# The Review of English Studies/Volume 1/Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More

SHAKESPEARE AND SIR THOMAS MORE
By Levin L. Schücking (Breslau)
The book on Shakespeare’s Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More has found so much favour with experts and the general public alike that it may almost appear impossible to invalidate the arguments piled up in it by some of the greatest authorities living for Shakespeare’s authorship of the so-called “insurrection-scene.” Still it will not perhaps be useless to show that there are some points of view from which the interesting building erected in this book looks less weather-proof than it appears if looked at with the eyes of the architects. For reasons which are not far to seek, the question of the identity of the pen which wrote the sheets concerned, with that from which the six signatures originated, must be ruled out in this investigation. However, it cannot be left unsaid, that these chapters too contain some material that is far from convincing to the unprejudiced reader. When Sir E. Maunde Thompson states the extraordinary similarity of the a in signature No. 1 to certain a’s in the manuscript (especially the “pointed projection or spur from the lower end of the back of the letter”), he will certainly not be contradicted, but it cannot be overlooked, on the other hand, that the two letters h and s are in all cases hopelessly and absolutely dissimilar in signatures and manuscript. (The reproduction of the h of signature No. 5 on plate v does not by any means give a right impression, as is easily to be seen on plate i. A little better is the h of signature No. 1, but in reality—as plate i shows—this letter too appears different in the facsimile, it being much more pointed and showing almost an acute angle; also, if less so, the h of No. 2, whereas the h’s of the manuscript are remarkable for their curves.) The difference between the s’s needs no ​pointing out; it is striking. Then there are the two words of the last signature of the will: “By me,” which contain a capital B which is so thoroughly unlike the capital B’s in the manuscript, that one is at a loss to understand how they should be written by the same hand. On the whole one gets the impression from the signatures that Shakespeare’s handwriting was a good deal more angular than that of the manuscript, which is characterised by its curves. But be that as it may, the decisive tests will in any case have to be looked for in other fields.
§ 1. The Supposed Shakespearian Flavour
The whole controversy takes its origin from the impression that Sir Thomas More contains scenes (or at least one scene) that are worthy of Shakespeare’s authorship. It depends, as Simpson (Noses and Queries, July 1, 1871) says, “on the Shakespearian flavour, which only a critical taste can thoroughly discriminate.” A number of distinguished scholars have tried to characterise, define, and dissect this flavour and to find out its components. These consist, to quote Simpson again, as well in “the imagery as the morality of these lines.” The imagery and the style show, on the one hand, what R. W. Chambers calls “repetitions” from Shakespeare’s acknowledged works, on the other hand they have, to quote A. W. Ward, “the true Shakespearian manner.” Moreover, the ideas expressed in these lines, particularly the political ideas, are exactly what we should expect from him. As regards the first of these arguments, it is certainly not to be denied that there are many things in the insurrection-scene which suggest Shakespearian passages. But it is scarcely worth while to discuss the degree of relationship between passages like “sit as kings in your desires” and “entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,” Sonn. 37 (Simpson, Chambers), or “you in the ruff of your opinions clothed” and “dressed in a little brief authority” (Longworth, Chambers, Times Lit. Supp., December 20, 1923), considering that there are plays by other Elizabethans, e.g. by Heywood—it will be seen later on that he is not mentioned without purpose—which although abounding with unmistakable Shakespearian reminiscences nobody ascribes to Shakespeare. Of real importance, therefore, are those ​“repetitions” only which are to be found in Shakespearian plays of undisputedly later origin and which do not obviously belong to a common stock of Elizabethan play-wrights’ phrases. Now of these there are evidently not many that deserve serious consideration (for a number of them lose their force if the play as I shall try to prove later on—is to be dated after Julius Cæsar and Hamlet). R. W. Chambers has shown some similar expressions, it is true, that occur in Coriolanus. He lays particular stress on the repetition of the idea that civil war would lead to a chaos, in which in the end people “would feed on one another.” But after all, is this idea more than a truism, which may have existed in the thinking of many contemporaries in those unruly times and been usually couched in the same words, although by chance other examples of it are now wanting? I cannot find, furthermore, that the “greyhound” simile offers much better material. Nay, it seems to me that R. W. Chambers misinterprets the passage. Of Titus Lartius (Coriol. I, vi, 37) it is said that he holds—
Corioli in the name of Rome Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash, To let him slip at will.
