Qass t- 
 
 Book 
 
LIFE AND GENIUS 
 
 OF 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 i 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
 OF THE LIFE OF 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 
 
 WITH 
 
 AN ESSAY TOWARD THE EXPRESSION OF 
 
 HIS GENIUS, 
 
 AND 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 By RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 
 ' ^ ) ' . i 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 1865. 
 

 'Ol 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 
 
 c « c ' t «■ c «- 
 
 University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
 Cambridge. 
 
TO THE HONORABLE 
 WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, LL. D., 
 
 SECRETARY OF STATE. 
 
 CIR,- 
 
 I venture, without your knowledge, to inscribe this 
 volume to you as an individual recognition of your long- 
 continued and signal services to the Republic. Through 
 all your public life the unrelenting foe of wrong and of 
 oppression, one of the earliest and most earnest advocates 
 of the cause of freedom, a statesman who recognized 
 his responsibility to a higher law than that of state ne- 
 cessity, yon have yet endeavored to secure the blessings 
 of liberty to all by peaceful methods, and to obtain for all 
 the protection of the law without the violation of the law. 
 Called to the Department of State at a period when our 
 foreign relations were fraught with peril and environed with 
 difficulty, you have so administered them, that, while you 
 calmly maintained the internal sovereignty and the ex- 
 ternal rights of the government you represented, the 
 jealous ministers of rival nations publicly acknowledged 
 your fairness and your candor, and were able only to 
 cavil at those assertions of the unabated power and dig- 
 nity of the Republic, which, made with unflinching con- 
 fidence in an hour of unprecedented trial, touched the 
 hearts of your countrymen as the expression of a faith 
 
yi DEDICATION. 
 
 which was then in very deed the substance of things 
 hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, but which 
 events have shown to be well founded. Just men may 
 have misunderstood you, but your only enemies have 
 been the enemies of right and of your country. At the 
 hands of some of these, you have lately suffered in com- 
 mon with the good President whom we yet mourn. That 
 your life was sought with his was an additional testimony 
 to your faithfulness and your ability. Men seek to kill 
 only whom they fear and hate. That you escaped this 
 murderous attempt made by assassins who struck at your 
 country through you, was an occasion of rejoicing to true 
 men throughout the land. This book, although purely 
 literary in its character, may be fitly dedicated to a states- 
 man in whom the cause of education has ever found an 
 advocate equally zealous and discreet, and whose pen 
 has gained him an enviable place in the world of letters. 
 That you may live long in the service of your country, 
 and that, while the undying interest of the subject of this 
 volume wins it readers, this page may do a little toward 
 preserving in the minds of your countrymen a memory 
 of how much they and freedom owe you, are the hearty 
 wishes of 
 
 Your grateful fellow-citizen, 
 
 R. G. W. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 npHIS volume is the result of an endeavor 
 -^ to present in a narrative form what is 
 known and may be reasonably inferred concern- 
 ing Shakespeare's life, with an appreciation of 
 his genius, and such a history of our early drama 
 as would conduce to that appreciation and be 
 suited to the perusal of the generality of his in- 
 telligent readers. During the last hundred and 
 fifty years much has been written upon these 
 subjects by men of various fitness for the task, 
 and of widely differing degrees of abihty. But 
 unless my knowledge of this literature is imper- 
 fect, the present book, in its scope, its purpose, 
 and its method, is without a rival among its pre- 
 decessors. It is not intended for lovers of desul- 
 tory gossip on the one hand, or for antiquaries 
 and Shakespearian scholars on the other. I 
 have undertaken to examine and to estimate the 
 
^jj^ PREFACE. 
 
 mass of material which has been accumulated 
 by the painstaking researches of previous inves- 
 tigators of the facts connected with Shake- 
 speare's life and of the earlier records of the 
 English drama, — much of it having the slight- 
 est possible connection, and more no connection 
 at all, with the subject, — to arrange with com- 
 pactness and coherence that which seemed to me 
 to be distinguished from the remainder by truth 
 and significance, and so to tell the story that it 
 might have a continuous interest for readers not 
 especially devoted to dramatic studies. 
 
 Having given my authority in most cases for 
 statement or hypothesis, it is not necessary that 
 I should here repeat my acknowledgment of ob- 
 ligations in this regard. Little has been added, 
 and nothing of moment, to the results either of 
 the searches made in the last two centuries by 
 Betterton, Malone, and Chalmers for tradition and 
 record concerning Shakespeare, or of their inves- 
 tigations of the social and professional conditions 
 under which his life must have been passed. The 
 last two writers seemed also to have exhausted the 
 field of research in regard to the history of the 
 English drama and the Enoflish sta2:e. But Mr. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 Collier's later work upon those subjects, by its ful- 
 ness and its systematic arrangement, supersedes 
 all others, either for the use of the dramatic stu- 
 dent, or as a book of reference for the occasional 
 inquirer. Yet the account of the English drama 
 given in the following pages will be found to be 
 something more, as well as something less, than 
 an abridgment of Mr. Collier's three octavo vol- 
 umes. 
 
 These remarks apply only to the first and last 
 divisions of this volume. The second, the Essay 
 toward an Expression of Shakespeare's Genius, 
 is the endeavor of one who, having read the poet 
 much and his critics little, has thought his own 
 thoughts and trusted his own judgment upon this 
 subject, until, with a mingling of confidence and 
 diffidence which it would be difficult to explain, 
 he now ventures to offer his conclusions as hints 
 and aids to others ; conscious the while that 
 those who can judge them best are those who 
 need them least. 
 
 Thus the purpose of this book is to enable its 
 reader to form as nearly as possible a full and 
 just appreciation of Shakespeare as a man, a 
 poet, and a dramatist. No other thought entered 
 
^ PREFACE. 
 
 my mind when I laid out my work. But I will 
 own that, as I wrote the following pages, I con- 
 ceived the hope that those who read them might 
 be led to remember, and not only to remember 
 but to take to heart, the pregnant and all-impor- 
 tant truth, that with the intellectual wealth and 
 glory of Shakespeare and Milton and their con- 
 temporaries and antecessors, we have inherited, 
 not in any indirect and collateral way, but as 
 coheirs and equals with our blood brethren in 
 Great Britain, however sharp our political sever- 
 ance from them, those principles of liberty, that 
 intelligent respect for law, and that capacity of 
 self-government, which belong to and distinguish 
 the English race, which some call Anglo-Saxon ; 
 — that if we have attained a national prosperity 
 and power, a diffusion of mental culture and moral 
 sensibility, and a union of stability and progres- 
 sive force hitherto unheard of among any people, 
 it is only because we have transplanted here, and 
 developed by a normal and unconstrained growth, 
 the same political principles and the same laws 
 of social development from which spring the real 
 power and the true glory of the British nation ; — 
 that we in our Englishhood, as they in theirs, are 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 SO subject to the same laws of moral and intellect- 
 ual development that, however that development 
 may be modified by circumstances, and though 
 we are politically two nations with sometimes 
 clashing interests, we are not, and indeed cannot 
 be, other than one people ; — and that, with all 
 our mutual emulation, inevitable as it is from the 
 community of our origin, our mental constitution, 
 and the similarity of our pursuits, we owe each 
 other, if not mutual regard, at least a mutual 
 consideration, respect, and confidence heartier 
 than that which befits the merely formal inter- 
 course of two nations which are called friendly 
 because they are not at open enmity. Our com- 
 mon inheritance is one which each of us may 
 enjoy to the full without diminishing the other's 
 share, or impugning the other's title, and which 
 we should share without envy, certainly without 
 malice or uncharitableness. These truths are 
 trite ; but the day will be a sad one, should it 
 ever come, when they finally lose their vital bind- 
 ing force for those who read in a common mother 
 tongue the words of William Shakespeare. 
 
 R. G. W. 
 
 New York, May 23d, 1865. 
 
MEMOIRS OF 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 
 
 THE name and the works of William Shake- 
 speare were widely known and highly 
 thought of by his contemporaries. UnHke Ho- 
 mer's, his figure does not loom vaguely from the 
 obscurity of a pre-historic period ; unlike Dante's, 
 it is not revealed by fitful and lurid light amid the 
 convulsions of society upon the verge of the dark 
 ages. From early manhood to maturity he lived, 
 and labored, and throve, in the chief city of a 
 prosperous and peaceful country, at a period of 
 high intellectual and moral development. His 
 life was passed before the public in days when the 
 pen recorded scandal in the diary, and when the 
 press, though the daily newspaper did not yet 
 exist, teemed with personality. Yet of Dante, 
 driven in haughty wretchedness from city to city, 
 and singing his immortal hate of his pursuers as 
 he fled, we know more than we do of Shakespeare ; 
 the paucity of whose personal memorials is so ex- 
 treme, that he has shared with the almost mythi- 
 
2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 cal Homer the fortune of having the works which 
 make his fame immortal pronounced medleys, in 
 the composition of which he was but indirectly 
 and partially concerned ; and two enthusiasts, one 
 in the Old England and the other in the New, 
 have even maintained that they were written by 
 the great philosophers and statesmen of his day, 
 who used his name as a stalking horse with which 
 to conceal themselves and mislead the public* 
 
 Two generations had not followed that which 
 gave to the world the great poet of our race and 
 of mankind, when Thomas Betterton, the most 
 celebrated London actor of his day, journeyed 
 from the scene of Shakespeare's metropolitan dis- 
 tinction to that of his rustic youth and his rural 
 retirement, in the hope of finding in the latter 
 those traces of his private life which had been so 
 entirely obliterated in the former. The grateful 
 and reverential player, who had gained compe- 
 tence and reputation chiefly by performing Shake- 
 speare's characters, gathered and preserved a few 
 fading but important traditions ; to these the as- 
 siduous investigation of more than a century and 
 a half has added the records of a few other facts 
 
 * The accomplished and gifted lady who broached this theory 
 on this side of the ocean in Putnam'' s Magazine for January, 1856, 
 was then, doubtless, suffering from that mental aberration which 
 soon after consigned her to the asylum in which she died. The 
 Transatlantic critics are, I believe, without a similar excuse for 
 the strange fancy of her British rival, which they were so quick 
 to condemn in her as a trait of " American " extravagance. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 3 
 
 of hardly more significance, and confirmation of 
 some of those traditions ; and this is all the faint 
 and uncertain light which falls from the past upon 
 the man whose works cast such a blaze of ever- 
 brightening glory upon our literature. There have 
 been issued, indeed, to us of the present genera- 
 tion, pamphlets professing to give new particulars 
 of the life of Shakespeare, and tomes with even 
 more pretentious titles. But from all these there 
 has been but small satisfaction, save to those who 
 can persuade themselves that, by knowing what 
 Shakespeare might have done, they know what he 
 did, or that a reflex of his daily life can be seen in 
 parchments beginning, " This indenture made," or 
 " Noverint tmiversi per prcese7ttes!' It is with no 
 disrespect, nay, it is rather with thankfulness and 
 sorrowing sympathy, that the devotee of Shake- 
 speare, after examining the fruit of the laborious 
 researches of men who have wasted sunlight and 
 candles, and worn good eyes, in poring over sen- 
 tences as musty as the parchments on which they 
 are written, and as dry as the dust which covered 
 them, will reluctantly decide that all this mousing 
 has been almost in vain. It has incidentally re- 
 sulted in the diffusion of a knowledge of the times 
 and circumstances in which Shakespeare lived, 
 and in the unearthing of much interesting illus- 
 tration of his works from the mould of antiquity ; 
 but only those who have the taste of the liter- 
 ary antiquary can accept these documents, which 
 
. MEMOIRS OF 
 
 4 
 
 have been so plentifully produced and so pitilessly 
 printed, — extracts from parish registers and old 
 account-books, inventories, including Hsts of the 
 knives and spoons and pots and pans of the guz- 
 zling aldermen of Stratford, last wills and testa- 
 ments, leases, deeds, bonds, declarations, pleas, 
 replications, rejoinders, surrejoinders, rebutters, 
 and surrebutters, — as having aught to do with the 
 life of such a man as William Shakespeare. They 
 have, most of them, told us nothing, and only 
 serve to mark and mock our futile efforts. For, 
 although we do know something of Shakespeare's 
 life, yet, compared with what we long to know, 
 and what it would seem that we should be able to 
 discover, our knowledge is, as knowledge often is, 
 only the narrow boundary which marks the limit 
 of a wide waste of ignorance. We do not know 
 positively the date of Shakespeare's birth, or the 
 house in which he first saw the light, or a single 
 act of his life from the day of his baptism to the 
 month of his obscure and suspicious marriage. 
 We are equally ignorant of the date of that event, 
 and of all else that befell him from its occurrence 
 until we find him in London ; and when he went 
 there we are not sure, or when he finally returned 
 to Stratford. That he wrote the plays which bear 
 his name we know ; but, except by inference, we 
 do not know the years in which they were written, 
 or even that in which either of them was first per- 
 formed. We do not know that he laid his father 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 5 
 
 or his mother in the grave, or stood by the dying 
 bedside of his only son, or that he gave the sanc- 
 tion of his presence to the marriage of his best- 
 loved daughter. Hardly a word that he spoke has 
 reached us, and not a familiar line from his hand, 
 or the record of one interview at which he was 
 present. Yet from the few facts which have been 
 ascertained, and the vague and sometimes incon- 
 gruous traditions which have been preserved con- 
 cerning him, from the circumstances in which he 
 must have been placed, and the mention of and 
 allusion to him by some of his contemporaries, we 
 may discover what manner of man this player-poet 
 was, and learn, though imperfectly, his life's almost 
 uneventful story. 
 
 Warwickshire, in Old England, seems to have 
 been the favorite haunt, if it were not the ances- 
 tral soil, of a family whose name more than any 
 other in our tongue sounds of battle and tells of 
 knightly origin. It is possible, indeed, that Shake- 
 speare is a corruption of some name of more peace- 
 ful meaning, and therefore mayhap (so bloody was 
 ambition's very lowest step of old) of humbler der- 
 ivation ; for in the irregular, phonographic spell- 
 ing of antiquity it appears sometimes as Chacksper 
 and Shaxptir. But upon such an uncertain foun- 
 dation it is hardly safe even to base a doubt ; and 
 as the martial accents come down to us from the 
 verge of the fourteenth century, we may safely 
 
5 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 assume that a name thus spoken in chivalric days 
 was not without chivalric significance * 
 
 The Shakespeares, however, seem never to have 
 risen to the rank of heraldic gentry, or to have es- 
 tablished themselves firmly among the landhold- 
 ers of the county. An old register of the Guild 
 of Saint Anne of KnoUe in Warwickshire, which 
 goes back to 1407, shows that, among many 
 
 * The manner in which the name is spelled in the old records 
 varies almost to the extreme capacity of various letters to pro- 
 duce a sound approximating to that of the name as we pronounce 
 it. It appears as Chacksper, Shaxpur, Shaxper, Schaksper, 
 Schakesper, Schakspere, Schakespeire, Schakespeyr, Shagspere, 
 Saxpere, Shaxpere, Shaxpeare, Shaxsper, Shaxspere, Shaxe- 
 spere, Shakspere, Shakspear, Shakspeere, Schakspear, Shack- 
 speare, Shackespeare, Shackespere, Shakspeyr, Skaksper, Shake- 
 spere, Shakyspere, Shakeseper, Shakespire, Shakespeire, Shake- 
 spear, Shakespeare, Shakaspeare ; and there are even other va- 
 rieties of its orthography. But Shakespeare himself, and his 
 careful friend Ben Jonson, when they printed the name, spelled it 
 Shakespeare^ the hyphen being often used ; and in this form it is 
 found in almost every book of their time in which it appeared. 
 The final e is mere superfluity, and might with propriety be 
 dropped ; but then we should also drop it from Greene, Mar- 
 lowe, Peele, and other names in which it appears. There seems, 
 therefore, to be no good reason for deviating from the orthog- 
 raphy to which Shakespeare and his contemporaries gave a kind 
 of formal recognition. As to the superior martial significance of 
 this name to all others, we have, indeed, Breakspeare, Winspeare, 
 Shakeshaft, Shakelance, Briselance, Hackstaff, Drawswerde, Cur- 
 tlemace, Battleman, and some others of that sort ; but in this 
 regard they all must yield to that which was an attribute of Mars 
 himself as long ago as when Homer wrote : — 
 
 MaiVero 6', ws or 'Aprj? eyxecnroXo?. 
 
 Iliad, 0. 605. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 7 
 
 Shakespeares in whose eternal welfare the broth- 
 ers and sisters were led to concern themselves, 
 there was a Prioress Isabella, whose soul was 
 prayed for in 1505 (did player William know it 
 when he wrote Measure for Measure ?), and a Lady 
 (" Domina") Joan, who seems to have been living 
 in 1527; but these trifling distinctions are the 
 highest which have been discovered in connection 
 with the name. 
 
 Little need we care, however, what was the 
 condition of those Shakespeares who were moul- 
 dering in the earth before he without whom they 
 would never have been heard of appeared upon it. 
 Who his paternal grandfather was, we do not sure- 
 ly know ; but there is hardly a doubt that he was 
 one Richard Shakespeare, farmer, of Snitterfield, 
 a village near Stratford on Avon. This Richard 
 Shakespeare was a tenant of Robert Arden, a 
 gentleman of ancient family but moderate estate, 
 who lived at Wilmecote, three miles from Strat- 
 ford, and who tilled a part of his patrimonial fields, 
 and let a part to humbler husbandmen. The 
 Ardens had been high among the gentry of War- 
 wickshire since a time long before the Conquest, 
 at which period Turchill de Arden was military 
 governer, vice-comes (or viscount, then not an he- 
 reditary dignity) of Warwick Castle. The family 
 took its name from the wooded country, called 
 Arden or Ardern, which lay in the northern and 
 western part of that county, of which at one time 
 
8 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 they had no small part in their possession * Rob- 
 ert Arden's branch of this family held lands in 
 Snitterfield as far back, at least, as the early part 
 of the fifteenth century; and he inherited his 
 property there in direct succession. Two of the 
 family had held places of some honor and respon- 
 sibility in the household of King Henry VI L, — 
 Sir John Arden, who was squire of the body, and 
 his nephew Robert, who was page of the bed- 
 chamber, to that shrewd and thrifty monarch, in 
 whose service they both prospered. This John 
 Arden did not escape great peril of marriage in 
 his youth. For when he was about eighteen 
 years old he was carried off bodily by a certain 
 Richard Bracebridge of Kingsbury, who threat- 
 ened him with his daughter Alice. As to which 
 proposition, indeed, the lad's father had no small 
 difference with the lady's. " Howbeit," says Dug- 
 dale, who tells the story, " at length, by a refer- 
 ence to Sir Simon Mountfort of Colshill, Knight, 
 and Sir Richard Bingham (the Judge who then 
 lived at Middleton), it was determined that the 
 marriage should be solemnized betwixt them, and, 
 in consideration of two hundred marks portion, 
 a convenient jointure settled ; and also that, for 
 the trespass done by the same Richard Brace- 
 
 * The name Ardern, or Wood, was given at first to a forest- 
 covered tract, which extended from the Avon to the Trent on the 
 north, and the Severn on the west ; but it was retained at a very 
 early period by that part only which lay within Warwickshire, 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. g 
 
 bridge in so taking away the young gentleman, he 
 should give to the before specified Walter Arden 
 the best horse that could by him be chosen in 
 Kingsbury Park." * 
 
 Robert Arden, the page of the bedchamber, was 
 grandfather to the Robert Arden who let his land 
 to Richard Shakespeare, — a fact in which we 
 may be sure that landlord and tenant took some 
 pride, because, as we shall see, it was so well re- 
 membered by their grandson. Of the family af- 
 fairs and fortunes of Richard Shakespeare, nothing 
 of interest is known ; but among the Shakespeares 
 of Snitterfield were two, John and Henry, who 
 were of the age which his sons might be, and who 
 were brothers. There appears to have been but 
 one family of the name in the place, and there is 
 hardly room for doubt that they called him father. 
 Henry Shakespeare's name will come up again ; 
 but our concern is with the fortunes of his brother 
 John, who appears to have been a man of thrift 
 and capacity, and withal, as such men are apt to 
 be, somewhat ambitious. Robert Arden had no 
 son to inherit his name, his property, and his bed- 
 chamber honors ; but he had seven daughters. 
 The youngest of these, Mary, who seems to have 
 been her father's favorite, John Shakespeare won 
 to look on him with liking ; and so he married 
 into the landlord's family, and allied his blood to 
 that of the Ardens, with their high old English 
 
 * Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, (fol., 1656,) p. 678. 
 
jQ MEMOIRS OF 
 
 pedigree, stretching past the Conqueror away be- 
 yond the reign of the Confessor. And to us of 
 Endish race it is a matter of some interest to 
 know that Shakespeare came of pure Enghsh 
 blood, and not upon his mother's side of Norman, 
 as some have concluded, because of her gentle 
 and ancient lineage, and because, to use the words 
 of one of them, Arden "sounds like a Norman 
 name." But Arderm, which became Arden, is 
 Celtic, and the name was given to the northern 
 part of Warwickshire by the ancient Britons. 
 And as there has even been a book written to 
 show that Shakespeare was a Celt, it may be well 
 to say here, that the Turchill * de Arden who is 
 above mentioned was the first of his family who 
 assumed a surname. His father s name was Al- 
 win, which, like his own, was common enough of 
 old among the English. He called himself, from 
 the place in which he lived, Turchill de Ardern ; 
 but the Normans called him Turchill de Warwick, 
 because of the ofiice which he held under Edward 
 the Confessor, and which the Conqueror allowed 
 him to retain in spite of his English, or possibly 
 Danish blood, because, like many other powerful 
 Englishmen, he had not helped Harold, and did 
 not oppose Duke William's title.f For it should 
 
 * The ch is hard in this name, which was often written Tur- 
 kill 
 
 t " This Turchill resided here at Warwick, and had great pos- 
 sessions in this county when William Duke of Normaiady invaded 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. jj 
 
 always be remembered that, according to the loose 
 dynastic notions of that day, the Norman bastard 
 had some claim to the throne of England, and 
 that it was the land of a divided people that he 
 successfully invaded. From this people, who 
 swallowed up their conquerors (like themselves, 
 of Teutonic family), and imposed upon them their 
 language, their customs, and their very mental 
 traits, came the man in whose origin we have so 
 great an interest ; and, to all intents and pur- 
 poses, from this people only, even on the mother's 
 side ; for the Ardens, in spite of their position, 
 seem to have intermarried almost altogether with 
 English families.* 
 
 But to return to the humbler members of the 
 Arden family, with whom we have more imme- 
 diate concern. Whether Robert Arden consented 
 to the marriage of the daughter who has given 
 
 England and vanquisht King Harold ; and though he were then 
 a man of especial note and power, yet did he give no assistance 
 to Harold in that battail, as may be easily seen from the favor he 
 
 received at the hands of the Conqueror And though he 
 
 had so much respect from the victorious Norman as to possess 
 these during his life, yet is it most clear that his son [Siward] 
 enjoyed none of them as his heir, but by the favor of the Con- 
 queror By which instance we may partly see how hardly 
 
 the native English were dealt with ; viz., not to enjoy their in- 
 heritances though they did not at all oppose the Conqueror's 
 title, as by that trust committed to this Turchill for enlarging of 
 Warwick Castle may be inferred." — Dugdale's Antiquities of 
 Warwickshire, pp. 302, 303. 
 * See Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, passim. 
 
J 2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 him a consequence in the eyes of posterity that 
 he httle dreamed of, or whether the pedigree and 
 the charms of the fair Mary were the only motives 
 of John Shakespeare's choice, we cannot tell ; be- 
 cause the wedding did not take place until after, 
 and probably not until a full year after, the death 
 of the young lady's father, by which event she be- 
 came the inheritress of a pretty fortune in posses- 
 sion and in reversion. Her father had bequeathed 
 her a farm, of between fifty and sixty acres, in 
 Wilmecote, called Ashbies, with a crop upon the 
 ground, and £6 \is. ^d. in money, beside her 
 share in what was left after legacies were paid ; 
 and she had also a reversionary interest of far 
 greater value than Ashbies in a stepmother's 
 dower estate at Snitterfield, and in some other 
 land at Wilmecote. The small sum of money set 
 down to the young heiress (though in the end she 
 doubtless had much more) may excite a smile, 
 until we remember that money had then nearly 
 six times its present value, and also how very little 
 of actual money is got, or in fact needed, by agri- 
 cultural people, even of comparatively large pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 Robert Arden died about the ist of Decem- 
 ber, 1556, and the first child of John Shakespeare 
 and Mary Arden was baptized on September 
 i5j 155S. Joan Shakespeare received her name 
 in the Church of the Holy Trinity, the parish 
 church of Stratford on Avon, where her father 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 13 
 
 had for some years been settled, and had become 
 a prosperous and rising man. When he went 
 thither, we do not know ; but he was there, and a 
 householder in Henley Street, in 1552. His chief 
 occupation seems to have been that of a glover ; 
 for he is so styled in a law document issued in 
 June, 1556. But he was also engaged in hus- 
 bandry, and in company with another person ; 
 for on the 19th of November in the same year 
 he brought a suit against Henry Field, who un- 
 justly kept from him eighteen quarters of barley. 
 John Shakespeare's private and public fortunes 
 advanced steadily and rapidly for twenty years 
 from the time when he first appears in Stratford. 
 It is true that he could not write his name ; 
 but that was no disgrace, and little impediment, 
 at a time when men much above him in social 
 position were equally incapable. In 1556 he pur- 
 chased the copyhold of two houses, one with a gar- 
 den and croft, and one — that in Henley Street 
 — with a garden only. In the course of the next 
 year he acquired other property (how considera- 
 ble for a man in his station, we have already seen) 
 by his marriage. In this year he was regarded 
 as of sufficient substance and importance to be 
 marked as one of the jury of the court-leet, upon 
 which he served soon afterward ; and at this date 
 he was also appointed ale-taster, — an office of 
 which, in spite of its humble name, the mighty 
 consumption of that fluid in Old England must 
 
,. MEMOIRS OF 
 
 have made the duties arduous, though pleasant, 
 and the perquisites acceptable. He must have 
 o-iven the buro:esses of Stratford cause to speak 
 well of him over the Hquor that they loved ; for 
 in 1557 they elected him one of their number, and 
 they were only fourteen. The next year saw him 
 a constable, and also the father of the girl who 
 was called after him; and in 1559 he was re- 
 elected one of the keepers of the Queen's peace 
 in Stratford. About this time he appears to have 
 dropped his glover's trade. It was, indeed, quite 
 inconsistent with the notions of propriety in that 
 day that the husband of an Arden and an heiress 
 should be an artisan ; and this consideration could 
 not but have its weight with the young burgess, 
 now that he had land and beeves. The year 1561 
 saw him made an afifeeror in the spring, and before 
 the leaves began to fall, elected chamberlain. It 
 was the duty of an affeeror to impose fines upon 
 offenders who were punishable arbitrarily for mis- 
 demeanors to which no express penalty was at- 
 tached by statute, ■ — an office only to be filled by 
 a man of discretion and integrity ; and as John 
 Shakespeare, according to the date when he is 
 with good reason believed to have been born, was 
 at this time but thirty or thirty-one years old, his 
 appointment to this office by the court indicates, 
 not only soundness of character on his part, but 
 somewhat unusual ripeness of judgment. He 
 served as chamberlain two years, in the second 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 15 
 
 of which another daughter was born to him, who 
 was called Margaret. But Mary Arden's little 
 family did not thrive like her husband's business. 
 A few months lightened the young mother's arms, 
 to lay a load upon her heart. Margaret as well 
 Joan died in early infancy. 
 
 To the now childless couple there came conso- 
 lation and a welcome care in their first-born son, 
 whom, on the 26th of April, 1564, they christened 
 and called William. The Reverend (or, as he was 
 then called, Sir) John Breechgirdle probably per- 
 formed that office. Of the day of William Shake- 
 speare's birth there exists, and probably there was 
 made, no record. Why should it have been other- 
 wise ? He was only the son of a Warwickshire 
 yeoman, a burgess of a little rural town. And 
 there were two score at least of children born that 
 year in Stratford, who, in the eyes of their parents 
 and of the good townsfolk, were of just as much 
 importance, and of whose appearance in the world 
 no other note was taken than such as tells us of 
 his advent, — the entry of their christening in the 
 parish register. As yet it was not the custom to 
 record upon the blank leaves of the Bible the 
 dates of life and death in humble families ; and 
 had John Shakespeare owned a Bible, neither he 
 nor even his higher-born wife could have written 
 the words to read which, if they had endured, 
 men would have made a pilgrimage. All unsus- 
 
j^ MEMOIRS OF 
 
 pecting what he was whom she had borne and 
 whom she cherished in her bosom, the mother of 
 WilHam Shakespeare could have looked on him 
 only as the probable inheritor of his father's little 
 wealth, the possible recipient of his father's little 
 honors, or mayhap, in some moment of high hope, 
 the occupant of a position like that of his mater- 
 nal grandfather. And had he become a peer in- 
 stead of a player, the day of his birth might have 
 been no less uncertain. Tradition says it was the 
 23d of April ; and the old custom of christening 
 the third day after birth, though it was far from 
 universal, if it did not give rumor a hint, gives 
 tradition some support. 
 
 A court roll tells us that in 1552 John Shake- 
 speare lived in Henley Street ; and another, that 
 he bought the copyhold of a house in that street 
 in 1556. Tradition points out a house in Henley 
 Street, which we know belonged to John Shake- 
 speare, as the birthplace of his illustrious son, 
 who himself became its owner ; and the proba- 
 bility of the truth of this tradition amounts, to all 
 intents and purposes, to certainty. Neglect, sub- 
 division, and base uses had reduced this house at 
 the beginning of the present century to a very 
 forlorn and unsightly condition. But as late as 
 1769 it preserved enough of its original form to 
 show that William Shakespeare was born and 
 passed his childhood and his adolescent years in 
 a home which was not only pretty and pictu- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 17 
 
 resque, but very comfortable and unusually com- 
 modious for a man in his father's station in the 
 middle of the sixteenth century. For in the reign 
 of Elizabeth domestic architecture was in its in- 
 fancy. Something had been done for the house- 
 hold comfort of noblemen and gentlemen of large 
 estate ; but almost nothing for the homes of that 
 large class, composed, in the words of Agar, of 
 those who have neither poverty nor riches, but 
 food convenient for them, and which now gives 
 the architect his chief employment. Old abbeys, 
 priories, and granges, recently sequestered, and 
 newly-built halls, were taking the place of cold, 
 crumbling castles as dwellings for the rich ; and 
 between these and the humble farm-house or 
 village cot, often built, as the haughty Spaniard 
 wrote in the reign of Elizabeth's sister, " of sticks 
 and dirt," there was no middle structure. People 
 corresponding in position to those whose means 
 and tastes would now insure them as much com- 
 fort in their homes as a king has in his palace, 
 and even simple elegance beside, then lived in 
 houses which in their best estate would seem at 
 the present day rude, cheerless, and confined, to 
 any man not bred in poverty. In 1847 the Shake- 
 speare house passed into the hands of an associa- 
 tion, under whose care it has been renovated ; but 
 unfortunately, like some of the Shakespeare po- 
 etry, not restored to a close resemblance to its first 
 condition ; though that was perhaps in both cases 
 
 B 
 
jg MEMOIRS OF 
 
 impossible. Whether it was in this house that 
 John Shakespeare and his wife, with their only 
 precious child, stayed out the plague which vis- 
 ited Stratford in 1564, or whether they fled to 
 some uninfected place, we do not know. But 
 families did not move freely in those days, or 
 easily find house-room ; and on the 30th of Au- 
 gust in that year John Shakespeare, as the Strat- 
 ford register tells, was at a hall or meeting, held 
 in a garden, probably for fear of infection. On 
 this occasion he gave twelvepence for the relief 
 of poor sufferers. The highest sum given was 
 seven shillings and fourpence, the lowest, six- 
 pence ; and there were but two burgesses who 
 gave more than twelvepence. In September he 
 gave sixpence more, and in October eighteen- 
 pence. It may be assumed as quite certain, then, 
 that the Shakespeares remained at Stratford dur- 
 ing the plague, thus leaving William, like any 
 other child, in peril of the pestilence. They 
 passed through a period of fearful trial. The 
 scourge made Stratford desolate. In six months 
 one sixth of their neighbors were buried. But 
 although around them there was hardly a house 
 in which there was not one dead, there was a 
 charm upon their threshold, and William Shake- 
 speare lived. 
 
 In the next year the father was chosen one of 
 the fourteen aldermen of the town ; and in 1568 
 he was made high bailiff, which office he filled 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. jg 
 
 one year. He continued to prosper, and in 1570 
 he took under his cultivation yet other lands, a 
 farm called Ington, at the then goodly rent of 
 £8. The year 1571 saw him chief alderman; 
 and in 1575 he bought two freehold houses in 
 Henley Street, with gardens and orchards. Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare, therefore, at ten years of age, 
 was the son of one of the most substantial and 
 respected men of Stratford, who was one of its 
 fourteen burgesses, and who had rapidly attained, 
 step by step, the highest honors in the gift of his 
 townsmen. He was styled Master Shakespeare, 
 — a designation the manly style of which we have 
 belittled into Mister, voiding it at the same time 
 of its honorable significance. As high bailiff and 
 chief alderman he sat as justice of the peace, and 
 thus even became " worshipful." There has been 
 much dispute as to what was his occupation at this 
 time ; his glover's trade having been before aban- 
 doned. Rowe. on Betterton's authority, says that 
 he was "a considerable dealer in wool." John 
 Aubrey the antiquary, or rather qtnd-tunc, says 
 that he was a butcher ; in a deed dated 1579, ^^^ 
 in another seventeen years later, he is called a 
 yeoman ; and his name appears in a list of the 
 gentlemen and freeholders of Barlichway Hun- 
 dred in 1580. One of his fellow-aldermen, who 
 was his predecessor in the office of bailiff, was a 
 butcher ; but with our knowledge of his landed 
 possessions and his consequent agricultural occu- 
 
20 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 pation, we may be pretty sure that his nearest 
 approach to that useful business was in having 
 his own cattle killed on his own premises. Wool 
 he mio-ht well have sold from the backs of his own 
 flocks without being properly a wool-dealer. But 
 what was his distinctive occupation is a matter 
 of very little consequence, except as it may have 
 affected the early occupation of his son, and of 
 not much, even in that regard. He was plainly 
 in a condition of life which secured that son the 
 means of a healthy physical and moral develop- 
 ment, and which, if he had lived in New England 
 a century or a century and a half later, would 
 have made him regarded, if a well-mannered man, 
 as fit company for the squire and the parson and 
 the best people of the township, and emboldened 
 him perhaps to aspire to a seat in the General 
 Court of the Colony. 
 
 II. 
 
 Stratford on Avon, where William Shakespeare 
 was born and bred, is a place the antiquity of which 
 is so great as to be uncertain. It was known as 
 Stratford or Streatford, i. e. Street-ford, three hun- 
 dred years before the Conquest Having its ori- 
 gin probably in a wayside ale-house, boatman's 
 cabin, or blacksmith's forge at a ford of the Avon 
 River, on which it stands, it grew slowly to an 
 insignificant size through long centuries. The 
 Avon is one of those gently flowing rural streams 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 21 
 
 which, unvexed by factories, undisturbed by traffic, 
 and spanned by soUd bridges which have sounded 
 to the tread of mail-clad men, make the soil of 
 England rich and her landscapes beautiful. The 
 ford, which was the nucleus of the town, and gave 
 it half its name, was on the high road or street 
 which gave the other half, and which stretches 
 from the hamlet of Henley in Arden through 
 Stratford across the Avon on towards London ; 
 and thus the names of Shakespeare's native place, 
 of the street on which stood his boyhood's home, 
 and of his mother's family, were happily associated. 
 Stratford is now a clean and quiet little place, 
 containing about four thousand inhabitants, who 
 seem to live comfortably enough without trade or 
 manufactures. But in itself it has no attraction ; 
 and towards the end of the reign of that shrewd 
 and selfish termagant whom our forefathers called 
 Good Queen Bess, it would have appeared to 
 modern eyes unsightly. It then contained about 
 fifteen hundred inhabitants, who dwelt chiefly in 
 thatched cottages, which straggled over the ground, 
 too near together for rural beauty, too far apart to 
 seem snug and neighborly ; and scattered through 
 the gardens and orchards around the best of these 
 were neglected stables, cow-yards, and sheep-cotes. 
 Many of the meaner houses were without chim- 
 neys or glazed windows. The streets were cum- 
 bered with logs and blocks, and foul with offal, 
 mud, muck-heaps, and reeking stable refuse, the 
 
22 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 accumulation of which the town ordinances and 
 the infliction of fines could not prevent, even be- 
 fore the doors of the better sort of people. The 
 very first we hear of John Shakespeare himself, 
 in 1552, is that he and a certain Humphrey Rey- 
 nolds and Adrian Quiney ^^fecerunt stergtdna- 
 rium" in the quarter called Henley Street, against 
 the order of the court ; for which dirty piece of 
 business they were " in misericordial^ as they well 
 deserved. But the next year John Shakespeare 
 and Adrian Quiney repeated the unsavory offence, 
 and this time in company with the bailiff himself. 
 This noisome condition of their streets, however, 
 did not indicate a peculiar carelessness of dirt 
 among the Stratford folk, at a time when in noble- 
 men's houses, and even in palaces, the great halls, 
 in which the household ate, were offensive, because 
 the rushes with which the floors were strewed, by 
 way of carpet, remained until they became mouldy, 
 and beneath were bones and crusts, dogs' refuse, 
 that were left there to decay. Launce gives us a 
 glimpse of the habits and manners of those days, 
 in that touching remonstrance which he addresses 
 to Crab, upon his sad misbehavior when he was 
 presented to Madam Silvia. But, with the strange, 
 sad incongruity of early times, although squalor 
 and discomfort thus pervaded the little town of 
 Stratford, it had public structures beautiful and 
 venerable, — such as now-a-days would not be 
 erected in a place of fifty times its size. Now, a 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 23 
 
 rich river-side city of fifty thousand inhabitants, 
 nearly all of whom are comfortably, and a large 
 proportion of them elegantly, housed, is content 
 to be approached over a serviceable wooden bridge, 
 resting on strong, but homely, stone piers ; the 
 people worship according to their choice in vari- 
 ous, perhaps pretty, but almost surely unpretend- 
 ing churches ; if there be other market than the 
 butchers' and hucksters' stalls scattered through 
 the streets, it presents no other attractions than 
 those of convenience and cleanliness ; and there 
 is no private dwelling so superior and lofty, that 
 it looks down upon the others round it as the 
 homes of an inferior caste. But the little nest of 
 plaster-walled, thatch-roofed cottages, most of them 
 of a single floor, in which William Shakespeare 
 was born, was approached by a noble stone bridge 
 of fourteen arches, built at his own expense by 
 Sir Hugh Clopton, a Stratford grandee and Mayor 
 of London. The single parish church was a col- 
 legiate foundation, and had had a chantry of five 
 priests. In size it was superior to, and in general 
 appearance not unlike, the largest church in the 
 United States, its namesake Trinity, in New York. 
 Its interior walls were decorated with rude but 
 striking fresco paintings, representing, among oth- 
 er subjects, some groups of the Dance Macabre, 
 otherwise known as the Dance of Death ; and 
 around its aisles and chancel end were monuments 
 and effigies of departed great folk of that neigh- 
 
2A MEMOIRS OF 
 
 borhood. There was the Chapel of the Guild of 
 the Holy Cross, a fine, well-proportioned building 
 of the earlier Tudor style of ecclesiastical archi- 
 tecture, and some parts of it very much older, 
 which, after the dissolution of religious houses by 
 that conscientious Protestant, Henry VHL, had 
 been used by the endowed and incorporated 
 Grammar School of Stratford. The walls of this 
 building were also decorated with paintings of 
 sacred and historical subjects. In the open place, 
 where the markets and the fairs were held, was a 
 market cross with clock and belfry, from the steps 
 of which the public crier performed his clamorous 
 duty. Hard by the Chapel of the Guild was the 
 Great House, or New Place, a grand mansion 
 then a hundred years old, and more, built by Sir 
 Hugh Clopton, of bridge memory, who lived and 
 died there ; and near the Great House was the 
 college, a fine monastic structure, which had been 
 converted into a dwelling, and where lived one 
 John a Combe, a wealthy gentleman who lent 
 money upon interest and good security. From 
 the narrow limits of the town the country stretched 
 away, with gentle undulations, into a broad expanse 
 of meadows and cornfields, bright with grass and 
 grain, laced with little brooks and divided by the 
 ever stone-bridged Avon, dotted with old clumps 
 of trees, darkened with remnants of the ancient 
 forest, enlivened with rustic hamlets, and adorned 
 with parks and gardens. Clopton House, old, 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 25 
 
 manorial, and substantial, the home of Sir Hugh's 
 family, was only two miles off; and about four 
 miles distant, on another road, was Charlecote, a 
 new country-seat built by Sir Thomas Lucy, in 
 the form of an E, to please his royal mistress, in- 
 satiable of flattery. Only nine miles away was 
 the county town, and the grand old feudal pile of 
 Warwick Castle, dating back to the time of Alfred, 
 of which William Shakespeare's maternal ancestor 
 had been governor ; and five miles farther was 
 Kenilworth, not quite so old, but not less magnifi- 
 cent, where the Earl of Leicester, the Queen's 
 favorite, was lately come as lord, and where within 
 a few years he had spent £ 60,000, or according 
 to our present measure of value $ 1,500,000, in 
 making the place grand and beautiful. 
 
 It was in such a town and amid such a country 
 that William Shakespeare passed his early years ; 
 and a glance at them has been worth our while ; 
 for when he left them for a wider, busier, and more 
 varied field of observation, marvellous as were the 
 flexibility of his nature and the range and activity 
 of his thought, his memory never lost the forms, 
 nor did his soul cast off the influences, which had 
 surrounded him in boyhood. As to the people of 
 Stratford, they were much like others of their class 
 and condition; simple folk, contentedly looking 
 after their fields, their cattle, and their Httle trade, 
 not troubling themselves about the great world 
 which lay beyond their ken, but somewhat over- 
 
26 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 ready to take the law of one another upon small 
 provocation, and strongly inclined to Puritanism. 
 If they had one trait which seems more prominent 
 than any other, it was a great capacity for liquor, 
 which they tested on every possible occasion. 
 The sums which they spent in providing them- 
 selves and each other, and the strangers within 
 their gates, with ale possets, claret, and sack and 
 sugar, must have been no small proportion of the 
 yearly outlay of the town. And yet perhaps in 
 this respect they were but of their day and gen- 
 eration. 
 
 What was the education of William Shake- 
 speare were a question indeed of interest to all 
 reasonable creatures, and to those who think that 
 education makes great men, of singular impor- 
 tance. But of his teachers we know nothing, 
 save of one, — his father. What were his moth- 
 er's traits of character, and whether she had 
 transmitted any of them to her son, we cannot 
 tell. In which ignorance there is a kind of bliss to 
 those people who have taken up the novel notion 
 of the day, that men of mark derive their mental 
 and their moral gifts, not from the father, but the 
 mother. A fungus fancy, which must have sprung 
 up while men could forget that Philip the Great 
 of Macedon was ecHpsed by his son Alexander ; 
 that there was a family of Scipios, all eminent ; 
 that Hamilcar, one of the master generals and 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 27 
 
 Statesmen of antiquity, would have come down to 
 us as the great Carthaginian, had his abiUties and 
 his fortunes not been surpassed by those of his 
 son Hannibal ; that Charles Martel, a born king 
 of men, who founded a great monarchy, was 
 father to Pepin, who, with the new-created power 
 which he inherited, inherited also the ability to 
 preserve, to consolidate, and extend it, and whose 
 son was the central figure of the Middle Ages, 
 the imperial Charlemagne ; that Henry H., great 
 after the fashion of his time and of the Planta- 
 genets, transmitted all his energy, his craft, and 
 his military genius to his son Richard the Lion- 
 hearted, great also after the Plantagenet fashion, 
 and who equalled him in most of his qualities 
 and surpassed him in others ; that strong-minded, 
 strong-willed Henry VHI. had his strong-minded, 
 strong-willed daughter Elizabeth by that weak 
 coquette, Anne Boleyn ; that his great Lord 
 Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was son to Sir 
 Thomas More, Justice of the King's Bench, a 
 man "of excellent wit and judgment," yet sur- 
 passed by his son in these points, as in others ; 
 that William, the great Prince of Orange, was 
 succeeded by his son, Prince Maurice of Nassau, 
 one of the two great captains of his day ; that 
 William Pitt, called " the Great Commoner," who 
 became Earl of Chatham, had for his son the 
 other William Pitt, the greater commoner, while 
 Chatham's most formidable rival, Henry Fox, 
 
2Z 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 who raised himself to be first Lord Holland, 
 transmitted his talents, though not his titles or 
 his lands, to his yet more eminent son, Charles 
 James Fox ; and that Julius Scaliger would have 
 been the first of scholars and critics, had not the 
 splendid abilities of his son, Joseph Scaliger, made 
 him the second. The Mendelssohn who came 
 between Moses the scholar and Felix the musi- 
 cian used smilingly to say that he was the son 
 of the great Mendelssohn and the father of the 
 great Mendelssohn. But this single case would 
 prove nothing, even if it were true that the mid- 
 dleman had a woman of mark for his wife. In- 
 tellect, like gout, sometimes skips a generation, 
 yet none the less follows the blood ; but some- 
 times it is also inherited by immediate descent. 
 The truth is, that upon the very interesting 
 subject of transmitted qualities in the human 
 race, we know almost nothing. But we do know 
 that, in Shakespeare's own words, "good wombs 
 have borne bad sons " ; and even a little observa- 
 tion will discover that the converse is equally 
 true, and that mothers, as well as fathers, of vi- 
 cious character or feeble intellect have had chil- 
 dren born to them upon whose moral integrity 
 or mental endowments they have looked with 
 perplexity and wonder.* 
 
 * Whoever thinks this subject of sufficient interest and mo- 
 ment to examine it, could not fail, I am sure, to add many similar 
 and perhaps more striking examples to those above mentioned, 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 29 
 
 Mary Arden may have been such a woman as 
 it would please us to imagine the mother of Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare ; but the limits of our knowl- 
 edge oblige us to look upon him during childhood 
 only under the tutelage of the father, whose good 
 sense and strong character are shown by his rapid 
 and steady rise of fortune and his advancement 
 among his townsmen. His son was taught, we 
 may be sure, to fear God and honor the King,* and, 
 in the words of the Catechism, to learn and labor 
 truly to get his own living, and do his duty in that 
 state of life to which it had pleased God to call 
 him ; for that was the sum and substance of the 
 
 which have occurred to me only as I have been writing. In the 
 brief annals of this Republic we find the two Adamses, John and 
 John Quincy, father and son ; and Daniel Webster, the equal in 
 intellectual capacity of any statesman of his generation, had for 
 his sire a man of such singular ability and great force of charac- 
 ter, that we cannot be sure that his son surpassed him, except by 
 reason of a higher culture and a wider field of labor. From the 
 memoir of his life by George Nesmith, we learn that he went 
 through with honor an amount of public service rarely rendered 
 by a single individual. He was a " Selectman " in Salisbury nine 
 years, Town-Clerk three years, Representative four years. Senator 
 four years, a Delegate to two State Constitutional Conventions, 
 Elector for President when Washington was first chosen to that of- 
 fice, a county magistrate thirty-five years, and a Judge of the Court 
 of Common Pleas fifteen years, which office he held at the time 
 of his death in 1806. Judge Webster also filled several offices in 
 the village church, was elected chairman of the town-meeting in 
 Salisbury forty-three times ; he served in the "Old French War," 
 was a captain during the Revolution, and a colonel in 1784. 
 
 * ^^ Moriamur pro rege nostra,^'' — as applicable to Elizabeth of 
 England as to Maria Theresa of Hungary. 
 
-Q MEMOIRS OF 
 
 home-teaching of our forefathers. For book in- 
 struction, there was the Free Grammar School of 
 Stratford, well endowed by Thomas Jolyffe in the 
 reign of Edward IV., — forever therefore let his 
 name be honored ! — where, unless it differed from 
 all others of its kind, he could have learned Latin 
 and some Greek. Some English too ; but not 
 much, for English was held in scorn by the 
 scholars of those days, and long after. The only 
 qualifications for admission to this school were 
 residence in the town, seven years of age, and 
 abiUty to read. That the sons of the chief al- 
 derman of Stratford went there, we could hardly 
 have entertained a doubt, even had not Betterton 
 learned the tradition that William had been bred 
 there for some time. The masters of the school 
 between 1572 and 1580 were Thomas Hunt, the 
 parson of the neighboring village of Luddington, 
 and Thomas Jenkins. Had either the English- 
 man or the Welshman known when they breeched 
 Shakespeare primus that he would have his re- 
 venge in making the one sit for his portrait as 
 Holofernes, and the other as Sir Hugh Evans, 
 they would doubtless have taken out their satis- 
 faction grievously in advance upon the spot. 
 Could any one with power of conviction upon his 
 tongue have told them what he was whom they 
 were flogging, they would have dropped the birch 
 and fled the school in awe unspeakable. There is 
 better discipline, even for a dull or a vicious boy, 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ^j 
 
 than beating ; but, aside from question of the kind 
 of training to which he was subjected, it was well 
 perhaps for William Shakespeare that his masters 
 knew only what he then was. Insight of the 
 future would not always bring good fortune. 
 
