The Authorship of " King Henry VI." 147 



unreasonable, or even improbable, in supposing " that Marlowe 

 furthermore collaborated with Shakespeare in the revised 2 and J 

 Henry VI.^ 



Thus critical investigation during nearly a century had travelled 

 a circular path. Miss Lee, in 1875, guided by independent research, 

 occupied approximately the same vague position taken up by Malone 

 before 1800. It is not surprising that this relative failure to advance, 

 in view of the careful scholarship and indubitable earnestness of 

 the various investigators, should have discouraged further effort. 

 It may be believed, however, without excessive temerity, that the 

 difficulties encountered arose less from inherent lack of evidence 

 than from the preoccupation of all the critics \vith one attractive, 

 but rather unproductive, aspect of the question. The direct approach 

 to the mystery of the authorship of 2 and J Henry VI from the side 

 of Shakespeare's concern in the plays offers little secure foothold 

 for the critic. Those writers who, hke Knight, Halliwell, and White, 

 attempted to prove Shakespeare's exclusive or partial interest in the 

 antecedent plays of the Contention and the True Tragedy seem by 

 all the best evidence to have been upholding a theory with no basis 

 of fact ; and they unconsciously distorted the real truths in order to 

 render this preconceived fiction tenable. Critics of the opposing group 

 expended far more care upon the disproof of Shakespeare's author- 

 ship than upon the discovery of the actual writers. Malone, indeed, 

 regarding the question, like Knight and White, from the specialized 

 view-point of the editor of Shakespeare, frankly lost interest when 

 he had shown reason to believe the Contention and True Tragedy 

 non-Shakespearean. Even Miss Lee's more comprehensive dis- 

 cussion manifests in the constructive portion which deals with the 

 actual origin of the earlier plays a vagueness and comparative in- 



1 In consequence of a challenge from Dr. Furnivall, Miss Lee added, 

 though with doubt and against her expressed better judgment, tables indi- 

 cating Shakespeare's and Marlowe's shares in 2 and 3 Henry YI, and Mar- 

 lowe's and Greene's shares in Contention and True Tragedy. These tables, 

 which seem to me to possess no importance, will be found on pp. 293 — 306 

 of the Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875—76. Other dis- 

 cussions worthy of attention are: A. Dyce, in the prefatory matter to his 

 editions of Marlowe (1850, etc.), and Shakespeare (1857, etc.); F. G. Fleay, 

 ''Who Wrote Henry VI ?" Macmillan's Magazine, Nov., 1875, p. 50—62; 

 A. C. Swinburne, " The Three Stages of Shakespeare," Fortnightly Review, 

 Jan., 1876, p. 25-30; F. E. Schelling, The English Chronicle Play, 1902, 

 p. 78 ff.; J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 155S-1642, 1910, 

 vol. i, p. 59-67. 



