Chapter 1

“Shakespeare,” says Forbes, “had neither the tragic talent nor the comic talent. His tragedy is artificial, and his comedy is but instinctive.” Johnson confirms the verdict: “His tragedy is the result of industry, and his comedy the result of instinct.” After Forbes and Johnson had contested his claim to drama, Green contested his claim to originality. Shakespeare is “a plagiarist;” Shakespeare is “a copyist;” Shakespeare “has invented nothing;” he is “a crow adorned with the plumes of others;” he pilfers Æschylus, Boccaccio, Bandello, Holinshed, Belleforest, Benoist de St. Maur; he pilfers Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert of Wace, Peter of Langtoft, Robert Manning, John de Mandeville, Sackville, Spenser; he steals the “Arcadia” of Sidney; he steals the anonymous work called the “True Chronicle of King Leir;” he steals from Rowley in “The Troublesome Reign of King John” (1591), the character of the bastard Faulconbridge. Shakespeare pilfers Thomas Greene; Shakespeare pilfers Dekker and Chettle. Hamlet is not his;—Othello is not his; Timon of Athens is not his, nothing is his. As for Green, Shakespeare is for him not only “a blower of blank verses,” a “shakescene,” a Johannes factotum (allusion to his former position as call-boy and supernumerary); Shakespeare is a wild beast. Crow no longer suffices; Shakespeare is promoted to a tiger. Here is the text: “Tyger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hyde.”[1]

Thomas Rhymer judges “Othello:”—

“The moral of this story is certainly very instructive. It is a warning to good housewives to look after their linen.”

Then the same Rhymer condescends to give up joking, and to take Shakespeare in earnest:—

“What edifying and useful impression can the audience receive from such poetry? To what can this poetry serve, unless it is to mislead our good sense, to throw our thoughts into disorder, to trouble our brain, to pervert our instincts, to crack our imaginations, to corrupt our taste, and to fill our heads with vanity, confusion, clatter, and nonsense?”

This was printed eighty years after the death of Shakespeare, in 1693. All the critics and all the connoisseurs were of one opinion.