Counting the Bard, How Verse Tests and Critical Taste Fought Over Edward III

“ For myself, I am and have always been perfectly satisfied with one single and simple piece of evidence that Shakespeare had not a finger in the concoction of King Edward III. He was the author of King Henry V.
NOTE.
I was not surprised to hear that my essay on the historical play of King Edward III. had on its first appearance met in various quarters with assailants of various kinds. There are some forms of attack to which no answer is possible for a man of any human self-respect but the lifelong silence of contemptuous disgust. ”

“ Evidence of style also gives Marlowe some pretension to a share in 'Edward III,' 1596, 4to, a play of very unequal merit, but including at least one scene which has been doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare. ”

“ If it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrangement of themselves constitute a distinction which overturns what I have been saying on the strict affinity of metrical language with that of prose, and paves the way for other distinctions which the mind voluntarily admits, I answer that the distinction of rhyme and metre is regular and uniform, and not, like that which is produced by what is usually called poetic diction, arbitrary and subject to infinite caprices upon which no calculation whatever can be made. ”

“ The theory culminated in 1874 in the analysis and argument of Fleay who stated strongly his confidence in Shakespeare's priority. [22] He concludes his Essay as follows: 'The essential part of this paper is the proof that the Shakspere part of this play was written before the other part.' Among the critics who have, in the main, subscribed to this theory are Rolfe, Hudson, Deighton, Gollancz, and Furnivall. ”

“ Richard II. cannot be definitely dated by external evidence, but all competent critics agree that it is the earliest of Shakespeare's historical plays; the question of authorship, &c., of Richard III. being reserved for the present. It is a tragedy like Marlowe's Edward II., not a "life and death" history. The Civil Wars of Daniel, from which Shakespeare seems to have derived a few hints, was entered on S. R. 11th October 1594. The play probably was produced after this date, and before the publication of the Pope's bull in 1596, inciting the Queen's subjects to depose her. ”

“ Yet it is no less a task than this that the scholiasts have girt themselves to achieve: they will pluck out the heart not of Hamlet’s but of Shakespeare’s mystery by the means of a metrical test; and this test is to be applied by a purely arithmetical process. It is useless to pretend or to protest that they work by any rule but the rule of thumb and finger: that they have no ear to work by, whatever outward show they may make of unmistakable ears, the very nature of their project gives full and damning proof. ”

“ Every man, woman, and child born with five fingers on each hand was henceforward better qualified as a critic than any poet or scholar of time past. But it was not, whatever outsiders might pretend to think, exclusively on the verse-test, as it had facetiously been called on account of its total incompatibility with any conceivable scheme of metre or principle of rhythm—it was not exclusively on this precious and unanswerable test that they relied. ”

“ Perhaps however it may be possible to do some service by an attempt to disprove what is untenable, even though it should not be possible to produce in its stead any positive proof of what we may receive as matter of absolute faith.
The veriest tiro in criticism who knows anything of the subject in hand must perceive, what is certainly not beyond a schoolboy's range of vision, that the metre and the language of this play are in great part so like the language and the metre of Fletcher that the first and easiest inference would be to assume the partnership of that poet in the work. ”

“ To distinguish rhythmic beat from metrical pattern is difficult, perhaps impossible to do by any rule-of-thumb. But a careful examination of Swinburne’s verse as a whole reveals that, in comparison with poets of [137] his own stature, he had little rhythmic subtlety, a diction that was superbly copious but seldom touched with the rarer magic of discovery, and a metrical genius that, in its power, its variety and its essential artistic significance, may be said without over-statement to remain beyond the approach of any other English poet. ”

“ Metre and rhyme are a fetter, but also a veil which the poet throws round him, and under which he is permitted to speak as he otherwise dared not do; and that is what gives us pleasure. He is only half responsible for all that he says; metre and rhyme must answer for the other half. Metre, or measure, as mere rhythm, has its existence only in time, which is a pure perception a priori, thus, to use Kant s language, belongs merely to pure sensibility; rhyme, on the other hand, is an affair of sensation, in the organ of hearing, thus of empirical sensibility. ”

