Curtain in 1596,1 and yet there is a strong presumption that it was written in 1593; for that the earthquake spoken of by the Nurse happening when Juliet was one year old and therefore thirteen years before the date of her speech, would be referred by the audience to the earthquake of 1580, which was so violent in the locality of the Curtain Theatre, can hardly be doubted. Drake has clearly shown this. Malone saw the difficulty of reconciling it with the 1596 date of representation. But if the play was originally written in 1593 by Peele, and passed at his death, in 1595 (?), into the hands of the Chamberlain's men, it is quite intelligible that it should have remained unrevised for a year or so. It is not so easy to understand that Shakespeare, if he wrote in 1593, should not have revised his own play till after its being acted in 1596, and after its being put upon the stage should have been in such a hurry with his alterations. This is unlike his of work. Perhaps his first production in 1593 may have been hindered by the closing of the theatres on account of the plague; and we know that Shakespeare (whether with L. Strange's or the Chamberlain's company) was "travelling" in 1594.

way

Another evidence in my favour is only admissible if my theory of Richard III. having been partly of Peele's production is granted me. It is of course impossible to do more than allude to it here. It has been proved by Spedding, and confirmed by independent investigations by me that the folio edition of that play is an alteration of the quarto. Now the alterations are exactly of the same character as those in Romeo and Juliet. The number of Alexandrines and four feet lines is enormously reduced, and the lines with extra strong syllables are altered so as to replace Peele's usual metre by Shakespeare's. It is also very likely that Richard III.

1 This confirms Mr. Hales in placing Romeo and Juliet between The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1595), and The Merchant of Venice (1596) on æsthetic grounds.

is by the same hand as the bulk of Henry VI. (parts 2 and 3), and that this hand was Peele's there can be little doubt. There are also numerous coincidences of language between all these plays in their original shape; I have only space here for one from Romeo and Juliet which will indicate their nature; to give them in full is impossible except in an annotated edition.

At the end of ii. 5, Juliet says"How doth her latter words revive my heart!"

this and the succeeding lines are replaced, Q, by

"Hie to high fortune; honest nurse, farewell." But in 3 Hen. VI., i., 1, the very words occur,

"How do thy words revive my heart." The phrase does not occur in any play undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, but it is common in his predecessors.

The numerous repetitions of lines and phrases in different parts of Q, only tend to show the same result. These are pointed out by Mr. Daniel, and I need not dwell on them here. As far, then, as these narrow limits will allow, I have indicated proofs that exist that external and internal evidence alike lead us to conclude that the first draft of this play, Qo, was made about 1593, probably by G. Peele; that after his death it was partially revised by Shakespeare, and produced at the Curtain Theatre in 1596 in the shape that we find it as printed in Q1; and that he subsequently revised it completely as we read it in Q2. It has been shown that his name was not attached to it in his lifetime; that the external evidence for his authorship is less than that for other plays of which he is acknowledged to have been only in part originator; that the unrevised parts of Q, are unlike his work in metre, style, and general form; that the unlikenesses are of the same character as those in Henry VI. and Richard III., and that if Q, is a surreptitious copy some theory more satisfactory than any yet pro

pounded must be given to account for its errors being errors of eye, not of ear. It is, I think, impossible to resist these arguments, even in the extent here presented. How much

more, then, in their totality, as for instance in the notes of the edition of

Q1, which I prepared in 1874 for the New Shakspere Society, in which every peculiarity was noted of spelling, metre, and language, and the inference from each pointed out; with illustrations from Peele's acknowledged works.

Assuming, then, for an instant, that this theory is correct, it may be said that it is an ungrateful task to diminish the laurels of our greatest poet even by a leaf; that it is an odious work (however just) to try to bring him nearer on a level with the lower playwrights of his time; that if the "onliness" of Shakespeare is an illusion, we had rather keep the illusion in its beauty than give it up for the truth in its ugliness. The answer to which is, Do right, though the sky fall. But it may yet be worth while to point out that such investigations do not lessen Shakespeare, though they advance other men who have hitherto been far too much neglected. We do not measure his greatness by the extent of his work, but by the height he attained in his best productions. The great tragedies, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, are all his; the great histories, Henry IV., Henry V., are all his; the great comedies, the Tempest, As you Like It, the Merchant of Venice, are all his; the great tragi-comedy, Winter's Tale, is all his. It is in the lesser plays that other men's work has been found ; and what men! Had Marlow and Peele lived, Shakespeare would probably not have been the unique phenomenon that he is to us. The hand that painted the death-scene of Faust, at an age when Shakespeare had, at most, given us two or three of his earliest comedies; the ear that first formed for us a perfect medium for dramatic poetry by organising our blank verse in harmonious rhythm; the genius that first saw the capability of historic themes to excite pity and terror in

