A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen

Chapter I: Front Matter

Text size

</pre>

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mike Zeug, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

Transcriber's Notes: Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. Words in italics in the original are surrounded by _underscores_. Words in bold in the original are surrounded by =equal signs=. Words in a Gothic font in the original are surrounded by +plus signs+. A row of asterisks represents a thought break. In poetry quotations, a row of periods indicates an ellipsis. Words in Greek are transliterated and placed between {curly braces}. A few typographical errors have been corrected. A complete list follows the text.

A LETTER

SHAKSPERE'S AUTHORSHIP

+The Two Noble Kinsmen;+

AND ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKSPERE'S STYLE
AND THE SECRET OF HIS SUPREMACY.

BY THE LATE

WILLIAM SPALDING, M.A.,

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AND
AFTERWARDS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC, RHETORIC, AND METAPHYSICS IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREW'S; AUTHOR OF 'A HISTORY OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE,' ETC., ETC.

+New Edition, with a Life of the Author,+

JOHN HILL BURTON, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF
'THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,' ETC., ETC.

PUBLISHT FOR

+The New Shakspere Society+

BY N. TRÜBNER & CO., 57, 59, LUDGATE HILL,
LONDON, E.C., 1876.

+Series+ VIII. +No.+ 1

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

FOREWORDS

This _Letter_ by Prof. Spalding has always seemd to me one of the ablest (if not the ablest) and most stimulating pieces of Shakspere criticism I ever read. And even if you differ from the writer's conclusion as to Shakspere's part, or even hold that Shakspere took no part at all, in the Play, you still get almost as much good from the essay as if you accept its conclusions as to the authorship of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. It is for its general, more than for its special, discussions, that I value this _Letter_. The close reasoning, the spirited language, the perception and distinction of the special qualities of Shakspere's work, the investigation into the nature of dramatic art, the grasp of subject, and the mixt logic and enthusiasm of the whole _Letter_, are worthy of a true critic of our great poet, and of the distinguisht Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics, who wrote this treatise, that at once delights and informs every one who reads it. No wonder it carrid away and convinct even the calm judicial mind of Hallam.

Indeed, while reading the _Letter_, one can hardly resist the power of Prof. Spalding's argument, backt as it is by his well-chosen passages from the Play. But when one turns to the play itself, when one reads it aloud with a party of friends, then come doubt and hesitation. One begins to ask, 'Is this indeed Shakspere, Shakspere at the end of his glorious career, Shakspere who has just given us Perdita, Hermione and Autolycus'?

Full of the heavenly beauty of Perdita's flowers, one reads over _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ flower-song, and asks, pretty as the fancy of a few of the epithets is, whether all that Shakspere, with the spring-flowers of Stratford about him, and the love of nature deeper than ever in his soul--whether all he has to say of the daisy--Chaucer's 'Quene of flourës alle'--is, that it is "smelless but most quaint"; and of marigolds, that they blow on death-beds[v:1], when one recollects his twenty-years' earlier use of them in _Lucrece_ (A.D. 1594):--

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Show'd like an April _daisy_ on the grass,
With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like _marigolds_, had sheath'd their light,
And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.

Full of the ineffable charm and consistency of Miranda and Perdita, one asks of Emilia--Chaucer's daring huntress, virgin free, seeking no marriage-bed--whether Shakspere, at the crisis of her life, degraded her to a silly lady's-maid or shop-girl, not knowing her own mind, up and down like a bucket in a well, balancing her lovers' qualities against one another, saying she'd worn the losing Palamon's portrait on her right side, not the heart one, her left, &c.; and then (oh dear!) that Palamon might wound Arcite and _spoil his figure_! What a pity it would be!

Arcite may win me,
And yet may Palamon wound Arcite to
The spoyling of his figure. O what pitty
Enough for such a chance!

V. iii. 68-71, p. 81, ed. Littledale.

I say, is it possible to believe that Shakspere turnd a noble lady, a frank gallant nature, whose character he had rightly seizd at first, into a goose of this kind, whom one would like to shake, or box her ears well? The thing is surely impossible. Again, is it likely--and again, I say, at the end of his career, with all his experience behind him, that Shakspere would make his hero Palamon publicly urge on Venus in his prayer to her, that she was bound to protect him because he'd believd a wanton young wife's word that her old incapable husband was the father of her child? Is this the kind of thing that the Shakspere of Imogen, of Desdemona, of Queen Catherine, would put forward as the crown of his life and work? Again I say, it can hardly be.

Further, when at one's reading-party one turns to the cleverest and most poetic-natured girl-friend, and says, 'This is assignd to Shakspere. Do you feel it's his?' She answers, 'Not a bit. And no one else does either. Look how people's eyes are all off their books. They don't care for it: you never see that when we're reading one of Shakspere's genuine plays.' Then when you note Prof. Spalding's own admission in his _Letter_, p. 81, that in Shakspere's special excellence, characterization, the play is--as of course it is--weak, and that it is to be compard on the one hand with his weaker early work, and on the other with his latest _Henry VIII_, more than half of which Fletcher wrote, you are not surpris'd to find that in 1840,[vii:1] seven years after the date of his _Letter_, Professor Spalding had concluded, that on Shakspere's having taken part in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, his "opinion is not now so decided as it once was," and that by 1847 he was still less decided, and declared the question "really insoluble." Here is the full passage from his article on Dyce's "Beaumont and Fletcher," in the _Edinb. Review_, July 1847, p. 57:--