Corioli, the unfortunate conquered town which is at the mercy of the victor, is compared to a “fawning greyhound,” which the owner will let loose from the fettering string just when he likes. But the rebels in Sir Thomas More are said, by assuming the right to punish the strangers, to—
lead the majesty of law in liom To slip him like a hound;
i.e. they usurp the prerogative of the (law of the) state and employ (its) force as they like. Here the “hound” is the power they use against the strangers. The image then is totally dissimilar. So the picture at the back of the writer’s mind is much more similar to passages like Jul. Cæs. III, i, 273: “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”
Superficial likenesses such as these have little convincing power. The decisive test as to the imagery employed is, whether it bears the particularly Shakespearian mark. Now the characteristic ​traits of Shakespeare’s style are the newness and boldness of his similes, the acuteness of the observation they betray, the persuasive power of his almost paradoxical combination of things, the surprising riches of his associations. For his imagination, as Spalding says, throws constantly flowers into the currency of his thought. Lines like those from Coriolanus, I, i, 168:
| | or 2 Hen. IV, IV, iv, 33: |
| you dissentious rogues That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, Make yourselves scabs; | being incensed, he’s flint, As humorous as winter, and as sudden As flaws congealed in the spring of day; |
are therefore unmistakably Shakespearian; they would betray his hand wherever they were to be found. Are there any lines of this sort in the “insurrection-scene”? Certainly not. Its language is throughout clever but nowhere brilliant. This is what Furnivall must have had in his mind’s eye when he wrote that there is “nothing necessarily Shakespearian in it, though part of it (is) worthy of him.” Perhaps, however, even this is too much to allow. There are, at any rate, lines in the scene that have scarcely the Shakespearian ring, compare for instance a poor verse like:
| | or: |
| Youle put downe straingers, Kill them, cutt their throts…! | Those same hands That you like rebels lift against the peace Lift up for peace! |
In one case, the reviser himself seems to have been so little satisfied with the text that he crossed a passage out, and indeed: “to kneele to be forgyven it safer warrs, then ever you can make, whose discipline is ryot” deserved no better fate, the paradox “to kneele… is warrs” being most unhappily chosen.
There are certainly, and this has more weight, a great number of expressions in it which seem not at all to belong to his vocabulary. It is true that this test must be used with great caution. For it is self-evident that each part of his work must contain words which are not in the rest. On the other hand, there are certainly words and expressions which belong to the common property of the time, and are lacking in Shakespeare’s vocabulary for the simple psychological reason that every human being, even he with the very greatest imagination, has only a distinctly circumscribed stock of words in his use, favouring some and neglecting ​others. Looked at from this standpoint, it appears remarkable that the following words and phrases from the insurrection-scene should not be found in Shakespeare’s works
15. As regards “sorry parsnip,” it is to be noted that Shakespeare never uses “sorry” in the sense of “worthless.” Although his work contains eighty-nine cases of “sorry,” it has this meaning in no other passage.
16. The expression “command them to a stillness” is decidedly unShakespearian. “Stillness” occurs many times in Shakespeare’s work, but its meaning is never a merely negative one, = the cessation or absence of noise, but a characteristic attribute or state, sometimes of the mind. Compare: The gravity and stillness of your youth, Oth. II, iii, 196, similarly Hen. V, III, i, 4; A wilful stillness entertain, M. of V. I, i, 90; in patient stillness, Hen. V, III. vii, 24; Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony, M. of V. V, i, 56.
17. “topt the peace” is quite without parallel in Shakespeare.
18. “in ruff of your opinions.” “Ruff” occurs five times in Shakespeare, but always in the sense of “collars” or “ruffles of boots,” not once in the sense of “highest pitch or fullest degree of some exalted condition” or “exalted or elated state” which the Oxford Dict. calls “very common from c. 1570 to 1675.”
19. “shark on you.” As the verb “to shark” occurs for the two first times here and in Hamlet, R. W. Chambers quotes it to sustain the thesis of Shakespeare’s authorship. But do not the facts rather point to the contrary? For “to shark” in Hamlet means “gather,” whereas here it means something like “to rob.”
20. “as mutinies are incident.” According to Chambers’s Twentieth Cent. Dict. the adj. “incident” has the two principal meanings: (i) “naturally belonging to anything or following therefrom”; (2) “liable to occur.” In the first sense it occurs ​three times in Shakespeare’s works, in the second in Sir Thomas More, but not in Shakespeare.
21. As to habits of style, it is impossible to overlook the fondness of the author of the insurrection-scene for interrupting himself with a short sentence, commencing with “as.” This we find no less than three times in the comparatively short passage:
v, 18. Theise basterds of dung, as you knowe they growe in dung, have infected us.
v, 130. What rebell captaine, as mutinies are incident, by his name can still the rout?
v, 137. Say nowe the Say King (as he is clement, yf th’ offendor moorne) shoold so much corn…
I do not find this habit in Shakespeare.
22. “a made my Brother Arther Watchins Seriant Safes yeoman.” The name “Sergeant Safe”? does not sound Shakespearian. E. Erler’s collection, Die Namengebung bet Shakespeare (Schücking’s Anglistische Arbeiten, No. 2), Heidelberg, 1913, shows that Shakespeare for his significant names preferred objects which are characteristic for the name-bearers’ vocation, as: Weaver Bottom, Musician Soundpost, Cook Potpan, constables Fang and Snare, or he calls a schoolmaster Pinch; sometimes, too, the comical names lack the association of this sort: constables Oatcake and Seacole. If he chooses simple adjectives, they help to characterise the bearer in a witty way: recruits Feeble and Mouldy, parson Dumbe; Slender, Simple, Justice Shallow; a hostess is called Mrs. Quickly, presumably from the shout of the impatient guests. But we look in vain in his works for a soldier Valiant or a parson Pious. There is too little wit in a “Sergeant Safe” for Shakespeare.
§ 2. “Shakespearian in Feeling”?
