Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/138

124 and lengthy discussions as to its authorship. There was a revival in certain quarters of the tendency to consider the play a work of Shakespeare's earlier days, and among the adherents of this opinion were Collins, Boas, Saintsbury, McCallum, and Raleigh. Courthope, in the appendix, 'On the Authenticity of Some of the Early Plays Assigned to Shakespeare, and their Relationship to the Development of his Dramatic Genius,' to his History of English Poetry, vol. iv, 1903, espouses the theory of the Shakespearean authorship of Titus. His formal conclusion is 'That there are no sufficient internal reasons to warrant us in resisting the testimony of the folio of 1623 that Titus Andronicus and King Henry VI. are the work of Shakespeare.' Greg, in his edition of Henslowe's Diary (II. 161), gives his opinion of the circumstances of Shakespeare's connection with Titus: 'I fail to discover any clear internal evidence of Shakespeare having touched the play at all, though there are a few lines whose Shakespearian authorship I do not think impossible. The Chamberlain's men, following their practice in the case of the other Pembroke's plays, Hamlet and the Taming of a Shrew, caused Titus to be worked over by a young member of their company named William Shakespeare. Thus revised the piece achieved sufficient success to call for notice by Francis Meres in 1598, and thenceforth passed as one of the "works" of the favourite playwright-actor. This MS. perished in the fire at the Globe in 1613. Wishing to replace their prompt copy the King's men procured a copy of the printed edition (1611), a device to which they certainly resorted in other cases too. In this they made certain alterations in the stage directions, and in doing so noticed the absence of one scene at least (III. ii.) which they were in the habit of acting and which had proved popular. This the actors were able to reconstruct from memory,