anything less than an
absolute impossibility--on comparison of parallel passages,

Though kings still hug suspicion in their bosoms,
They hate the causer. (_Andromana_, Act i. Sc. 3.)

Compare this with the avowal put by Shakespeare into the mouth of a king.

Though I did wish him dead
I hate the murderer. (_King Richard II_., Act v. Sc. 6.)

Again in the same scene:

For then her husband comes home from the Rialto.

Compare this with various passages (too familiar to quote) in the
_Merchant of Venice_. The transference of the Rialto to Iberia was of a
piece with the discovery of a sea-coast in Bohemia. In the same scene
Andromana says to her lover, finding him reluctant to take his leave,
almost in the very words of Romeo to Juliet,

Then let us stand and outface danger,
Since you will have it so.

It was obvious that only the author of the one passage could have thought
it necessary to disguise his plagiarism in the other by an inversion of
sexes between the two speakers. In the same scene were three other
indisputable instances of repetition.

Mariners might with far greater ease
Hear whole shoals of sirens singing.

Compare _Comedy of Errors_, Act iii. Scene 2.

Sing, siren, for thyself.

In this case identity of sex was as palpable an evidence for identity of
authorship as diversity of sex had afforded in the preceding instance.

Again:

Have oaths no _more validity_ with princes?

In _Romeo and Juliet_, Act iii. Scene 3, the very same words were coupled
in the very same order:

_More validity_,
More honourable state, more courtship lies
In carrion flies than Romeo.

Again:

It would have killed a salamander.

Compare the _First Part of King Henry IV_, Act iii. Scene 3.

I have maintained that salamander of yours with fire any time this two
and thirty years.

In Act ii. Scene 2 the hero, on being informed how heavy are the odds
against him in the field, answers,

I am glad on't; the honour is the greater.

To which his confidant rejoins:

The danger is the greater.

And in the sixth scene of the same act the messenger observes:

I only heard the prince wish
. . . . . . .
He had fewer by a thousand men.

Could any member doubt that we had here the same hand which gave us the
like debate between King Henry and Westmoreland on the eve of Agincourt?
or