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By Root 19043 0

plays. The remainder of the play has no poetic merit which raises it far above the rustic poetry which is handed down by tradition as Shakespeare's. And if we give the unknown student all credit for authorship of the finer poetry of the greater dramas, may we not still assume that Shakespeare labored with him, assisting in moulding into form adapted to the stage the poetry that burst from his friend with volcanic force; or that he perhaps sometimes suggested the side lights and sudden transitions which appear so often,—for instance, in the grave scene in Hamlet or the nurse's part in Romeo and Juliet?[] And if some great unknown was the sole author and Shakespeare was the publisher and was to take part in the representation of these plays, may we not still, however they lodged, find ample occasion for the waiting hours of the poet, which would be entirely unexplained if the person addressed was the Earl of Southampton or some other member of the nobility?

Such a view explains very much which is otherwise inexplicable. If into that series of publications came the genius of the unknown author of the Sonnets, touching some of the plays like stray sunbeams, and as the work progressed absorbing and filling all their framework,—it must yet be assumed that he did not labor without recompense. And so we may believe that Shakespeare from friend became patron, and that this employment, coming as the poet was passing to life's "steepy night," gave him the means and the leisure for those dreams of lovers, of captains and of kings, so visioned on his brain that he wrote of them as of persons real and living. So regarding the author of the Sonnets, we appreciate his jealousy, when (as perhaps in Henry VIII.) another and almost equal poet was employed, and may understand how he could blame his false mistress and yet forgive his friend. His poetry and the opportunity and leisure for its enjoyment was his real mistress, like the love of Andromache for Hector displacing and absorbing all other loves.

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If the Sonnets were written by Shakespeare, who the friend and patron so intimately related to the poet and his work was, is a riddle still unsolved; but if they were written by some unknown poet, the obvious and reasonable inference is that they were addressed to Shakespeare.[]

It may be asked why I would leave anything as the work of Shakespeare, if I deny to him the authorship of the greater plays. My answer is this: I believe he did not write the Sonnets; and if the Sonnets are the work of another, I think it fairly follows that the great dramas, considered as mere poetry, are so clearly in the same class as the Sonnets, that we must ascribe the authorship of the greater Shakespearean dramas to the same great unknown.

When it is once agreed that any considerable portions of the plays credited to Shakespeare are from different authors, almost the entire force of the argument resting on report or tradition is destroyed; because report or tradition is about equally satisfied and equally antagonized by ascribing to him the authorship of either section into which the admission of dual authorship concedes that they are divided.

That Shakespeare must have had a genius for dramatic work,—though not necessarily for poetry,—his success as a reputed dramatist and as a manager, all his history and traditions, very clearly indicate. And conceding him that, why is not the situation fully satisfied by considering that he was the lesser, or one of the lesser, rather than the greater of the collaborators; and that his knowledge of the stage and his talent for conceiving proper dramatic effects or situations, made his labors valuable to the greater poet, aiding him to give to his works a dramatic form and movement which many other great poets have entirely failed to attain. So considering, the Shakespearean plays will in some degree still seem to us the work of the gentle Shakespeare, although in large part the product of the older and more mature mind, the dreaming and loving recluse and student, who could say,—

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