tion with the history and development of Shakespeare's art. To me the periods of Shakespeare's work that have proved most rewarding, are two: that of the plays which traces the beginnings and growth of the dramatist's art, and that which displays his greatest achievement in comedy and tragedy.

In this work of revamping old stuff and improving old themes, it seems natural to suppose that Shakespeare began with the older chronicle form of play and the traditions of classical comedy and tragedy. Such a theory best explains what is perhaps the greatest crux in Shakespeare - the relation of "II and III Henry VI" to the two older plays, their originals, viz. : "The Contention Between the Two Houses of York and Lancaster," and the "True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York," and the relation of all four of these, still further, to "I Henry VI" and "Richard III." The inextricable confusion can only be explained, it seems to me, by a reference to this process of working over old plays. While the theory may not be proved at every point, it is one of which I have become fairly convinced and upon which I have had the hardihood to write more than once.

The problem is this. We have six plays. There has been some to doubt that they are Shakespeare's at all-yet Shakespeare seems to have had a good deal to do with every one of the six. The subject of the Wars of the Roses was an interesting and a vital one historically, and from the point of view of the popular Tragedy of Blood was also essentially dramatic. There must have been originally an old play or plays on this subject before Shakespeare engaged with the material at all. This original matter Shakespeare, most probably with others, worked over into the two plays existing in quarto form: "The Contention Between the Two Houses of York and Lancaster" and the "True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York." Note the expression, "True Tragedie," implying that there was another inferior version and perhaps a rival performance by a theatrical company on the next block. I believe, consequently, that in these two plays, "The Contention" and the "True Tragedie," while not wholly, and possibly not largely, Shakespeare's, we have incorporated the oldest and first specimens of his work to be found.

A very little later it dawned upon the dramatist, that this material could be used to still further advantage. He could develop these two plays on the Wars of the Roses, prefix a play and affix a play-material for which already existed in previous plays and connect all four, thus resulting into a tetralogy on the unfortunate reign of Henry VI, crowned by the figure of the wicked monster, whom these dissensions had generated, Richard III.

Whatever part of the original plays "The Contention" and the "True Tragedie," and even of the new plays thus produced, may have been by others - Peele, Lodge, or even Greene and Marlowe - the new conception of an historic tetralogy seems to have been that of one mind, and this one mind to have been Shakespeare's. The one name that emerges and certainly had a hand in them, though all four of the pieces were probably composite, as described, is Shakespeare's. All the changes, heightening, developing, expanding, seem to have this one object in view. An old play existed on Talbot's victories over the French; it could be reduced and altered. The events were those of the early days of Henry VI. It is only necessary to heighten the parts dealing with Talbot's bravery, lengthen the pathetic business of the death of Talbot and his young son into a lyrical outburst, introduce Henry VI as an ineffective young king just coming of age, indicate the beginning of the Wars of the Roses in the delightful scene of the plucking of the white and red roses in the Temple Garden - for whose can such poetry be save Shakespeare's, even at the beginning of his art? Finally, add the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk for his king (and for himself) as a good curtain- and there you are! The play is done and you may label it "I Henry VI" and let it precede the other two old quarto plays on the Wars of the Roses. "

The Margaret Episode at the end of "I Henry VI" leads us to expect more for it is unmistakably inserted at the close with this intention. It introduces a new element and serves as a transition to the following parts. The figure of Margaret is

'My arguments for this were stated some years ago in a paper in the Publications of the Modern Language Association entitled "The Episodes in 'I Henry VI.'"

the one character that is in all four plays of the tetralogy - from first to last. By a fictitious device - undoubtedly, it seems to me, the work of Shakespeare - Margaret appears in all four plays, unhistorically, it is true, but, dramatically, very effective: in the first two as a lover; in the last two, Cassandra-like, heaping curses and prophesying doom.

With the old Talbot play thus converted into a Henry VI play and this introduction now called "I Henry VI" completed, the dramatist returned to the old plays of "The Contention" and "The True Tragedie," dealing with the Wars of the Roses, in which it is most probable Shakespeare already had a decisive share. What would he now do? Why, naturally take these two plays with their excellent dramatic raw material, and in the light of "I Henry VI," develop them, extend them, expand them, intensify their dramatic and lyrical notes, and thus expanded and intensified call them "II and III Henry VI," respectively.

