the language of nature into that of convention, so in passing from the second to the third scene of the second Act (in which Anne Bullen appears, I may say for the first time, for in the supper scene she was merely a conventional court lady without any character at all), I seemed to pass not less suddenly from convention back again into nature. And when I considered that this short and otherwise insignificant passage contains all that we ever see of Anne (for it is necessary to forget her former appearance) and yet how clearly the character comes out, how very a woman she is, and yet how distinguishable from any other individual woman, I had no difficulty in acknowledging that the sketch came from the same hand which drew Perdita.

"Next follows the famous trial-scene. And here I could as little doubt that I recognized the same hand to which we owe the trial of Hermione. When I compared the language of Henry and Wolsey throughout this scene to the end of the Act, with their language in the councilchamber (Act I. Sc 2), I found that it corresponded in all essential features: when I compared it with their language in the second scene of the second Act, I perceived that it was altogether different. Katharine also, as she appears in this scene, was exactly the same person as she was in the council-chamber; but when I went on to the first scene of the third Act, which represents her interview with Wolsey and Campeius, I found her as much changed as Buckingham was after his sentence, though without any alteration of circumstances to account for an alteration of temper. Indeed the whole of this scene seemed to have all the peculiarities of Fletcher, both in conception,

language, and versification, without a single feature that reminded me of Shakspere."

Spedding proceeds in this manner through the entire play. The results which he reaches are exhibited in the following table showing Shakespeare's work and Fletcher's work in the composition of Henry the Eighth.

Scene 2. (As far as the exit of King Henry.)

Scene 3. (Almost all prose.) Fletcher.

Mr. Spedding's results were confirmed independently by Mr. Samuel Hickson, who published his conclusions in Notes and Queries, August 24, 1850. His work was later republished in the New Shakspere Society Transactions for 1874. The play was subjected to metrical

tests by Mr. F. G. Fleay, and the results obtained were confirmatory of Mr. Spedding's views. Further confirmatory evidence of the truth of Mr. Spedding's views was furnished by Mr. F. J. Furnivall, who applied the stopline test to the play. Professor A. H. Thorndike applied the "'em-them" test, and gained results strongly corroborative of Mr. Spedding's conclusions. It is thus seen that views which were based upon purely æsthetic grounds have been triumphantly confirmed and fortified by rigorous and scientific methods of investigation, and are now generally accepted by scholars.

It may be noted that The Two Noble Kinsmen is probably also the result of collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher. Stylistically, Fletcher may be readily distinguished from Shakespeare, and indeed from all the rest of his contemporaries, by certain easily detected peculiarities in the structure of his verse. Prominent among these is his use of feminine endings, which occur with surprising frequency. Another characteristic of Fletcher's verse is his use of the redundant syllable in the middle of the line. The larger portion of Henry the Eighth was written by Fletcher. Throughout the play he maintains a high degree of excellence, while in the great passage

- Wolsey's farewell—he is not rightly to be placed below Shakespeare himself. Many of the fine pageant passages in the play are from Fletcher's pen. They are sonorous and well sounding; they are picturesque and vital. He handles his characters well with much dignity, and with beauty of phrase. In this play he was no unworthy collaborator of Shakespeare.

Collaboration.

It would be interesting to know the way in which Shakespeare and Fletcher worked together. Spedding's explanation is plausible. "It was not unusual in those days," he writes, "when a play was wanted in a hurry to set two or three or even four hands at work upon it; and the occasion of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage (February 1612–1613) may very likely have suggested the production of a play representing the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Bullen. Such an occasion would sufficiently account for the determination to treat the subject not tragically; the necessity for producing it immediately might lead to the employment of several hands; and thence would follow inequality of workmanship and imperfect adaptation of the several parts to each other. But this would not explain the incoherence and inconsistency of the main design. Had Shakspere been employed to make a design for a play which was to end with the happy marriage of Henry and Anne Bullen, we may be sure that he would not have occupied us through the four first Acts with a tragic and absorbing interest in the decline and death of Queen Katharine, and through half the fifth with a quarrel between Cranmer and Gardiner, in which we have no interest. On the other hand, since it is by Shakspere that all the principal matters and characters are introduced, it is not likely that the general design of the piece would be laid out by another. I should rather conjecture that he had conceived the idea of a great historical drama on the subject of Henry VIII which would have included the divorce of Katharine, the fall of Wolsey, the rise of Cranmer, the coronation of Anne Bullen, and the final separation of the English from

the Romish Church, which, being the one great historical event of the reign, would naturally be chosen as the focus of poetic interest; that he had proceeded in the execution of this idea as far perhaps as the third Act, which might have included the establishment of Cranmer in the seat of highest ecclesiastical authority (the council-chamber scene in the fifth being designed as an introduction to that); when, finding that his fellows of the Globe were in distress for a new play to honour the marriage of the Lady Elizabeth with, he thought that his half-finished work might help them, and accordingly handed them his manuscript to make what they could of it; that they put it into the hands of Fletcher (already in high repute as a popular and expeditious playwright), who, finding the original design not very suitable to the occasion and utterly beyond his capacity, expanded the three acts into five, by interspersing scenes of show and magnificence, and passages of description, and long poetical conversations, in which his strength lay; dropped all allusion to the great ecclesiastical revolution, which he could not manage and for which he had no materials supplied him; converted what should have been the middle into the end; and so turned out a splendid 'historical masque, or show-play,' which was no doubt very popular then, as it has been ever since."

Thorndike in his treatise, The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere, says: "Thus each writer shared in each of the five main actions. Shakspere's work, though largely expository, includes the trial scene of Katharine; Fletcher's work, while including the main