of the theme, but it quickly followed, for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in the following autumn.
The applause attending this effort drew from one rival dramatist a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on 3 Sept. 1592, wrote on his Greene's attack.deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ‘Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.’ Addressing three brother dramatists—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge—he bade them beware of puppets ‘that speak from our mouths,’ and of ‘antics garnished in our colours.’ ‘There is,’ he continued, ‘an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is in his owne conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie. … Never more acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.’ The ‘only Shake-scene’ is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The tirade was probably inspired by an author's resentment of the energy of the actor—the theatre's factotum—in revising professional dramatic work. The italicised quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of Shakespeare's ‘Henry VI:’
Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide.
But Shakespeare's amiability of character and versatile ability had already won him admirers. In December 1592 Greene's publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed to his ‘Kind Hartes Dreame’ an apology Chettle's apology. for Greene's attack on the young actor. ‘I am as sory,’ he wrote, ‘as if the originall fault had beene my fault because myselfe have seene his (i.e. Shakespeare's) demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.’
The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI was first published in the collected edition of Shakespeare's works; the second and third plays were previously printed in a form very different from that which they assumed when they Divided authorship of ‘Henry VI.’followed it in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in these plays Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, and correct other men's work. In pt. i. the scene in the Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political parties (act ii. sc. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of his style. A play dealing with the second part of Henry VI's reign was published anonymously from a rough stage copy in 1594, with the title ‘The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster.’ A play dealing with the third part was published with greater care next year under the title ‘The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.’ In both these plays Shakespeare's hand can be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in ‘The Contention’ can only owe their savour to him. After he had hastily revised them, perhaps with another's aid, they were doubtless put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by his own company (Lord Strange's men), and the third, under some exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with another writer. The first part of ‘The Contention’ was thoroughly overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio ‘2 Henry VI;’ there more than half the lines are new. ‘The True Tragedie,’ which became ‘3 Henry VI,’ was less drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched; only a third was completely recast (cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 235 seq.; Trans. New Shakspere Soc., 1876, pt. ii. by Miss Jane Lee; Swinburne, Study, pp. 51 seq.).
Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two revisions of ‘Henry VI’ cannot be determined. The theory that Greene and Peele produced the original draft of the three parts of ‘Henry VI’ may help to account for Greene's indignation. Much can be said, too, in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision which resulted in ‘The Contention’ and the ‘True Tragedie,’ and that Marlowe returned the compliment by adding a few touches to the final revision, for which Shakespeare was mainly responsible.
Many of Shakespeare's comedies—notably ‘Midsummer Night's Dream’ and ‘Much Ado about Nothing’—exhibit familiarity with the
