Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/240

234 Oliphant The foregoing portion of this paper is practically a blending and re-writing of a letter which I wrote on the subject in November 1917 to Dr. Greg and a paper which I read at the inital meeting of the Melbourne Shakspeare Society for the year 1918. Of this paper I had sent an advance copy in January to Sir Edward Thompson. Those who have paid me the compliment of reading thus far will have perceived that I have put forward three important views. The first is that Sir Edward Thompson's verdict regarding Shakspere's participation is borne out by the evidence of literary and dramatic style. The second, which was entirely novel, is that the play was not originally written by Mundy alone, but by several writers, each of whom altered his own portion of it. The third, which also had never been put forward before, though Dr. Greg had to some extent pointed the way, is that another of the dramatists concerned was Dekker. It is worthy of remark, and is a matter of considerable satisfaction to me that letters received from Sir Edward Thompson since the reading of my paper to the Melbourne Shakspeare Society have confirmed on quite other grounds both these original views of mine. He informs me that he compared the handwriting of Dr. Greg's "E" with a specimen of Dekker's handwriting in the British Museum, and found it to be "most certainly" the same, both as to general character and correspondence in details. "There can be no doubt," he says. No less pleasing is it to myself to have him on palaeographical grounds suggesting, regarding the original authorship of the play, the very view that I have put forward for purely literary reasons. That is to say, Sir Edward Thompson and myself, working independently, came almost simultaneously to the conclusion that Mundy was only part-author of the first draft. Since then, Sir Edward has been good enough to send me an advance proof of an article he has written for the Bibliographical Society on "The Autograph Manuscripts of Anthony Mundy." As it will have been published before this paper appears in print, there can be no objection to my remarking that in this very important contribution to the subject he proves that (a) "More" and the Mundy play "John a Kent" were bound simultaneously in the vellum wrappers in which they have descended to us; (b) not earlier, perhaps later, than 1596 the two plays were stored away together; (c) the MS of