THE CONTENTION AND SHAKESPEARE'S 2 HENRY VI.

By Charles TylerProuty '31. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1954. 157 pp. $4.00.

Until well into the present century most scholars held the opinion that the Folio text of 2 Henry VI was a revision by Shakespeare of The First Part of the Contention Betwixtthe Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, a drama published anonymously in quarto form in 1594 but apparently written earlier. During the last twenty-five years, however, the view has generally obtained that the Contention is a pirated report of a heavily cut version of 2 Henry VI, reconstructed from memory by two or more actors in Pembroke's Company of players.

In the present volume Professor Prouty makes a detailed comparison of these two texts and offers very convincing evidence that the position taken by the earlier critics is the correct one. He bases his evidence on a careful and thorough study of the two versions in the matters of variations of playing, of style (especially the use of imagery and the skill in handling blank verse rhythms), and of character and structure.

The determination of this problem is particularly important for the implications to be drawn from it as to Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist. Did he, very early in his career, write original plays dealing with English history, or was he at that period engaged in revising old plays that had already proved popular? Professor Prouty is to be congratulated for having made a noteworthy contribution to the critical material upon which any convincing answer is to be founded.

However fully the reader may be persuaded by the arguments here set forth, he cannot, nevertheless, consider the question settled with finality, for it is one of those for which, as Kittredge used to say, nothing short of revelation can provide the complete answer. Undoubtedly critical scholars who hold the opposite view will attack Professor Prouty with vigor, for they are strenuous partisans, but they will have a harder task to refute his position than they have had with any previous work dealing with this particular subject.