Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  Within the last few years there has been an enormous stimulus to Shakespeare study. The chief work of modern Shakespearean scholarship is the still incomplete Variorum edition of Dr. H. H. Furness and his son.

  Other aids to study are reprints of the books used by Shakespeare, facsimile reprints of the original quartos of the plays, and, perhaps as useful as any one thing, the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio. The few perplexing problems that the scholar still finds in the text of Shakespeare will probably never be solved.

  On the subject of this chapter, consult A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, Methuen, London, 1910; Sidney Lee, Introduction to the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio by the Oxford University Press; T. R. Lounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare, New York, Scribners, 1906. For the remarks of critics and editors, the Variorum edition of Dr. H. H. Furness is invaluable.

  [1] A quarto volume, or quarto, is a book which is the size of a fourth of a sheet of printing paper. The sheets are folded twice to make four leaves or eight pages, and the usual size is about 6x9 in. A folio is a volume of the size of a half sheet of printing paper. The paper is folded once and bound in the middle, the usual size being about 9 x 12 in. The divisions of the book made by thus folding sheets of paper are called quires, and may consist of four or eight leaves.

  [2] This view of the Pavier-Jaggard collection is held by A. W. Pollard of the British Museum and W. W. Greg of Trinity College Library, Cambridge. The writers of this volume incline to accord it complete recognition.

  [3] It was evidently designed to fit in between Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar; but the owner of the publishing rights holding out till that part of the book was ready, the editors "ran in" Timon of Athens to fill up. When Troilus and Cressida was finally arranged for, it had to be inserted between the Histories and Tragedies.

  CHAPTER X

  THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD—IMITATION AND EXPERIMENT

  1587 (?)-1594

  The first period of Shakespeare's work carries him from the youthful efforts at dramatic construction to such mastery of dramatic technique and of original portrayal of life as raise him, when aided by his supreme poetic art, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own talents, and eager for success, was feeling his way among the different types of drama which he saw reaching success on the London stage.

  The longest period of experiment was in the writing of chronicle histories. The experience acquired in these six plays, all derived in some measure from earlier work by others, made Shakespeare a master of this type. Next in importance was comedy, chiefly romantic with four plays of widely different aim and merit. These two types are brought to the highest development in the dramatist's second period. Tragedy was to wait for a fuller and riper experience. What the complete earlier version of Romeo and Juliet was like, we have only a faint idea; it was obviously, while intensely appealing, the work of a young and immature poet. Titus Andronicus led nowhere in development.

  Christopher Marlowe remained Shakespeare's master in the drama throughout the chronicle plays of the period. John Lyly's court comedies contained most of the types of character which are to be found in Love's Labour's Lost. Throughout the period Shakespeare grows in mastery of plot and of his dramatic verse; but his chief growth is away from this imitation of others into his own creative portraiture of character. The growth from the bluff soldier, Talbot, in Henry VI to the weak but appealing Richard II is no less marked than is that from the fantastic Armado in Love's Labour's Lost to the unconsciously ridiculous Bottom.

  Shakespeare's greatest achievements in this period, aside from Romeo and Juliet in the unknown first draft, are the characters of Richard II and Richard III, the former a portrait of vanity and vacillation mingled with more agreeable traits, lovable gentleness and traces at least of kingliness, the latter a Titanic figure possessed by an overmastering passion.

  It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line of division between the experimental period of Shakespeare's work and the period of comedy which follows. Two plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, lie really between the two. The chief arguments for an early grouping seem to be that the former is in some measure an artificial court comedy, and is full of riming speech and end-stopped lines; the latter derives some help from Marlowe's treatment of The Jew of Malta. But, on the other hand, the mastery of original characterization in such groups as the delicate fairies of the Dream, or those who gather at the trial of The Merchant, might justify their position in the second period rather than in the first. On the whole, it is perhaps wisest to let metrical differences govern, and so to put Midsummer Night's Dream, at the end of Imitation and Experiment; while The Merchant of Venice may safely usher in the great period of comedy.

