others, they have not been given, a large number of critics and editors have rested in the same judgment, among whom are found such respectable names as Morgann, Drake, Singer, and Hallam. Morgann speakes of the play as "that drum-and-trumpet thing,-written, doubtless, or rather exhibited, long before Shakespeare was born, though afterwards repaired and furbished up by him with here and there a little sentiment and diction." Hallam says, "In default of a more probable claimant, I have sometimes been inclined to assign The First Part of Henry VI to Greene." And Drake proposed that the play should be excluded from future editions of the Poet, as "offering no trace of any finishing strokes from the master-bard." These authorities, backed up as they are by a host of concurring names, must be our excuse for stating, in the Introduction to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, that "the three parts of Henry VI were adapted from preëxisting stock copies, into which Shakespeare distilled something of the life and spirit of his genius;" a conclusion which cannot well survive a careful sifting of the arguments whereon it has been based.

For, in the first place, the diction and versification have not the qualities specified by Malone in nearly so great a degree as his statement would lead one to suppose. In variety of pause and structure, the verse, though nowise comparable to what the Poet afterwards wrote, is a good deal in advance of any preceding dramas that have come down to us from other hands. On this score, the play may be safely affirmed to differ much less, for example, from Shakespeare's King John and Richard II, than these do from his Henry VIII; or than A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice from The Tempest and The Winter's Tale. Yet in these cases of course no one has ever thought of inferring diversity of authorship from difference of style. Besides, what might we expect, but that in these respects his first performances would be more like what others had done before, than what was afterwards done by himself? Would he not naturally be

gin by writing very much as those about him wrote, and thus by practice gradually learn to write better? Surely his style must needs draw towards such models as were before him, till he had time to form a style of his own; so that, had the play in hand borne less of resemblance to such as then held the stage, this would have been a strong argument that it was not the work of a beginner, but of one who had attained considerable experience and proficiency in his art.-As to the classical allusions, Malone here brought the power of figures to bear, and found there were just twenty-two in the play. He also figured out, that of something more than six thousand lines in the Second and Third Parts, Shakespeare was the sole author of somewhat less than one-third; and he took the pains to mark Shakespeare's lines with asterisks for the convenience of all future readers and editors. Knight's Shakespeare has a very learned and elaborate essay, wherein Malone's argument is thoroughly knocked to pieces, showing, among other things, that in the lines thus painfully marked there are no less than eighteen classical allusions and quotations, and those not a whit more apt and natural than Malone's twenty-two. Which seems to finish that part of the argument.

Again, touching the Chronicles used, it is to be observed that Holinshed's were first published in 1577, when Shakespeare was in his fourteenth year, and Hall's about thirty years earlier; and it is quite probable that the Poet became familiar with the elder chronicler in his boyhood, before the other got into circulation. Moreover, Holinshed embodies in his own work the greater part of Hall, insomuch that, on most of the subjects handled by the Poet, the same matter, and in nearly the same words, is found in both chroniclers, thus often making it uncertain to which of them he was immediately indebted. Remains but to add on this point, that Shakespeare's unquestioned dramas furnish numerous instances of acquaintance with Hall.

Finally, as to the discrepancies of representation, which Malone cites in proof of his point, these might indeed make

somewhat for the purpose, but that similar discrepancies are not unfrequently to be met with in the Poet's undoubted plays. For example, in this very play, Act i. sc. 3, Gloster says to Beaufort,-"I'll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal's hat;" and the Mayor a little after,-"This cardinal's more haughty than the devil:" yet in Act v. sc. 1, Exeter exclaims,-"What! is my lord of Winchester install'd, and call'd unto a cardinal's degree?” as if that were the first notice he had of his brother's advancement. Does this infer that the first and fifth acts of this play were written by several hands? Another still more material discrepancy is adduced by Knight. It occurs in The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Act iii. sc. 1, where the following is put into the mouth of Bolingbroke:

"But which of you was by,

(You, cousin Neville, as I may remember,)
When Richard, with his eye brimfull of tears,
Then check'd and rated by Northumberland,
Did speak these words, now prov'd a prophecy?
'Northumberland, thou ladder, by the which
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne;'—
Though then, God knows, I had no such intent.”