"In measuring the height of Beaumont and Fletcher, we cannot
take a better scale than to put them alongside Shakespeare,
and compare them with him. In this manner, an imaginary
supposition may assist us in determining the nature of their
excellence, and almost enable us to fix its degree. Suppose
there were to be discovered, in the library of the Earl of
Ellesmere, or in that of the Duke of Devonshire, two dramas
not known before, and of doubtful authorship, the one being
'Hamlet,' and the other 'The Winter's Tale.' We should be at
no loss, we think, to assign the former to Shakespeare: the
judgment would be warranted alike by the consideration of the
whole, and by a scrutiny of particular parts. But with
regard to the other play, hesitation would not be at all
unreasonable. Beaumont and Fletcher (as an eminent living
critic has remarked to us) might be believed to have written
all its serious parts, more especially the scenes of the
jealousy of Leontes, and those beautiful ones which describe
the rustic festival[vii:2]. Strange to say, a case of this
kind has actually arisen. And the uncertainty which still
hangs over it, agrees entirely with the hesitation which we
have ventured to imagine as arising in the case we have
supposed.

"In 1634, eighteen years after Beaumont's death, and nine
after Fletcher's, there was printed, for the first time, the
play called 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' The bookseller in
his title-page declared it to have been 'written by the
memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr
William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' On the faith of this
assertion, and on the evidence afforded by the character of
the work, it has been assumed universally, that Fletcher had
a share in the authorship. Shakespeare's part in it has
been denied; though there is, perhaps, a preponderance
of authority for the affirmative. Those who maintain the
joint authorship, commonly suppose the two poets to have
written together: but Mr Dyce questions this, and gives us an
ingenious theory of his own, which assumes Fletcher to have
taken up and altered the work long after Shakespeare's labour
on it had been closed.

"_The question of Shakespeare's share in this play is really
insoluble._ On the one hand, there are reasons making it very
difficult to believe that he can have had any concern in it;
_particularly the heavy and undramatic construction of the
piece, and the want of individuality in the characters_.
Besides, we encounter in it direct and palpable imitations of
Shakespeare himself; among which the most prominent is the
wretchedly drawn character of the jailor's daughter. On the
other hand, there are, in many passages, resemblances of
expression (in the very particulars in which our two poets
are most unlike Shakespeare) so close, that we must either
admit Shakespeare's authorship of these parts, or suppose
Fletcher or some one else to have imitated him designedly,
and with very marvellous success. Among these passages,
too, there are not a few which display a brilliancy of
imagination, and a grasp of thought, much beyond Fletcher's
ordinary pitch. Readers who lean to Mr Dyce's theory, will
desire to learn his grounds for believing that Fletcher's
labour in the play was performed in the latter part of his
life. It appears to us that the piece bears a close likeness
to those more elevated works which are known to have been
among the earliest of our series: and if it were not an
unbrotherly act to throw a new bone of contention among the
critics, we would hint that there is no evidence entitling us
peremptorily to assert that Fletcher was concerned in the
work to the exclusion of Beaumont.

"Be the authorship whose it may, 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' is
undoubtedly one of the finest dramas in the volumes before
us. It contains passages which, in dramatic vigour and
passion, yield hardly to anything--perhaps to nothing--in the
whole collection; while for gorgeousness of imagery, for
delicacy of poetic feeling, and for grace, animation, and
strength of language, we doubt whether there exists, under
the names of our authors, any drama that comes near to
it.[viii:1] Never has any theme enjoyed the honours which
have befallen the semi-classical legend of Palamon and
Arcite. Chosen as the foundation of chivalrous narrative by
Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Dryden, it has furnished one of the
fairest of the flowers that compose the dramatic crown of
Fletcher, while from that flower, perhaps, leaves might be
plucked to decorate another brow which needs them not.

"If the admirers of Fletcher could vindicate for him the
fifth act of this play, they would entitle him to a still
higher claim upon our gratitude, as the author of a series of
scenes, as picturesquely conceived, and as poetically set
forth, as any that our literature can boast. Dramatically
considered, these scenes are very faulty: perhaps there
are but two of them that have high dramatic merits--the
interrupted execution of Palamon, and the preceding scene in
which Emilia, left in the forest, hears the tumult of the
battle, and receives successive reports of its changes and
issue. But as a gallery of poetical pictures, as a cluster of
images suggestive alike to the imagination and the feelings,
as a cabinet of jewels whose lustre dazzles the eye and
blinds it to the unskilful setting,--in this light there are
few pieces comparable to the magnificent scene before the
temples, where the lady and her lovers pray to the gods: and
the pathetically solemn close of the drama, admirable in
itself, loses only when we compare it with the death of
Arcite in Chaucer's masterpiece, 'the Iliad of the middle
ages.'"

All this does but show how well-founded was the judgment which that sound scholar and able Shaksperian critic, Prof. Ingram,[ix:1] expresst in our _Transactions_ for 1874, p. 454. My own words on pages 73, 64*,--written after short acquaintance with the play, and under stress of Prof. Spalding's and Mr Hickson's able Papers, and the metrical evidence--were incautiously strong. In modifying them now, I do but follow the example of Prof. Spalding himself. Little as my opinion may be worth, I wish to say that I think the metrical and æsthetic evidence are conclusive as to there being two hands in the play. I do not think the evidence that Shakspere wrote all the parts that either Prof. Spalding or Mr Hickson assigns to him, at all conclusive. If it could be shown that Beaumont[ix:2] or any other author wrote the suppos'd Shakspere parts, and that Shakspere toucht them up, that theory would suit me best. It failing, I accept, for the time, Shakspere as the second author, subject to Fletcher having spoilt parts of his conception and work.

The following scheme shows where Prof. Spalding and Mr Hickson agree, and where they differ:--

Comments

A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble KinsmenChapter I: Front Matter

0%9 min left in chapter