Twenty-five copies of this Essay, as originally written, were printed for private circulation, at the Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., with the following dedication: ΤΟ CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, OF SHADY HILL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., A TOKEN OF HIGH REGARD, A TRIBUTE TO HIS SCHOLARSHIP AND TASTE, AND A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF INTEREST SPONTANEOUSLY MANIFESTED IN THE LABORS OF WHICH THIS ESSAY FORMS A PART. AN ESSAY ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE THREE PARTS OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH IT 1 T has long been a question of much interest in English literature, whether Shakespeare was in any proper sense the author of either of the Three Parts of King Henry the Sixth. More than a hundred years ago, Theobald cast a doubt upon their authenticity, 1 and Warburton, as his manner was, denied it without reserve and with little reason. Johnson then opposed these conjectures and assertions by a few solemnly uttered truisms, and the brief assertion of opposite opinions upon the merit and style of the plays; 2 while Farmer, Steevens, and Tyrwhitt skirmished still more lightly upon the same field, the former as an opponent, the two latter as allies of "the great moralist." Malone was the first who gave the subject careful consideration and systematic treatment. To use his own words, he " was long struck with the many evident Shakespearianisms" in the Three Parts of King Henry the Sixth, and did not doubt either "that the whole of 1 "Indeed, tho' there are several master strokes in these three plays, which incontestably betray the workmanship of Shakespeare, yet I am almost doubtful, whether they were entirely of his writing. And unless they were wrote by him very early, I shou'd rather imagine them to have been brought to him as a director of the stage, and so have receiv'd some finishing beauties at his hand. An accurate observer will easily see, the diction of them is more obsolete, and the numbers more mean and prosaical, than in the generality of his genuine compositions." Theobald's Shakespeare, 1733, Vol. IV. p. 110. 2 From mere inferiority nothing can be inferred; in the productions of wit there will be inequality. Sometimes judgment will err, and sometimes the matter itself will defeat the artist. Of every authour's works, one will be the best and one will be the worst. Dissimilitude of stile, and heterogeneousness of sentiment may sufficiently show that a work does not really belong to the reputed authour. But in these plays no such marks of spuriousness are found. The diction, the versification, and the figures are Shakespeare's. These plays, considered without regard to characters and incidents, merely as narratives in verse, are more happily conceived and more accurately finished than those of K. John, Richard II., or the tragick scenes of King Henry IV. and V. If we take these plays from Shakespeare, to whom shall they be given? What authour of that age had the same easiness of expression and fluency of numbers?" Johnson's Shakespeare, 1765, Vol. V. p. 225. It is very doubtful whether Johnson had read a page of either "authour of that age," except Shakespeare, to whom Henry the Sixth might be attributed with any semblance of probability. these plays was the production of the same person," or that "they were properly ascribed" to Shakespeare. This was Malone's opinion before his edition of Shakespeare's works was published, in 1790; but during the preparation of that edition, he reached an opposite conclusion, and wrote a long dissertation to show that this three-part dramatic history was not Shakespeare's, that it had only been altered and enriched by him, and that the first part was written by another person than the author of the second and third. 1 Malone's arguments were accepted as conclusive, and his opinion prevailed without open dissent, until the appearance of Mr. Knight upon the field of Shakespearian letters. Indeed, Dr. Drake proposed that the First Part of Henry the Sixth should be excluded from future editions of Shakespeare's works, because it "offers no trace of any finishing strokes from the master bard." Mr. Knight opposed himself directly, and upon all points, to Malone and his supporters. He held that Shakespeare, so far from having been the mere furbisher of The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster and The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, the two old plays which are undoubtedly earlier versions of the Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth, was the unaided author of the whole of those old plays or earlier versions, and also of the First Part of King Henry the Sixth, no earlier version or impression of which is known than that of the folio of 1623. Malone had written with much ingenuity; but his argument rested mainly upon mere points of verbal criticism. His examination was minute, but his view was the narrowest that could possibly be taken of the subject; and by this method of treating it he was blinded to so much that was inconsistent with his position, that what was really a failure of perception, seemed, or was easily made to appear, a lack of candor. Mr. Knight, on the contrary, writing upon the subject at great length, and with an enthusiastic fervor nearly equalled in degree by the ability which he displayed, could not be reproached with narrow-mindedness, 1 Shakespeare and his Times, Vol. II. p. 297. |