146 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



speare Society. In his introduction to this work, the editor set up, 

 as a sort of compromise between the views of Malone and Knight, 

 the unfounded conjecture that the original plays upon which 2 and J 

 Henry VI were based have been lost, and that the Contention and 

 True Tragedy " included the first additions which Shakespeare made 

 to the originals." The gratuitous assumption of such a hypothesis, 

 inspired by the pious desire of the Shakespeare-worshipper to ascribe 

 to his idol whatever might be of particular merit in the work, while 

 reUeving him of all responsibihty for the mediocre portions, really 

 carries the problem out of the domain of logical research, and makes 

 the discussion of the non- Shakespearean residue impracticable and 

 unimportant. 



An equally one-sided attitude to the question is involved in 

 Richard Grant White's more painstaking Essay on the Authorship 

 of Henry VI (1859). It was, of course, natural that this elaborate 

 paper, composed for insertion in White's edition of Shakespeare, 

 should concern itself primarily, like its predecessors, with Shake- 

 speare's interest in the plays. White's theory assumes that all the 

 passages in the earher plays {i. e., Contention and True Tragedy) 

 retained in 2 and 3 Henry VI were of Shakespeare's original compo- 

 sition. Thus, only the poor rejected matter in Contention and True 

 Tragedy is ascribed to the other authors, whom White identifies as 

 Greene, Peele, and Marlowe; and White's treatment of the non-Shake- 

 spearean side of the question degenerates into an unworthy attempt 

 to show by illustrative excerpts that the poets named were incapable 

 of writing of the scenes retained in 2 and J Henry VI. 



Miss Lee's paper,^ the most clearly reasoned discussion of the sub- 

 ject which has yet appeared, is mainly occupied with a refutation of 

 the ill-advised Shakespearean claims of Knight, Halliweh, and White. 

 She advances sohd, and, it appears to me, sufficient arguments in 

 favor of the belief that Shakespeare had no part in the Contention or 

 the True Tragedy. Yet Miss Lee's negative thesis is not much less 

 engrossed with the special Shakespearean interest of the problem than 

 were the positive theories which she opposed. Though she very con- 

 scientiously devoted considerable pains to the discussion of Mar- 

 lowe's and Greene's share in the earlier plays, she really left that 

 part of the subject as undecided as she found it. Her concluding 

 statements are that " Marlowe and Greene, and possibly Peele, were 

 the authors" of the older plays, and " that there is, at least, nothing 



1 " On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI and 



their Originals," Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875—76. 

 p. 219 ff. 



