Page:Henry VIII (1925) Yale.djvu/169

King Henry the Eighth accountable reason in many of the scenes imitated the style of Fletcher. This is the explanation given by Sir Sidney Lee. (2) Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated. Collaboration between two or more playwrights was very common in the Elizabethan age. But here almost every great scene is written by Fletcher. If Henry VIII was a 'new' play in 1613, Shakespeare had already written Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear; he was a veteran dramatist with an established reputation. The question consequently arises why under these circumstances the younger writer should take all the great opportunities and the older do merely the filling in. (3) Shakespeare had no hand in the play whatever; it was merely played under his direction. The non-Fletcherian scenes are not by Shakespeare, but by Massinger. This explanation was suggested in the eighties of the last century by Mr. Robert Boyle. It has recently been argued by Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, largely on the ground of coincidences of phrasing between Henry VIII and Massinger's known plays. It may be interesting to compare the table made by Mr. Sykes with the table of Spedding.