The archaic flavour of the play is to me the outstanding fact about it; we know that plays on this subject were acted in 1566 and 1594. The archaic flavour may be due to the influence of Chaucer on the writers; it is more likely to be due to an earlier play having been taken and altered. It might also be due to the collaboration of someone like Heywood, who, though late in time, is surprisingly simple and early in style. The rustic scenes are an instance of this very early manner.(333) If Shakspere and Fletcher took an old play, and the former contributed a few turns to the revised edition, then everything would be accounted for.(334) It will be said that there are scenes which remind us of Lady Macbeth and Ophelia; why should not an already existing play have suggested to Shakspere something which he worked up in those two characters into a far finer result? We know for a fact that much of his best work is based on older plays. This random hypothesis is quite as probable as the supposition that Massinger had anything to do with _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. Let us next consider Mr. Tucker Brooke’s position.(335) After a searching and masterly analysis of the merits and defects of the play, he ends with a guarded tendency towards assigning the “un-Fletcherian” parts to Massinger on the following grounds: “The metrical tests give him an even better title than his master [_i.e._, Shakspere] to the doubtful parts of our play.” To this I reply that style is a more important test than metre. There are, secondly, “the structural and psychological imperfections of the work”; thirdly, “the tendency to unnecessary coarseness of language”; fourthly, “the feeble imitation of Shakspere”; fifthly, “the frequent similarity to Massinger’s acknowledged writings.” The only serious argument against the assumption is that there is nothing in Massinger to compare with “the magnificent poetry of the un-Fletcherian part.”