 At school Shakespeare acquired some knowl- 
 edge of Latin and of Greek. For not only does 
 Ben Jonson tell us that he had a little of the 
 former and less of the latter, but his very frequent 
 use of Latin derivatives in their radical sense 
 shows a somewhat thoughtful and observant study 
 of that language ; and although he has left fewer 
 traces of his personal feelings and experience upon 
 his works than any modern writer, he wrote one 
 passage bearing upon this subject, and telling a 
 plain story. Warwick, pleading to King Henry 
 IV. in extenuation of the fondness of Prince Hal 
 for wild associates, says : — 
 
 "My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite. 
 The Prince but studies his companions. 
 Like a strange tongue ; wherein, to gain the language, 
 'T is needful that the most immodest word 
 Be look'd upon and learn'd ; which once attain'd, 
 Your Highness knows, comes to no farther use, 
 But to be known and hated." 
 
 Second Part of King He7iry IV., Act IV. So. 4. 
 
 Genius does not teach facts ; and every man who 
 has himself been through the curriculum will see 
 that the writer of that passage had surely, at least, 
 passed through the same course before the days 
 of expurgated classics. Jonson's phrase, " small 
 
^2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Latin and less Greek," has been generally taken 
 as meaning a mere smattering of the first, and 
 nothing at all of the second ; but without suffi- 
 cient reason, in my opinion. So does Edward 
 Bathurst, B. D., in his memoir of his friend Arthur 
 Wilson, the author of TAe Inconstant Ladie, writ- 
 ten before 1646, say that "He had little skill in 
 the Latin tongue and less in the Greek, a good 
 readiness in the French and some smattering in 
 the Dutch " ; * and yet, according to the same 
 authority, Wilson had been a fellow-commoner of 
 Trinity College, Oxford, where he had been regu- 
 lar and studious ; and by his own account he 
 could, at a pinch, speak Latin. f Little and much 
 are comparative terms, the value of which can be 
 determined only when we know the standard ac- 
 cording to which they are used. Jonson's schol- 
 arship, though not profound or various, seems to 
 have been somewhat thorough and exact, and 
 Bathurst was probably a man entirely given up 
 to study. Both, we may be sure, would speak 
 very lightly of the Latin and Greek of many men 
 now-a-days who have well earned their degree of 
 Master of Arts, and who can make good use of 
 their academical acquirements. From report and 
 from the evidence of his works we may reasonably 
 conclude that WilHam Shakespeare read, as boys 
 
 * " Character of Wilson," &c., in the Appendix to The In- 
 cojistant Ladie. Ed. 1 814, p. 156. 
 
 t " Observations of God's Providence in the Tract of my 
 Life." Ibid., p. 128. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ^3 
 
 read, the easier classical Latin authors at Strat- 
 ford Grammar School, and added to them the fa- 
 vorite of that day, old Baptista Mantuan, whom 
 he quotes in Loves Labor 's Lost, and that he re- 
 tained enough of what he learned to have thereby 
 a finer insight and more thorough mastery of 
 English, if not to enjoy Virgil and Terence in the 
 original. It is true, as Farmer has shown, that 
 his works furnish evidence undeniable that in pre- 
 paring himself to write upon Greek and Roman 
 subjects he used the existing translations of the 
 classics. But how many who for years have spent 
 a part of every day in the study of Greek and 
 Latin do the same, when college exercises are 
 driven out of mind by the duties and labors for 
 which college studies are but discipline, and turn 
 laboriously from translation to original only when 
 they wish to examine some particular passage 
 closely. When, in The Taming of the Shrew, 
 Tranio quotes a passage from Terence, he is in- 
 accurate, and gives it not as it appears in the text 
 of the Latin dramatist, but as it is misquoted in the 
 Latin Grammar of William Lilly, whose accidence 
 was in common use among our forefathers when 
 Shakespeare was a boy, and held its place indeed 
 much longer.* But, even if this showed that 
 
 * " Quid agas ? nisi ut te redimas captum quam queas 
 Minimo." Eumtchus, Act I. Sc. i. 
 
 ** Redime te captum quam queas minimo." 
 
 The Taming of the Shrnv, Act I. Sc. i. 
 2* C 
 
-, . MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Shakespeare had not read Terence, which it does 
 not, it surely does show that he had studied Mas- 
 ter Lilly's book, which, be it remembered, is itself 
 not in English, but in Latin, after the strange, 
 pedantic fashion of the times when it was written. 
 The scene between Sir Hugh and William, in 
 The Meny Wives of Windsor, is as surely evi- 
 dence of the writer's knowledge of the Latin gram- 
 mar. " Shigulariter, noininativo, hie, hcec, hocl^ 
 does not lie very far beyond the threshold of that 
 elementary book ; but the question which elicits 
 the declension, " What is he, William, that does 
 lend articles 1 " by which the pragmatic parson 
 tries to trip the poor boy up, although borrowed 
 from Lilly, shows an intelligent acquaintance with 
 the rudiments of the Latin language. 
 
 Italian and French, we may be sure, were not 
 taught at Stratford Grammar School ; but this is 
 the most convenient occasion on which to say that 
 Shakespeare appears to have learned something 
 of them before he became too busy a man to 
 study. It was probably in his earlier London 
 years. Both these languages, and especially the 
 former, were much in vogue among the cultivated 
 people of that period. Shakespeare was likely to 
 be thrown into the society of those who taught 
 them ; and their instructions he might well re- 
 quite, if he were sparing of money, by orders of 
 admission to the theatre, which have been held 
 to pay many a larger debt in later times. He 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 35 
 
 has left several traces of a knowledge of Italian, 
 which might be great or small, scattered through 
 his plays ; but in two passages there are indica- 
 tions of an acquaintance with two Italian poets, 
 which, though hitherto passed by, cannot, I think, 
 be mistaken. When Othello, in the dawning of 
 his jealousy, chides Desdemona for being without 
 the handkerchief, his first love-token, he tells her : 
 
 " There 's magic in the web of it. 
 A sibyl, that had number'd in the world 
 The sun to course two hundred compasses, 
 In her prophetic fury, sew'd the work." 
 
 The phrase "prophetic fury" is so striking, so 
 picturesque, and so peculiar, that in itself it ex- 
 cites remark, and remains upon the memory as 
 the key-note of the passage ; but when we regard 
 it as applied to mood in which a web was woven 
 or embroidered, all these characteristics are much 
 enhanced. Now in the Orlando Furioso there is 
 the following passage about a tent which Cas- 
 sandra gave to Hector, and which descended 
 through Cleopatra to Constantine, who gave it 
 to Melissa : — 
 
 " Eran de gli anni appresso che duo milia 
 Che fu quel ricco padiglion trapunto. 
 Una donzella de la terra d' Ilia 
 Ch' avea 11 furor profetico congiunto 
 Con studio di gran tempo e con vigilia, 
 Lo fece di sua man, di tutto punto." * 
 
 Canto XLVI. St. 80. 
 
 * Thus rendered by Rose : — 
 
 *' Two thousand tedious years were nigh complete, 
 Since this fair work was fasioned by the lore 
 
^5 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Here we have the identical thought, and, in their 
 ItaUan form, the identical v^ord^, ftiror prof etico, 
 used in the description of a woman, sibyl-like, 
 if not a sibyl, weaving a cloth of magic virtues. 
 There is, too, in both passages, the idea of a great 
 lapse of time, though in one it is appHed to the 
 weaver and in the other to the thing woven. It 
 would seem impossible that this striking coinci- 
 dence of thought, of incident, and of language 
 could be merely accidental ; and there was no 
 other translation of the Orlando Furioso into 
 English in Shakespeare's time than Sir John 
 Harrington's, pubhshed in 1591, and in that the 
 phrase "prophetic fury," or any one like it, does 
 not occur.* 
 
 Again, when lago, distilling his poison into 
 Othello's ears, utters the often quoted lines, — 
 
 " Who steals my purse, steals trash ; 't is something, nothing ; 
 'T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave to thousands ; 
 But he that filches from me my good name 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
 And makes me poor indeed," — 
 
 he but repeats with little variation this stanza of 
 Berni's Orlando Innamorato, of which poem, to 
 this day, there is no English version : -— 
 
 Of Trojan maid, warmed with prophetic heat ; 
 
 Who 'mid long labor, and 'mid vigil sore, 
 With her own fingers all the storied sheet 
 
 Of the pavilion had embroidered o'er." 
 
 * See Harrington's Orlajtdo Furioso in English^ Canto XLVI. 
 St. 64, ed. 1 59 1. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 37 
 
 " Chi ruba un corno un cavallo un anello, 
 E simil cose, ha qualche discrezione, 
 E potrebbe chiamarsi ladroncello ; 
 Ma quel che ruba la reputazione, 
 E de 1' altrui fatiche si'fa bello, 
 Si puo chiamare assassino e ladrone ; 
 E tanto pill odio e pena e degno 
 Quanto piii del dover trapassa il segno." * 
 
 Canto LL St. i. 
 
 Now, when we consider that the faculty and 
 habit of assimilating what he read was one of 
 Shakespeare's mental traits, and that both these 
 passages of his, so identical in thought and in 
 expression with others in two Italian poets who 
 wrote on kindred subjects, occur in a play founded 
 upon an Italian novel which had not been ren- 
 dered into our language in his day, can we reason- 
 ably doubt that he was sufficiently an Italian 
 scholar to read Ariosto, Berni, and Giraldi Cin- 
 thio in the original ? f 
 
 * As no English translation has been made of the Orlando In- 
 namorato, I must ask the reader who cannot command the origi- 
 nal to be content with this rendering of the above stanza : — 
 
 The man who steals a horn, a horse, a ring. 
 Or such a trifle, thieves with moderation, 
 
 And may be justly called a robberling ; 
 But he who takes away a reputation, 
 
 And pranks in feathers from another's wing, 
 His deed is robbery, assassination. 
 
 And merits punishment so much the greater 
 
 As he to right and truth is more a traitor. 
 
 t Mr. Halliwell in his Life of William Shakespeare, p. 190, 
 quotes from a MS. entitled The New Metamorphosis ^ which was 
 
^g MEMOIRS OF 
 
 The consideration of this subject has diverted 
 us from the course of Shakespeare's Ufe, and has 
 given us an anticipatory glance of one of its few 
 landmarks; which, however, are so well known, 
 that I have not sought and shall not seek solici- 
 tously to follow them in due order. 
 
 John Shakespeare's prosperity hardly lasted to 
 his eldest son's adolescence. Betterton heard a 
 tradition, that the narrowness of his circum- 
 stances and the need of his son's assistance at 
 home forced him to withdraw William from 
 school ; and the evidence of town registers and 
 of court records corroborates the story. In 1578, 
 when the young poet was but fourteen years old, 
 his father mortgaged the farm at Ashbies for 
 forty pounds to Edmund Lambert. That this 
 step was taken, not to raise money for a venture 
 in trade or for a new purchase, but on account of 
 serious embarrassment, is shown by a concur- 
 
 written "by J. M. Gent. 1600," the following lines, which he, not 
 having Berni's stanza in mind, naturally regards as an imitation 
 of the passage of Othello in question, and therefore, of course, 
 as evidence that that play was written before the date of the 
 MS. : — 
 
 " The highwayman that robs one of his purse 
 Is not soe bad ; nay, these are ten times worse ! 
 For these doe rob men of their pretious name, 
 And in exchange give obloquy and shame." 
 
 But J. M.'s lines are, on the contrary, a manifest imitation of 
 Berni's, rather than Shakespeare's ; and if they have any bear- 
 ing at all upon the question of the date of Othello, (which in my 
 opinion they have not,) they show that it was written after 1600. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 39 
 
 rence of significant events, all pointing in the 
 latter direction. In the same year when his fel- 
 low-aldermen assessed themselves 6s. Sd. each to- 
 wards the equipment of pikemen, billmen, and 
 an archer, he is set down as to pay only 3^-. 4d. 
 Again in that year when the aldermen paid 4d. 
 each a week for the relief of the poor, it was or- 
 dered that John Shakespeare should not be taxed 
 to pay anything. In March, 1578-9, the inhab- 
 itants of Stratford having been assessed for the 
 purchase of arms, he failed to contribute his 
 quota. In October, 1579, ^^ sold his wife's share 
 in the Snitterfield property, and in 1580 a rever- 
 sionary interest in the same, — the latter for forty 
 pounds. Six years afterwards his little wealth 
 had found such wings that, a distraint having 
 been issued against him, the return made upon it 
 was, that he had nothing upon which to distrain ; 
 whereupon a writ of capias was issued against his 
 person, — he who as high bailiff had but a short 
 time before issued such writs against others.* 
 He seems even to have been in hiding about this 
 time ; for the town records show that in 1586 he 
 was deprived of his alderman's office, the reason 
 given being that " Mr. Shaxpere dothe not come 
 to the halles when they be warned, nor hathe not 
 done of longe tyme " ; and it appears, on the 
 same authority, that he had thus absented him- 
 
 * The Shakespeare Society of London was in possession of 
 two such writs. 
 
.^ MEMOIRS OF 
 
 self for seven years. But before March of the 
 next year he had been arrested, and was impris- 
 oned or in custody, doubtless for debt, according 
 to the barbarous and foolish practice of which our 
 brethren in the mother country have not yet rid 
 themselves. This we know by his suing out a 
 writ of habeas corpus in the Stratford Court of 
 Record. Perhaps he suffered this indignity on 
 account of his kindness to his brother Henry, be- 
 fore mentioned, who had much money trouble, 
 and for whom he became surety to one Nicholas 
 Lane for ten pounds. Henry not having duly 
 paid this sum, Lane sued John Shakespeare for 
 it in February, 1587. To follow his sad fortunes 
 yet further, in 1592 a commission, upon which 
 were Sir Thomas Lucy and Sir Fulke Greville 
 with six others, which had been appointed to in- 
 quire into the conformity of the people of War- 
 wickshire to the established religion, with a 
 special eye to Jesuits, priests, and recusants, re- 
 ported many persons "for not comming moneth- 
 lie to the churche, according to hir Majestie's 
 lawes " ; and among them was John Shakespeare. 
 But the commissioners specially note as to him 
 and eight others, that " it is sayd that these last 
 nine coom not to churche for fear of processe for 
 debtte." 
 
 Thus low in fortune and estate had sunk the 
 once prosperous high bailiff of Stratford, in the 
 veins of whose children ran the blood of men who 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 41 
 
 had owned half the county through which he 
 skulked, a bailiff-hunted debtor. Those very chil- 
 dren added largely to his anxiety and his cares. 
 For since Margaret's death six had been born to 
 him: William; Gilbert, born in 1566; a second 
 Joan, in 1569; Anne, in 1571 ; Richard, in 1573-4; 
 and Edmund, in 1580. Rowe, upon Betterton's 
 authority, says that John Shakespeare had " ten 
 children in all." But Betterton only reported 
 tradition ; and the Stratford parish register, bet- 
 ter authority on such a point, records the baptism 
 of no more than eight, two of whom, as we have 
 seen, died before their father reached the height 
 of his prosperity ; and Anne died at the begin- 
 ning of his troubles. At her burial there were 
 both pall and bell, for which it has been discovered 
 that eight pence were paid, while other children 
 buried in the same year (1579) were honored with 
 only half the ceremony, the bell, at half the price. 
 This has been accepted as evidence that John 
 Shakespeare had money to spare. He doubtless 
 meant that it should be so regarded ; and he de- 
 ceived even posterity. As long as funeral cere- 
 monies are deemed important, they will be the 
 last as to which poverty will compel retrench- 
 ment. In 1579 John Shakespeare had not aban- 
 doned the struggle to keep up appearances. Had 
 his purse been fuller, or his position lower, he 
 might have been willing to save the four pence. 
 But a few years later five little mouths to feed, 
 
.2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 five little backs to clothe, were quite enough to 
 harass the poor man who could not keep his 
 own body out of a debtor's prison, and to cause 
 him to abandon any ambitious projects which he 
 might have formed for his eldest son, and call him 
 from his studies to contribute something to his own 
 support, and perhaps to that of the family. 
 
 The traditions of the townsfolk upon this sub- 
 ject were surely therefore in the main well 
 founded, though in their particulars they were 
 discordant. Rowe, speaking for Betterton, says, 
 that "upon his leaving school he seems to have 
 given entirely into that way of living which his 
 father proposed to him," which, according to the 
 same authority, was that of a dealer in wool. 
 Gossiping John Aubrey, who says that John 
 Shakespeare was a butcher, adds : " I have been 
 told heretofore by some of the neighbors that 
 when he was a boy he exercised his father's 
 trade ; but when he kill'd a calfe he wold 
 doe it in a high style, and make a speeche." 
 Aubrey, who died about 1700, probably received 
 this precious information from the same source 
 through which an old parish clerk of Stratford, 
 who was living in 1693, and was then more than 
 eighty years old, derived a similar story, that 
 Shakespeare had been "bound apprentice to a 
 butcher." Aubrey also records, on the authority 
 of an unknown Mr. Beeston, that William Shake- 
 speare " understode Latin pretty well, for he had 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 43 
 
 been many years a schoolmaster in the country." 
 The only point upon which these loose traditions 
 are of importance is that upon which they all con- 
 form to probability, that William Shakespeare was 
 obliged to leave school early and earn his living.* 
 
 * Isolated passages in Shakespeare's plays have been gravely 
 brought forward to sustain each of these traditions as to his early 
 occupation, — surely a wise and penetrative method of getting at 
 the truth in such a matter. Let us see. When we read a pas- 
 sage like this in King Henry the Sixth, — 
 
 " Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh. 
 And sees fast by the butcher with an axe, 
 But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter ? " — 
 
 what way to avoid concluding that the writer had been himself a 
 butcher ? Consider, too, the profound inner significance of this 
 passage in Love's Laboicr 'j Lost, in which Holofernes describes 
 Sir Nathaniel : " He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too 
 odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. . . . He draw- 
 eth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his 
 argument." Is there not a goodly part of the wool-stapler's art, 
 as well as of the art of rhetoric, compressed into that last sen- 
 tence by the power of Shakespeare's genius ? And is it not thus 
 made clear that he was practically initiated into the mysteries 
 of long and short staple before he wrote this, one of the earliest 
 of his plays t But, again, ponder the following lines in King 
 Henry the Sixth, written when the memory of his boyish days 
 was freshest, and see evidence that both these traditions were 
 well founded : — 
 
 " So, first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece. 
 And next his throat, unto the butcher's knife." 
 
 Certainly these lines could have been written only by a man who 
 was both the son of a considerable dealer in wool, and a butcher, 
 who killed calves in high style, making a speech. Who, appre- 
 ciating rightly the following passage in Hamiet, can have a doubt 
 about this matter .'' 
 
^ MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Utterly ruined, however, as John Shakespeare 
 was, he seems never to have been driven out of 
 his house in Henley Street, or to have lost his 
 property in it ; though how this could be in the 
 case of a man as to whom the return upon an exe- 
 cution was "no effects," it is not easy to conjecture. 
 
 ** Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well 
 When our deep plots do fall ; and that should teacn us 
 There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 Rough-hew them how we will." 
 
 Upon which thus discourse two acute and learned commentators. 
 George Steevens speaks : — 
 
 " Dr. Farmer informs me that these words are merely techni- 
 cal. A woolman, butcher, and dealer in skewers lately observed 
 to him that his nephew (an idle lad) could only assist him in mak- 
 ing them. *He could rough-hew them, but I was obliged to 
 shape their ends ! ' To shape the ends of wool-skewers, i. e. to 
 point them, requires a degree of skill ; any one can rough-hew 
 them. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakespeare's 
 father will admit that his son might be no stranger to such 
 terms. I have frequently seen packages of wool pinn'd up with 
 skewers." 
 
 What a revelation at once of the unknown outer and that 
 more mysterious inner life of Shakespeare ! Lucky wool-man, 
 butcher, and dealer in skewers ! to furnish thus a comment upon 
 the great philosophical tragedy, and proof that you and its 
 author were both of a trade. Fortunate Farmer, to have heard 
 the story ! and most sagacious Steevens, to have penetrated its 
 hidden meaning, recollecting felicitously that you had seen pack- 
 ages of wool pinned up with skewers ! But, O wisest, highest, 
 and deepest-minded Shakespeare ! to have remembered, as you 
 were propounding, Hamlet-wise, one of the great unsolvable 
 mysteries of life, the skewers that you, being an idle lad, could 
 but rough-hew, leaving to your careful father the skill-requiring 
 task of shaping their ends ! — ends without which they could not 
 have bound together the packs of wool with which you loaded 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 45 
 
 But what was William Shakespeare doing in all 
 those years through which his father was descend- 
 ing into the vale of poverty, whither we have 
 followed him to the lowest depth ? We have 
 passed over thereby some events of great impor- 
 tance to the son, whom his father's trials seem not 
 
 carts at the door in Henley Street, or have penetrated the veal of 
 the calves you killed in such high style and with so much elo- 
 quence, and which loaded the tray you daily bore on your shoul- 
 der to the kitchen-door of New Place, yet unscheming to become 
 its master ! 
 
 Yet I would not insist too strongly upon this evidence that 
 Shakespeare's boyhood was passed as a butcher's and wool- 
 stapler's apprentice ; because I venture to think that I have dis- 
 covered like evidence in his works that their author was a tailor. 
 For in the first place I have found that the word "tailor" ap- 
 pears in his plays no less than twenty-seven times ! " Measures" 
 occurs nearly thrice as often ; " shears," no less than six times ; 
 "thimble," thrice; "goose," no less than twenty-seven times! 
 And when we see that in all his thirty-seven plays " cabbage " 
 occurs but once, and then with the careful explanation that it 
 means roots, and is "good cabbage," must we not regard such 
 reticence upon this tender point as touching confirmation of the 
 theory sartorical ? His plays abound with like evidence. He 
 says of the use to which his favorite hero Prince Hal will put 
 the manners of his wild companions, that 
 
 " Their memory 
 Shall as a patter7t or a meastire live 
 By which his Grace must meet the lives of others." 
 
 He makes one of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, as his severest 
 censure of the other, reproach him with being badly dressed : — 
 
 " Ruffian, let go that rude uncivil touch, 
 Thou friend of an ill fashion I " 
 
 And how unmistakably he gives us in Hamlet a reminiscence of 
 a highly ornamented style of children's clothing : — 
 
46 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 to have chastened into sobriety. In estimating 
 Shakespeare's character, the fact that he left 
 among his neighbors the reputation of having 
 been somewhat irregular in his youth cannot be 
 lightly set aside. Nor is it at all strange that such 
 a reputation should have been attained in the 
 early years of a man of his lively fancy, healthy 
 organization, and breadth of moral sympathy. It 
 is from tradition that we learn that during his 
 father's misfortunes he was occasionally engaged 
 in stealing deer ; but we know on good evidence 
 that about that time he also got himself married 
 in no very creditable fashion. While he was 
 sowing his wild oats in the fields round Strat- 
 ford, he naturally visited the cottage of Richard 
 Hathaway, a substantial yeoman of Shottery, who 
 seems to have been on terms of friendship with 
 John Shakespeare. This Richard Hathaway had, 
 
 " The canker galls the infants of the Spring 
 Too oft before their buttotts be disclosed." 
 
 What more natural than that a tailor, vexed with the memories 
 of peevish customers, should make the incensed Northumber- 
 land compare himself to a man who is " impatient of his fit " } 
 And yet this evidence, so strong and cumulative, must not be too 
 much relied upon. For who but a publisher, anxious about the 
 health and the progress in her work of a popular authoress, 
 could have written thus in Twelfth Night ? 
 
 " Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive. 
 If you will lead these graces to the grave 
 And leave the world no copy.'''' 
 
 The subject expands inimitably before me, and I resign it to 
 the followers of Farmer and of Steevens, and to the Germans. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 47 
 
 among other children, a daughter named Anne, 
 who might have dandled William Shakespeare 
 in his infancy upon her knee ; for she was eight 
 years old when he was born, in 1564. Whether 
 or no Anne Hathaway had a fair face and a win- 
 ning way which spontaneously captivated William 
 Shakespeare, or whether he yielded to arts to 
 which his inexperience made him an easy victim, 
 we cannot surely tell. But we do know that she, 
 though not vestally inclined, as we shall see, re- 
 mained unmarried until 1582, and that then the 
 woman of twenty-six took to husband the boy of 
 eighteen. They were married upon once asking 
 of the banns ; and the bond given to the Bishop 
 of Worcester for his security in licensing this de- 
 parture from custom was given in that year, on 
 the 28th day of November.* About those days 
 
 * " Noverint universi per praesentes nos ffulconem Sandells de 
 Stratford in comitatu Warwici, agricolam, et Johannem Rychard- 
 son ibidem agricolam, teneri et firmiter obligari Ricardo Cosin 
 generoso, et Roberto Warmstry notario publico, in quadraginta 
 libris bonas et legalis monetae Angliae, solvend. eisdem Ricardo 
 et Roberto, hasred. execut. vel assignat. suis, ad quam quidem 
 solucionem bene et fideliter faciend. obligamus nos et utrumque 
 nostrum per se pro toto et in solid, haered. executor, et admi- 
 nistrator, nostros firmiter per praesentes sigillis nostris sigillat. 
 Dat. 28 die Novem. anno regni dominae nostrae Eliz. Dei gratia 
 Angliae, Franc, et Hiberniae reginae, fidei defensor, &c. 25. 
 
 "The condicion of this obligacion ys suche, that if herafter 
 there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason 
 of any precontract, consangui[ni]tie, affinitie, or by any other law- 
 full meanes whatsoever, but that William Shagspere one thone 
 partie, and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the dioces of Worces- 
 
48 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 there was great need that Anne Hathaway' 
 should provide herself with a husband of some 
 sort, and that speedily ; for in less than five 
 months after she obtained one she was delivered 
 of a daughter. The parish register shows that 
 Susanna, the daughter of William and Anne 
 Shakespeare, was baptized May 26th, 1583. 
 
 There have been attempts to turn aside the 
 obvious bearings of these facts upon the character 
 of Anne Hathaway. But it is a stubborn and un- 
 wise idolatry which resists such evidence as this, 
 — an idolatry which would exempt Shakespeare, 
 
 ter, maiden, may lawfully solennize matrimony together, and in 
 the same afterwardes remaine and continew like man and wiffe, 
 according unto the lawes in that behalf provided : and moreover, 
 if there be not at this present time any action, sute, quarrell, or 
 demaund, moved or depending before any judge ecclesiasticall or 
 temporall, for and concerning any suche lawfull lett or impedi- 
 ment : and moreover, if the said William Shagspere do not pro- 
 ceed to solemnizacion of mariadg with the said Anne Hathwey 
 without the consent of hir frindes : and also, if the said William 
 do, upon his owne proper costes and expences, defend and save 
 harmles the right reverend Father in God, Lord John Bushop of 
 Worcester, and his offycers, for licensing them the said William 
 and Anne to be maried together ^vith once asking of the bannes 
 of matrimony betweene them, and for all other causes which may 
 ensue by reason or occasion thereof, that then the said obligacion 
 to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand and abide in full 
 force and vertue." 
 
 To this instrument are attached the rude marks of Sandells 
 and Richardson, and a seal which bears two letters, R, and 
 another, imperfect, which seems to be an H. This seal is conjec- 
 tured to be that of the bride's father, who at the execution of the 
 bond had been dead five months. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ^g 
 
 and not only him, but all with whom he became 
 connected, from human passion and human frailty. 
 That temperament is cruel, and that morality 
 pharisaic, which treats all cases of this kind 
 with inexorable and indiscriminating severity, and 
 that judgment outrageously unjust which visits all 
 the sin upon the weaker and already suffering 
 party. Yet if in the present instance it must be 
 that one or other of this couple seduced the other 
 into error, perhaps where a woman of twenty-six 
 is involved with a boy of eighteen, for the honor 
 of her sex the less that is said about the matter 
 the better. Besides, Anne Hathaway rests under 
 the implied reproach of both the men whose good 
 opinion was to her of gravest moment. Her 
 father, like Mary Arden's, had died about a year 
 before her marriage ; but while Mary Arden had 
 special legacies, and was assigned to the honorable 
 position of executrix by her father's will, Anne 
 Hathaway was passed over even without mention 
 by her father, who yet carefully, and minutely re- 
 membered all but one of his other children. And 
 to look forward again, — which we well may do, 
 for Shakespeare's wife will soon pass entirely from 
 our sight, — when her husband was giving in- 
 structions for his will, he left her only his second- 
 best bed, the one that probably she slept upon. 
 It is true, as Mr. Knight has pointed out, that she 
 was entitled to dower, and that so her livelihood 
 was well provided for ; it is true also, that a bed 
 
 3 D 
 
-Q MEMOIRS OF 
 
 with its furniture was in those days no uncommon 
 bequest. But William Shakespeare's will was one 
 of great particularity, leaving little legacies to 
 nephews and nieces, and also swords and rings 
 as mementoes to friends and acquaintance ; and 
 yet his wife's name is omitted from the document 
 in its original form, and only appears by an after- 
 thought in an interlineation, as if his attention 
 had been called to the omission, and for decency's 
 sake he would not have the mother of his children 
 unnoticed altogether. The lack of any other be- 
 quest than the furniture of her chamber is of small 
 moment in comparison with the slight shown by 
 that interlineation. A second-best bed might be 
 passed over ; but what can be done with second- 
 best thoughts.? And second-best, if good at all, 
 seem to have been all the thoughts which Shake- 
 speare gave her ; for there is not a line of his 
 writing known which can be regarded as ad- 
 dressed to her as maid or matron. Did ever poet 
 thus slight the woman that he loved, and that too 
 during years of separation ? 
 
 The cottage in which Anne Hathaway lived is 
 still pointed out in Shottery. It is a timber and 
 plaster house, like John Shakespeare's, standing 
 on a bank, with a roughly paved terrace in front. 
 The parlor is wainscoated high in oak ; and in the 
 principal chamber is an enormous and heavily 
 carved bedstead. Though a rustic and even rude 
 habitation when measured by our standard, it was 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 51 
 
 evidently a comfortable home for a substantial 
 yeoman in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and is 
 picturesque enough for the cradle of a poet's love. 
 But it never can be looked upon without sadness 
 by those who rightly estimate the sorrow and the 
 shame which there were born to William Shake- 
 speare, — sorrow and shame which not all the 
 varied successes of his after-life could heal and 
 obliterate, and his sufferings from which find fre- 
 quent expression both in his plays and sonnets. 
 True, he was of all poets the most dramatic, and 
 therefore the most self-forgetful ; but his trouble 
 he did not forget. His works are full of passages, 
 to write which, if he had loved his wife and hon- 
 ored her, would have been gall and wormwood to 
 his soul ; nay, which, if he had loved and honored 
 her, he could not have written. The nature of 
 the subject forbids the marshalling of this ter- 
 rible array ; but did the " flax-wench " whom he 
 uses for the most degrading of all comparisons do 
 more "before her troth-plight" than the woman 
 who bore his name and whom his children called 
 mother ? * It is not a question whether his judg- 
 ment was justifiable, but of what he thought and 
 felt. 
 
 And even if Anne Hathaway's fair fame, if in- 
 deed it was ever fair, remained untarnished, the 
 marriage at eighteen of such a man as her boy 
 husband proved is one of the saddest social events 
 
 * T/ie Winter's Tale, Act I. Sc. 2. 
 
C2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 that can be contemplated. Not because it was 
 sino-ular in all its circumstances or its conse- 
 quences ; for, alas ! in most of them it is too com- 
 mon. A youth whose person, whose manner, and 
 whose mental gifts have made him the admired fa- 
 vorite of some rural neighborhood, captivated ere 
 he is well a man by some rustic beauty, or often by 
 his own imagination, married and a father before he 
 should be well beyond a father's care, or bound as 
 much in honor, according to the matrimonial code, 
 as if he were married, developing into a man of 
 mark and culture, attaining social position and 
 distinction which would make him the welcome 
 suitor of the fairest and most accomplished woman 
 of the circle into which he has risen by right of 
 worth and intellect, yet tied to one who is inferior 
 to him in all respects, except perhaps in simple 
 truthfulness, and who does not — poor creature, 
 who cannot if she would — keep pace with him ; 
 and all this the consequence of a boyish passion, 
 which opposition might have confirmed, but which 
 tact and a little time — so little ! — might easily 
 have dissipated : this case, so pitiable ! — so pitiable 
 for both parties, even most pitiable for her, — we 
 see too often. But add to all this that the man was 
 William Shakespeare, and that he met his fate at 
 only eighteen years of age, and that the woman 
 who came to him with a stain upon her name was 
 eight years his senior, and could we but think of 
 their life and leave out the world's interest in him, 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 53 
 
 should we not wish that one of them, even if it 
 were he, had died before that ill-starred marriage ? 
 But chiefly for him we grieve ; for a woman of her 
 age, who could so connect herself with a boy of 
 his, was either too dull by nature or too callous by 
 experience to share his feelings at their false, un- 
 natural position. Who can believe that the well- 
 known counsel upon this subject which he put into 
 the Duke Orsino's mouth in Twelfth NigJit * was 
 not a stifled cry of anguish from his tormented, 
 over-burdened soul, though he had left his tor- 
 ment and his burden so far behind him t It is 
 impossible that he could have written it without 
 thinking of his own experience ; the more, that 
 
 * " Duke. Thou dost speak masterly : 
 
 My life upon 't, young though thou art, thine eye 
 Hath stay'd upon some favor that it loves ; 
 Hath it not, boy .? 
 
 Vio. A little, by your favor. 
 
 Dicke. "What kind of woman is 't ? 
 
 Vio. Of your complexion. 
 
 Duke. She is not worth thee then. What years, i' faith .'' 
 
 Vio. About your years, my lord. 
 
 Duke. Too old, by Heaven ! Let still the woman take 
 An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
 So sways she level in her husband's heart. 
 For, boy, however we do praise ourselves. 
 Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm. 
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, 
 Than women's are. 
 
 Vio. I think it well, my lord. 
 
 Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, 
 Or thy affection cannot hold the bent." 
 
 Act IL Sc. 4. 
 
-. MEMOIRS OF 
 
 54 
 
 the seeming lad to whom it is addressed is about 
 his years, and the man who utters it about Anne 
 Hathaway's, at the time when they were married. 
 After considering all that has been said, which 
 is quite all that can reasonably be said, about the 
 custom of troth-plight in mitigation of the circum- 
 stances of Shakespeare's marriage, I cannot regard 
 the case as materially bettered. It has been urged 
 that Shakespeare put a plea for his wife into the 
 mouth of the Priest in Twelfth Night, where the 
 holy man says to Olivia that there had passed be- 
 tween her and Sebastian 
 
 " A contract of eternal bond of love, 
 Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, 
 Attested by the holy close of lips, 
 Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings ; 
 And all the ceremony of this compact 
 Sealed in my function, by my testimony." 
 
 Act V. Sc. I. 
 
 But what this was is shown by Olivia's language 
 at the time when it took place, in a passage which 
 the apologists leave out of sight. 
 
 *' Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well. 
 Now go with me, and with this holy man, 
 Into the chantry by : there, before him, 
 And underneath that consecrated roof, 
 Plight me the full assurance of your faith ; 
 That my most jealous and too doubtful soul 
 May live at peace. He shall conceal it, 
 Whiles you are willing it shall come to note ; 
 What time we will our celebration keep 
 According to my birth. — What do you say ? " 
 
 Act IV. Sc. t,. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 55 
 
 This plainly was a private marriage, in church and 
 by a priest ; indissoluble and perfect, except that 
 it lacked consummation and celebration according 
 to the lady's birth. As to troth-plight, its import 
 depends entirely upon that to which troth is plight- 
 ed. The closing words of the binding declaration 
 in the marriage ceremony of the Church of Eng- 
 land are, " and thereto I plight thee my troth." 
 
 The marriage between William Shakespeare and 
 Anne Hathaway took place in December, 1582. 
 The ceremony was not performed in Stratford ; 
 and no record of it has been discovered. But 
 there is a tradition in Luddington, a little village 
 not far off, that it took place there ; and the story 
 derives some support from the fact that Thomas 
 Hunt, Shakespeare's schoolmaster, was curate of 
 that parish. Susanna, the first child born in this 
 wedlock, was baptized May 26th, 1583 ; and Ham- 
 net and Judith, twins, were baptized February 2d, 
 1584-5. William Shakespeare and his wife had 
 no other children ; and soon after the latter event 
 their household married life was interrupted for 
 many years by the departure of the youthful hus- 
 band from Stratford. The eldest son of a ruined 
 man just degraded from office, having four broth- 
 ers and sisters younger than himself, and a wife 
 and three children upon his hands before he was 
 twenty-one, there were reasons enough for him to 
 go, as he did, to London, if he could get money 
 there more rapidly than at Stratford. But tradi- 
 
56 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 tion assigns a particular occasion and other motive 
 for his leaving home. Betterton heard, and Rowe 
 tells us, that he fell into bad company, and that 
 some of his wild companions, who made a frequent 
 practice of deer-stealing, drew him into the rob- 
 bery of a park belonging to Sir Thomas Lucy, of 
 Charlecote. For this, according to Rowe's story, 
 he was prosecuted by the knight, and in revenge 
 lampooned him in a ballad so bitter that the pros- 
 ecution became a persecution of such severity that 
 he was obliged to flee the country, and shelter him- 
 self in London. There is what may perhaps be ac- 
 cepted as independent authority for the existence 
 of this tradition. The Reverend William Ful- 
 man, an antiquary, who died in 1688, bequeathed 
 his manuscript biographical memorandums to 
 the Reverend Richard Davies, Rector of Sapper- 
 ton in Gloucestershire, and Archdeacon of Lich- 
 field, who died in 1708. To a note of Fulman's, 
 which barely records Shakespeare's birth, death, 
 and occupation, Davies made brief additions, the 
 principal of which is, that William Shakespeare 
 was "much given to all unluckinesse in stealing 
 venison and rabbits, particularly from S'' Lu- 
 cy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes impris- 
 oned, and at last made him fly his native country, 
 to his great advancement : but his revenge was so 
 great that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him 
 a great man, and that in allusion to his name bore 
 three louses rampant for his arms." Davies may 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 57 
 
 have heard this story in Stratford ; but consider- 
 ing the date of his death, 1708, and that of Bet- 
 terton's visit to Warwickshire, 1675, and Rowe's 
 pubhcation of his edition of Shakespeare's Works, 
 1709, it is not at all improbable, to say the least, 
 that the story had reached the Archdeacon di- 
 rectly or indirectly through the actor.* But Ca- 
 pell tells us that a Mr. Thomas Jones, who lived 
 at Tarbick, a few miles from Stratford, and who 
 died there in 1703, more than ninety years of age, 
 remembered having heard from old people at Strat- 
 ford the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir Thom- 
 as Lucy's park.f According to Mr. Jones their 
 story agreed with that told by Rowe, with this ad- 
 dition, — that the lampoon was stuck upon the 
 park gate, and that this insult, added to the injury 
 of the deer-stealing, provoked the prosecution. 
 Mr. Jones had written down the first stanza of 
 
 * Betterton was born in 1635, and went upon the stage in 1656 
 or 1657. The veneration for Shakespeare with which he was im- 
 bued by the study of his plays was the motive of his pilgrimage 
 to Stratford. We may be quite sure that the journey was under- 
 taken after 1670, for in that year Shakespeare's granddaughter, 
 who must have known much that Betterton did not discover, died 
 in Shakespeare's house ; and it could hardly have been after 
 1675, for at that time the great actor was grievously afflicted with 
 a disease, — the gout, — which compelled him to retire from the 
 stage, and from which he suffered until it caused his death, in 
 1 7 ID. Betterton had been taught to play some of Shakespeare's 
 principal characters by Sir William Davenant, who had seen them 
 performed by actors of the Black-friars Theatre, who had been in- 
 structed by the poet himself See Downes's Roscins Anglicamu. 
 
 *■ Azotes and Various Readings, &c., Vol. 11. p. 75. 
 
58 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 this ballad, and it reached Capell through his own 
 grandfather, a contemporary of Jones. A similar 
 account of a very old man living near Stratford, 
 and remembering the deer-stealing story and the 
 ballad, is given by Oldys, the antiquarian, in his 
 manuscript notes. Oldys and Capell plainly de- 
 rived their information from the same source, 
 though possibly through different channels ; and 
 the stanza of the ballad is given by both of them 
 in the same words, with the exception of a single 
 syllable. These are the lines according to Oldys, 
 with the addition of " O " in the last line, which 
 appears in Capell's copy, and which plainly be- 
 longs there : — 
 
 " A parliemente member, a justice of peace, 
 At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse. 
 If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Then Lucy is lowsie whatever befall it : * 
 
 He thinks himself greate. 
 
 Yet an asse in his state 
 We allowe by his ears but with asses to mate. 
 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it, 
 Sing O lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it." 
 
 The phrase " Parliament member," if we must 
 accept it as having been originally written in the 
 first line of this lampoon, is inconsistent with its 
 genuineness ; for in Shakespeare's time, and long 
 after, the phrase was Parliament man. But as the 
 verses were handed down orally, a conformity to 
 the more recent custom in this respect would 
 creep in easily and unnoticed. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ^g 
 
 This story enriches with a rare touch of real 
 life our faint and meagre memorials of Shake- 
 speare. Not sufficiently well established to be 
 beyond the assaults of those who think it scorn 
 that the author of Km£- Lear and Hamlet should 
 have stolen deer and written coarse lampoons, it 
 yet may well be cherished, and its credibility 
 maintained, by those who prize a trait of character 
 and a glimpse of personal experience above all 
 question of propriety. In Queen Bess's time deer- 
 stealing did not rank with sheep-stealing ; and he 
 who wrote, and was praised for writing, The Com- 
 edy of Errors and Troilus and Cressida when he 
 was a man, may well be believed, without any 
 abatem.ent of his dignity, to have written the Lucy 
 ballad in his boyhood. Malone thought that he 
 had exploded the tradition by showing that Sir 
 Thomas Lucy had no park, and therefore could 
 have no deer to be stolen ; and the lampoon has 
 been set aside as a fabrication by some writers, 
 and regarded by all with suspicion. But it appears 
 that, whether the knight had an enclosure with for- 
 mal park privileges or not, the family certainly had 
 deer on their estate, which fulfils the only condition 
 requisite for the truth of the story in that regard ; 
 for Sir Thomas Lucy, son of Shakespeare's victim, 
 sent a buck as a present to Harehill when Sir 
 Thomas Egerton entertained Queen Elizabeth 
 there in August, 1602.* I think that there is a 
 
 * Egerton Papers, pp. 350, 355. 
 
5o MEMOIRS OF 
 
 solution to the question somewhat different from 
 any that has yet been brought forward, and much 
 more probable. 
 
 The first scene of The Merry Wives of Wind- 
 sor certainly gives strong support to the tradition ; 
 so strong, in fact, that it has been supposed, with 
 some reason, to have been its origin. In that 
 scene Shakespeare makes Justice Shallow (who, 
 in the words of Davies, is his clodpate, or, as we 
 should say, his clownish or loutish, justice) bear a 
 dozen white luces, or pikes, in his coat of arms, 
 which bearing gives the Welsh parson the oppor- 
 tunity for his punning jest that "the dozen white 
 louses do become an old coat well." * The Lucys 
 bore punning coat-armor, three luces, hariant ; 
 and the allusion is unmistakable. In that scene, 
 too, the country gentleman who is so proud of the 
 luces in his old coat bursts upon the stage furious 
 at Falstaff for having killed his deer. Now, in 
 Shakespeare's day, as well as long before, killing a 
 gentleman's deer was almost as common among 
 wild young men as robbing a farmer's orchard 
 
 * Some critics have attrilDuted the transformation of luces to 
 louses to Sir Hugh's incapacity of English speech ; but this is to 
 rob the Welshman of his wit. The pronunciation of tc as ow is no 
 trick of a Welsh tongue, or of any other, I believe ; but " louse " 
 was pronounced like " luce " or " loose " by many people. So the 
 ballad tells us that "lousy is Lucy as some volke miscall it." 
 There is a similar variation as to the name Toucey, which some 
 pronounce Toosey, giving the first syllable the vowel sound of too 
 undjfozi, others Towsey, with the sound oi how^ thou. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. ^j 
 
 among boys. Indeed, it was looked upon as a 
 sign of that poor semblance of manliness some- 
 times called spirit, and was rather a gentleman's 
 misdemeanor than a yeoman's ; one which a peas- 
 ant would not have presumed to commit, except, 
 indeed, at risk of his ears, for poaching at once 
 upon the game- and the sin-preserves of his bet- 
 ters. Noblemen engaged in it ; and in days gone 
 by the very first Prince of Wales had been a deer- 
 stealer. Among multitudinous passages illustra- 
 tive of this trait of manners, a story preserved by 
 Wood in his AtheiKB Oxonienses fixes unmistak- 
 ably the grade of the ofience. It is there told, on 
 the authority of Simon Forman, that his patrons, 
 Robert Pinkney and John Thornborough, the lat- 
 ter of whom was admitted a member of Magdalen 
 College in 1570, and became Bishop of Bristol and 
 Worcester, " seldom studied or gave themselves to 
 their books, but spent their time in fencing-schools 
 and dancing-schools, in stealing deer and conies, 
 in hunting the hare and wooing girls." * In fact, 
 deer-stealing then supplied to the young members 
 of the privileged classes in Old England an excite- 
 ment of a higher kind than that afibrded by beat- 
 ing watchmen and tearing off knockers and bell- 
 pulls to the generation but just passed away. A 
 passage of TitiLS Andronicus, written soon after 
 Shakespeare reached London, is here in point. 
 Prince Demetrius exclaims : — 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 371. 
 
52 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 " What, hast thou not full often struck a doe, 
 And cleanly borne her past the keeper's nose ? " 
 
 Whereupon Steevens, wishing to discredit the 
 play as Shakespeare's, remarks: "We have here 
 Demetrius, the son of a queen, demanding of his 
 brother if he has not often been reduced to prac- 
 tise the common artifices of a deer-stealer, — an 
 absurdity worthy the rest of the piece." Probably 
 Steevens had never read in the old chronicle of 
 Edward of Caernarvon, the first Prince of Wales, 
 that " King Edward put his son. Prince Edward, 
 in prison because he had riotously broken into the 
 park of Walter Langton, Bishop of Chester, and 
 stolen his deer." The Prince did this at the insti- 
 gation of his favorite, that handsome, insolent rake. 
 Piers de Gaveston ; and he had previously begged 
 Hugh le Despencer to pardon his "well-beloved 
 John de Bonynge," who had in like manner broken 
 into that nobleman's park. What was pastime 
 for a Prince of Wales and his companions in the 
 fourteenth century, might well be regarded as a 
 venial misdemeanor on the part of a landless 
 knight, and a mark of spirit in a yeoman's son, in 
 the sixteenth. 
 
 But he with the "three louses rampant" on 
 his coat makes much more than this of Fal- 
 staff's affair. He will bring it before the Coun- 
 cil, he will make a Star-Chamber matter of it, and 
 pronounces it a riot. And, in fact, according to 
 his account, Sir John was not content with steal- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 63 
 
 ing his deer, but broke open his lodge and beat 
 his men. It seems then, that, in writing this pas- 
 sage, Shakespeare had in mind not only an actual 
 occurrence in which Sir Thomas Lucy was con- 
 cerned, but one of greater gravity than a mere 
 deer-stealing affair ; that having been made the 
 occasion of more serious outrage. 
 
