For the drovers who guide and misguide
at will the turbulent flocks of their mutinous cattle his store of bitter
words is inexhaustible; it is a treasure-house of obloquy which can never
be drained dry. All this, or nearly all this, we must admit; but it
brings us no nearer to any but a floating and conjectural kind of
solution. In the earliest form known to us of this play it should seem
that we have traces of Shakespeare's handiwork, in the latest that we
find evidence of Marlowe's. But it would be something too extravagant
for the veriest wind-sucker among commentators to start a theory that a
revision was made of his original work by Marlowe after additions had
been made to it by Shakespeare; yet we have seen that the most
unmistakable signs of Marlowe's handiwork, the passages which show most
plainly the personal and present seal of his genius, belong to the play
only in its revised form; while there is no part of the whole composition
which can so confidently be assigned to Shakespeare as to the one man
then capable of such work, as can an entire and important episode of the
play in its unrevised state.
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