  The three plays known as The Three Parts of Henry VI, together with Richard the Third, constitute the history of the Wars of the Roses, in which the House of York fought the House of Lancaster through the best part of the fifteenth century, and lost the fight and the English crown in 1485, a hundred years before Shakespeare came to London. Although these plays have but slight appeal to us as readers, they must have been highly popular among Elizabethan playgoers.

  The First Part of Henry the Sixth deals chiefly with the wars of England and France which center about the figures of Talbot, the English commander, and Joan of Arc, called Joan la Pucelle (the maiden). The former is a hero of battle, who dies fighting for England. The latter is painted according to the traditional English view, which lasted long after Shakespeare's time, as a wicked and impure woman, in league with devils, who fight for her against the righteous power of England. We are glad to think that while the Talbot scenes are probably Shakespeare's, the portrait of La Pucelle is not from his hand, as we shall see. The deaths of these protagonists prepares the way for the peace which Suffolk concludes, and the marriage which he arranges between Margaret of Anjou and King Henry.

  The Second Part of Henry the Sixth concerns the outbreak of strife between York and Lancaster, but chiefly the overthrow of the uncle of the king, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, as Protector of the Realm, and the destruction of his opponent, the Duke of Suffolk, in his turn. The play ends with the first battle of St. Albans (1455), resulting in the complete triumph of Duke Richard of York, in open rebellion against King Henry.

  The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth tells of the further wars of York and Lancaster, in the course of which Richard of York is murdered, and his sons, Edward and Richard, keep up the struggle, while Warwick, styled the "Kingmaker," transfers his power to Lancaster. In the end York is triumphant; and while Henry VI and his son are murdered, and Warwick slain in battle at Barnet, Edward is crowned as Edward IV, and Richard becomes the Duke of Gloucester.

  Authorship.—The Three Parts of Henry the Sixth were first printed in the First Folio, 1623. Two earlier plays, The First Part of the Contention between the two Noble Houses of York and Lancaster (sometimes called 1 Contention), and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York... with the whole Contention between the two Houses of Lancaster and York (2 Contention), appeared in quarto in 1594 and 1595 respectively. These are to be regarded as earlier versions of II and III Henry VI.[1] For the First Part of Henry VI no dramatic source exists. The ultimate source is, of course, Holinshed's Chronicles.

  The authorship of these plays is not ascribed to any dramatist, until 1623, although, as we have seen,[2] Robert Greene accuses Shakespeare of authorship in a stolen play, by applying to him a line from III Henry VI which had appeared earlier in 2 Contention. Internal study of the three plays, however, has reduced the problem to about this state:—

  The First Part of Henry VI is thought to have been written by Greene, with George Peele and Marlowe to help. To this Shakespeare was allowed to add a few scenes on a later revival of the play. Some critics give to him the Talbot scenes and the quarrel in the Temple; but Professor Neilson warns us that the grounds for this and other assignmen
ts of authorship in the play "are in the highest degree precarious."

  The two Contentions are thought to have been chiefly the work of Marlowe, with Greene to help him. Others are suggested as assistants, such as Lodge, Peele, and Shakespeare. In the revival of the two Contentions, Shakespeare's work amounted to a close revision, though the older material remained in larger part, both in text and plot. In this revision, Marlowe is thought to have aided, and Greene's bitter attack on Shakespeare may have been caused by the fact that Shakespeare had so supplanted him as collaborator with Marlowe, then the greatest dramatist of England. It hardly seems likely that this attack would have been made if Shakespeare had had any share in the first versions, The Contentions.

  Date.—The First Part of Henry VI is thought to have been the play at the Rose Theatre on March 3, 1591-1692, by Lord Strange's company, since a reference by Nash about this time refers to Talbot as a stage figure. The Second and Third Parts have no evidence other than that of style, but are usually assigned to the period 1590-1592.