So great an authority on the English drama as Professor A. W. Ward has summed up his opinion on the Thomas Moore scenes in question, that it is “genuinely Shakespearian in feeling (and) it is with difficulty (it) can be conceived to have been written by any other contemporary author.” This conception has been endorsed by the authors of Shakespeare’s Hand, etc. In order to gain a critical standpoint for this high appreciation it is necessary to sketch out the trend of ideas in More’s great speech first.
​The rebellion is looked at by More, from—in the main—three points of view: (1) Practical wisdom (consider the consequences of your action!); (2) religion (you offend against God’s law!); and (3) humanity (“let us do as we may be done by”). But it is very curious that between the second and the third thought the writer throws in some considerations which in reality belong to the first point of view. The idea of v, 114 seq.: “what rebel captain—as mutinies are incident—by his name can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?” has already been expressed before in other words, or at least its legitimate position would be after the lines 82 seq.: “by this pattern not one of you should live an aged man,” for they only continue or vary the train of thought which initiates the whole speech. I do not mean to say, of course, that these lines (114 seq.) have been actually misplaced; I only draw attention to the fact that the writer is by no means a man of very clear conception.
But he is very far, also, from possessing Shakespeare’s marvellous insight into the motives of human action. There can be little doubt that the effect of a speech like Sir Thomas More’s in this scene would in reality have been very different from that depicted by the dramatist. For two reasons. Firstly, the crowd would have been right in answering him that he entirely misconstrues their case. For if they really would have to leave England and would have to implore the mercy of the people in “Fraunc or Flanders, any Jarman province, Spane or Portigall,” their situation would be absolutely different from that of the proud and overbearing foreigners, whose impudent attitude towards the natives of London has—as the first scenes of the play show—become simply unbearable. What the rebels object to is not that strangers are treated humanely, but that they themselves must endure to be treated by them like dogs. But even if the rhetorical power of the orator was able to make them forget this difference, they would scarcely be moved by the argument which is here couched in the words “letts do as we may be doon by.” Experience teaches us that in times of public excitement no argument has less force with the masses than this one. Did Shakespeare take a different view about the psychology of the multitude? The facts point to the contrary. What is the way of Clifford (in 2 Hen. VI, IV, vii, 34 seq.) to win over the masses to him, which have been seduced by Jack Cade? lie appeals to their patriotism, to-day we should say, to their chauvinism, in egging them on against France. Like a ​modem jingo agitator he conjures up the picture of the threatening triumph of their national adversaries in order to silence the “class-war”:
Were’t not a shame, that whilst you live at jar, The fearful French, whom you late vanquished, Should make a start o’er seas and vanquish you? Methinks already in this civil broil I see them lording it in London streets… etc.
This is a splendid piece of mass-psychology. Is it necessary to refer to a still more glorious example of it, the Marc-Antony scene in Julius Cæsar, with its brilliant mixture of rhetorical means? Frederick Tupper, junr., who has given an elaborate analysis of them, explains the effects of this great speech with the very words, that “Antony fires the multitude not by working upon its reason, its critical spirit” for “a mob can make no response to reason and conscience, and higher motives are above the understanding of an entranced multitude” (l.c. 506, 507). That is exactly what the author of the insurrection-scene in Sir Thomas More fails to see. The idea would probably have appeared child-like to a man of Shakespeare’s realism, to make the mob-rebels (it says: “all,” not a single person!) after the appeal to their reason and conscience exclaim: “fayth a saies trewe letts do as we may be doon by.” To write this a more sentimental mind than Shakespeare’s is required. And indeed there is a slight strain of sentimentality in the whole of the speech. Compare the lines:
Ymagin that you see the wretched straingers, Their babyes at their backes and their poor lugage, Plodding tooth ports and costes for transportacion.
Here again the case is misconstrued in a characteristic way. The proud and “saucie aliens,” whom we have just been witnessing behaving in an outrageous way to the good citizens of London and to their wives, become suddenly a pitiable lot of distressed people, the impudent “libertins” who enticed the citizens’ wives away from their husbands and later on had the insolence of charging the husbands the costs for their “boarding,” or tried to get hold of pretty women by employment of force in the street, have turned into hard-struggling, grief-bowed, injured fathers of families who are particularly worthy of commiseration because of their “poor luggage” and the little children, whom they bear on their backs as the dearest possessions, as the wives of Weinsberg whilom did ​their husbands. If this be not a sentimental conception of things, I wonder what sentimentality consists of.
Perhaps the objection will be raised that Shakespeare often heightens the effect of pathetic passages by the mentioning of children. This, however, is only partially true. Babies occur, where the plot requires them, as in C. o. E., Winter’s T., Rich. III, Macbeth, and elsewhere, and are spoken of in sympathetic words. The murder of children—“flowering infants” as they are called in Hen. V, III, iii, 14—is repeatedly spoken of as the height of terrors, pity being accordingly represented once as “a new-born babe striding the blast” (Macb. I, vii, 22). But in all this there is nothing particularly sentimental, certainly not in the description of the Roman citizens, who, to see Pompey, climbed up to “the chimney-tops, your infants in your arms.” In contradistinction to this we do find, it is true, the “motif” of babies employed to delineate a situation that is “larmoyante,” viz. in 1 Hen. VI, I, i, 49:
await for wretched years When at their mother’s moist’ned eyes babies shall suck, etc.
and 1 Hen. VI, III, iii, 48:
As looks the mother on her lowly babe…
But it is interesting to see that both passages belong to an evidently non-Shakespearian part of the trilogy!
