Shakespeare's secret is 'that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense best brings out the rhythm,-here the lines are constructed on a given tune.'1 To these differences may perhaps be added a certain divergence from Shakespeare's practice in the use of prose and verse. Thus the blank verse conversation of the two gentlemen in ii. 1. 1-50, and again in iv. 1. 1-36, is in the matter-offact tone for which Shakespeare regularly used prose (cf. V. F. Janssen, Die Prosa in Shakespeare's Dramen, p. 103). The second writer, denoted by these striking mannerisms, Spedding, like Tennyson, confidently identified with Fletcher, the most mannered of all contemporary dramatists. More recently a claim has been advanced for Massinger-the chosen depository, in our time, of Shakespearean work not wholly worthy of Shakespeare; but on indecisive grounds.2 It remains to ask how the play came to be thus divided between the two writers. Spedding, with his unfailing ingenuity, supplied an elaborately fanciful solution: I should rather conjecture that [Shakespeare] had conceived the idea of a great historical drama on the subject of Henry VIII. which would have included the divorce of Katharine, the fall of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, the coronation of Anne Bullen, and the final separation of the English from the Roman Church . . . that he had proceeded in the execution of this idea as far perhaps as the third Act, which might have included the establishment of Cranmer in the seat of highest ecclesiastical authority (the council-chamber scene in the fifth being designed 1 Representative Men. has been accepted by Mr. Fleay 2 Boyle, in Transactions of (Life and Work of Shakespeare, N. Sh. Soc. 1885. His view p. 250). as an introduction to that); when, finding that his fellows of the Globe were in distress for a new play to honour the marriage of the Lady Elizabeth with, he thought that his half-finished work might help them, and accordingly handed them his manuscript to make what they could of it: that they put it into the hands of Fletcher (already in high repute as a popular and expeditious playwright), who finding the original design not very suitable to the occasion, and utterly beyond his capacity, expanded the three acts into five by interspersing scenes of show and magnificence, and passages of description, and long poetical conversations, in which his strength lay . . . and so turned out a splendid "historical masque or showplay." It is hard to believe that Shakespeare, so tenacious of his rights in the cummin of land and corn, thus easily surrendered his interest in the fruits of his genius. If Fletcher completed the play, we may infer pretty confidently that Shakespeare had previously abandoned it. Whatever the explanation may be of that mysterious withdrawal, before he was fifty, to the provincial amenities of Stratford, there is little doubt that his life's work on his departure was not so completely rounded off as the Tempest Epilogue tempts us to imagine; that he left some projects unfulfilled, some dramatic schemes half-wrought. It is not difficult to understand how Henry VIII. should have been among these. The pathetic story of Katharine, so vividly told by Holinshed, must have been familiar to him from boyhood; but it appealed with a new fascination to the recent creator of Hermione. Unless appearances wholly deceive, he intended to blend her fortunes in the same drama with those of Cranmer and the Protestant Reformation (v. 1). Events so recent and familiar could not be handled with the freedom of a tragic myth or a lawless romance, or boldly embroidered with imaginary character and incident like the remote reign of King John. The task of bringing these two conflicting lines of interest and sympathy into focus was not insuperable. But it may well have been hard enough, with material not of gossamer romance but of intractable history, to check the impetus of an imagination which, to judge by even the finest work in this drama, had already lost something of its shaping power, something of its marvellous mastery of soulcharacter. The fragment was abandoned, and passed, probably in company with the twin fragment of The Two Noble Kinsmen, into the hands of Shakespeare's brilliant successor, whose facile pen and lax artistic conscience lightly dared the problem which Shakespeare had declined, piecing out the interrupted destinies of his persons with death-scenes of a ready and fluent pathos, but contriving to lift into prominence all the lurking weaknesses of the plot. It was reserved for Fletcher to render Shakespeare's work fairly liable to Hertzberg's summary of it as 'a chronicle-history with three and a half catastrophes, varied by a marriage and a coronation-pageant,' and to mingle the memory of the English Hermione's unavenged and unrepented wrongs with the dazzling coronation of her rival and exuberant prophecies over the cradle of her rival's child. THE FAMOUS HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE EIGHTH THE PROLOGUE. I COME no more to make you laugh: things now, The play may pass, if they be still and willing, In a long motley coat guarded with yellow, Will be deceived; for, gentle hearers, know, 3. working, moving. 12. their shilling, the usual price for a seat on the stage, the most privileged place in the Elizabethan theatre. 10 To rank our chosen truth with such a show Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring, Will leave us never an understanding friend. The first and happiest hearers of the town, As they were living; think you see them great, 20 ACT I. SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the palace Enter the DUKE OF NORFOLK at one door; at the other, the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM and the LORD ABERGAVENNY. Buck. Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done Since last we saw in France? Nor. 20. the opinion that we bring, the reputation we bring (of making our ensuing play in strict accordance with truth). I thank your grace, 24. happiest, best disposed, readiest to seize and respond to the dramatist's intention. 2. saw, met. |