  Richard the Third is best treated at this point, although in the date of composition King John may intervene between it and III Henry VI. It is the tale of a tyrant, who, by murdering everybody who stands in his way, including his two nephews, his brother, and his friend, wins the crown of England, only to be swept by irresistible popular wrath into ruin and death on Bosworth Field. This tyrant is scarcely human, but rather the impersonation of a great passion of ambition. In this respect, as well as in lack of humor, lack of development of character, and in other ways less easy to grasp, Shakespeare is here distinctly imitative of Marlowe's method in plays like Tamburlaine.

  Date.—Richard the Third was very popular among Elizabethans, for quartos appeared in 1597, 1598 (then first ascribed to Shakespeare), 1602, 1605, 1612, 1629, 1622, and 1634. The First Folio version is quite different in detail from the Quarto, and is thought to have been a good copy of an acting version. The date of writing can hardly be later than 1598.

  Source.—An anonymous play called The True Tragedie of Richard III had appeared before Shakespeare's; just when is uncertain. A still earlier play, a tragedy in Latin called Richardus Tertius, also told the story. Shakespeare's chief source was, however, Holinshed's Chronicles, which learned the tradition of Richard's wickedness from a life of that king written in Henry VII's time, and ascribed to Sir Thomas More. In the Chronicles was but a bare outline of the character which the dramatist so powerfully developed.

  King John, so far as its central theme may be said to exist, portrays the ineffectual struggles of a crafty and unscrupulous coward to stick to England's slippery throne. At first King John is successful. Bribed with the rich dowry of Blanch, niece of England, as a bride for his son the Dauphin, King Philip of France ceases his war upon England in behalf of Prince Arthur, John's nephew and rival. When the Church turns against John for his refusal to obey the Pope, and France and Austria continue the war, John is victorious, and captures Prince Arthur. At this point begins his downfall. His cruel treatment of the young prince, while not actually ending in the murder he had planned, drives the boy to attempted escape and to death. The nobles rise and welcome the Dauphin, whose invasion of England proves fruitless, it is true, but the victory is not won by John, and the king dies ignobly at Swinstead Abbey.

  Two characters rise above the rest in this drama of unworthy schemes,—Constance, the passionately devoted mother of Prince Arthur, who fights for her son with almost tigress-like ferocity, and Faulconbridge, the loyal lieutenant of King John, cynical and fond of bragging, but brave and patriotic, and gifted with a saving grace of rough humor, much needed in the sordid atmosphere he breathes. One single scene contains a note of pathos otherwise foreign to the play,—that in which John's emissary Hubert begins his cruel task of blinding poor Prince Arthur, but yields to pity and forbears.

  Date.—The Troublesome Raigne was published in 1591, and probably written about that time. Shakespeare's play did not appear in print until the First Folio, 1623. Meres mentions it, however, in 1598, and internal evidence of meter and style, as well as of dramatic structure, puts the play between Richard III and Richard II, or at any rate close to them. The three plays have been arranged in every order by critics of authority. Perhaps 1592-1593 is a safe date.

  Source.—The only source was the two parts of The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, a play which appeared anonymously in quarto in 1591. Shakespeare compressed the two parts into one, gaining obvious advantages thereby, but losing also some incidents without which the later play is unmotivated. The hatred felt by Faulconbridge for Austria was due in the earlier version to the legendary belief that Richard Coeur-de-Lion, his father, met death at Austria's hands. No reference to this is made by Shakespeare, but the hatred remains as a motive. In the opening scene between the Bastard and his mother, Shakespeare's condensation has injured the story somewhat. But most of his changes are improvements. He cut out the pandering to religious prejudice which in the earlier play made John a Protestant hero to suit Elizabethan opinion. He improved the exits and entrances, divided the scenes in more effective ways, and built up the element of comic relief in Faulconbridge's red-blooded humor.

  The numerous alterations from historical fact, such as the youth of Arthur, the widowhood of Constance, the character of Faulconbridge, are all from the earlier version, as is the suppression of the baron's wars and Magna Charta. Shakespeare added practically nothing to the action in his source.

  A still earlier play, Kynge Johan by Bishop John Bale (c. 1650), had nothing to do with later versions.

