152 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



like that of the Contention, and hke the registration notice and all 

 the early title-pages of Tamhurlaine, omits the author's name. Hence, 

 Millington's failure to mention Marlowe as author of the Contention 

 and True Tragedy should not be taken as evidence against that 

 poet's authorship, particularly as the revised version by Shake- 

 speare must probably have been better known to the public at 

 the time when Millington's quartos were published. 



The rather scanty external evidence regarding the 1594/5 texts 

 of our plays seems to me, therefore, quite sufficient to disqualify 

 Shakespeare as possible author. Respecting the positive determi- 

 nation of authorship, though there is nothing in this evidence which 

 at all approaches proof, it seems worth remembering that the com- 

 pany which acted the Contention and True Tragedy very shortly 

 after acted Marlowe's play of Edi&ard II, and that the publisher 

 of our plays recorded his ownership of the copyright of ]\Iarlowe's 

 other play of The Jew of Malta during the very months when the 

 Contention and True Tragedy were issuing from his press. 



2. Plot. 

 The two plays we are considering are very carefully welded into 

 one. The Contention breaks off abruptly at the most exciting mo- 

 ment, when the success of York at the first Battle of St. Albans 

 renders civil war inevitable. Without any intermission or prelude, 

 the first scene of the Trtie Tragedy introduces the conversation 

 of the victorious leaders as they compare their experiences on the 

 battle-field. The whole work is planned with an imaginative appre- 

 ciation of the meaning of history and a power of unifying details 

 which are very remarkable and which would make themselves more 

 generally felt even in the revised versions of Shakespeare, if these 

 plays were there separated in the reader's mind from the unrelated 

 First Part of Henry VI. The very determination of the limits of 

 the double drama shows marked constructive ability. The first 

 play opens with the arrival of Margaret, England's evil genius. 

 The second closes with the final ruin of Margaret's cause at Tewkes- 

 bury, and the death of the pious Henry, whose fate has been so 

 disastrously linked with that of his terrible queen. Between these 

 termini the poet's imagination moves with an iron precision. Though 

 the historical figures necessarily shift and disappear, the tone of 

 the work never changes. There is nothing irrelevant or episodic. 

 Even the Horner, Simcox, and Cade scenes in the Contention bear 

 directly upon the general tragic plot and have their comedy suffused 

 with its stern light. 



