and of The Yorkshire Tragedy, and perhaps in portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen, and most notably of Edward III, it is difficult to escape from recognising the touch of an incomparable-and, as at times one would fain believe, an unmistakeable-hand.

The few remarks which follow, concerning the dramatic Limited genius of Shakspere, are made from certain points of view scope of the ensuing only; viz. from those on which I may with the least pre- remarks. sumption seek to place myself. The utmost that any one student can hope to achieve in the study of a genius such as Shakspere's, is to draw nearer to it from those points of view which are open to him-not indeed disregarding or rashly undervaluing the significance of the rest, but satisfied with the certainty that even to the swiftest perception and to the most conscientious research many veins of treasure must remain closed. When Goethe was aging, he wrote his autobiography, and called it Truth and Poetry. Intentionally ambiguous as the title is, it nevertheless distinctly conveys the fact that even he, who commanded and controlled his own being with a serene consciousness rarely given to mortal man, no longer possessed part of himself except in imagination only. What Goethe could not do for the history of his own genius, no critic will accomplish for that of Shakspere's. But every true student labouring in his province will add to the progress of a work which weakness

The tale of Merlin, like other episodes of the Arthurian legend, lends itself ill to dramatic, as compared with epic, treatment. But its attractions have repeatedly proved irresistible even in the former direction; and I may mention, as a late attempt, Merlin, a dramatic poem (1890), by a talented writer, the late Ralph Macleod Fullerton, Q.C.

alone would abandon on the pretext of its seeming interminable1. Not, of course, that in forming for themselves, and helping others in forming, a critical appreciation of Shakspere they are likely to succeed best who are chiefly intent upon connecting him with the particular intellectual or other interests to which habit or inclination may have accustomed them. On the contrary, they run the risk of letting their conception of him slide into grooves from which it will not easily escape-something like the Alexandrian mythologists who, unable to comprehend the idea of a Zeus uniting in himself a diversity of attributes of supremacy, subdivided him into a multiplicity of chief deities with different activities and characteristics. Such a method of classification may be incidentally productive of interesting results, but they will never amount to a real contribution towards the purpose of all true criticism, viz. a more lucid and complete distinction between what is, and what is not, essential to genius.

I propose, then, to touch briefly upon the influence exercised in Shakspere's age by the great currents of national opinion and sentiment, and of national action more or less directly expressive of these, upon his dramatic work, some of which these currents seem to have helped to carry into particular channels of creative activity. A few observations will be subjoined on the way in which Shakspere regarded political history, and more particularly the political history of his own country. And, without adhering too closely to the three divisions under which it seemed proper to his fellowactors to arrange his plays in the first collective edition of them, I shall permit myself in conclusion to dwell in some such general sequence upon one or two further aspects of his genius as a dramatic poet, and of the relations between

1 The word 'finality' should never be used in connexion with any subject of criticism or of research-and least of all with any great subject of either. The biographical and exegetical portions of this chapter had, for better or for worse, just passed through the press, when Mr. Sidney Lee's notice of Shakspere appeared in vol. li. of his Dictionary of National Biography. I think a statement of this fact due to myself, although it can matter little to, an Elisabethan scholar unrivalled, in some respects at least, by any of his contemporaries.