  Richard the Second, unlike Richard the Third, is not simply the story of one man. While Richard III is on the stage during more than two-thirds of the latter play, Richard II appears during almost exactly half of the action. Richard III dominates his play throughout; Richard II in only two or three scenes. Richard's two uncles, John of Gaunt and the Duke of York, and his two cousins, Hereford (Bolingbroke, later Henry IV) and Aumerle, claim almost as much of our attention as does the central figure of the play, the light, vain, and thoughtless king.

  And yet with all this improvement in the adjustment of the leading role to the whole picture, Shakespeare drew a far more real and complete character in Richard II than any he had yet portrayed in historical drama. It is a character seen in many lights. At first we are disappointed with Richard's love of the spectacular when he allows Bolingbroke's challenge to Mowbray to go as far as the actual sounding of the trumpets in the lists before he casts down his warder and decrees the banishment of both. A little later we see with disgust his greedy thoughtlessness, when he insults the last hour of John of Gaunt by his importunate visit, and without a word of regret lays hold of his dead uncle's property to help on his own Irish wars. Nor does our respect for him rise at all when in the critical moment, upon the return of Bolingbroke to England, Richard's weak will vacillates between action and unmanly lament, and all the while his vanity delights to paint his misery in full-mouth'd rhetoric. Vanity is again the note of his abdication, when he calls for a mirror in which to behold the face that has borne such sorrow as his, and then in a fit of almost childish rage dashes the glass upon the ground. His whole life, like that one act, has been impulsive and futile.

  But now that misfortune and degradation have come upon King Richard, Shakespeare compels us to turn from disgust to pity, and finally almost to admiration. We realize that after all Richard is a king, and that his wretched state demands compassion. Moreover, a nobler side of Richard's character is portrayed. His deeply touching farewell to his loving Queen, as he goes to his solitary confinement, though tinged with almost unmanly meekness of spirit, is yet poignant with true grief. And the last scene of all, in which he dies, vainly yet bravely resisting his murderers, is a gallant end to a life so full of indecision.

  In strong contrast with this weak and still absorbing figure are the two high-minded and patriotic uncles of King Richard, and the masterful though unscrupulous Henry. The famous prophetic
speech of dying John of Gaunt is committed to memory by every English schoolboy, as the expression of the highest patriotism in the noblest poetry. And just as our attitude towards Richard changes from contempt to pity and even admiration, so our admiration for Henry, the man of action and, as he calls himself, "the true-borne Englishman," turns into indignation at his usurpation of the throne and his connivance, to use no stronger term, at the murder of his sovereign. Throughout the play, however, Shakespeare makes us feel that the national cause demands Henry's triumph.

  Date.—Marlowe's Edward II is usually dated 1593; and Shakespeare's Richard II is dated the year following, in order to accommodate facts to theory. The frequency of rime points to an earlier date, the absence of prose to a later date. Our only certain date is 1597, when a quarto appeared. Others followed in 1598, 1608, and 1615.

  A play "of the deposing of Richard II" was performed by wish of the Earl of Essex in London streets in 1601, on the eve of his attempted revolt against the queen. If this was our play, then Essex failed as signally in understanding the real theme of the play as he did in interpreting the attitude of Englishmen toward him. Both the one and the other condemned usurpation in the strongest terms.

  Source.—Holinshed's Chronicles furnished Shakespeare with but the bare historical outline. It is usual to suggest that Marlowe's portrayal of a similarly weak figure with a similarly tragic end suggested Shakespeare's play; and this may be, though there is nothing to indicate direct influence.

  Titus Andronicus has a plot so revolting to modern readers that many critics like to foll

  ow the seventeenth-century tradition, which tells, according to a writer who wanted to justify his own tinkering, that Shakespeare added "some master-touches to one or two of the principal characters," and nothing more. But unfortunately not only the phraseology and the meter, but the more important external evidences point to Shakespeare, and, however we might wish it, we cannot find grounds to dismiss the theory that Shakespeare was at least responsible for the rewriting of an older play.