ABSTRACT
With regard to the authorship of this play, we may, I think, take it at once for granted that the first two acts are not by Shakespere. It has been so long admitted by all critics of note that this is the case, that it cannot be worth while to go over the evidence again in detail. In order, however, to extinguish any lingering doubt, I give the metrical evidence; which will, at the same time, show how much more easily and certainly this result would have been arrived at had this method of investigation been earlier adopted. The play consists of verse scenes, prose scenes, and the Gower chorus. Considering at present only the first of these three parts, we shall find so marked a difference between the first two, and last three, acts, as to render it astonishing that they could ever have been supposed to be the work of one author.
