A Letter on Shakspere's Authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen Part 16

Hide it thy visage in smiles and affability; For if thou _path_, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough to hide thee from _prevention_.'

_Macbeth_, Act V. scene vii.:

'Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, And with him pour we in our country's purge, Each drop of us. Or so much as it needs To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.'

(rather strained figures).

_Hamlet_, Act I. scene iv.:

'So, oft it chances in particular men, That for some _vicious mole_ of nature in them, As, in their birth,--wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin, By the _o'ergrowth_ of some _complexion_, Oft breaking down _pales_ and _forts_ of Reason, Or by some habit that too much o'er _leavens_ The form of plausive manners, that these men Carrying, I say, the _stamp_ of one defect, Being _nature's livery_, or _fortune's star_,-- Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo,-- Shall in the general censure take _corruption_ From that particular fault.'

=Conceits and Wordplay=, p. 22. _Richard II_, Act II. scene i.:

'Old Gaunt indeed and gaunt in being old,' etc.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, Act IV. scene iii.:

'They have pitched a toil, I am toiling in a pitch!'

=Personification=, p. 25. _Two Gentlemen_, Act I. scene i.:

'So _eating Love_ Inhabits in the finest wits of all.'

_Richard II_, Act III. scene ii.:

'Foul _Rebellion's_ arms.'

_Midsummer Night's Dream_:

'The debt that _bankrupt Sleep_ doth Sorrow owe.'

_Henry V_, Act II. scene ii.:

'_Treason_ and _Murder_ ever kept together.'

_Macbeth_, Act I. scene iii.:

'If _Chance_ will have me king, Why _Chance_ may crown me.'

Act II. scene i.:

'_Witchcraft_ celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered _Murder_, Alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf.'

_Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. scene iii.:

'_Welcome_ ever smiles, And _Farewell_ goes out sighing.'

p. v. _Marigolds._ Dr Prior, writing from his place, Halse, near Taunton, 11 Oct., 1876, says, "I asked in a family here whether they had ever heard of marigolds being strown on the beds of dying persons, and they referred me to a book by Lady C. Davies, _Recollections of Society_, 1873. At p. 129:

"'Is Little Trianon ominous to crowned women?'

"'Pa.s.sing through the garden,' said the King, 'I perceived some _soucis_ (marigolds, emblems of sorrow and care) growing near a tuft of lilies.

This coincidence struck me, and I murmured:

"Dans les jardins de Trianon Je cueillais des roses nouvelles.

Mais, helas! les fleurs les plus belles Avaient peri sous les glacons.

J'eus beau chercher les dons de Flore, Les hivers les avaient detruits; Je ne trouvai que des _soucis_ Qu'humectaient les pleurs de l'Aurore."'

"I am inclined to hold my first opinion that _cradle_ and _death-bed_ refer to the use of the flowers, and not to anything in their growth or appearance."

p. 1. _My dear L--._ Altho' Prof. Spalding says that L. was an early and later friend of his, of great gifts and taste, and that he had visited the New World (p. 108), yet Mrs Spalding and Dr Burton have never been able to identify L., and they believe him to be a creation of the author's.--F.

p. 4. _Shakspere had fallen much into neglect by 1634._ "After the death of Shakspeare, the plays of Fletcher appear for several years to have been more admired, or at least to have been more frequently acted, than those of our poet." Malone, _Hist. Account of the English Stage_, Variorum Shakspere of 1821, vol. ii. p. 224. And see the lists following, by which he proves his statement.--F.

From the Paper with which Mr J. Herbert Stack opend the discussion at our Reading of the _Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_, he has allowd me to make the following extracts:--

