Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/124

 not the Titus that Meres attributed to him; and some that the admitted rewriting of Love's Labour's Lost makes it a doubtful witness; while the date of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is extremely uncertain. But it would, I think, be difficult so to pack a jury of competent scholars that these plays, and the Comedy of Errors, should not be put in the van. And though every one of them is full of crudities, the Grand Style appears in each, as it never does appear in any other probably contemporary work, except Marlowe's, and not as it appears in Marlowe himself. The central splendour of Adriana's speech in the Errors (n. ii. 112 ff.); the glorious 'phrase of the ring' in the fatal discovery of the murder of Bassianus in Titus (II. iii. 226 ff.); the famous and incomparable veiled confession of Julia in the Two Gentlemen (iv. iv. 154 ff.); at least a dozen passages in Love's Labour's Lost—have the broad arrow—the royal mark—upon them unmistakably.

But, it is said, there is so much else—so much even of the close context of these very passages—which has not the mark! And why should it have? Poetry, and most especially dramatic poetry, is a microcosm: and it may—perhaps it should, like the macrocosm—contain wood, hay, and stubble as well as gold and silver. Again, in these plays, it is said, there are failures of the Grand Style—slips from it or mis-shots at it—fallings into conceit, preciousness, bombast, frigidity, what not. Is it necessary, even at this time of day, to recapitulate the classes of persons to whom, according to the adage, half-done work should not be shown? Or is there any one, not included in these classes, who really wishes that we had not got Shakespeare's half-done work? I should be sorry to think that there is—especially in this audience. But, if there be, may I suggest to him that on the calculus we are using, the fact, supposing it to be a fact, does not matter? It is not a question whether anything that is not the Grand Style exists in these plays: but