Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/136

122 believe, because 't is the most incorrect and indigested piece in all his works. It seems rather a heap of rubbish than a structure.'

The integrity of Ravenscroft is discredited by Langbaine, who intimates that Ravenscroft was merely trying to belittle Shakespeare in order to exalt himself. He quotes part of the prologue which Ravenscroft originally prefixed to his revision of Titus in 1678, in which he called the play Shakespeare's and produced it as such, saying of his own part in it that he had

Ravenscroft's statement is, however, accepted in substance by the majority of critics since his day.

External evidence against Shakespeare’s authorship of Titus has been found in the absence of his name from all three Quartos of the play. The conclusiveness of this evidence is impaired, however, by the fact that the poet's name does not appear on any of the Quartos of Henry V, or on any of the first three Quartos of Romeo and Juliet.

Eighteenth-century critics and editors, with the exception of Capell, denied the Shakespearean authorship of the play. Theobald thought Shakespeare might have added 'a few fine touches' to the play. Johnson, Farmer, and Steevens, reject the Shakespearean theory entirely. Johnson says of it: 'All the editors and critics agree in supposing this play spurious. I see no reason for differing from them; for the colour of the style is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification, and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles and the general massacre, which are here