 Now, Sir Thomas Lucy was a man of much 
 consideration in Warwickshire, where he had 
 come to a fine estate in 155 1, at only nineteen 
 years of age. He was a member of Parliament 
 twice; first in 1571, and next from November, 
 1584, to March of the following year; just before 
 the very time when, according to all indications, 
 Shakespeare left Stratford. Sir Thomas was a 
 somewhat prominent member of the Puritanical 
 party, as appears by what is known of his Parlia- 
 mentary course. For instance, during his first 
 term he was one of a committee appointed upon 
 "defections" in religious matters, one object of 
 the movers of which was " to purge the Common 
 Prayer Book, and free it from certain superstitious 
 ceremonies, as using the sign of the cross in bap- 
 tism," &c. He was, on the other hand, active in 
 the enforcement and preservation of the game 
 privileges of the nobility and gentry, and served 
 on a committee to which a bill for this purpose 
 was referred, of which he appears to have been 
 chairman. This took place in his last term, 1584 
 to 1585, — the time of his alleged persecution of 
 
64 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 William Shakespeare for poaching. Charlecote, 
 his seat, being only three miles from Stratford, 
 and he being a man of such weight and position 
 in the county, he would naturally have somewhat 
 close public relations with the towns-people and 
 their authorities. That such was the case, the 
 records of the town and of the county furnish 
 ample evidence. Whenever there was a com- 
 mission appointed in relation to affairs in that 
 neighborhood, he was sure to be on it ; and the 
 Chamberlain's accounts, as set forth by Mr. Halli- 
 well, show expenses at divers times to provide 
 Sir Thomas with sack and sugar, to expedite or 
 smooth his intercourse with the corporation. But 
 in spite of mollifying drinks, the relations of the 
 Lucy family with the Stratford folk were not 
 always amicable. Mr. Halliwell's investigations 
 have shown that the Lucys were not unfrequently 
 engaged in disputes with the corporation of that 
 town. Records of one about common of pasture 
 in Henry VIII.'s time are still preserved in the 
 Chapter House at London ; and among the pa- 
 pers at the Rolls' House is one containing "the 
 names of them that made the ryot uppon Mas- 
 ter Thomas Lucy, esquier." 
 
 Here are all the conditions of a very pretty 
 parish quarrel. A puritanical knight, fussy about 
 his family pretensions and his game, having he- 
 reditary disagreement with the Stratford people 
 about rights of common, — a subject on which 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 65 
 
 they were, like all of English race, sure to be 
 tenacious, — after having been left out of Par- 
 liament for eleven years, is re-elected, and imme- 
 diately sets to work at securing that privilege so 
 dearly prized by his class, and so odious to all 
 below it, — the preservation of game for the pas- 
 time of the gentry. The anti-puritan party and 
 those who stand up stoutly for rights of common 
 vent their indignation to the best of their ability ; 
 one of their number writes a lampoon upon him, 
 and a body of them, too strong to be successfully 
 withstood, break riotously into his grounds, kill 
 his deer, beat his men, and carry off their booty 
 in triumph. The affair is an outbreak of rude 
 parish politics, a popular demonstration against 
 an unpopular man ; and who so likely to take 
 part in it as the son of the former high bailiff, 
 who, we know, was no puritan, and whose father, 
 ambitious, and, as we shall see, even pretending 
 to a coat of arms, had most probably had per- 
 sonal and official disagreements with, and received 
 personal slights and rebuffs from, his rich, power- 
 ful, arrogant neighbor, — or who so likely to write 
 the lampoon as young Will Shakespeare.-' There 
 could hardly have been two in Stratford who 
 were able to write that stanza, the rhythm of 
 which shows no common clodpole's ear, and 
 which, though coarse in its satire, is bitter and 
 well suited to the occasion. That it is a genu- 
 ine production, — that is, part of a ballad written 
 
55 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 at the time for the purpose of lampooning Sir 
 Thomas Lucy, — I think there can be no doubt : 
 it carries its genuineness upon its face and in its 
 spirit. That Shakespeare wrote it, I am incUned 
 to beheve. But even were he not its author, if 
 he had taken any part in a demonstration against 
 Sir Thomas Lucy, and soon after was driven, by 
 whatever circumstances, to leave Stratford for Lon- 
 don, where he rose to distinction as a poet, rumor 
 would be likely soon to attribute the ballad to him, 
 and to assign the occasion on which it was writ- 
 ten as that which caused his departure ; and ru- 
 mor would soon become tradition.* That Shake- 
 speare meant to pay off a Stratford debt to Sir 
 Thomas Lucy in that first scene of The Merry 
 Wives, and that he did it with the memory of the 
 riotous trespass upon that gentleman's grounds, 
 seem equally manifest. That he had taken part 
 in the event which he commemorated, there is 
 
 * The stanza given above is plainly one, and not the first, of 
 several. Others have been brought forward as the remainder 
 of the lampoon ; but they are too plainly spurious to be worthy 
 of notice. The story of the deer-stealing is said by Mr. Fullom, 
 in his History of William Shakespeare, to be confirmed by a 
 note, entered, about 1750, in a manuscript pedigree of the Lucy 
 family, by an old man named Ward, who derived his informa- 
 tion from family papers then in his hands. But this date is 
 nearly fifty years after the publication of the story in Rowe's 
 Life, and so is of little or no value. According to the same 
 authority Sir Thomas Lucy ceased his prosecution of Shake- 
 speare, and released him, at the intercession of the Earl of 
 Leicester. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 67 
 
 not evidence which would be sufficient in a court 
 of law, but quite enough for those who are satis- 
 fied with the concurrence of probability and 
 tradition ; and I confess that I am of that num- 
 ber. 
 
 From 1584, when Shakespeare's twin chil- 
 dren — Hamnet and Judith — were baptized, until 
 1592, when we know that he was rising rapidly to 
 distinction as a playwright in London, no record 
 of his life has been discovered ; nor has tradition 
 contributed anything of importance to fill the 
 gap, except the story of the deer-stealing and its 
 consequences. What was he doing in all those 
 eight years ? and what before the former date } 
 For he was not born to wealth and privilege, and 
 so could tiot, like the future Bishop of Bristol and 
 Worcester, spend all his time in stealing deer 
 and wooing girls. Malone, noticing the frequen- 
 cy with which he uses law terms, conjectured that 
 he had passed some of his adolescent years in an 
 attorney's office. In support of his conjecture, 
 Malone, himself a barrister, cited twenty -four 
 passages distinguished by the presence of law 
 phrases ; and to these he might have added many 
 more. But the use of such phrases is by no 
 means peculiar to Shakespeare. The writings of 
 the poets and playwrights of this period, Spen- 
 ser, Drayton, Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Middleton, Donne, and many others of less note, 
 
58 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 are thickly sprinkled with them.* In fact, the 
 application of legal language to the ordinary af- 
 fairs of life was more common two hundred and 
 fifty years ago than it is now ; though even now- 
 a-days the usage is much more general in the 
 
 * There are two passages in Shakespeare's works which are 
 so remarkable for the freedom with which law phrases are scat- 
 tered through them, that it is worth while to give them here. 
 The first is the well-known speech in the grave-digging scene of 
 Hmnlet: — 
 
 " Hamlet. — There 's another. Why may not that be the skull 
 of a lawyer ? Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases^ 
 his tenures, and his tricks ? Why does he suffer this rude knave, 
 now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will 
 not tell him of his action of battery? Humph! This fellow 
 might be in 's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his 
 recognizances, his fines, his double vauchers, his recoveries. Is this 
 the fijte of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have 
 his fine pate full of fine dirt ? Will his vouchers vouch him no 
 more of his purchases, and double ones, too, than the length and 
 breadth of a pair of htdenttcres ? The very conveyances of his 
 lands will hardly lie in this b6x ; and must the ittheritor himself 
 have no more ? ha ? " — Act V. So. I. 
 
 The second is the following Sonnet (No. XLVI.), not only the 
 language, but the very fundamental conceit of which, it will be 
 seen, is purely legal : — 
 
 " Mine Eye and Heart are at a mortal war 
 How to divide the conquest of thy sight ; 
 Mine Eye my Heart thy picture's sight would bar. 
 My Heart mine Eye the freedom of that right. 
 My Heart doth//m^ that thou in him dost lie 
 (A closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes) ; 
 But the defiendajit doth that plea deny, 
 And says in him thy fair appearance lies. 
 To 'cide this title is impanelled 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 69 
 
 rural districts than persons who have not hved in 
 them would suppose. There law shares with ag- 
 riculture the function of providing those phrases 
 of common conversation which, used figuratively 
 at first, and often with poetic feeling, soon pass 
 into mere thought-saving formulas of speech, and 
 
 A qiiest of thoughts, all tenants to the Heart, 
 And by their verdict is determined 
 The clear Eye's moiety, and the dear Heart's part ; 
 As thus : Mine Eye's due is thine outward part, 
 And my Heart's right, thine inward love of heart." 
 
 It would seem, indeed, as if passages like these must be re- 
 ceived as evidence that Shakespeare had more familiarity with 
 legal phraseology, if not a greater knowledge of it, than could 
 have been acquired except by habitual use in the course of pro- 
 fessional occupation. But that he is not peculiar even in this 
 crowding of many law-terms into one brief passage, take this 
 evidence from The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, a poor play 
 written by George Wilkins, an obscure contemporary play- 
 wright : — 
 
 " Doctor. Now, Sir, from this your oath and bond, 
 Faith's pledge and seal of conscience, you have run, 
 Broken all contracts, and the forfeiture 
 Justice hath now in s^lit against your soul : 
 Angels are made \}i\Q jurors, who are "witnesses 
 Unto the oath you took ; and God himself. 
 Maker of marriage, He that hath sealed the deed 
 As a firm lease unto you during life, 
 Sits now as Judge of your transgression : 
 The world inforjns against you with this voice, — 
 If such sins reign, what mortals can rejoice t 
 
 " Scarborow. What then ensues to me ? 
 
 " Doctor. A heavy doom, whose execution ''s 
 Now served upon your conscience," &c. 
 
 D. O. P., Vol. III. p. 91, ed. 1825. 
 
«Q MEMOIRS OF 
 
 which in large cities are mostly drawn from trade 
 and politics * 
 
 There are reasons, however, for believing that 
 Shakespeare had more than a layman's knowledge 
 of the technical language of the law. The famili- 
 arity with that language manifested by other play- 
 wrights and poets of his day precludes us, indeed, 
 from accepting the mere occurrence of law phrases 
 in his works as indications of a distinctive profes- 
 sional training. On the other hand, we have direct 
 contemporary evidence that many dramatic au- 
 thors of the Elizabethan period (1575 - 1625) were 
 bred attorneys or barristers. Thomas Nash, a 
 playwright, poet, and novelist, whose works were in 
 vogue just before Shakespeare wrote, in an " Epis- 
 
 * And yet Lord Chief Justice Campbell could cite these lines 
 from the exquisite song in Measure for Measure as among the evi- 
 dences of Shakespeare's legal acquirements : — 
 
 " But my kisses bring again 
 Seals of love, but sealed in vain." 
 
 If Shakespeare's lines smell of law, hov^ strong is the odor of 
 parchment and red tape in these, from Drayton's Fourth Eclogue 
 (1605)! — 
 
 " Kindnesse againe with kindnesse was repay'd, 
 
 And with sweet kisses couenants were sealed.'''' 
 
 Surely a man must be both a Lord Chancellor and a Shakespea- 
 rian commentator to forget that the use of seals is as old as the 
 art of writing, and perhaps older, and that the practice has fur- 
 nished a figure of speech to poets from the time when it was 
 written, that out of the whirlwind Job heard, " It is turned as clay 
 to the seal,''' and probably from a period yet more remote. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 71 
 
 tie to the Gentleman Students of the Two Uni- 
 versities," with which, according to the fashion of 
 the time, he introduced Greene's Menaphon (1587) 
 to the reader, has the following paragraph : — 
 
 " It is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a sort of 
 shifting companions that run through every art and thrive 
 by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were 
 born, and busy themselves with the endeavors of art, that 
 could scarcely Latinize their neck-verse, if they should 
 have need ; yet EngHsh Seneca, read by candle-light, 
 yields many good sentences, as, Blood is a beggar^ &c. ; 
 and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will af- 
 ford you whole Hamlets, — I should say, handfuls of tragi- 
 cal speeches. But, oh, grief! Tempiis edax rerum, — 
 what is that will last always ? The sea, exhaled by drops, 
 will, in continuance, be dry ; and Seneca, let blood line by 
 line and page by page, at length must needs die to our 
 stage." 
 
 It has most unaccountably been assumed that 
 this passage refers to Shakespeare, chiefly, it 
 would seem, if not only, because of the phrase, 
 " whole Hamlets, — I should say, handfuls of tragi- 
 cal speeches," — which has been looked upon as 
 an allusion to Shakespeare's great tragedy. That 
 Shakespeare had written this tragedy in 1586, 
 when he was but twenty-two years old, is improb- 
 able to the verge of impossibility ; and Nash's 
 allusion, if indeed he meant a punning sneer at a 
 play, (which is not certain,) was doubtless to an 
 old, lost dramatic version of the Danish story 
 upon which Shakespeare built his Hamlet. But 
 on the contrary, it seems clear that Nash's object 
 
72 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 was to sneer at Jasper Heywood, Alexander 
 Nevil, John Studley, Thomas Nuce, and Thomas 
 Newton, — one or more of them, — whose Seneca^ 
 his Tenne Tragedies translated into Englysh, was 
 pubhshed in 158 1. It is a very grievous perform- 
 ance ; and Shakespeare, who had read it thor- 
 oughly, made sport of it in A Midsimimer Nighfs 
 Dream. Indeed, Nash introduces the passage 
 above given by this paragraph, which has been 
 hitherto omitted in noticing the subject: "I will 
 turn my back to my first text of studies of delight, 
 and talk a little in friendship with a few of our 
 trivial translators." 
 
 Upon the leaving of law* for dramatic litera- 
 ture the passage in question is plainly of general 
 application. Such a change of occupation Nash 
 says was common ; and his testimony accords 
 with all that we know of the social and literary 
 history of that age. There was no regular army 
 in Elizabeth's time ; and the younger sons of gen- 
 tlemen not rich and of well-to-do yeomen flocked 
 to the church and to the bar ; and as the former 
 had ceased to be a stepping-stone to power and 
 wealth while the latter was gaining in that regard, 
 most of these young men became attorneys or 
 barristers. But then, as now, the early years of 
 professional life were seasons of sharp trial and 
 
 * Attorneys were called noverints because of the phrase JVove- 
 rint universi per presentes (Know all men by these presents) with 
 which many legal instruments then began. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 73 
 
 bitter disappointment. Necessity pressed sorely, 
 or pleasure wooed resistlessly ; and the slender 
 purse wasted rapidly away while the young lawyer 
 awaited the employment that did not come. He 
 knew then, as now he knows, the heart sickness 
 that waits on hope deferred ; nay, he felt, as now 
 he sometimes feels, the tooth of hunger gnawing 
 through the principles and firm resolves that par- 
 tition a life of honor and self-respect from one 
 darkened by conscious loss of rectitude, if not by 
 •open shame. Happy (yet, it may be, O un- 
 happy) he who now in such a strait can wield the 
 pen of a ready writer ! For the press, perchance, 
 may afford him a support which, though tempo- 
 rary and precarious, will hold him up until he can 
 stand upon more stable ground. But in the reigns 
 of Good Queen Bess and Gentle Jamie there was 
 no press. There was, however, an incessant de- 
 mand for new plays. Play-going was the chief 
 intellectual recreation of that day for all classes, 
 high and low. It is not extravagant to say that 
 there were then more new plays produced in 
 London in one month, than there are now in 
 both Great Britain and the United States in a 
 whole year. 
 
 To play -writing, therefore, the needy and gifted 
 young lawyer turned his hand at that day, as he 
 does now to journalism; and of those who had 
 been successful in their dramatic efforts, how inev- 
 itable it was that many would give themselves up 
 4 
 
yA MEMOIRS OF 
 
 to play-writing, and that thus the language of the 
 plays of that time should show such a remarkable 
 infusion of law phrases ! To what, then, must we 
 attribute the fact, that of all the plays that have 
 survived of those written between 1580 and 1620 
 Shakespeare's are most noteworthy in this respect ? 
 For no dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, 
 who was a younger son of a Judge of the Com- 
 mon Pleas, and who, after studying in the Inns of 
 Court, abandoned law for the drama, used legal 
 phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exact- 
 ness. And the significance of this fact is height- 
 ened by another, — that it is only to the language 
 of the law that he exhibits this inclination. The 
 phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him 
 on rare occasions by way of description, compar- 
 ison, or illustration, generally when something in 
 the scene suggests them ; but legal phrases flow 
 from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel 
 of his thought. The word "purchase," for in- 
 stance, which in ordinary use meant, as now it 
 means, to acquire by giving value, applies in law 
 to all legal modes of obtaining property, except 
 inheritance or descent. And in this peculiar sense 
 the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty- 
 four plays, but only in a single passage in the fifty- 
 four plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. And in the 
 first scene of the Midsummer Night's Dream the 
 father of Hermia begs the ancient privilege of 
 Athens, that he may dispose of his daughter either 
 to Demetrius or to death, — 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " according to our law 
 Immediately provided in that case." 
 
 75 
 
 He pleads the statute ; and the words run off his 
 tongue in heroic verse as if he were reading them 
 from a paper. 
 
 As the courts of law in Shakespeare's time oc- 
 cupied public attention much more than they do 
 now, — their terms having regulated " the season " 
 of London society,* — it has been suggested that it 
 was in attendance upon them that he picked up 
 his legal vocabulary. But this supposition not 
 only fails to account for Shakespeare's peculiar 
 freedom and exactness in the use of that phrase- 
 ology, — it does not even place him in the way of 
 learning those terms his use of which is most re- 
 markable ; which are not such as he would have 
 heard at ordinary proceedings at nisi prius, but 
 such as refer to the tenure or transfer of real prop- 
 erty, — " fine and recovery," " statutes merchant," 
 "purchase," "indenture," "tenure," " double vouch- 
 er," " fee simple," " fee farm," " remainder," " rever- 
 sion," "forfeiture," &c. This conveyancer's jargon 
 could not have been picked up by hanging round 
 the courts of law in London two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, when suits as to the title to real prop- 
 erty were comparatively so rare. And beside, 
 Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his early 
 plays, written in his first London years, as in those 
 
 * Faltsaff, for instance, speaks of " the wearing out of six fash- 
 ions, which is four tei^ms or two actions." 
 
^5 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 produced at a later period * Just as exactly 
 too ; for the correctness and propriety with which 
 these terms are introduced have compelled the ad- 
 miration of a Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor.! 
 Again, bearing in mind that genius, although it 
 reveals general truth, and facilitates all acquire- 
 ment, does not impart facts or acquaintance with 
 technical terms, how can we account for the fact 
 that, in an age when it was the common practice 
 for young lawyers to write plays, one playwright 
 left upon his plays a stronger, sharper legal stamp 
 than appears upon those of any of his contempo- 
 raries, and that the characters of this stamp are 
 those of the complicated law of real property? 
 
 * Thus, in Henry the Sixth, Part II., Jack Cade says, " Men shall 
 hold of me in capite : and we charge and command that wives be 
 as free as heart can wish or tongiie can telV ; — words which indi- 
 cate acquaintance with very ancient and uncommon tenures of 
 land. In the Comedy of Errors, when Dromio of Syracuse says, 
 " There 's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald 
 by nature," (wise words, and fatal to many hopes,) his mas- 
 ter replies, " May he not do it hjfjie and recovery ? " Fine and 
 recovery was a process by which, through a fictitious suit, a trans- 
 fer was made of the title in an entailed estate. In Lovers Labor 'j 
 Lost, almost without a doubt the first comedy that Shakespeare 
 wrote, on Boyet's offering to kiss Maria (Act 11. Sc. i), she de- 
 clines the salute, and says, *' My lips are no common, though sev- 
 eral they be." Maria's allusion is plainly to tenancy in common 
 by several (i. e. divided, distinct) title. 
 
 t These are Lord Campbell's words : " While novelists and 
 dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to the law of mar- 
 riage, of wills, and of inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly 
 as he propounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of ex- 
 ceptions, nor writ of error." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 77 
 
 Must we believe that this man was thus distin- 
 guished among a crowd of play-writing lawyers, 
 not only by his genius, but by a lack of special 
 knowledge of the law ? Or shall we rather be- 
 lieve that the son of the late high bailiff of Strat- 
 ford, a somewhat clever lad, and ambitious withal, 
 was allowed to commence his studies for a profes- 
 sion for which his cleverness fitted him, and by 
 which he might reasonably hope to rise at least to 
 moderate wealth and distinction, and that he con- 
 tinued these studies until his father's misfortunes, 
 aided perhaps by some of those acts of youthful 
 indiscretion which clever lads as well as dull ones 
 sometimes will commit, threw him upon his own re- 
 sources, — and that then, law failing to supply his 
 pressing need, he turned to the stage, on which he 
 had townsmen and friends ? One of these con- 
 clusions is in the face of reason, fact, and proba- 
 bility ; the other in accordance with them all. 
 
 But the bare fact that Shakespeare was an at- 
 torney's clerk, even if indisputably established, 
 though of some interest, is of little real impor- 
 tance. It teaches us nothing about the man, of 
 what he did for himself, thought for himself, how 
 he joyed, how he suffered, what he was in his mere 
 manhood. It has but a naked material relation to 
 the other fact, that he uses legal phrases oftener, 
 more freely, and more exactly than any other 
 poet. 
 
78 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 III. 
 
 Somewhere, then, within the years 1585 and 
 1586, Shakespeare went from Stratford to Lon- 
 don, where we next hear of him as an actor and a 
 mender of old plays. That he went with the in- 
 tention of becoming an actor, has been universally 
 assumed ; but perhaps too hastily. For he had 
 social ambition and high self-esteem ; and in his 
 day to become an actor was to cast the one of these 
 sentiments aside, and to tread the other under 
 foot. Betterton's story, told through Rowe, is, that 
 Shakespeare was " obliged to leave his business 
 and family for some time, and shelter himself in 
 London." In so far as this may be relied upon, it 
 shows that Shakespeare had business in Stratford, 
 and that he sought only a temporary refuge in the 
 metropolis. Probably it was with no very definite 
 purpose that he left his native place. Poverty, 
 persecution, and perhaps a third Fury, made Strat- 
 ford too hot to hold him ; and he might well flee, 
 vaguely seeking relief for the present and provis- 
 ion for the future. He would naturally hope to 
 live in London by the business which he had fol- 
 lowed at Stratford. Such is the way of ambitious 
 young men who go from rural districts to a me- 
 tropolis. And, until every other means of liveli- 
 hood had failed him, it was not in this high-mind- 
 ed, sensitive, aspiring youth to assume voluntarily 
 a profession then scorned of all men. We may 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 79 
 
 be sure that, if he sought business as an attorney 
 in London, he did not at once obtain it. Shake- 
 speare although he was, no such miracle could be 
 wrought for him ; nay, the less would it be wrought 
 because of his being Shakespeare. He doubtless 
 in these first days hoped for a publisher ; and not 
 improbably this purpose was among those which 
 led him up to London. Let who will believe that 
 he went that journey without a manuscript in his 
 pocket. For to suppose that a man of poetic 
 power lives until his twenty-first year without 
 writing a poem, which he then rates higher 
 than he ever afterward will rate any of his work, 
 is to set aside the history of poetry, and to si- 
 lence those years which are most affluent of 
 fancy and most eager for expression. 
 
 With Venus and Adonis written, if nothing 
 else, — but I think it not unlikely a play, — 
 Shakespeare went to London and sought a pa- 
 tron. For in those days a poet needed a patron 
 even more than a publisher ; as without the for- 
 mer he rarely or never got the latter. Shake- 
 speare found a patron ; but not so soon, we may 
 be sure, as he had expected. Meantime, while he 
 waited, the stage door stood ajar invitingly, and 
 he was both tempted and impelled to enter. For 
 that natural inclination to poetry and acting 
 which Aubrey tells us he possessed had been 
 stimulated by the frequent visits of companies of 
 players to Stratford, at whose performances he 
 
8o 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 could not have failed to be a delighted and 
 thoughtful spectator. Indeed, as it was the cus- 
 tom for the mayor or bailiff of a town visited by 
 a travelling company to bespeak the play at their 
 first exhibition, to reward them for it himself, and 
 to admit the audience gratis, it may safely be as- 
 sumed that the first theatrical performance in 
 Stratford of which there is any record had John 
 Shakespeare for its patron. For it was given in 
 1569, the year in which he was high bailiff; and 
 the bailiff's son, although he was then only five 
 years old, we may be sure was present. Between 
 1569 and 1586 hardly a year passed without sev- 
 eral performances by one or more companies at 
 Stratford. But natural inclination and straitened 
 means of living were not the only influences 
 which led Shakespeare to the theatre. Other 
 Stratford boys had gone up to London, and some 
 of them had become players. Thomas Greene, 
 one of the most eminent actors of the Elizabethan 
 period, he who gave his name to The City Gallant, 
 which was known and published as " Greene's 
 Tu Qiioquel' was in 1586 a member of the compa- 
 ny known as " The Lord Chamberlain's Servants," 
 to which Shakespeare became permanently at- 
 tached. Greene was of a respectable family at 
 Stratford, one member of which was an attorney, 
 who had professional connections in London, 
 and was Shakespeare's kinsman. Burbadge, Sly, 
 Heminge, and Pope, who all bore Warwickshire 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 3 1 
 
 names, were on the London stage at the time 
 of Shakespeare's arrival at the metropoHs.* If 
 Shakespeare went to London relying upon the 
 good offices of friends, we may be sure that he 
 looked more to his townsman, Greene the attor- 
 ney, than to his other townsman, Greene the 
 actor. But in that case, considering how shy 
 attorneys are apt to be of the sort of young man 
 who steals deer and writes verses, it is not at all 
 surprising that the player proved to be the more 
 serviceable acquaintance. 
 
 Many circumstances combine to show that it 
 was in 1586 that William Shakespeare became 
 connected with the London stage ; a few month's 
 variation — and there cannot be more — in the 
 date, one way or the other, is of small impor- 
 tance. Betterton heard that "he was received 
 into the company at first in a very mean rank," 
 and the octogenarian parish clerk of Stratford, 
 before mentioned, told Dowdall, in 1693, that he 
 "was received into the play-house as a serviture." 
 These stories have an air of truth. What claim 
 had this raw Stratford stripling to put his foot 
 higher than the first round of the ladder.'^ In 
 those days that round was apprenticeship to some 
 well-established actor ; and as such a servitor 
 probability and tradition unite in assuring us that 
 
 * See the Remarks on the Preliminary Matter to the Folio, 
 Vol. II. pp. xxxvi., xlvii., xlviii. of the author's edition of Shake- 
 speare's Works. 
 
 4* F 
 
32 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 William Shakespeare began his theatrical career. 
 There is a story that his first occupation in Lon- 
 don was holding horses at the play-house door ; 
 but it was not heard of until the middle of the 
 last century, and is unworthy of serious attention. 
 
 Theatres had increased rapidly in London dur- 
 ing the few years preceding Shakespeare's arrival. 
 Not long before that time public acting was con- 
 fined almost entirely to the court-yards of large 
 inns, or to temporary stages which were erected 
 in the open air or in booths ; although sometimes 
 the use of a large hall was obtained by the gener- 
 osity of a nobleman or a corporation, or that of a 
 churchyard, or even a church, by the paid conni- 
 vance of the rector. The public authorities, more 
 especially those who were inclined to Puritanism, 
 exerted themselves in every possible way to re- 
 press the performance of plays and interludes. 
 They fined and imprisoned the players, even 
 stocked them, and harassed and restrained them 
 to the utmost of their ability. But, like all such 
 restrictive, persecuting folk, they began their 
 work at the wrong end to warrant any hope of 
 its accomplishment. They punished the players 
 when they should have disciplined the public. 
 Had they been able to root out the taste for dra- 
 matic entertainment, and checked the demand for 
 it, they might have let the poor players go quietly 
 on with their performances, sure that they would 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 83 
 
 soon come to an end. But the taste grew into 
 a fierce appetite, and pervaded all classes of so- 
 ciety ; and the supply of the needful food was an 
 inevitable necessity. The strait-laced aldermen 
 of London would neither be mollified by the art 
 of the player nor learn sufficient wisdom from 
 experience to devote their energies to regulating 
 that which they could not stop ; and in 1575 the 
 players were interdicted from the practice of their 
 art (or rather their calling, for it was not yet an 
 art) within the limits of the city. 
 
 Among the men who suffered from this new 
 ordinance was James Burbadge, a Warwickshire 
 man. He is said to have been a carpenter ; but 
 he added to the gains of his craft what he could 
 get as one of a cry of players ; and mayhap, like 
 that other artisan actor, Nick Bottom, he had 
 " simply the best wit of any handy-craft-man " in 
 his city. Certainly whatever wit he had was put 
 to good use ; for, as he could not play in London, 
 he determined to play just outside of it, and to 
 use his skill as a carpenter in building that then 
 unheard-of thing in England, a play-house. Bor- 
 rowing the good round sum of £600 from a rich 
 father-in-law, he leased a plot of ground and the 
 buildings upon it in the suburb of Shoreditch for 
 twenty-one years, with the privilege of putting 
 up a theatre ; and partly by altering, partly by 
 building, as we have seen under similar circum- 
 stances in New York, he soon had his play-house 
 
84 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 finished. And thus the oppression of an artisan 
 player caused the erection, in 1575, of the First 
 English Theatre, — indeed the first modern thea- 
 tre ; for, setting aside the ruined structures of 
 antiquity, in no other country at this time had 
 there been built a house for the especial purpose 
 of dramatic performances. Burbadge's house was 
 called inevitably " The Theatre." It had no other 
 name ; and no other was needed. The enterpris- 
 ing dramatic carpenter's venture proved so prof- 
 itable, that, resolving, like a Yankee showman of 
 world-wide notoriety, to be his own opposition, 
 he built within a year another theatre in Moor- 
 fields, which he called " The Curtain " ; and to 
 these two he added, in 1576, a third, destined to 
 immortal fame. This was in the liberties of the 
 late dissolved monastery of the Blackfriars. Like 
 " The Theatre," it was constructed by the altera- 
 tion of dwelling-houses. Its site is now in the 
 heart of London, near Printing-House Square ; 
 and even then, though outside the city proper, it 
 was one of the most thickly-built quarters of the 
 town, and one inhabited by the better sort of folk, 
 and even by the nobility. These people, aided by 
 the Mayor of London, did all they could to get the 
 Privy Council to forbid the erection of the new 
 theatre in their elegant and orderly neighborhood. 
 But it is worthy of special notice that all this 
 aristocratic and high official influence failed of 
 the object to which it was directed. The love 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 85 
 
 of the whole people for the drama was too strong 
 and too vivid in its manifestation to make it 
 politic, even in those days of arbitrary power, to 
 restrict that individual liberty of which our race 
 is so jealous, in favor of the few who were averse 
 to stage plays or annoyed by the surroundings of 
 a play-house. In 1586 the houses above named 
 were the principal theatres of London ; but there 
 were three or four other buildings, near the bank 
 of the river, one of which was called " The Rose," 
 which were used by players, tumblers, mounte- 
 banks, and bear -baiters promiscuously. Paris 
 Garden, which some time afterward became a 
 theatre, was entirely devoted to the cruel sports 
 of the baiting ring. 
 
 These theatres were occupied by companies of 
 players, each of which was under the patronage 
 and protection of some distinguished nobleman. 
 The most esteemed of these companies were the 
 Queen's, the Earl of Leicester's, the Lord Admi- 
 ral's (Earl of Nottingham), the Earl of Pem- 
 broke's, the Earl of Sussex's, and the Children 
 of the Royal Chapel and of St. Paul's. The 
 company which played at the Blackfriars, and of 
 which James Burbadge was the leading man, was 
 the Earl of Leicester's. This company had played 
 at Stratford several times in Shakespeare's boy- 
 hood. The playwrights whose works were then 
 most in vogue, and who were all attached to one 
 or other of these companies, and were actors of 
 
36 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 more or less repute, were George Peele, Robert 
 Greene, Christopher Marlowe, John Lyly, Thomas 
 Kyd, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Lodge, Henry 
 Chettle, and Anthony Munday. Of these only 
 the first four possessed any marked superiority 
 over their fellows ; and of the four only Marlowe's 
 pen obtained for him any other place in the 
 world's memory than that of having been a con- 
 temporary of Shakespeare. 
 
 Tradition and the custom of the time concur in 
 assuring us that Shakespeare's first connection 
 with the stage was as an actor ; and an actor he 
 continued to be for twenty years or more. But 
 although Aubrey tells us that " he did act exceed- 
 ing well," he seems never to have risen high in 
 this profession. Betterton, or perhaps Rowe, 
 heard that the top of his performance was the 
 Ghost in his own Hamlet ; and Oldys tells a story, 
 that one of his younger brothers, who lived to a 
 great age, being questioned as to William, said 
 that he remembered having seen him act the part, 
 in one of his own comedies, of a long-bearded, 
 decrepit old man, who was supported by another 
 person to a table, where they sat among other 
 company, one of whom sang a song. If this were 
 true, Shakespeare played Adam in As You Like 
 It. And it is consistent with all that we know of 
 him that he should play such parts as this and the 
 Ghost, which required judgment and intelligent 
 reading rather than passion and lively simulation. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 87 
 
 It is not probable that Shakespeare, when he had 
 found that he could labor profitably in a less pub- 
 lic walk of his calling, ever strove for distinction 
 or much employment as an actor. We know 
 from one of his sonnets how bitter the conscious- 
 ness of his position was to him, and that he 
 cursed the fortune which had consigned him to 
 a public life.* If he ever had comfort on the 
 stage it must have been in playing kingly parts, 
 which are assigned to him in the lines of Davies.f 
 But although Shakespeare began his London 
 life as a player, it was impossible that he should 
 long remain without writing for the stage ; and so 
 it happened. With what company he became 
 first connected, there is no direct evidence ; but 
 his earliest dramatic employment seems to have 
 been as a co-worker with Greene, Marlowe, and 
 Peele for the Earl of Pembroke's players. There 
 are good reasons for believing that, in conjunction 
 with one or more of these playwrights, he labored 
 on TJie Fii'st Part of the Contention betwixt the 
 Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster, The 
 True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, A Pleas- 
 ant Conceited History of the Taming of a Shrew ^ 
 Titus AndronicuSy an early form of Romeo and 
 Juliet, of which there are some remains in the 
 quarto edition of 1597, and probably some other 
 pieces which have been lost.J It would have 
 
 * Sonnet CXI. t See page 138. 
 
 % See the Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, 
 
38 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 been strange, indeed almost unprecedented, if a 
 young adventurer going up to London had imme- 
 diately found his true place, and taken firm root 
 therein. But little as we know of Shakespeare's 
 period of trial and vicissitude, we do know that it 
 was brief, and that within about three years from 
 the time when he left his native place he attached 
 himself to the Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon's com- 
 pany (previously known as the Earl of Leicester's), 
 of which the Burbadges, father and son, were 
 prominent members, and that he became a share- 
 holder in this company, and remained an active 
 member of it until he finally retired to Stratford. 
 
 Shakespeare immediately showed that unmis- 
 takable trait of a man organized for success in 
 life, which is so frequently lacking in men who 
 are both gifted and industrious, — the ability to 
 find his work, and to settle down quickly to it, 
 and take hold of it in earnest. He worked hard, 
 did everything that he could turn his hand to, — 
 acted, wrote, helped others to write, — and seeing 
 through men and things as he did at a glance, he 
 was in those early years somewhat over-free of his 
 criticism and his advice, and, what was less endur- 
 able by his rivals, too ready to illustrate his prin- 
 ciples of art successfully in practice. He came 
 soon to be regarded, by those who liked and 
 
 Vol. VII., and the Introduction to Tittis Androjziais, Vol. IX., 
 The Taming of the Shrew, Vol. IV., and Romeo and yuliet^ 
 Vol. X. of the author's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 89 
 
 needed him, as a most useful and excellent fel- 
 low, a very factotum, and a man of great promise ; 
 while those who disliked him and found him in 
 their way, and whose ears were wounded by his 
 praises, set him down as an officious and con- 
 ceited upstart. He saw at once the coarse, un- 
 natural, feeble, and inflated style of the men 
 whom he found in possession of public favor, and 
 he treated them to a little good-natured ridicule, 
 of which we find traces in some of his plays, as in 
 Hamlet and A Midsiivimei^-Nighi s Dream, and in 
 some of his burlesque bombastic characters, as in 
 Pistol and Nym. Now, men may love their ene- 
 mies and do good to them that hate them; but 
 men will never love their critics, or do anything 
 but evil to them that ridicule them. As to criti- 
 cism men are unwise ; but in regard to ridicule 
 they have some reason. Accusation of crime is 
 trifling in comparison. Say that a man has mur- 
 dered his mother ; and if he has not done the 
 deed, your slander will recoil upon your own head, 
 bringing him consolation in your infamy. But 
 make him ridiculous, and he simply is ridiculous, 
 and there is an end ; except that he is your ene- 
 my for life. Ridicule can neither be refuted nor 
 explained away. For which reason, although it is 
 a fair weapon against words and acts, (however 
 poor a test of truth,) against persons it is the fit 
 resort of cowardice and malice ; — a distinction, 
 however, which many men cannot or will not 
 
QO MEMOIRS OF 
 
 make ; and consequently an author often resents 
 the ridicule of his writings as if it were directed 
 against himself This was Shakespeare's experi- 
 ence. But not content with criticism and carica- 
 ture, he began to outstrip his victims in favor with 
 the public. Now, such conduct is always resented 
 as an insult. There is no surer, as there can be 
 no sadder, evidence to a man that he is rising in 
 the world's consideration, than an outcry from the 
 little souls around him that he is receiving that of 
 which he is not worthy. How they strive by pro- 
 tests (always in the interests of truth), by sneers, 
 and by all the little artifices of detraction, even 
 silence, to show that he is as small as they are, 
 only showing the while how much he is their 
 superior ! Goodness divine and wisdom infinite 
 could not escape such scoffing. " Is not this the 
 carpenter's son ? is not his mother called Mary .? 
 and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, 
 and Judas, and his sisters, are they not all with 
 us } Whence then hath this man all these 
 things } And they were offended in him." 
 
 That such was Shakespeare's lot we are not left 
 to conjecture, hardly to infer. One of the play- 
 wrights whom he found in high favor when he 
 reached London, and with whom, as a youthful 
 assistant, he began his dramatic labors, stretched 
 out his hand from beyond the grave to leave a rec- 
 ord of his hate for the man who had supplanted 
 him, and who, he saw, would supplant his com- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 91 
 
 panions, as a writer for the stage. The drunken 
 debauchee, Robert Greene, dying in dishonorable 
 need, left behind him a pamphlet written on his 
 death-bed, and published after his burial. It was 
 called A Groatsworth of Wit boiLght with a Million 
 of Repentance, and was better named than its au- 
 thor, or its editor, Henry Chettle, probably sup- 
 posed. But Greene, though repentant, with the 
 repentance of sordid souls when they are cast 
 down, was not so changed in heart that he could 
 resist the temptation of discharging from his stif- 
 fening hand a Parthian shaft, barbed with envy 
 and malice, and winged with little wit, against 
 young Shakespeare. In the pretended interests 
 of truth and friendship, he warned his companions 
 and co-workers, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, that 
 the players who had all been beholden to them, 
 as well as to him, would forsake them for a certain 
 upstart crow, beautified with their feathers, who 
 supposed that he was able to write blank verse 
 with the best of them, and who, being in truth a 
 Johannes Factotum, was in his own conceit the 
 only Shake-scene in the country.* Greene was 
 right, as his surviving friends ere long discovered. 
 Their sun had set ; and it was well for them that 
 they all died soon after. They could not forgive 
 
 * See the passage in question, given verbatim and in full, and 
 its significance with regard to Shakespeare's early labors set forth, 
 in the Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, Vol. 
 VIL pp. 408-412 of the author's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
92 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Shakespeare his superiority ; but he forgave at 
 least one of them his envy ; for when, a few years 
 after, he wrote As You Like It, he made Phebe say 
 of Marlowe, quoting a Hne from Hero and Leaitder, 
 
 " Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, 
 ' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight ? ' " 
 
 Greene sank into his grave, his soul eaten up with 
 envy as his body with disease ; but he was spared 
 the added pang of foreseeing that his own name 
 would be preserved in the world's memory only 
 because of his indirect connection with the man 
 at whom he sneered, and that he would be chiefly 
 known as his slanderer. Had he lived to see his 
 book published, he would have enjoyed such base 
 and pitiful satisfaction as can be given by revenge. 
 His little arrow reached its mark, and the wound 
 smarted. As the venom of a sting often inflicts 
 more temporary anguish than the laceration of a 
 fatal hurt, such wounds always smart, although 
 they rarely injure ; and few men are wise and 
 strong enough to bear their suflering in dignity 
 and silence. Whether, if Greene had been alive, 
 Shakespeare would have publicly noticed his at- 
 tack, can only be conjectured ; but I feel sure that 
 he would have been kept from open wrangle with 
 such an assailant by his reticence and self-respect. 
 Yet, although he was above petty malice and re- 
 crimination, he was sore and indignant ; and he, 
 and others for him, protested against the wrong 
 which had been done him in Greene's pamphlet. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 93 
 
 He did not protest in vain ; for Chettle, Greene's 
 editor, although he treated with great contempt a 
 like complaint of disrespect on the part of Mar- 
 lowe, whom Greene had also slurred, apologized to 
 Shakespeare in a tract called TJie Kind Heart's 
 Dremn, which he published immediately afterward, 
 saying that, although he was personally guiltless 
 of the wrong, he was as sorry as if the original 
 fault had been his own to have offended a man so 
 courteous, so gifted, and one who, by his worth 
 and his ability, had risen high in the esteem of 
 many of his superiors in rank and station.* Greene 
 died in the autumn of 1592, and his pamphlet and 
 Chettle's were both published in the same year. 
 Thus Shakespeare, within six or seven years of his 
 departure from Stratford a fugitive adventurer, 
 had won admiration from the public, respect from 
 his superiors, and the consequent hate of some, 
 and, what is so much harder of attainment, the 
 regard of others, among those who were his equals, 
 except in his surpassing genius. 
 
 These two pregnant passages, which we owe to 
 the malice of a disappointed rival, are the first 
 public notice of Shakespeare, and our earliest au- 
 thentic record of his presence in London.f By 
 
 * See Chettle's apology in full and verbatim in the Essay on the 
 Authorship of King Hettiy the Sixth, Vol. VII. p. 410, as above. 
 
 + In 1835 ^^' John Payne Collier published a small volume en- 
 titled New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare., in which he 
 brought to notice six documents as having been found at Bridge- 
 water House among the papers of Lord Ellesmere, who was 
 
QA MEMOIRS OF 
 
 this time he had produced, in addition to his con- 
 tributions to partnership plays and to old ones 
 partly rewritten, T/ie Comedy of Errors, Loves La- 
 
 Chancellor in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. One of these 
 documents was an unsigned certificate or memorandum, intended 
 apparently for the Privy Council, exculpating the players at the 
 Black-friars Theatre from a charge of having meddled in matters 
 of state and religion, which had been brought against the thea- 
 tres generally in 1589. Among the names of the players men- 
 tioned in this paper as sharers in the theatre appears that of 
 William Shakespeare, which stands twelfth on the list. The doc- 
 ument is as follows : — 
 
 "These are to sertifie yor right honorable LL, that her Ma*^ 
 poore playeres James Burbidge Richard Burbidge John Laneham 
 Thomas Greene Robert Wilson John Taylor Anth. Wadeson 
 Thomas Pope George Peele Augustine Phillippes Nicholas Tow- 
 ley William Shakespeare William Kempe William Johnson Bap- 
 tiste Goodale and Robert Armyn being all of them sharers in the 
 blacke Fryers playehouse haue neuer given cause of displeasure, 
 in that they haue brought into their playes maters of state and 
 Religion, vnfitt to be handled by them or to be presented before 
 lewde spectators neither hath anie complainte in that kinde ever 
 beene preferrde against them, or anie of them Wherefore, they 
 trust most humblie in yor Lis consideracion of their former good 
 behauiour being at all tymes readie and willing to yeelde obedi- 
 ence to any comaund whatsoever yor LI in yor wisdome may 
 thinke in such case meete, &c. 
 
 "Nov. 1589." 
 
 Until recently this memorandum was received as genuine ; and 
 were it so, it would show us that, within three years after his ar- 
 rival at London, William Shakespeare had advanced from the 
 position of servitor, apprentice, or hired man in the Lord Cham- 
 berlain's company to that of a sharer in the receipts of the com- 
 pany, not that of a proprietor of the theatre. But suspicion of 
 the genuineness of the documents brought forward by Mr, Col- 
 lier having been excited, this, among the others, was carefully 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 95 
 
 boi^^s Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona ^ his 
 earliest original productions. He was already 
 thriving, with prosperity in prospect. But he had 
 
 examined by the most eminent palaeographists in London, some 
 of them holding high official positions, and all pronounced it a 
 forgery. The facts in regard to the investigation of the character 
 of these documents will be found in Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton's 
 Inquiry, Sec, 4to, London, i860 ; Dr. Mansfield Ingleby's Com- 
 plete View of the Shakespeare Controversy, London, 1861 ; Mr. Duf- 
 fus Hardy's Review of the Present State of the Shakespearian Con- 
 trover sy, London, i860 ; and in The Shakespeare Mystery, in the 
 Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1S61. It is possible, though very im- 
 probable, that the judgment pronounced by such high palaeo- 
 graphic authorities may be incorrect ; but the documents are put 
 by this decision out of question as evidence of the bare and 
 meagre facts in Shakespeare's life which they profess to establish. 
 In Spenser's Teares of the Muses, printed in 1591, a passage be- 
 ginning with the lines, — 
 
 "And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made 
 To mock her selfe, and Truth to imitate, 
 With kindly counter under mimick shade. 
 Our pleasant Willy, ah, is dead of late," — 
 
 has been held to refer to Shakespeare ; chiefly, it would seem, be- 
 cause of the name, Willy. But that, like *' shepherd," was not 
 uncommonly used merely to mean a poet, and was distinctly ap- 
 plied to Sir Philip Sidney in an Eclogue preserved in Davidson's 
 /"(^^/zm/ ^/^a/j-<?^', published in 1602. And the Teares of the Mu- 
 ses had certainly been written before 1590, when Shakespeare 
 could not have risen to the position assigned by the first poet of 
 the age to the subject of this passage, and probably in 1580, when 
 Shakespeare was a boy of sixteen in Stratford. Indeed, the no- 
 tion that Spenser had him in mind would not merit even this at- 
 tention, were it not that my readers might suppose that I had 
 passed it by through inadvertence. All that ingenuity and per- 
 sistent faith can urge in support of it the reader will find in Mr. 
 Knight's and Mr. Collier's biographies of the poet. 
 
96 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 literary ambition which play-writing did not satis- 
 fy (for that he did as a conveyancer draws deeds, 
 — as business) ; and he had a poem written ; so 
 he still looked about for a patron. Now, there 
 was at this time in London a nobleman of high 
 rank and large wealth, Henry Wriothesley, Earl 
 of Southampton, who had a genuine love of let- 
 ters, and who was just upon the threshold of a 
 lordly life. As yet he had not exhibited in any 
 marked degree the high spirit, the fine capacity 
 of appreciation, the graciousness, and the generos- 
 ity which made him afterward admired and loved 
 of all men at the court of Queen Elizabeth. For 
 at the publication of Greene's pamphlet he was 
 but nineteen years old, and Shakespeare was nine 
 years his senior. Loving literature and the soci- 
 ety of men of letters, he had a special fondness 
 /or the drama, and, being a constant attendant up- 
 on the theatre, he saw much of Shakespeare and 
 his plays ; and there can be no doubt that he was 
 one of those " divers of worship " whose respect 
 for the poet's " uprightness of dealing " and admi- 
 ration of his "facetious grace in writing" Chettle 
 assigns as one reason for his apology to a man 
 whom, it is very easy to see, he did not think it 
 prudent to offend.* Shakespeare must have had 
 
 * The meaning of the word " facetious " in this well-known pas- 
 sage has been very generally misunderstood, and by none more 
 completely than by Miss Bacon, who rested her misapprehension 
 of Shakespeare's rank among his contemporaries much on Chet- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 97 
 
 some acquaintance with Southampton at this time, 
 and have felt that he was in his Lordship's favor. 
 For to him he determined to dedicate his Vemis 
 and Adonis, although he had not asked permission 
 to do so, as the dedication shows ; and in those 
 days, in fact at any time, without some knowledge 
 of his man and some opportunity of judging how 
 he would receive the compliment, a player would 
 not have ventured to take such a liberty with the 
 name of a nobleman. In the next year (1593) 
 the closing of the London theatres on account of 
 the plague afforded a favorable occasion for the 
 publication of the poem, and it was printed by 
 Richard Field, a Stratford man. It immediately 
 won its author a high literary reputation. Before 
 a year had passed a new edition was called for ; 
 a third was published in 1596, and two others with- 
 in nine years of its first appearance. Southamp- 
 ton must have been a churl not to be gratified at 
 the homage of such a poet ; and being a man 
 whose rank was the mere pedestal, and whose 
 
 tie's use of this epithet, upon which she rung a never-ending 
 change of sneers. But " facetious " here has no reference to that 
 light comic vein of speech to which it is now exclusively applied. 
 It was used in Shakespeare's time in a sense combining our terms 
 " felicitous " and " fastidious " in regard to style. Thus Thomas 
 Sackville, Earl of Dorset, a grave statesman as well as an accom- 
 plished man of letters, who in his very youth wrote only serious 
 and sententious works, is said by Naunton to have been " so facete 
 and choice in his phrase and style " when drafting state papers, 
 that his secretaries could rarely please him. 
 
