The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 151 



single compan}' — known successively as Lord Strange's, Lord Derby's 

 Lord Hunsdon's, the Lord Chamberlain's, and the King's — of which 

 he was personally a member. 



Those critics who imagine Shakespeare employed during his early 

 years as a hack writer for various companies reason against all the 

 evidence and all the probabilities. The old distinction between the 

 " university wits " on the one hand and Shakespeare on the other 

 is trite and superficial, but it has one true side. About 1590, there 

 were two sets of dramatic writers in London. The larger class was 

 made up of professional litterateurs, who, like Greene and Marlowe, 

 had no personal knowledge of the stage, or whose interest in any 

 one company, like that of Ben Jonson, was too unsatisfactory to 

 encourage permanence. These poets naturally disposed of their 

 plays as best they could, now to one company, now to another, but 

 nearly always, as far as we can tell, at pitiably low rates and much to 

 their own discontent. To the other set belonged Shakespeare, who, 

 approaching the stage from its non-literary side, was already a loyal 

 and relatively prosperous actor in a particular company when he 

 commenced his career as playwright by patching up old dramas for 

 purely utilitarian reasons. To the end, Shakespeare's income from 

 the success of his company seems to have far exceeded his earnings 

 as a writer. Considering, then, where the theatrical profits lay in 

 his time, it would have been utterly absurd for Shakespeare to 

 dispose of any play capable of being successfully acted to a compan}^ 

 in which he had no interest. And it is hardly less absurd to imagine 

 the Earl of Pembroke's Company applying for dramatic material, 

 between 1590 and 1592 to an active member of a rival company, 

 who was as yet almost unknown as a dramatic author. 



Pembroke's company acted Marlowe's Edicard II, which seems 

 to have been composed a very little later than the plays we are 

 considering. ^ 



The only other piece of external evidence bearing upon the 

 1594/5 texts concerns the publisher, Thomas Millington. The entry 

 of the Contention, March 12, 1593/4, quoted above, ^ is the earhest 

 mention of Millington's name on the Stationers' Register. MiUing- 

 ton next appears, just two months and five days later (May 17, 

 1594), when he, in conjunction with Nicholas Linge, registered " the 

 famouse tragedie of the Riche Jewe of Malta." Unfortunately, no 

 edition of the Jeiv of Malta, published at this time, is known to 

 have survived ; but it is worth remarking that the registration notice, 



■^ With reference to the relative dates of these plays, see pp. 173 — 177. 

 2 See p. 149. 



