402 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 55. 



Fletcher was the pupil of Shakspeare : and this 

 view, it appears to me, demands the serious atten- 

 tion of the biographer who next may study or 

 speculate upon the great poet's life. 



I don't laiow that I can add anything to Mr. 

 Spedding's able analysis of Henry VIII. There 

 are certain tricks of expression he, no doubt, has 

 observed that characterise Fletcher's style, and 

 ■which abound in the play. It might be useful to 

 make notes of these; and, at some future time, I 

 may send you a selection. I now beg to send you 

 the following extracts, made some time ago, show- 

 ing the doubts entertained by previous writers on 

 the subject : — 



" Tliou"-h it is very difficult to decide whctlier short 

 pieces be genuine or spurious, yet I cannot restrain 

 myself from expressing my susi)icion that neither tlie 

 prologue nor epilogue to this play is the work of 

 Sliakspeare. It appears to me very likely that they 

 were supplied by the friendship or officiousness of 

 Jonson, whose manner they will be perhaps found 

 exact!// to resemble." — Johnson. 



" Play revived in 1613." "Prologue and epilogue 

 added by Jonson or some other i)erson." — Muhne. 



" I entirely agree with Dr. Johnson, that Ben Jon- 

 son wrote the prologue and epilogue to this play. 

 Shakspeare had a little before assisted him in his 

 Sejantis. ... I think I now aud then perceive his 

 hand in the dialogue." — Farmer. 



" That Jonson was the author of the prologue and 

 epilogue to this play has been controverted by IVIr. 

 GifFord. That they were not the composition of 

 Shakspeare himself is, I think, clear from internal 

 evidence. " — Boswell. 



" I entirely agree with Dr. Johnson with respect to 

 the time when these additional lines were inserted. . . . 

 I su';pect they were added in 1613, after Shakspeare 

 had quitted the stage, by that hand which tampered 

 with the other parts of the play so much as to have 

 rendered the versification of it of a difl'erent colour from 

 all the other jdays of Shakspeare." — Malone. 



" If the reviver of this play (or tamperer with it, as 

 he is called by INIr. Malone) had so much influence 

 over its numbers as to have entirely changed their 

 texture, he must be supposed to have new-woven the 

 substance of the whole piece ; a fact almost incredible." 

 — Stteveiis. 



" The double character of Wolsey drawn by Queen 

 Kathtrine and her attendant, is a piece of vigorous 

 writing of which any other author but Shakspe u-e 

 might have been proud ; and the celebrated farewell of 

 the Cardinal, with his exhortation to Cromwell, only 

 wants that quickening, that vital something wliich the 

 poet could have breathed into it, to be truly and almost 

 incomparably great. 



" Our own conviction is that Shakspeare wrote a 

 portion only of this play. 



" It cannot for a moment be supposed that any 

 alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or 

 would be allowed ; as little is it to be supposed that 

 Shakspeare would commence a i)lay in his old-accus- 

 tomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in 

 the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not 



inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple." — Ti/ns's 

 Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 441. 



At the same time I made the following notes 

 from Coleridge : — 



" Classification, 1802. 

 3rd Epoch. Henry VIII. Gelegenheitsgedlcht. 



Classification, 1819. 

 3rd Epoch. Henry VIII., a sort of historical 

 masque, or show-play." 



" It (the historical drama) must likewise be poetical ; 

 that only, I mean, must be taken which is the perma- 

 nent in our nature, which is common, and therefore 

 deeply interesting to all ages." — Lit. Rem., vol. ii. 

 p. IGO. 



What is said in this last extract might be ap- 

 plied (as Coleridge, I feel no doubt, had he gone 

 one step farther into the subject, would have ap- 

 plied it) to the Shalcspearian drama generally ; 

 and tried by this test Henry VIII. must certainly 

 be found wanting. 



Before I conclude I am anxious to make an ob- 

 servation with regard to the extract from Mr. 

 Emerson's Bepre.^entative Men (vol. ii. p. 307.). 

 The essay from which this is taken, I presume to 

 be the same, in a printed form, as a lecture which 

 I heard that gentleman deliver. With abundant 

 powers to form a judgment for himselti I should say 

 that his mind had never been directed to questions 

 of this nature. Accident, perhaps, had drawn his 

 attention to the style of Henry VIII.; but, with 

 reference to the general subject, he had received 

 implicitly and unquestioned the conchisions of 

 authorities who have represented Shakspeare as 

 the greatest borrower, plagiarist, and imitator that 

 all time has brought forth. This, however, did not 

 shake his laith in the poet's greatness ; and to re- 

 concile what to some would appear contradictory 

 positions, he proposes the fact, I might say the 

 truism, that the greatest man is not the most ori- 

 ginal, but the "most indebted" man. This, in the 

 sense in which it is true, is saying no more than 

 that the educated man is better than the savage ; 

 but, in the apologetic sense intended, it is equi- 

 valent to aliirming that the greatest thief is the 

 most respectable man. Confident in this morality, 

 he assumes a previous play to Shakspeare's ; but 

 it appears to me that he relies too much upon the 

 "cadence" of the lines: otherwise I could not 

 account for his selecting as an " autograph " a 

 scene that, to my mind, bears " unmistake.able 

 traits " of Fletcher's hand, and that, by whomso- 

 ever written, is about the weakest in the whole 

 play. _ 



It is a branch of the subject which I have not 

 yet fully considered ; but Mr. Spedixing will ob- 

 serve that the view I take does not interfere with 

 the supposition that Fletcher revised the play, 



