g Henry the Sixt, as it was
sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.' In both these
plays Shakespeare's revising hand can be traced. The humours of Jack
Cade in 'The Contention' can owe their savour to him alone. After he had
hastily revised the original drafts of the three pieces, perhaps with
another's aid, they were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by
his own company (Lord Strange's men), and the third, under some
exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not
content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a
revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with
another writer. 'The First Part of The Contention' was thoroughly
overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio 'The
Second Part of Henry VI;' there more than half the lines are new. 'The
True Tragedie,' which became 'The Third Part of Henry VI,' was less
drastically handled; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched;
only a third was thoroughly remodelled. {60}

Shakespeare's coadjutors.

Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two successive revisions of
'Henry VI' is matter for conjecture. The theory that Greene and Peele
produced the original draft of the three parts of 'Henry VI,' which
Shakespeare recast, may help to account for Greene's indignant
denunciation of Shakespeare as 'an upstart crow, beautified with the
feathers' of himself and his fellow dramatists. Much can be said, too,
in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest
of his predecessors, in the first revision of which 'The Contention' and
the 'True Tragedie' were the outcome. Most of the new passages in the
second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare alone, but a few suggest
a partnership resembling that of the first revision. It is probable that
Marlowe began the final revision, but his task was interrupted by his
death, and the lion's share of the work fell to his younger coadjutor.

Shakespeare's assimilative power.

Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that receptivity of mind
which impels them to assimilate much of the intellectual effort of their
contemporaries and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore into
pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been professionally employed in recasting
old plays by contemporaries, he would doubtless have shown in his
writings traces of a study of their work. The