To judge the question clearly, let us note how far the author or authors of the _Two N. K._ followed what was the basis of their drama--Chaucer's Knightes Tale. We have there the same opening incident--the pet.i.tions of the Queens, then the capture of the Two, then their sight of Emily from the prison window, the release of Arcite, his entry into Emilia's service, the escape of Palamon, the fight in the wood, the decree of Theseus, the prayers to Diana, Venus, and Mars, the combat, the victory in arms to Arcite, his death, and Palamon's eventual victory in love. But Chaucer is far superior to the dramatists. He has no Gaoler's Daughter to distract our thoughts. The language of his Palamon is more blunt, more soldierlike, more characteristic. His Emilia, instead of being equally in love with two men at the same time, prefers maidenhood to marriage, loves neither, but pities both. At the end of the _play_ we have something coa.r.s.e and hurried: Emilia, during the Tournament, is ready to jump into anybody's arms, so that he comes victorious; then she accepts Arcite; and on his sudden death, she dries her tears with more than the supposed celerity of a modern fashionable widow; and, before she is the widow of Arcite, consents to become the wife of Palamon. Contrast this with Chaucer, where the poem dedicates some beautiful lines to the funeral of Arcite and the grief of all, and only makes Emilia yield after years to the silent pleading of the woful Palamon and the urgency of her brother. Contrast the dying speeches in the two works. In the play, Arcite transfers Emilia almost as if he were making a will: "_Item_, I leave my bride to Palamon." In Chaucer, he says to Emilia that he knows of no man

'So worthy to be loved as Palamon, And if that you shal ever be a wyf Forget not Palamon that gentil man.'

Now here we have a play founded on a poem, the original delicate and n.o.ble, where the other is coa.r.s.e and trivial; and we ask, 'Was this Shakspere's way of treating his originals?'

In his earlier years he based his _Romeo and Juliet_ on Brooke's poem of the same name--a fine work, and little disfigured by the coa.r.s.eness of the time. Yet he pruned it of all really offensive matter, and has given us a perfect love-story, as ardent as it is pure. His skill in omission is remarkably shown in one respect. In Brooke's poem, Juliet, reflecting when alone on Romeo's sudden love, remembers that he is an enemy to her house, and suspects that he may intend dishonourable love as a base means of wreaking vengeance on hereditary foes. It seems to me that a thought so cunning is out of character with Juliet--certainly would have been felt as a stain on Shakspere's Juliet. That Shakspere deliberately omitted this, is known by one slight reference. Juliet says to Romeo,

'If thy intent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage.'

That is all--no cunning caution, no base doubt.

Now if in this original, and in this play, we trace the very manner of Shakspere's working--taking up gold mixed with dross, and purifying it in the furnace of his genius--are we to suppose that later in life, with taste more fastidious, even if his imagination were less strong, he carried out a converse process; that he took Chaucer's gold, and mixed it with alloy? That, I greatly doubt. Also, would he imitate himself so closely as he is imitated in certain scenes of the _Two N. K._?

Another point. Love between persons of very different rank has been held by many dramatists to be a fine subject for the stage. Shakspere never introduces it. _Ophelia_ loves a Prince, and _Violet_ a duke, and Rosalind a Squire's son; but gentlehood unites all. Helena in _All's Well_ is a gentlewoman. With anything like levelling aspirations Shakspere had clearly no sympathy. In no undoubted play of his have we, so far as I remember, any attempt to make the love of the lowly born for the high a subject of sympathy: there is no Beggar maid to any of his King Cophetuas. Goneril and Regan stoop to Edmund through baseness; Malvolio's love for Olivia is made ridiculous. The Gaoler's Daughter of the _Two N. K._ stands alone: like the waiting-maid in the _Critic_, she goes mad in white linen, and as painfully recalls Ophelia, as our cousins the monkeys remind us of men.

In some other respects the poem is far superior to the play.

Chaucer introduces the supernatural powers with excellent effect and tact--so as to soften the rigour of the Duke's decrees. In the Temple, Palamon, the more warlike in manners of the two, is the more reckless and ardent in his love: of a simpler nature, Venus entirely subdues and, at the same time, effectually befriends him. He prays to her not for Victory: for that he cares not: it matters not how events are brought about 'so that I have my lady in mine arms.' Arcite, the softer and more refined knight, prays simply for Victory. If it be true that love changes the nature of men, here we have the transformation. The prayer of each is granted, though they seem opposed--thus Arcite experiences what many of those who consulted old oracles found, 'the word of promise kept to the ear, broken to the hope.' Then in the poem Theseus freely forgives the two knights, but decides on the Tournament as a means of seeing who shall have Emilia. In the play he decides that one is to live and marry, the other to die. The absurdity of this needless cruelty is evident: it was possibly introduced to satisfy the coa.r.s.e tastes of the audiences who liked the sight of an executioner and a block.