theatric representation-were extinguished by the ignoble brawl in which Marlow met his death. At that date he was certainly the equal, if not the superior, of Shakespeare. George Peele, also, the author of the Old Wives' Tale and David and Bathsheba-the only fairy tale and the only scriptural theme that have been treated dramatically with success by the Elizabethans-he whom Greene ranked even above Marlow, whose delicate work, in the portions that have come down to us, is so exquisitely finished-he, too, if he did no more than is commonly attributed to him, was no mean competitor with Shakespeare for supremacy. Shakespeare did not show his greatness till his second period; until he produced his Merchant of Venice and his Henry IV. he was not recognizable as taller than his brethren by the head and shoulders. And who can say that, had Peele and Marlow lived, they would not have attained an equal height? Of Marlow there can be little doubt that, although he would probably not have been so genial, so human, so comprehensive, he might yet have touched the springs of sorrow and fear as deeply as Lear or Macbeth. And Peele, if, as I believe, he wrote great part of Henry VI., Richard III., and Romeo and Juliet, stood so nearly on an equality with Shakespeare, that their work has been confused and mistaken for two centuries and more. The features of the young giant-race are hard to discriminate; they are all of one family, and their birth-dates are not far asunder. The surviving brother is the greatest, in virtue of his survival, but had they all lived it would have been hard indeed to prognosticate on which brow the highest crown should ultimately have rested. Meanwhile

let us try to be just to all, and if any fame is due to the earlier dead, let us not shrink to give it them: even if in doing so we may seem for an instant to be invidious to its former possessor, let our admiration of Shakespeare be freed from silly idolatry and unfair adulation.

It is only natural that Oxford, abounding as it does in traces of the past, should be a favourite field of archæological investigation. The interest of the subject, after centuries of labour bestowed upon it, is indeed far from being exhausted. Not only has the mass of antiquarian material collected by the diligence of such men as Wood and Hearne and their worthy successors to be re-examined and treated critically, but much new material, only recently made accessible, has to be collected and utilised.

One topic in particular- some knowledge of which one might suppose would be especially desirable at a time when the University is about once more to be reformed- has by no means received the attention which its intrinsic interest demands. The constitution of the University as an organised body of teachers and learners is far from being generally understood. It is hardly too much to say that the average undergraduate passes through Oxford without any reflection upon the historical significance of its organisation. He looks upon it as a large school for adults, where all sorts of subjects are taught by a rabble of professors and tutors. He perhaps knows that, now and then, while he is on the river or in the cricket-field, these same professors and tutors transact some unintelligible business in the Convocation House, but he finds that none of these things produce much practical effect upon himself. His business is to pass the examinations, with honours if he can, and receive the title of B.A. If the new-made bachelor leaves the university, he looks back upon it only as the large school for adults, where he played cricket and made friends, and obtained the

title of Bachelor, which, after an interval and on payment of a fee, was transmuted into the title of Master, of Arts; but of what "arts" he was made a bachelor, or in what sense he subsequently became a "master" of them, he has no suspicion.

Nearly the same assertions may indeed be made of the graduate who stays at Oxford. Instead of a learner he has become a teacher, and he takes part in the well-intended legislation of the Convocation House, but the University continues to be in his eyes a large, and no doubt very ancient, school, where very promiscuous subjects are taught, and which conducts its business in accordance with a procedure which, knowing nothing of its significance, he regards with but scant respect.

The ordinary fellow and tutor may not be devoid of archæological tastes; but he finds their sufficient satisfaction

in ascertaining how much bread and cheese was allowed per diem to the labourers who built the college hall, in collecting materials for biographies of the boys who have sung in the college choir for 300 years past, and pulling down, or as he calls it "restoring," his college chapel. I venture to think that, laudable as these recreations may be, it would be well if some attention were now diverted from the Colleges, the interest of which is after all chiefly local, to the University itself, which besides being older than any of them, is one of a sisterhood of similar institutions which are to be found in every country of Europe, and in most others which have a tincture of European civilisation.

A good book upon the subject of Universities generally has yet to be written, and could only be written

after an examination of a very voluminous and scattered literature. The subject might, however, be dealt with piecemeal. An important work might be produced upon the Natural History of Universities, in which they would be grouped according to affinity of organisation, the affiliation of one to another would be shown, and their bodies of statutes would be traced to a few types of which the rest are copies. Among the smaller questions which would well deserve attention are the relation of Universities to the Papal See, the migration of students. from one country to another, and the consequent formation of foreign " nations," the origin of degrees and the nature of the privileges which they conferred, the development of any given department of study, the relation of academical studies to the professions.

Some, at least, of these topics one may hope will eventually be treated of by those who have leisure for such inquiries. We must confine ourselves on the present occasion to the narrower question of the organisation of the University of Oxford; leaving out of consideration how far that organisation is shared by similar bodies elsewhere. Is Oxford, as some persons who should know better really seem to suppose, merely a great school, in which a number of isolated teachers are engaged, each upon his own subject, without reference to the rest? Or is there a plan, and that a grand and historically instructive one, in accordance with which the University not only was, but still is, arranged?