But this is not the only portion of the speech that breathes another atmosphere than Shakespeare’s world. The different atmosphere makes itself felt, also, when the speaker admonishes the rebels:
Wash your foule mynds with tears, and those same handes That, etc.
Would Shakespeare have made an orator ask a seditious crowd to commence a general whining by shedding tears of compunction in public? This too, as will be shown later on, is more like Heywood than like Shakespeare.
There is also something distinctly unShakespearian in the use of the term “inhumanitie,” which corresponds with this difference. It has been stated above that the word “inhumanitie” does not ​occur at all in Shakespeare (No. 14 on page 44). This might be mere chance, for the adjective “inhuman” does occur. But there is a distinct difference between its meaning and the modern sense of the word, the same difference that exists between German “unmenschlich” and “entmenscht.” It is the second meaning that is represented by the word in Shakespeare’s language, something like “totally divested of any human feeling.” It is therefore not used very often. In Tit. Andr. (V, ii, 177) it characterises the murderers and ravishers of Lavinia, in 3 Hen. VI the fury Margaret (“more inhuman, more inexorable, ten times more than tigers of Hyrcania”), in Rich. III it is applied by Anne to the murder of her husband (I, ii, 60), Henry V calls so the men who intend to kill the holy person of the King, the dying Roderigo finds no stronger expression for the moral monster Iago, Bertram deserves it, whom the King in All’s Well considers as the murderer of his own loving wife, Shylock is termed “inhuman,” who thirsts for the blood of his innocent adversary. In all cases, then, it designates the highest degree of moral depravity, almost always assassins. Would Shakespeare use it to characterise the action of poor people, who lose their heads and turn in exasperation and rage against their foreign oppressors?
§ 3. The Position of the Play in the Development of the Drama
A reader of the play who has been patient enough to lend his ear to the arguments brought forth until here will perhaps object that no matter if what Sir Thomas More says to the multitude appears sentimental or unsentimental, convincing or not, the author will have found it in his literary source. Just the contrary, however, is the case. The whole speech is an invention. Hall, whose description of “Evil Mayday” the play uses, mentions nothing of the sort. His report only contains a statement that Sir Thomas More and others entreated the masses “and had almost brought them to a staye,” but the violence was renewed and they did not succeed. How then did the idea of a great oration which had a marvellous effect on the multitude enter the authors’ mind? This question is only part of a greater problem: the general attitude of the authors to the sources. To find a key to this, however, the question must first be answered: How did the idea to write a drama on Sir Thomas More ​originate at all? This question could scarcely be answered by those who like Simpson and others dated the play 1586 or 1587, i.e. at a time when the English Chronicle play was of absolutely different character. On trying to ascertain the position of Sir Thomas More, one’s first endeavour, then, must be to find out the group to which it belongs. Now there can be little doubt that it forms part of a group which shows in some respects a surprising similarity. These are The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle (1600) and The True Chronicle History of the whole Life and Death of Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602). Oldcastle is usually looked upon as the result of a more or less ineffectual endeavour to challenge Shakespeare. Ineffectual the play indeed is, if compared with Shakespeare’s art. But one must not overlook that it is a comparatively modern idea to make a man like Oldcastle the hero of a play. Not in the sense that he is not a king or a royal personage. Sir Thomas Stukeley, too, is not of royal blood. But to select him for the leading figure of a play was to create a hero-type hitherto almost unknown in Elizabethan drama, a man who was not “a dramatic character” in the traditional sense at all. It is true that, before Oldcastle, dramatic art had occasionally celebrated men of note in civic affairs, but never before had so detailed a portrait been attempted of a man who had not earned any warlike laurels or made himself famous by daring adventures. Oldcastle held a place in the history of his country’s civilisation which allowed the dramatist to hold up as an example one who was human, kindhearted, cheerful and trustworthy, charitable, self-controlled and devout, tender to his wife, for whose sake only his suffering weighs upon him, and above all a staunch adherent to principle as regards both his advanced religious creed and his loyalty to the King. When the two clash he unflinchingly decides for the first and tells the King so with great frankness, who, however, is far too generous to “incroach upon his conscience.” The hero in The Life and Death of Cromwell is of course in many ways of a different stamp, still something of the spirit of Oldcastle is in him too. Schelling says (The English Chronicle Play, p. 217): “Cromwell stands for the glorification, the very apotheosis, of citizen virtue. It is his honorable thrift and capacity in trade, his temperance, piety, and staunch Protestantism, which are dwelt on and extolled. He befriends the broken debtor and outwits the wrongdoer. He is mindful of others’ favours to him, forgetful of his own,” etc. Another embodiment of ​citizen virtue (with frequent reference to the surroundings where it grew from, i.e. the city of London) is Sir Thomas More. He has been carefully divested of those traits which might create antipathy against him with an Elizabethan audience, especially his strict catholicism, and some of those very qualities upon which stress was laid in Oldcastle and Cromwell are thrown into bold relief instead. A childlike cheerfulness and joviality combine with absolute self-control, kindness, and social feeling, with severity against himself. Although he is the most tender husband and father, still the love for his family does not influence his attitude where his conscience is concerned. For his character is tested like Oldcastle’s in the adherence to his principles when they prove fatal to him. He makes in this way an extremely modern impression as a hero, nay, he reminds us of the very type of hero of Galsworthy’s “Mob” in resisting the adjuration of his nearest relatives, even his wife, to desert his cause. There is a spirit of advanced humanity about him that pervades the whole play and makes itself particularly felt in the description of the treatment of the Mayday revolt by the authorities, which shows a deviation from the very different and unpleasant statement of the historical sources looking almost like a distinct tendency.