“ But the powerful influence exerted by Marlowe on Shakespeare's literary work is more interesting than their private relations with each other. All the blank verse in Shakespeare's early plays bears the stamp of Marlowe's inspiration. In 'Richard II' and the 'Merchant of Venice ' Shakespeare chose subjects of which Marlowe had already treated in 'Edward II' and the 'Jew of Malta,' and although the younger dramatist was more efficient in the handling of his plots than the elder, Shakespeare's direct indebtedness to Marlowe in either piece is unmistakable. ”

“ There were older plays on the subject of Richard II., but Shakespeare does not seem to have made any use of them. The model he had in his mind's eye was Marlowe's finest tragedy, his [Pg 120] Edward II. Shakespeare's play is, however, much more than a clever imitation of Marlowe's; it is not only better composed, with a more concentrated action, but has also a great advantage in the full-blooded vitality of its style. Marlowe's style is here monotonously dry and sombre. ”

“ One would tend to the theory that [Pg xlv] the play was written by Marlowe, on account of the total absence of comedy and a dulcet sweetness in the blank verse. If so it was an early study and must be placed before Edward II. Edward III. is like James IV. in the fact that it is not a pure chronicle play, but is based for its most effective scenes upon a romantic episode from Painter's Palace of Pleasure. As James IV. goes back to a novella of Cinthio, the ultimate source of the romantic by-plot of Edward III. is a novel by Bandello. The historical portions of the play are based on Holinshed. ”

“ Some such date is confirmed by its direct imitations from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (c. 1587) and to a less extent from Dr. Faustus (c. 1588) , which are collected by Boas, 93. For author, Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and Peele have all been suggested, but, so far as we know, Marlowe did not repeat himself, and the others did not plagiarize him, in this flagrant manner. Shakespeare also is still often credited with a hand in the old play, [49] as well as in the revision, and the problem can best be discussed in connexion with Shakespeare. ”

“ Though ‘Richard II’ was in ‘Richard II.’style and treatment far less deeply indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly suggested by Marlowe's ‘Edward II,’ which it imitates at many points in the development and collapse of the weak king's character—the leading theme. Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embellishments are numerous and include the magnificently eloquent eulogy of England which is set in the mouth of John of Gaunt. Prose is avoided throughout the play, a certain sign of early work. ”

“ An attempt in picking out the actual lines is mere sophistication, and a profitless and useless discussion. In introducing a play within a play, Shakespeare endeavours to beguile the audience to believe in the reality of the play and in the artificiality of the play scene; for this purpose he employs rhyme couplets instead of the ordinary dialogue and blank verse. The style of the interlude is further mocked by the forced conceits and bombastic nature of the language. ”

“ Warwick, Artois, to horse and let’s away!
COUNTESS.
What might I speak to make my sovereign stay?
KING EDWARD.
What needs a tongue to such a speaking eye,
That more persuades than winning Oratory?
COUNTESS.
Let not thy presence, like the April sun,
Flatter our earth and suddenly be done.
More happy do not make our outward wall
Than thou wilt grace our inner house withal.
Our house, my liege, is like a Country swain,
Whose habit rude and manners blunt and plain
Presageth nought, yet inly beautified
With bounties, riches and faire hidden pride. ”

“ That her perfections emulate the sun,
That she breeds sweets as plenteous as the sun,
That she doth thaw cold winter like the sun,
That she doth cheer fresh summer like the sun,
The she doth dazzle gazers like the sun;
And, in this application to the sun,
Bid her be free and general as the sun,
Who smiles upon the basest weed that grows
As lovingly as on the fragrant rose.
Let’s see what follows that same moonlight line.
LODOWICK.
‘More fair and chaste than is the queen of shades,
More bold in constance’—
KING EDWARD.
In constance! than who? ”

