impressive. The poet who worked with him, worked in sympathy with his
dramatic intention. If this poet were Marlowe, as some believe (and the
clearness of the man's brain seems to point to this), it is another
proof that the two great poets were friends during the last months of
Marlowe's life. It is plain that something stopped the revision before
it was finished. The latter half of the play is only half written. It
has flesh and blood but no life. It reads like work that has been
wrought to a pitch by two or three re-writings, and then left without
the final writing that turns imagination into vision. It would be
interesting to know why Shakespeare left the play in this state. Perhaps
there was no time to make it perfect before the rehearsals began.
Perhaps the murder of Marlowe upset the plans of the capitalist who was
speculating in the play. If it had been finished in the spirit of the
first two and a half acts it would have been one of the grandest of the
historical plays.

The poetry of the two completed acts is often noble. The long speech of
York, in Act I, coming, as it does, after a clash of minds turbid with
passion, is most noble. It gives a terror to what follows. The calm mind
makes no mistake. The judgment of a man without heart seems as
infallible as fate, as beautiful, and as ghastly. All happens as he
foresees. All the cruelty and bloodiness of the latter half of the play
come from that man's beautifully clear, cool brain. He stands detached.
One little glimmer of heart in him would alter everything. The glimmer
never comes. Humphrey is poisoned, Suffolk is beheaded, the Cardinal
dies. Cade, in that most awful scene of the mob in power, looks at two
heads on pikes with the remark--

"Is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved
well when they were alive....

Now part them again."

These are some of the results of the working of a fine intellect in
which--

"Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought,
And not a thought but thinks on dignity."

There is a terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is
discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has
poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder
is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made
clearer for his enemies perhaps. That is the only result. Now he is
dying, the waste of mind is at an end, and the figure of