But the similarity between these plays does not confine itself to such more general and—most critics will say—vague likenesses. Especially Cromwell and More show a near relation. They both of them to a great extent want the unity of action. Individual careers are represented in a series of scenes of sometimes anecdotal character. Occasionally the matter used for the one play is taken from the very source of the other, as the episode of the long-haired Faulkner in More, which is related in Fox in connection with Thomas Cromwell (Tucker Brooke, Shakespeare Apocrypha, liv). Striking single resemblances have been repeatedly drawn attention to (cf. Fleay, Life of Shakespeare, p. 298; W. Streit’s diss. p. 53 seq.; and the present writer in Engl. Stud. 46, p. 242). They might be multiplied. But the most important point has never been noticed. As Fleay rightly remarks: “In Act IV (of Cromwell) the chorus apologises for the omission of Wolsey’s life. That had, in fact, been treated already by Chettle in August, 1601, and by Chettle, ​Munday, Drayton, and Smith in November, 1601, in two plays for the Admiral’s men.” There can be little doubt that that is the reason why, in the Cromwell play, the public is asked to “pardon if we omit all Wolsaye’s life.” But it evidently is the reason, too, why “all Wolsaye’s life” is omitted from Sir Thomas More. Nothing surely is more remarkable than the absolute absence of everything that concerns Cardinal Wolsey from our play. Nay, more, not even is he absent, but Sir Thomas More has in some cases taken his very historical place. It was Wolsey who acted the decisive part in the liquidation of the “Ill-Mayday” revolt; it was he, not More, who scored the success to have the “good emperour,” i.e. Kaiser Maximilian, “marche in pay Under our English flagge, and weare the crosse, Like some high order, on his manly breast” (IV, ii), at a time when More was still under-sheriff of London. Moreover, how is it possible that More’s dealings with Wolsey, whose direct successor as Chancellor he was, as they are offered in the sources are entirely disregarded in the play? The reason is obvious. These things must have been dealt with already in the very popular plays about Wolsey’s life. The Wolsey theme had been worked out so fully that the interest in him with the public was supposed to be exhausted. That is also why names like Cromwell or Norfolk do not, as we might expect, appear in our play. A connection of this sort between Cromwell, More, and the Wolsey plays is also made plausible by their authorship. In the two Wolsey plays the lost Life of Cardinal Wolsey and its sequel, the Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, which is lost too, Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith were concerned. Now the handwriting of “our best plotter” Munday seems to be established beyond doubt as that “of the bulk of Sir Thomas More” too (Shakespeare’s Hand, etc., p. 8). This makes it more plausible still, that Cromwell, Wolsey, and More belong closely together. It may even be—though this is by no means certain—that of this close connection there is a hint in the very plays themselves. Says Gardiner in the Cromwell play (IV, v, 54):
Theres Thomas Wolsey, hees alreadie gone, And Thomas Moore, he followed after him: Another Thomas yet there doth remaine…
§ 4. The Date
If these conclusions are accepted, we get a firm date for our play. The Oldcastle plays by Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway date from 1599. The Wolsey plays, in which again Drayton and Munday were concerned, date from 1601. Cromwell used to be dated much earlier, but Streit already has made it plausible (The Life and Death of Th. Lord Cromwell, Jena, 1904) that it originated after Wolsey. Sir Thomas More then must needs date from about the same time, 1601–2. That the play did not originate before that date I have formerly tried to show by a number of reminiscences which connect it with plays like Julius Cæsar and Hamlet (Engl. St. 46, 233 seq.). I cannot allow that they have been invalidated by R. W. Chambers. Chambers admits (l.c. p. 145) that there is “a real connection” between the scene in Julius Cæsar in which the masses are worked upon and won by Marc Antony and the similar scene in our play, but he explains it by assuming the authorship of Shakespeare in both cases. “We cannot argue,” he says, “that, because Antony did actually, as a matter of history, succeed in swaying the mob by his speech, whilst the success of More is fictitious, therefore the More fiction is necessarily an imitation of that historic fact. If the writer of the More scene needed any pattern to follow, he could have found it in the speech in which old Clifford equally wins the rebels under Cade to his side.” But how then does Chambers explain it, that the idea entered the mind of the man who made the plot of Sir Thomas More, to make the hero—contrary to all historical facts—from a comparatively unimportant position rise to a decisive one in the state by a miraculous rhetorical performance which alters the opinion of the masses and reverses the threatening current of public events? Chambers mentions the Clifford–Cade scene as a possible pattern. ​But the whole situation there is entirely different. The nineteen lines Clifford pronounces are by no means the great “air de bravoure” which is the climax of the play and decides about the orator’s fate; they are, on the contrary, comparatively so unimportant that the King does not even feel compelled to say a word of