The refined instinct, artistic judgment and consummate taste of Shakespeare were never perhaps so wonderfully shown as in his recast of another man's work - a man of real if rough genius for comedy - which we get in The Taming of the Shrew. Only the collation of scene with scene, then of speech with speech, then of line with line, will show how much may be borrowed from a stranger's material, and how much may be added to it by the same stroke of a single hand. All the force and humor alike of character and situation belong to Shakespeare's eclipsed and forlorn precursor; he has added nothing, he has tempered and enriched everything. The luckless author of the first sketch is like to remain a man as nameless as the deed of the witches in Macbeth, unless some chance or caprice of accident should suddenly flash favoring light on his now impersonal and indiscoverable individuality. . . . On the other hand, he is, of all the Pre-Shakespeareans known to us, incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful and original humorist; one, indeed, without a second on that ground, for the rest are nowhere.1 And how comes it that the world was, just at that time, so full of mighty but unknown geniuses? It seems to have rained Shakespeares. Then there is The Warning for Fair Women, arising out of a murder in 1573, supposed to have been written before 1590, and published in 1599. Mr. Collier' gives excellent reasons for believing that it was written by the man who wrote Shakespeare; and says the identities of language and thought are so great that it is aut Shakespeare aut diabolus. And Collier' cites the names of a number of other plays, "domestic tragedies" he calls them, which, like The Yorkshire Tragedy and Arden of Feversham, were founded upon events of the day; there is, for instance, Two Tragedies in One, based upon the assassination of a merchant of London, The Fair Maid of Bristol, The Stepmother's Tragedy, The Tragedy of John Cox of Collumpton, The Tragedy of Page of Plymouth, Black Bateman of the North, etc., all founded on actual occurrences which attracted public attention, and which were seized upon by some fertile mind as subjects on which to dash off short plays that would draw the multitude, and fill the pockets of actors and author. Many of these "domestic tragedies" are lost, but nearly all those that have been accidentally preserved are deemed by our best critics, English and German, to bear traces of the Shakespearean mind. And nearly all these antedate the time when Shakespeare appeared as a play-writer. It is generally supposed that Shakespeare originated that form. of drama known as the historical play. This is not true. Marlowe preceded him with Edward II., and an unknown writer with Edward III. Here we see that the purpose of teaching the multitude the history of their own country in plays, descriptive of the great events of different reigns, began before Shakspere appeared on the scene, probably before he left Stratford. Of the author of this play of Edward III. Swinburne says: He could write, at times, very much after the fashion of the adolescent Shakespeare.' This play was first printed in 1596, and ran through several anonymous editions. Collier speaks of it as undoubtedly Shakespeare's. Capell published it in 1760, as "thought to be writ by Shakespeare." Knight says "there was no known author capable of such a play." Ulrici is positive that Shakespeare wrote it. There is a curious fact about this play. It contains the following line: Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. And this line is precisely repeated in Shakespeare's 94th sonnet: Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. Either the unknown author stole this line bodily from Shakespeare, or Shakespeare stole it bodily from him: for in neither case were there any marks to show that it was a quotation. Public purloining of whole lines is very unusual in any age; but it would be most natural for an author to copy a few expressions from himself, with intent to preserve them. The writer of the play puts this speech into the mouth of the Countess of Salisbury: As easy may my intellectual soul "This last couplet," says Swinburne, "is very much in the style of Shakespeare's sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic 1 A Study of Shak., p. 235. "History of Dram. Poetry, vol. iii, p. 311 Knight's Doubtful Plays, p. 279. style of Shakespeare in his youth." He might have added that the whole passage is decidedly Shakespearean. The "angel, pure, divine, unspotted," reminds us of the description in Henry VIII., v, 4, of Queen Katharine as "a most unspotted lily." I quoted on page 534, ante, from 2d Henry VI., v. 1, the lines: These brows of mine Whose smile and power, like to Achilles' spear, Is able with the change to kill and cure. And in this play of Edward III. I find these lines: The poets write that great Achilles' spear Could heal the wound it made. I could fill many pages with parallel passages, but that I have not the space. There can be no doubt that Edward III. was written by the same pen that wrote the Shakespeare Plays; and if Shakspere was Shake-speare, why was it published anonymously; why did the thrifty player permit it to be sold without the pennies going into his own pocket? III. THE PLAY OF "STUCKLEY." There was an English adventurer, Sir Thomas Stuckley, who was first cousin to Sir Amias Paulet, the English Minister at the court of France while Bacon was an attache of the legation. He was a famous character during Bacon's youth-bold, warlike, chivalrous, unfortunate; the very character to captivate a youthful imagination. He was killed at the battle of Alcazar, in Africa, August 4, 1578, about the time that Bacon returned to England from Paris, and commenced the study of the law. His relationship to Sir Amias Paulet must have made this dashing adventurer the subject of a great deal of conversation among the members of the English legation in Paris; and what more natural than that Francis Bacon, if he had the dramatic instinct, should choose this interesting theme as the subject of one of his first plays. Stuckley raises a company of soldiers to fight in Ireland; he quarrels with the Cecils; goes to Spain; is imprisoned by the Governor of Cadiz; enters the service of Philip II.; the Pope makes him Marquis of Ireland, for 1A Study of Shak., p. 253. |