From this sample it might seem that the main difficulty must be to detect
anywhere the sign-manual of Shakespeare, even in the best passages of the
revised play. On the other hand, it has not unreasonably been maintained
that even in the next scene of this same act in its original form, and in
all those following which treat of Cade's insurrection, there is evidence
of such qualities as can hardly be ascribed to any hand then known but
Shakespeare's. The forcible realism, the simple vigour and lifelike
humour of these scenes, cannot, it is urged, be due to any other so early
at work in the field of comedy. A critic desirous to press this point
might further insist on the likeness or identity of tone between these
and all later scenes in which Shakespeare has taken on him to paint the
action and passion of an insurgent populace. With him, it might too
plausibly be argued, the people once risen in revolt for any just or
unjust cause is always the mob, the unwashed rabble, the swinish
multitude; full as he is of wise and gracious tenderness for individual
character, of swift and ardent pity for personal suffering, he has no
deeper or finer feeling than scorn for "the beast with many heads" that
fawn and butt at bidding as they are swayed by the vain and violent
breath of any worthless herdsman. 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