202 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



To prie into the secrets of the state, 



Till Henry surfeiting in ioyes of loue, 



With his new bride, and Englands dear bought queene. 



And Humphrey with the Peeres be falne at iarres. 



Then will I raise aloft the milke-white Rose, 



With whose swete smell the aire shall be perfumde, 



And in my Standard beare the Armes of Yorke, 



To graffle with the House of Lancaster : 



And force perforce, ile make him yeeld the Crowne, 



Whose bookish rule hath puld faire England downe." 



Bad as the text of the Contention often is, the student of Marlowe 

 will hardly refuse to accept every syllable of this speech as the genuine 

 work of the poet. ]More distinctly Marlovian verse, in melody and 

 in sense, it would, indeed, be hard to point out. The reviser, Shake- 

 speare, evidently found no fault here, for he was content to retain the 

 lines quoted without any change except the characteristic metrical 

 alteration of " fertile England " into " fertile England's soil," which 

 has been mentioned above. ^ However, it would seem that the 

 fine lines and the fine situation challenged the imaginative powers 

 of the later writer and made him insert, as a supplement to the old 

 passage, twenty-one new lines as typically Shakespearean as are 

 the others Marlovian. After quoting with a trifling change the 

 first verse of Marlowe, " Anjou and Maine are given to the French," 

 the reviser continues in the strain most natural to him at this period 

 (2 Henry VI, I, i, 216-236) : 



" Paris is lost ; the state of Normandy 



Stands on a tickle point now they are gone. 



Suffolk concluded on the articles. 



The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleas'd 



To change two dukedoms for a duke's fair daughter. 



I cannot blame them all : what is't to them ? 



'Tis thine they give away, and not their own. 



Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage. 



And purchase friends, and give to courtesans, 



Still revelling like lords till all be gone ; 



While as the silly owner of the goods 



Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands, 



And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof, 



While all is shar'd and all is borne away. 



Ready to starve and dare not touch his own : 



1 See p. 179. 



