What that difference is we are fortunately able to
determine with exceptional certitude, and with no supplementary help from
conjecture of probabilities. In the play which is undoubtedly a joint
work of these poets the points of contact and the points of disunion are
unmistakable by the youngest eye. In the very last scene of _The Two
Noble Kinsmen_, we can tell with absolute certainty what speeches were
appended or interpolated by Fletcher; we can pronounce with positive
conviction what passages were completed and what parts were left
unfinished by Shakespeare. Even on Mr. Spedding's theory it can hardly
be possible to do as much for _King Henry VIII_. The lines of
demarcation, however visible or plausible, are fainter by far than these.
It is certainly not much less strange to come upon such passages in the
work of Shakespeare as the speeches of Buckingham and Cranmer than it
would be to encounter in the work of Sophocles a sample of the later and
laxer style of Euripides; to meet for instance in the _Antigone_ with a
passage which might pass muster as an extract from the _Iphigenia in
Aulis_.
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