62
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. MABCH,
be grateful to him for daring to say all he
has said. But, apart from the general
inclination to discredit any attribution to
Shakespeare of any play not clearly his on
the external evidence, the critics of the day
have made a " dead set "on * Double False-
hood.' Mr. D. Nichol Smith in his * Eigh-
teenth-Century Essays ' says that Theobald
in ascribing the play to Shakespeare " must
at least stand convicted of ignorance of the
Shakespearian manner " ; Sir Sidney Lee
maintains that " there is nothing in the
play as published by Theobald to suggest
Shakespeare's hand " ; and Prof. Lounsbury
declares that " there is scarcly a trace of
the great dramatist in it, even of his best or
worst manner." Mr. Bradford in his article
reminds me that I too have written similarly,
having pronounced the play to contain
" nothing that could have been written by
Fletcher or Shakespeare." So rash a state-
ment is characteristic of the attitude of
more than myself. When I made it a
quarter of a century ago in the course of an
examination into the authorship of the
Beaumont and Fletcher plays, I was so
overcome by the prevalence of the idea that
the play was by Theobald himself that,
supposing it outside my scope, I wasted no
time on it, but gave a mere casual glance
at a chance page or two of a copy in the
British Museum. I confess my fault and
retract. The play does contain much of
Fletcher's work : does it also contain any
of Shakespeare's ?
Mr. Bradford speaks, quite rightly, of the presence of " a firmer, stronger hand " than Fletcher's : this hand is to be found overlaid by Theobald's in the first two speeches of I. i. ; in I. ii. (with the exception of the 10 speeches beginning " Leon. What do you mean ? ") ; in I. iii. ; in II. i. ; in II. ii. ; in III. i. ; in the first 4 speeches of III. ii. and in that portion of the scene lying between " Scene opens to a large hall" and "Most perjur'd if I do ' ; and in the 5 speeches immediately succeeding Julio's entry in IV. i. (the first of these being apparently free from any impertinent intrusion on the reviser's part). The balance of I. i. and I. ii., the whole of II. iii. and II. iv., the balance of III. ii., and the succeeding part of IV. i. to the re-entry of Violante, seem to be entirely the work of the reviser, though in these portions of both III. ii. and IV. i. there may possibly be relics of the older writer.
Is Mr. Bradford's " firmer, stronger hand " the hand of Shakespeare ? One is inclined to see something of his bold, vigorous touch
in the use of " heirs " as a verb in I. i., and
in such lines as
Aa if she there sev'n reigns had slander 'd Time..
(I. iii.)
Those that subtly make their words their ward. Keeping Address at distance. (I. ii.)
My flames are in the flint. Haply, to lose a husband I may weep ; Never to get one. (I. ii.)
Is not this a Shakespearian coinage set in a Shakespearian construction ?
What you can say is most unseasonable ; what
sing, Most absonant and harsh. (I. iii.)
In II. i., printed as prose, we have a sentence more like [Shakespeare than any one
" Not love,f but brutal violence prevail'd ; to-
which the time and place and opportunity were
accessaries most dishonourable " ;
and there are other lines that speak to me (perhaps deceivingly) as Shakespeare's. But, finally, let me quote a passage from III. i. which it requires some boldness to quote, since it contains the famous line denounced by Pope as being too- bathetical to be by any possibility Shake- speare's :
Is there a treachery like this in baseness Recorded any where ? It is the deepest : None but itself can be its parallel : And from a friend profess'd ! Friendship ? Why,
'tis
A word for ever maim'd : in human nature It was a thing the noblest, and 'mong beasts It stood not in mean place : things of fierce
nature
Bold amity and concordance. Such a villany A writer could not put down in his scene Without taxation of his auditory For fiction most enormous.
I have not by me Theobald's defence of ih& line which Pope ridiculed ; but he is stated by Prof. Lounsbury to have shown conclu- sively " that this particular line selected for animadversion was not different in character from several others to be found " in Shakespeare. Gifford indeed took the line as a proof of the Elizabethan origin of the play ; and the same critic also pointed out that the use of the word " comparison " for "caparison" in I. iii. ("Throw all my gay comparisons aside "), over which Pop& made merry, was to be matched in Mas- singer's * Picture ' (" Rich suits, the gay comparisons of pride "), and that it con- stituted a proof of Theobald's good faith.
Melbourne.
E. H. C. OLIPHANT.
(To be concluded.)
