make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.'

Shake

speare.

Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public attention during the period under review (1591-4)— 'Arden of Feversham' (licensed for publication April 3, 1592, and published in 1592) and 'Edward III' (licensed for publication December 1, 1595, and published in 1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be discerned in the work of any contemporary whose writings are extant. There is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship in either case. 'Arden of Feversham' dramatises with intensity and insight a Early plays doubtfully sordid murder of a husband by a wife which assigned to took place at Faversham in 1551, and was fully reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no relation either in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in Marlowe's vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy grounds. Capell reprinted it in his Prolusions' in 1760, and described it as 'thought to be writ by Shakespeare.' Many speeches scattered through the drama, and one whole scenethat in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the advances of Edward III-show the hand of a master (act ii. sc. ii.)

But there is even in the style of

these contributions much to dissociate them from Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of Marlowe. A line in act ii. sc. i. (Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds') reappears in Shakespeare's Sonnets' (xciv. 1. 14). It was contrary to his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line in the play was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of the 'Sonnets.'

2

Two other popular plays of the period, 'Mucedorus' and 'Faire Em,' have also been assigned to Shakespeare on slighter provocation.

'Mucedorus.'

In

Charles II.'s library they were bound together in a volume labelled 'Shakespeare, Vol. I.,' and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the misnomer.

'Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic comedy, dates from the early years of Elizabeth's reign; it was first published, doubtless after undergoing revision, in 1595, and was reissued, 'amplified with new additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who included it in his privately printed edition of Shakespeare in 1878, was confident that a scene interpolated in the 1610 version (in which the King of Valentia laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. However readily critics may admit the superiority in literary value of the interpolated scene to anything else in the piece, few will accept Mr. Collier's extravagant estimate. The scene was probably from

Cf. Swinburne, Study of Shakspere, pp. 231-74.

2 See p. 89.

the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator of Shakespeare.1

'Faire Em,' although not published till 1631, was acted by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange

'Faire Em.'

was its patron, and some lines from it are

quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert Greene in his Farewell to Folly' in 1592. another rudimentary endeavour in romantic comedy, and has not even the pretension of 'Mucedorus' to one short scene of conspicuous literary merit.

1 Cf. Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874, ii. 236–8.

VI

THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE reading public

Publication of

'Venus and

DURING the busy years (1591-4) that witnessed his first pronounced successes as a dramatist, Shakespeare came before the public in yet another literary capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the publication of 'Venus and Adonis,' a metrical version of a classical tale of love. It was published a month or two later, withAdonis.' out an author's name on the title-page, but Shakespeare appended his full name to the dedication, which he addressed in conventional style to Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. The Earl, who was in his twentieth year, was reckoned the handsomest man at Court, with a pronounced disposition to gallantry. He had vast possessions, was well educated, loved literature, and through life extended to men of letters a generous patronage.1 'I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble

1 See Appendix, sections iii. and iv.

a godfather.' 'The first heir of my invention' implies that the poem was written, or at least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is affluent in beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, but imbued with a tone of license which may be held either to justify the theory that it was a precocious product of the author's youth, or to show that Shakespeare was not unready in mature years to write with a view to gratifying a patron's somewhat lascivious. tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin motto from Ovid's 'Amores: '1

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.

The influence of Ovid, who told the story in his 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a ba b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of his inspiration.2

See Ovid's Amores, liber i. elegy xv. ll. 35-6. Ovid's Amores, or Elegies of Love, were translated by Marlowe about 1589, and were first printed without a date on the title-page, probably about 1597. Marlowe's version had probably been accessible in manuscript in the eight years' interval. Marlowe rendered the lines quoted by Shakespeare thus:

Let base conceited wits admire vile things,

Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs!

2 Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis, by James P. Reardon, in 'Shakespeare Society's Papers,' iii.