popular applause for the drama from which
he had "cribbed" his imitation. And this imitation was not from friendly
authors, but from those of a hostile school, who had during their whole
career borrowed from his plots, parodied his phrases, and ridiculed his
masterpieces by slurs and burlesques. We respectfully dissent from the
assertion that these facts "create a strong presumption that 'Philaster'
was the original," "Cymbeline" the "copy." On the contrary, it seems to
us that they are utterly inconsistent with any such presumption, and
with the whole theory and teaching of Professors Wendell and Thorndike.

That theory, as we have shown, is based upon the assumption that
Marlowe, or Greene, or Peele, or somebody else, wrote most of "Henry
VI"; the assumption that Fletcher helped Shakspere write "Henry VIII";
the assumption that Shakspere assisted Fletcher in the composition of
"The Two Noble Kinsmen"; the unsupported, the admitted conjecture that
"Philaster" was written before October 8th, 1610; the unwarranted
assertion that Beaumont and Fletcher "created the romance" in spite of
the admission that the date of creation depends upon the priority of
"Cymbeline" or "Philaster," which is likewise admitted to be wholly
uncertain; the suppression of the proof from "Measure for Measure" that,
years before "Philaster," Shakspere, within the proposed definition, had
produced a romantic tragi-comedy; the guess as to priority in favor of
Beaumont and Fletcher, in spite of repeated imitations by them from
previous plays of Shakspere. And so the argument in support of the
theory is a pyramid of _ifs_, supporting an apex that vanishes into
the thin air of an invisible conclusion.

To us, after all this latest effort to depose the sovereign of English
literature from the throne where he has worn the crown for more than
three centuries, and seat there a pretender, having no title, either by
divine right or the suffrages of mankind, Shakspere is the sovereign
still.

He needed and he sought no allies to win his realm; he imitated no
fashions of other courts to maintain his own; he took good care that the
records of his universal conquests should be kept,--written by his own
hand, and fortunately preserved by his friends,--secure from the
interpolations and imitations of his contemporaries and successors.

Much has been written of Shakspere's impersonality, and we have been
taught to think that his dramas are utterly silent as to