Page:Henry VI Part 1 (1918) Yale.djvu/162

150 scene echoes the close of 1 Tamburlaine, Act III; and the burial of Zenocrate is again clearly parodied in the burial of Salisbury (II. ii).

All this means mimicry, conscious or unconscious. Frequently the imitation degenerates into travesty, as in the weak mouthing of Bedford (I. i. 148-156) and the atrocious rot of the whole scene in which Salisbury is stricken (I. iv). Imagine Marlowe making his chief hero say at the height of passion:

'What chance is this, that suddenly hath cross'd us?

Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst speak,' etc.

It is easier to conceive the mighty line to have attained the unsurpassable flatness of the messenger's words in II. iii. 29, 30:

'Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my Lady craves

To know the cause of your abrupt departure.'

The real proof that Marlowe did not write Harry the Sixth is the absence of any passion except in scenes which bear marks of revision. The lines are usually musical and sometimes charming, and the stage action is interesting, but they are not irradiated by the electric intensity that scintillates in Marlowe. Till Shakespeare vivifies him in the fourth act, Talbot himself is but a skeleton in armor.

Greene has been very often suggested as the author of this play, most recently by Gray, though with reservations, and most positively by Hart. I see nothing that renders such an attribution reasonable: Hart's verbal parallels seem quite without demonstrative value. Greene's essays in the chronicle his- 