"Hard to seem won: but I was won, my lord, If I confess much, you will play the tyrant. I love you now; but not, till now, so much And so on to the end, "stop my mouth". Portia's words come panting straight from the heart. Her excitement shivers her thoughts into fragments. But there is not a trace of the sensuous in them. Cressida plays a part, but teaches her awkward lover what to do. In All's well there is an allusion to this scene in Act II sc. I line 100. Lafeu: "I am Cressid's uncle, that dare leave two together." This is a fragment of the early play Love's Labour's Won. There is also a parallel to a well-known passage in Twelfth Night in Act III sc. 2 line 165: Troilus. "O that I thought it could be in a woman To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; That doth renew swifter than blood decays!" Compare Twelfth Night Act 2 sc. 4 line 96. Duke to Viola: "There is no woman's sides Can bide the beating of so strong a passion · The whole scene is so decidedly in Shakespeare's earlier style that we may confidently rest our case on it. The lovers are sharply and powerfully characterised, but in the poet's earlier manner, through the contrast between the truth and constancy of Troilus and the levity of the ready-tongued Cressida rather then through the force of contending internal passions. The next scene of early Shakespeare is Act IV sc. 2 with sc. 3, and sc. 4 to line 110. We have a reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet in: "O Cressida, but that the busy day, Waked by the lark, hath roused the ribald crows I would not from you." This is in the same style of conceit as Merchant of Venice: Cressida. "Night hath been too brief. Troilus. Beshrew the witch with venomous wights she stays As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love With wings more momentary swift than thought." Compare this with Gratiano's conceits in Merchant of Venice Act II sc. 6. The allusion to the Genius in scene 4 line 52 occurs in Julius Caesar and Comedy of Errors Act V line 332 and in other plays. Line 58. "A woful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks" has already occurred Act I sc. 2 spoken by Cressida of Helen: "Then she's a merry Greek indeed." The next scene of early Shakespeare is Act V sc. 2. The conversation between Diomedes and Cressida is in Shakespeare's early style (compare particularly Cressida's soliloquy 107-112), but the comments of Troilus, Ulysses, and Thersites have been added, whether by Marston or by Shakespeare is uncertain. I think the additions belong to Marston, to judge from Thersites. The next scene brings us the conclusion of the play as it was originally intended by Shakespeare lines 97 to the end (16 lines). Thus we see that the part of the play attributed te early Shakespeare is connected with the plays of his early life. Everything in the characterisation and pictorial language points to a comparatively early period as the date of the play. The play is mentioned as played by the Lord Chamberlain's men in 1602. At the date of this entry the play in its present state evidently did not exist, and the Stage Quarrel between Jonson on the one side and Marston and Dekker on the other was over. The sins of our modern editors against Shakespeare are innumerable and our play comes in for its full share of them. They have arbitrarily suppressed two lines which stand in the Folio as the orginal close of the play without a word of notice. These two lines are of the utmost importance to us as they show that this was undeniably the original close. After Troilus says: "But edifies another with her deeds" the Folio has: Pand. "Why but heare you." Troilus answers: "Hence brother lackie, ignomie and shame Pursue thy life and live aye with thy name." Marston corrected these lines and transferred them to Act V sc. 10 where they stand thus: "Hence broker, lackie, ignomy and shame The change from 'brother lackie' to 'broker lackie' is an evidence that Marston had a copy of the original play before him and noticed the mistake of 'brother' for 'broker'. It is one of the strongest links in our chain of evidence that Shakespeare's play was put into the hands of a second author to finish. What has hitherto not been noticed is that the bluster and rant of the last seven scenes which have induced many authorities to pronounce these scenes un-Shakespearean is present, not only in these scenes, but also in others which are unmistakeably by Marston. Hector, quite contrary to the character given of him, blusters and boasts. Aeneas and Diomedes are guilty of the same fault, as we shall see later. If we admit the presence of a second author in the fifth act, which cannot be avoided, then we must admit his presence in the first four acts. One important piece of evidence must. be mentioned before closing with the early Shakespeare part. We have here everywhere the form Ilium as Marlowe used it. But the other author has everywhere the form Ilion and wherever this form is used the scene in which it occurs shows itself to be derived from Caxton. For this change of form great importance must be claimed in establishing the presence of a second Author in the play. Those who are accustomed to investigations of this kind know that such differences not only in form but in the pronunciation of proper names formed the wedge which split off Fletcher's part from a long series of plays and solved a question which had previously been deemed impossible of solution the respective shares of Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger with the other authors concerned in that series. What has been established hitherto is that the part of the play above investigated was written by Skakespeare at an early period. It probably preceded Romeo and Juliet. It will now be our task to show that at a later period, probably about 1606, he began to recast the play and worked at this recast up to the close of Act III. III. We have shown above that the language and manner of pictorial representation in the love-story correspond with those of Shakespeare's earlier plays. The thought-laden language of the Ulysses-story and the hurrying pictures passing into each other with bewildering swiftness are just as strongly characteristic of the close of the third period. Act I sc. 3 is the first of these later Shakespeare scenes. Nothing more strikingly Shakespearean can be found in the great tragedies than Agamemnon's words at the beginning of this scene: "Checks and disasters. Grow in the veins of actions highest reared, Infect the sound pine and divert his grain Tortive and errant from his course of growth." It is impossible not to recognise the difference between this picture and those of the poet's early period. The latter are plastic and transparent - all for the eye. This picture is thought-laden in the highest degree. For we do not think of actions highest reared as tall pines in the veins of which knots divert the grain from its course of growth. The poet no longer translates his thoughts into a picture from which we may conclude back to his thoughts, but he flashes these latter in an electric stream directly into us without the elaborate machinery of a picture. His poetry has become less pictorial and more dramatic. Nobody can for a moment take such a passage as the above for any other author's than Shakespeare, and Shakespeare at his ripest. In his early work he would have dwelt on the checks and disasters to which every heroic action is liable as being the knots in the tall pine which divert the grain from its course of growth and would have worked it out in the minutest detail. Nestor interrupts Agamemnon to apply his words: "In the reproof (= rebutting) of chance Lies the true proof of men; the sea being smooth, Upon her patient breast, making their way. But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon behold The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut, Like Perseus' horse: where's then the saucy boat Doth valour's show and valour's worth divide Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, And flies fled under shade, why, then the thing of courage, As roused with rage with rage doth sympathise And with an accent tuned in selfsame key Retorts to chiding fortune." Coriolanus IV sc. I reminds his mother Volumnia of what she was wont to tell him: "You were used To say, extremity was the trier of spirits, That common chances common men could bear; That when the sea was calm all boats alike Showed mastership in floating." The word breese in the above extract is also found in Antony and Cleopatra III sc. 10: "The breese upon her, like a cow in June Hoists sails and flies." Such personifications as "the ruffian Boreas", "makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks", are particularly characteristic of later Shakespeare, that is to say, of Shakespeare as late as or later than Hamlet. Marston has a personification |