“ No sooner has he said anything especially beautiful, pathetic, or sublime, than the evil genius must needs take his turn, exact as it were the forfeit of his bond, impel the poet into some sheer perversity, deface the flow and form of the verse with some preposterous crudity or flatulence of phrase which would discredit the most incapable or the most fantastic novice. And the worst of it all is that he limps or stumbles with either foot alternately. At one moment he exaggerates the license of artificial rhetoric, the strain and swell of the most high-flown and hyperbolical poetic diction ”

“ I am indeed far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer. It is seldom that authors, though more studious of fame than Shakespeare, rise much above the standard of their own age; to add a little to what is best will always be sufficient for present praise, and those who find themselves exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, and to spare the labour of contending with themselves. ”

“ When his judgment had matured Shakespeare could not have written so very ill as he sometimes does in Romeo and Juliet, but a writer of genius could at an early age, when inspired by the passion of his theme, have written as admirably as he does even in the noblest passages of the fifth Act. That he was conscious of having already attained comparative mastery in his art may be inferred from his independence of Marlowe, and the implied criticism of the style of Kyd in the exclamatory lamentations over Juliet supposed dead. ”

“ Shakespeare is a supreme if not infallible poet; his verse, often of an antique simplicity or of a rich, harmonious, romantic perfection, is at other times strained and shattered with what it tries to express, and attains beauty only through discord. ”

“ The character of old John of Gaunt, loyal to his King, but still more to his country, gives Shakespeare his first opportunity for expressing his exultation over England's greatness and his pride in being an Englishman. He places in the mouth of the dying Gaunt a superbly lyrical outburst of patriotism, deploring Richard's reckless and tyrannical policy. All comparison with Marlowe is here at an end. Shakespeare's own voice makes itself clearly heard in the rhetoric of this speech, which, with its self-controlled vehemence, its equipoise in unrest, soars high above Marlowe's wild magniloquence. ”

“ If Shakespeare was conscious of himself when he wrote, he succeeded in concealing himself so thoroughly that it is impossible to discover him in his writing,—as impossible as it is not to discover other poets in their writings; for whatever is absent from the choir of British song, the note of personality is always present there. ”

“ In truth, no other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected himself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that every great master has more or less reproduced in his works characteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our greatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose entire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his imperishable works. ”

“ I think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. He was a full man who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand.
Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably. With this wisdom of life is the equal endowment of imaginative and lyric power. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. He has no peculiarity, no importunate topic, but all is duly given. No mannerist is he ”

“ Shakespeare’s career of playwright began as a hack writer and cobbler of existing plays. As an actor his technical knowledge of the requirements of the stage rendered his help invaluable to managers, and the conditions of that time gave no remedy to any author whose plays were thus altered. It may be supposed from lack of evidence to the contrary, that most other dramatic authors submitted to this treatment in silence; perhaps because they had all been employed, at some time or other in the same way. But one man seems to have bitterly resented a mere actor presuming to call himself an author. ”

“ Be that as it may, nothing strikes the student of comparative literature so much as the paucity of plots throughout literature and the universal tendency to borrow plots rather than attempt the almost impossible task of inventing them. That tendency is shown at its highest in the Elizabethan Drama. Even Shakespeare is as much a plagiarist or as wise an artist, call it which you will, as the meanest of his fellows.
Not alone is it difficult to invent a plot; it is even difficult to see one in real life. ”

“ They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself, it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds. ”

“ The play before them was undoubtedly a remarkable one; he could not take upon himself to say from internal evidence whether it was, or was not, written by William Shakespeare, but, on the whole, he believed it to have been so. Persons better qualified than himself to judge of such matters had expressed themselves for and against the other proofs of its authenticity. Again, on the whole, these seemed to him to be in its favour. But what, after all, was their great stumbling-block was the mystery—and as it seemed to him the unnecessary mystery—that hung about its discovery. ”