Even his victims, Buckingham, Katharine, and Wolsey, pray, after their fall, for blessings on him, though it is noticeable that in all three cases the speeches are due to Fletcher, and are doubtless inspired in part by the Stuart doctrine that the king can do no wrong.

THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN was printed in 1634, and according to the title-page, it had been 'presented at the Blackfriers by the King's Majesty's servants with great applause,' and was 'written by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakspeare, Gent.' This is the only piece of external evidence connecting Shakspere with the authorship of the work. It is omitted in the folios, and did not, like Pericles, appear during his life in quarto form. Hence we are thrown back upon internal evidence for the decision whether Shakspere had in reality a share in the work, and, if so, what parts are to be assigned to him. The problem thus raised has produced some of the most original and suggestive Shaksperean criticism of this century. As early as 1811 Coleridge maintained that there is the clearest internal evidence that Shakspere importantly aided Fletcher' in the composition of the play, and in 1833 he declared that he had no doubt whatever that the first Act and the first scene of the second Act' are by him. In the same year the first systematic study of the subject was made by Professor Spalding in an elaborate letter (reprinted in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1876, with 'Forewords' by Furnivall). Spalding discusses at length the respective characteristics of Fletcher's and Shakspere's (later) style. He points out that Fletcher's verse is sweet and flowing, with end-stopped and double-ending lines; that he is diffuse both in his leading thoughts and in his illustrations, and, while poor in metaphor, excels in picturesque and romantic descriptions. Shakspere's versification, on the other hand, is broken and full of pauses, with a much more sparing use of double endings; his style is marked by energy, obscurity, and abruptness; it is metaphorical to excess, but avoids similes and elaborate narrative detail. These and other contrasts appear in various parts of the play, and guided by them Spalding assigned to Shakspere Act i, Act iii. 1, and Act v except Scene 2, the rest of the work being Fletcher's. The choice of the main plot, taken from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, he attributed to Shakspere on the ground that, unlike Fletcher, he dramatized familiar stories, and that A Midsummer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles are, like The Two Noble Kinsmen, classical tales in mediaeval garb, while there is no other instance of a similar theme in Fletcher's writings. The underplot, on the other hand, Spalding assigned entirely to Fletcher, partly because the madness of the principal character, the jailer's daughter, seemed to him a weak imitation of the madness of Ophelia.

At a later date Spalding wavered in his conviction of Shakspere's partauthorship of the drama. Writing in the Edinburgh Review, July 1847, he declared: The question of Shakspere's share in this play is really insoluble. . . . 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.' Meanwhile, however, Hickson, in April 1847, in an essay reprinted in the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874, had made a careful investigation of the whole problem. He supported the main conclusion of Spalding's 'Letter,' that Shakspere and Fletcher were the joint-authors of the work, but he assigned to the former a larger share of the play, and a more preponderating influence in its construction than the earlier critic had done. He claimed for Shakspere the design not only of the main-plot but also of the under-plot, and attributed to him Act ii. 1, Act iii. 2, Act iv. 3, which Spalding had assigned to Fletcher. His arguments are forcible, and the conclusions at which he arrives have been in the main supported by Littledale in his Introduction to his edition of the play, 1882. But Littledale detects revising touches by Fletcher in Act iii. 2 and Act iv. 3, as also in Act v. 3 and 4, which both Spalding and Hickson had assigned entirely to Shakspere.

The critics who thus, with differences in details, support the Shaksperean authorship of part of The Two Noble Kinsmen, base their conclusions on those features of style and versification which bear the hall-mark of the master-dramatist. It is perfectly true that in other respects the work is unlike any of his undoubted writings. The heavy and undramatic construction of the piece and the want of individuality in the characters,' which gave even Spalding pause in later years, have been emphasized by many critics, e. g. Furnivall, Stack, and Ingram. But these considerations, however true in themselves, cannot overrule the argument founded on the style of numerous scenes. The co-operation too of Shakspere and Fletcher on Henry VIII lends plausibility to their similar co-operation on The Two Noble Kinsmen, and had we fuller knowledge of their joint method of work, we might be able to account in some degree for the peculiarities of the piece. As things stand, Ingram's summing up of the matter (New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874, P. 454) cannot well be improved : 'In reading the (so-called) Shaksperean part of the play, I do not often feel myself in contact with a mind of the first order. Still, it is certain that there is much in it that is like Shakspere, and some things that are worthy of him at his best; that the manner, in general, is more that of Shakspere than of any other contemporary dramatist; and that the system of verse is one which we do not find in any other, whilst it is, in all essentials, that of Shakspere's last period. I cannot name any one else who could have written this portion of the play.'

INDEX.