or of the larger portion is Fletcher. The attribution of the
non-Fletcherian part to Shakespeare has been upheld by Lamb, Coleridge,
De Quincey, Spalding (in a notable Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of
_The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 1833), Furness, and Littledale (who edited the
play for _The New Shakespeare Society_, Series II, 1, 8, 15, London,
1876-1885); but there are still many critics who do not believe that
Shakespeare had any part in the play. This question will probably always
remain a matter of opinion; but the evidence of various verse tests
confirms esthetic judgment in assigning about two fifths of the verse to
Shakespeare. The Shakespearean portion, here and there possibly touched
by Fletcher, includes, I. i; I. ii; I. iii; I. iv. 1-28; III. i; III.
ii; V. i. 17-73; V. iii. 1-104; V. iv, and perhaps the prose II. i and
IV. iii.

The dance in the play is borrowed from an anti-masque in Beaumont's
_Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn_, presented at court,
February 20, 1613. This fixes the date of composition for the play in
1613, the same year as _Henry VIII_, on which it is now generally agreed
that Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated. On both of the plays the
collaboration seems to have been direct; _i.e._, after making a fairly
detailed outline, each writer took certain scenes, and, to all intents,
completed these scenes after his own fashion.

One other play must be mentioned in connection with _The Two Noble
Kinsmen_. _Cardenio_, entered on the Stationers' Register, 1653, was
described as "by Fletcher and Shakespeare." It seems probably identical
with a _Cardenno_ acted at court by the King's men in May, 1613, and a
_Cardenna_ in June, 1613. Attempts have been made to connect it with
_Double Falsehood_, assigned to Shakespeare by Theobald on its
publication in 1728.

[Page Heading: Last Ascriptions]

Other non-extant plays ascribed to Shakespeare after 1642 require no
attention, nor do a number of Elizabethan plays assigned to him in
certain of their later quartos. Among these are _The Troublesome Reign
of King John_, on which Shakespeare's _King John_ was based; _The First
Part of The Contention_, and (the Second Part) _The True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York_ (versions of _2 Henry VI_ and _3 Henry VI_); and
_The Taming of a Shrew_, the basis of Shakespeare's play. The relation
of Shakespeare's plays to these earlier versions is discussed in the
introductions to the respective volumes of the