 5 *G 
 
98 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 wealth the mere adornment, of his real nobility, 
 he acknowledged Shakespeare's compliment in a 
 manner both munificent and considerate. Tradi- 
 tion tells us the former ; a second dedication, the 
 latter. In the dedication of his Venus a7id Adonis y 
 which we must not forget that Shakespeare re- 
 garded as his first appearance as an author, he 
 expressed a fear that he might offend the young 
 Earl by connecting his name with the first heir of 
 his invention ; but he promised that, if his patron 
 were only pleased, he would devote all the time 
 that he could steal from the daily labor of playing 
 and play- writing to some graver labor in his honor. 
 Such a work, we may be sure, he then already had 
 in mind ; for in the very next year appeared the 
 Lucrece, a grave and even tragic poem, showing 
 much greater maturity of thought and style than 
 its predecessor, and dedicated also to Southamp- 
 ton. But the tone of the poet toward the patron is 
 now very different from what it was a year before ; 
 although it is still tainted with that deference of 
 simple manhood to privilege, which, in the time of 
 Elizabeth, Englishmen of Shakespeare's rank, no 
 matter what their age, their ability, or their char- 
 acter, must needs pay to English lads of South- 
 ampton's. How is it now, except among those 
 Englishmen who have never bowed again under 
 the yoke of privilege which their forefathers cast 
 off" in the days when Milton was our mouthpiece 
 and Cromwell our leader ? 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. qq 
 
 It is evident from this dedication, that the Earl 
 had done something more than seem pleased with 
 its predecessor. Shakespeare speaks in it of a 
 warrant which he had of his patron's honorable 
 disposition that makes him sure of acceptance, 
 and adds, " What I have done is yours ; what I 
 have to do is yours ; being part in all I have, de- 
 voted yours." This is not flattery, or even defer- 
 ence : words of acknowledgment could not be 
 stronger. On this evidence alone it is plain that 
 something had passed between Shakespeare and 
 the Earl which had bound the former entirely to 
 the latter by lasting ties of gratitude. Again cir- 
 cumstance and tradition strengthen and eke out 
 each other. A story reached Rowe through Da- 
 venant (would that so excellent a thing had been 
 preserved in a cleaner vessel !) that Southampton 
 gave Shakespeare a thousand pounds to make a 
 purchase of importance. Now, it so happened 
 that in 1594 the Globe Theatre was built by the 
 company to which Shakespeare belonged, in all 
 the property of which we know that he became a 
 lar2:e owner. The sum which the Earl is said to 
 have given to Shakespeare is so very large, — be- 
 ing equal to thirty thousand dollars at our present 
 rate of value, that, while the world has willingly 
 believed the substance of the story, many have 
 doubted the correctness of its details. And yet, 
 remembering the customs of those times, the 
 more we consider how splendid a fellow young 
 
 L.ofC. 
 
100 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Southampton was, how munificent to men of let- 
 ters, how whole-hearted to his friends, the more 
 we shall be ready to receive the story of his gen- 
 erosity to Shakespeare without abatement. We 
 know that the Earl of Essex gave Bacon — then 
 only Mr. Francis Bacon, a rising young barrister 
 — an estate worth eighteen hundred pounds, — 
 nearly twice as much as Southampton's reported 
 gift to Shakespeare. And the story that Sir 
 Philip Sidney, on reading the first stanza of The 
 Faeide Qiieene, which had been sent to him in 
 manuscript, directed fifty guineas to be given to 
 the author, which he doubled on reading the sec- 
 ond, and raised to two hundred as he went on, at 
 least shows the way in which the higher class of 
 Englishmen of noble birth treated the higher 
 class of men of letters in the days of Queen 
 Elizabeth. This story is probably not true, be- 
 cause Sidney was not rich ; but Southampton 
 was. When only eight years old he inherited 
 large estates, which, being well cared for during 
 his minority, made him one of the wealthiest of 
 his class when he came of age. He used his 
 money with discriminating liberality. John Flo- 
 rio, George Chapman, Thomas Nash, and Francis 
 Beaumont, all sing his praises. Florio says, in 
 the dedication of his World of Words to the Earl 
 of Rutland, the Earl of Southampton, and the 
 Countess of Bedford, in 1598: "In truth I ac- 
 knowledge an entyre debt, not onely of my best 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 10 1 
 
 knowledge, but of all ; yea of more than I can or 
 know to your bounteous lordship, most noble, 
 most vertuous and most Honorable Earle of South- 
 ampton, in whose paie and patronage I have lived 
 some yeeres ; to whom I owe and vow the yeeres 
 I have to live. But as to me and manie more, the 
 glorious and gracious sunneshine of your honour 
 hath infused light and life." " Who," asks Beau- 
 mont, "lives on England's stage and knows him 
 not.''" Chapman calls him, in his Iliad, "the 
 choice of all our country's noblest spirits " ; and 
 Nash says, " Incomprehensible is the height of 
 his spirit," and calls him " a dear lover and cher- 
 isher as well of the lovers of poets as of poets 
 themselves." Nor should we be troubled about 
 any loss of manly dignity on Shakespeare's part 
 by the acceptance of such a gift. For there need 
 be no doubt that there was a genuine friendship 
 between these men, in spite of their difference of 
 rank. Nay, wise Francis Bacon would say, by 
 very reason of that difference. "There is little 
 friendship in the world," (thus he closes his essay 
 Of Followers and Friends^ " and least of all be- 
 tween equals, which was wont to be magnified. 
 That that is, is between superior and inferior 
 whose fortunes may comprehend the one the 
 other." In those days there might be such 
 friendship between a peer and a player, because 
 then classes were sharply defined, and rank meant 
 something ; and therefore the creature now called 
 
102 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 "snob" did not exist. Henry VIIL, who defied 
 the Pope, could be a frequent guest at the table 
 of simple Sir Thomas More, and afterward be- 
 head him. Queen Elizabeth could on one day 
 complain to a proud Earl, when he saluted her, 
 that he did not put his knee well to the ground, 
 and on another go in state to dine with the rough 
 sailor Francis Drake, in his little ship, the Golden 
 Hind. She could do the one because she could 
 do the other. If the Earl had left Shakespeare a 
 thousand pounds by will, no objection would have 
 entered any mind ; and must a man die before he 
 can do another a substantial service .'* Does dig- 
 nity require us to insist that a friend shall lose 
 the pleasure of benefiting us, and we be released 
 from the obligation of gratitude } Does one 
 friend ever lower himself by accepting freely 
 what another freely gives, and can afford to give, 
 for friendship's sake ? In countries where land 
 and wealth and privilege pertain to a compara- 
 tively small class, such gifts are but noble, though 
 inadequate, attempts to do away some of the 
 wrongful consequences of established inequality ; 
 and although it is more manly and independent 
 to enjoy rights, than to receive compensation for 
 the lack of those rights by way of favor, we must 
 judge Southampton's literary friends by the so- 
 cial canons of an aristocracy in the sixteenth 
 century, and not by those of a democracy in the 
 nineteenth. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 103 
 
 Between 1592 and 1596 Shakespeare produced, 
 in addition to his Lucrece, King Richard the Third, 
 A Midsummer - Nigh f s Dream, The Merchant of 
 Venice, King Richard the Second, and some of his 
 Sonnets ; probably also Romeo and ynliet and 
 (with the name " Love's Labor 's Won") AlVs Well 
 that Ends Well, in earlier forms than those in 
 which they have come down to us ; — works, 
 which, although none of them exhibited his genius 
 in its full height and power, effectually established 
 his supremacy among his contemporaries as a poet 
 and a dramatist. England now began to ring 
 with his praises. His brother dramatists made 
 their lovers long for his Venus and Adonis by 
 which to court their mistresses ; other poets made 
 their chaste heroines compare themselves to the 
 Lucretia whom he had "revived to live another 
 age " ; they sung of his " hony-flowing vein," and 
 that he had given new immortality even to the god- 
 dess of love and beauty ; and some of them paid 
 him the unequivocal compliment of plagiarism.* 
 Even Spenser, then at the height of his fame and 
 his court favor, having in mind Shakespeare's two 
 
 * See Willoughby's Avisa, 1594; Drayton's Matilda, 1594; 
 Barnefield's Poems in Divers Himiors, 1598; Heywood's Fair 
 Maid of the Exchange, 1607, but written some years before; 
 Phillis and Flora, by R. S., 1598; and Nicholson's Acolastus his 
 Afterwitte, 1600. In " A Letter from England to her Three 
 Daughters," reprinted in the British Bibliographer, (Vol. I. pp. 
 274-285,) and which forms the second part of a book called 
 Polimanteia, published in 1595, there is a marginal note, "All 
 praise worthy Lucretia Sweete Shakespeare.''' 
 
jQ. MEMOIRS OF 
 
 martial histories and his name, generously paid 
 the young poet this pretty compliment in Colin 
 Clout 's come Home again, written in 1 594 : — 
 
 " And there, though last not least, is ^tion ; 
 A gentler Shepheard may no where be found ; 
 Whose muse full of high thought's invention 
 Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound." * 
 
 Nay, in this interval Colin Clout's mistress, the 
 imperial Elizabeth herself, distinguished him by 
 her favor, won, or acknowledged, by the exquisite 
 compliment in A MidsummenNight s Dream. For 
 we know upon Ben Jonson's and Henry Chet- 
 tle's testimony, and from tradition, that she did 
 delight in him ; and it is not in mortal woman, 
 least of all was it in Elizabeth, to know of such a 
 compliment, and not to hear it and be captivated.f 
 
 * It may be worth while to say, that if Shakespeare's name had 
 been Shaksper or Shakspere, as some would have it, this compli- 
 ment would have been impossible. 
 
 t These well-known lines are from Jonson's verses in memory 
 of Shakespeare, which were published in the folio of 1623 : — 
 
 *' Sweet Swan of Avon, what a sight it were 
 To see thee in our waters yet appeare. 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
 That so did take Eliza and our James." 
 
 On the death of Queen Elizabeth, Chettle, in his England's 
 Mourning Garment, thus reproached Shakespeare that his verse 
 had not bewailed his own and England's loss : — 
 
 " Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert 
 Drop from his honied Muse one sable tear, 
 To mourne her death that graced his desert, 
 And to his lines opened her royal eare. 
 Shepheard remember our Elizabeth, 
 And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 105 
 
 Having this evidence of his reputation, and 
 other of an equally pleasing and satisfactory 
 character as to his increase in wealth, we can 
 afford to be very indifferent in regard to the 
 trustworthiness of a document about which there 
 has been much ado, and the only interest of which 
 consists in the fact that it enumerates Shakespeare 
 among the owners of the Black-friars Theatre, 
 and names him fifth among eight ; but which, 
 after a life of thirty years of antiquarian glory, 
 has been " done to death by envious tongues " as 
 spurious.* A like fate has befallen a memoran- 
 
 * This document exists in the State Paper Office at West- 
 minster. (London.) It was brought to public notice by Mr. 
 Collier in his History of English Dramatic Poetry^ &c., 1 83 1. 
 (Vol. I. p. 297.) It professes to be an answer to a remonstrance 
 by thirty inhabitants of the Liberty of the Black-friars, " some of 
 them of honor," against the repairing of the Black-friars Theatre. 
 The remonstrance was said by Mr. Collier to be " preserved in the 
 State Paper Office " ; but it is not to be found there. This reply 
 is so genuine in appearance, that it was given in fac-simile even by 
 Mr. Halliwell, in his great folio edition of Shakespeare's Works, 
 although that gentleman was one of the first to pronounce many 
 of the Collier Shakespeare MSS. spurious. It is as follows : — 
 
 " To the right honorable the Lords of her Mat^^^ most honora- 
 ble privie Counsell. 
 
 " The humble petition of Thomas Pope Richard Burbadge John 
 Hemings Augustine Phillips Willm Shaksepeare Willim Kempe 
 Willim Slye Nicholas Tooley and others, seruaunts to the right 
 honorable the L. Chamberlaine to her Ma*'^. 
 
 " Sheweth most humbly that yor petitioners are owners and 
 playei-s of the priuate house or theater in the precinct and libertie 
 of the Blackfriers, wch hath beene for manie yearse vsed and oc- 
 cupied for the playing of tragedies commedies histories enter- 
 5* 
 
I06 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 dum which would otherwise show us that at this 
 time Shakespeare lived in the part of London 
 called Southwark. Malone speaks of a certain 
 
 ludes and playes. That the same by reason of hauing beene soe 
 long built hath falne into great decaye and that besides the repa- 
 ration thereof it hath beene found necessarie to make the same 
 more conuenient for the entertainement of auditories comming 
 thereto. That to this end yor petitioners haue all and eche of 
 them putt downe sommes of money according to their shares in 
 the saide theater and whch they haue justly and honestlie gained 
 by the exercise of their qualitie of Stage-players but that certaine 
 persons (some of them of honour) inhabitants of the said precinct 
 and libertie of the Blackfriers have as yor petitioners are en- 
 fourmed besought yor honorable Lps not to permitt the saide pri- 
 uate house anie longer to remaine open but hereafter to be shut 
 vpp and closed to the manifest and great injurie of yor petitioners 
 who have no other meanes whereby to maintaine their wiues and 
 families but by the exercise of their qualitie as they have hereto- 
 fore done. Furthermore that in the summer season yor petition- 
 ers are able to playe at their newe built house on the Bankside 
 callde the Globe but that in the winter they are compelled to 
 come to the Blackfriers and if yor honorable Lps giue consent 
 vnto that whch is prayde against yor petitioners thay will not 
 onely while the winter endureth loose the meanes whereby they 
 nowe support them selues and their families but be vnable to 
 practise them selues in anie playes or enterluds when calde upon 
 to performe for the recreation and solace of her Matie and her 
 honorable Court, as they have beene heretofore accustomed. 
 The humble prayer of yor petitioners therefore is that your 
 honble Lps will graunt permission to finishe the reparations and 
 alterations they have begunne and as your petitioners have hith- 
 erto been well ordred in their behauiour and just in their deal- 
 inges that yor honorable Lps will not inhibit them from acting at 
 their aboue named priuate house in the precinct and libertie of 
 the Blackfriers and your petitioners as in dutie most bounden 
 will ever praye for the increasing honour and happinesse of yor 
 honorable Lps." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 107 
 
 paper which was before him as he wrote, which 
 belonged to Edward Alleyn, the eminent and pub- 
 lic-spirited player, and from which it appeared 
 
 This document being in a public office, upon a grave suspicion 
 of its genuineness, Sir John Romilly, Master of the Rolls, or- 
 dered a palaeographic examination of it to be made ; and there is 
 now appended to it the following certificate : — 
 
 "We, the undersigned, at the desire of the Master of the 
 Rolls, have carefully examined the document hereunto annexed, 
 purporting to be a petition to the Lords of her Majesty's Privy 
 Council, from Thomas Pope, Richard Burbadge, John Hemings, 
 Augustine Phillips, William Shakespeare, William Kempe, Wil- 
 liam Slye, Nicholas Tooley, and others, in answer to a petition 
 from the inhabitants of the Liberty of the Black-friars ; and we 
 are of opinion that the document in question is spurious. 
 
 "FrA. PaLGRAVE, K. H., Deputy Keeper of H. M. Public Records. 
 Frederic Madden, K. H., Keeper of the MSS., British Museum. 
 J. S. Brewer, M. a., Reader at the Rolls. 
 T. DUFFUS Hardy, Assistant Keeper of Records. 
 N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Assistant, Dep. of MSS., British Museum. 
 ** 30th January, i860." 
 
 The following professed copy of a letter from the Earl of 
 Southampton, concerning Shakespeare, is now pronounced spu- 
 rious with an equal weight of authority. 
 
 " My verie honored Lord. The manie good offices I haue re- 
 ceiued at your Lordship's hands, which ought to make me back- 
 ward in asking further favors, onely imbouldeneth me to require 
 more in the same kinde. Your Lordship will be warned howe 
 hereafter you graunt anie sute, seeing it draweth on more and 
 greater demaunds. This which now presseth is to request your 
 Lordship, in all you can, to be good to the poore players of the 
 Black Fryers, who call them selves by authoritie the servaunts 
 of his Majestie, and aske for the protection of their most gracious 
 Maister and Sovereigne in this the tyme of their troble. They 
 are threatened by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, 
 never friendly to their calling, with the distruction of their 
 
I08 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 that in 1596 Shakespeare lived in Southwark, 
 near the Bear Garden. Malone makes this state- 
 ment in his Inquiry into the Authenticity of Cer- 
 tain Papers, which were forged by that scapegrace 
 William Ireland ; and eminent palaeographers and 
 Shakespearian scholars will have it that there 
 
 meanes of livelihood, by the pulling downe of their plaiehouse, 
 which is a priuate theatre, and hath neuer giuen occasion of 
 anger by anie disorders. These bearers are two of the chiefe 
 of the companie ; one of them by name Richard Burbidge, who 
 humblie sueth for yom- Lordship's kinde helpe, for that he is a 
 man famous as our English Roscius, one who fitteth the action 
 to the word, and the word to the action most admirably. By the 
 exercise of his qualitye, industry, and good behaviour, he hath 
 be come possessed of the Blacke Fryers playhouse, which hath 
 bene imployed for playes sithence it was builded by his Father, 
 now nere 50 yeres agone. The other is a man no whitt less de- 
 serving favor, and my especiall friende, till of late an actor of 
 good account in the companie, now a sharer in the same, and 
 writer of some of our best English playes, which, as your Lord- 
 ship knoweth, were most singularly liked of Queue Elizabeth, 
 when the companie was called uppon to performe before her 
 Maiestie at Court at Christmas and Shrovetide. His most gra- 
 cious Maiestie King James alsoe, sence his coming to the crowne, 
 hath extended his royal favour to the companie in divers waies 
 and at sundrie tymes. This other hath to name William Shake- 
 speare, and they are both of one countie, and indeede allmost of 
 one towne : both are right famous in their qualityes, though it 
 longeth not of your Lo. grauitie and wisedome to resort vnto 
 the places where they are wont to delight the publique eare. 
 Their trust and sute nowe is not to bee molested in their way of 
 life, whereby they maintaine them selves and their wives and 
 families, (being both marled and of good reputation) as well as 
 the widows and orphanes of some of their dead fellows. 
 " Your Lo most bounden at com. 
 " Copia vera:' " H. S." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 109 
 
 was contamination in the subject, and that the 
 following brief memorandum, which Mr. Collier 
 brought forward as the paper to which Malone 
 referred, is also spurious. 
 
 " Inhabitantes of Sowtherk as have complaned 
 this [o]f Jully, 1596. 
 
 Mr. Markis 
 
 Mr. Tuppin 
 
 Mr. Langorth 
 
 Wilson the pyper 
 
 Mr. Barett 
 
 Mr. Shaksper 
 
 Phellipes 
 
 Tomson 
 
 Mother Golden the baude 
 
 Nagges 
 
 Fillpott and no more and soe well ended." 
 
 It may be that this is a delusion, deliberately 
 contrived. If it be, the rogue has baited his trap 
 so well that he shall have me a willing prey. I 
 cannot easily believe that such a genuine-seeming 
 glimpse of real life is artificial ; and I am loath 
 to lose those neighbors of William Shakespeare 
 upon whom his calm and searching glances fell, 
 and who watched with curiosity the handsome 
 player-poet as he went in and out on his way 
 to and from the Black-friars. I sympathize too 
 heartily with the writer as he shuts his ears 
 against Wilson the piper, who had the real Lin- 
 colnshire drone, — I have Falstaif's word for it, — 
 and as he tosses off Fillpot with such a round Amen 
 
IIQ MEMOIRS OF 
 
 of thankfulness. I mourn the vanishing Nagges, 
 whom I think of as a humble kind of Silence, or 
 perhaps Goodman Verges, and feel injured at the 
 assertion that Mother Golden — Mrs. Quickly in 
 the flesh, and plenty of it — is a myth ; than 
 which nothing could be more deplorable, except, 
 indeed, that she were virtuous. 
 
 The last five years of the sixteenth century are 
 among the most interesting and important in the 
 history of Shakespeare's life. He was then rap- 
 idly attaining the independent position which he 
 coveted, and for which he labored ; while growth, 
 culture, and experience were uniting in the de- 
 velopment of those transcendent powers which 
 reached their grand perfection in the next decade. 
 To those years may be confidently assigned the 
 production of Romeo and Juliet in its second and 
 final form, King Johny the two Parts of King 
 Henry the Foin'th, the first sketch of The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, 
 Twelfth Night, King Henry the Fifth, As You 
 Like It, and Hamlet. They were probably pro- 
 duced in this order, the first in 1596, the last in 
 1600. The man who could put those plays upon 
 the stage at a time when play-going was the fa- 
 vorite amusement of all the better and brighter 
 part of the London public, gentle and simple, was 
 sure to grow rich, if he were but prudent ; and 
 Shakespeare was prudent, and even thrifty. He 
 knew the full worth of money. He felt the truth 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. HI 
 
 told in the simile of Franklin (in the large grasp 
 of his worldly wisdom the Bacon of democracy), 
 that it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright. 
 And he saw that pecuniary independence is abso- 
 lutely necessary to him who is seeking, as he 
 sought, a social position higher than that to 
 which he was born. Therefore he looked after 
 his material interests much more carefully than 
 after his literary reputation. The whole tenor of 
 his life shows that he labored as a playwright 
 solely that he might obtain the means of going 
 back to Stratford to live the life of an indepen- 
 dent gentleman. His income now began to be 
 considerable ; and there are yet remaining rec- 
 ords of the care with which he invested his 
 money, and his willingness to take legal measures 
 to protect himself against small losses. It is not 
 pleasant to think of the author of The ATerchant of 
 Venice going to law to compel the payment of a 
 few pounds sterling : it would be revolting, if the 
 debtor's failure were because of poverty. But as 
 we have to face the fact, we may find comfort in 
 the certainty that a man of that sweetness of dis- 
 position which is attributed to him by his con- 
 temporaries, could not have been litigious, and in 
 the probability that he knew too much of human 
 nature and of the law to commence a suit, unless 
 to protect himself against fraud, or to decide a 
 legal liability. He who so pitilessly painted Shy- 
 lock could not but have felt the truth of the max- 
 im, Summtcm Jus, sunima injuria. 
 
112 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Filial piety, unhappily, is not always a sign of 
 generosity of soul ; for hard masters, cruel credit- 
 ors, and selfish friends are sometimes devoted 
 sons ; but it is pleasant, in remarking upon 
 Shakespeare's thrift, to record that one of the 
 earliest uses of his prosperity seems to have been 
 the relief of his father from the consequences of 
 misfortune. The little estate of Ashbies, part 
 of Mary Arden's inheritance, which had been 
 mortgaged to Edmund Lambert in 1578, should 
 have been released by the conditions of the mort- 
 gage on the repayment of the mortgage-money 
 on or before the 29th of September, 1580. The 
 mortgagors tendered the money, forty pounds ; 
 but they owed Lambert more, upon another obli- 
 gation ; and he, having possession, and knowing 
 John Shakespeare's inability to incur law ex- 
 penses, refused to release Ashbies unless the other 
 debt, for which it was not given as security, was 
 discharged also. But in 1597, John Shakespeare 
 and his wife ventured upon that most trying and 
 expensive of all legal proceedings, a chancery 
 suit, to compel John Lambert, the son and heir 
 of Edmund, to restore the estate. There can be 
 no reasonable doubt that the money necessary to 
 this proceeding, and the prompting to undertake 
 it, came from William Shakespeare, incited by 
 filial love and attachment to ancestral fields. 
 
 Previously to this date, — how long v/e do not 
 know, but it was certainly some months before 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Ijo 
 
 October, 1596, — John Shakespeare applied to 
 the Heralds' College (and, if we are to believe 
 the records, not for the first time) for a grant of 
 coat-armor, by which he, then a yeoman, might 
 attain the recognized position of a gentleman. 
 Such applications were then customarily made by 
 men who deemed themselves of sufficient impor- 
 tance to enter the pale of gentry. The arms, if 
 granted, were of value ; for they were an official 
 and universally recognized certificate of a certain 
 social standing, which those to whom they were 
 granted were required to show that they were 
 in condition creditably to support. It has been 
 conjectured that John Shakespeare made this ap- 
 plication at the instigation and with the means — 
 for the honor cost money — of his now prosperous 
 son. But in the circumstances of the case, and 
 in certain evidence which William Shakespeare 
 himself unconsciously left upon the subject, there 
 seems to be ground for more than a guess that he 
 was the real mover in this matter. 
 
 To John Shakespeare, a man now past middle 
 life, and without property or position, this empty 
 honor would have brought only such distinction 
 as a man having the good sense of which his 
 career was evidence must have seen was most un- 
 enviable. But sustained by the money and the 
 influence of his son, prosperous and in favor with 
 powerful members of the nobility, he could bear 
 up against ridicule. And as far as the son him- 
 
 H 
 
IT4 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 self was concerned, aside from the fact that he 
 was a player, to whom the heralds would have re- 
 fused coat-armor, there was a reason, very cogent 
 to a man ambitious of social advancement at that 
 time, why the apphcation should be made by the 
 father. For, the arms being granted to John 
 Shakespeare, William inherited them, and be- 
 came a gentleman, not by grant or purchase, but 
 by descent, — an important advantage where the 
 social scale is graduated by degrees in heraldic 
 gentry. But to these reasons add Shakespeare's 
 own evidence. It is in that scene of King Lear 
 in which the crazy King, his Fool, and the sham- 
 madman Edgar are left together in the farm- 
 house.* The Fool asks his uncle, "Tell me 
 whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeo- 
 man " ; and he, forlorn alike of royalty and rea- 
 son, with an indirection that has a grand touch of 
 heart-break in it, answers, " A king, a king ! " 
 But then the Fool rejoins, " No ; he 's a yeoman 
 that has a gentleman to his son. For he 's a mad 
 yemnan that sees his son a gentleman before him^ 
 Now, entirely as Shakespeare avoided mingling 
 himself with any of the creatures of his imagina- 
 tion, it is absolutely impossible that he should 
 have put this mere sententious moralizing into 
 the Fool's mouth without a distinct recollection 
 of the process by which he became the son of a 
 gentleman, as well as the grandson of one on 
 
 * Act III. Scene 6. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 115 
 
 the mother's side. Well-deserved ridicule is now 
 heaped, even in Europe, upon weak people who go 
 to the heralds to have arms hunted up for them, 
 or granted to them ; and wej»ay think it small 
 business for the man tO/^!™)se mental grandeur 
 this mem.oir is one of^ thousand feeble witness- 
 es, thus to go about to make himself a gentleman 
 by inheritance. And he himself had a keen ap- 
 preciation of the essential absurdity of the whole 
 affair. Let any one who doubts read the passage 
 in The Winter's Tale^ written years after, in which 
 the Clown, having, with his father, received grace 
 at court, announces to Autolycus, that he is "a 
 gentleman born," and has been so "any time 
 these four hours " ; that he was a gentleman born 
 before his father ; and that on the occasion in 
 question they wept, — and these, he adds, "were 
 the first gentleman-like tears that ever we shed." 
 Why then, with this perception of the factitious 
 nature of heraldic gentry, should Shakespeare 
 have desired its possession } From the most sen- 
 sible and reasonable of motives ; — simply because 
 at his day it brought with it more or less of that 
 which every man who is by nature fitted to be a 
 gentleman prizes above all other things, except 
 his self-respect, — consideration. Consideration ; 
 — something different from respect, esteem, or 
 love, or even fear ; any, and possibly all, of which 
 may pertain to him who has not the other, and 
 who, if he be sensitive, and the least lacking in 
 
jj5 memoirs of 
 
 self-reliance, will therefore fret internally; — some- 
 thing the assurance of which, even at the end of 
 a diplomatic note, is a rampart of respectful inter- 
 course. Congreve has been laughed at because 
 he was offended that Voltaire visited him as a 
 poet and a man of letters, and Gray subjected to 
 a like ridicule, because, when residing at Cam- 
 bridge, he desired to be regarded, not as a profes- 
 sional scholar and writer, but as a gentleman who 
 was fond of literary pursuits. But, society in 
 Europe being what it was in their day, Congreve 
 and Gray were right.* Nay, even now and here, 
 such a feeling, in a certain degree, is but becom- 
 ing. Men of letters who are also gentlemen can- 
 not fail to see that distinction in their calling 
 sometimes wins, and justly wins, only an atten- 
 tion different in degree, but not much in kind, 
 from that which is lavished upon a mountebank 
 or a medium. For between what a man can do 
 to amuse, and even to instruct, and what he is, 
 there is great difference. He may be wonder- 
 fully clever, learned, wise, — may have that mys- 
 terious gift which we call genius, — and yet be one 
 whom we would not willingly see within the limit 
 
 * Nevertheless it is rather ridiculous to turn men of letters 
 into noblemen. Among people who must have lords it was well 
 to make dukes of General Churchill and General Wellington, 
 a baron of Judge Murray and an earl of the ex- Premier John 
 Russell ; but a baron in virtue of brilliant historical essays was 
 in a position only a little less absurdly false than a baronet might 
 be in virtue of charming idyls. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. j-^y 
 
 of our social circle. Society is not purely an af- 
 fair of intellect, or even of moral worth. 
 
 It was, then, for this social consideration that 
 William Shakespeare labored and schemed ; that 
 he, the Stratford fugitive, might return to his na- 
 tive place and meet Sir Thomas Lucy as a pros- 
 perous gentleman. But Sir Thomas, I think, with 
 that scorn of new men which, it may well be 
 feared, is very general, even in republics, endeav- 
 ored to check one of his aspirations, — this one 
 for coat-armor. The arms were granted, but not 
 until three years after they had been applied for, 
 and in fact not until that time after a grant of 
 them had been drafted. A draft dated October 
 20th, 1596, of a grant to John Shakespeare of the 
 right to bear a golden silver-headed spear upon 
 a black band in a golden shield, with a white 
 falcon grasping a golden spear for a crest, still 
 exists in the College of Arms ; and from this the 
 grant actually issued in 1599 differs only by the 
 addition of the right to bear the Arden arms im- 
 paled ; impaling, or bearing a second coat upon 
 the left half of the shield being the heraldic mode 
 of recording marriage with an heiress of the fam- 
 ily whose coat is thus displayed. And these doc- 
 uments, both sketch and grant, also tell the story 
 of the application for the arms. For they were 
 made, as they record, upon the ground that " John 
 Shakespere, nowe of Stratford upon Avon in the 
 counte of Warwik gent., whose parent, great grand- 
 
Ijg MEMOIRS OF 
 
 father, and late antecessor, for his faithefull and 
 approved service to the late most prudent prince 
 King H. 7. of famous memorie, was advaunced and 
 rewarded with lands and tenements geven to him 
 in those parts of Warwikeshere," was, like his an- 
 cestors of some descents, in good reputation and 
 credit, and also tha:t he had married the daughter 
 and one of the heirs of Robert Arden of Wilme- 
 cote. Now, John Shakespeare's great-grandfather 
 had not been thus distinguished and rewarded by 
 Henry VI I. ; but his wife's, and therefore his son's, 
 ancestor had ; and of those bedchamber honors 
 that son was evidently not forgetful, and deter- 
 mined to obtain the fullest advantage. If there be 
 littleness in this, it was the age that was in fault, 
 and not the man who conformed to prejudices 
 which, as we have seen, he really scorned, but was 
 not strong enough to override. 
 
 The delay of three years in the granting of these 
 arms must have been caused by some opposition to 
 the grant ; the motto given with them, Non sans 
 droicty (Not without right,) itself seems to assert a 
 claim against a denial ; and who so likely to make 
 this opposition as the great neighbor of the Shake- 
 speares, the Parliament member and justice of 
 peace. Sir Thomas Lucy } There is record of cen- 
 sure after they were granted. The herald princi- 
 pally concerned in conferring them. Sir William 
 Dethick, Garter King at Arms, was called to ac- 
 count for having granted arms improperly, and the 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 119 
 
 grant to John Shakespeare was among the causes 
 of complaint. His justification rested, in a great 
 measure at least, upon the allegation upon the mar- 
 gin of the draft of 1596, that John Shakespeare 
 " sheweth a patent thereof under Clarence Cook's 
 hands in paper xx years past"; and in the grant 
 of 1 599 it is expressly stated that John Shakespeare 
 had "produced this his auncient cote of arms here- 
 tofore assigned him whilst he was her Majesties of- 
 ficer and baylefe" of Stratford. Because no record 
 of this grant is known to exist, it has been hitherto 
 supposed that no such grant was made. But it is 
 not at all improbable that John Shakespeare, when 
 he was bailiff and in the height of his prosperity, 
 made application to the heralds for arms at the 
 time of one of their visitations, and that the mat- 
 ter went as far, at least, as the draft of a grant 
 and a sketch, or, as it was called, a trick, of the 
 arms, and that, the matter being spoken of in the 
 neighborhood, the final grant was stopped at the 
 instance of an old county family like the Lucys, 
 who were particular about what Mrs. Page of 
 Windsor would have called the article of their 
 gentry. For in the famous first scene of the com- 
 edy in which she appears, where the bearer of the 
 coat with the luces is ridiculed, his particularity 
 about the antiquity of that coat is made even more 
 of than his anger at the stealing of his deer. He 
 is Robert Shallow, Esquire, Justice of Peace and 
 coram, and ctLst-alomm, and ratalorum too ; and a 
 
120 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 gentleman born, who writes himself annigero in 
 any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation ; and he 
 has done it any time these three hundred years ; 
 all his successors that have gone before him, and 
 all his ancestors that come after him may give the 
 dozen white luces in their coat. For, mind you, it 
 is an old coat ; and although this ignorant, low- 
 bred Welsh parson will mistake a luce for the 
 familiar beast to man, and have it passant, you 
 are to know that the luce is the fresh fish, and 
 that the salt fish is an old coat, and that the 
 upstart bailiffs in yonder dirty little town are not 
 to be bearing silver-headed tilting-spears upon 
 golden shields, and getting within the pale of gen- 
 try by marrying poor gentlemen's daughters, and 
 by heraldic puns upon their names, when their 
 betters, by punning on their names can only bear 
 fresh fish, which are subject to unpleasant misap- 
 prehension and mispronunciation, and have to be 
 salted to keep and attain the honors of antiquity. 
 If Shakespeare had two causes of quarrel with the 
 man of the luces, he settled the two accounts 
 rarely in that short scene of his only comedy of 
 English manners; which he wrote in 1598, be- 
 tween the date at which the confirmation of his 
 father's arms was drafted and that at which it 
 was granted. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 121 
 
 IV. 
 
 Shakespeare was now able to take an important 
 step toward establishing himself handsomely in 
 his native place. In 1597 he bought of William 
 Underbill the Great House, or New Place, as it 
 was called in Stratford, a mansion built of brick 
 and timber, about a hundred and fifty years be- 
 fore, by Sir Hugh Clopton, the benefactor of the 
 town. It cost Shakespeare sixty pounds sterling 
 (equal to about ^1500); a small outlay for the 
 dwelling of a man of its new possessor's means 
 and capacity of enjoyment. We know from the 
 fine levied at the sale, that the premises included 
 the Great House itself, two barns, two gardens, 
 and two orchards. But from contemporary legal 
 documents we learn that in 1550 the house was 
 so much in need of repair as to be almost in de- 
 cay. This was doubtless the reason why it was 
 sold for so small a price. Its owner in the early 
 part of the last century. Sir Hugh Clopton, a 
 lineal descendant of its builder, told Theobald 
 that Shakespeare " repaired and modelled it to his 
 own mind " ; and this family tradition is supported 
 by the record of the payment in 1598 of "x^" 
 to Mr. Shakespeare for " a lod of ston," which was 
 probably at the thrifty poet's disposal on account 
 of the extensive alterations at New Place. No 
 representation of the house as it was in Shake- 
 speare's time is known to exist, it having been 
 6 
 
122 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 again much altered by Sir John Clopton in 1700 ; 
 yet its size was not enlarged, and an existing rep> 
 resentation of it in its last condition shows that it 
 was a goodly mansion. But its new master took 
 possession bereaved and disappointed. The death 
 of his only son, Hamnet, in the twelfth year of his 
 age, 1596, left him without a descendant to whom 
 he might transmit, with his name, the houses and 
 lands and the arms which he had obtained by such 
 untiring labor. Shakespeare having money to in- 
 vest, of course there was no lack of applicants for 
 the pleasure of placing it for him to his advantage. 
 Of these was one Master Abraham Sturley, a Pu- 
 ritan of the first water. He begins a long letter, 
 written at Stratford, January 24th, 1559, to a friend 
 in London, (probably Richard Quiney, whose son 
 afterward married Shakespeare's daughter,) with 
 a pious ejaculation, and then passes promptly to 
 business, urging his correspondent to quicken an 
 intention which Shakespeare was known to have 
 to lay out some of his superfluous money in Strat- 
 ford property, and especially to recommend to him 
 a purchase of the tithes of Stratford and three 
 other parishes, as profitable to himself, beneficial 
 to the town, and likely to gain him many friends.* 
 
 * " Most loveinge and belovedd in the Lord. In plaine Eng- 
 lishe we remember u in the Lord, & ourselves unto u. I would 
 write nothinge unto u nowe, but come home. I prai God send u 
 comfortabli home. This is one speciall remembrance ffrom ur 
 ffather's motion. It semeth bi him that our countriman, Mr. 
 Shakspere, is willinge to disburse some monei upon some od 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. J23 
 
 The recommendation, as we shall hereafter see, 
 appears to have had some effect. There is another 
 letter of this time, written also to Richard Quiney, 
 which contains an obscure mention of a money 
 transaction with Shakespeare.* And the fact is 
 somewhat striking in the life of a great poet, that 
 the only letter directly addressed to Shakespeare 
 which is known to exist, is one which asks a loan 
 of £^0. It is from Richard Quiney, who at the 
 writing was in London, and is as follows ; for this 
 money transaction belongs in full to Shakespeare's 
 history. 
 
 " Loveinge Contreyman, I am bolde of yo', as of a 
 ffrende, craveinge yo""" helpe w**" xxx", uppon M' Bushells 
 & my securytee, or M' Myttens with me. M"" Rosswell is 
 nott come to London as yeate, & I have especiall cawse. 
 Yo' shall ffrende me muche in helpeinge me out of all the 
 debtts I owe in London, I thanck god, and muche quiet my 
 mynde w"'' wolde not be indebeted. I am now towardes the 
 Cowrte, in hope of answer for the dispatche of my Buyse- 
 nes. Yo'' shall nether loose creddytt nor monney by me, the 
 Lorde wylhnge ; & nowe butt perswade yo"' selfe soe, as I 
 
 yarde land or other att Shottri or neare about us ; he thinketh it 
 a veri fitt patterne to move him to deale in the matter of our 
 tithes, Bi the instructions u can geve him theareof, & by the 
 frendes he can make therefore, we thinke it a faire marke for him 
 to shoote att, & not impossible to hitt. It obtained would ad- 
 vance him in deede, and would do us much good. Hoc movere, 
 et quantum in te est permovere, ne necligas, hoc enim et sibi et 
 nobis maximi erit momenti. Hie labor, hoc opus esset eximiae 
 et gloriae et laudis sibi." &c., &c. 
 
 * " Yff yow bargen with \Vm. Sh or receve money there- 
 for, brynge your money home that yow maye." 
 
124 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 hope, & yo* shall nott need to feare ; butt with all hartie 
 
 thanckfullnes I wyll holde my tyme & content yo'" frend, 
 
 & yf we Bargaine farther, yo'' shall be the paie m"- yo"' selfe. 
 
 My tyme biddes me to hasten to an ende, & soe I comitt 
 
 thys [to] yo™ care & hope of yo'^ helpe. I feare I shall nott 
 
 be backe this night fFrom the Cowrte. haste, the Lorde be 
 
 w*^ yo^ & w*"" us all. amen. From the Bell in Carter Lane, 
 
 the 25 October 1598. 
 
 a Yo"" in all kyndenes, 
 
 "Ryc. Quyney." 
 
 This letter is addressed " To my loveing good 
 fFrend and countreyman Mr. Wm. Shackespere 
 delr thees." 
 
 It is impossible to disguise the fact that Quiney 
 offers an approved indorsed note to the author 
 oi Hamlet ; but it is gratifying to observe that he 
 applies to him as a friend. The motive which he 
 touches is not interest, but the helping him out 
 of trouble ; and though the sum was not a small 
 one, — half the price of New Place, — he plainly 
 feels that Shakespeare had both the ability and 
 the willingness to spare it. There is another let- 
 ter of this period, dated November 4th, 1598, ad- 
 dressed to the same Richard Quiney by Abraham 
 Sturley again. The first part, with which only we 
 have concern, begins, "All health happiness of 
 suites and wellfare be multiplied unto u and ur 
 labours in God our ffather by Christ our Lord," 
 and ends, with no less fervor, " O howe can you 
 make dowbt of monei who will not bear xxx-tie or 
 xl. s towardes sutch a match ! " But its chief in- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 125 
 
 terest to us is, that the writer of these beatitudes 
 has heard that " our countriman Mr. Wm. Shak. 
 would procure us monei, wc. I will like of." It is 
 pleasant thus to see that Shakespeare's townsmen, 
 even the staid and sober men among them, re- 
 spected and looked up to him, and leaned confi- 
 dently upon the support of his influence and his 
 purse. And this marvellous " Mr. Wm. Shak." 
 then had real property in London, as well as in 
 Stratford, besides his theatrical possessions ; for 
 in October of 1598 he was assessed on property in 
 the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, £$ i^s. 4^. 
 
 In 1598 Ben Jonson's first and best comedy. 
 Every Man in his Humour, was produced at the 
 Black-friars, and the author of King Henry the 
 Fourth and Romeo and yuliet might have been 
 seen for twopence by any London prentice who 
 could command the coin, playing an inferior part, 
 probably that of Knowell, in the new play. But, 
 according to tradition, Shakespeare not only 
 played in Jonson's comedy, — he obtained Ben 
 his first hearing before a London audience. The 
 play had been thrown aside at the Black-friars 
 with little consideration, as the production of 
 an unknown writer ; but Shakespeare's attention 
 having been drawn to it, he read it through, 
 admired and recommended it, and then and 
 thereafter took pains to bring the author's works 
 before the public. Jonson's honest love for 
 
126 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Shakespeare may well have had its spring in 
 gratitude for this great service, which having 
 been performed by one dramatic author for an- 
 other, who was his junior, indicates both kindness 
 and magnanimity. 
 
 The year 1598 was one of great professional 
 triumph to Shakespeare. We may safely accept 
 the tradition first mentioned by John Dennis a cen- 
 tury later, that in that year he was honored with a 
 command from Queen EHzabeth to let her see his 
 Falstafif in love, which he obeyed by producing 
 in a fortnight The Merry Wives of Windsor in its 
 earliest form.* In that year, too, the greatness 
 and universality of his genius received formal 
 recognition at the hands of literary criticism. 
 Francis Meres pubhshed in 1598 a book called 
 Palladis Tainia^ Wits Treasury, which was a col- 
 lection of sententious comparisons, chiefly upon 
 morals, manners, and religion. But one division 
 or chapter is "A comparative discourse of our 
 English Poets with the Greeke, Latine, and Ital- 
 ian Poets." Meres was a Master of Arts in both 
 Universities, a theological writer, and the author 
 of poetry which has been lost. His comparative 
 discourse makes no pretence to analysis or aes- 
 thetic judgment. Indeed, according to the modern 
 standard, it can hardly be regarded as criticism ; 
 
 * See this tradition, and the facts which bear upon it, dis- 
 cussed in the Introduction to The Merry Wives of Windsor^ in 
 the author's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 127 
 
 but it may be accepted as a record of the estima- 
 tion in which Shakespeare was held by intelHgent 
 and cultivated people when he was thirty-four 
 years old, and before he had written his best 
 plays. In this book Shakespeare is awarded the 
 highest place in English poetical and dramatic 
 literature, and is ranked with the great authors 
 of the brightest days of Greece and Rome. It is 
 true that other poets and dramatists are com- 
 pared by Meres to Pindar, ^Eschylus, and Aris- 
 tophanes, to Ovid, Plautus, and Horace, and that, 
 like all who have judged their contemporaries, he 
 bestows high praise upon men whose works and 
 names have perished from the world's memory. 
 But in his comprehensive eulogy Shakespeare has 
 this distinction, that while he shares equally all 
 other praise, it is said of him, that, " as Plautus 
 and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy 
 and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare 
 among the English is the most excellent in both 
 kinds for the stage." * There is ample evidence 
 
 * The following are all the passages of this chapter of the 
 Palladis Tamia in which Shakespeare's name appears. They 
 have never been all reprinted before. 
 
 "As the Greekes tongue is made famous and eloquent by 
 Homer, Hesiod, Euripedes, ^schylus, Sophocles, Pindarus, 
 Phyloclides, and Aristophanes ; and the Latine tongue by Virgile, 
 Ouid, Horace, Sicilius Italius, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ausonius, 
 and Claudianus, so the English tongue is mightily enriched and 
 gorgeously invested in rare ornaments by sir Philip Sidney, 
 Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and 
 Chapman." 
 
128 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 that this appreciation of Shakespeare was gen- 
 eral, and that, although his contemporaries could 
 hardly have suspected that his genius would over- 
 shadow all others in our literature, they regarded 
 
 " As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to Hue in Pythago- 
 ras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ouid Hues in meUifluous and 
 hony-tongued Shakespeare ; witnes his Venus and Adonis^ his 
 Lucrece, his sugred sonnets among his priuate friends," &c. 
 
 "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy 
 and Tragedy among the Latines : so Shakespeare among y^ Eng- 
 Hsh is the most exceUent in both kinds for the stage; for Com- 
 edy, witnes his Getleme of Verona, his Errors, his Lone labors 
 lost, his Loue labours womie, his Midstinimers night dreaj?ie, & his 
 Merchant of Venice: for Tragedy his Richard the 2. Richard 
 the 3. Henry the 4. King John, Titus Andronicus and his Ro- 
 meo and luliet.'''' 
 
 " As Epius Stolo said, the Muses would speake with Plautus 
 tongue, if they would speak Latin ; so I say the Muses would 
 speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speak 
 English." 
 
 " And as Horace saith of his, Exegi monumentu sere perenni- 
 us, Regaliq ; situ pyramidum altius ; Quod non imber edax ; 
 Non Aquilo impotens possit diruere, aut innumerabilis annorum 
 series et fuga temporum ; so say I severally of Sir Philip Sid- 
 neys, Spencers, Daniels, Draytons, Shakespeares, and Warner's 
 workes." 
 
 "As Pindarus, Anacreon, and Callimachus among the Greekes, 
 and Horace and Catullus among the Latines, are the best lyrick 
 poets ; so in this faculty the best amog our poets are Spencer 
 (who excelleth in all kinds), Daniel Drayton, Shakespeare, 
 Bretto." 
 
 "As these tragicke poets flourished in Greece, ^schylus, 
 Euripedes, Sophocles, Alexander Aetolus, Achaeus Erithri^us, 
 Astydamas Atheniesis, Apollodorus Tarsensis, Nicomachus 
 Phrygius, Thespis Atticus, and Timon Apolloniates ; and these 
 among the Latines, Accius, M. Attilius, Pomponius Secundus 
 and Seneca ; so these are our best for tragedie ; the Lord Buck- 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 129 
 
 him as a poet and a dramatist beyond compari- 
 son among his countrymen. Shakespeare's plays 
 filled the theatre to overflowing when even Jon- 
 son's would hardly pay expenses.* It was not 
 
 hurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Dr. Edes of Oxford, Maister 
 Edward Ferris, the Authour of the Mirrour for Magistrates^ 
 Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, 
 Decker, and Beniamin lohnson." 
 
 " The best poets for comedy among the Greeks are these : 
 Menander, Aristophanes, Eupolis Atheniensis Alexis, Terius, 
 Nicostratus, Amipsias Atheniensis, Anaxadrides Rhodius, Aris- 
 tonymus, Archippus Atheniesis, and Callias Atheniensis ; and 
 among the Latines, Plautus, Terence, Naeuius, Sext. Turpilius, 
 Licinius Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus ; so the best for comedy 
 amongst us bee Edward Earle of Oxforde, Doctor Gager of Ox- 
 forde, Maister Rowley, once a rare scholler of learned Pem- 
 brooke Hall in Cambi'idge, Maister Edwardes, one of her Maies- 
 ties Chappell, eloquent and wittie John Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, 
 Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, An- 
 thony Mundye, our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, 
 Hathway, and Henry Chettle." 
 
