Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/68

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. MABCH,

be grateful to him for daring to say all he has said. But, apart from the general inclination to discredit any attribution to Shakespeare of any play not clearly his on the external evidence, the critics of the day have made a " dead set "on * Double False- hood.' Mr. D. Nichol Smith in his * Eigh- teenth-Century Essays ' says that Theobald in ascribing the play to Shakespeare " must at least stand convicted of ignorance of the Shakespearian manner " ; Sir Sidney Lee maintains that " there is nothing in the play as published by Theobald to suggest Shakespeare's hand " ; and Prof. Lounsbury declares that " there is scarcly a trace of the great dramatist in it, even of his best or worst manner." Mr. Bradford in his article reminds me that I too have written similarly, having pronounced the play to contain " nothing that could have been written by Fletcher or Shakespeare." So rash a state- ment is characteristic of the attitude of more than myself. When I made it a quarter of a century ago in the course of an examination into the authorship of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays, I was so overcome by the prevalence of the idea that the play was by Theobald himself that, supposing it outside my scope, I wasted no time on it, but gave a mere casual glance at a chance page or two of a copy in the British Museum. I confess my fault and retract. The play does contain much of Fletcher's work : does it also contain any of Shakespeare's ?

Mr. Bradford speaks, quite rightly, of the presence of " a firmer, stronger hand " than Fletcher's : this hand is to be found overlaid by Theobald's in the first two speeches of I. i. ; in I. ii. (with the exception of the 10 speeches beginning " Leon. What do you mean ? ") ; in I. iii. ; in II. i. ; in II. ii. ; in III. i. ; in the first 4 speeches of III. ii. and in that portion of the scene lying between " Scene opens to a large hall" and "Most perjur'd if I do ' ; and in the 5 speeches immediately succeeding Julio's entry in IV. i. (the first of these being apparently free from any impertinent intrusion on the reviser's part). The balance of I. i. and I. ii., the whole of II. iii. and II. iv., the balance of III. ii., and the succeeding part of IV. i. to the re-entry of Violante, seem to be entirely the work of the reviser, though in these portions of both III. ii. and IV. i. there may possibly be relics of the older writer.

Is Mr. Bradford's " firmer, stronger hand " the hand of Shakespeare ? One is inclined to see something of his bold, vigorous touch

in the use of " heirs " as a verb in I. i., and

in such lines as

Aa if she there sev'n reigns had slander 'd Time..

(I. iii.)

Those that subtly make their words their ward. Keeping Address at distance. (I. ii.)

My flames are in the flint. Haply, to lose a husband I may weep ; Never to get one. (I. ii.)

Is not this a Shakespearian coinage set in a Shakespearian construction ?

What you can say is most unseasonable ; what

sing, Most absonant and harsh. (I. iii.)

In II. i., printed as prose, we have a sentence more like [Shakespeare than any one

" Not love,f but brutal violence prevail'd ; to- which the time and place and opportunity were accessaries most dishonourable " ;

and there are other lines that speak to me (perhaps deceivingly) as Shakespeare's. But, finally, let me quote a passage from III. i. which it requires some boldness to quote, since it contains the famous line denounced by Pope as being too- bathetical to be by any possibility Shake- speare's :

Is there a treachery like this in baseness Recorded any where ? It is the deepest : None but itself can be its parallel : And from a friend profess'd ! Friendship ? Why,

'tis

A word for ever maim'd : in human nature It was a thing the noblest, and 'mong beasts It stood not in mean place : things of fierce

nature

Bold amity and concordance. Such a villany A writer could not put down in his scene Without taxation of his auditory For fiction most enormous.

I have not by me Theobald's defence of ih& line which Pope ridiculed ; but he is stated by Prof. Lounsbury to have shown conclu- sively " that this particular line selected for animadversion was not different in character from several others to be found " in Shakespeare. Gifford indeed took the line as a proof of the Elizabethan origin of the play ; and the same critic also pointed out that the use of the word " comparison " for "caparison" in I. iii. ("Throw all my gay comparisons aside "), over which Pop& made merry, was to be matched in Mas- singer's * Picture ' (" Rich suits, the gay comparisons of pride "), and that it con- stituted a proof of Theobald's good faith.

Melbourne.

E. H. C. OLIPHANT.

(To be concluded.)