We have elsewhere shown {302}that Farmer stumbled upon the same difficulty. Malone "wrote a long dissertation," says Mr. Grant White, "to show that the three parts of 'King Henry VI.' were not Shakespeare's, but had only been altered and enriched by him; and that the first 'part' was written by another person than the author of the second and third."* Drake proposed that the "First Part of 'King Henry VI.' be excluded from future editions of Shakespeare's Works, because it offers no trace of any finishing strokes from the master bard." ** "It remains to inquire," says Hallam (after a discussion of these plays, which he says Shakespeare remodeled from two old plays "in great part Marlowe, though Greene seems to have put in for some share in their composition"), "who are to claim the credit of these other plays, so great a portion of which has passed with the world for the genuine work of Shakespeare." *** And again, what share he (Shakespeare) may have had in similar repairs of the many plays he represented, can not be determined. **** And Dyee, Halliwell, and all the others follow Mr. Hallam (whose authority' is Greene's well-known complaint about the "Johannes Factotum, who struts about with his tyger's heart wrapped in a player's hide;" *v which allusion to a line in the third part of Henry the Sixth, locates the particular "steal" which Greene had most at heart when he complained). * An essay on the authorship of the three parts of King Henry the Sixth. By Richard Grant White. Riverside Press. H. O. Houghton & Go., Cambridge, Mass., 1859. ** Shakespeare and His Times. Vol. II., p. 297. *** Note to Hallam's Literature of Europe. Part II., chap, vi., § 30. **** Id., §35. *v "O, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide."--III. Hen. VI. Last of all comes Mr. {303}Grant White, a most profound believer in Shakespeare, and all that name implies! with "An Essay on the authorship of the Three Parts of King Henry the Sixth," * to prove that William Shakespeare, in plagiarizing from the earlier tragedies, only plagiarized from himself, he himself having really written all that was worth saving in them! Mr. White labors considerably to fix the exact date at which Marlowe, Peale and Greene--the most eminent play writers of the day--employed a raw Stratford youth, just truanting in London, to kindly run over, prune, and perfect their manuscripts for them, and to clear Mr. White's Shakespeare from the stigma of what, if true, Mr. White admits to have been a "want of probity on Shakespeare's part, accompanied by a hardly less culpable indifference on the part of his fellows." ** This "indifference" can not be charged to one sufferer, at least, Robert Greene, who was not silent when he saw his work unblushingly appropriated: thus giving us assurance of one occasion, at least, upon which William Shakespeare posed as editor instead of author.