September 1, 1888.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



245 



which Shakespeare had in the production of the First Part 

 of "Henry VI." So far as Shake.^peare's own character is 

 concerned (about which wc are endeavouring to gain 

 glimpses from his plays) it may be .'^xul tlrit this particular 

 play tells us more by that which is indubitably not 

 Shakespeare's than by the passages which may with more or 

 less confidence be a.s,signed to him. I have already, how- 

 ever, considered the play in that particular aspect. I shall 

 here content myself by touching on some portions of this 

 pla}- which seem undoubtedly touched by Shakespeare's 

 hand, even if all of them have not come direct from his pen, 

 and contrasting them with others which seem as certainly to 

 have come from other hands. 



The first seven lines of the play seem as clearly to come 

 from different pens as the play itself regarded as a whole. 

 It would be absurd to suppose Shakespeare wrote the last 

 two of these seven lines : — 



Kingf Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long I 

 England ne'er lost a king of so much worth. 



While the four lines immediately preceding might well have 

 come from his pen : — 



Comets, importing change of times and states. 

 Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky ; 

 And with them scourge the bad revolting stars. 

 That have consented unto Henry's death ! 



though there is nothing enabling us definitely to assign 

 these lines to Shakespeare. Greene and Marlowe frequently 

 refer to as "rological fancies; and the tone of a later refer- 

 ence of the kind : — 



Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens, 

 So in the earth, to this day is not known, 



recalls rather Greene's occasionally pedantic affectation of 

 learning (a fault shared al.-o by Marlowe) than Shake- 

 speare's manner. 



The following lines read like Shakespeare's work : — 



Expect Sa'nt Martin's summer, halcyon d^ys. 

 Since I have entered into these wars. 

 Glory is like a circle in the water, 

 'Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself. 

 Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. 

 With Henry's death the English circle ends ; 

 Dispersed are the glories it included. 

 Now am I like that proud insulting ship 

 'Which CiEsar and bis fortunes bare at once. 



The Countess of Auvergne's comments on Talbot are 

 decidedly Shakesperean in tone : — 



Is this the scourge of France ? 

 Is this the Talbot, so much feared abroad, 

 That with his name the mothers still their babes ? 

 I see, report is fabulous and false : 

 I thought, I should have seen some Hercules, 

 A second Hector, for his grim aspect. 

 And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. 



[Compare with the last two lines Elinor's description of 

 Faulconbridge, " King John," act i. scene 1 : — 



Do you not read some tokens of my son 

 In the large composition of this man ?] 



Yet the greater part of the scene between the Countess and 

 Talbot is not at all in Shakespeare's style. 



The fourth scene of act ii. is by general consent attributed 

 wholly to Shakespeare. No one else, Greene or Poele, Mar- 

 lowe or Nash, could have written it as it stands. It pre- 

 sents, too, all the signs of having been produced by one 

 hand and at one time. The quality of the work is uniform 

 and consistent. Thoroughly Shakespearean is the skill 

 (evidently unconscious) with which the characters of Suffolk 

 and Plantagenet, both alike fiery, are differentiated, while 

 Somerset, cool even in his wmth, is strongly contrasted with 



either, and with Warwick, quiet but resolute throughout. 

 There is perhaps a touch of gentle Will Shakespeare's 

 nature in Plantagenet's " Thanks, gentle sir," specially 

 addres.sed to the unnamed lawyer, whose tone in the few 

 'worc's he speaks indicates his comparatively lowly station. 



Very little in acts iii. and iv. seems like Shakespeare's 

 work. The characterisation of the ilaid of Orleans, here 

 as throughout, is not only unworthy of Shakespeare, but 

 wanting in dramatic unity. Yet there are lines which few 

 but Shakespeare would have written in those days. For 

 instance. Burgundy's 



'Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy 

 Enshrines thee in his heart, and there erects 

 Thy noble deeds as valour's monument. 



And La Pucelle's 



Look on Ihy country, look on fertile France, 



As looks the mother on her lowly babe 

 When de;ith doth close his tender dying eyes. 



These passages, whether Shakespeare's or not, 'were cer- 

 tainly not from the same hand which wrote York's silly 

 lament : — 



He dies, we lose ; I break my royal word ; 



We mourn, France smiles ; we lose, they daily get ; 



All 'long of this vile traitor Somerset. 



Lucy, farewell ; no more my fortune can. 

 But curse the cause, I cannot aid the man — 

 Maine, Blois, Poictiers, and Tours are won away, 

 'Long all of Somerset and his delay. 



The fifth, sixth, and seventh scenes of this (fourth) act 

 are certainly not Shakespeare's. Probably the rhymed por- 

 tion which forms nearly the whole of these scenes is from a 

 pen which produced no other part of the play as it stands. 

 But the first lines of scene 5 read much like Shakespeare's 

 ■work, and seem even suggestive of Shakespeare's nature : — 



young John Talbot I I did send for thee 

 To tutor thee in stratagems of war, 

 That Talbot's name might be in thee revived, 

 When sapless age, and weak unable limbs. 

 Should bring thy father to his drooping chair. 



If Greene, however, did not (to use his own words) 

 " bombast out " the " blank verse " following, I know not 

 who, unless perhaps Marlowe, can have written them : — 



Is Talbot slain ? — the Frenchman's only scourge. 



Your kingdom's terror and black Nemesis ? 



0, were mine eyeballs into bullets turned. 



That I, in rage, might shoot them at your faces 1 



O, that I could but call the dead to life. 



It were enough to fright the realm of France : 



Were but his picture left among you here 



It would amaze the proudest of yon all. 



Shakespeare certainly never wrote this bombastic non- 

 sense. But very likely Shakespeare added the answers in 

 which La Pucelle ridicided Lucy's bombast. Possibly it 

 was thus he oflTended Greene. 



The parts relating to La Pucelle in the fifth act we may 

 safely assign to another hand than Shakespeare's. There 

 are some who regard the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk as 

 Shakespeare's ; but there are passages in it too feeble and 

 too false to nature to be his work. Some lines are almost 

 certainly his, as Suffolk's : — 



So doth the swan her downy c}"gnets save. 

 Keeping them prisoners underneath her wings. 



0, stay 1 I have no power to let her pass ; 

 My hand would free her, but my heart says— no : 

 As plays the sun upon the glassy streams, 

 Twinkling another counterfeited beam, 