 "As these are famous among the Greeks for elegie, Melan- 
 thus, Mymnerus Colophonius, Olympius Mysius, Parthenius 
 Nicaeus, Philetas Cous, Theogenes Megarensis, and Pigres Hali- 
 carnasoeus ; and these among the Latines, Mecaenas, Quid, Ti- 
 bullus, Propertius, T. Valgius, Cassius Seuerus, and Clodius 
 Sabinus ; so these are the most passionate among us to bewaile 
 and bemoane the perplexities of loue ; Henrie Howard Earle of 
 Surrey, sir Thomas Wyat the elder, sir Francis Brian, sir Philip 
 Sidney, sir Walter Rawley, sir Edward Dyer, Spencer, Daniel, 
 Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoyne, Samuell Page 
 sometimes fellowe of Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford, Church- 
 yard, Bretton." 
 
 * See the following lines from the verses of Leonard Digges, 
 prefixed to the edition of Shakespeare's Poems published in 1640. 
 
 " So have I seen, when Caesar would appear. 
 And on the stage at half-sword parley were 
 
 6* I 
 
J 20 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 until the moral and literary decadence of the 
 Restoration, and the establishment of the exotic 
 and artificial standards of the so-called Augustan 
 
 Brutus & Cassius, O how the audience 
 
 Were ravish'd ! with what wonder they went thence ! 
 
 When, some new day, she would not brook a Hne 
 
 Of tedious, though well-labour'd CatiHne ; 
 
 Sejanus too, was irksome : they priz'd more 
 
 * Honest ' lago, or the jealous Moor. 
 
 And though the Fox «& subtil Alchymist, 
 
 Long intermitted, could not quite be mist, 
 
 Though these have sham'd all th' ancients, & might raise 
 
 Their author's merit with a crown of bays, 
 
 Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire, 
 
 Acted, have scarce defray'd the sea-coal fire, 
 
 And door-keepers : when, let but Falstaff come, 
 
 Hal, Poins, the rest — you scarce shall have room, 
 
 All is so pester'd : let but Beatrice 
 
 And Benedick be seen lo ! in a trice 
 
 The cock-pit, galleries, boxes, all are full, 
 
 To hear Malvolio, that cross-garter'd gull. 
 
 Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book. 
 
 Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look, 
 
 Like old coin'd gold, whose lines, in every page. 
 
 Shall pass true current to succeeding age." 
 
 In The Return from Parnasstis, a comedy acted certainly be- 
 fore the death of Queen Elizabeth by the students of St. John's 
 College, Cambridge, but the earliest known copy of which was 
 printed in 1606, there is this tribute to the native superiority of 
 Shakespeare : — 
 
 *' Kemp. Few of the vniuersity pen plaies well ; they smell 
 too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphosis, 
 and talke too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, heres our 
 fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe ; I and Ben Jonson too. 
 O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow : he brought up Horace 
 giuing the poets a pill ; but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen 
 him a purge that made him beray his credit." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. I3I 
 
 age of English literature, that he was thought to 
 have equals, and even superiors. In spite of 
 Shakespeare's manifest and generally acknowl- 
 edged superiority, under which Jonson, conscious 
 both of larger learning and more laborious effort, 
 fretted a little, there was warm friendship be- 
 tween the two men, which lasted through Shake- 
 speare's life, and the memory of which inspired 
 and softened gruff Ben when his friend had 
 passed away. There was never more generous 
 or more glowing eulogy of one man by another 
 than that in Jonson's verses which appeared 
 among the preliminary matter to the first folio ; 
 and in the well-known passage in his Discover- 
 ies, written in his later years, the crusty critic, 
 though he must carp at the poet, breaks out into 
 a hearty expression of admiration and cherished 
 love of the man.* 
 
 * " I remember the Players have often mentioned it as an hon- 
 our to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penn'd) 
 he never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had 
 blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. 
 I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose 
 that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most 
 faulted. And to justifie mine own candor, (for I lov'd the man, 
 and doe honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as 
 any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open and free nature : 
 had an excellent Phantsie, brave notions, and gentle expressions : 
 wherein he flow'd with that facility, that sometime it was neces- 
 sary he should be stop'd. SitfflaiTiinandus erat, as Augustus said 
 of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power, would the rule of 
 it had beene so too. Many times he fell into those things, could 
 not escape laughter : As when he said in the person of Caesar 
 
1^2 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 In 1599 Shakespeare received a not very wel- 
 come tribute to his poetic eminence. A book- 
 seller named Jaggard, who, even in those days of 
 extremest Kcense in his craft, was distinguished by 
 his disregard of the rights of literary property and 
 literary reputation, printed a volume of verses un- 
 der the unmeaning title The Passionate Pilgrimy 
 upon the title-page of which he impudently placed 
 Shakespeare's name, although but a part of its 
 meagre contents were from his pen, and that part 
 had been surreptitiously obtained. Shakespeare 
 was much offended that Jaggard made so bold 
 with his name. This we know on the testimony 
 of Heywood, who in a second edition saw two of 
 his own compositions also attributed to the favor- 
 ite of the hour, and who publicly claimed his 
 own.* Shakespeare, although offended at the per- 
 sonal liberty, seems to have been careless of any 
 possible injury to his reputation. No evidence of 
 any public denial on his part is known to exist ; 
 and it was not until after the publication of the 
 third edition of the volume, in 1612, that his name 
 
 one speaking to him, Ccesar thou dost me wrong, Hee replyed : 
 CcEsar did never wrong, but with just cause ; and such like ; which 
 were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his virtues. 
 There was euer more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned." 
 Discoveries. De Shakespeare nostrat. Lond., fol., 1640, p. 97. 
 
 * These were two poetic epistles, from Paris to Helen and from 
 Helen to Paris. See the postscript to Heywood's Apology for 
 Actors, i6i2. The Passionate Pilgri??i was printed only on one 
 side of each leaf, to eke out the volume. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1^3 
 
 was taken from the title-page. In 1600 he was 
 made for a time to father Sir yohn Oldcastle ; but 
 the pubUsher appears to have been speedily un- 
 deceived, or compelled to do justice ; for Shake- 
 speare's name was omitted from some part of the 
 impression. We know from Henslow's Diary that 
 Sir John Oldcastle was written by Munday, Dray- 
 ton, Wilson, and Hath way, jointly. The removal 
 of Shakespeare's name from the title-page was 
 more probably owing to their pride and jealousy 
 than to Shakespeare's. An edition of King Henry 
 the Fifth was published in this year, which shows 
 from internal evidence that the bookseller was so 
 eager to put this work of Shakespeare's before the 
 public that he used a version obtained by surrep- 
 titious means, and so mangled as to be almost 
 without connection from page to page. A mis- 
 fortune, wliich we may well believe was more se- 
 riously regarded by Shakespeare than any liberty 
 with his reputation, fell upon him also in this year, 
 through the plot which cost Essex his head, and 
 his friend and Shakespeare's patron, Southamp- 
 ton, his liberty during the remainder of Eliza- 
 beth's reign. 
 
 The latter years of John Shakespeare's check- 
 ered life seem to have been passed in tranquil 
 though humble ease, through the filial care of his 
 distinguished son. He died in September, 1601, 
 as we know by the record of his burial on the 8th 
 of that month ; being then, if we set him down 
 
134 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 as twenty-one or twenty-two years old when we 
 first hear of him at Stratford, somewhat more than 
 seventy years of age. His house in Henley Street, 
 and probably such other real property as he may 
 have owned at the time of his death, descended 
 to William, who, though the possessor and occu- 
 pier of the Great House which had doubtless im- 
 pressed his youthful imagination by its magnitude 
 and its village pre-eminence, clung to the memo- 
 ries of his humbler home, and always kept it in 
 his possession. During the next year he added 
 to his landed estate one hundred and seven acres 
 of land in the parish of Old Stratford, which 
 he bought from the brothers William and John 
 a Combe. He also bought a cottage in Henley 
 Street from Walter Gettey ; and from Hercules 
 Underbill, a messuage with two barns, two or- 
 chards, and two gardens. He was not in Strat- 
 ford at the time of the completion of the first of 
 these purchases, in which he was represented by 
 his brother Gilbert. In this year, while he was 
 thus rapidly acquiring that landed interest in his 
 native county without which no man in his day 
 could maintain a respectable position as a gentle- 
 man of family, the burgesses of Stratford passed 
 an ordinance forbidding the exhibition of plays 
 of any kind in the chamber, the guild-hall, or any 
 part of the house or court, — a proscription which 
 was made more rigid in 1612. Is it strange that 
 under these circumstances Shakespeare did not 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 135 
 
 show much solicitude about the careful publication 
 of his dramas and the perpetuation of his fame 
 as a playwright ? 
 
 The death of Elizabeth in 1603, which gave 
 our fathers, instead of a royal family that tyran- 
 nized firmly and sagaciously, one that was at once 
 despotic, feeble, and vacillating, and whose mon- 
 strous outrages upon the rights of Englishmen 
 contributed mainly to the founding of an English 
 nation upon this continent, produced a change 
 in Shakespeare's professional position, traces of 
 which remain in the mother country until this day. 
 One of King James's earliest warrants under the 
 privy seal of England made the company of which 
 Shakespeare was a member " His Majesty's ser- 
 vants" ; a designation which has since always per- 
 tained to the performers at the leading theatre 
 of London. In this warrant Shakespeare's name 
 appears second, Laurence Fletcher's being first.* 
 
 * It is, verbatim et literatim, thus ; — 
 "By the King. 
 
 " Right trusty and welbeloved Counsellor, we greete you well, 
 and will and commaund you, that under our privie Seale in your 
 custody for the time being, you cause our letters to be derected 
 to the keeper of our greate seale of England, commaunding him 
 under our said greate Seale, he cause our letters to be made pa- 
 tents in forme following. James, by the grace of God, King of 
 England, Scotland, Fraunce, and Irland, defendor of the faith, 
 &c. To all Justices, Maiors, Sheriffs, Constables, Headbor- 
 oughes, and other our officers and loving subjects greeting. 
 Know ye, that we of our speciall grace, certaine knowledge, and 
 
13^ 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 And in this year, too, if we could believe in the 
 authenticity of a letter professing to be written by 
 the poet Daniel to Sir Thomas Egerton, and which 
 Mr. Collier brought to light in 1835,* Shakespeare 
 
 meere motion have licenced and authorized, and by these pre- 
 sentes doe licence and authorize, these our servants, Lawrence 
 Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine 
 Phillippes, John Hemmings, Henrie Condell, William Sly, Rob- 
 ert Armyn, Richard Cowlye, and the rest of their associats, freely 
 to use & exercise the arte and faculty of playing Comedies, Trage- 
 dies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stage plaies, and 
 such other like, as that thei have already studied or hereafter 
 shall use or studie, as well for the recreation of our loving sub- 
 jects, as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke good 
 to see them, during our pleasure. And the said Comedies, Trage- 
 dies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stage plaies, and 
 such like, to shew & exercise publiquely to their best commo- 
 ditie, when the infection of the plague shall decrease, as well 
 within theire now usuall howse called the Globe, within our coun- 
 ty of Surrey, as also within anie towne halls, or mout halls, or 
 other convenient places within the liberties & freedome of any 
 other citie, universitie, towne, or borough whatsoever within our 
 said realmes and dominions. Willing and commaunding you, 
 and every of you, as you tender our pleasure, not only to permit 
 and suffer them heerin, without any your letts, hinderances, or 
 molestations, during our said pleasure, but also to be ayding or 
 assisting to them, yf any wrong be to them offered. And to al- 
 lowe them such former courtesies, as hathe bene given to men of 
 their place and qualitie : and also what further favour you shall 
 shew to these our servants for our sake, we shall take kindly at 
 your hands. And these our letters shall be your sufficient war- 
 rant and discharge in this behalfe. Given under our Signet at 
 our mannor of Greenewiche, the seaventeenth day of May in the 
 first yere of our raigne of England, France, and Ireland, & of 
 Scotland the six & thirtietli. 
 
 " Ex per Lake." 
 * New Facts regarding the Life of Shakespeare. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 137 
 
 applied for the office of Master of the Queen's 
 Revels, which, through Sir Thomas Egerton's in- 
 fluence, was given to Daniel. The genuineness 
 of this letter, in which the allusion to Shakespeare 
 is slight and incidental, has been disputed on 
 purely palaeographical grounds. But it may also 
 be questioned whether Shakespeare would have 
 applied at this time for such an office as that of 
 Master of the Queen's Revels, which would have 
 occupied much of his time and attention ; for he 
 was now at the height of his reputation, and was 
 gathering a profit from his professional labors for 
 the loss of which the position of Master of the 
 Queen's Revels would not have been a recom- 
 pense. If indeed he did apply for it, the world 
 has reason to be thankful at his disappointment. 
 For it is to the first ten years of the seventeenth 
 century that we owe the great tragedies, Troihis 
 and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Thnon of Ath- 
 ens, Macbeth, Julius Ccesar, Antony and Cleopatra, 
 and Coriolajius, with Cynibeline, All ^s Well that 
 Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Shake- 
 speare's part in Pericles and TJie Taming of the 
 Shrew, of which all but Pericles and TJie Taming 
 of the Shrew were quite surely written after 1603. 
 In that year Ben Jonson's Sejanus was pro- 
 duced at the Black-friars, and the author of Ham- 
 let might have been seen playing a subordinate 
 part in it. But about this time he appears to 
 have retired from the stage, where, as we have 
 
138 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 seen, he had gained but little distinction at much 
 sacrifice of feeling, and to have confined his labors 
 for the theatre to the more congenial occupation 
 of play-writing. Chettle, it is true, says that 
 Shakespeare was excellent in the quality he pro- 
 fessed ; but in that commendation, "quality" may 
 include play-writing as well as play-acting ; and 
 mayhap it refers with some vagueness to both. 
 According to a contemporary epigram by Davies 
 (in The Scourge of Folly), which has been pre- 
 viously mentioned, Shakespeare played kingly 
 parts ; and in so doing offended his new master, 
 and marred his fortunes. The verses are not 
 clear, as the reader will see. 
 
 " To our English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare. 
 
 " Some say, good "Will, which I in sport do sing, 
 Had'st thou not plaid some kingly parts in sport, 
 Thou had'st bin a companion for a king, 
 And beene a king among the meaner sort. 
 
 " Some others raile ; but raile as they thinke fit. 
 Thou hast no rayling, but a raigning wit : 
 And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape. 
 So to increase their stocke, which they do keepe." 
 
 It cannot be that Shakespeare in playing kingly 
 parts ventured to take off " God's vicegerent upon 
 earth." The temptation to do so must have been 
 great ; but he was too prudent to indulge in a sport 
 so expensive and so dangerous. It is difficult to 
 see how the mere decorous performance of kingly 
 parts could have offended James ; and yet we must 
 remember that he was as petty and capricious as 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 139 
 
 he was tyrannical. Nevertheless the king was 
 attacked through the players ; of which the fol- 
 lowing very direct evidence has been found in a 
 treatise on hunting preserved among the Sloane 
 MSS. The writer, having censured the players 
 for lack of decorum, thus continues : " What mad- 
 nesse is it, I saye, that possesseth them under 
 faigned persons to be censureing of their sove- 
 raigne : surely though these poets for many years 
 have, for the most part, lefte foles and devills out 
 of their playes, yet nowe on the suddayne they 
 make them all playe the foles most notoriouslye 
 and impudently in medlinge with him (in waye 
 of taxacion) by whome they live and have in man- 
 ner there very being." In this grovelling and 
 blasphemous style it was the fashion to speak of 
 a man who was about as mean and sordid a crea- 
 ture as ever lived. 
 
 There is a story which was first printed in Lin- 
 tot's edition of Shakespeare's Poems, published 
 in 1 7 10, that King James wrote with his own 
 hand an amicable letter to Shakespeare, which 
 was once in the hands of Davenant, as a credita- 
 ble person then living could testify ; and conjec- 
 ture, ever ready, has made Macbeth's prophetic 
 vision of kings the occasion of the compUment. 
 It is well to have a more creditable person than 
 Davenant to corroborate such a story ; and 01- 
 dys, in a manuscript note to his copy of Ful- 
 ler's Worthies, says that the Duke of Bucking- 
 
140 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 ham told Lintot that he had seen this letter in 
 Davenant's possession. If Oldys meant George 
 Villiers, the last Duke of Buckingham, which is 
 possible, he added not much to our security for 
 the mere existence of such a letter ; but if he 
 meant John Sheffield, the first Duke of the Coun- 
 ty of Buckingham, which is also possible, we 
 can the more readily believe that Davenant pro- 
 duced such a letter as that in question, although 
 even then we lack satisfactory evidence of its gen- 
 uineness. Davenant is poor authority for any 
 story about Shakespeare. This one, however, is 
 more probable than another which places Shake- 
 speare in royal company. It was unheard of till 
 late in the eighteenth century, and is to the effect 
 that Queen Elizabeth, being at the theatre one 
 evening when Shakespeare was playing a king, 
 bowed to him as she crossed the stage. He did 
 not return the salutation, but went on with his 
 part. To ascertain whether the omission was an 
 intentional preservation of assumed character, or 
 an oversight, the Queen again passed him, and 
 dropped her glove. Shakespeare immediately 
 picked it up, and, following the royal virgin, hand- 
 ed it to her, adding on the instant these lines to a 
 speech which he was just delivering, and so aptly 
 and easily that they seemed to belong to it. 
 
 " And though now bent on this high embassy, 
 Yet stoop we to take up our cousin's glove." 
 
 The Queen, it is said, was highly pleased, and 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. j^j 
 
 complimented him upon his adroitness and his 
 courtesy. In judging the credibihty of this story, 
 it should be remembered that in Shakespeare's 
 time the most distinguished part of the audience 
 went upon the stage, during the performance, in 
 what must have been a very confusing manner. 
 But the anecdote is plainly one made to meet the 
 craving for personal details of Shakespeare's life. 
 In addition to its inherent improbabihty, Shake- 
 speare well knew what the author of the verses 
 seems not to have known, — that kings cannot go 
 on embassies. Empty compliment and his share 
 of payment to the company for services rendered 
 seem to have been all the benefit that Shakespeare 
 obtained from royal favor. There is not the least 
 reason for believing that either the strong-minded 
 woman or the weak-minded man in whose reigns 
 he flourished recognized his superiority by special 
 distinction or substantial reward.* 
 
 * Mr. Peter Cunningham's Extracts from the Accounts of the 
 Revels at Court include the following entries of the perform- 
 ance of Shakespeare's plays before King James, between 1604 
 
 and 161 1 : — 
 
 The Poets which 
 The Plaiers. niayd the plaies. 
 
 By the Kings Hallamas day being 
 
 Ma"' plaiers. the first of Novembar, 
 
 A play in the Banketinge 
 
 House att Whithall 
 
 called the Moor of 
 
 Venis. [Nov. ist, 1604.] 
 
 By his Ma"* The Sunday ffollowinge, 
 
 plaiers. A Play of the Merry W^ives 
 
 of Winsor. [Nov. 4th, 1604,] 
 
142 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 On the 5 th of June, 1607, Susanna Shakespeare, 
 who was her father's favorite daughter, and who 
 seems to have been a superior woman, was mar- 
 ried to Dr. John Hall, a physician of good repute 
 in his county. On the 31st of December of the 
 same year, Edmund Shakespeare was buried in 
 the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark. He was 
 
 TJie Platers. 
 
 By his Ma*'« 
 plaiers. 
 
 By his Ma*'« 
 plaiers. 
 
 By his Ma*^' 
 plaiers. 
 
 By his Ma*^^ 
 plaiers. 
 
 By his Ma*'^ 
 plaiers. 
 
 By his Ma*'^ 
 plaiers. 
 
 The Poets which 
 jnayd the plaies. 
 
 On St. Stivens night in Shaxberd. 
 
 the Hall a Play called 
 
 Mesur for Mesur. [Dec. 26th, 1604.] 
 
 On Inosents Night The Plaie Shaxberd. 
 of Errors. [Dec. 28th, 1604.] 
 
 Betwin Newers day and 
 Twelfe day a Play of Loves 
 Labours Lost. [1605.] 
 
 On the 7 of January was played 
 the play of Henry the 
 fift. [1605.] 
 
 On Shrovsunday A play of Shaxberd. 
 
 the Marchant of Venis. 
 [Mar. 24th, 1605.] 
 
 On Shrovtusday A Play Shaxberd. 
 
 cauled the Merchant of 
 
 Venis againe commaunded 
 
 by the Kings Ma*^'. [Mar. 26, 1605.] 
 
 [Accounts from Oct. 31st, 161 1, to Nov. ist, 1612.] 
 
 By the Kings 
 
 Hallomas nyght was 
 
 players. 
 
 presented att Whithall 
 
 
 before y^ Kinges Ma*'" 
 
 
 a play called the Tempest. 
 
 
 [Nov. 1st, 161 1.] 
 
 The Kings 
 
 The 5th of November : A 
 
 players. 
 
 play called y« winters 
 
 
 nightes Tayle. [161 1.] 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 143 
 
 a player of no distinction, who probably had fol- 
 lowed his brother to London and obtained a place 
 in the Black-friars company by his influence. 
 
 The inducements presented to Shakespeare by 
 his Puritan townsman Sturley, as early as the 
 year 1597, to the purchase of tithes in his native 
 place, were insufficient at the time, or he had not 
 the needful money at hand ; for he then acquired 
 no interest in them. But he seems to have enter- 
 tained the project favorably, and to have formed 
 the design of making an investment of this kind ; 
 for in 1605 he bought the moiety of a lease, 
 granted in 1544, of all the tithes of Stratford, 
 Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe ; for 
 which he paid down in cash ;^440. This is the 
 most important purchase he is known to have 
 made. The consideration was equal to between 
 eleven and twelve thousand dollars of our money. 
 
 The natural desire of transmitting an honora- 
 ble name and a fair estate to descendants seems 
 to have been strong in Shakespeare, and his 
 hopes, sadly disappointed by the early death of 
 his only son, must have been a little dashed again 
 by the event which made him first a grandfather, 
 — the birth, in February, 1607-8, of a daughter to 
 his daughter Susanna, the wife of Dr. Hall. She 
 brought her husband no other children. In Sep- 
 tember following Mary Arden died, having sur- 
 vived her husband seven years. Shakespeare's 
 mother must have been about seventy years old 
 
J 44 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 at her death, which took place probably in the old 
 home in Henley Street, to which she had gone 
 fifty years before as John Shakespeare's wife, and 
 where the son was born to whom she doubtless 
 owed her undisturbed residence in that house of 
 hope and of sad and tender memories. We do not 
 know that he was present at her funeral ; and he 
 seems to have set up no stone to tell us where she 
 or his father lay. But the same is true with regard 
 to his son Hamnet ; and it is reasonable to sup- 
 pose that his own death prevented the completion 
 of designs for a tomb for the family. The next 
 month, October of this same year, 1608, affords 
 us, though in the most formal and unsatisfactory 
 manner, our nearest approximation to a record of 
 a social gathering at which he was present. On 
 the 1 6th, he was sponsor at the baptism of the 
 son of Henry Walker, an alderman of Stratford. 
 The boy was called after his godfather, who re- 
 membered him in his will by a legacy of xx. s, 
 in gold. So that, after all, as Shakespeare's 
 mother's funeral took place on the 6th of the pre- 
 vious month, we may be pretty sure that he per- 
 formed for her the last offices, and that he was 
 remaining at Stratford in temporary and much 
 coveted seclusion when he was asked to be Wil- 
 liam Walker's godfather. 
 
 In 1605, when he was forty years old, he had 
 produced his great tragedy, Kin^ Lear, the most 
 admirable and wonderful work of human genius. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 145 
 
 Of this drama the bookseller obtained a copy in 
 1608, and in that year published three editions of 
 it, the high reputation of its author, as well as the 
 public admiration of this particular work, having 
 been shown not only by the unusual demand which 
 the bookseller was called upon to supply, but by 
 the means which the latter took to make it clear 
 upon the title-page that this was "Mr. William 
 Shakespeare HIS Tragedy of King Lear." 
 
 For anxious souls who are concerned upon the 
 subject of Shakespeare's taxes, there is a comfort- 
 able memorandum preserved at Dulwich College, 
 which professes to give the names of all those 
 who in April, 1609, were rated and assessed for a 
 weekly payment toward the relief of the poor of 
 the Clink Liberty in Southwark. Among fifty- 
 seven names are those of Philip Henslow, Ed- 
 ward Alleyn, and Mr. Shakespeare, who are each 
 assessed weekly at vj. d. But, alas ! this invalua- 
 ble evidence also is impeached as spurious ; and 
 judging from the fac-simile of it which has been 
 published, it is certainly but a clumsy, and some- 
 times careless, imitation of seventeenth-century 
 writing. But for this loss there is recompense in 
 the authenticity of a court record, by which we 
 know that in August, 1608, Shakespeare sued John 
 Addenbroke of Stratford, got a judgment for £6, 
 and £1 4^. costs, and that, Addenbroke being re- 
 turned itojt est inveiittts, Shakespeare sued his bail, 
 Thomas Hornby, the proceedings lasting until 
 7 J 
 
I .5 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 June, 1609. Four years before, Shakespeare had 
 sued one Philip Rogers in the Stratford Court of 
 Record for £1 15^. lod. He had sold Rogers malt 
 to the value of ;^i 19^. lod., and had lent him 
 2s., of which the debtor had paid but 6s. And 
 so Shakespeare brought suit for what is called in 
 trade the balance of the account, which repre- 
 sented about $40 of our money. These stories 
 grate upon our feelings with a discord as much 
 harsher than that which disturbs us when we 
 hear of Addison suing poor Steele for ^100, as 
 Shakespeare lives in our hearts the lovelier as 
 well as the greater man than Addison. But Ad- 
 dison's case was aggravated by the fact that the 
 debtor was his long-time friend and fellow-laborer. 
 Debts are to be paid, and rogues who can pay 
 and will not pay must be made to pay ; but the 
 pursuit of an impoverished man, for the sake of 
 imprisoning him and depriving him both of the 
 power of paying his debt and supporting himself 
 and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's life 
 which it requires the utmost allowance and con- 
 sideration for the practice of the time and. country 
 to enable us to contemplate with equanimity, — 
 satisfaction is impossible. 
 
 The biographer of Shakespeare must record 
 these facts, because the literary antiquaries have 
 unearthed and brought them forward as " new par- 
 ticulars of the life of Shakespeare." We hunger, 
 and we receive these husks ; we open our mouths 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. j^y 
 
 for food, and we break our teeth against these 
 stones. What have these law-papers, in the in- 
 volved verbiage of which dead quarrels lie em- 
 balmed, in hideous and grotesque semblance of 
 their living shapes, their life-blood dried that lent 
 them all their little dignity, their action, and their 
 glow, exhaling only a faint and sickly odor of the 
 venom that has kept them from decay, — what 
 have these to do with the life of him whom his 
 friends delighted to call sweet and gentle ? Could 
 not these, at least, have been allowed to rest ? 
 The parties to them have been two centuries 
 in their graves. Why awake from slumber the 
 empty echoes of their living strife ? 
 
 It is almost as remote from the purpose of true 
 biography, though it is somewhat more satisfac- 
 tory, to ascertain the amount of the income which 
 Shakespeare so laboriously acquired and so jeal- 
 ously guarded. That the basis of a calculation 
 might not be lacking, the indefatigable (and ever 
 successful) Mr. Collier produced from the manu- 
 scripts at Bridgewater House a memorandum 
 which professes to state the value of Shake- 
 speare's property in the Black-friars. The reader 
 will remember the fruitless opposition of the Lord 
 Mayor and Aldermen of London to the establish- 
 ment of this theatre. Neither their animosity 
 nor their efforts ceased with their first failure. 
 They neglected no opportunity, no means, to at- 
 tain their end. Finally, in 1608, Sir Henry Mon- 
 
148 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 tagu, the then Attorney-General, gave an opinion 
 that the jurisdiction of the corporation of London 
 extended over the Liberty of the Black-friars, and 
 there was another attempt to dislodge Richard 
 Burbadge, William Shakespeare, and their fellows. 
 Either through lack of title or of influence, it was 
 in vain. The players could not be ousted. Then, 
 if we could accept the evidence of Mr. Collier's 
 document, the Mayor and Aldermen thought of 
 buying out the men whom they could not turn 
 out, and had an estimate made of the value of the 
 Black-friars theatrical property, which proved to 
 be in the bulk worth ;^7,ooo, of which sum Shake- 
 speare's shares and wardrobe property absorbed 
 ;^ 1,43 3 ^^- ^^- According to this memorandum 
 Shakespeare's income from his four shares was 
 ;;^I33 6s. d)d.; the rent of a wardrobe and proper- 
 ties set down as worth ;^500 could not have been 
 less than ;^50 ; which makes the Black-friars in- 
 come £i^2> ^^' 8^. Reckoning a like return from 
 the Globe, we have £'^66 135-. ^d.; and remem- 
 bering that Shakespeare had other property, and 
 also a productive pen, Mr. Collier, whose calcu- 
 lation this is, certainly rather underrates than 
 overrates his income at ;^400 — equal to about 
 ^10,000 now — yearly. But alas ! this paper, like 
 so many others brought to light by the same hand, 
 and like the professed Southampton letter which 
 refers to the same circumstances, has been pro- 
 nounced spurious by high, though perhaps not 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 149 
 
 infallible, authority.* Yet the conclusions based 
 upon it are sustained by a letter of unquestioned 
 
 * The following is a copy of the memorandum in question. 
 It has been pronounced spurious by Sir Frederic Madden, Mr. 
 T. Duffus Hardy, Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, Professor Brewer 
 (as to whose official positions see the note on p. 107), Mr. Richard 
 Giardner, M. W. B. D. D. Turnbull, and Mr. Halliwell. 
 
 " For avoiding of the playhouse in the Blacke Friers. 
 Impr Richard Burbidge owith the Fee and is alsoe \ 
 
 a sharer therein. His interest he rateth at/ y e. qa 
 
 the grosse summe of loooli for the Fee and I ^^^ 
 for his foure Shares the summe of 93311 6s 8d ; 
 Ite77t Laz Fletcher owith three shares w'^'' he rateth \ 
 
 at 7ooli that is at 7 years purchase for eche > 700 li • 
 share or 3311 6s 8d one year with an other. ; 
 Ikm W. Shakspeare asketh for the wardrobe and ^ 
 
 properties of the same playhouse 5ooli, and f y (^ 9a 
 
 for his 4 shares, the same as his fellowes ( 
 Burbidge and Fletcher 933li 6s 8d ) 
 
 Item Heminges and Condell eche 2 shares 933 li 6s 8d 
 
 Item Joseph Taylor one share and an halfe 350 li 
 
 Itetn Lowing one share and an halfe 350 li 
 
 Item foure more playeres with one halfe share ) ,,.. , 
 
 unto eche of them ) ^ 
 
 Suma totalis 6166. 13. 4. 
 Moreover, the hired men of the Companie de- ' 
 maund some recompence for their greate losse 
 and the Widowes and Orphanes of players who 
 are paide by the Sharers at diuers rates & propor- 
 cons soe as in the whole it will coste the Lo. 
 Mayor and Citizens at the least 
 
 Here may conveniently be added another document from the 
 same source, which rests under even graver imputations against 
 its genuineness. It professes to be a draft or abridged tran- 
 script of a warrant, appointing Robert Daiborne, William Shake- 
 speare, and others, instructors of the Children of the Queen's 
 Revels. But aside from the palasographic condemnation of the 
 paper, its contents have been shown by Mr. Halliwell (in his 
 
 ► 7000 li " 
 
ISO 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 authenticity in the State Paper Office at London. 
 Mr. John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley 
 
 Curiosities of Shakespearian Criticisiji, p. 22) to be entirely incon- 
 gruous with the circumstances under which it professes to have 
 been written. 
 
 " Right trusty and welbeloved, &c., James, &c. To all Mayors, 
 Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, &c. Whereas the Queene, our 
 dearest wife, hath for her pleasure and recreation appointed her 
 servaunts Robert Daiborne, &c. to provide and bring upp a con- 
 venient nomber of children, who shall be called the Children of 
 her Majesties Revells, knowe ye that we have appointed and au- 
 thorized, and by these presents doe appoint and authorize the 
 said Robert Daiborne, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Field, 
 and Edward Kirkham, from time to time to provide and bring 
 upp a convenient nomber of children, and them to instruct and 
 exercise in the quality of playing Tragedies, Comedies, &c., by 
 the name of the Children of the Revells to the Queene, within 
 the Blackfryers, in our Citie of London, or els where within our 
 realme of England. Wherefore we will and command you, and 
 everie of you, to permitt her said servaunts to keepe a conven- 
 ient nomber of children, by the name of the Children of the 
 Revells to the Queene, and them to exercise in the qualitie of 
 playing according to her royal pleasure. Provided alwaies, that 
 no playes, &c. shall be by them presented, but such playes, &c. 
 as have received the approbation and allowance of our Maister 
 of the Revells for the tyme being. And these our Ires, shall be 
 your sufficient warrant in this behalfe. In witnesse whereof, &c., 
 4° die Janij. 1609. 
 
 Bl Fr and globe 
 
 Wh Fr and parish garden 
 
 Curten and fortune 
 
 All in & neere London 
 
 Hope and Swanne 
 
 *' Proud povertie. Engl tragedie. 
 
 Widow's mite. False Friendes. 
 
 Antonio kinsmen. Hate and love. 
 
 Triumph of Truth. Taming of S. 
 
 Touchstone. K. Edw 2. 
 Grissell. Stayed." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 151 
 
 Carleton at the Hague in 161 9, mentions that the 
 death of the Queen hinders the players from the 
 exercise of their caUing, and adds, " One speciale 
 man among them, Burbadge, is lately dead, and 
 hath left, they say, better than ;^300 land." Now, 
 if Burbadge, who was but an actor, could acquire 
 landed property to the value of ^300 yearly, sure- 
 ly Shakespeare might well receive ;^ioo more 
 from all his sources of income. A chancery suit 
 upon which Shakespeare was obliged to enter, 
 apparently in 161 2, for the protection of his in- 
 terests in the tithes of Stratford and neighboring 
 parishes, shows us that his receipts from that 
 quarter were £60 (now full i^isoo) yearly.* To 
 
 I here remark upon a hitherto unnoticed but very significant 
 and suspicious fact in connection with this paper, and one of a 
 very unpleasant nature for Mr. Collier. It will be observed that 
 the list of plays which follows the essential part of the paper, and 
 which is followed by the memorandum " Stayed," ends with " K. 
 Edw 2." According to the fac-simile made by a fac-similist of 
 high repute in London, this list is in a single column, and be- 
 tween the title of the last play and the word '* Stayed " there is a 
 blank space about two inches wide. Now, in the copy of this 
 paper given in Mr. Collier's Life of Shakespeare (p. ccxxix.) 
 " K. Edw 2 " is followed by the name of another play, " Mirror 
 of Life." Whence did Mr. Collier derive the name of that play, 
 which does not exist upon the document itself as it appears in 
 the Bridgewater MSS. ? From a draft firom which the Bridge- 
 water MS. was written out? How else ? For it must be noted 
 that this is not an instance of error in reading or copying, but an 
 absolute interpolation. See the Southampton letter above re- 
 ferred to, on pp. 107, 108 of this volume. 
 
 * The Bill, which maybe found at full length in Mr. Halliwell's 
 Life of Shakespeare, furnishes the following single paragraph of 
 interest : — 
 
152 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 finish all that need be said about mere business 
 transactions, in March, 1 612-3, Shakespeare, in 
 connection with " William Johnson citizein and 
 vintner of London and John Jackson and John 
 Hemynge gentlemen," purchased from " Henry 
 Walker citizein and minstrell" a house and the 
 land attached, not far from the Black-friars thea- 
 tre ; paying for it ;^I40, of which £60 were left 
 on bond and mortgage. Mr. CoUier has reasona- 
 bly conjectured that Shakespeare joined in this 
 purchase to serve his fellow-actor, Heminge ; and 
 that, Heminge and the two other purchasers not 
 being able to discharge the amount which he 
 had paid and assume the mortgage, the property 
 fell to him. The deed of conveyance has a pecu- 
 liar interest as bearing one of the four certainly 
 authentic signatures of Shakespeare. It is now 
 preserved in the library of the city of London, at 
 Guildhall. 
 
 Shakespeare had been about eighteen years in 
 London, and with the approach of his fortieth 
 year was attaining the height of his reputation, 
 when a club was established there, which owes a 
 
 *'.... and your oratour William Schackspeare hath an estate 
 and interest of and in the moyty or one half of all tythes of corne 
 and grayne aryseing within the townes, villages and ffields, and 
 of and in the moity or half of all tythes of wool and lambs, and 
 of all small and privy tythes, oblacions and alterages arisinge or 
 increasing in Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcome, being in 
 the said parishe of Stratford, or within the wholl parishe of Strat- 
 ford uppon Avon aforesaid, for and during all the residue of the 
 said terme, beinge of the yearly value of threescore pounds." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. jq^ 
 
 wide celebrity and perpetual fame chiefly to him, 
 although there is no evidence that he was one of 
 its members. It was founded by Sir Walter Ra- 
 leigh, and met at the Mermaid, — a favorite tav- 
 ern in Bread Street. Here Raleigh himself, Jon- 
 son, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Colton, Carew, 
 Donne, and others their chosen companions, met 
 for social and convivial enjoyment ; and that they 
 did not admit Will Shakespeare of their crew, 
 who can believe ? Yet our confidence that he sat 
 with them round that board which Beaumont cel- 
 ebrates in his well-known lines,* can only rest 
 upon the moral impossibility that he should have 
 been absent. There all students of the literature 
 and manners of those days have reasonably agreed 
 in placing the scene of the wit combats between 
 Shakespeare and Jonson, the fame of which had 
 reached Fuller's time, and caused him to imagine 
 
 * " What things have we seen 
 Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been 
 So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that every one from whom they came 
 Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
 And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown 
 Wit able enough to justify the town 
 For three days past, wit that might warrant be 
 For the whole city to talk foolishly 
 Till that were cancell'd, and, wJien that was gone, 
 We left an air behind us which alone 
 Was able to make the two next companies 
 Right witty, though but downright fools, more wise." 
 
 Letter to Ben Jonson, 
 
1^4 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 the encounter of the two like that between a 
 Spanish great galleon and an English man-of- 
 war ; Jonson, like the former, built far higher in 
 learning, and solid, but slow in his performances ; 
 Shakespeare, like the latter, less in bulk, but 
 lighter in movement, turning and tacking nimbly, 
 and taking every advantage by the quickness of 
 his wit and invention. This, however is only Ful- 
 ler's imagination. We have no testimony as to 
 the quality or the style of wit exhibited by either 
 of these redoubted combatants ; and all the pre- 
 tended specimens of their colloquial jests and 
 repartees that have reached us are so pitiably 
 tame and forced, that they are plainly foolish fab- 
 rications. 
 
 We all are sure that Shakespeare must have 
 been one of this Mermaid club, because of his cer- 
 tain acquaintance with some, and his very proba- 
 ble acquaintance with all of its members, and be- 
 cause of the qualifications which made him the 
 most desirable of men as one of such a social 
 circle. For he was not only a great poet, a suc- 
 cessful playwright, and an influential man in his 
 company, but, according to all accounts, a charm- 
 ing companion. What, then, may we conclude, 
 was Shakespeare's social life in London, while 
 from earliest manhood to maturity he rose by his 
 connection with literature and the drama from 
 obscurity to the highest distinction attainable by 
 those means in that day ? 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 155 
 
 We have seen that at twenty-eight years of age 
 he enjoyed the acquaintance and had won the re- 
 spect of men very far above him in social position. 
 It could not have been that his intercourse with 
 that class of society was confined to casual meet- 
 ings at the theatre and convivial gatherings at the 
 tavern. Men of his gifts, rating him merely at 
 contemporary estimation, are too rare in any so- 
 ciety not to be welcomed if there are not special 
 reasons for their exclusion. Nay, they sometimes 
 make their way into the most fastidious circles, 
 even when they are needy and debauched, or 
 uncouth and domineering. And in the time of 
 Queen Elizabeth such association was more open 
 to them than it is in our day, from the very fact 
 that then the grades of society were so distinctly 
 marked, and the position of every man so exactly 
 known, that there was no apprehension on the one 
 part, or hope on the other, of any confusion of 
 class and rank. Difference in social position and 
 in occupation was then indicated unmistakably in 
 the every-day dress and even the holiday costume 
 of the wearer. Peasant, yeoman, artisan, trades- 
 man, and gentleman could then be distinguished 
 from each other almost as far as they could be 
 seen. Except in cases of unusual audacity, neither 
 presumed to wear the dress of his betters. But 
 to these rigid and exclusive rules of demarcation 
 the poets, and especially the players, were, in a 
 certain degree, exceptions. Even in dress they 
 
156 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 assumed a license which was made the subject of 
 remark and satire, and rustled through the streets 
 in silks and satins, with swords and plumed hats, 
 like noblemen. The reasons for this peculiarity 
 were partly the fact that their intellectual culture 
 gave them the taste, and in some degree a claim, 
 to assume the habit and manners of the higher 
 classes, partly because their ranks were in some 
 measure recruited from those of the poorer gen- 
 try, and partly also from the habit which the 
 players at least (and many of the poets were play- 
 ers)' acquired on the stage of bearing and dress- 
 ing themselves like gentlemen. 
 
 Belonging to the exceptional class, yet by na- 
 ture not of it, Shakespeare was exceptional in it, 
 and shared its privileges without contamination 
 of its vulgar vices, and so without suffering all its 
 disabilities. And beside, the very company of 
 which he was a member enjoyed, and seems to 
 have deserved, peculiar consideration. Authority 
 nearly contemporary assures us that "all those 
 companies got money and lived in reputation, es- 
 pecially those of the Black-friars, who were men 
 of grave and sober behavior." In this respect, as 
 well as in all others, we may be sure that he was 
 primus inter pares. We can see by the impression 
 which he left upon his contemporaries, that to a 
 native dignity of soul and gentleness of disposi- 
 tion he united a courtesy of bearing that made 
 him in fact the gentleman, to be acknowledged as 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 157 
 
 which seems to have been his chief desire. In 
 the phraseology of modern society, he was emi- 
 nently presentable in any circle. Being such a 
 man, being distinguished as he was, and having 
 early won the personal esteem of influential no- 
 blemen, it can hardly be but that he was received 
 into the high and cultivated society of the metrop- 
 olis. Once there, we may be sure he met with 
 ladies who were more than willing that he should 
 yield to that fascination of soul and sense which 
 the personal and mental charms of beautiful and 
 high-bred women exert upon men of sensitive or- 
 ganization. What effect this experience must have 
 had upon him, almost every man can measurably 
 judge. We know how Robert Burns, that inspired 
 peasant, was bewildered by a brief draught of like 
 intoxication. But over Burns Shakespeare had 
 not only the advantage of superior genius. Self- 
 poised, reserved, instinct with tact (this is no more 
 than inference, but inference which to me is moral 
 certainty), he was no inspired peasant, and bore 
 himself so unexceptionably that no woman, what- 
 ever her rank or her refinement, who looked on 
 him with favor, was put to shame by his weak- 
 ness, his extravagance, or even his eccentricity. 
 That there should be such women was inevitable. 
 Tradition tells us that he went yearly to Stratford, 
 where he left his wife and children. This may 
 well have been. The interests which he looked 
 after so carefully would be likely to take him into 
 
158 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 the society of his wife as often as once in a twelve- 
 month. Tradition also tells us, that on his way 
 back and forth on these dutiful journeys he used 
 to stop in Oxford, at the Crown Tavern, which 
 was kept by John Davenant, a grave and melan- 
 choly citizen who had to wife a beautiful and 
 charming woman. Sir William Davenant, who 
 was born in February, 1605-6, was her son ; and 
 Shakespeare, it is said, was his godfather. And 
 the story goes that one day an old townsman, 
 seeing Will running homeward in great haste 
 "to see his godfather Shakespeare," told him to 
 be careful lest he took God's name in vain. This 
 may all be true ; but a story essentially the same 
 is not uncommon in very old jest-books. Indeed, 
 the humorous quibble is so apparent and so invit- 
 ing, that, if the tale is not as old as the custom 
 of having fathers, it is only because it cannot be 
 older than that of having godfathers. Now Sir 
 William Davenant gave countenance to this report 
 of his origin ; but what credit shall be given to 
 the testimony of a man who would welcome an 
 aspersion upon his mother's reputation for the 
 sake of being believed to write, by inheritance, 
 " with the very spirit of Shakespeare," as he said 
 he thought he did. Davenant was morally a poor 
 creature, and in this he only did his kind. 
 
 Another story is also told of Shakespeare's for- 
 tunes with the sex. Having been long current as 
 a tradition, it was afterwards found recorded in 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 159 
 
 Manningham's diary among the Ashmolean MSS., 
 under the date, March 13th, 1601. It is, that a 
 woman, '' a citizen," seeing Richard Burbadge, the 
 great actor of the day, play Richard III., was so 
 carried away by her admiration that she asked 
 him to visit her after the play, — an invitation to 
 supper from ladies to favorite actors being then 
 not uncommon. Shakespeare overheard the ap- 
 pointment, (the custom of admitting spectators 
 upon the stage during the performance must again 
 be remembered,) and, resolving to supplant his 
 friend, went to the rendezvous before him, an- 
 nounced himself as the crook-backed tyrant, and 
 was as successful as his own hero in winning fe- 
 male favor under adverse circumstances. Bur- 
 badge arrived soon after, and, sending word that 
 Richard III. was at the door, received for answer, 
 from a source as to which he could have had no 
 doubt, that " William the Conqueror was before 
 Richard III." 
 
 But it was not by adventures of this kind that 
 a soul like Shakespeare's could be satisfied ; nor 
 was it under the influence of women of this sort 
 that with the advance of years a striking change 
 took place in the traits of his female characters. 
 For it is remarkable that in his earliest plays, 
 those written when his Stratford reminiscences 
 were freshest, the women are the reverse of lova- 
 ble and gentle. But after a few years of London 
 life had widened his observation and mitigated his 
 
l6o MEMOIRS OF 
 
 experience, there came such a change over his 
 creatures of this kind, that it is praise enough of 
 any, the fairest now and sweetest, to say she is 
 like one of Shakespeare's women. Surely not to 
 chance, and as surely to no evolution from the 
 depths of moral consciousness, is due the differ- 
 ence between the women in Henry the Sixth, The 
 Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Loves 
 Labor V Lost, and those in the later plays. Nor 
 could it have been merely the fruit of maturing 
 judgment. For very young men, and, most of all, 
 very young poets, are sure to see women with the 
 mind's eye only through the soft lustre of those 
 charms which bewilder even the better instructed, 
 though perhaps not wiser, apprehension of pro- 
 saic age.* Shakespeare's mind, like Raphael's, 
 furnished forth his own ideals ; but there can be 
 no reasonable doubt that it was in the high-bred, 
 cultivated women into whose society his noble and 
 worshipful admirers took him that he found his 
 female models.f From among these women did 
 
 * I have always thought Kent's reply to Lear's inquiry as to his 
 age a superlative touch of penetration. 
 
 " Lear. How old art thou ? 
 
 " Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing ; nor 
 so old, to dote on her for anything : I have years on my back for- 
 ty-eight." 
 
 t During the slow progress of these Memoirs from manuscript 
 into type Miss Bunnett's translation of Dr. Gervinus's voluminous 
 Shakespeare Commentaries has reached me. In his comments 
 upon Much Ado About N'othing he says : " We have before drawn 
 attention to the fact, that in the plays belonging to Shakespeare's 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. l6l 
 
 he go forth with heart unscathed ? Among them 
 all, was there not one who felt that, although she 
 perhaps was of noble birth, that player, though not 
 her lord, was master of her heart ? Of the many 
 courtly dames who then gave up all, even their 
 good name, for men they loved, was there not one 
 who knew the worth of Shakespeare ? He with 
 a painter's eye for beauty, and a poet's soul of 
 passion, who could read women's hearts as in a 
 mirror, alive to all the charms of cultivated socie- 
 ty, and illustrating them in his person, and with a 
 rustic wife eight years older than himself away 
 off in Stratford, — he with honey upon his tongue 
 as well as in his pen, of such winning ways that 
 men called him sweet, and gruff Ben Jonson's 
 heart went out to him, — handsome and well- 
 shaped too, — is it in man's nature, is it in wo- 
 man's nature, that he should not have loved and 
 been beloved in London ? Let only those who 
 
 early period there is a remarkable preponderance of bad women : 
 the poet's own experience appears at that time to have inspired 
 him with no advantageous opinion of the female sex." After- 
 ward Gervinus adds, speaking of the author's second period : 
 " Shakes]Deare must at that time in London, in the wider circle of 
 his acquaintance, in his contact with the liigher classes, have be- 
 come intimate with women who withdrew him suddenly from his 
 former ill humor with the sex, into a devoted admiration of 
 them." (Vol. I. p. 588.) While I cannot but be gratified at the 
 support which my views thus receive from the learned German 
 philosopher, it is only just that I should say that they are not ap- 
 propriated from him without acknowledgment ; they having been 
 written out, and even partly put in type, long before his Shake 
 speare Cmimentaries made their appearance. 
 
l52 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 have thoughtfully read his sonnets answer. For 
 whatever may have been the motives of those 
 mysterious compositions, which alternately be- 
 guile us with their seeming revelations of a sim- 
 ple fact, and baffle us with the sudden presenta- 
 tion of impossibility, there beats beneath their 
 artificial surface a pulse of passion so profound, 
 there comes from behind their impenetrable veil 
 a cry of anguish so personal as well as so human, 
 that reason seeks in vain to stifle the intuitive con- 
 viction that in them we are face to face and eye to 
 eye with the man Shakespeare, reading, though but 
 vaguely comprehending, the inmost secrets of his 
 heart. They may not be the record of his soul's 
 experience, but they surely are its witness. They 
 may possibly have been written for others, but 
 they are of himself They lack entirely the dra- 
 matic element, and tell an individual story ; and 
 no such living, fleshly birth as they ever took life 
 from another's joy, or was brought forth by vica- 
 rious suflering. 
 