thanks to him for them, let alone to promote him. It is true that the authors could find in their sources that More had showed himself of considerable eloquence in Parliament; still the idea of his creating a wave of enthusiasm by a public speech which bears him up to the highest dignities at once is strange to the facts. Imitation of Julius Cæsar explains it best. But there are other reminiscences as well, which point to the same date. I cannot repeat here what I have tried to make clear (p. 236, l.c.) about the similarity between the actors’ scene in Hamlet and the actors’ scene in Sir Thomas More. I doubt if it is invalidated by Chambers’ remark, that “if More’s attitude to the players sometimes reminds us of Hamlet’s, there is nothing more than can well be accounted for by the common atmosphere in which both plays grew up.” Can a common atmosphere (?) produce parallel situations and attitudes of this sort? Another likeness has been left unmentioned up to now. It is to be found in Sir Thomas More, I, i, where Justice Suresbie is let down by the cunning pick-pocket Lifter. The source (cf. Dyce, p. 13) only describes him as a “grave, old man,” later on, “so bitter a censurer of innocent men’s negligence.” In the play he is a pompous person, loquacious, vain, jovial from a wrong feeling of superiority, inclined to vent a gaiety which is principally pleasedness with himself, endeavouring to be witty and thinking himself so, with a certain over-officiousness, which expresses itself in his language, for he repeats the same words two or three times: “Sirra, be breefe, be breef! … doo not, doo not, sirra. … There be, varlet! What be there? Tell me what there be. Come off or on: there be! what be there, knave? … Well … well … excellent, excellent … yfaith, yfaith. …”
There can be little doubt that this Justice Suresbie is the image of Justice Shallow in Shakespeare’s 2 Hen. IV, even to his manner of speech (compare passages like III, ii, 96 seq.: “Where’s the roll? where’s the roll? where’s the roll? Let me see, let me see, let me see. …”) Now 2 Hen. IV was written 1598 or early in 1599 (R. P. Cowl, Arden Edition, 1923, p. xv). The figure of Justice Shallow became evidently soon famous, as is shown by a passage ​in the Return from Parnassus, IV, v: “your face would be good for a foolish mayre or a foolish justice of peace”? (cf. the present writer’s Shakespeare im literarischen Urteil seiner Zeit, p. 168 ff.), which Fleay connects with the Thomas More scene (Life and Work of Shakespeare, p. 223). As it has been made plausible that More was never acted, this explanation seems to be impossible.
In proposing the above-mentioned date of 1601 or 1602 for the play I needs must give up the still later date (1604–5) which I proposed in Engl. Stud. 46, 228 seq. The arguments taken from general tendencies of the times must necessarily carry with them less weight than those drawn from special circumstances. Meanwhile one of the minor arguments for an early origin, the allusion to one “Oagle,” has broken down (Times Lit. Suppl. November 8, 1923). It is to be doubted if the Goodal argument is of much greater value.
§ 5. The Authorship of the Scene
According to the theory of A. W. Pollard and the other contributors to Shakespeare’s Hand, the “players in anticipation of trouble with the censor had turned to” William Shakespeare, “who had previously had no part in the play” (p. 5), and he supplied the three pages in question. It is not easily to be seen why they acted so. Chambers supposes (p. 180) the difference between the original draft and the later text to have consisted in an alteration from a harsh “threat of present death” to an “appeal to generosity, fair play, pity.” Did they believe to be in this way more in agreement with the censor’s views? But whence this belief? They were, at any rate, mistaken, for the censor’s rigorous prohibition of the scene shows that he lacked the taste for ethical subtleties of this sort. But it is of course more than doubtful if any such idea was implied. On the other hand, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty that the speech in the original text “terrorised [the crowd] by the threat of present death.” Chambers says that “references in the other scenes make [this] clear.” As far as I can see, however, it is just the other way round. It is stated above already that the whole “Ill Mayday” scenes are pervaded by a spirit of humanity that is remarkably absent in the sources. One would, e.g., look in vain for an idea in them like II, iii, 34: “The King laments, if one true subject bleede.” From the very beginning More is full of sympathy ​and understanding for the “simple men” who mostly act from foolishness, not wickedness. What his original words must have been is, moreover, clearly pointed to by Doll’s later remark: “Thou hast done more with thy good words than all they could with their weapons” (II, iv, 202). Threats one certainly would not call “good words.” And wherever else his speech is mentioned, his “eloquence” (II, iv, 217) and his “persuasion” (III, i, 96) are being praised. That allows the conclusion that the tendency of the original speech—and perhaps the ideas too—were not very different from the later one. In all probability, then, this passage, like others in the play, was simply worked over on the old lines. If it be objected that this revision may have been done by Shakespeare nevertheless, one wonders what the reasons may have been. Consideration for the censor does at any rate not appear plausible.
