'Historical Play of King Henry VI.,' had, I suspect, been a very popular piece for some years, before 1592, and perhaps was first exhibited in 1588 or 1589." Collier states "that it is merely the old play on the early events of that reign, which was most likely written in 1589." Knight concludes that "there can be no doubt that the composition of this play preceded that of the two parts of the 'Contention.'" That these had been upon the stage before Greene died in 1592 is proven beyond dispute by Greene's savage attack, at that time Shakspere was twenty-eight years old and for at least three years had been a shareholder in the Blackfriars Theatre, and, if Mr. Sidney Lee is right, had been in London six years; if old Aubry was better informed, he had been "acting exceeding well" and making "essays at dramatic poetry which took well" for ten years.

The theory of "imitation" rests upon the assumption that Shakspere did not begin to write for the stage before 1592; Collier asserts, without the slightest support from known facts, and against the hostile testimony of Greene, that he wrote the "tiger's heart lines" before September, 1592, that "the 'History of Henry VI.,' the 'First Part of the Whole Contention,' and the 'True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York,' were all three in being before Shakspere began to write for the stage"; and Mr. Hallam says, more cautiously, that "it seems probable that the old plays of the 'Contention' ... were in great part by Marlowe."

And so, we find Shakspere in London, from six to ten years connected with its principal theatre, but writing nothing for its stage, not even as a "hack-writer." We respectfully dissent from this conclusion because it lacks support either in fact or probability. The man who, from utter penury, had in 1589 won his way to a lucrative share in the theatre he made illustrious, and who wrote "Romeo and Juliet," which first appeared, according to Ulrici's investigation, in 1592, was more capable of writing, and more likely to have written, the three original pieces than Greene or Marlowe, to one of whom, or to some other writer, the authorship is assigned by mere conjecture, from a fancied but confused and indeterminate likeness of style or metre or classical quotation.

Marlowe was killed in a brawl with one Francis Archer, at Deptford, on the first day of June, 1593. The only dramas that can be certainly called his are the "Two Parts of Tamburlaine," "The Massacre of Paris," "Faustus," the "Jew of Malta" and "Edward II." His merits and his faults have been discussed by many scholars; his style is characterized as the "mighty line"; he is said by many to have invented and introduced blank verse as the vehicle of the drama, although "Gorboduc," acted before the Queen in 1561 and published in 1565, Gascogne's "Jocasta," played in 1566, and Whetstone's "Promos and Cassandra," printed in 1578, were wholly or partly in blank verse. But it is admitted by all editors and critics that Marlowe's only historical plays are "The Massacre" and "the almost masterly Edward II.," as Professor Wendell somewhat ambiguously calls it. The "Massacre" ends with the death of Henry III. of France, who was assassinated on the 1st of August, 1589; "it cannot, therefore, have been written earlier than about 1590." Whatever its true date, it is not claimed to bear any likeness to either part of the "Contention." On the contrary, "it was a subject in which Marlowe would naturally revel; for in the progress of the action, blood could be made to flow as freely as water." The resemblance is sought in his Edward II., which, as all the facts tend to show, was his latest work, written after the "Massacre" and certainly not published in his lifetime. It was entered at Stationer's Hall in July, 1593, a little more than a month after Marlowe's death. But here stands the "Contention" with a fixed date, proved to have been in existence "in or close upon the first half of the decade commencing in 1585," and the admission of all scholars that it preceded Marlowe's "Edward II." If, therefore, Marlowe wrote one or both parts of the "Contention," the extravagant assumption must be made "that his mind was so thoroughly disciplined at the period when he produced 'Tamburlaine,' 'Faustus' and the 'Jew of Malta' that he was able to lay aside every element, whether of thought or expression, by which those plays are characterized, adopt essentially different principles for the dramatic conduct of a story, copy his characters from living and breathing models of actual men; come down from his pomp and extravagance of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry with familiar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaring and fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ... but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,—pride, and envy, and ambition, and revenge,—most fearful, from their alliance with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was what Marlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustained scene of either part of the 'Contention'; before he could have depicted the fierce hatreds of Beaufort and Gloster, the never-subdued ambition of Margaret and York, the patient suffering, amidst taunting friends and reviling enemies, of Henry, and, above all, the courage, the activity, the tenacity, the self-possession, the intellectual supremacy and the passionless ferocity of Richard."

Does it need more to show that Marlowe was not the author of the "Contention"? Here is the proof, and it does not rest upon conjecture, or inference from disputed facts, but upon records that have survived the waste of three centuries. The "First Part of the Contention" was printed by Thomas Creed, for Thomas Millington, in 1594; "The True Tragedy of Richard," the old name of the "Second Part of the Contention," by "P. S." for Thomas Millington, in 1595. The title page gives the name of no author for either play, and it is claimed by eminent authority that both were piratical editions; but if Marlowe was the unquestioned author, were not his friends and associates still living, three years after his death, to claim the honor of creating two dramas which immeasurably surpassed any other he ever wrote? If it be asked why Shakspere's friends did not claim the authorship for him, it is answered that as soon as another edition appeared, they did. In 1619, three years after his death, a new edition of these very plays appeared, with Shakspere's full name on the title page, and enlarged by additions from the second and third parts of "Henry VI." And this proof is further supported: In an entry in the Stationer's Registers under date of April 19, 1602, appears the following remark:—"Thom. Pavier: By assignment from Th. Millington salvo jure cujuscunque: the First and Second Parts of 'Henry VI.', two books." This entry refers to the two plays first published in 1594 and 1595, the first of which is always called "The First Part of the Contention," and both of which in the edition of 1619 were under the title of "The whole Contention between the two famous Houses of Lancaster and York," by the same Th. Pavier who had received them "by assignment" from the original publisher of the editions of 1594 and 1595,—Thomas Millington. Pavier knew in 1619, and therefore put his name on the title page of his edition, that Shakspere was the author of the two parts of the "Contention," but instead of giving them the extended titles of the former editions, briefly and inaccurately designated them as "The