This refers to what took place in King Richard II, Act v. sc. 1, which was some time after the same Bolingbroke had said to the parliament,—“In God's name I'll ascend the regal throne." It is hardly needful to add, that on the principle of Malone's reasoning the two plays in question could not have been by the same author. Several other inaccuracies of this kind are remarked in our notes, and indeed occur too often in these plays to prove any thing but that either the Poet or his characters sometimes made mistakes.

Thus it appears that upon examination Malone's argument really comes to nothing. But even if it were at all points sound, still it has not force enough to shake, much less to overthrow, the evidence on the other side. Of this evidence the leading particulars are thus stated by Mr. Collier: "When Heminge and Condell published the folio

of 1623, many of Shakespeare's contemporaries, authors, actors, and auditors, were alive; and the player-editors, if they would have been guilty of the dishonesty, would hardly have committed the folly, of inserting a play in their volume which was not his production. If we imagine the frequenters of theaters to have been comparatively ignorant upon such a point, living authors and living actors must have been aware of the truth; and in the face of these Heminge and Condell would not have ventured to appropriate to Shakespeare what had really come from the pen of another. That tricks of the kind were sometimes played by fraudulent booksellers, in single plays, is certainly true; but Heminge and Condell were actors of repute, and men of character: they were presenting to the world, in an important volume, scattered performances, in order to "keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare;" and we cannot believe they would have included any drama to which he had no title." It is further considerable, that Ben Jonson lent to their volume the sanction of his great name;—a man whose long intimacy with the Poet gave him every chance to know the truth, and whose unquestionable honesty forbids the thought of his having endorsed any thing savoring of fraud.

Furthermore, we have words from Shakespeare himself which can scarce be interpreted otherwise than as claiming The First Part of Henry VI for his own. Which words occur in the Epilogue to Henry V:

"Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd king
Of France and England, did this king succeed;

Whose state so many had the managing,

That they lost France, and made his England bleed:
Which oft our stage hath shown; and for their sake,
In your fair minds let this acceptance take."

The sense of which manifestly is, that "the events whereby France was lost have been often set forth in plays of our writing;" it being rather unlikely that the Poet would thus

beg a favorable reception for his play, because a play written by somebody else, and on another subject, had formerly been well received.

Besides this strong external evidence, concurrent therewith is internal evidence more than enough to counterpoise Malone's argument. This, to be sure, is not of a kind to be discovered by mere verbal criticism, but few, it is to be presumed, will think the less of it on that account. Several parts of the play evidently look to a continuation, and are strangely out of place and unmeaning, but that they are to reappear in their after results. Such, especially, are the fourth scene of Act ii., where in the Temple Garden the two factions assume the white rose and the red as their respective badges; the interview of Mortimer and Richard in the next scene; the quarrel of Vernon and Basset in Act iv. sc. 1; and, above all, the undertaking of a marriage between Henry and Margaret in the last scene of the play. These scenes, be it observed, more than any others in the play, are of the author's invention; which puts it quite out of reason that they should have been meant to end with themselves: unless designed and regarded as the beginnings of something yet to come, they are manifest impertinences, having nothing to do with the action of the play, viewed by itself. Of course the promises thus made are fulfilled in the plays immediately following. Here, then, we have the lines of an intrinsic connection between the several plays of the series, running them all together as parts of a larger whole. In short, the First Part is strictly continuous with the Second and Third, as these in turn are with King Richard III; an unbroken harmony and integrity not only of design and action, but of composition and characterization, pervading the four plays, and knitting together in the unity of individual authorship.

This matter will be unfolded more at length in our Introductions to the Second and Third Parts, where we shall hope to make appear how each preceding play of the series runs into the following, while, in turn, the latter in like manner carries out and completes the former. For the