Moreover, if it were not for the handwriting, a great number of people would certainly not hesitate to ascribe also other parts of the play to Shakespeare. Simpson, who started the whole discussion, felt sure that Shakespeare was the author not of one scene only, and who will deny that the style of III, ii, 1–20 has indeed some resemblance to Shakespeare’s? (Compare “I, in my father’s life, To take prerogative and tithe of knees From elder kinsmen,” etc. See Engl. Stud. 46, p. 238.) This makes it more probable still that it is wrong to stare spellbound at the handwriting. As regards other passages of the play, too, the authors of Shakespeare’s Hand do not always identify handwriting and author. One ought to do so also in this case, i.e. not only in the “147 lines,” but also in other passages to recognise a man who sometimes—although not very strongly—reminds us of Shakespeare. Who was it? What has been stated above about the close connection of this play with the Wolsey plays, and also the Oldcastle plays, makes it appear probable that some at least of the authors of these plays must have had a share in it. The claim of Munday seems to be settled. That Drayton co-operated is extremely likely, and some passages could ​indeed be ascribed to him without difficulty. (Also it is a curious coincidence that 2 Hen. VI, in which Drayton’s hand has been identified in my opinion by Else von Schaubcrt beyond a doubt, contains the Jack Cade scenes which are so very similar to the insurrection-scenes in our play.) Still one hesitates to consider Drayton as the author of our scene. A. W. Pollard’s opinion, that “if these pages were not Shakespeare’s work, the dramatist to whom on the ground of style and temper I would most readily assign them would be Thomas Heywood” seems to be nearer the mark. Heywood, as everybody who has read his plays knows, reminds one again and again of Shakespeare. At the same time he has that sentimental vein, so unmistakable in the Moore speech. An admonition, e.g., to a multitude to shed tears (cf. above, p. 48) would come natural from a man who, in The Four Prentices of London (Works, ii, 230), wrote about the Holy Land:
I wish that I could march upon my knees In true submission, and right holy zeale. Oh, since our warres are God’s, abandon feares, But in contrition weepe repentant teares.
This passage, besides slightly reminding of the More lines, “your unreverent knees—Make them your feet to kneele to be forgiven!” has something of the sermon-like tone too, which pervades large parts of More’s speech. Also the unfortunate “babyes at their backes and their poor lugage” would be quite in Heywood’s somewhat lachrymose style. Nor is that all. There are quite a number of curious parallels to the diction of the More scene in Heywood’s works. Chambers finds (p. 177) the remark of Doll particularly Shakespearian: “Let’s hear him: a keeps a plentiful shrevaltry, and a made my brother Arthur Watchins Sergeant Safe’s yeoman: let’s hear Shrieve More.” Perhaps he is right, but it deserves mention that some passages in Heywood contain similar ideas. Says Reignald, the parasitical serving-man in The English Traveller, ​IV, i, to old Lionel: “here… in time you may keep your shrievalty, and I be one o’ the serjeants.” The idea of the sheriff proving himself a benefactor to the speaker by appointing certain people serjeants or serjeants’ yeomen may, it is true, have been common property to the time; the opinion, however, that “in a good hospitality there can be nothing found that’s ill, he that’s a good housekeeper keeps a good table,” etc., and deserves all confidence, which the clown pronounces in Heywood’s English Traveller (I, 1), makes certainly a more individual impression. It mirrors in a remarkable way Doll’s words: “I, byth mas, will we, Moor: [sc. hear you] th’art a good howskeeper,” etc. Also the remark of Lincoln: “Our countrie is a great eating country,” we find in the Engl. Tr. (I, i), “Our [English] appetites are not content but with the large excess of a full table,” etc. Furthermore, the extremely rare word “to top” = “to lopp off,” which we meet in Sir Thomas More’s “that could have topt the peace”—Spedding altered it into “kept”—is to be found in the Rape of Lucrece, II, iii, “But when, in topping one, three Tarquins more… grow.” The expression “wash your foul minds with tears” has several distant parallels in Shakespeare, but a very close one in the “Woman Killed with Kindness,” V, iii: “but when my tears have washed my black soul white;” so also: “help me with your tears, to wash my spotted sins.” The idea that disobedience to kings is a sin against God is expressed in the lines: “ Treason to kings doth stretch even to the gods, And those high gods that take great Rome in charge Shall punish your rebellion” (Rape of Lucrece, V, ii). The expression “god on earth” applied to kings does occur in Shakespeare, it is true, though not in particularly trustworthy passages, i.e. Rich. II, V, iii, 136, and Pericles, I, i, 103. Heywood uses it repeatedly. Compare The Fair Maid of the West, I, v, 2: “I’d swear great Mullisheg To be a god on earth!” The Golden Age (Works, iii, p. 67) “Thou art a God on earth.” The displaying of dry geographical knowledge (“go you to France or Flanders, To any Jarman province, Spaine or Portigall”) which is so very unShakespearian finds quite a number of parallels in Heywood, compare e.g. Woman Killed with Kindness, V, iii: “I’ll over first to France, And so to Germany and Italy.” Or 1 Edw. IV, I: “he neither comes from Italy nor Spain.” Considering the fact that most of Heywood’s plays from the very years in which Sir Thomas More seems to have originated are lost, this list of similarities is not quite inconsiderable, ​though it of course by no means suffices to prove that the insurrection-scene be written by Heywood. Who knows how full of repetitions the old dramatists are will laugh at such idea.
