Mr. Greenwood writes, "Some of the
dates are disputable"; and, for himself, would omit "Titus
Andronicus, the three plays of Henry VI, and possibly also The Taming
of the Shrew, while the reference to Hamlet also is, as I have
elsewhere shown, of very doubtful force." {113a} This leaves us with
six of Dr. Furnivall's list of earliest plays put out of action. The
miracle is decomposing, but plays numerous enough to stagger my
credulity remain.
I cannot believe that the author even of the five plays before 1592-3
was the ex-butcher's boy. Meanwhile these five plays, written by
somebody before 1593, meet the reader on the threshold of Mr.
Greenwood's book {113b} with Dr. Furnivall's eleven; and they fairly
frighten him, if he be a "Stratfordian." "Will, even Will," says the
Stratfordian, "could not have composed the five, much less the
eleven, much less Mr. Edwin Reed's thirteen 'before 1592.'" {113c}
But, at the close of his work {113d} Mr. Greenwood reviews and
disbands that unlucky troop of thirteen Shakespearean plays "before
1592" as mustered by Mr. Reed, a Baconian of whom Mr. Collins wrote
in terms worthy of feu Mr. Bludyer of The Tomahawk.
From the five plays left to Shakespeare's account in p. 51, King John
(as we know it) is now eliminated. "I find it impossible to believe
that the same man was the author of the drama" (The Troublesome Reign
of King John) "published in 1591, and that which, so far as we know,
first saw the light in the Folio of 1623 .
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