 To what period of Shakespeare's life we are to 
 assign these sonnets cannot be decided. He had 
 written some sonnets before 1598, because' in that 
 year Meres mentions certain "sugared sonnets 
 among his private friends." But were they these } 
 These tell of a dear, a trusted, and a faithless 
 friend, of a mistress loved in spite of reason and 
 in the teeth of conviction. Are these the sort of 
 literary exercises that Shakespeare would be likely 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 163 
 
 to hand around among his curious, criticising 
 friends ? Or if they revealed the secrets of an- 
 other's heart, would he be inclined to have them 
 submitted to such publicity ? The date of their 
 publication makes it certain that these sonnets 
 were all written before Shakespeare was forty-five 
 years old ; and they probably were produced be- 
 tween his thirtieth and his fortieth year. Thomas 
 Thorpe's dedication tells us absolutely nothing of 
 their origin ; only that there was a secret about 
 it that has never been revealed. Could either 
 of those other persons whom they concern have 
 become so reduced as to make merchandise of 
 them, or have been so small-souled as to seek 
 notoriety through their publication t Sadder, 
 stranger things have happened. The mystery of 
 these sonnets will never be unfolded ; yet in an 
 attempt to trace the course of Shakespeare's life 
 they cannot be passed by, although they tell us 
 nothing surely, except that they express the in- 
 most thoughts and feelings of one who, however 
 wise and prudent he might have been, was in 
 his affections and his passions little more self- 
 restrained than David, little less wise than Sol- 
 omon. 
 
1 64 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 V. 
 
 We are as ignorant, upon direct evidence, of 
 the exact date at which Shakespeare at last with- 
 drew from London to live at ease in Stratford, 
 as we are of that at which he fled from Stratford 
 to enter upon a life of irksome toil in London. 
 But all circumstances which bear upon this ques- 
 tion point to some time in the year 1611. He 
 retired from active life a wealthier man than he 
 could reasonably have hoped to become when hc' 
 entered it. He had achieved a fame and attained 
 a social standing which must have been very far 
 beyond his expectations ; and he had won the fa- 
 vor and enjoyed the society of men of high rank 
 and great public distinction. But yet even to 
 William Shakespeare, with his surpassing genius, 
 his worldly wisdom, his prudence and his thrift, 
 all culminating in a success which made him the 
 mark of envy at the end, as he had been at 
 the beginning of his career, life was unsatisfy- 
 ing.* He returned to Stratford a disappointed 
 man. 
 
 * The following passage in a tract called RatseVs Ghost, or the 
 Second Part of his Mad Prankes and Robberies, of which only one 
 copy is known to exist, plainly refers, first to Burbadge and next 
 to Shakespeare. The book is without date, but is believed to 
 have been printed before 1606. Gamaliel Ratsey, who speaks, is 
 a highwayman who has paid some strollers 40^-. for playing before 
 him, and afterward robbed them of their fee. The author was 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 165 
 
 Circumstances not pleasant, we may be sure, 
 had limited his family to three children born at 
 two births before he was of age, and heaviest 
 among his household sorrows was the loss of the 
 only boy his wife had brought him. He had no 
 son to bear his name, to inherit his property, to 
 glory in his fame, and to be the third gentleman 
 of his family. His daughters, rustic born and 
 rustic bred, were not fitted for circles in which 
 they might otherwise have been sought as wives 
 by men of the position to which their father had 
 raised himself He saw them married rather late 
 
 probably some inferior player or playwright to whom Shake- 
 speare had been chary of his money or his companionship. 
 
 " And for you, sirrah, (says he to the chiefest of them,) thou 
 hast a good presence upon a stage, methinks thou darkenst thy 
 merit by playing in the country : get thee to London, for if one 
 man were dead, they will have much need of such as thou art. 
 There would be none, in my opinion, fitter than thyself to play 
 his parts : my conceit is such of thee, that I durst all the money 
 in my purse on thy head to play Hamlet with him for a wager. 
 There thou shalt learne to be frugal (for players were never so 
 thrifty as they are now about London), and to feed upon all men; 
 to let none feed upon thee ; to make thy hand a stranger to thy 
 pocket, thy heart slow to perform thy tongue's promise ; and 
 when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place of 
 lordship in the country ; that, growing weary of playing, thy 
 money may there bring thee to dignity and reputation : then thou 
 needest care for no man ; no, not for them that before made thee 
 proud with speaking their [thy] words on the stage. Sir, I thank 
 you (quoth the player) for this good council : I promise you I 
 will make use of it, for I have heard, indeed, of some that have 
 gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be ex- 
 ceeding wealthy." 
 
1 56 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 in life to simple village folk, and he resigned him- 
 self to simple village society, — wisely, perhaps, 
 but yet, we may be sure, not without a pang and 
 that sense of wrong which afflicts so many of us 
 at the unequal and incongruous distribution of 
 means and opportunities. It must have been 
 with bitterness of soul that he saw the disappear- 
 ance of his hopes of being the head of a family 
 ranking among the gentry of England. 
 
 Rowe says that the latter part of his life was 
 spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs 
 may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation 
 (i. e. the society, the intercourse) of his friends. 
 He adds, that " his pleasurable wit and good na- 
 ture engaged him in the acquaintance and enti- 
 tled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the 
 neighborhood." And Mr. Fullom tells us that 
 the Lucys have lately discovered that his quarrel 
 with their family was made up, and that he lived 
 on pleasant terms with Sir Thomas, the son of his 
 ancient enemy.* But this story, though not very 
 improbable, rests on vague and untrustworthy 
 evidence. William Shakespeare, retired from the 
 stage, and living in a fine mansion, upon a hand- 
 some fortune, in his native town, seems to us a 
 man whose acquaintance might well have been 
 courted by the gentlemen of the neighborhood. 
 But we must remember the social canons and 
 the class limitations of his time, and take also 
 
 * Fullom's History of William Shakespeare, p. 314. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 167 
 
 into consideration that, when he abandoned au- 
 thorship and the theatre, he divided the ties 
 which had bound him not only to a profession 
 which he disHked, but to a social circle into which 
 that profession had introduced him. Thereafter 
 his personal relations and social position depend- 
 ed merely upon his personal character and his 
 social importance ; and he inevitably fell into the 
 place which could be filled by one who, although 
 a pleasant companion, a poet of reputation, and a 
 highly respectable, prudent man, was yet barely 
 within the nominal pale of gentry ; and who yet, 
 being within it, could not be treated as a yeoman. 
 William Shakespeare the great play-writer and 
 poet, omnipotent at the Black -friars and the 
 Globe, and living a bachelor's life in London, 
 was socially a very different person from William 
 Shakespeare the retired actor, assuming the posi- 
 tion of a gentleman, and living at Stratford with 
 his rustic wife and daughters. To the gentlemen 
 of the county round he was merely one of the 
 newest sort of new men. And although, from 
 what we know of his business affairs, it is proba- 
 ble that on his retirement to Stratford he sold all 
 his theatrical property, and withdrew from any 
 connection with the theatre, except such as con- 
 sisted in the writing of two or three plays, yet it 
 cannot have been that, in a community so per- 
 vaded with the leaven of Puritanism as Warwick- 
 shire around Stratford was, and where, as we 
 
l58 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 have already seen, in 1602, and again in 1612, the 
 most stringent measures were taken by the cor- 
 poration of the town to prevent the performance 
 of any plays, the profession which had brought 
 Shakespeare his wealth and his eminence did not 
 tell against his social advancement, except among 
 the liberal and generous-minded few. Again T 
 remark, that it is to this prejudice and to Shake- 
 speare's desire to stand with the world as a gen- 
 tleman of substance and character, and not as an 
 actor and playwright, that we must attribute his 
 neglect of his dramas after they had discharged 
 their double function of filling his pockets and 
 giving his brain employment and his soul expres- 
 sion. Indifference to the literary fate of their 
 works was common among the playwrights of 
 that day ; but to this custom was added, in Shake- 
 speare's case, a motive. The Reverend John 
 Ward, who was made Vicar of Stratford in 1662, 
 records a tradition that Shakespeare in his retire- 
 ment supplied the stage with two plays every 
 year, and lived at the rate of i^iooo. This is 
 .quite surely but a gross exaggeration of the facts, 
 both as to the rate of his expenditure and the 
 amount of his dramatic labor. We have seen that 
 his income was about ;^400, though it was rather 
 over than under that then handsome sum ; and 
 only three of his plays. The Tempest, The Winters 
 Tale, and Henry the Eighth, were produced after 
 his retirement to Stratford. The last of these 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 169 
 
 was brought out at the Globe Theatre, as a spec- 
 tacle piece, on the 29th of June, 161 3 ; and dur- 
 ing its performance the theatre took fire from 
 the discharge of the chambers during one of the 
 pageants, and was burned to the ground. It is an 
 interesting coincidence, that the first performance 
 of the last play that came from Shakespeare's 
 pen was the occasion of the destruction of that 
 " wooden O " in which he had won so many of his 
 imperishable laurels. 
 
 Shakespeare is said to have put his poetical 
 powers to use during his later Stratford years in 
 writing epitaphs for friends and neighbors. Such 
 an employment of his pen would have been natu- 
 ral. The following verses upon the tomb of Sir 
 Thomas Stanley in Tonge Church are attributed 
 to him by Dugdale in his Histoiy of Wmuuickshire. 
 It is possible that he wrote epitaphs no better. 
 
 " Written upon the east eitd of the Tomb. 
 
 " Ask who lies here, but do not weep ; 
 He is not dead, he doth but sleep. 
 This stony register is for his bones ; 
 His fame is more perpetual than these stones : 
 And his own goodness, with himself being gone, 
 Shall live when earthly monument is none. 
 
 " Written on the west end thereof. 
 " Not monumental stone preserves our fame. 
 Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our name. 
 The memory of him for whom this stands 
 Shall outlive marble and defacer's hands. 
 When all to time's consumption shall be given, 
 Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in heaven." 
 8 
 
I/O 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 Rowe tells us of a tradition that John a Combe, 
 of whose residence and habits something has 
 been said in the earlier part of these memoirs, 
 told Shakespeare laughingly, at a sociable gather- 
 ing, that he fancied he meant to write his epitaph 
 if he happened to outlive him, and begged the 
 poet to perform his task immediately. Upon 
 which Shakespeare gave him these now well- 
 known verses : — 
 
 " Ten in the hundred lies here in-grav'd ; 
 'Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not sav'd : 
 If any man ask, Who lies in this tomb ? 
 Oh ho, quoth the Devil, 'tis my John a Combe." 
 
 Much the same story had reached Aubrey's ears, 
 and was of course duly recorded. But according 
 to Aubrey the epitaph was written at a tavern on 
 occasion of the funeral of its subject, and was in 
 these words : — 
 
 *' Ten in the hundred the Devil allows, 
 But Combe will have twelve, he swears and he vows. 
 If any one ask, Who lies in this tomb ? 
 Ho ! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John a Combe." 
 
 Rowe says that the sharpness of the satire so 
 stung the man that he never forgave it. This, at 
 least, is untrue. Shakespeare and his wealthier 
 neighbor of Stratford College were good friends 
 to the end of the latter's life. John a Combe's 
 will is extant, and in it Shakespeare is remem- 
 bered by a bequest of five pounds, and Shake- 
 speare himself left his sword to Thomas, John 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 171 
 
 a Combe's nephew. It must be remembered that 
 in those times all interest was called usury, i. e. 
 money paid for the use of money, and John a 
 Combe's will is that of a man of true benevolence 
 and mindful friendship. He forgives debts, makes 
 wide and generous provision for the poor, and re- 
 members with much particularity a large circle of 
 friends among the knights, esquires, and gentle- 
 men of his neighborhood.* This jest, turning 
 upon ten in the hundred (the usual interest at that 
 time), and a hundred to ten in favor of the Devil, 
 was an old and a common one among our fore- 
 fathers ; and consequently it has been generally 
 supposed that this epitaph is a fabrication which 
 was foisted upon Shakespeare. But I am inclined 
 to think that he did crack this innocent joke upon 
 his friend, using, as he would be likely to use, an 
 
 * Mr. Halliwell discovered among the Ashmolean MSS. one 
 "written," as he says, "not many years after the death of Shake- 
 speare," in which this version of the above anecdote appears : — 
 
 " On John Combe, a covetous rich man, Mr. Wm. Shak-spear zvright 
 this att his request while hee was yett liveingfor his epitaphe. 
 " Who lies in this tombe ? 
 Hough, quoth the devil, tis my sone John a Combe. 
 
 jFinis. 
 
 " But being dead and making the poor his heires, hee after wrightes 
 this for his epitaph. 
 " Howere he lived judge not, 
 John Combe shall never be forgott 
 While poore hath memmorye, for he did gather 
 To make the poore his issue : he their father, 
 As record of his tilth and seedes. 
 Did crowne him in his later needes. 
 
 Finis. W. Shak:' 
 
j>72 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 old, well-known jest, and giving it a new turn upon 
 the money-lender's name. For Shakespeare was 
 not always writing Hamlet. "'Tis my John a 
 Combe" involves of course the sharp punning 
 jest, 'tis my John ha' come* 
 
 A project for the enclosing of some common 
 lands near Stratford brings Shakespeare forward 
 in 1614 as a man of weight and consideration in 
 his neighborhood. It touched his interests in his 
 own acres and in his tithes so closely, that he said 
 to one of the numerous Greenes of Stratford, that 
 " he was not able to bear the enclosing of Wel- 
 combe." His kinsman Greene, the attorney, who 
 was clerk of Stratford, records in his note-book 
 this almost the only speech of Shakespeare which 
 has been authoritatively handed down to us. 
 Shakespeare took all possible measures to secure 
 his threatened interests ; and there exists an agree- 
 ment between him and William Replingham, who 
 appears to have been one of the movers in the 
 affair, by v/hich the latter agrees to make good 
 any damage which the former may receive by the 
 proposed enclosure.! The corporation of Strat- 
 
 * Mr. Hunter says that the verses are " allusive to the double 
 sense of the word Combe, as the name of the person there in- 
 terred, and also the name of a certain measure of corn " ; and 
 this explanation has been hitherto accepted. What point is there 
 in likening John a Combe to a measure of corn ? 
 
 t " Coppy of the articles with Mr. Shakspeare. 
 
 " Vicesimo octavo die Octobris, anno Domini 1614. Articles 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 173 
 
 ford were also opposed to this measure, alleging 
 that it would press heavily upon the poorer class- 
 es, already distressed by a destructive fire which 
 
 of agreement made [and] indented between William Shacke- 
 speare of Stretforde in the County of Warwick gent, on the one 
 partye, and William Replingham of Great Harborow in the Coun- 
 ty of Warwick gent, on the other partie, the daye and yeare above 
 said. 
 
 ^^ Item, the said William Replingham for him, his heires, exec- 
 utors and assignes, doth covenaunte and agree to and with the 
 saide William Shackspeare his heires and assignes, That he, the 
 said William Replingham, his heires or assignes, shall uppon rea- 
 sonable request, satisfie, content, and make recompense unto him 
 the said William Shackespeare or his assignes, for all such losse, 
 detriment, and hinderance as he the said William Shackespeare, his 
 heirs and assignes, and one Thomas Greene gent, shall or maye 
 be thought in the viewe and judgement of foure indifferent per- 
 sons, to be indifferentlie elected by the said William and William 
 and their heires, and in default of the said William Replingham, 
 by the said William Shackespeare or his heires onely, to survey 
 and judge the same to sustayne or incurre for or in respecte of 
 the increasinge of the yearlie value of the tythes they the said 
 William Shackespeare and Thomas doe joyntlie or severallie hold 
 and enjoy in the said fieldes or anie of them, by reason of anie 
 inclosure or decaye of tyllage there ment and intended by the 
 said William Replingham ; and that the said William Repling- 
 ham and his heirs shall procure such sufficient securitie unto the 
 said William Shackespeare and his heires for the performance 
 of theis covenauntes, as shall bee devised by learned counsell. 
 In witnes whereof the parties abovsaid to theis presentes inter- 
 changeablie their handes and scales have put, the day^ and yeare 
 first above wrytten. 
 
 " Sealed and delivered in the presence of us, 
 
 "Tho. Lucas, 
 Jo. Rogers, 
 Anthonie Nasshe, 
 Mich. Olney." 
 
174 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 took place in that town in 1613, but which seems 
 to have left Shakespeare's property untouched. 
 In the autumn of 1614, Thomas Greene was in 
 London about this business ; and by one of his 
 memorandums we know that Shakespeare arrived 
 there on the i6th of November of that year, prob- 
 ably upon the same errand. Greene's memoran- 
 dums show that he was in constant communica- 
 tion with his " cosen Shakespeare " upon this sub- 
 ject, and that the corporation counted much upon 
 their distinguished townsman's influence in the 
 matter.* He remained in London until after the 
 23d of December in that year. From the same 
 authority we hear of him in the negotiations of 
 161 5, with regard to the same affair, which was 
 not settled until 161 8 ; and this testimony as to 
 his thrift and his care for his material interests is 
 the last known contemporary record of the life of 
 the great poet of all time. 
 
 * " 1614. Jovis, 17 No. My cosen Shakspear comyng yes- 
 terdy to Town, I went to see him how he did. He told me that 
 they assured him they ment to inclose no further than to Gospell 
 Bush, and so upp straight (leavying out part of the Dyngles to 
 the ffield) to the gate in Clopton hedg, and take in Salisburyes 
 peece ; and that they mean in Aprill to survey the land, and then 
 to gyve satisfaccion, and not before ; and he and Mr. Hall say 
 they think ther will be nothyng done at all." 
 
 " 23. Dec, A hall. Lettres wrytten, one to Mr. Man)nring, 
 another to Mr. Shakspear, with almost all the company's hands 
 to eyther. I also wrytte myself to my cosen Shakspear the cop- 
 pyes of all our acts, and then also a not of the inconvenyences 
 wold happen by the inclosure." 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 175 
 
 His younger daughter, Judith, was married on 
 the nth of February, 1615-6, to Thomas Quiney, 
 a vintner of Stratford, and son of the Thomas 
 Quiney who in 1598 had asked Shakespeare to 
 lend him ^^30. On the 25 th of the following 
 March he executed his will, which an erased date 
 shows that he had intended executing on the 25th 
 of the preceding January ; and on the 23d of 
 April, 1 6 16, William Shakespeare, of Stratford 
 on Avon, in the county of Warwick, Gentleman, 
 died. 
 
 Of the cause of his death we only know what 
 Vicar Ward aforesaid heard and noted down half 
 a century after the event. His account is : 
 " Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a 
 merrie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for 
 Shakespeare died of a feavour ther contracted." 
 We shrink from the thought of such a close of 
 Shakespeare's life. But looking back upon the 
 manners of the time, and considering its convivial 
 habits, and the inordinate quantities of wine and 
 strong ale then drunk by all who could procure 
 them, we must admit that to die of fever after 
 festivity might have been the fate of any man 
 Men now living can remember when no person 
 entered a house, at any time, the family of which 
 were not very poor, without being offered and ex- 
 pected to drink some spirituous liquor ; cake and 
 wine having been brought forward even to our 
 mothers at morning calls. And Spence tells us 
 
176 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 in his Anecdotes, on the authority of Pope, that 
 Cowley the poet died as Ward says Shakespeare 
 died, but from potations in more reverend, though 
 perhaps not more worshipful company. He and 
 Dean Sprat, afterward Bishop of Rochester, "had 
 been together," Spence says, "to see a neighbor 
 of Cowley's, who (according to the fashion of 
 those times) made them too welcome. They did 
 not set out for their walk home until it was too 
 late, and had drunk so deep that they lay out in 
 the fields all night. This gave Cowley the fever 
 that carried him off. The parish still talk of the 
 drunken Dean." And in the Chamberlain's ac- 
 counts of Stratford, among the frequent charges 
 for sack and sugar, claret, and beer, for such wor- 
 shipful folk as Sir Fulke Greville and Sir Thomas 
 Lucy, and even Lady Lucy, is one in 16 14 for 
 "on quart of sack and on quart of clarett wine 
 geven to a preacher at the New Place," Shake- 
 speare's own house. These considerations make 
 the alleged excess at such a merry meeting of 
 poets as that recorded in Ward's diary a venial 
 sin, and the sad consequences, though uncertain, 
 not improbable. 
 
 Shakespeare's remains were interred the sec- 
 ond day after his death, the 25 th of April, in 
 Stratford church, just before the chancel rail. 
 Above his grave, on the north wall of the church, 
 a monument was erected, at what exact date we 
 do not know ; but it was before 1623, as it is 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1 77 
 
 mentioned by Leonard Digges in his verses pre- 
 fixed to the first foUo edition of Shakespeare's 
 plays. The monument shows a bust of the poet 
 in the act of writing. Upon a tablet below the 
 bust is the following inscription : — 
 
 JuDicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
 Terra tegit, populus maeret, Olympus habet. 
 
 Stay Passenger, why goest thou by so fast, 
 Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
 Within this monument, Shakespeare, with whome 
 Quick nature dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
 Far more then cost ; sith all yt he hath writt 
 Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 
 
 Obiit ano. dol 1616. aetatis 53. die 23 AP. 
 
 The last line of this inscription, and a tradition 
 unheard of until Oldys wrote his notes in Lang- 
 baine, have raised the question whether Shake- 
 speare died on the same day of the month on 
 which he is supposed to have been born. But what 
 matter whether he lived a day more or less than 
 fifty-two full years } He had lived long enough. 
 His work was done, and he had tasted, nay, had 
 drained, life's cup of bitter sweet. Dugdale 
 tells us that his monument was the work of Ge- 
 rard Johnson, an eminent sculptor of the period ; 
 others have attributed it to Thomas Stanton ; and 
 experts have supposed that the face was modelled 
 from a cast taken after death. Be this as it may, 
 the bust must be accepted as the most authentic 
 likeness that we have of Shakespeare. It was 
 originally colored after life. The eyes were light 
 8* L 
 
178 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 hazel, the hair and beard auburn, the complexion 
 fair ; the doublet was scarlet ; the tabard, or loose 
 gown without sleeves thrown over the doublet, 
 black ; the neck and wristbands white ; the up- 
 per side of the cushion green, the under, crimson ; 
 its cord and tassels, gilt. The colors were re- 
 newed in 1749; but in 1793 Malone, tastelessly 
 and ignorantly classic, had the whole figure paint- 
 ed white by a house-painter. A flat stone covers 
 the grave. Upon it is the following strange in- 
 scription : — 
 
 Good Frend for Iesvs sake forbears 
 to digg the dust encloased heare 
 Blest be y^ man y'^ spares thes stones 
 And curst be he y'^ moves my bones. 
 
 A Mr. Dowdall, in an existing letter to Mr. Ed- 
 ward Southwell, dated April loth, 1692, says that 
 these lines were written by the poet himself a 
 little before his death. Dowdall plainly records 
 a tradition which possibly may have been well 
 founded. It is more probable, however, that to 
 prevent the removal of Shakespeare's remains to 
 the charnel-house of the church, in compliance 
 with a custom of the day and place, when time 
 made other demands upon the space they occu- 
 pied, some member of his family, or some friend, 
 had this rude, hearty curse cut upon his tomb- 
 stone. Tradition, not traceable higher than 1693, 
 says his wife and daughters earnestly desired to 
 be laid in the same grave with him, but that " not 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. j-tq 
 
 one, for fear of the curse above said, dare touch his 
 gravestone." It has had one good effect, at least. 
 It has kept at Stratford those reUcs which but 
 therefor would probably have been removed to 
 Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Shakespeare's wife and his two daughters — 
 Susannah, married to Dr. Hall, and Judith, mar- 
 ried to Thomas Quiney — survived him. His 
 granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, who also was liv- 
 ing at the time of his death, was twice married ; 
 first, to Thomas Nash, an esquire, of Stratford, 
 and afterward to Mr. John Barnard of Abington 
 in Northamptonshire, who was knighted by Charles 
 II. in 1 66 1 ; but she had no children. Judith had 
 three sons, who died unmarried ; and with Lady 
 Barnard, who died in 1669-70, Shakespeare's fam- 
 ily became extinct. His property was strictly 
 entailed upon the male issue of his daughter Su- 
 sannah, which failed to appear. The entail was 
 broken by legal contrivance ; and soon after the 
 death of Lady Barnard, the estate which he had 
 gathered with so much labor and solicitude was 
 dispersed. New Place, which was the home of 
 his later years, was distinguished, in Lady Bar- 
 nard's time, by the brief residence there of Queen 
 Henrietta Maria, during the troubles of the Great 
 Revolution. Mr. and Mrs. Nash entertained the 
 Queen there for three weeks, in June, 1643, when, 
 escorted by Prince Rupert and his troops, she was 
 on her progress to join King Charles at Oxford, — 
 
l3o MEMOIRS OF 
 
 an incident which would have been well-pleasing 
 to Mistress Nash's grandfather. Afterward, as we 
 have already seen, New Place fell into the hands 
 of Sir Hugh Clopton, a descendant of its builder, 
 who renovated and altered it ; and it was finally 
 bought by the Reverend Francis Gastrell as his 
 residence. He lived there several years, much 
 annoyed by curious pilgrims to his house and to 
 his garden, in which there was a mulberry-tree, 
 which, according to the tradition of the town, 
 Shakespeare planted with his own hands. This 
 reverend gentleman was wealthy enough to in- 
 dulge in that very .expensive luxury, a high tem- 
 per. So at last he gave his vexation vent by cut- 
 ting down the mulberry-tree,* and afterward, in 
 1759, having quarrelled with the magistrates about 
 assessments, he razed his house to the ground, 
 and left the place, a petty ecclesiastic Erostratus, 
 hooted and execrated by the Stratford people. 
 Thus, within less than one hundred and fifty years 
 of his death, all traces of Shakespeare had disap- 
 peared from his native village, except his birth- 
 place and his tomb. 
 
 This is all that we know by authentic record, 
 by tradition, and by inference, of him who stands 
 
 * The wood of this tree was bought by a watchmaker of Strat- 
 ford, who made it into boxes and similar articles. It must have 
 attained an enormous size ; for there is enough of it extant to 
 make a line-of-battle ship. But my piece and yours, reader, are 
 genuine. 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. igj 
 
 alone in the highest niche of hterary fame. But 
 this is much. It seems Httle only because of his 
 greatness. Of many men not to be thought of 
 in comparison with him we know indeed much 
 more ; and in these days, when every man seems, 
 like Pepys, to be his own Boswell, we are likely 
 to know all ; but of many who occupy a place 
 only second to his, we know much less. The 
 causes of our ignorance of Shakespeare's life are 
 partly the Puritanism which developed itself in the 
 mother country during his life, and the consequent 
 political convulsions which came so soon after his 
 death, and lasted so long ; partly the frivolous 
 and grovelling taste of the literary and dramatic 
 school which came in with the Restoration, and 
 prevailed for more than half a century, and which 
 cared little about the works and less about the life 
 of William Shakespeare ; partly, too, we may be 
 sure, a desire on his part, characteristic of all cul- 
 tivated people of English race, to keep personal 
 affairs from publicity. But the total effect of these 
 causes is small in comparison with the results of 
 the indifference which prevailed among people 
 of all ages and countries, until within the last 
 hundred or hundred and fifty years, to the per- 
 sonal character and private lives of poets, paint- 
 ers, scientific men, and generally of all public per- 
 sons not concerned in government. When men 
 have control over the lives and fortunes of their 
 fellow-citizens in peace, and are able to plunge 
 
1 32 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 two nations into war, the world follows their move- 
 ments with prying, wondering eyes ; but hereto- 
 fore when they only amused, or even instructed, 
 they must have achieved fame, and a generation 
 or two must have passed away before the world at 
 large concerned itself about their personal histo- 
 ries. We know more of the lives of brutal, self- 
 ish soldiers, and of crafty, selfish churchmen, who 
 had no thought or purpose beyond the attainment 
 or the preservation of power and place for them- 
 selves and their adherents, than we do of men 
 whose quiet, thoughtful labors have blessed and 
 delighted millions from generation to generation. 
 Of Shakespeare we know more than the Greeks 
 knew of ^schylus, the father of their tragedy, or 
 of Aristophanes, the father of their comedy, two 
 centuries after they died. Public functions par- 
 tially preserved the personal history of Sophocles 
 from similar obscurity. Of Moliere, the greatest 
 and most original of French dramatic writers, we 
 have very meagre personal accounts ; and it is 
 remarkable that not a page of his manuscripts is 
 known to be in existence. The personal history 
 of Shakespeare's great contemporary, Bacon, is 
 well known ; but had he not become successively 
 the King's Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon, 
 Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord 
 High Chancellor of England, Master Bacon might 
 have written his Essays and worked out his No- 
 vum Orgmion in happy, unobserved obscurity, and 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 183 
 
 the world might have begun to inquire into his 
 every-day Ufe only after it had discovered that 
 he was the greatest philosopher and the worldly- 
 wisest man of modern times. We are yet more 
 ignorant of Shakespeare's fellow-craftsmen than 
 we are of him. Of Beaumont and Fletcher, both 
 born in the rank of gentry, one the son of a 
 Judge, the other of a Bishop, we know little more 
 than that they wrote their plays and lived in the 
 society of the most intelligent men of their day. 
 Chapman's associations and what he did are dis- 
 covered only by indirect collateral evidence ; but 
 eminent as he was, and highly esteemed as he 
 appears to have been, nothing is recorded of his 
 personal history. We are obliged to infer the 
 year of his birth from the record of his age upon 
 his portrait ; and time has left us no guide-post 
 to his birthplace. The minor stars of the Eliz- 
 abethan galaxy, the Greenes, Peeles, Marlowes, 
 Websters, Fords, and such like, left hardly a 
 trace behind them which their own pens had not 
 written. Ben Jonson, who lived to see all the 
 poets of the Elizabethan period in their graves, 
 dnd to be an object of literary and almost anti- 
 quarian interest to a new generation and a new 
 school, left more materials for his memoirs than 
 any contemporary poet. But it is only with his 
 later years that we are thus acquainted. Of his 
 youth and early manhood we are not less igno- 
 rant than we are of Shakespeare's. 
 
1 84 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 How difficult it is to trace the vestiges of a 
 life not passed in the performance of important 
 public duty is shown by our ignorance of the 
 youth and early manhood of the last great Eng- 
 lish ruler of England, Oliver Cromwell : — last 
 English ruler ; for since his time his place has 
 been occupied, not filled, by certain Scotch and 
 German men and women, sons and daughters of 
 Scotch fathers and German fathers and mothers, 
 not always even born in the British purple. Al- 
 though he came, on both sides, of families of 
 knightly rank and landed estate, and made him- 
 self in effect absolute monarch of England and 
 of Scotland south of the Grampians, the little 
 that we know of him before he rose, at mature 
 years, into notice in public life, is gathered from 
 obscure tradition and official mention. We know 
 more of William Shakespeare, yeoman's son and 
 player, before he was forty years old, than we do 
 of Oliver Cromwell, country gentleman and Lord 
 Protector, at the same age. The same degree of 
 doubt exists as to the occupation of the father 
 of each of them, and the same uncertainty as to 
 how and where they passed certain years of early 
 life ; the debatable period being longer in the 
 case of the Protector. The same truth in biog- 
 raphy is illustrated by a striking deficiency in the 
 biography of Washington. We are well and au- 
 thoritatively informed as to the small details of 
 his daily life after he entered the service of the 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 185 
 
 revolted Colonies ; but his own nephew, to whom 
 were open all family papers and records, and who 
 was in communication with many of the friends 
 and neighbors of his illustrious uncle, was unable 
 to discover the date of his marriage, although his 
 wife, Mrs. Custis, was one of the richliest dowered 
 widows in all Virginia.* Instead, therefore, of 
 our ignorance of Shakespeare's life being in it- 
 self at all remarkable, we have reason for con- 
 gratulation, that from one source or another we 
 have learned so much upon a subject which in- 
 terests us so greatly, but about which his gener- 
 ation and its successor were so indifferent. 
 
 Unlike Dante, unlike Milton, unlike Goethe, 
 unlike the great poets and tragedians of Greece 
 and Rome, Shakespeare left no trace upon the 
 political, or even the social, life of his era. Of 
 his eminent countrymen, Raleigh, Sidney, Spen- 
 ser, Bacon, Cecil, Walsingham, Coke, Camden, 
 Hooker, Drake, Hobbes, Inigo Jones, Herbert 
 of Cherbury, Laud, Pym, Hampden, Selden, Wal- 
 ton, Wdtton, and Donne may be properly reck- 
 oned as his contemporaries ; and yet there is no 
 proof whatever that he was personally known 
 to either of these men, or to any others of less 
 note among the statesmen, scholars, soldiers, and 
 artists of his day, except the few of his fellow- 
 craftsmen whose acquaintance with him has been 
 
 * George Washington Parke Custis's Recollections of Washing- 
 ton^ p. 502. 
 
1 86 MEMOIRS OF 
 
 heretofore mentioned in these Memoirs. This, 
 partly from the loss of evidence, and partly, per- 
 haps, because he was not personally acquainted 
 with any of these men. It is a common mistake 
 to suppose that, even in these days of free inter- 
 course, eminent persons who are contemporaries 
 and countrymen must needs be brought into con- 
 tact. Their personal relations, like those of other 
 persons, are governed by prudential reasons and 
 social influences, — greatly also by mere accident. 
 Shakespeare's character, entirely free from those 
 irregularities which are usually, but unreasonably, 
 regarded as almost the necessary concomitants of 
 genius, seems to have been of singular complete- 
 ness and of perfect balance. Of his transcendent 
 mental gifts, the results of the daily labor by which 
 he first earned his bread and then made his for- 
 tune remain as evidence ; and what else we know 
 of him shows him to us in the common business 
 and intercourse of life, upright, prudent, self-re- 
 specting, — a man to be respected and relied upon. 
 An actor at a time when actors were held in the 
 lowest possible esteem, he won the kind regard 
 and consideration of those who held high rank 
 and station : a poet, he was not only thrifty but 
 provident. Though careful of his own, he was 
 not only just, but generous, to others. His integ- 
 rity was early noticed ; and Jonson says " he was 
 indeed honest, and of an open and free nature." 
 Surpassing all his rivals, after the recoil of the 
 
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 187 
 
 first surprise he was loved by all except tne mean- 
 est souls among them ; and such men only love 
 themselves. " Sweet " and " gentle " are the en- 
 dearing epithets which they delighted to apply to 
 him. In his position, to have produced this effect 
 upon high and low he must have united a native 
 dignity to a singular kindness of heart, evenness 
 of temper, and graciousness of manner. His 
 ready wit and his cheerfulness in social inter- 
 course are particularly mentioned in tradition. 
 To these qualities it is plain that he added a sym- 
 pathy that was universal, — a gift which more than 
 any other wins the love of all mankind. And, in- 
 deed, it is to the effect of this moral quality that 
 we owe the complete and multitudinous manifes- 
 tation of his intellectual greatness. The Rever- 
 end Mr. Davies, writing after 1688, says that "he 
 died a Papist." If he became a member of the 
 Church of Rome, it must have been after he 
 wrote Romeo and ytiliet, in which he speaks of 
 "evening mass" ; for the humblest member of that 
 Church knows that there is no mass at vespers. 
 The expression used by Davies implies, indeed, 
 that Shakespeare died in a faith in which he had 
 not been educated. But his report is improbable. 
 In the overmuch righteousness of the puritanical 
 period in which Shakespeare's last years were 
 passed, a moderate degree of cheerfulness and 
 Christian charity, to say nothing of conformity to 
 the Church of England, might easily have brought 
 
igS MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 the reproach of Papistry upon men less open to 
 that suspicion than a retired player. Shake- 
 speare, although he seems to have been a man of 
 sincere piety, seems also to- have been without re- 
 ligious convictions. His works are imbued with 
 a high and heartfelt appreciation of the vital 
 truths of Christianity ; but nowhere does he show 
 a leaning towards any form of religious obser- 
 vance, or of church government, or toward any 
 theological tenet or dogma. No Church can claim 
 him ; no simple Christian soul but can claim his 
 fellowship. Such as this imperfect record shows 
 was William Shakespeare ; a man who adorned 
 an inferior and dignified an equivocal station in 
 life, and who raised himself from poverty and ob- 
 scurity to competence and honorable position by 
 labors which, having their motive, not in desire 
 of fame, but in duty and in manly independence, 
 have placed him upon an enduring eminence to 
 which in these after ages sane ambition does not 
 aspire. 
 
AN ESSAY 
 
 TOWARD THE EXPRESSION OF 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 May I express thee unblam'd ? " 
 
ESSAY. 
 
 THE student of language, or the mere intelli- 
 gent observer of the speech of his own day, 
 cannot but notice how surely men supply them- 
 selves with a word when one is needed. The 
 new vocal sign is sometimes made, but is gener- 
 ally found. A lack is felt, and the common in- 
 stinct, vaguely stretching out its hands, lays hold 
 of some common, or mayhap some half-forgotten 
 or rarely used word, and, putting a new stamp 
 upon it, converts it into current coin of another 
 denomination, a recognized representative of new 
 intellectual value. Purists may fret at the per- 
 version, and philologers may protest against the 
 genuineness of the new mintage ; but in vain. It 
 answers the needs of those who use it, and that it 
 should do so is all they require. A good example 
 of the perversion of a word from its true etymo- 
 logical meaning is the modern use of "several." 
 This adjective not long ago conveyed only the 
 idea of severance, and was generally applied but 
 to two objects of one kind. Thus in old plays it 
 is very common to find two personages directed to 
 
IQ2 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 enter by several doors, — meaning by two, or as 
 we now say, with less etymological correctness, 
 different doors ; for the two doors may not differ 
 at all, but be exactly alike. But the need was felt 
 of a word which should mean a greater number 
 than a few, or some, and less than many ; and by 
 general unexpressed consent "several" was put to 
 that service ; so that the unlearned reader of the 
 present day, who finds two persons directed in an 
 old play to enter by several doors, is for the mo- 
 ment puzzled as to the mode in which the instruc- 
 tion is to be obeyed. 
 
 The word " talent," in the sense of mental fac- 
 ulty, affords an example both of appropriation and 
 perversion. Its appropriation took place about 
 three centuries ago ; but its perversion has been 
 gradually going on within the memory of men yet 
 living, and is perhaps hardly yet completed. And 
 there is this singularity in its history, that it was 
 taken at about the same time into the vocabu- 
 laries of several languages of divers origin ; into 
 all those in fact which felt the influence of the 
 Christian Scriptures at the time of the revival 
 of learning. Christ's parable of the servants who 
 received a different number of talents in trust 
 during their master's absence, in which the word 
 is used with its original meaning of a sum of 
 money, but figuratively to signify those personal 
 gifts and advantages for the use of which each 
 man is responsible, is the source of the word as it 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 193 
 
 appears in all the languages of civilized Christen- 
 dom ; it having been taken into them in its purely 
 metaphorical signification.* But at first it was 
 used to mean the natural bent of the mind ; and 
 in fact, until the present generation, it was synon- 
 ymous with " genius," a word which in its appli- 
 cation to the mind or soul is, in our tongue at 
 least, of later introduction. The earlier, as well 
 as the later lexicographers of the English, French, 
 and Italian languages, give definitions of these 
 words which are really identical ; and Crabb him- 
 self, although his function is that of nice dis- 
 crimination, can divide them no further than by 
 saying that "genius is the particular bent of the 
 intellect which is born with a man," and that 
 "talent is a particular mode of intellect which 
 quahfies its possessor to do some things better 
 than others " ; thus furnishing as perfect an ex- 
 ample as could be given of distinction without 
 difference. But since the author of the Synon- 
 ymes issued the last edition of his work, 1837, 
 the usage of intelligent people has been drawing 
 
 * There is a fidgety dislike on the part of some persons to 
 the word "talented," which some British critics brand as an 
 " Americanism " ; and even Dr. Richardson is betrayed into say- 
 ing, " Dr. Webster has the word ' talented,' and it has been too 
 hastily used in common speech here." There is no ground what- 
 ever of objection to the participial adjective, which does not apply 
 to the noun. If " talent " be correctly used to mean mental gifts, 
 it is as correct, as English, to say " a talented man," as to say 
 " a moneyed corporation," or " a landed aristocracy." 
 
 9 M 
 
194 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 a sharp line of demarkation between these two 
 words. One, "genius," has been raised, and the 
 other, " talent," has been degraded, from their for- 
 mer common level. The next lexicographer who 
 does his work with nicety and thoroughness must 
 define "genius" as original creative mental power, 
 and "talent" as that inferior and more common, 
 though sometimes more expanded and more be- 
 neficent faculty, which puts to new use facts al- 
 ready known, principles already discovered, meth- 
 ods of thought or expression already established, 
 or which in literature and the arts of design pro- 
 duces by labor and taste rather than by new con- 
 ception. 
 
 Genius may be of high or low order ; talent 
 may be great or small ; genius may be pestilent, 
 talent beneficent. But the former in its lower 
 grades is not approached in kind by the latter in 
 its larger developments, any more than a poor 
 diamond is rivalled by a fine quartz crystal, or a 
 living spring, from which flows but a thread of 
 water, by a reservoir which supplies the daily 
 needs of millions. Genius is as unmistakable in 
 Gustave Dore's drawing on wood for book illus- 
 tration, as in Raphael's Sistine Madonna ; while 
 all the canvas which Giulio Romano covered with 
 paintings in the grand style — some of them, in 
 drawing and composition, not unworthy of his 
 master — only made it manifest that he was a man 
 of talent, who had studied. The throng of perfect, 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 195 
 
 polished figures which Canova left behind him 
 only bear multiplied witness to his talent ; but the 
 few worn and broken marbles of the Parthenon 
 proclaim a genius before which we stand mute in 
 delight and wonder. We can see how taste and 
 skill, culture and application, might produce many 
 Canovas ; but who does not feel that what we 
 bow down to in the Theseus and the Parcae is 
 something which, although it may be cultivated 
 and developed, cannot be acquired ^ Meyerbeer 
 is an instance of a musician whose compositions, 
 though rich and varied, and sometimes really 
 grand masterpieces too of skill, are the produc- 
 tions of only a great and highly cultivated talent. 
 But had Schubert written only his Serenade, he 
 would have shown that in his soul burned the na- 
 tive fire of genius. The apothegm poefa nascitiLV, 
 nonfit, is true only if by poet we mean no other 
 than the poet of genius. But so we do not m.ean ; 
 and we have crowned, and worthily crowned, a 
 made poet with bays, and left a born poet to live 
 by gauging the liquor that soothed his grief and 
 quickened his inspiration. Perhaps Gray affords 
 the most signal example of poetic talent devel- 
 oped and cultivated to its utmost capability and 
 perfection ; and his Elegy in a Country Chnrch- 
 yard, the most admired instance of an exquisite 
 work of poetic art produced by taste and fine 
 susceptibility and labor, — in a word, by talent. 
 But certainly the highest manifestation of genius 
 
196 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 in poetry is Shakespeare, who indeed united in 
 himself genius in its supremest nature and talent 
 in its largest development ; adding to the peculiar 
 and original powers of his mind a certain dexteri- 
 ty and sagacity in the use of them which are fre- 
 quently the handmaids of talent, but which are 
 rarely found in company with genius. 
 
 There are two great divisions of genius. One 
 supplies the needs and expresses the spirit of its 
 age ; the other finds its inspiration in elemental 
 truth, and deals only with that which is eternal. 
 Of the three great poets of the world, (if we pass 
 by the author of the Book of Job,) Homer, work- 
 ing in the simplest elements of human nature-, 
 and limited less than any one of his successors 
 by artificial modes of thought and forms of life, 
 himself a mere voice, chanting an unconscious 
 epic in the dim twilight beyond the farther verge 
 of history, and telling the story of man's youth 
 before his anxious eye had been turned inward, 
 belongs pre-eminently to the universal type of 
 genius, and therefore appeals directly to both in- 
 structed and uninstructed minds ; while of those 
 who found their inspiration in their own experi- 
 ence, Dante the chief, as much politician as poet, 
 making a hell for his foes and a heaven for his 
 friends, cannot be fully understood without some 
 knowledge of the period and the country in which 
 he lived. Hence it is that even among his coun- 
 trymen Dante is and always must remain the 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 197 
 
 poet of the instructed few ; while unlearned men 
 of all bloods and all ages find in the barrier of a 
 foreign tongue their only hindrance to perusing 
 with a common delight the ever fresh and ever 
 living page of Homer. But Shakespeare pre- 
 sented as simply and directly as Homer to the 
 universal mind of man the perennial truth of un- 
 changing nature. This seems to have been per- 
 ceived by his very contemporaries. Ben Jonson, 
 in the only line of his eulogy of Shakespeare 
 which is generally known, and which, continually 
 cited, is almost as often destructively misquoted, 
 expresses this appreciation of his beloved friend 
 and fellow. It will be recognized by nearly every 
 reader, in these words : 
 
 " He was not for an age, but for all time." 
 
 But this was not what Jonson wrote. He said of 
 Shakespeare, 
 
 " He was not of an age, but for all time "; 
 
 and the almost universal substitution of the one 
 preposition for the other shows a failure to appre- 
 ciate Jonson's meaning, and degrades a most re- 
 markable expression of the high quality of Shake- 
 speare's genius into a clever antithetical utterance 
 of the commonplace eulogy that his fame would 
 endure forever. Jonson said, and the context as 
 well as the line itself shows his meaning, that 
 Shakespeare was not a man of his age, but that 
 what he wrote was for, adapted to, all time. The 
 
198 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 voice of more than two centuries has confirmed 
 this far-reaching and discriminating judgment. 
 Yet it but partly told the truth ; for Shakespeare 
 alone of all great poets attained the highest and 
 rarest combination of power, and united in him- 
 self the two kinds of genius. He was both of his 
 age and for all time. Only his race could have 
 produced him, (for a Celtic, a Scandinavian, or 
 even a German Shakespeare is inconceivable,) and 
 that race only at the time when he appeared. 
 
 The English or so-called Anglo-Saxon race is 
 distinguished by a sober earnestness and down- 
 rightness of character, which manifests itself even 
 in its narrative, dramatic, and poetical literature ; 
 and our greatest poet, universal although he was, 
 marked himself peculiarly ours by raising his diz- 
 zy pile of fancy and imagination upon the broad 
 and solid foundation of English common-sense. 
 The eminence of the rugged and solid English 
 mind in all departments of poetry is a noteworthy 
 intellectual phenomenon. It seems akin to one 
 observable in music, where we see that the most 
 brilliant vocalization is that of large and robust 
 voices carefully trained and painfully broken in to 
 flexibility ; and in fact, that the dazzling effects of 
 rapid movement are in direct ratio to the physical 
 inertia which has, or which seems to have been, 
 overcome. No trill like that of the heroic-voiced 
 Jenny Lind, which had the weight and the 
 steady beat of an antique pendulum, although it 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. Iqq 
 
 quivered like the reflection of sunlight from water. 
 But Shakespeare not only thought and spoke as 
 an Englishman, and so was always truly national,* 
 (although of his plots not historical only one is 
 English,) he thought and spoke only as an Eng- 
 lishman could think and speak in the Elizabethan 
 era. Before that period our forefathers were too 
 rude, and since we have become, on both sides of 
 the water, too lettered a folk, though not too learn- 
 ed, for such an utterance. Who can conceive of 
 Hamlet or King Lear or the MereJiant of Veniee 
 being written by a contemporary of John Skelton, 
 by a dramatist of the Restoration, by one of the 
 wits of Queen Anne's reign, or by either king or 
 subject in Johnson's realm of letters .? Had any 
 man been moved to write them at either of those 
 periods, the public would not have listened to them, 
 produced as new compositions. In the style and 
 
 * Nation has come to mean the people under one government. 
 As, for instance, the British nation is composed of English, 
 Scotch, Welsh, and Irish people ; and the nation which is called 
 most improperly, but it would seem inevitably, American, is com- 
 posed of the same peoples, with a still greater predominance of 
 the English element, to which within the last twenty years there 
 has been a considerable addition of Germans. Owing to pecu- 
 liar political, social, and material conditions, the assimilation of 
 the minor elements goes on much more rapidly here than in the 
 mother country ; and the English or Anglo-Saxon race, stub- 
 bornly preserving its own characteristics, as it ever has done, ab- 
 sorbs here those who flee to it for refuge, as in the mother coun- 
 try it absorbed its nominal conquerors. But there is no other 
 word than "national" suited to the sentence above written: 
 "ethnical" will not serve the purpose. 
 
