Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/135



The external evidence for the Shakespearean authorship of Titus Andronicus rests on its inclusion in the Folio of 1623 by Heminges and Condell, friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, and its mention by Francis Meres in a list of Shakespeare's plays in his Palladis Tamia in 1598, four years after the appearance of the First Quarto. It is again listed as Shakespeare's by Gerard Langbaine in 1691. Such evidence is not easily contestable, especially in view of the close connection between Shakespeare and the editors of the Folio, and the fact that Meres seems to have been sufficiently familiar with Shakespeare to have known of his privately circulated sonnets some eleven years before they were first printed. But in spite of these facts, the play, largely because of its repulsive theme, the crudeness of workmanship displayed throughout, the un-Shakespearean quality of many of its lines, and the presence in the text of numerous traces of the work of other authors, has been a storm-centre in Shakespearean criticism for over two centuries, and to-day it finds itself rejected, either partially or wholly, by far the greater number of editors and critics.

The first doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of which we have any record is contained in the preface to Edward Ravenscroft's revision of the play in 1687, wherein he says: 'I have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters; this I am apt to