class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[15]"/> of work which excels the "Novum Organum," for that action was laughed out of court by judge, jury, and audience. It might as well be claimed that Job wrote "Hamlet"; for, whatever doubt may be raised as to his personal history, the folio of 1623 and the testimony of his contemporaries have shown as clearly that Shakspere wrote the dramas bearing his name as that Macaulay wrote a history of the Revolution of 1688.

But here come Barrett Wendell, Professor of English Literature at Harvard, and his pupil and disciple, Ashley H. Thorndike, Assistant Professor of English at the Western Reserve University, with a new case, or a new brief on the old one, maintaining, with laborious industry and mutual sympathy, that Shakspere was only an Elizabethan playwright, who found the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at once seized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in the histories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music of his blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the manner of Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are but adaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but an imitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style of drama made popular by some contemporary of more original power, he immediately imitated his style and plot, surpassed him in phrase-making, and so coined sterling money to build and decorate his house at Stratford.

If not the most formidable, this is the latest attack of the critics. It should seem from our brief review of former efforts, that this has been fully answered. But if apology is needful for further defence, let it be found in this, that when men of eminent position as the instructors of youth, whose word in these days of careless and superficial reading is likely to be taken as final, undertake to change the opinion of the civilized world as to the genius and character of its supreme mind, their assertions should be supported by something more substantial than references to each other as authority, more reliable than dramatic chronology, which they themselves admit to be uncertain, more tangible than the effort to count the lines of "Henry VIII." written by Fletcher.

The position of Professor Wendell can be most fairly stated in his own words. After a hasty review of the early drama, he says of Shakspere:—

Professor Wendell proceeds to give what he is pleased to call examples of Shakspere's "lack of superficial originality," whatever that may mean, and assumes that he "had certainly done years of work as a dramatic hack-writer" before the appearance of "Venus and Adonis." There is no proof, not even the doubtful authority of tradition, that he was ever a hack-writer, or ever revised or revamped the dramatic work of another.

Professor Wendell asserts, upon the authority of Mr. Sidney Lee, that Shakspere came to London in 1586,—that is, when he was twenty-two. Aubry, his oldest biographer, says in 1680 that "this William, being naturally inclined to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess about eighteen (i.e., in 1582), and was an actor at one of the playhouses, and did act exceeding well." "He began early to make essays at dramatic poetry, and his plays took well." The date is important, as will soon be seen.

Professor Wendell proceeds:—"'Love's Labour's Lost' is obviously in the manner of Lilly. 'Henry VI.,' certainly collaborative, is a chronicle history of the earlier kind. Greene and Peele were the chief makers of such plays until Marlowe developed the type into his almost masterly 'Edward II.' 'Titus Andronicus' ... is a tragedy of blood much in the manner of Kyd. 'The Comedy of Errors' adapts for popular presentation a familiar kind of Latin comedy."

We may differ with some of these assertions because dissent is supported by the highest authority, both German and English. Ulrici says that "Lilly's works in fact contain nothing but witty words; the actual wit of comic characters, situations, actions, and incidents is almost entirely wanting. Accordingly, his wit is devoid of dramatic power, his conception of comedy still not distinct from the ludicrous, which is always attached to one object; he has no idea of a comic whole." "Love's Labour's Lost" is assigned by the best authority to 1591-92, after the appearance of "Pericles," "Titus Andronicus," the two parts of the "Contention," "The Comedy of Errors," and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." Professor Wendell admits that in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Shakspere did work of his own. After that, it is not quite "obvious" that "Love's Labour's Lost" is in the style of Lilly, however clear to the critic may be its "tedious length."

Lilly wrote "Endymion, or The Man in the Moon," first published in 1591; it is "one great and elaborate piece of flattery addressed to 'Elizabeth Cynthia'," that is, the Queen; she instructs her ladies in Morals and Pythagoras in Philosophy. "Her kiss breaks the spell" which put Endymion into his forty-years sleep, upon which, and upon his deliverance from which, "the action principally turns within the space of forty years." Can any impartial reader trace this "manner of Lilly" in "Love's Labour's Lost"?

Lilly's "Pleasant conceited Comedy," called "Mother Bombie," appeared in 1594, his "Midas" in 1592, and his "Most Excellent Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe, and Diogenes" in 1584. "Mother Bombie" represents four servants, treated partly as English, partly as Roman slaves, who deceive their respective masters in an "equally clumsy, unlikely, and un-motived manner." It is difficult to see how "Love's Labour's Lost," produced in 1592, could have imitated "Mother Bombie," produced in 1594. "Alexander and Campaspe" is "taken from the well known story of the magnanimity and self-command with which Alexander curbs his passionate love for his beautiful Theban captive, and withdraws in favor of her lover Apelles." The most important comic scenes afford Diogenes the opportunity of emerging from his tub and silencing all comers by his cynical speeches.

Lilly's most ambitious work was his "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, very pleasant for all Gentlemen to read," "probably printed as early as 1579." Long before Shakspere's time, all "Gentlemen" had read it, and it had introduced to the fashionable world a new language which nobody but the high-born could understand.

If "Love's Labour's Lost" is "in the manner of Lilly," it is not so in Professor Wendell's sense, but only as it ridicules with unsparing satire Lilly's conceits and puns.

The statement that "Henry VI." is "certainly collaborative" is unwarranted, because it has been successfully challenged and disproved by the eminent critics Hermann Ulrici and Charles Knight; it is supported only by the guesswork of Clark, Wright, Halliwell and others who assume to find a divided authorship from assumed divergencies of style. The result shows the futility of the method. What Shakspere is assumed not to have written is assigned