Page:Henry VI Part 2 (1923) Yale.djvu/167

King Henry the Sixth often as the plays were revived on Shakespeare's stage, but there seems no ground for supposing that any very essential changes were made after Shakespeare had attained full maturity as a writer. Stylistically the Shakespearean portions of 1 Henry VI testify to a later date of composition than the Shakespearean portions of the Second and Third Parts.

The study of the rewritten or additional matter in 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI, which in the former play exceeds and in the latter amounts to about three fourths of the total length of the basic play, offers one of the best opportunities to gauge the trend of Shakespeare's poetical abilities near the beginning of his career. As compared with the original author (Marlowe) it is evident that the reviser, Shakespeare, had broader sympathies. He is interested in a greater variety of types of human beings, and exerts himself to do justice to such good but weak personalities as King Henry and Gloucester, who in the original versions had been left shadowy and negative. These characters are greatly improved and much more fully developed in the revised plays. On the other hand, the reviser has evidently less maturity and finality in his view of life than the original author: he sentimentalizes and frequently blurs the outlines of the earlier plays, particularly in his handling of the harsh and limited, but clean-cut, evil figures depicted in the Contention and True Tragedy: York, Suffolk, Margaret, Beaufort, etc. Rhetorical declamation and prettinesses of figurative illustration tempt him to undramatic and frequently inconsistent additions, of which the effect is to lower the dramatic pitch of the scene.