The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 183 



lines in 2 Henry VI (2148) include not only Shakespeare's revisions, 

 but also a very considerable amount of original matter not represented 

 in the Contention.''- 



6. How far do the Contention and True Tragedy represent 

 Marlowe's original text ? 



In the last section it was suggested that, although the evidence 

 of metre in general strongly confirms the idea that the Contention 

 and True Tragedy were written by Marlowe and altered by Shake- 

 speare into 2 and J Henry VI, at least one metrical consideration 

 indicates that Marlowe's share in the performance is not wholly 

 represented in the 1594/5 text. Evidence of another kind, now to 

 be discussed, points in the same direction, justifying the assumption 

 that the 1623 version of the plays, besides including for the first 

 time the alterations of Shakespeare, also represented a purer and 

 more complete copy of the Mario vian work than Millington, the 

 publisher of the 1594/5 quartos, was able to acquire. 



Though there appears not a shadow of likelihood of collaboration 

 in the original composition of the Contention and True Tragedy, there 

 is a practical certainty of contamination of Marlowe's text. No 

 intelligent reader will probably desire to hold so careful a metrist 

 as Marlowe responsible for the five percent, or more, of totally 

 unscannable lines in Contention and True Tragedy, or for the three 

 percent in The Massacre at Paris and four percent in The Jew of 

 Malta. Moreover, since it is known that inferior matter, not by 

 Marlowe, was injected into Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustns, sub- 

 sequent to their original composition, is it not impossible that spuri- 

 ous scenes may have been added to the Contention and True Tragedy 

 even before they were revised by Shakespeare. 



The unusual excellence of the Folio text of Shakespeare's plays in- 

 clines us to estimate too highly the accuracy of the extant versions of 

 the works of other dramatists of the period. Shakespeare's practical 

 connexion with the company that acted his plays was productive 

 to the poet of many benefits, both literary and temporal. Among 

 others, it protected the acting version of his plays from outside inter- 

 ference, made sure that such changes as might from time to time 

 become commercially desirable should during his life be made by the 

 poet himself, and after his death procured the careful editing of the 

 genuine texts by those who knew most about them. Thus Shake- 

 speare's position in his company and the friendly services of his 



^ For a further discussion of this point, see pp. 184 — 188. 



