Page:A study of Shakespeare (IA cu31924013158393).pdf/144

 To me the difference appears immeasurable between the reasons for admitting the possibility of Shakespeare's authorship in the case of Arden of Feversham, and the pretexts for imagining the probability of his partnership in A Warning for Fair Women. There is a practically infinite distinction between the evidence suggested by verbal or even more than verbal resemblance of detached line to line or selected passage to passage, and the proof supplied by the general harmony and spiritual similarity of a whole poem, on comparison of it as a whole with the known works of the hypothetical author. This proof, at all events, we surely do not get from consideration in this light of the plea put forward in behalf of A Warning for Fair Women. This proof, I cannot but think, we are very much nearer getting from contemplation under the same light of the claim producible for Arden of Feversham.

A Warning for Fair Women is unquestionably in its way a noticeable and valuable "piece of work," as Sly might have defined it. It is perhaps the best example anywhere extant of a merely realistic tragedy—of realism pure and simple applied to the service of the highest of the arts. Very rarely does it rise for a very brief interval to the height of tragic or poetic style, however simple and homely.