_The Fable._ Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose firstborn son is sacrificed by t.i.tus Andronicus, determines to be revenged. She succeeds in her determination. t.i.tus and his daughter are mutilated. Two of the Andronici, his sons, are beheaded.

t.i.tus determines to be revenged. He bakes the heads of two of Tamora's sons in a pasty, and serves them up for her to eat. He then stabs her, after stabbing his daughter. He is himself stabbed on the instant; but his surviving son stabs his murderer. Tamora's paramour is then sentenced to be buried alive, and the survivors (about half the original cast) move off (as they say) "to order well the State."

This play shows an instinct for the stage and a knowledge of the theatre. It seems to have been a popular piece. A knowledge of the theatre will often make something foolish theatrically effective. So here.

The piece is nearly worthless. The turning of the tide of revenge, from Tamora against Andronicus, and then from Andronicus against Tamora, is the theme. It is a simple theme. Man cannot have simplicity without hard thought, and hard thought is never worthless, though it may be applied unworthily.

There can be no doubt that Shakespeare wrote a little of this tragedy; it is not known when; nor why. Poets do not sin against their art unless they are in desperate want. Shakespeare certainly never touched this job for love. There is only one brief trace of his great, rejoicing triumphant manner. It is possible that the play was brought to him by his theatre-manager, with some such words as these: "This piece is very bad, but it will succeed, and I mean to produce it, if I can start rehearsals at once. Will you revise it for me? Please do what you can with it, and write in lines and pa.s.sages where you think it is wanting.

And whatever happens please let me have it by Monday."

The only poetry in the play comes in the three lines--

"You sad-fac'd men, people and sons of Rome, By uproar sever'd, like a flight of fowl Scatter'd by winds and high tempestuous gusts."

_King Henry VI, Part I._

_Written._ 1589-91.

_Produced._ 1591.

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Raphael Holinshed's _Chronicles_.

_The Fable._ The play begins shortly after the death of King Henry V. Henry VI is too young to rule. There is a feud between Gloucester, the Lord Protector, and Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester. In France, where Talbot is besieging Orleans, the English have had many losses. Joan of Arc begins her conquering progress by causing Talbot to raise the siege.

A feud between the Duke of York (the white rose faction) and the Earl of Somerset (the red rose faction) becomes acute, in spite of King Henry's personal intercession. It intensifies the feud between the Lord Protector and the Cardinal. In France, Talbot is killed in battle. The English are beaten from their possessions. Joan of Arc is taken, tried, and burned.

The menace of civil trouble hangs over King Henry's court. The feud between the factions of the roses threatens to break into war. The Earl of Suffolk (one of the red rose faction) schemes to marry King Henry to Margaret of Anjou. It is made plain that he means to become Margaret's lover so that he may rule England through her. A disgraceful peace is concluded with France. The play ends with Suffolk's departure to arrange the King's marriage with Margaret.

It is plain that this play is not the work of one mind. Part of it is the work of a man who saw a big tragic purpose in events. The rest is the work of at least two mechanical (sometimes muddy) minds, who neither criticised nor understood, but had some sense of the pageant. There are bright marks in the play where Shakespeare's mind touched it.

"Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought."

"If underneath the standard of the French She carry armour."

"Now thou art come unto a feast of death."

"Thus, while the vulture of sedition Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders, Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss The conquest of our scarce-cold conqueror, That ever-living man of memory, Henry the Fifth."

The work as a whole is one of the old formless chronicle plays, which inspired the remark that if an English dramatist were to make a play of St. George he would begin with the birth of the Dragon. In Act II Shakespeare's mind both directs and explains the welter. The scene in the Temple Gardens, where the men of the two factions pluck the red and white roses, is like music after discord. The play is lifted into poetry. The big tragic purpose broods; something fateful quickens. The next scene, where Mortimer dies in prison, is another instance of the power of great intellect to give life. The dying Mortimer is carried in, to show how the imminent tragedy has been for long years preparing, in countless pa.s.sionate men, each of whom has shaped it, little by little, out of l.u.s.t and hate, till the spiritual measure tips towards justice.

The only other scenes that bear marks of Shakespeare's mind are those in Act IV, in which Talbot meets his death. The verse of these scenes is often careless, but it has a bright variety, pleasant to the mind after the strutting verse (wearily reiterating one prosodic effect, like choppy water) of the other authors. Some people claim that Shakespeare wrote the whole of this play. The intellect changes much in life; but never in kind, only in degree. Shakespeare's mind could play with dirt and relish dirt, but it was never base and never blunt. The base mind is betrayed by its conceptions, not by its amus.e.m.e.nts. Shakespeare's mind could never, at any stage of his career, have sunk to conceive the disgusting scene in which Joan of Arc pleads. Nor could he at any time have planned a play in which the moral idea is a trapping to physical action.