The answer to that question is written in two documents, composed as we now see them at about the same date, but each preserving, with little essential alteration, evidence of a state of things far older than itself. The date is the early part of the seventeenth century, and the two documents are-the Quadrangle of the Schools, and the Corpus Statutorum.

The Schools, begun in 1613, and

finished in 1617, merely embody in a grander pile of buildings arrangements which are older than the sixteenth century.

The Statute Book, completed in 1633 and published by authority in 1636, is an orderly digest, with very slight alteration, of the laws which had been made by the University for its own government during the three previous centuries.

Both the Schools Quadrangle and the Corpus Statutorum preserve for our instruction at the present day the University of the Middle Ages. As it was stereotyped in these two monuments, so has its legal organisation remained substantially to our day. It is archæologically fortunate that the University legislated very little between the date of the Corpus and that of the Commission of 1852.

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I. Now what is the picture of the constitution of the University which is presented to us by the Schools Quadrangle ?

To see that picture in its true perspective, one must enter the building by its principal gateway-the gateway by which processions are admitted on state occasions; that is to say, one passes in under the tower which faces towards Hertford College. One then sees right opposite the School of Divinity, enthroned, as it were, as the mater scientiarum. On the proper right of the Divinity School is the old School of Medicine; on the proper left is the old School of Law.

These three occupy the west side of the quadrangle. The south and north sides, and the east side, where you are supposed to be stationed, are occupied by the Schools of Metaphysic, Logic, Geometry, and other sciences.

For many years the inscriptions over the doors of several of the schools had became illegible. They have recently been restored by the pious care of a late senior proctor, and now once more enable us to see the image of the University as it presented

As to which see Reg. N. fol. 94, in the archives of the University.

itself to the minds of Oxford men of the early years of the seventeenth century.

The schools were not merely places for holding the disputations which answered the purpose of our present examinations, but also lecture rooms; and a special school was assigned to each of the sciences then taught in the University.

The place of honour was given to the school of divinity, next to that of medicine, thirdly to that of law.

Less honourably placed, but far more numerous, were the schools belonging to the great faculty of arts;1 i.e. as we may see from the inscriptions over their doorways, schools for each of the seven liberal arts, viz., grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium); arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy (the quadrivium); for the three sciences-metaphysics, moral philosophy and natural philosophy; also for the tongues, viz. Greek and Hebrew; and lastly for history.

The

Lectures and exercises in divinity, before the erection of the present magnificent building in the fifteenth century, took place in St. Mary's Church, and in various religious houses. There were several schools of physic; and there were numerous schools of law, most of them in the Jews' quarter, near the modern post office. schools of arts (to the number of thirty-two in 1408) had been mainly in Schools' Street (running between St. Mary's and Brasenose College), till in 1439, the Abbot of Osney, ad captandum benevolentiam universitatis, built the block of arts schools which gradually superseded the rest. It contained ten rooms, one for each of the seven arts, and the three sciences. These "new schools," as they were called, stood in front of, and transversely to, the divinity school. They were purchased in 1554 by the University, which in 1557 placed appropriate inscriptions over the door of

1 Schole Facultatis Artium. Stat. Tit. vi. $3.

each school: over that of grammar, litteras disce; of dialectics, imposturas fuge; of rhetoric, persuadent mores; of arithmetic, numeris omnia constant ; of music, ne tibi dissideas; of geometry, cura quæ domi sunt; of astrology, altiora ne quasieris.2

It is to be observed that though these arts-schools were pulled down in order to complete the quadrangle of which Bodley's library formed the western side, their arrangements were substantially reproduced in the grander edifice which rose in their place."

II. Much may be readily inferred as to the character of the University from the arrangement of this venerable building; but for more articulate information we must turn from its dumb walls to the pages of the Corpus Statutorum. Many interesting matters are touched upon in that curious volume; but our attention must be confined to what concerns the distribution of studies, and the organisation of the teaching, which is also the governing, body of the University.

The studies of the place, and the degrees which attest capacity to teach, are distributed into the five faculties of theology, medicine, law, arts, and music. The precedence of those qualified to teach in each of those faculties is minutely regulated in accordance with a scale which had not been acquiesced in without debates extending over centuries, and sometimes determined only by the interposition of the king.

The duties of the teachers of each subject, and the studies qualifying for the position of teacher-in other words, for the attainment of a degree, are prescribed with great minuteness.

2 German Traveller in Gutch's Wood, iii. p. 764.

3 Let us hope that the old traditions may not be entirely lost sight of in the structure which is now rising from its foundations in the High Street.

Which its compilers admit to be expressed in a style horrida, impexa et barbarismis et solæcismis scatens. For the history of its compilation see its preface and A. Wood,