In fact I would say the play is not mainly Shakspere's because of its un-Shaksperean depth. Who can sympathize with the cold, coa.r.s.e balancing of Emilia between the two men--eager to have one, ready to take either; betrothed in haste to one, married in haste to another--so far flying in the face of the pure beauty of the original, where Emilia never loses maidenly reserve. Then the final marriage of the Gaoler's Daughter is as destructive of our sympathy as if Ophelia had been saved from drowning by the grave-digger, and married to Horatio at the end of the piece. The pedantry of Gerrold is poor, the fun of the rustics forced and feeble, the sternness of Theseus brutal and untouched by final gentleness as in Chaucer.

Another argument against Shakspere's responsibility for the whole play is the manner in which the minor characters are introduced and the underplot managed. A secondary plot is a characteristic of the Elizabethan drama, borrowed from that of Spain. But Shakspere is peculiar in the skill with which he interweaves the two plots and brings together the princ.i.p.al and the inferior personages. In _Hamlet_ the soldiers on the watch, the grave-diggers, the players, the two walking gentlemen, even Osric, all help on the action of the drama and come into relation with the hero himself. In _King Lear_, Edmund and Gloster and Edgar, though engaged in a subsidiary drama of their own, get mixed up with the fortunes of the King and his daughters. In _Oth.e.l.lo_, the foolish Venetian Roderigo and Bianca the courtesan have some hand in the progress of the play. In _Romeo and Juliet_, the Nurse and the Friar are agents of the main plot, and the ball scene pushes on the action. In _Shylock_, Lancelot Gobbo is servant to the Jew, and helps Jessica to escape. I need not multiply instances, as in _Much Ado about Nothing_, Dogberry, &c. As far as my own recollection serves, I do not believe that in any play undoubtedly Shakspere's we have a single instance of an underplot like that of the Gaoler's Daughter. It might be altogether omitted without affecting the story. Theseus, Emilia, Hippolyta, Arcite, Palamon, never exchange a word with the group of Gaoler's Daughter, Wooer, Brother, two Friends and Doctor; and Palamon's only remembrance of her services is that at his supposed moment of execution he generously leaves her the money he had no further need of to help her to get married to a remarkably tame young man who a.s.sumes the name of his rival in order to bring his sweetheart to her senses. If this underplot is due to Shakspere, why is there none like it in all his works? If these exceedingly thin and very detached minor characters are his, where in his undoubted plays are others like them--thus hanging loosely on to the main machinery of a play? Nor must we forget that if this underplot is Shakspere's, it is his when he was an experienced dramatist--so that after being a skilful constructor and connecter of plot and underplot in his youth, 'his right hand forgot its cunning' in his middle age.

Two other arguments. In the Prologue of the play, written and recited when it was acted, there are two pa.s.sages expressing great fears as to the result,--one that Chaucer might rise to condemn the dramatist for spoiling his story,--another that the play might be d.a.m.ned, and destroy the fortunes of the Theatre[115:1]. Is this the way in which a play partly written by Shakspere--then near the close of his successful stage career--would be spoken of on its production?

Another argument is, if Shakspere, using Chaucer's poem as a model, spoiled it in dramatising it[115:2], then as a poet he was inferior to Chaucer--which is absurd.

Following high authorities, anybody may adopt any opinion on this play and find backers--the extremes being the German Tieck, who entirely rejects the idea of Shakspere's authorship, and Mr Hickson, who throws on him the responsibility for the whole framework of a play and the groundwork of every character. I should incline to the middle opinion[116:1], that Shakspere selected the subject, began the play, wrote many pa.s.sages; had no underplot, and generally left it in a skeleton state; that Fletcher took it up, patched it here and there, and added an underplot;--that Fletcher, not Shakspere, is answerable for all the departures from Chaucer, for all the underplot, and for the revised play as it stands.