On the other hand, I do not think that a simple statement that the handwriting is not Heywood’s, should cause us to abandon the idea of his possible authorship. To begin with, it must be proved incontestably that the “147 lines” are the author’s original draft. I must confess, however, that this seems to me to be not quite beyond doubt. There are some points in the script which, to say the least, allow as well of the explanation of its being a copy, none that force us to take it for the original.
If, then, we draw the conclusion from what has been put forward, the final judgment must needs be that Shakespeare’s authorship of the “147 lines” is more than doubtful.
* ↑ Shakespeare’s Hand in the Play of Sir Thomas More: papers by A. W. Pollard, W. W. Greg, E. Maunde Thompson, J. Dover Wilson, and R. W. Chambers. Cambridge University Press, 1923. (“Shakespeare Problems by A. W. Pollard and J. Dover Wilson,” II.)
* ↑ E. Koeppel’s collections in Studien über Shakespeare’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker (W. Bang’s “Materialien z. Kunde des älteren Engl. Dramas,” Bd. IX, p. 11 seq.) might be easily extended.
* ↑ An instructive parallel is offered by the frequency of occurrence of the “hydra-headed multitude,” see Fr. Tupper, junr., The Shakespearean Mob (Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc. Am.” xxvii), 495.
* ↑ For Hen. VI, see Else von Schaubert, Drayton’s Anteil an Heinrich VI, 2 u. 3 Teil (Schücking und Deutschbeins Neue Anglistische Arbeiten, No. 4), Cöthen, 1920, a book that has not perhaps received the attention which it deserves.
* ↑ Compare, e.g., Cromwell, III, iii, the endeavour to make the three great men, Wolsey, More, and Gardiner, appear in a brilliant “causerie,” with the same attempt concerning More, Erasmus, and Surrey in Sir Thomas More, III, ii.
* ↑ The Emperor Maximilian and all his servants which were retained with the King of England in wages by the day, every person according to his degree, and the emperor as the King’s soldier wore a cross of Saint George with a rose. Hall, fol. 32; cf. Holinshed, ii, 1483.
* ↑ The idea to introduce a “motif of last tension” in making Cromwell's life depend on his reading a letter which is brought to him at the moment, which decides about his fate (V, ii), is possibly borrowed from Julius Cæsar, III, i.
* ↑ It will be objected that the revision certainly cannot have been made by the original author, or somebody familiar with the details of the play, because the reviser knew so little of the dramatis personæ that he in several cases simply put “other” before the speeches and left it to the final redactor to put in the right name. But I am afraid we have made too much out of these occasional “others.” On closer scrutiny one sees that these very remarks have no particular significance, and might indeed be made by any of the crowd, so that it might be without damage left to the final redactor or to the stage manager himself to put them into the mouth of somebody. Want of knowledge of the plot and the rest of the play is certainly not indicated in this way.
* ↑ To quote one example for many, how similar is a passage like the following to Percy Hotspur’s famous lines on “Honour”!— So little do I reckon of the name Of ugly Death, as, were he visible I’de wrestle with him for the victory, And tug the slave and teare him with my teeth But I would make him stoope to Falconbridge And for this life, this paltry brittle life, This blast of winde… (1 Edw. IV, Works i, p. 54.)
* ↑ Whether Drayton’s handwriting is out of the question or not (see his hastily written lines in Oliver Elton’s Michael Drayton, London, 1905, p. 86), I feel incompetent to judge.
* ↑ That a word like “help” is crossed out (71) and “advantage” is put in instead might happen to every one who copies a text and occasionally keeps only the sense of a word in his mind, “watrie parsnip,” which he crossed out for “sorry parsnip,” is even decidedly the more expressive word, which one wonders the author should not prefer. The words “alas, alas” which the writer D. interlined and C. deleted are so curiously out of place, that they might be the rest of some passage which had been crossed out in the original draft. The copyist found them left standing, felt uncertain, and reintroduced them in the end. It was not the only case in which he appended an omitted item. The most remarkable fact, however, is—a friend drew my attention to it—that a very high percentage of the mistakes in the text are due to a sort of anticipation during the writing. What is crossed out follows after a few words. The deleted “sh,” line 28, seems to be “Shro” in the next line (for small s see line 38); “ar,” 35, see 36: “what ar”; “But,” 37, see second part of the sentence: “but not men”; 95, “in,” see: “you wer in armes”; 102, “le,” see: “only lent”; 107, “ar,” see: “as you are”; 129, “why you,” see 130: “why you must.” Does this point to the writer’s composing while he wrote? A line e.g. like “and twere in no error yf I told you all, you wer in armes gainst god,” in the first part of which the word “in” had to be deleted, might have originated, it seems to me, by the copyist having his finger or his eye erroneously already on the second “wer in.” Also, in the “But” case of v. 37, the copyist made some such blunder. The mistake “theise,” line 67, for “the,” on the other hand, is too isolated to allow of important conclusions, because the word “state” follows: as “theise” = “these” (see line 144), the word may be due to mishearing, the “s” from “state” being drawn to the “the.” But this quite clearly may be mere chance.