I see little prospect of reaching conclusive results on these points. The theory that the Contention was written by Marlowe at all, or by any other reputable writer of blank verse, is allowable only on the assumption that there has been much contamination of the extant texts; and the inequality of style is more safely attributed to theatrical manipulation or careless transcribing and printing than to a fundamental division of authorship. The Cade scenes, as they appear in the Contention, are not unworthy of the young Shakespeare, but they bear no indelible stamp of his hand, and the wisest attitude toward them is perhaps that agnostically expressed by Mr. F. A. Marshall (Henry Irving Shakespeare): 'If Shakespeare's claim to have been part author of The Contention and The True Tragedy rests chiefly on the humours of Jack Cade and his company of rebels, we may feel ourselves at perfect liberty to believe that he had no share in them whatever.'
(b) That other writers than Shakespeare assisted in the revision of The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy into the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI has been often suggested, most recently by Dr. Else von Schaubert, who argues in a very elaborate dissertation[1] that Michael Drayton was author of considerable portions of both the Second and Third Parts. For this view, as well as for that which would make Marlowe himself Shakespeare's assistant in the revision, I see no sufficient evidence.
Whether Shakespeare's revision, as printed in the Folio of 1623, represents the work as completed by him in 1592, or whether it is the result of a series of recastings, is hard to say. It is natural to assume that the text may have been subjected to some alteration as
- ↑ Draytons Anteil an 'Heinrich VI,' 2 u. 3. Teil, Neue Anglistische Arbeiten, 1920. (The author accepts the old theory that the Contention and True Tragedy are not earlier plays, but pirated versions of the Shakespearean plays.)
