150 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



later. 1 It may be said at once that Pavier's assertion of Shake- 

 speare's authorship seems to be quite as little grounded in this case 

 as in the same publisher's editions of Sir John Oldcastle (1600) ^ and 

 A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608), where the words, " Written by W(il- 

 liam) Shakespeare " likewise appear. 



III. The third and final phase in the evolution of the text of the 

 plays under discussion is found in the 1623 Shakespeare Folio. Here 

 for the first time, the two plays, clearly first written as a two-part 

 drama, and so regarded for thirty years, are associated with the 

 previously unpublished First Part of King Henry VI and thus 

 changed into the second and third members of a trilogy. The verbal 

 alterations in the 1623 edition of our plays are so radical, particu- 

 larly in the case of 2 Henry VI, as to make the revised texts a,lmost 

 new dramas, though the basic elements of plot and character are not 

 very seriously affected. 



There is evidence to indicate that the revision represented in the 

 1623 text was carried out not later than 1592^: and it seems very 

 likely that the matter then added was exclusively Shakespearean 

 work and was the only Shakespearean work in the plays. There- 

 fore, the discussion of Shakespeare's concern, in the concluding 

 section of this article, will be mainly a discussion of the peculiar 

 features of the 1623 text. 



Let us return for the present to the consideration of the external 

 evidence connected with Millington's editions. It will have been 

 noted that the first title-page of the True Tragedy expressly declares 

 the drama to have been acted by the Earl of Pembroke's Company. 

 The connection between the two plays under discussion is so close, 

 and the later one so entirely unintelligible without the earher, that 

 it is perfectly safe to conclude that the introductor}^ drama of the 

 Contention must have been produced by the same company. The 

 determination of the company by which the plays printed by Milling- 

 ton were acted, does not, of course, determine their authorship. 

 Both Greene and Marlowe, among others, are known to have written 

 for Pembroke's Men. The fact, however, that The Contention and 

 True Tragedy texts represent plays written for Lord Pembroke's 

 Company justifies xis in inferring that Shakespeare had nothing to 

 do with them; for there is every reason against believing that Shake- 

 speare had direct relations at any period of his life with any but the 



1 See p. 186 ff. 



2 This edition of Oldcastle, though dated 1600, was probably printed in 

 the same year as the Whole Conte^iiion (1619). 



» See p. 191. 