200 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 in the vocabulary of the so-called Augustan age 
 of English literature, or in the Johnsonian period, 
 such writing would have been impossible. Yet 
 bearing thus plainly the mark of the time as well 
 as of the race which produced them, these writ- 
 ings have as their chief distinction, that what- 
 ever they possess of beauty is beautiful, and 
 whatever they tell of truth is true to all mankind 
 forever. The attempt to explain such an intellect- 
 ual phenomenon seems indeed presumptuous. We 
 may rightly admire what we cannot fully under- 
 stand ; we may apprehend what we cannot com- 
 prehend, and comprehend that which we cannot 
 express ; and I own that I shrink back as I essay 
 to measure with my little line and fathom with my 
 puny plummet the vast profound of Shakespeare's 
 genius. 
 
 Individual organization determines preference ; 
 but organization and circumstances together de- 
 termine choice, which is preference moved by will, 
 or preference in action. Happily both these 
 joined to make a dramatist of Shakespeare. Cir- 
 cumstances took him to London to earn his bread ; 
 circumstances made the theatre the aptest field 
 for his labor ; and his organization fitted him su- 
 premely for the dramatic function. Yet, had he 
 been born in the present day, it may at least be 
 questioned whether he would have chosen the 
 drama as his profession; for in contemporary Eng- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 201 
 
 lish literature, indeed upon our very stage, there is 
 no indigenous drama. One great cause of this, how- 
 ever, is the fact, that Shakespeare has so entirely- 
 covered the field that there is neither room for 
 new dramatic literature nor need of it ; only for 
 intrigue, incident, by-play, the scene-painter, and 
 the tailor. Perhaps he might have chosen jour- 
 nalism, but more probably trade ; for competency 
 was the sole object of his exertion. It is clear 
 from what we know of him, that he would have 
 made an influential journalist, or a first-rate mer- 
 chant. But living in the reign of Elizabeth, he 
 went to London to become an actor and write 
 plays for a London audience. 
 
 Never, perhaps, did imaginative works, written 
 to please the public of a great city, have less of a 
 town air, of that urban quality which, for in- 
 stance, is so striking in Pope's poems, in Addi- 
 son's essays, and in the plays of their period and 
 of Dryden's, than is to be found in Shakespeare's 
 dramas. They have local allusions, it is true, but 
 these are comparatively few ; and were they many, 
 this would not touch the point. They are so free 
 from city taint, that in this respect they might 
 have been written at a country-seat by one who 
 had never passed its boundaries or made himself 
 acquainted with the tone of the metropolis. Yet 
 it was only in London that those plays could 
 have been written. London had only just before 
 Shakespeare's day made its metropoHtan suprem- 
 
202 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 acy felt, as well as acknowledged, throughout 
 England. As long as two hundred years after 
 that time the county of each member of Parlia- 
 ment was betrayed by his tongue ; but then the 
 speech of the cultivated people of Middlesex and 
 its vicinity had become for all England the undis- 
 puted standard. Northumberland, or Cornwall, 
 or Lancashire, might have produced Shakespeare's 
 mind ; but had he lived in any one of those coun- 
 ties, or in another, like them remote in speech as 
 in locality from London, and written for his rural 
 neighbors instead of the audiences of the Black- 
 friars and the Globe, the music of his poetry would 
 have been lost in sounds uncouth and barbarous to 
 the general ear, and the edge of his fine utterance 
 would have been turned upon the stony rough- 
 ness of his rustic phraseology. His language 
 would have been a dialect which must needs have 
 been translated to be understood by modern Eng- 
 lish ears, with the loss of that heavy discount 
 which is always paid at the desk of the broker in 
 literary exchange. For us of after days, and so 
 for the perpetuity and diffusion of Shakespeare's 
 fame, he appeared at a most propitious period of 
 the history of our race, not only as to its language, 
 but as to its political and social condition. As to 
 language, there was then a freedom from critical 
 and scholastic restraint which has never since 
 existed, united to a copiousness of vocabulary, 
 which, except in the direction of philosophy and 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 203 
 
 science, has not been materially enlarged. The 
 English language, even the English of London, 
 although Chaucer and Spenser had used it, was 
 regarded then in England itself as unfit for the 
 use of scholars. English literature held no ad- 
 mitted place in the realm of letters ; and the 
 English people were of small consideration in 
 Europe. Andrew Borde, a physician of Henry 
 the Eighth's time, in his Book of the IntrodiLction 
 of Knowledge, says : " The speche of Englande 
 is a base speche to other noble speches, as Italion, 
 Castylion, & Frenche ; howbeit the speche of 
 Englande of late dayes is amended." And Lilly, 
 Shakespeare's contemporary, makes his Euphues, 
 in describing England, speak of "the English 
 tongue, which is, as I have heard, almost bar- 
 barous." 
 
 We are accustomed to think of London as the 
 capital of a great kindred empire, which is in 
 letters as well as in arms and commerce one of 
 the five or six great powers of the civilized world. 
 We measure its importance by the fact of its 
 being the time-honored literary metropolis of 
 the great kingdom and the great republic whose 
 tongue it speaks. But at the time of Shake- 
 speare's arrival there, although that time was the 
 glorious reign of Queen Elizabeth, London was 
 only the chief city of the southern part of a lit- 
 tle island which then contained the whole Eng- 
 lish race, — a race which had not yet taken its 
 
204 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 appointed place among the nations. Haughty 
 Spain, splendid in the spoil of the Indies, France, 
 chivalric and courtly, and Italy, rich in art, in lit- 
 erature, and learning, looked down upon us as 
 rude islanders who spoke an uncouth tongue, — a 
 people not much to be regarded, but not to be 
 interfered with or offended, because, as Euphues 
 says, English folk "are impatient in their anger 
 of any equall ; readie to revenge an injurie, but 
 never wont to proffer any ; they never fight with- 
 out provoking, and once provoked they never 
 cease." It would seem that in some respects at 
 least the traits of race have not changed during 
 three centuries, on either side of the water. In- 
 deed, as a people it was not until the beginning of 
 Elizabeth's reign that we attained to the full ma- 
 turity of our English-hood. The great civil wars, 
 which involved three generations, though lasting 
 but thirty years, and which ended by placing the 
 Tudors on the throne, were not only the expir- 
 ing throes of feudalism, they were the pangs of a 
 new birth, and that birth was the English nation. 
 Until after the reign of Henry the Seventh the 
 people of England, although politically bound to- 
 gether, were as little penetrated by that unity of 
 feeling and character which we call the genius of 
 a nation as could possibly be in a community 
 mainly of one origin, which had lived for nearly 
 a thousand years in one small country, isolated 
 from other peoples by the sea, and for six cen- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 205 
 
 turies under one government. Yet up to that 
 period the habits and tone of thought, even among 
 the governing and cultivated classes, those which 
 held most frequent communication with each 
 other and felt most the influence of the court, 
 were so unlike, for instance in Northumberland, 
 Kent, and Cornwall, that they might have served 
 to distinguish alien and hostile populations. But 
 during the long and tranquil reigns of the first 
 Tudor and of his immediate successor the English 
 people became knit together through peaceful 
 intercourse, and by assimilation of thought and 
 manners among the superior classes. And even 
 among the yeomanry and peasantry the Wars 
 of the Roses, by disturbing the inertness and lo- 
 cal isolation of people otherwise tied to the soil 
 on which they lived, and ignorant of their own 
 countrymen beyond their own narrow neighbor- 
 hood, by sending them in large bodies through 
 the land, thus mingling their blood and measu- 
 rably assimilating their dialects by attrition, did 
 much to establish the condition of a true na- 
 tionality. 
 
 The nation whose various elements were thus 
 upheaved by the ploughshare, and intermingled 
 by the harrow of war, lay fallow under the genial 
 skies of the long succeeding days of peace, gaining 
 strength and unity for the new growth which was to 
 enrich it for the first time throughout its borders 
 with an indigenous and common harvest. To this 
 
2o6 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 people thus made approximately homogeneous, 
 the Reformation came and completed the enfran- 
 chisement which the destruction of feudalism had 
 but partly accomplished. The English character 
 did not completely attain its ideal type until after 
 it had freed itself from the fetters of feudality and 
 cast off the yoke of Rome. During the century 
 which succeeded the latter event it seems to have 
 been more purely and absolutely, and at the same 
 time unconsciously and generously, English, than 
 the influences of party politics, the entangling in- 
 terests of an extended empire, and the artificial pres- 
 ervation of a dead form of society, have permitted 
 it to be since that period. Then from this people, 
 thus interfused, thus tried and purified, thus in- 
 vigorated by repose, in the first flush and strength 
 of its perfected and awakened nature, there sprang 
 an array of men glorious in arts and arms, in 
 learning and in literature, in commerce and in 
 statesmanship. The rich intellectual product of 
 the Elizabethan era was like nothing that the 
 world has seen, except the outburst of genius in 
 Greece after the Persian war, which produced 
 Pericles, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Thu- 
 cydides, Socrates, Plato, and Phidias. It was this 
 period, celebrated under the name of the princess 
 whose reign filled the greater part of it, and which 
 extended from about 1575 to 1625, which pro- 
 duced the men who changed the position of the 
 English people before the world ; and chief 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 207 
 
 among them, though not then reckoned of them, 
 was WilUam Shakespeare. 
 
 Not until the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury did Shakespeare's own race acknowledge, 
 with one consent, that the rustic-bred playwright 
 was the greatest of poets, and one of the wisest, if 
 not the wisest, of men. It took us two hundred 
 years to bring ourselves with unanimity to the 
 simple acceptance of that miracle. We literally 
 brought ourselves to it ; for the professed scholars 
 and critics rather hindered than helped our pro- 
 gress to that large appreciation, in which they 
 were ever behind the people. In fact Shake- 
 speare's supreme popularity dates from his own 
 day ; and in this respect it was not exceptional, 
 but conformed to a rule which is almost universal. 
 The judgment of posterity may reverse, or it may 
 confirm, enhance, and diffuse the approval of con- 
 temporaries ; but in literature the man who fails 
 to please those to whom he addresses himself has 
 failed forever. We have contemporary testimony 
 to the fact that Shakespeare's plays were regarded 
 by the public of his own day as incomparably su- 
 perior to those of all his rivals ; and it may be 
 doubted whether a remarkable appreciation of 
 them which was printed in the bookseller's Ad- 
 dress to the Reader of TjvUus and Cressida, in 
 1609, that "they serve for the most common com- 
 mentaries of all the actions of our lives," has been 
 more than decorated and illustrated, amplified and 
 
2o8 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 weakened, by all subsequent criticism. It was 
 the demand of succeeding ages for these dramas, 
 the delight in them which was constantly felt and 
 expressed, broadening, deepening, strengthening, 
 with each generation, and the moral and intel- 
 lectual influence which they exerted, which com- 
 pelled the critics to undertake to account for this 
 extraordinary phenomenon in literature. The lit- 
 erary history of the seventeenth century, during the 
 first sixteen years of which Shakespeare was alive, 
 shows a demand for his plays by the reading pub- 
 lic unapproached in the case of any other author. 
 The fondness grew. It included all classes of 
 readers, from the most thoughtful to those who 
 merely sought in books a momentary pastime. 
 In the first half of the eighteenth century the 
 demand of the public for Shakespeare's plays was 
 at least fourfold greater than that for any other 
 book, notwithstanding the great number already 
 issued from the press, and in spite of the fact that 
 the most admired and elegant writer of the early 
 part of that period had devoted his best powers 
 to the diflusion of a taste for the works of our 
 great epic poet, while he hardly mentions those 
 of the greater dramatist. Yet the literary men of 
 his own day who praise Shakespeare, almost with- 
 out exception, leave his plays unnoticed, and limit 
 their eulogy to his Venus and Adonis and his Lu- 
 crece ; and the critics of the eighteenth century, 
 yielding personally, as we can see, to the spell of 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 200 
 
 his genius, were yet reluctant, doubtful, and trou- 
 bled with many scruples when they came to ac- 
 count for all the admiration of which they them- 
 selves and their labors were living witnesses. 
 True, one of them, himself a poet. Pope, passed 
 in happy phrase one of the most penetrative judg- 
 ments that has been uttered upon him, when he 
 said : " The poetry of Shakespeare is inspiration 
 indeed. He is not so much an imitator as an in- 
 strument of Nature ; and it is not so just to say 
 that he speaks for her, as that she speaks through 
 him." But he, like all his contemporaries and im- 
 mediate successors, thought it necessary to praise 
 and blame with alternate breath, and to point out 
 deformities manifold and monstrous in this be- 
 witching but untutored and half-savage child of 
 nature. Yet at this very time the intelligent love 
 of Shakespeare was so deeply rooted in the Eng- 
 lish mind that his words and thoughts pierced, 
 like multitudinous fibres, the intellectual being of 
 the people ; and while these men and their little 
 rhymes and their bulbous sentences might have 
 lived or perished, and no harm been done, and lit- 
 tle notice taken, he could not have been uptorn 
 without a disturbance of the whole English na- 
 ture, and a destruction of no small part of the 
 phraseology of common life. 
 
 This being true as to the relative position of our 
 own critics to our own spontaneous appreciation 
 of Shakespeare, still more is it true with regard to 
 
 N 
 
210 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 the relations of foreign critics to that appreciation. 
 Some people, who ought to have known better, 
 have more than half admitted that the German 
 critics taught us to understand our own poet. I 
 am unwilling to believe this of the English race in 
 Europe ; I know that it is not true of that part of 
 it which is in America. Here at least there is, and 
 always has been, a class of people so large and so 
 diffused through society that it cannot be rightly 
 called a class, who do not know that there are Ger- 
 man critics, who have little acquaintance with any 
 criticism, to whom Schlegel is unrevealed and 
 Coleridge is but a name, and who would quietly 
 smile at the notion that " at last " we understand 
 Shakespeare, because some learned people have 
 said very profound sayings about his revelations 
 of " the inner life." I have an abiding faith which 
 no criticism that I have yet seen has shaken, that 
 most of those who read Shakespeare worthily and 
 lovingly understand what he meant as thoroughly 
 as Coleridge did, or as Gervinus does, with all their 
 metaphysics and philosophy. All honor to them 
 for what they have written ; which is in itself ad- 
 mirable, and which it would not be well lightly to 
 undertake to rival or to imitate. But we must 
 be careful not to confound perception with expres- 
 sion, or comprehension with power of analysis. 
 Newton saw no better, rejoiced no more in the 
 beauty of color, than other people, because he 
 analyzed the sunbeam. The ignorant monk, who 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 211 
 
 would have roasted him as a sorcerer, illuminated 
 missals with an intuitive mastery of the harmo- 
 nies of the prism which he could not have attained 
 by all his experiments or explained by all his the- 
 ories. Shakespeare himself, who seems to have 
 seen and understood all mental relations and con- 
 ditions, saw this, and, as if with an eye of favor 
 upon the millions who would read him with simple 
 pleasure, made Birone say of the astronomers : 
 
 " These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, 
 That give a name to every fixed star, 
 Have no more profit of their shining nights 
 Than those that walk and wot not what they are." 
 
 It was by no strange feature or striking peculiar- 
 ity in the construction of his works that Shake- 
 speare commanded the attention and won the 
 applause of his contemporaries. In their design, 
 as in their very means and methods, his plays 
 were like those of his immediate predecessors, 
 which themselves were the fruits of a slow and 
 compact growth. He affected no novelties, es- 
 sayed no surprise. He did just what others did, 
 but did it incomparably better, supremely best. 
 He did not even seek to awaken interest by origi- 
 naUty in the stories of his dramas. Beginning 
 his career by working over old plays, and perform- 
 ing his labor in company with others, when he 
 came to be an independent writer and the sole 
 author of plays, he still used old chronicles and 
 
212 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 plays and stories, the subjects of which were fa- 
 miUar to many of his audience ; and he adopted 
 the forms of the old plays with little variation. 
 This he did, not only for convenience and expedi- 
 tion, but because the public for which he wrote 
 was more easily interested by dramas with the 
 subjects of which they were acquainted, than by 
 those the subjects of which were entirely new. 
 
 That which first distinguished Shakespeare from 
 the little throng of dramatists among whom and 
 with some of whom he first labored, was the char- 
 acter of his thought and the language in which 
 he clothed it, — in a word, his style. It is this 
 which first strikes the attention of the reader of 
 the present day when he takes up Shakespeare's 
 works. It is this by which we are enabled to dis- 
 tinguish his writing from that of other dramatists 
 in the same play, as in the First and Second Parts 
 of King Henry the Sixth, the Taming of the Shrew, 
 and Pericles. The distinction can be made with 
 a very great degree of certainty by any one qual- 
 ified by natural gifts and practice for such investi- 
 gations, even with regard to Shakespeare's earliest 
 writing. It is not that Shakespeare is all fine 
 gold and others are all dross ; but when we know 
 that of several mines one produced gold, another 
 silver, and another lead, and when we find gold 
 and dross, or silver and dross, or lead and dross, or 
 gold and silver and lead together, we need not be 
 in much doubt as to the distribution of the own- 
 ership. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 2n 
 
 Purely English as Shakespeare was in what we 
 may call the externals of his dramatic art, he was 
 in no respect more so than in his style. In the 
 earlier half of the sixteenth century Italian litera- 
 ture had begun to exercise a modifying influence 
 upon that of England, and especially upon Eng- 
 lish poetry. Surrey, Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, 
 Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Drayton, Milton, all 
 show the effect of this influence. In Shake- 
 speare's writings it does not appear, except, per- 
 haps, in his erotic pastoral poem, Vemis and Adonis. 
 His very sonnets are free from any traits of Ital- 
 ian spirit or versification. He went to Italian 
 literature, in his time the great mint and treasure- 
 house of fiction ; but it was only for the raw ma- 
 terial of a tragedy like Othello, or a comedy like 
 The Merchajit of Venice. He doubtless read Ital- 
 ian well enough to master the works of the early 
 Italian novelists ; but although the literature of 
 that language could not but have insensibly 
 enlivened his genius and enriched his stores of 
 thought, it had no perceptible eflect upon his 
 mental tone, his turn of expression, or his choice 
 of imagery. He is as free from the influence of 
 this as he is from that of classic literature, — the 
 imitation of which was in vogue with the regular- 
 ly educated writers of his day. His vocabulary, 
 at once his means of thought and medium of ex- 
 pression, is merely that of his time, that which was 
 used by his dramatic contemporaries and by the 
 
214 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 translators of the Bible. Writing for the gen- 
 eral public, he used such language as would con- 
 vey his meaning to his auditors, — the common 
 phraseology of his period. But what a language 
 was that ! In its capacity for the varied and 
 exact expression of all moods of mind, all forms 
 of thought, all kinds of emotion, a tongue un- 
 equalled by any other known to literature ! A 
 language of exhaustless variety ; strong without 
 ruggedness, and flexible without effeminacy. A 
 manly tongue ; yet bending itself gracefully and 
 lovingly to the tenderest and the daintiest needs 
 of woman, and capable of giving utterance to 
 the most awful and impressive thoughts in home- 
 ly words that come from the lips and go to the 
 heart of childhood. It would seem as if this 
 language had been preparing itself for centuries 
 to be the fit medium of utterance for the world's 
 greatest poet. Hardly more than a generation 
 had passed since the English tongue had reached 
 its perfect maturity ; just time enough to have it 
 well worked into the unconscious usage of the peo- 
 ple, when Shakespeare appeared, to lay upon it a 
 burden of thought which would test its extremest 
 capability. He found it fully formed and devel- 
 oped, but not yet uniformed and cramped and dis- 
 ciplined by the lexicographers and rhetoricians, — 
 those martinets of language, who seem to have 
 lost for us in force and flexibility as much as they 
 have gained for us in precision. The phrase- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 215 
 
 ology of that day was notably large and simple 
 among ordinary writers and speakers. Among 
 the college-bred writers and their imitators, there 
 was too great a fondness for little conceits ; but 
 even with them this was an extraneous blemish, 
 like that sometimes found in the ornament upon 
 a noble building. Shakespeare seized this instru- 
 ment, to whose tones all ears were open, and with 
 the touch of a master he brought out all its har- 
 monies. It lay ready to any hand ; but his was 
 the first to use it with absolute control ; and 
 among all his successors, great as some are, he 
 has had, even in this single respect, no rival. No 
 unimportant condition of his supreme mastery 
 over expression was his entire freedom from re- 
 straint — it may almost be said from conscious- 
 ness — in the choice of language. He was no pre- 
 cisian, no etymologist, no purist. He was not pur- 
 posely writing literature. The only criticism that 
 he feared was that of his audience, which repre- 
 sented the English people of all grades above the 
 peasantry. These he wished should not find his 
 writing incomprehensible or dull : no more. If 
 we except the translators of the Bible, Shake- 
 speare wrote the best English that has yet been 
 written ; but they who speak of it as remarkably 
 pure, that is, as having a notably small admixture 
 of Romance words, utter mere vague, unwarranted 
 encomium. In the sixteenth century there were 
 probably more Romance words adopted into our 
 
2i6 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 language than there had been before, or have been 
 since, if we exclude words of technical or quasi- 
 technical character. These words Shakespeare 
 and the translators of the Bible used at need with 
 unconscious freedom. The vocabularies both of 
 the Bible and of Shakespeare's plays show forty 
 per cent of Romance or Latin words, which, with 
 the exception just named, is probably a larger 
 proportion than is now used by our best writers ; 
 certainly larger than is heard from those who 
 speak their mother tongue with spontaneous idio- 
 matic correctness.* So many Latin words having 
 been adopted into the English language in the 
 Elizabethan era, and English having been up to 
 that period almost excluded from literature, the 
 Latin element then retained much of its native 
 character ; to which fact is due, in some measure, 
 Shakespeare's use of words of Latin origin in 
 their radical signification. But although he uses 
 them thus oftener than any of his contemporaries, 
 we may be sure that it was the result of no yield- 
 ing to the constraints of scholarship. In brief, 
 words were his slaves, not he theirs ; and if one 
 could serve his purpose better than another, he 
 did not stop to ask the birthplace or to trace the 
 lineage of his servant. He will compose verse 
 after verse almost wholly of Anglo-Saxon mono- 
 syllables ; and this equally in passages descriptive, 
 
 * See Lectures on the English Language, by the Hon. George 
 P. Marsh, LL.D., pp. 124, 125. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 217 
 
 dramatic, and lyric, and of the utmost dissimilari- 
 ty of sentiment. 
 
 " The moon shines bright. — In such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise, — in such a night, 
 Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls. 
 And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents. 
 Where Cressida lay that night." 
 
 " Howl, howl, howl, howl ! — O, you are men of stone ! 
 Had I your tongues and ej^es I 'd use them so 
 That heaven's vault should crack. — She 's gone forever ! 
 I know when one is dead, and when one lives : 
 She 's dead as earth. — Lend me a looking-glass : 
 If that her breath will mist or stain the stone. 
 Why, then she lives." 
 
 " Vex not his ghost ! O, let him pass : he hates him 
 That would upon the rack of this tough world 
 Stretch him out longer." 
 
 " Take, O take those lips away 
 That so sweetly were forsworn. 
 And those eyes, the break of day. 
 Eyes that do mislead the morn. 
 But my kisses bring again, — bring again. 
 Seals of love, but sealed in vain,— sealed in vain." 
 
 On the other hand, he will make two Latin 
 words fill an entire verse, except perhaps one syl- 
 lable. 
 
 " He and Aufidius can no more atone 
 Than violentest contrariety." 
 
 ** You shout me forth 
 In acclamations hyperbolical." 
 
 " No, this my hand will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine." 
 lo 
 
2i8 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 " This supernatural soliciting 
 Cannot be good, cannot be ill." 
 
 " Think'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly 
 As to prenominate in nice conjecture 
 Where thou wilt hit me dead ? " 
 
 These brief passages furnish us five verses, 
 each composed, except a monosyllable or two, of 
 two Latin words, and each of these verses preced- 
 ed or followed, or both preceded and followed, by 
 one made up of short native words. 
 
 Shakespeare discriminates with exquisite nicety 
 between the fitness of romance and of native 
 words. He writes of Cleopatra: 
 
 " Age cannot wither 
 Nor custom stale her infinite variety." 
 
 But in Pericles he makes the Prince, speaking of 
 the obtaining of the beautiful prize who has tempt- 
 ed so many men to their destruction, say, — not 
 
 " To gain such infinite felicity," — 
 
 but, counter-changing, in the herald's phrase, his 
 Anglo-Saxon and his Latin, 
 
 " To compass such a boundless happiness." 
 
 To an English ear "boundless happiness" means 
 more, comes more directly home, than "infinite 
 felicity " ; while on the other hand " compass," 
 though strictly inapplicable to anything bound- 
 less, conveys an idea of encircling, which is most 
 appropriate to the occasion. Again, Shakespeare 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 2IQ 
 
 mingles words of native and of foreign origin 
 which are synonymous, so closely as to subject 
 him to the charge of pleonasm, — a charge which 
 can, for the like reason, be brought against the 
 noble liturgy of the Church of England. He has, 
 for instance, in King yoJuiy " infinite and bound- 
 less reach," in Measure for Measure^ " rebate and 
 blunt his natural edge," and in OthellOy " to such 
 exsufflicate and blown surmises." It is thus man- 
 ifest that Shakespeare was secure in his use of 
 words, and thoughtless except as to their power to 
 serve his present purpose. So that there can be 
 no more futile objection to a reading in his plays, 
 than that the doubtful word occurs in no other 
 passage of his writing. For if he had occasion 
 to use a word but once, or, for that matter, to make 
 it for his single need, he would have used or made 
 it without hesitation. Yet his intuitive knowledge 
 of the peculiar value of words of various deriva- 
 tion is continually manifest. That he was keenly 
 sensible of the ludicrous effect of long Latin words 
 in certain situations is manifest, not only from 
 such instances as Costard's conclusion, that remu- 
 neration is " the Latin word for three farthings," 
 and Bardolph's definition of accommodated, "that 
 is when a man is as they say accommodated, or, 
 when a man is, being, whereby, a may be thought 
 to be accommodated, which is an excellent thing," 
 but from such usage as that in Sir Toby Belch's 
 rejoinder to Maria's remonstrance against his rois- 
 
220 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 tering behavior, — "Tilly vally, am I not consan- 
 guineous ? " — where the use of the Latin word and 
 the abstract idea has a humor which would be lost 
 had he said, "Am I not her kinsman ?" 
 
 Shakespeare's freedom in the use of words was 
 but a part of that conscious irresponsibility to 
 critical rule which had such an important influ- 
 ence upon the development of his whole dramatic 
 style. To the working of his genius under this 
 entire unconsciousness of restraint we owe the 
 grandest and the most delicate beauties of his 
 poetry, his most poignant expressions of emotion, 
 and his richest and subtlest passages of humor. 
 For the superiority of his work is just in pro- 
 portion to his carelessness of literary criticism. 
 His poems, the least excellent of his writings, 
 were written for the literary world ; and it is 
 upon them that his contemporaries, in passing 
 literary judgment, found his reputation. His son- 
 nets, which occupy a middle place, were written 
 for himself or for his private friends, and were ob- 
 tained for publication in some indirect way. His 
 plays were mere entertainments for the general 
 public, written, not to be read, but to be spoken ; 
 written as business, just as Rogers wrote money 
 circulars, or as Bryant writes leading articles. 
 This freedom was suited to the unparalleled rich- 
 ness and spontaneousness of his thought, of which 
 it was in fact partly the result and itself partly 
 the condition. Ben Jonson had these traits of his 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 221 
 
 friend's genius in his mind when he wrote that 
 passage in his Discoveries in which he tells us that 
 he " had an excellent phantsy, brave notions, and 
 gentle expressions ; wherein he flow'd with that 
 facility that it was sometimes necessary he should 
 be stopp'd. StLfflaminandiis erat, as Augustus 
 said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power ; 
 would the rule of it had been so too." The whole 
 of the passage of Seneca from which Jonson 
 quotes, is so notably applicable to Shakespeare 
 that it deserves to be preserved entire. 
 
 " Itaque divus Augustus optime dixit : Haterius noster suf- 
 flaminandus est. Adeo non currere, sed decurrere videbatur ; nee 
 verborum tantum illi copia, sed etiam rerum erat ; quotiens vel- 
 les eandem rem, et quamdiu velles, diceret." — Excerpta Contro- 
 versiarum. Lib. IV. Praef. 
 
 We, with our dictionaries and our books of syn- 
 onymes, our thesauruses of words and phrases to 
 facilitate literary composition, our Blairs and our 
 Kameses, may think, some of us, that we have 
 smoothed the road to literary excellence, when 
 we have but cumbered our movement and dis- 
 tracted our attention. After all, the secret of the 
 art of writing is to have somewhat to say, and to 
 say just that and no other. We think in words, 
 and when we lack fit words we lack fit thoughts. 
 When we strive to write finely for the sake of doing 
 so, we become bombastic or inane. Oldisworth, 
 quoted by Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets, 
 says of Edmund Neale (known under the assumed 
 name of Smith), who had a great reputation in his 
 
222 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 own day : " Writing with ease what could easily 
 be written moved his indignation. When he was 
 writing upon a subject he would seriously consid- 
 er what Demosthenes, Homer, Virgil, or Horace, 
 if alive, would say upon that occasion, which 
 whetted him to exceed himself as well as others." 
 Which I take it is one principal reason why, al- 
 though the world yet hears something of Demos- 
 thenes, of Homer, of Virgil, and of Horace, it has 
 long ceased to hear anything of Neale. It must 
 not be supposed, however, that Shakespeare, in 
 the composition of his plays, was guided by no 
 written law, because in his day in England no lit- 
 erary law had yet been written. In The Garden 
 of Eloquence, by Henry Peacham, published in 
 1577, there are forms and figures of speech de- 
 scribed and classified and named to the number 
 of two hundred and more, with apt rules to use 
 them withal. But not seeking to square his work 
 by these rules, Shakespeare wrote in his marvel- 
 lous fashion, because, if he wrote at all, it was just 
 as easy for him to write in that way as in any 
 other. When Lear says, 
 
 " Down, thou climbing sorrow, 
 Thy element 's below," — 
 
 the critics of the last century, walking through 
 the clipped verdure and formal alleys of the Gar- 
 den of Eloquence, point out, with dignified com- 
 placency, that " here is a most remarkable proso- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 223 
 
 popoeia." So there is, if they must have it so. 
 But it comes from Shakespeare's pen as a matter 
 of course ; as if no other thought, no other words, 
 could have occurred to him on that occasion. 
 And what cared he what Homer or what Virgil 
 would have said > But it is always thus with him. 
 Unlike other great writers, he does not seem to 
 scatter his riches with a lavish hand : they drop 
 from him like fatness from the clouds of heaven ; 
 as if, with the intellectual riches of a god, he had 
 a godhke serenity in their possession and their 
 bestowal. 
 
 Notwithstanding Shakespeare's copiousness of 
 thought and affluence of imagery, no remark 
 upon his style could be more erroneous than that 
 so often made by his critics, that he does not re- 
 peat himself It has even been attempted to 
 regulate his text upon this assumption. But 
 Shakespeare did not hesitate to repeat his own 
 thoughts or words, or, for that matter, those of 
 other writers, when to do so served his present 
 purpose. Examples are scattered all through his 
 plays. For instance, the same feeling is expressed 
 in nearly the same words by characters as radi- 
 cally unlike as King Lear, Justice Shallow, and 
 Othello. The first two in their feebleness, the 
 last in constraint, revert to their former prowess. 
 Lear says : 
 
 ** I have seen the day when with my good biting falchion 
 I would have made them skip." 
 
224 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 Shallow : 
 
 " I have seen the time with my long sword I would have made 
 your four tall fellows skip like rats." 
 
 Othello : 
 
 " I have seen the day 
 
 When, with this little arm and this good sword, 
 
 I have made my way through more impediments 
 
 Than twenty times your stop." 
 
 In no respect was Shakespeare's art classical. 
 He was essentially a Goth ; and his style corre- 
 sponded entirely to the character of his mind. 
 English is a Gothic language ; yet there can be 
 classical English, as we have been shown by Addi- 
 son and Goldsmith. In the former of these eminent 
 writers we find the perfection of ease, clearness, 
 harmony, and dignity. So we do in Shakespeare, 
 except that some passages, from compression of 
 many thoughts, from neglect of elaboration, and 
 sometimes from corruption, lack clearness. But 
 it is not thus that Shakespeare's style is to be 
 defined. It is not to be defined at all ; it is a 
 mystery. Addison's sound sense, the eminently 
 graceful character of his mind, and his lambent 
 humor, were individual qualities which marked 
 his thought ; but as to his style, it can be easily 
 analyzed ; its elements can be detected and their 
 proportions declared. But you cannot take cer- 
 tain qualities of style and combine them in cer- 
 tain proportions, by certain rules, and make your 
 Shakespeare's mixture. A nameless something, 
 not grace, not harmony, not strength, which yet 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 22 q 
 
 mingles with them all in Shakespeare, would be 
 lacking. Addison's perfect style has been perfect- 
 ly imitated. There have been men, there might 
 be many men, who could produce, not what would 
 properly be called an imitation of it, but the thing 
 itself But the man has never yet written, except 
 Shakespeare, who could produce ten lines having 
 that quality which, for lack of other name, we call 
 Shakespearian. 
 
 It is, however, not only in this nameless charm 
 and happy audacity that Shakespeare differs from 
 those writers of our language whose styles may be 
 regarded as models of correctness. He is often 
 undeniably incorrect, in consequence partly of the 
 syntactical usage of his day, which upon minor 
 points had not yet attained a complete logical con- 
 formity to the very principles then recognized, and 
 partly of his own neglect to revise carefully that 
 which he wrote so fluently. Such of his occasional 
 errors as are not of the former kind appear exclu- 
 sively in his plays : they are not found in the poems 
 which he carefully prepared for perusal. Perhaps 
 it is safe to say that it is not among those great 
 imaginative writers who are affluent in thought and 
 free in style that we are to look for a grammati- 
 cally faultless use of language ; but rather among 
 didactic writers, who are constipated and precise, 
 and who occupy a place in the second or third 
 grade, or one yet lower. The pages of Walter 
 Scott, who in imagination and richness of re- 
 
 10* o 
 
226 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 source stands nearer (if any can be near) to Shake- 
 speare than any other writer in our language, 
 are marked with instances of inaccuracy of style, 
 as well as of statement, which we pass by almost 
 unnoticed as we are borne along upon the strong, 
 swift current of his narrative. But whatever may 
 be the general truth in this respect, it is certain 
 that in Shakespeare's plays we find not a few 
 such passages as the following, which there is 
 no reason for doubting came as we have them 
 from his pen. 
 
 " No more of this, Helena : go to, no more, lest it be thought 
 you rather affect a sorrow than to have." 
 
 All 's Well, &c., Act I. Sc. i. 
 
 " Achievement is command, ungain'd beseech." 
 
 Troihis and Cressida. 
 
 "He hath, and is again to cope your wife." 
 
 Othello, Act IV. Sc. i. 
 
 These would serve as fit school exercises in 
 faulty syntax, of which alone they are examples. 
 But in that grand rejoinder to the desperate 
 Othello, in which Emilia, noble though not un- 
 tainted soul, rises to the serenest height of con- 
 scious self-sacrifice, — 
 
 " Thou hast not half the power to do me harm 
 As I have to be harm'd," — 
 
 the grandeur and the pathos of this truly woman- 
 ly utterance reach our hearts through a confusion 
 not only of syntax, but of logic ; " power " being 
 used in the first part of the sentence in the sense 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 227 
 
 of ability, and understood in the latter in the 
 sense of capacity, — inaccurately, because power 
 is an attribute of action, not of reception. But 
 the hand which should undertake to rectify these 
 errors in construction by rule and plummet would 
 find that it had strength enough only to bring 
 down the noble though irregular structure in a 
 ruin that would overwhelm the rash endeavor 
 with disgrace and ridicule. 
 
 There is, however, a vagueness in some pas- 
 sages of Shakespeare's poetry which is inten- 
 tional, and which is a result of the highest art, — 
 a vagueness which magnifies an image, generally 
 of terror, that would be belittled by being drawn 
 with sharper outline. This is a trait of Gothic 
 art, and is not peculiar to Shakespeare, or indeed 
 to poetry ; for it finds its place in Gothic archi- 
 tecture. Schiller has been much praised, and 
 somewhat over-praised, for his use of the indefi- 
 nite neuter pronoun " it " in his ballad. The Diver^ 
 to indicate the fabled polypus, which, however, he 
 immediately describes.* But Shakespeare, who 
 seems to have been beforehand with most modern 
 poets in all their happiest devices, had in this 
 efiect anticipated and surpassed Schiller, and had 
 availed himself of our indefinite dread of unknown 
 horrors in the recesses of the sea, not only, like 
 Schiller, to leave upon the mind a vague image of 
 
 * "It saw — a hundred-armed creature— its prey." 
 
 Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's Translation. 
 
228 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 the unknown creature itself, but to heighten our 
 dread of, and aversion to, unnatural crime. How 
 indefinite the comparison when Lear exclaims : 
 
 " Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 
 More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child, 
 Than the sea-monster ! " 
 
 What is the sea monster ? Yet how much more 
 of horror is suggested by that definite indefinity, 
 than if the comparison had been in terms to a 
 crocodile or a kraken ! * And in other modes, 
 and for other reasons than the heightening of an 
 image, Shakespeare is sometimes vague, and in 
 expressing abstract thought or simple emotion 
 purposely indefinite. He is aided in his effects 
 of this kind by a singular felicity in framing 
 phrases which convey ideas by mere suggestion, 
 and which at once fill mind and ear with a satis- 
 faction, the reason for which escapes close analy- 
 
 * I will here remark that the happy comparison made by 
 Swift, so often quoted, and always as his, of those able and well- 
 informed men who are yet hesitating speakers, to a full church, 
 which, from its very fulness, is emptied more slowly than if the 
 congregation were a small one, was taken by the Dean from 
 Shakespeare. And it shows how little the Lucrece is read, that 
 this appropriation has not been pointed out before. 
 
 " Her maid is gone, and she prepares to write, 
 
 First hovering o'er the paper with her quill. 
 
 Conceit and grief an eager combat fight ; 
 
 What wit sets down is blotted straight with will ; 
 
 This is too curious good, this blunt and ill : 
 Much like a press of people at a door 
 Throng her inventions, which shall go before." 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 22Q 
 
 sis. What, for instance, is the exact meaning of 
 the last two lines of this passage from one of 
 Macbeth's soliloquies ? 
 
 " Present fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings. 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
 But what is not." 
 
 Yet there is no doubt that it leaves upon the 
 mind just the impression which Shakespeare in- 
 tended to make ; and that probably the intelli- 
 gent reader of sensitive organization but uncriti- 
 cal mind is placed by it more in sympathy with 
 the poet's mood than some of those who have 
 harder heads and subtler intellects. So as to the 
 phrase " blood-boltered Banquo," it may be safely 
 doubted if any modern reader on first meeting 
 with the passage knew positively the meaning of 
 " boltered " ; but it may be as safely believed that 
 few readers, except those who read a play as the 
 mathematician did, to see what it all proves, did 
 not receive from the sound of the phrase, and a 
 vaguely attributed sense, the impression intended 
 by the poet. 
 
 Akin to this power in Shakespeare is that of 
 pushing hyperbole to the verge of absurdity ; of 
 minghng heterogeneous metaphors and similes 
 which, coldly examined, seem discordant ; in short, 
 of apparently setting at naught the rules of rhet- 
 
230 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 oric, without paying the penalty by the critics in 
 such case made and provided. Thus, when Cle- 
 opatra, about to send a message to Antony, says, 
 
 " Give me ink and paper. 
 He shall have every day a several greeting, 
 Or I 'II unpeople Egypt," — 
 
 how needlessly extravagant is the hyperbole in 
 regard to the number of messengers, three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five of whom would have conveyed 
 a several greeting to Antony every day for a year ! 
 But it is really reflective in its effect ; it is a reve- 
 lation of Cleopatra's character ; and as a measure 
 of her feeling toward her lover, and of her con- 
 sciousness of absolute power, it is in keeping. 
 Of both mixed metaphor and apparently discor- 
 dant simile, where is there a more flagrant seem- 
 ing example than the following passage from the 
 Tempest, the beauty of which, as a whole, is tran- 
 scendent 1 
 
 " The charm dissolves apace : 
 And as the morning steals upon the night, 
 Melting the darkness, so their rising senses 
 Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle 
 Their clear reason." 
 
 Now if the beauty and propriety of metaphor 
 depended upon the exact, the material and me- 
 chanical conformity of images, what a hotchpot 
 would be here ! Indeed, a learned and generally 
 judicious critic of the last century has selected 
 this very passage as a shocking example of mixed 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 23 1 
 
 metaphor, in which " so many ill-sorted things are 
 joined that the mind can see nothing clearly." 
 And if it were necessary to the beauty and the 
 force of the metaphor that we should picture to 
 ourselves a figure of the dawn stealing upon a fig- 
 ure of the darkness, and at the same time melt- 
 ing it up in a pot, and that we should see a like- 
 ness between this process and the equally incom- 
 prehensible one of senses rising up and running 
 after uninstructed fumes which were casting a 
 mantle over reason, it need hardly be said that 
 the passage would be ridiculous. But not thus 
 does the mind receive the impression of a met- 
 aphor. And in this passage, as in hardly any 
 other in the range of poetry, is the tender glory 
 of the dawning day gently dispelling the dark- 
 ness that covers the face of nature brought up 
 before the mind ; and it is to this image, not 
 sharply defined, but seen as if in a mental twi- 
 light, that Prospero compares his charm's dissolv- 
 ing. It should ever be remembered, too, in our 
 judgment of a poet's, and especially a dramatic 
 poet's, fancies and expressions of emotion, that 
 they are to be looked upon from his plane of vis- 
 ion. If we do not rise with him to the point to 
 which he has risen, much that has to his eye due 
 proportion will to us seem monstrous. To one 
 who stands upon a mountain-top, objects, the size 
 and opposite character of which strike the eye of 
 him who remains upon the plain, are dwarfed into 
 
232 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 insignificance or blended into harmony. There 
 is in a play, which, though not the greatest pro- 
 duction of Shakespeare's genius, displays more 
 completely than any other all the qualities of his 
 style, — The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, — a 
 passage which in its resistless sweep and majestic 
 imagery is not surpassed by any other of his writ- 
 ing, and which is an extreme example at once of 
 the vagueness, the mingling of metaphor, and the 
 extravagance with which he could dare to write, 
 and splendidly succeed. Northumberland, after 
 several speeches, during which he, with rapidly 
 rising emotion, is led to the certain knowledge of 
 his son Hotspur's death, enraged with grief, thus 
 closes his outbreak of wrath and sorrow : — 
 
 " Now bind my brows with iron, and approach 
 The ragged'st hour that time and spite dare bring 
 To frown upon the enrag'd Northumberland. 
 Let heaven kiss earth : now let not nature^s hand 
 Keep the wild flood confin'd ; let order die ; 
 And let this world no longer be a stage 
 To feed contention in a ling'ring act ; 
 But let one spirit of the first-born Cain 
 Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set 
 On bloody courses, the rude scene may end, 
 And darkness be the burier of the dead ! " 
 
 How big this is with strong emotion ! how tur- 
 bulent with grand and multitudinous impersona- 
 tion ! The very abstract subjects are all endowed 
 with life and passion. Yet no clear images are 
 left upon the mind ; the attributed actions are in 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 233 
 
 themselves preposterous, impossible ; and the im- 
 precation of the end of all things upon occasion 
 of the death of one man in battle shows, by at- 
 taining it, that there can be a limit even to ex- 
 travagance. But what reader, except a rhetori- 
 cian of the last century, ever attempted to form an 
 image of a personified heaven kissing a person- 
 ified earth ? How great a loss would be the knowl- 
 edge of what the wild flood is which nature keeps 
 confined ! Who ever supposed that Shakespeare 
 meant that a stage could properly be said to feed 
 anything, much more feed contention ? The truth 
 is, that in such passages as that in question, when 
 they are the work of a hand strong enough to 
 carry the reader with the writer, the mind does 
 not take the personifying words in their strict 
 sense. That sense, as in the phrases, " Let heaven 
 kiss earth," " let order die," " to feed contention," 
 is only suggested, and gives a certain color and in- 
 tensity to expression. And in Northumberland's 
 speech, the quick opposing changes of impersona- 
 tion perturb the passage with a stir of words and 
 clash of thought which corresponds to and portrays 
 the strong, deep agitation of the speaker's soul. 
 
 Shakespeare mixed not only metaphors, but 
 metaphors and plain language. He unites even 
 the material and the spiritual ; and yet his image 
 loses neither strength nor beauty, because its head 
 is of gold and its feet of clay. When Hamlet 
 says. 
 
234 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 " and bless'd are those 
 Whose blood and judgment are so well co-mingled 
 That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
 To play what stop she please," 
 
 what a union of weight and edge is given to the 
 passage by the welding of the physical idea of 
 blood with the moral idea of judgment ! Yet the 
 rhetoricians have forbidden the banns of such 
 unions. But the period as a whole, no less than 
 the first member of it, is obnoxious to their denun- 
 ciation. For the last half is as apparently incon- 
 gruous with the first, as the elements of the first 
 are with each other. How can the commingling 
 of blood and judgment make a pipe ? But Shake- 
 speare did not write for men who read after this 
 mole-eyed fashion. Nor did he here mean that 
 blood and judgment make a pipe. Blood and 
 judgment make the man, and the man is then 
 compared to a pipe in the hands of fortune. This 
 is discovered not by an analysis, however rapid, 
 but apprehended at once by the understanding of 
 every reader who can and does admit the entrance 
 of more than one idea into his mind at the same 
 time. So in Hamlet's speech, against which there 
 was an outcry all through the last century, — 
 
 " To take arms against a sea of troubles," — 
 
 Shakespeare does not put his moody prince in 
 the attitude of a military Mrs. Partington, using 
 arms instead of broom against the ocean. It is 
 against the troubles that the man is to struggle, 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 2T,K 
 
 and it is the troubles which are to be ended. Had 
 Shakespeare written a " host of troubles,'^ or any 
 equivalent phrase, the line would have been within 
 the capacity of a poet of the second rank ; but by 
 writing " sea," he with one word brings to mind the 
 tumultuous, ever succeeding woes, which seeming 
 innumerable, like the multitudinous seas, some- 
 times overwhelm the soul. It is to his faculty of 
 combining the expression of an impressive truth 
 or a genuine human feeling with fancies which by 
 themselves would seem extravagant, that Shake- 
 speare's style owes its peculiar and never failing 
 charm, — a faculty which in its action transcends 
 all law, except that of its own being. He has, 
 in the height of his hyperbole, and even in the 
 occasional inflation of his imagery, a keeping 
 which makes his expressions seem those of simple 
 though elevated nature. He possesses, also, in its 
 highest manifestation, the correlative power of 
 giving, by the reflected light of his intellect, beau- 
 ty to that which is in itself repulsive. Not only 
 passion, guilt, and woe, but even inhumanity and 
 baseness, are presented to us so tempered and 
 elevated through the medium of his genius, that 
 we are not wounded or repelled by the picture, 
 while we mourn over, or condemn, or even loathe, 
 that which it represents. We may say of his ge- 
 nius, as Laertes says of the crazed Ophelia, 
 
 " Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 
 She turns to favor and to prettiness." 
 
