Yet {228b} _Titus_ and _Henry VI_ appear as “revised, improved, and
dressed” by the mysterious “some one whom they called Shakespeare.” If
Mr. Greenwood’s conclusion {228c} be correct, “Shakespeare” had no right
to place _Henry VI_, Part I, and _Titus_ in his Folio. If his
“conviction” {228d} be correct, Shakespeare had as good a right to them
as to any of the plays which he revised, and improved, and dressed. They
_must_ be “Shakespearean” if Mr. Greenwood is right {228e} in his
suggestion that “Shakespeare” either revised his works for publication
between 1616 and 1623, or set his man, Ben Jonson, upon that business.
Yet neither one nor the other knew what to make of _Troilus and
Cressida_. “The Folio Editor had, evidently, no little doubt about that
play.” {228f}
So neither “Shakespeare” nor Ben, instructed by him, can have been “the
Folio Editor.” Consequently Mr. Greenwood must abandon his suggestion
that either man was the Editor, and may return to his rejection of
_Titus_ and _Henry VI_, Part I. But he clings to it. He finds in
Henslowe’s Diary “references to, and records of the writing of, such
plays” as, among others, _Titus Andronicus_, and _Henry VI_. {229a}
Mr. Greenwood, after rejecting a theory of some one, says, “Far more
likely does it appear that there was a great man of the time whose genius
was capable of ‘transforming dross into gold,’ who took these plays, and,
in great part, rewrote and revised them, leaving sometimes more, and
sometimes less of the original work; and that so rewritten, revised, and
transformed they appeared as the plays of ‘Shake-speare.’” {229b}
This statement is made {229c} about “these plays,” including _Titus
Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_, while {229d} “_Titus_ and the _Trilogy of
Henry VI_ are not the work of Shakespeare . . . his hand is probably not
to be found at all in _Titus_, and only once or twice in _Henry VI_, Part
I,” though he probably made Parts II and III out of older plays.
I do not know where to have the critic. If _Henry VI_, Part I, and
_Titus_ are in no sense by “Shakespeare,” then neither “Shakespeare” nor
Ben for him edited or had anything to do with the editing of the Folio.
If either or both had to do with the editing, as the critic suggests,
then he is wrong in denying Shakespearean origin to _Titus_ and _Henry
VI_, Part I.
Of course one sees a way out of the dilemma for the great
auto-Shakespeare himself, who, by one hypothesis, handed over the editing
of his plays to Ben (_he_, by Mr. Greenwood’s “supposing,” was deviling
at literary jobs for Bacon). The auto-Shakespeare merely tells Ben to
edit his plays, and never even gives him a list of them. Then Ben brings
him the Folio, and the author looks at the list of Plays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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