II.— THE AUTHORSHIP 

 OF THE SECOND AND THIRD PARTS OF KING HENRY VI. 



By C. F. Tucker Brooke. 



THE APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT. 



During the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, at least 

 five opposing theories were circulated in regard to the authorship 

 of the second and third Henry VI plays, each supported by careful 

 research and ingenious argument. Yet, in spite of the successive 

 labors of Malone, Knight, Halliwell, Grant White, and Miss Jane Lee, 

 with their respective followers, the problem was left at the end so 

 much involved in the mists of conflicting opinion as to appear more 

 insoluble than ever. Indeed, the very mass of accumulated argument 

 has apparently had the effect of stifling inquiry during the last 

 thirty-five years, notwithstanding the fact that the publication of 

 careful facsimiles of the early quarto editions of 1594/5 and 1619 has 

 placed the means of study within easy reach. 



It is possible that the failure of critics so far to arrive at conclu- 

 sive results arises from the circumstance that they have aU treated 

 the question primarily, if not exclusively, in connexion with its 

 bearing upon Shakespeare. Malone (d. 1812) contented himself 

 with proving that Shakespeare was not the author of the early quar- 

 tos entitled The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy. 

 These plays he first assigned, with little discussion, to Greene and 

 Peele on the evidence of a passage in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit.^ 

 Subsequently, Malone lightly renounced this theory, and accepted 

 the suggestion of Marlowe's authorship, originally proposed by Dr. 

 Richard Farmer (d. 1797). ^ 



Charles Knight, in his Pictorial Shakespeare (1839, etc.), attempted 

 on grounds purely sentimental to establish Shakespeare's exclusive 

 right to the plays in all their phases. This extravagant claim, which 

 contradicts aU the probabilities, has not been accepted, I believe, by 

 any other writer on the subject. 



In 1843, J. O. HaUiweU (later HaUiwell-PhiUips) edited The First 

 Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy for the (old) Shake- 



^ See the Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry YI, printed in 

 Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakespeare (1821), vol. xviii, p. 570 ff. 



2 See An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in ivhich the Plays of Shakspeare 

 were Written, Boswell's Malone, vol. ii, p. 311 ff. 



