The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 205 



That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels 

 When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets. 

 Bvt, soft ! / think she comes ; and I'll prepare 

 My tear-stain' d eyes to see her miseries." 



Here there is no question that the tone of the new matter is quite 

 opposed to the tone of the old, and that the added lines, though in 

 themselves excellent poetry, decidedly weaken the effect of the 

 whole. The four introductory lines of sententious moral, conceived 

 in the spirit of many of Shakespeare's sonnets, form a feebler opening 

 to the scene which follows than the curt question with which the 

 Contention version begins. The new lines, 8 and 9, are positively 

 unfortunate, for they divert attention from the humiliation of 

 Eleanor's "noble mind," of which Marlowe's Gloucester thinks alone, 

 to the rather ludicrous image of the duchess's physical discomfort 

 as she walks barefoot over the flinty pavement. So trifling a detail 

 could at such a time hardly have occupied the attention either of the 

 sufferer or of her husband. To give it special notice seems both 

 bad art and bad psychology. The addition of the last two lines is 

 no less injurious. The purpose of the speech is the exhibition of 

 Gloucester's fine stoical refusal to allow personal feeling to assert 

 itself in opposition to the execution of justice. The sentimental 

 allusion to his tear-stained eyes, together with the lachrymose tone 

 fo the other inserted lines, distinctly weakens this impression of noble 

 austerity.^ 



The soHloquy of York at the end of Act III, scene i (2 Henry VI) 

 again shows the contrast between the clear-cut method of Marlowe, 

 bent always upon the expression of some one mood in its highest 

 intensity, and the medleys of changing emotion, rich in poetical 

 truisms and fine-wrought figures, which Shakespeare at the beginning 

 of his career loved to put into the mouths of his characters. The 

 quotation of the first lines of the speech in the two versions will 

 sufficiently illustrate the opposition. Again I italicize the lines 

 which are entirely original in the 1623 version : 

 Contention, p. 34, 1. 170 ff. : 



" Now York bethink thy self and rowse thee vp, 

 Take time whilst it is offered thee so faire. 

 Least when thou wouldst, thou canst it not attaine, 

 Twas men I lackt, and now they give them me," 



^ The warmer play of feeling in Shakespeare's treatment, which here 

 results injuriously, is in other scenes advantageous to Gloucester's character 

 as has been noted already (p. 198). 



Trans. Conn. Acad., Vol. XVII. 14 July, 1912. 



