Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/139

Titus Andronicus and a manuscript insertion of some 85 lines was made in the quarto. Ten years later this doctored prompt copy was sent to press for the text of the collected folio.'

So far as there may be said to be a prevailing theory among American students, it is that Shakespeare is the reviser, to some extent, of an older play. But as to the author or authors of the original work, and as to the nature and extent of the revision, there is considerable latitude of opinion. Among American students of the play there are to be mentioned Schelling, Fuller, Baker, Wendell, Stoll, H. D. Gray, and Parrott. J. Q. Adams, in his Life of Shakespeare, 1923 (p. 134), pictures Shakespeare shortly after the death of Marlowe 'exercising his skill in touching up several of the old stock pieces belonging to the company, plays, no doubt, in which he himself had been called upon to act. Perhaps one of these was Titus Andronicus, mainly, if not entirely, by George Peele. Shakespeare could hardly have had a genuine artistic interest in the bloody Titus, but his business shrewdness showed him the opportunity of turning it into a great money-maker for his company.'

The two lengthiest recent discussions of the authorship of the play are by H. B. Baildon (Arden Shakespeare, 1904), who believes the play to be substantially and essentially the work of Shakespeare, and J. M. Robertson, whose elaborate study, Did Shakespeare Write 'Titus Andronicus'?, 1905, revised in 1924 as An Introduction to the Study of the Shakespeare Canon, Proceeding on the Problem of 'Titus Andronicus,' rejects in toto the theory that the play is the work of Shakespeare.

The arguments concerning the Shakespearean authorship of Titus turn largely on the consideration of questions of the metrical construction, versification, vocabulary, characters, theme, and general style