210 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



Ah ! what a shame ? ah, what a fault were this. 



Say, Warwick was our anchor ; what of that ? 



And Montague our top-mast ; what of him ? - 



Our slaughter'd friends the tackles ; what of those ? 



Why, is not Oxford here another anchor ? 



And Somerset, another goodly mast ? 



The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings ? 



And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I 



For once allow'd the skilful pilot's charge ? 



We will not from the helm, to sit and weep, 



But keep our course, though the rough wind say no. 



From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wrack. 



As good to chide the waves as speak them fair. 



And what is Edward but a rvthless sea ? 



What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit ? 



And Richard but a ragged fatal rock ? 



All these the enemies to our poor bark. 



Say you can swim ; alas ! 'tis but a while : 



Tread on the sand ; why, there you quickly sink : 



Bestride the rock ; the tide will wash you off, 



Or else you famish : that's a three-fold death. 



This speak I, lords, to let you understand. 



In case some one of you would fly from us. 



That there's no hop'd-for mercy with the brothers 



More than with ruthless waves, with sands and rocks. 



Why, courage, then ; what cannot be avoided 



'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear." 



It is quite possible that injustice is done to Shakespeare in the 

 study of these parallels. The reviser, working upon material so 

 homogeneous and so firmly moulded, was necessarily at a disadvantage. 

 His failures to preserve the tone and purpose of the original quickly 

 rise to convict him. But where he may have succeeded in main- 

 taining or improving the decorum of Marlowe's conceptions, his 

 additions are less easily distinguished from the earlier matter. Cer- 

 tain details in which the adapter was able to broaden the range of 

 character interest of the original plays have been pointed out. On 

 the whole, however, there seems no reason to doubt the justice of 

 the impression, based on many careful readings and comparisons 

 of the different texts, that in spite of probable curtailments and 

 corruptions, the Marlovian versions preserved in the Contention and 

 True Tragedy are intrinsically better plays than those which resulted 



J 