_King Henry VI, Part II._

_Written._ 1591-2.

_Produced._ 1592.

_Published_, in the crude original form, 1593. When first published, the play was called "The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster." This version seems to have been written by Greene and Peele. It contains pa.s.sages (improving additions) that resemble Shakespeare's work; but the work is very crude. The version as a whole reads like a long scenario.

After the first production of this version, Shakespeare and some other writer, possibly Marlowe, revised, improved and enlarged it.

This revised version, the _Second Part of King Henry VI_, as we now have it, was first published in the first folio in 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ Edward Hall's _Chronicle_.

_The Fable._ The play begins with the arrival of Margaret of Anjou at the Court of King Henry VI. An altercation among the Lords in scene i. explains the political situation to those who have not seen the first part of the trilogy. The subject is the gradual ascent to power of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. The play is turbulent with pa.s.sions. The subject is obscured and made grander by the war of interests and l.u.s.ts among the n.o.bles of the Court.

The Queen's party, the Duke Humphrey's party, and Cardinal Beaufort's party, make a welter of hate and greed, against which the Duke of York's cool purpose stands out, as Augustus stands out against the wreck of old Rome. The action is interrupted and lightened by the cheat of Simpc.o.x and by the rebellion of Jack Cade. In modern theatres the pa.s.sage of time is indicated by the dropping of a curtain and by a few words printed on a programme.

The Elizabethan theatre had neither curtain nor programme. The pa.s.sage of time was suggested by some action on the stage as here.

The play advances the tragedy of the King by removing the figures of Duke Humphrey, the Cardinal, and the Earl of Suffolk. It ends with the first triumph of the white rose faction, under the Duke of York, at the battle of St. Albans.

It is plain that Shakespeare worked upon the revision of this play with a big tragic conception. The first half of the piece is very fine. He makes the crude, muddy, silly welter of the Contention significant and complete. He reduces it to a simple, pa.s.sionate order, deeply impressive. The poet who worked with him, worked in sympathy with his dramatic intention. If this poet were Marlowe, as some believe (and the clearness of the man's brain seems to point to this), it is another proof that the two great poets were friends during the last months of Marlowe's life. It is plain that something stopped the revision before it was finished. The latter half of the play is only half written. It has flesh and blood but no life. It reads like work that has been wrought to a pitch by two or three re-writings, and then left without the final writing that turns imagination into vision. It would be interesting to know why Shakespeare left the play in this state. Perhaps there was no time to make it perfect before the rehearsals began.

Perhaps the murder of Marlowe upset the plans of the capitalist who was speculating in the play. If it had been finished in the spirit of the first two and a half acts it would have been one of the grandest of the historical plays.

The poetry of the two completed acts is often n.o.ble. The long speech of York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with pa.s.sion, is most n.o.ble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached.

One little glimmer of heart in him would alter everything. The glimmer never comes. Humphrey is poisoned, Suffolk is beheaded, the Cardinal dies. Cade, in that most awful scene of the mob in power, looks at two heads on pikes with the remark--

"Is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive....

Now part them again."

These are some of the results of the working of a fine intellect in which--

"Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought, And not a thought but thinks on dignity."

There is a terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made clearer for his enemies perhaps. That is the only result. Now he is dying, the waste of mind is at an end, and the figure of the victim is at the foot of the bed.

"Bring me unto my trial when you will.

Died he not in his bed? where should he die?

Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no?

O, torture me no more, I will confess.

Alive again? then show me where he is: I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him.

He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.

Comb down his hair: Look! look! it stands upright.

Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul.

Give me some drink."

Some people find humour in the Simpc.o.x and Cade scenes. There is more sadness and horror of heart than humour. The minds of the two great poets were brooding together on life. They saw man working with intellect to bring ruin, and working without intellect to bring something beastlier than man should know. In its unfinished state the play is without the exaltation of great tragedy. It would be one of the hopeless plays, were it not for the pa.s.sionate energy of mind with which the n.o.bles alter life. There is little human feeling in the play.

Warwick by Gloucester's corpse shows the sense of rect.i.tude of a police inspector. At the death-bed of the Cardinal, he makes the remark of a fiend--

"See how the pangs of death do make him grin."

The one human, tender figure is that of the King, who betrays his friend, his only true friend--

"With sad unhelpful tears; and with dimm'd eyes Looks after him, and cannot do him good."