lus to Shakespeare study. The chief work of modern Shakespearean scholarship is the still incomplete Variorum edition of Dr. H. H. Furness and his son.

Other aids to study are reprints of the books used by Shakespeare, facsimile reprints of the original quartos of the plays, and, perhaps as useful as any one thing, the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio. The few perplexing problems that the scholar still finds in the text of Shakespeare will probably never be solved.

On the subject of this chapter, consult A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, Methuen, London, 1910; Sidney Lee, Introduction to the facsimile reproduction of the First Folio by the Oxford University Press; T. R. Lounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare, New York, Scribners, 1906. For the remarks of critics and editors, the Variorum edition of Dr. H. H. Furness is invaluable.

CHAPTER X

THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD

EXPERIMENT

1587 (?)-1594

IMITATION AND

THE first period of Shakespeare's work carries him from the youthful efforts at dramatic construction to such mastery of dramatic technique and of original portrayal of life as raise him, when aided by his supreme poetic art, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own talents, and eager for success, was feeling his way among the different types of drama which he saw reaching success on the London stage.

The longest period of experiment was in the writing of chronicle histories. The experience acquired in these six plays, all derived in some measure from earlier work by others, made Shakespeare a master of this type. Next in importance was comedy, chiefly romantic, with four plays of widely different aim and merit. These two types are brought to the highest development in the dramatist's second period. Tragedy was to wait for a fuller and riper experience. What the complete earlier version of Romeo and Juliet was like, we have only a faint idea; it was obviously, while in

tensely appealing, the work of a young and immature poet. Titus Andronicus led nowhere in development.

Christopher Marlowe remained Shakespeare's master in the drama throughout the chronicle plays of the period. John Lyly's court comedies contained most of the types of character which are to be found in Love's Labour's Lost. Throughout the period Shakespeare grows in mastery of plot and of his dramatic verse; but his chief growth is away from this imitation of others into his own creative portraiture of character. The growth from the bluff soldier, Talbot, in Henry VI to the weak but appealing Richard II is no less marked than is that from the fantastic Armado in Love's Labour's Lost to the unconsciously ridiculous Bottom.

Shakespeare's greatest achievements in this period, aside from Romeo and Juliet in the unknown first draft, are the characters of Richard II and Richard III, the former a portrait of vanity and vacillation mingled with more agreeable traits, lovable gentleness and traces at least of kingliness, the latter a Titanic figure possessed by an overmastering passion.

It is impossible to draw a satisfactory line of division between the experimental period of Shakespeare's work and the period of comedy which follows. Two plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice, lie really between the two. The chief arguments for an early grouping seem to be that the former is in some measure an artificial court comedy, and is full of riming speech and end-stopped lines; the latter derives some help from Marlowe's treatment of The Jew of Malta. But, on the other hand, the

mastery of original characterization in such groups as the delicate fairies of the Dream, or those who gather at the trial of The Merchant, might justify their position in the second period rather than in the first. On the whole, it is perhaps wisest to let metrical differences govern, and so to put Midsummer Night's Dream at the end of Imitation and Experiment; while The Merchant of Venice may safely usher in the great period of comedy.

The three plays known as The Three Parts of Henry VI, together with Richard the Third, constitute the history of the Wars of the Roses, in which the House of York fought the House of Lancaster through the best part of the fifteenth century, and lost the fight and the English crown in 1485, a hundred years before Shakespeare came to London. Although these plays have but slight appeal to us as readers, they must have been highly popular among Elizabethan playgoers.

The First Part of Henry the Sixth deals chiefly with the wars of England and France which center about the figures of Talbot, the English commander, and Joan of Arc, called Joan la Pucelle (the maiden). The former is a hero of battle, who dies fighting for England. The latter is painted according to the traditional English view, which lasted long after Shakespeare's time, as a wicked and impure woman, in league with devils, who fight for her against the righteous power of England. We are glad to think that while the Talbot scenes are probably Shakespeare's, the portrait of La Pucelle is not from his hand, as we shall see. The deaths of these protagonists prepares the way for the peace which Suffolk concludes, and the marriage

which he arranges between Margaret of Anjou and King Henry.

The Second Part of Henry the Sixth concerns the outbreak of strife between York and Lancaster, but chiefly the overthrow of the uncle of the king, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, as Protector of the Realm, and the destruction of his opponent, the Duke of Suffolk, in his turn. The play ends with the first battle of St. Albans (1455), resulting in the complete triumph of Duke Richard of York, in open rebellion against King Henry.

The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth tells of the further wars of York and Lancaster, in the course of which Richard of York is murdered, and his sons, Edward and Richard, keep up the struggle, while Warwick, styled the "Kingmaker," transfers his power to Lancaster. In the end York is triumphant; and while Henry VI and his son are murdered, and Warwick slain in battle at Barnet, Edward is crowned as Edward IV, and Richard becomes the Duke of Gloucester. Authorship. The Three Parts of Henry the Sixth were first printed in the First Folio, 1623. Two earlier plays, The First Part of the Contention between the two Noble Houses of York and Lancaster (sometimes called 1 Contention), and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York... with the whole Contention between the two Houses of Lancaster and York (2 Contention), appeared in quarto in 1594 and 1595 respectively. These are to be regarded as earlier versions of II and III Henry VI.1 For the First Part of Henry VI no dramatic source exists. The ultimate source is, of course, Holinshed's Chronicles.

The authorship of these plays is not ascribed to any dramatist. until 1623, although, as we have seen,2 Robert Greene accuses 2 See p. 8.

1 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama I, 264.