in the Return from Parnassus, IV, v: “your face would be good for a foolish mayre or a foolish justice of peace”? (cf. the present writer’s Shakespeare im literarischen Urteil seiner Zeit, p. 168 ff.), which Fleay connects with the Thomas More scene (Life and Work of Shakespeare, p. 223). As it has been made plausible that More was never acted, this explanation seems to be impossible.
In proposing the above-mentioned date of 1601 or 1602 for the play I needs must give up the still later date (1604–5) which I proposed in Engl. Stud. 46, 228 seq. The arguments taken from general tendencies of the times must necessarily carry with them less weight than those drawn from special circumstances. Meanwhile one of the minor arguments for an early origin, the allusion to one “Oagle,” has broken down (Times Lit. Suppl. November 8, 1923). It is to be doubted if the Goodal argument is of much greater value.
§ 5. The Authorship of the Scene
According to the theory of A. W. Pollard and the other contributors to Shakespeare’s Hand, the “players in anticipation of trouble with the censor had turned to” William Shakespeare, “who had previously had no part in the play” (p. 5), and he supplied the three pages in question. It is not easily to be seen why they acted so. Chambers supposes (p. 180) the difference between the original draft and the later text to have consisted in an alteration from a harsh “threat of present death” to an “appeal to generosity, fair play, pity.” Did they believe to be in this way more in agreement with the censor’s views? But whence this belief? They were, at any rate, mistaken, for the censor’s rigorous prohibition of the scene shows that he lacked the taste for ethical subtleties of this sort. But it is of course more than doubtful if any such idea was implied. On the other hand, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty that the speech in the original text “terrorised [the crowd] by the threat of present death.” Chambers says that “references in the other scenes make [this] clear.” As far as I can see, however, it is just the other way round. It is stated above already that the whole “Ill Mayday” scenes are pervaded by a spirit of humanity that is remarkably absent in the sources. One would, e.g., look in vain for an idea in them like II, iii, 34: “The King laments, if one true subject bleede.” From the very beginning More is full of sympathy
