There only remains, therefore, the supposition of a first sketch, afterward perfected by its author. Among the proofs of detail which Mr. Malone accumulates in opposition to this opinion, and which are not all equally conclusive, there is, however, one which deserves to be taken into consideration, and that is, that the original plays are evidently based upon Hall's chronicle, whereas Shakspeare always followed Holinshed, never borrowing from Hall except when Holinshed has copied him. It is not at all probable that, if he had used Hall for his first works, he would afterward have left the original for the copyist.
If these two opinions be rejected, we must suppose that Shakspeare borrowed without scruple, from the work of another, the substance and stuff which he afterward enriched with his own embroidery. His numerous borrowings from the dramatic authors of this time render this supposition very easy of credence, and the following fact, in this special instance, is almost equivalent to a proof of its legitimacy. In the first place, it must be observed that the two original pieces which were printed in 1600 existed as early as 1593; for we find them, at that period, registered under the same title, and with the name of the same bookseller, in the registers of the Stationers' Company. What cause delayed the publication of these two plays until 1600, it is useless just now to discuss; but the proof of the antiquity of their existence acquires, in the discussion which now occupies our attention, considerable importance from the following passage in a pamphlet by Greene, a very prolific author, who died in the month of September, 1592. { 326} In this pamphlet, which was written a short time before his death, and printed immediately after, as he had ordered in his will, Green addresses his farewell advice to several of his friends, literary men like himself; and the object of this advice is to dissuade them from working for the theatre, if they desire to escape the griefs of which he complains. One of the motives which he gives for so doing is the imprudence of trusting to the actors; for, he says, "there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his _Tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide_, [Footnote 33] supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country." [Footnote 34]