Various - Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850

In returning to the question of the authorship of Henry VIII. , I am anxious to remove a misconception under which MR. SPEDDING appears to labour relative to the purport of a remark I made in my last communication to you (Vol. ii., p. 198.) on this subject. As we appear to be perfectly agreed as to the reasons for assigning a considerable portion of this play to Fletcher, and as upon this basis we have each worked out a result that so exactly coincides with the other, I conclude that MR. SPEDDING, as well as myself, has rested his theory solely on positive grounds; that is, that he imagines there is strong internal evidence in favour of all that he ascribes to this writer. It follows, therefore that the "third hand" which he thought he detected must be sought rather in what remained to Shakspeare, than in that which had been already taken from him. I never for an instant doubted that this was MR. SPEDDING's view; but the inequality which I supposed he had observed and accounted for in this way, I was disposed to refer to a mode of composition that must needs have been troublesome to Shakspeare. The fact is, that, with one or two exceptions, the scenes contributed by the latter are more tamely written than any but the earliest among his works; and these, different as they are, they recalled to my mind. But I have no doubt whatever that these scenes were all written about the same time; my feeling being, that after the opening Shakspeare ceased to feel any great interest in the work. Fletcher, on the other hand, would appear to have made a very great effort; and though some portions of the work I ascribe to him are tedious and overlaboured, no censure would weigh very strongly against the fact, that for more than two centuries they have been applauded as the work of Shakspeare.

As to the circumstances under which Henry VIII. was composed, it is an exceedingly difficult question; and if I venture, on the present occasion, to give the impression upon my mind, I do so, reserving to myself the full right to change my opinion whenever I shall have acquired more knowledge of the subject, or, from any other motive, shall see fit to do it. I consider this case, then, as one of joint authorship; in point of time not much later than the Two Noble Kinsmen , and in other respects similar to that play. If the conclusions of the article in the Westminster Review , to which MR. SPEDDING alludes, be accepted, the writer of the introductory notice to Henry VIII. in the Illustrated Shakspeare , published by Tyas, will recognise the "reverent disciple" whom he hints at, but does not name. In short, I think that Fletcher was the pupil of Shakspeare; and this view, it appears to me, demands the serious attention of the biographer who next may study or speculate upon the great poet's life.

I don't know that I can add anything to MR. SPEDDING'S able analysis of Henry VIII. There are certain tricks of expression he, no doubt, has observed that characterise Fletcher's style, and which abound in the play. It might be useful to make notes of these; and, at some future time, I may send you a selection. I now beg to send you the following extracts, made some time ago, showing the doubts entertained by previous writers on the subject:—

"Though it is very difficult to decide whether short pieces be genuine or spurious, yet I cannot restrain myself from expressing my suspicion that neither the prologue nor epilogue to this play is the work of Shakspeare. It appears to me very likely that they were supplied by the friendship or officiousness of Jonson, whose manner they will be perhaps found exactly to resemble."— Johnson.

"Play revived in 1613." "Prologue and epilogue added by Jonson or some other person."— Malone.

"I entirely agree with Dr. Johnson, that Ben Jonson wrote the prologue and epilogue to this play. Shakspeare had a little before assisted him in his Sejanus .... I think I now and then perceive his hand in the dialogue."— Farmer.

"That Jonson was the author of the prologue and epilogue to this play has been controverted by Mr. Gifford. That they were not the composition of Shakspeare himself is, I think, clear from internal evidence."— Boswell.

"I entirely agree with Dr. Johnson with respect to the time when these additional lines were inserted.... I suspect they were added in 1613, after Shakspeare had quitted the stage, by that hand which tampered with the other parts of the play so much as to have rendered the versification of it of a different colour from all the other plays of Shakspeare."— Malone.

"If the reviver of this play (or tamperer with it, as he is called by Mr. Malone) had so much influence over its numbers as to have entirely changed their texture, he must be supposed to have new-woven the substance of the whole piece; a fact almost incredible."— Steevens.

The double character of Wolsey drawn by Queen Katherine and her attendant, is a piece of vigorous writing of which any other author but Shakspeare might have been proud; and the celebrated farewell of the Cardinal, with his exhortation to Cromwell, only wants that quickening, that vital something which the poet could have breathed into it, to be truly and almost incomparably great.

"Our own conviction is that Shakspeare wrote a portion only of this play.

"It cannot for a moment be supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."— Tyas's Shakspeare , vol. iii. p. 441.

At the same time I made the following notes from Coleridge:—

"Classification, 1802.

3rd Epoch. Henry VIII. Gelegenheitsgedicht.

Classification, 1819.

3rd Epoch. Henry VIII., a sort of historical masque, or show-play."

"It (the historical drama) must likewise be poetical; that only, I mean, must be taken which is the permanent in our nature, which is common, and therefore deeply interesting to all ages."— Lit. Rem. , vol. ii. p.160.

What is said in this last extract might be applied (as Coleridge, I feel no doubt, had he gone one step farther into the subject, would have applied it) to the Shakspearian drama generally; and tried by this test Henry VIII. must certainly be found wanting.

Before I conclude I am anxious to make an observation with regard to the extract from Mr. Emerson's Representative Men (vol. ii. p. 307.). The essay from which this is taken, I presume to be the same, in a printed form, as a lecture which I heard that gentleman deliver. With abundant powers to form a judgment for himself, I should say that his mind had never been directed to questions of this nature. Accident, perhaps, had drawn his attention to the style of Henry VIII. ; but, with reference to the general subject, he had received implicitly and unquestioned the conclusions of authorities who have represented Shakspeare as the greatest borrower, plagiarist, and imitator that all time has brought forth. This, however, did not shake his faith in the poet's greatness; and to reconcile what to some would appear contradictory positions, he proposes the fact, I might say the truism, that the greatest man is not the most original, but the "most indebted" man. This, in the sense in which it is true, is saying no more than that the educated man is better than the savage; but, in the apologetic sense intended, it is equivalent to affirming that the greatest thief is the most respectable man. Confident in this morality, he assumes a previous play to Shakspeare's; but it appears to me that he relies too much upon the "cadence" of the lines: otherwise I could not account for his selecting as an "autograph" a scene that, to my mind, bears "unmistakeable traits" of Fletcher's hand, and that, by whomsoever written, is about the weakest in the whole play.