Soon after Mr. Knight's Essay on King Henry the Sixth, ap-
peared Mr. Collier's edition of the works of Shakespeare, in
the Introductory Essays of which to these plays the latter gen-
tleman put forth the monstrous opinion that Shakespeare wrote
the Fii'st Part of King Henry the Sixth, but was not concerned
in the production of the First Part of the Contention, or Tlie
True Tragedy. For such an opinion, however, there is support
in the external evidence, — aside from the testimony of Heminge
and Condell, — and Mr. Collier reasoned logically, though like
an antiquary rather than a critic.
Next, Mr. Halliwell, editing the Shakespeare Society's reprint
of the old plays just named, brought forward in his Prefatory



406 ESSAY ON THE AUTHORSHIP

Essay, as a not improbable conjecture, the suggestion that
" when these plays were printed in 1594 and 1595, they included
the first additions which Shakespeare made to the originals."
Mr. Halliwell, also, finding some words and parts of lines in an
impression of these plays printed in 1619, which appear in the
impression of 1623, but not in those of 1594 and 1595, con-
cluded that there was ' ' an intermediate composition " between
the earliest and the latest impressions. But such slight differ-
ences as those pointed out by Mr. Halliwell, which are similar
to others that I have myself remarked, hardly seem to warrant
the conclusion that he drew from them. At the period during
which these various impressions appeared, two editions of the
same play, even when published within a year or two of each
other, were rarely without variations as important, at least, as
those in question.
