160 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



cidence would make natural. It would perhaps be unduly tedious 

 to dwell at length upon the likenesses between the two sets of charac- 

 ters ; but it is certainly worth remarking that, wherever the analogy 

 seems particularly striking, the Contention and True Tragedy will be 

 found to be merely reproducing history, while Edward II frequently 

 departs from the facts recorded by the chroniclers in order to conform 

 to our plays. Thus, Edward IV's despatching of Warwdck to France 

 to prevent Louis from listening to Margaret's appeals is a well-known 

 historic occurrence ; but Edward II's sending of Levune on a similar 

 mission against Isabella appears to be a gratuitous invention suggested 

 from the other play. Here, then, and in other instances, where an 

 account of debit and credit can be set up between Edi&ard II and the 

 early versions of the Henry VI plays, it is the former which proves 

 to be the borrower. Hence, if we are unwilling to admit that Marlowe 

 was influenced in Edward II by reminiscence of his own earlier 

 productions, we shall be driven to the unlikely conclusion that in 

 his most mature play he introduced a series of small purposeless 

 imitations of an inferior work by an undetermined author. ^ 



4. Verbal Parallels in the Contention and True Tragedy 

 and in Accepted Plays of Marlowe. 

 Previous critics have been struck with the close parallel between 

 some six or eight passages in the plays under discussion and corre- 

 sponding passages in Marlowe's acknowledged dramas, and they 

 have explained the similarity in various ways. Dyce, who dis- 

 covered five of the most important resemblances, believed that they 

 indicated Marlowe's authorship of the Contention and True Tragedy, 

 in part at least.^ Grant White, holding the opposite view, tried 

 to invalidate this testimony by the citation of several vague parallels 

 between plays by Marlowe and others by Shakespeare. Miss Lee 

 accepted the parallels as proof of Marlowe's authorship of parts of 

 the plays, but attempted quite fruitlessly to point out another set 

 of parallels with the works of Greene, in order that the claim of that 

 poet might also be supported.^ The list which follows will show that 

 the verbal echoes of undoubted Marlovian dramas in the Contention 

 and the True Tragedy are three or four times as numerous as has 

 been hitherto suggested. It is important to discuss with some care 

 what these resemblances reall}^ indicate. 



^ For a further discussion of this point see p. 175 ff. 



^ Cf. " Some Account of Marlowe and his Writings " in Dyce's edition of 

 Marlowe (1850, etc.). 



3 Cf. Transactions of the Xeic Shakspere Society, 1875—76, p. 248. 