The two plays contain plenty of good stuff. Thus, the dying words of the conscience-stricken Cardinal Beaufort:

Comb down his hair: look, look! it stands upright,
Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul.

Give me some drink..

And Warwick comments:

See how the pangs of death do make him grin!

Already in "III Henry VI" the deformed, hump-backed Richard is characterized by his monologue form:

I have no brother, I am like no brother,

And this word 'love' which grey beards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.

The true conception is already there, and forthwith a final fourth play is appended: "Richard III." Richard had been the subject, seemingly, of more than one play before; but this is the first indication of any consistent psychological conception of the character. Many hands may have dealt with the original dramatic material in the four plays; but it seems that no one but Shakespeare the same conscious artist, who developed later

into the creator of Hamlet, Iago, Othello and Lear-planned putting these four plays together into a sequence and one consistent whole with their fitting culmination in the imperious Richard. The characteristic psychology of the later plays may be already discerned in the earlier ones. Here are the definite marks of Shakespearean tragedy near its beginning. As in the later plays, there is the coniflct between forces - a great waste of heroic qualities, courage, determination, great will — and somehow something that impels our sympathy. The tremendous will-power and the splendid audacity in courting Lady Anne is the justification of what would otherwise be an improbable and painful scene. The self-control in chasing away the visions of the night which are troubling a haunted conscience; the dying a death grandly and bravely on the battlefield worthy of a better cause these qualities call forth admiration, even with a natural detestation of Richard's character. Full of crudities, irrelevances these four early history plays naturally are; they reveal their mixed origin and complex nature, indicate that they rest on other plays and contain elements we may accept as un-Shakespearean; but they show, too, the process of beginning, growing, strengthening work; characteristics that are later developed in the creation of the masterpieces of modern dramatic literature.

Another point anent the literary quality of "Richard III" may here be touched upon. It is in connection with the vexed relations of the quarto and the folio. The text of the English Globe and Cambridge editors, usually adopted without question, adheres in the main, as is known, to the quarto text, as an earlier version than that of the folio, and supposedly more nearly like Shakespeare's original manuscripts. Other editors like the American Richard Grant White, or the maker of the latest edition, Professor Neilson, in the American Cambridge Poets series, accept the folio copy of 1623 as a later, better and corrected form. The differences between the two views has been great and the discussion has sometimes degenerated into violent controversy. One point which seems to have escaped the advocates of one text or the other, I am convinced of. After going through hundreds upon hundreds of these variations for they are legion-to my mind and to any literary feeling I possess, the

person who made many of these alterations from quarto to foliooften merely of a single word in a line - whether Shakespeare or not, was unquestionably a poet with distinctively subtle qualities. The Cambridge editors bluntly affirm that the quarto is probably from Shakespeare's copy. But may not the poet himself (for certainly it was some poet) have altered his own copy in the course of time to the great improvement of scores, nay hundreds, of lines? It will be found that change after change has been made to escape awkward iterations of words and syllables, to introduce a concrete or specific word in place of a general term, as children for kindred or fathers for parents, or to bring in an entirely new poetic idea. But the editors of the Cambridge text, having started off on a certain path in obedience to a theory, insistently keep it and will have none of these things.

It is, of course, beside the question, but I may frankly express the opinion for myself, that after working for some years over the variations between the quarto and folio copies of Shakespeare's plays and considering the number of misprints and errors in both, I am convinced that nothing like a perfect text of Shakespeare exists, nor in the nature of the case can very well exist. The elements that enter into the process are entirely too fanciful and subjective. None of the old copies is altogether trustworthy, and when we begin to alter, no two of us, for example, will agree as to the precise alteration to be made; nay, frequently, indeed, will not be even consistent in the treatment in different places of apparently the same phenomena.

This lack of consistency is the most grievous sin of all existing texts. Editors are capable of doing on one page what they calmly ignore on another. The English Globe and Cambridge text, generally accepted as the standard - and I shall not undertake to say any other is preferable — is open frequently to this charge of inconsistency from which all texts suffer; but to my feeling the Globe and Cambridge text is subject to the more damning fault of having been established by minds that, while remarkably accurate in details of textual criticism, seemingly had no adequate feeling for poetic distinction.

But we can see the beginner Shakespeare practising in Comedy and Tragedy no less than in the History Play. In perhaps the