If the quality of the piece is not too directly
at variance with this claim, the circumstance would afford an
additional probability in its favour. For such motives were not
foreign to Shakespeare: he treated Henry the Seventh, who bestowed
lands on his forefathers for services performed by them, with a
visible partiality.
'Whoever takes from Shakespeare a play early ascribed to him, and
confessedly belonging to his time, is unquestionably bound to
answer, with some degree of probability, this question: who has then
written it? Shakespeare's competitors in the dramatic walk are
pretty well known, and if those of them who have even acquired a
considerable name, a Lilly, a Marlow, a Heywood, are still so very
far below him, we can hardly imagine that the author of a work,
which rises so high beyond theirs, would have remained unknown'--
LECTURES ON DRAMATIC LITERATURE, vol. ii, page 252.
We agree to the truth of this last observation, but not to the
justice of its application to some of the plays here mentioned. It
is true that Shakespeare's best works are very superior to those of
Marlow, or Heywood, but it is not true that the best of the doubtful
plays above enumerated are superior or even equal to the best of
theirs. THE YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY, which Schlegel speaks of as an
undoubted production of our author's, is much more in the manner of
Heywood than of Shakespeare.
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