236 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 Thus Shakespeare furnishes us with the very 
 language in which we can pass critical judgment 
 upon himself ; so that it is possible that the best 
 and completest expression of his genius could be 
 culled from the works which that genius has pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Shakespeare, from the height to which he 
 soars, can overlook and disregard that which af- 
 fronts lowlier eyes ; or, by the universal solvent 
 of his genius, he can compel the union of ele- 
 ments whose natural repugnance resists less po- 
 tent alchemy. Yet, with no material detriment to 
 his fame, it may be admitted that precisians and 
 purists, and all who admire, as Sampson fought, 
 only when the law is on their side, can find a true 
 bill of extravagance against him. For what was 
 justly said of Plato, that "if he had not erred he 
 would have done less," is quite as applicable to 
 the great dramatic poet as to the great philoso- 
 pher ; and the allowance may be more reasonably 
 made in the case of Shakespeare. If we will have 
 high-sounding poetry, we must risk an occasional 
 flight beyond the bounds of reason. Genius has 
 produced some bombast which is really grand, and 
 some tinsel that will shine forever. 
 
 Much more objectionable than such extrava- 
 gance as that into which Shakespeare sometimes, 
 though rarely, fell, are the opposite faults of style, 
 an elaboration of nice conceit, and a proneness to 
 verbal quibbling, into which he was led by a con- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 237 
 
 formity to the taste of his period. These trivial 
 blemishes, easily discernible, were just of the kind 
 to provoke the censure of the last century's crit- 
 ics, who were never tired of pecking at Shake- 
 speare for the readiness with which he sprang at 
 an opportunity for a pun ; and there can be no 
 doubt that some fine passages of his poetry 
 are less purely beautiful than they would have 
 been, were they not spotted with this labored use 
 of words in a double sense. This fault is like 
 those fripperies of dress which are generally an 
 ungraceful and elaborate affectation in the fashion 
 of a day, and which it is better indeed that the 
 painter of a picture in the grand style should omit 
 from the costume of his figures. But should a 
 great master introduce them, who that can com- 
 prehend and rightly admire the essential parts of 
 his work will waste much time in grieving .? Of 
 the kindred fault, which did not take the form 
 of an absolute pun, but which is hardly less offen- 
 sive, the Lucrece furnishes the following perfect 
 specimen : — 
 
 " Even here she sheathed in her harmless breast 
 A harmful knife, which thence her soul unsheathed." 
 
 Conceits like this, which abound in all depart- 
 ments of the literature of the Elizabethan age, 
 are mere labored verbal antitheses corresponding 
 to parallel antitheses of thought. The humorous 
 side of this conceit in style is a pun, in which 
 there is correspondence of words but incongruity 
 
238 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 of thought. The development of taste has taught 
 us that in serious writing these antitheses are im- 
 pertinent ; but the pleasing surprise of a certain 
 lack of pertinence, which yet seems pertinent, 
 forms no small ingredient in our enjoyment of 
 wit. Of this "kind of wit, no less than of that sub- 
 tler comic quality which we call humor, Shake- 
 speare has shown himself in Falstaff the match- 
 less master. And thus we find that his most 
 objectionable and most noticeable fault is nearly 
 related to one of his most exquisite and charming 
 graces. All Shakespeare's faults of the kind just 
 noticed are found united in the following passage 
 from Heniy the Fifth, the most offensively thus 
 deformed in all his works : — 
 
 " A many of our bodies shall, no doubt, 
 Find native gi'aves, upon the which, I trust, 
 Shall witness live in brass of this day's work ; 
 And those that leave their valiant bones in France, 
 Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, 
 They shall be famed ; for there the sun shall greet them. 
 And draw their honors reeking up to heaven. 
 Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, 
 The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France. 
 Mark, then, abounding valor in our English ; 
 That, being dead, like to the bullet's grazing. 
 Break out into a second course of mischief, 
 Killing in relapse of mortality." 
 
 This is not the nodding of Homer : these sins 
 were committed with open eyes. Such indeed 
 was Shakespeare's vivacity of mind, that he rarely 
 drowsed over his work. But upon one or two oc- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 23Q 
 
 casions he slumbered outright ; as when he made 
 Coriolanus say that his "throat of war" should, 
 if he flattered the people, become like "the virgin 
 voice which babies lulls asleep," which is a rare, 
 almost an isolated instance of his misuse of epi- 
 thet. It is interesting to know that, while he 
 conformed to the fashion of his day in this matter 
 of conceits and quibbles, he saw how petty and 
 injurious it was, and visited it with open con- 
 demnation. In Twelfth Night, after making the 
 Clown quibble for three speeches, to Viola's be- 
 wilderment, upon two words, he makes the same 
 character exclaim : " To see this age ! A sentence 
 is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. How quick- 
 ly the wrong side may be turned outward ! " To 
 which Viola replies, " Nay, that *s certain ; they 
 that dally nicely with words may quickly make 
 them wanton." This is one of the very few pas- 
 sages in his plays which may safely be accepted as 
 a mere expression of his own opinions. 
 
 Another mark which his period set upon Shake- 
 speare's style — his reference to subjects and his 
 use of words which are excluded from polite socie- 
 ty by modern notions of decorum — may be passed 
 by with slight attention. Within certain wide 
 limits, which seem to be set by nature, decency in 
 word and deed is determined absolutely by cus- 
 tom. What is decent in one age or under certain 
 circumstances, may be indecent in another age or 
 under other circumstances. The defying of cus- 
 
240 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 torn is the essence of indecency. This is nota- 
 bly exemphfied in the history of language. For 
 in language the tendency is to the degradation 
 and consequent exclusion of words from polite 
 usage, while the idea maintains its place. Thus 
 we do not hesitate to speak, if it be necessary to 
 do so, of the stomach or bowels ; but in Eliza- 
 beth's time the best-bred people designated those 
 parts of the body by words the first of which is 
 now heard only among boys, and the second 
 never among decent people. It has been before 
 remarked, that Shakespeare is less obnoxious to 
 our modern code in this respect than any other 
 dramatic writer of his period. He has some pas- 
 sages which are not to be read in general soci- 
 ety now-a-days ; but there is no moral taint in 
 any of his works, — nothing that can debauch the 
 mind of the pure and innocent. It is only as a 
 concession to the fancies of the weak-minded, or 
 as a provision for the needs of those who find it 
 agreeable to read Shakespeare aloud in mixed 
 company, that Bowdler's mutilations are at all 
 defensible. 
 
 But one fashion of his day, at Shakespeare's 
 conformity to which we must chiefly rejoice, was 
 that of using blank verse instead of rhyme in dra- 
 matic compositions. His choice doubtless went 
 with his conformity; but that he yielded in this 
 respect to fashion is plain from the facts that his 
 earUer plays abound in rhymed passages, a great 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 24I 
 
 part of one of them, The Comedy of Erivrs, being 
 in complete or alternate rhyme, and that he used 
 blank verse only in his plays. Blank verse had 
 been slowly growing in favor with our English 
 poets ever since Surrey used it for his translation 
 of the fourth book of the -^neid, forty years be- 
 fore Shakespeare entered upon his career. At 
 the latter period it was coming into vogue upon 
 the stage ; and Shakespeare, who in all that he 
 wrote to set forth as poetry chose rhyme, soon 
 became in his dramas the greatest master of Eng- 
 lish heroic measure. Not much can be said, and, 
 if there could, not much need be said, in an at- 
 tempt to appreciate Shakespeare's genius, of the 
 beauty of his versification. Criticism can do no 
 more than record its various and surpassing beau- 
 ties. The mere structure of verse is mechani- 
 cal. It can be, it has been, made perfect by rule. 
 Much good sense has been written in lines com- 
 posed of five feet of two syllables, with accent 
 duly disposed and tastefully and correctly varied, 
 which are unexceptionable verses, quite as perfect 
 as any that Shakespeare ever wrote ; but they are, 
 most of them, weariness to the flesh, while his 
 delights our ears forever. The reason of this dif- 
 ference it is impossible to set forth. We can no 
 more say why it is, than we can say why, when 
 one composer writes a succession of notes which 
 follow each other in perfect conformity to the rules 
 of music, and the canons of taste, as well as the laws 
 II p 
 
242 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 of composition, we may say with Sly, "A very ex- 
 cellent piece of work, would 't were done ! " and 
 when Mozart writes conforming to no other laws, 
 he ravishes our souls with melody. Power over 
 sound, whether of words or musical notes, is a 
 personal gift, which, unlike other personal gifts, 
 such as wisdom, logical power, imagination, the 
 mastery of form, as in sculpture and architecture, 
 or of color, as in painting and decoration, is ex- 
 ercised (within certain general limits) purely ac- 
 cording to the personal fancy, the spontaneous 
 and intuitive preference of the possessor. Thus, 
 for instance, the sculptor and the painter must 
 represent something in nature, by the form or 
 color of which they are limited : the architect 
 must adapt his structure, not only to certain me- 
 chanical and aesthetic laws, but to the purpose for 
 which his building is intended. But the musician 
 has no such limit to the exercise of his faculty. 
 Within himself alone he finds both guide and mo- 
 tive for the flow of his melody and the progres- 
 sion of his harmony. He adapts his melody to 
 his words, if he write to words ; but, within the 
 limitation of poetic rhythm, that determines not 
 its form, only its spirit. And so the poet in the 
 sensuous expression of his verse is guided only 
 by his own sense of what is fit and beautiful. 
 We can see that he attains this purpose by the 
 variation of his pauses, the balance of his sen- 
 tences, and his choice and arrangement of words 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 243 
 
 in regard to sound. But why he does this as he 
 does it, we cannot tell ; nor could he tell himself. 
 Haydn could give no other reason for writing a 
 certain passage in a certain way, than that he 
 thought " it would sound best so." We can test 
 one of Shakespeare's characters by the laws of our 
 moral nature ; but we have no law, except those 
 before mentioned, which refer to the rudiments 
 and mechanism of the art, by which we can test 
 the sensuous beauties of his poetry. Except in 
 his songs, he wrote almost entirely in one kind of 
 verse ; and he wrote that as he willed, his varia- 
 tions of style in this respect resulting only from 
 the greater or less freedom which he allowed him- 
 self, guided only by his innate, exquisite sense of 
 the beautiful. The dissertations upon his versifi- 
 cation written by critics of past generations, who 
 discovered that he had furnished us admirable in- 
 stances of different kinds of verse with very im- 
 posing names, trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic, 
 for instance, are in my judgment only lamentable 
 instances of the waste of learning and of ingenu- 
 ity. The freedom of dramatic writing at his day 
 allowed him to be very irregular in his verse. He 
 had no criticism to fear (it cannot be too con- 
 stantly kept in mind), and the success of his plays 
 was not with a public who read, but with an audi- 
 ence who listened. Therefore he allowed himself 
 defective and redundant lines, the alternation of 
 verse with prose, and of rhyme with blank verse ; 
 
244 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 conscious that, so long as the dialogue ran easily 
 and naturally on, the audience would concern 
 themselves with the situations, the thoughts and 
 feelings of the personages, indifferent to niceties 
 of versification, which indeed only a reader could 
 detect. 
 
 In respect to the strict laws of versification, 
 the dramatic poet of the days of Elizabeth was a 
 chartered libertine. This is plain enough to any 
 critical reader. But contemporary testimony is 
 not lacking to the entire freedom from rhetorical 
 restraint in this respect, as in all others, with 
 which the Elizabethan dramatists labored. 
 
 " Too popular [i. e. vulgar] is tragic poesie, 
 Straining his tiptoes for a farthing fee ; 
 And doth beside in nameless numbers tread ; 
 Turbid iambics flow from careless head." 
 
 Bishop Hall's Satires. 
 
 Shakespeare availed himself of this freedom to 
 the full ; and we can see that as he grew older 
 he allowed himself greater license ; the effect of 
 which relaxation was counterbalanced and modi- 
 fied by his greater mastery of the material in 
 which he worked and his more refined percep- 
 tions of beauty. The plays which we know were 
 his latest productions, such as The Winter s Tale, 
 Coriolanus, and Henry the Eighth, are notably 
 freer, free almost to carelessness, when compared 
 with The Two Gentlemen of Verona and King 
 Richard the Second for instance, which we know 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 245 
 
 were of his early writing. In some of the Roman 
 plays and in King Henry the Eighth he reaches 
 the point of almost failing to mark his verse by 
 any caesural or final pause whatever ; very often 
 allowing the place of the last accent to be filled 
 by a syllable, frequently a monosyllabic word, 
 which cannot be accented. 
 
 " The king's majesty 
 Commends his good opinion of you to you, and 
 Does purpose honor to you no less flowing 
 Than Marchioness of Pembroke." 
 
 Henry VIII. , Act I. Sc. 3. 
 
 " Sir, I desire you to do me right and justice, 
 And to bestow your pity on me ; for 
 I am a most poor woman and a stranger." 
 
 Ibid., Sc. 4. 
 
 " Because that now it lies in you to speak 
 
 To th' people ; not by your own instruction. 
 
 Nor by the matter that your heart prompts you. 
 
 But with such words that are but voted in 
 
 Your tongue," &c. 
 
 Coriolanus, Act III. Sc. 2. 
 
 " My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done 
 
 To thee particularly and to all the Volsces 
 
 Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness vtay 
 
 My surname, Coriolanus Only that name remains : 
 
 The cruelty and envy of the people. 
 
 Permitted by our dastard nobles, who 
 
 Have all forsook me, hath devour'd the rest ; 
 
 And suffered me by th' voice of slaves to be 
 
 Whoop'd out of Rome. Now, this extremity 
 
 Hath brought me to thy hearth : not out of hope — 
 
 Mistake me not — to save my life ; for if 
 
 I had fear'd death,, of all the men i'the world 
 
 I would have 'voided thee." 
 
 lb.. Act IV. Sc. 5. 
 
246 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 "You are they 
 
 That made the air unwholesome, when you cast 
 
 Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at 
 
 Coriolanus' exile." 
 
 lb., Act IV. Sc. 6. 
 
 It is true that the rhythm of all modern poetry 
 depends merely upon accent, and that the English 
 language has among its happy distinctions that 
 of containing no word which is unfit for poetry. 
 But the facility given by these traits is shared in 
 the first instance by all modern poets, in the sec- 
 ond by all English poets. Yet of all English, as 
 well as of all modern poets, Shakespeare, in re- 
 spect to his versification, as well as in all other 
 respects, is the supreme master. The rhythm of 
 his verse and the cadence of his periods is deter- 
 mined by an exquisite sense of the beauty of ver- 
 bal form, working with an intuitive, though not 
 unconscious, power in the adaptation of form to 
 spirit. 
 
 One point in regard to the history and struc- 
 ture of our language is particularly worthy of no- 
 tice in connection with the present topic. As the 
 rhythm of English verse is dependent solely upon 
 accent, a permanence of accent in pronunciation 
 is necessary, not only to the continued enjoyment 
 of verse during many generations, but actually to 
 its continuing to be verse ; while the completest 
 change in the vowel sounds of the words of which 
 a verse is composed will not deprive it of its 
 rhythmical, and scarcely of any musical quality. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 247 
 
 Shakespeare's poetry is no less verse and no less 
 beautiful to the Englishman born north of the 
 Tweed, who calls himself a Lowland Scot, or to 
 the Englishman born in Ulster, who calls himself 
 an Irishman, than to the native of London or Bos- 
 ton. Yet each of the two former, however well 
 educated, will pronounce the words of which that 
 verse is composed, with vowel sounds, and in a 
 measure with an articulation, peculiar to himself, 
 and different from that of the educated man born 
 in the Old England or the New. But the latter 
 themselves give to a very large proportion of 
 words vowel sounds quite different from their 
 common forefathers, for whom Shakespeare wrote, 
 and whose pronunciation was more like that of 
 the so-called Irishman than that which they have 
 adopted. These facts make it the more worthy of 
 note that the changes of accent in our language 
 since its maturity, about three hundred years ago, 
 have been so extremely few as to leave it, to all 
 intents and purposes, the same in this respect that 
 it was in the Elizabethan era ; although the chan- 
 ges in many vowel and some consonant sounds 
 have been so great, that, if the wits who met at 
 the Mermaid could hear their descendants of to 
 day read their writings, they would surely smile 
 and wonder, even if they could understand. Ac- 
 cent furnishes to the body of our language its 
 bones and articulations, and preserves its form and 
 determines its movement, although its softer and 
 
248 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 apparently more vital parts are changed by time 
 and circumstance. To this characteristic -we owe, 
 and our posterity will owe, the inestimable advan- 
 tage of reading Shakespeare's poetry with no less 
 pleasure than it gave to his contemporaries. 
 
 Like in the irresponsibility and absoluteness of 
 its operation to the faculty of melodious versifi- 
 cation is that faculty which we call fancy, touch- 
 ing Shakespeare's exercise of which somewhat has 
 necessarily been said already. Fancy is defined 
 by Johnson as "the power by which the mind 
 forms to itself images of things, persons, or scenes 
 of being," and he gives imagination as its syno- 
 nyme and first definition ; by Webster, as " the 
 faculty by which the mind forms images or repre- 
 sentations of things at pleasure " ; by Worcester, 
 as " the faculty of combining ideas " ; and some 
 metaphysicians, attempting to draw a distinction 
 between fancy and imagination, have attributed to 
 the former faculty the power of forming im.ages or 
 representations of things in the mind, — to the lat- 
 ter, that of combining and modifying them. If 
 these definitions were correct and sufficient, fancy 
 could not with propriety be considered as a trait 
 of style, which is in poet, painter, or musician the 
 mode of expression. It would belong to the sub- 
 stance of an author's work, — that which style 
 expresses. But the definitions in question, to 
 which all others known to me conform with un- 
 essential variation, must be set aside as express- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 249 
 
 ing neither the idea of fancy which is presented 
 by our best writers of any age, nor that which has 
 determined the general use of the word among 
 intelHgent people. 
 
 This is not the place in which to go into ex- 
 tended dissertation upon the characteristic traits 
 and differences of fancy and imagination ; but it 
 maybe briefly said, that if "fancy" were ever cor- 
 rectly used as a synonyme of "imagination," which 
 is more than doubtful, or as the name of a crea- 
 tive image-forming faculty, that usage has long 
 since passed away ; and that the needs of intelli- 
 gent people have effected a distinction between 
 the two words similar in kind to that which has 
 been made between " talent " and " genius." Car- 
 lyle, for instance, is celebrated as a writer of vivid 
 and powerful imagination ; but no person of ordi- 
 nary discrimination would speak of fancy as one 
 of his characteristic mental traits. So the style 
 of A Midsummer Night 's Dream is peculiarly rich 
 and brilliant in fancy ; but, except in the person- 
 ages of Puck and the clowns, it is not distin- 
 guished among Shakespeare's plays for imagina- 
 tion, which as exhibited in his works finds its 
 highest manifestation in King Lear, Macbeth, and 
 The Tempest. 
 
 Imagination works upon the substance or ma- 
 terial of a writer of fiction or history, producing 
 his personages, with their traits, actions, and sur- 
 roundings ; fancy, upon the style in which he en- 
 n* 
 
250 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 forces and adorns his thoughts. And thus Sheri- 
 dan, satirizing an opponent, said that he drew upon 
 his imagination for his facts, not upon his fancy. 
 In truth the sense of the world has for ages re- 
 garded the fancy as a faculty so peculiarly indi- 
 vidual, and having to do with that which passes 
 within a man's own mind, that it has applied the 
 word " fancy " to love between the sexes,* to any 
 personal predilection, to an eccentric notion, a 
 dress adopted by an individual, or a fashion pre- 
 vailing among a few. The poor, abandoned girl 
 still has her fancy-man, the costumer makes fancy 
 dresses, even the baker fancy cake ; and every one 
 has his own fancies, for which he is held alto- 
 gether irresponsible. But what need to go about 
 for definition and illustration, when Shakespeare 
 himself, all-discerning, has given them .? Miranda 
 says to Ferdinand, 
 
 " I would not wish 
 Any companion in the world but you ; 
 Nor can imagination form a shape 
 Besides yourself to like of." 
 
 And Theseus tells Hippolyta, in a famous passage 
 of A Midsummer NigMs Dream, that " imagina- 
 tion bodies forth the forms of things unknown." 
 On the other hand, the King of Navarre in Loves 
 Labour's Lost calls an eccentric personage, who 
 
 * " Tell me where is fancy bred ? " — Mer. of Veji. 
 " In maiden meditation, fancy free." — M. N. Dr. 
 "All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer. — Ibid. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 2^1 
 
 "hath a mint of phrases in his brain/' Armado, 
 " this child of fancy " ; and Holofernes, a sound 
 and acute critic, though a pedant, speak of " the 
 odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of inven- 
 tion," which furnish not the substance, but " the 
 elegance, facility, and gojden cadence of poesy " ; 
 and he sends the love-born Orlando throusrh the 
 forest of Arden, "chewing the cud of sweet and 
 bitter fancy." It is quite impossible to make 
 fancy and imagination change places in these pas- 
 sages ; or to suppose that the poet had in mind 
 faculties of which one, fancy, furnishes representa- 
 tions of things which the other, imagination, com- 
 bines and modifies. In brief, imagination is that 
 creative faculty of the mind by which images of 
 men and things, and their relations, are conceived 
 and brought forth with seeming reality. It is a 
 correlative of faith, which is the substance of 
 things hoped for and the evidence of things not 
 seen. Fancy is the faculty which illustrates, en- 
 riches, and adorns a person, a thing, or a state- 
 ment of fact or truth, by association, by compari- 
 son, and by attributed function or action. Thus 
 sexual love is rightly called fancy, because the 
 loved is endowed by the lover with all that charms 
 that lover in the other sex, though often having 
 few or none of those endearing qualities. And 
 thus Ariel is a creature of Shakespeare's imagi- 
 nation ; but when he makes Ferdinand say of 
 Ariel's song, 
 
252 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 " This music crept by me upon the waters, 
 Allaying both their fury and my passion," 
 
 he exhibits in one of its most entrancing manifes- 
 tations his exquisite and peerless fancy. So when 
 the Duke in Twelfth Night exclaims, 
 
 " O when mine eyes did see Olivia first, 
 Methought she purged the air of pestilence," 
 
 Shakespeare at once exhibits his own fancy as a 
 poet and portrays the fancy of a lover. 
 
 Never did intellectual wealth equal in degree 
 the boundless riches of Shakespeare's fancy. He 
 compelled all nature and all art, all that God had 
 revealed, and all that man had discovered, to con- 
 tribute materials to enrich his style and enforce 
 his thought ; so that the entire range of human 
 knowledge must be laid under contribution to il- 
 lustrate his writings. This inexhaustible mine of 
 fancy, furnishing metaphor, comparison, illustra- 
 tion, impersonation, in ceaseless alternation, often 
 intermingled, so that the one cannot be severed 
 from the other, although the combination is clear- 
 ly seen and leaves a vivid impression upon the 
 mind, is the great distinctive intellectual trait of 
 Shakespeare's style. In his use of simile, im- 
 agery, and impersonation, he exhibits a power to 
 which that of any other poet in this respect can- 
 not be compared, even in the way of derogation ; 
 for it is not only superior to, but unlike, that which 
 we find in any other. He very rarely institutes a 
 formal comparison, — rarely uses the word " like," 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 253 
 
 which is so common with other poets. Nor does 
 the condensation of simile called metaphor, or 
 the attribution of will called impersonation, fur- 
 nish a medium quite sufficient for his fancy. He 
 does not set off his thought and his image against 
 each other, or formally illustrate one by the other. 
 He fuses a thought or a feeling and an image to- 
 gether. They are not even twins, but a single 
 birth ; thought giving soul to image, and image 
 embodying thought. When Milton, in a passage 
 of justly celebrated beauty, would exhibit the 
 bashfulness of a modest, new-made wife, he makes 
 Adam say, 
 
 " To the nuptial bower 
 I led her blushing like the morn." 
 
 But Shakespeare makes Posthumus say that in 
 like circumstances Imogen showed 
 
 *' A pudency so rosy the sweet sight on 't 
 Might well have warmed old Saturn." 
 
 In the epic poet there are two ideas, not only dis- 
 tinct, but severed. The dramatist presents one 
 which suggests two. Again, Milton, in a passage 
 yet more beautiful than the last quoted from him, 
 describing the dawn, says, 
 
 " Now Morn, her rosy steps i' th' eastern clime 
 Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl." 
 
 This is nearer, especially in the rosy steps ; but 
 still there is a severance between morn and the 
 eastern clime, between morn and the orient pearl. 
 
254 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 Shakespeare, describing the same event, says, in 
 his compact way, 
 
 " Morn, in russet mantle clad, 
 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." 
 
 This is the production of no acquired art, but of 
 an inborn faculty. Shakespeare displayed the 
 fulness of its strength in his earliest plays. Who 
 has not already thought of Romeo's announce- 
 ment of the dawn, — 
 
 " Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-top " .'* 
 
 But this is mere description of natural phenom- 
 ena. Shakespeare's peculiar power in this respect 
 is the vividness with which his fancy illustrates 
 thought, action, and emotion. The highest exer- 
 cise of that faculty appears in the following pas- 
 sage, which has never been surpassed in the 
 grandeur of its imagery or the felicity of its illus- 
 tration. Queen Margaret, taunting York after 
 the battle of Sandal Castle with his disappointed 
 ambition, says, 
 
 *' Come, make him stand upon this mole-hill here 
 That raught at mountains with outstretched arms, 
 Yet parted but the shadow with his hand." 
 
 Yet this passage is from a speech in The True 
 Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, which was 
 written when Shakespeare was but about twenty- 
 five years of age, and an unknown dramatist, work- 
 ing in company with others. He transferred the 
 speech bodily to his Third Part of King Henry 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 255 
 
 the Sixth. It is of his writing. Its mere excel- 
 lence does not alone stamp it as his ; but no other 
 poet has made such a use of imagery. 
 
 It has been already remarked, that the richness 
 of Shakespeare's style is due in great measure 
 to the variety of his allusions and the extended 
 knowledge from which he draws his illustrations. 
 His knowledge of man and of nature was chiefly 
 intuitive, although it was developed and perfected 
 by observation and reflection. But so intimate 
 is the acquaintance which he exhibits with certain 
 arts and occupations, and certain departments of 
 learning, that on this hypotheses have been framed, 
 and supported by argument, that he passed some 
 of his early years in the professional acquirement 
 of the knowledge which he afterward put so dex- 
 terously to use. A dangerous foundation for such 
 a supposition in regard to any author of quick 
 observation and a lively fancy, — most dangerous 
 with regard to Shakespeare. Johnson's dictum, 
 that Nature gives no man knowledge, is, to say 
 the least, too general in its terms to be true in all 
 its bearings. It is hardly less safe to limit the 
 power of genius in expressing emotions by the 
 bounds of individual experience, than to assume 
 that it cannot describe actual occurrences which 
 it has not witnessed, or places which it has not 
 seen. And although it is clear that genius can- 
 not furnish its possessor with knowledge of facts, 
 or with technical knowledge, men whose faculties 
 
256 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 do not rise to the plane of genius may, by powers 
 of keen observation, quick perception, retentive 
 memory, and ready combination, acquire in the or- 
 dinary intercourse of Hfe, without special study, a 
 technical knowledge which, up to a certain point, 
 shall be real, and, dexterously deployed, seem 
 thorough. It is not derogatory to Shakespeare's 
 genius, but rather the reverse, to believe that in 
 his works much of what appears to be the fruit 
 of special knowledge was acquired in this man- 
 ner. Of all men known to the history of litera- 
 ture, he seems to have had the most subtle and 
 sensitive intellectual apprehension. What he cas- 
 ually heard, and what he saw by side glances, he 
 seems to have understood by intuition, and to 
 have made thenceforth a part of his intellectual 
 resources. The very management of the ship in 
 The Tempest, which satisfies naval critics, may 
 have been the fruit either of casual observation, 
 or of what men of letters call " cram," rapidly as- 
 similated by his genius. 
 
 As to book knowledge it is certain that, although 
 he was not what scholars call a scholar, he had as 
 much learning as he had occasion to use, or even 
 more. His plays and poems teem with evidence 
 that he devoured books, and that he assimilated 
 what he read with marvellous celerity and com- 
 pleteness. Even when we can trace in his po- 
 etry the very passages of the authors to whom he 
 was indebted, they reappear from the mysterious 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 257 
 
 recesses of his brain transmuted and glorified. 
 When we see what it was that he absorbed, and 
 how he reproduced it, we are reminded of Ariel's 
 song : — 
 
 " Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 
 Of his bones are coral made ; 
 Those are pearls that were his eyes ; 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea change 
 Into something rich and strange." 
 
 His early plays are full of allusions to ancient 
 classic literature, showing no great learning in- 
 deed, but a mind fresh from academic studies 
 such as they were. But he soon discontinued 
 this school-boyish habit. The fulness of his brain 
 with his own thoughts left no room for second- 
 hand lumber. He imbibed the spirit of Greek 
 and Roman history, through whatever channel he 
 received it, although he sometimes violated chro- 
 nology and costume to the annoyance of some 
 critics hardly worthy to have been his readers. 
 Where, even in Plutarch's pages, are the aristo- 
 cratic republican tone and the tough muscularity 
 of mind which characterized the Romans so em- 
 bodied as in Shakespeare's Roman plays } Where, 
 even in Homer's song, the subtle wisdom of the 
 crafty Ulysses, the sullen selfishness and con- 
 scious martial might of broad Achilles, the blun- 
 dering courage of thick-headed Ajax, or the 
 mingled gallantry and foppery of Paris, so vividly 
 portrayed as in Troilus and Cressida? What 
 
258 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS, 
 
 matter is it that he committed such an error in 
 costume as to make Aufidius say to Coriolanus, 
 that he joyed more at welcoming him a friend and 
 ally of Corioli, than when he first saw his wedded 
 mistress bestride his threshold, — the fact having 
 been that the newly married wife of the Latin race 
 was carefully lifted over the threshold on her first 
 entrance to her husband's house ? What, that he 
 made Hector cite Aristotle, who lived eight hun- 
 dred years after the siege of Troy ? He did not 
 care ; nor did his hearers ; and why should we 
 be troubled ? Must our little learning so cripple 
 our imagination ? Shakespeare's genius could not 
 have taught him the relations which Greek litera- 
 ture bore to that of Rome ; but he having ac- 
 quired that knowledge, his intuitive perception of 
 higher relations taught him what function the 
 Greek language would perform for an accom- 
 plished Roman orator, statesman, and philoso- 
 pher ; and his dramatic imagination of the scene 
 when Caesar fell into a fit after having refused the 
 crown, showed him Cicero speaking Greek, so 
 that "those that understood him smiled at one 
 another and shook their heads." But when, in 
 Henry the Fifth, the Bishop of Exeter makes his 
 comparison of government to the subordination 
 and harmony of parts in music, — 
 
 " For government, though high and low and lower 
 Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, 
 Congruing in a full and natural close 
 Like music," — 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 25Q 
 
 it were more than superfluous to seek, as some 
 have sought, in Cicero De Repiiblica, the origin of 
 this simile ; for that book was lost to Hterature, and 
 unknown except by name, until Angelo Mai dis- 
 covered it upon a palimpsest in the Vatican, and 
 gave it to the world in 1822. Cicero very proba- 
 bly borrowed the fancy from Plato ; but it was not 
 Shakespeare's way to go so far for that which lay 
 near at hand. Music, and particularly vocal part- 
 music, was much cultivated by our forefathers in 
 Shakespeare's time ; and he seems to have been a 
 proficient in the art. The comparison is one that 
 might well occur to any thoughtful man who is 
 also a musician ; but it is not every such man who 
 would use it with so much aptness and make it 
 with so much beauty. 
 
 No less noticeable than this display of knowl- 
 edge, more or less recondite, yet no less easy to 
 understand, is Shakespeare's use in illustration of 
 natural phenomena which must have been beyond 
 his personal observation. Of all negative facts in 
 regard to his life, none perhaps is surer than that 
 he never was at sea ; yet in Henry the EightJi, de- 
 scribing the outburst of admiration and loyalty 
 of the multitude at sight of Anne Bullen, he says, 
 as if he had spent his life on shipboard, 
 
 " Such a noise arose 
 As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest ; 
 \ As loud, and to as many tunes." 
 
 We may be very sure that he made no special 
 
26o SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 study of natural phenomena ; and indeed no con- 
 dition of his Ufe seems surer than that it afforded 
 him neither time nor opportunity for such studies. 
 Yet in the following lines from his sixty-fourth 
 sonnet, an important geological fact serves him for 
 illustration : — 
 
 " When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 
 Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, 
 And the firm soil win of the watery main. 
 Increasing store with loss and loss with store " 
 
 Where and how and why had Shakespeare ob- 
 served a great operation of nature like this, which 
 takes many years to effect changes that are per- 
 ceptible ? Yet we may be sure that Shakespeare 
 had this knowledge in no miraculous way, though 
 his possession of it might be remarkable to the 
 many who did not possess it themselves. For we 
 find that his knowledge of that which he could 
 not learn of his own soul, which could teach him 
 everything with regard to man, but nothing with 
 regard to material nature, was limited to what he 
 had observed, and to the knowledge of his time, 
 even in the simplest matters. He knew that Cice- 
 ro would be likely to veil a sententious comment 
 upon an important political event in Greek ; he 
 knew that the shrouds of a ship howled dismally 
 in a tempest ; he even knew that a compensating 
 loss and gain are going on between the great 
 waters and the continents ; but he did not know 
 what every lad fit to enter college now knows, 
 and what it would seem that any intelligent man 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 26 1 
 
 who considered the subject must have discovered 
 for himself, that the sparks produced by flint and 
 steel are minute pieces of steel struck off and 
 heated to redness by friction. Like all his con- 
 temporaries, he supposed that the fire was in 
 the flint. Thersites says that Ajax's wit "lies as 
 coldly in him as fire in a flint, which will not 
 show without knocking." 
 
 But the limits of Shakespeare's knowledge did 
 not mark the scope of his genius, and his igno- 
 rance or his learning is of small account in esti- 
 mating the quaUty of his poetry, or the truth 
 and interest of his dramatic conceptions. Would 
 either of two passages from which lines have just 
 been quoted have been more impressive, if Aufid- 
 ius had spoken of his new-married wife being 
 lifted over his threshold, or if Shakespeare had 
 known that steel was burned by collision with 
 flint ? It matters little what naturalists and schol- 
 ars think of the material which Shakespeare used 
 for the illustration of his thought, and less whence 
 those materials were derived. Of no more impor- 
 tance is it that he has transferred thoughts from 
 forgotten wastes to his own blooming pages. 
 What matter that he has taken some from Lilly ? 
 It is he alone who makes those thoughts admired. 
 Those which he did not take, the world has quite 
 forgotten. The glory is not in the cloud, but in 
 the eternal light that falls upon the fleeting exha- 
 lation. Even in regard to the special knowledge 
 
262 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 which is most strikingly exhibited in Shakespeare's 
 writings, that of the law, of how little real impor- 
 tance is it to establish the bare fact that Shake- 
 speare was an attorney's clerk before he was an 
 actor. Suppose it proved, what have we learned ? 
 Nothing peculiar to Shakespeare, but merely 
 what was true of a great number of other young 
 men, his contemporaries. It has a naked mate- 
 rial relation to the other fact, that he uses legal 
 phrases oftener than any other dramatist or poet ; 
 but with his plastic power over those grotesque 
 and rugged forms of language it has naught to do 
 whatever. That was his inborn mastery. Legal 
 phrases did nothing for him ; but he did much for 
 them. Chance cast their uncouth forms around 
 him, and the golden overflow from the furnace of 
 his glowing thought fell upon them, enshielding 
 and glorifying them forever. The same fortune 
 might have befallen the lumber of any other craft ; 
 it did befall that of some others, — the difference 
 being one of quantity and not of kind. The cer- 
 tainty that Shakespeare had been bred in the law, 
 would it even help us to the knowledge of his 
 life, — of what he did for himself, thought for him- 
 self, — how he joyed, how he suffered, what he 
 was .'* No more would it help us to understand 
 his genius. 
 
 Whatever Shakespeare may have learned, he 
 did not learn his dramatic art, in which he had, 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 263 
 
 not only no instructor, but no model. By dramatic 
 art is not here meant the principles which guided 
 him in the construction of his plays. In that he 
 had teachers who were also his examples. The 
 form and the action of all his dramas, whether 
 comedies, histories, or tragedies, were determined 
 by laws over which he had, or at least exercised, 
 no control. At the time of his arrival in London 
 the English drama had attained a recognized, if 
 not an established form, which was not an imita- 
 tion of an elder type or the invention of an indi- 
 vidual, but an outgrowth of the national charac- 
 ter. As the physical traits and moral qualities of 
 men are determined by those of their forefathers, 
 and the growth which produced the political insti- 
 tutions of a country upon which such institutions 
 have not been forcibly imposed can be traced 
 through its history, so the form, and in a certain 
 measure the spirit, of the English drama (in this 
 respect, as in all others, so unlike those of France 
 and Spain) were the result of centuries of sponta- 
 neous development. The English drama sprang 
 from English soil* Shakespeare accepted this 
 form with entire acquiescence, and during the 
 whole of his career confined the exercise of ge- 
 nius within its limitations. Not only was the 
 form of plays thus determined, but the manner of 
 writing them. It was the settled practice of the 
 dramatic writers of that day, most of whom were 
 
 * See the Account of the English Drama, &c., pp. 315, et seq. 
 
264 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 connected with one theatre or another, either as 
 actors or retained playwrights, to take plots wher- 
 ever they could find them, — from popular novels, 
 old plays, or well-known passages of history, — and 
 to work these up as quickly as possible into an ef- 
 fective play, which, by its story and its characters, 
 would interest the public. Preference was given 
 to the plots of old plays or the stories of novels 
 which already had a hold upon popular favor. In 
 those days the theatre supplied in a great meas- 
 ure, even to those who could read, the place now 
 filled by literature. This we know from the fact 
 that readers and books were then comparatively 
 scarce ; but it also appears from the very con- 
 struction of the plays of that period. If the sto- 
 ry of the play were fictitious, the people wished 
 to enjoy the story, as well as the presentation of 
 the characters. They were not bound up, as we 
 are, in sentiment, character, style, and stage effect. 
 They liked to have a complete narration of all the 
 events of the story, without reference to dramatic 
 cHmax ; and therefore, after that climax had been 
 reached, they did not resent, as we do, a continu- 
 ation of the action. They were even pleased with 
 a relation by some of the characters of the occur- 
 rence of events not represented, but connected 
 with the story. Thus, for instance, the dramatic 
 interest of Hamlet ceases with the death of the 
 prince, when our managers very properly drop the 
 curtain ; but the audiences of Shakespeare's day 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 265 
 
 liked to have Fortinbras and the English ambas- 
 sadors come in and tell the fate of Rosencranz 
 and Guildenstern, and to hear that Hamlet would 
 be buried in princely style and with a funeral ora- 
 tion by Horatio. So also, as few could then read 
 the history of their own country, they liked to see 
 history, to have it "lively presented" to them 
 upon the stage. They asked in these historical 
 entertainments for the spirit and the essential 
 facts and leading characters of the period repre- 
 sented, rather than details or strict chronological 
 accuracy. They seem to have been quite indif- 
 ferent as to a gradual culmination of the action ; 
 although, of course, it was natural to expect that 
 the end of the play should coincide with the ac- 
 complishment or defeat of some great purpose. 
 To supply this v/ant, and guided only by these 
 demands, Shakespeare wrote his Histories. In- 
 deed, almost every play that bears his name bears 
 also evidence of his conformity to the require- 
 ments of the audience for which he wrote, as well 
 as to the practices of contemporary playwrights. 
 
 To another well-known custom of his day, that 
 of engaging two or more writers upon one play, 
 he also conformed. He did so certainly at the 
 beginning and the end, if not occasionally during 
 the whole of his career.* He rewrote old plays, 
 
 * See the Introduction to the Taming of the Shre^v, Titus An- 
 drottiacs, Romeo and Juliet, and Essay on Henry the Sixth, in the 
 author's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 12 
 
266 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 got his plots out of popular novels, and even took 
 English history just as he found it in the Chron- 
 icles, and Greek or Roman history just as it was 
 told in North's Plutarch, appropriating the very 
 language of the chronicler or the translator, — as 
 sometimes he did that of an old playwright, with a 
 difference, — but what a difference ! — and wrote in 
 company or alone, just as best suited the theatre's 
 purpose and his own convenience. It is worth 
 while to bring to mind these well-established facts 
 in regard to Shakespeare's dramatic writing, be- 
 cause it is the fashion of some critics to regard him 
 as writing, like Sophocles or Euripides, to a listen- 
 ing nation, conscious that its fame was partly in- 
 volved in his productions, the judgment of which 
 was worthy of the grave consideration of gravest 
 men, and because much superfine subtlety and in- 
 genuity have been exhibited in tracing his pur- 
 poses and in providing him with psychological the- 
 ories, according to which he gave certain traits to 
 certain personages, and led them through such and 
 such experience, when in fact he was but following 
 the old play or the old story to which he had gone 
 for the framework or the material of his drama. 
 Even his historical pieces, which all the evidence 
 shows were written at haphazard as far as re- 
 gards their order, or at least only with the public 
 taste in view, have been solemnly resolved into 
 tetralogies and cycles, with a central thought and 
 a ruling purpose, as if Shakespeare meant in writ- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 267 
 
 ing them to give the world a philosophy of his- 
 tory. This indeed can be extracted from them 
 by the thoughtful reader for himself; but only be- 
 cause they are an idealized picture in little of real 
 life. And what wonderful psychological knowl- 
 edge has one of Shakespeare's later critics found 
 in the bringing Romeo upon the scene enamored 
 of Rosaline, to have this passion supplanted by the 
 purer and tenderer one for Juliet ! which, on the 
 contrary, critics of the last century regarded as a 
 great fault in the amorous Veronese's character. 
 But the truth which these critics did not know is, 
 that in this transfer of affection Shakespeare mere- 
 ly followed the novel and the poem to which he 
 went for his plot. There he found the incident of 
 Romeo's earlier love ; there, too, he found the Old 
 Nurse, and even her praise of Paris to Juliet, and 
 her underrating of Romeo after his banishment, 
 with her counsel to the second marriage ; all of 
 which have been lauded as exquisite and subtly 
 drawn traits of nature. Which, again, indeed they 
 are ; and Shakespeare could doubtless have in- 
 vented them : but the truth is that he found them. 
 So in the tale which he dramatized and called 
 Othello he found lago, with his craft and his spon- 
 taneous and almost superfluous fiendishness, the 
 reason and the right of which have been the occa- 
 sion of so much profound psychological discussion. 
 There is ground for believing the sudden changes 
 in the feelings of lovers and tyrants in some of 
 
268 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 Shakespeare's plays, and such unaccountable acts, 
 for instance, as Valentine's willingness to resign 
 his mistress to Proteus, would be accounted for, 
 though perhaps not explained, by the discovery of 
 some lost play or novel. In plays thus written as 
 daily labor by a man whose sole object in writing 
 was to please a promiscuous audience, — by a play- 
 wright who worked merely as one of a company 
 or partnership, his part of the business being to 
 furnish words for others to speak, who composed 
 sometimes in joint authorship, and who worked 
 over the old material which lay nearest to his hand 
 and was best suited to his money-making purpose, 
 always saving time and trouble as much as pos- 
 sible, — in such plays, so produced, what folly to 
 seek, as some have sought, a central thought, a 
 great psychological motive ! Shakespeare, like all 
 men of creative genius, "builded better than he 
 knew," knowing right well, however, what, though 
 not how greatly, he was building. But although 
 genius destined to empire may seek asses and find 
 a crown, genius cannot have a purpose great or 
 small unconsciously. For will is the soul of pur- 
 pose ; and from all that we know of Shakespeare 
 and his circumstances, and all that can be ex- 
 tracted from his plays without torture, we may be 
 sure that the great central thoughts and inner 
 motives which have been sought out for his va- 
 rious dramas by critics of the German school, 
 could he but come back and hear them, would 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 269 
 
 excite only his smiling wonder. In the mere con- 
 struction of his dramas, although Shakespeare 
 sometimes displays great skill, not only in the 
 working of the plot, but in the manner in which 
 he conformed his genius to the taste and the 
 dramatic fashions of his day, he exhibits nowhere 
 a conformity to principles of art unknown before 
 his era. 
 
 Every thoughtful reader of Shakespeare must 
 see that his pecuHar power as a dramatist lies in 
 his treatment of character. The interest which 
 distinguishes his plays, as plays, from all others, 
 is that which centres in the personages, in their 
 expressions of thought and emotion, and in their 
 motives and modes of action. This was his dra- 
 matic art, and this it was in which he had neither 
 teacher nor model. For at the time when he began 
 to write, character, properly so called, was almost, 
 if not quite, unknown either to English literature 
 or even to that of the Latin races. In English 
 dramatic literature Marlowe alone had attempted 
 character, but in a style extremely coarse and 
 rudimentary. The Italian and French novelists 
 who preceded Shakespeare, including even Boc- 
 caccio himself, interest by mere story, by incident, 
 and sentiment. Their personages have no char- 
 acter. They are indeed of different kinds, good 
 and bad, lovers, tyrants, intriguers, clowns, and 
 gentlemen, of whom some are grave and others 
 merry. But they are mere human formulas, not 
 either types or individuals. 
 
2/0 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 It has been much disputed whether Shake- 
 speare's personages are types or individuals. 
 They are both. Those which are of his own 
 creation are type individuals. So real are they 
 in their individuality, so sharply outlined and 
 completely constructed, that the men and women 
 that we meet seem but shadows compared with 
 them ; and yet each one of them is so purged 
 of the accidental and non-essential as to be- 
 come typical, ideal. He made them so by unit- 
 ing and harmonizing in them a variety of traits, 
 all subordinated to, yet not overwhelmed by, one 
 central, dominating trait, and by so modifying 
 and coloring the manifestation of this trait that 
 of itself it has individuality. Othello and Leon- 
 tes are both jealous, and unreasonable in their 
 jealousy, as all the jealous are. But the men 
 are almost as unlike as Lear and Hamlet ; and 
 their jealousy differs almost as much as the fierce 
 madness of the old king from the young prince's 
 weak intellectual disorder. lachimo and lago 
 are both villains, who would pitilessly ruin a 
 wife's reputation for their selfish ends ; but the 
 former is a rude and simple villain, who seems to 
 lack the moral sense ; the latter, one who has a 
 keen intellectual perception of that moral beauty 
 which he neither possesses nor heartily admires. 
 Shakespeare's personages are thoroughly human, 
 and therefore not embodiments of single traits or 
 simple impulses, but complicated machines ; and 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 271 
 
 the higher their type, the more complex their or- 
 ganization. He combines in one individual and 
 harmonizes qualities apparently incongruous, his 
 genius revealing to him their affinities. Thus 
 Angelo is no mere hypocrite, but really a precis- 
 ian. He is sincere in his austerity, and has pride, 
 or rather an inordinate secretly enjoyed vanity, in 
 his power to restrain his strong passions in the 
 face of weak temptation. But he is intensely 
 selfish, as most precisians are, and there comes a 
 time when his passions and a great temptation 
 join their forces. Before these his artificial re- 
 straint gives way, and he consciously sets out 
 upon a course of monstrous crime, which he yet 
 shrinks from whispering in the solitude of his 
 own chamber. lago, another hypocrite, on the 
 contrary, dallies with his villany, places it in vari- 
 ous lights, and stands off, smiling admiration upon 
 the honest fellow who is working death and ruin. 
 Yet lago was a good soldier and a brave man, 
 and, had he been promoted instead of Cassio, 
 would have made the better Heutenant to Othello, 
 for the very lack of a certain weak amiability 
 which beset Cassio off the battle-field. His vic- 
 tim, poor Othello, who in his relations toward 
 women is one of the most delicate and sensitive 
 of men, in the bitterness of his soul pays his 
 wife's own maid as he leaves the former's bed- 
 chamber ; not either to reward or to offend Emilia, 
 but that he may torment his own soul by carrying 
 
2/2 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 out his supposition to its most revolting conse- 
 quences. 
 
 It is this complication of motive which causes 
 the characters of Shakespeare's personages to be 
 read differently by different people. This variety 
 of opinion upon them, within certain wide and 
 well-determined limits, is evidence of the truthful- 
 ness of the characters. Not only does their com- 
 plex organization give opportunity for a different 
 appreciation of their working, but, as in real life, 
 the character, nay, the very age, of those who pass 
 judgment upon them is an element of their repu- 
 tation. Not only will two men of equal natural 
 capacity, and equally thoughtful, form different 
 opinions of them ; but the judgment of the same 
 man will be modified by his experience. Unlike 
 the personages of the world around us, some of 
 whom pass from our sight while others come for- 
 ward, and all change with the lapse of time, those 
 of Shakespeare's microcosm, by the conditions of 
 their existence, remain the same. But our view of 
 them is enlarged and modified by advancing years. 
 As we grow older, we look upon them from a higher 
 point, and the horizon of our sympathy broadens. 
 We lose little and we gain much. For manhood's 
 eye, ranging over its wider scope, finds that the 
 eminences which were the boy's bounds of admira- 
 tion do not pass out of sight, but become parts of 
 a grander and more varied prospect, while dis- 
 tance, in diminishing their importance, casts upon 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 273 
 
 them the tender light of that happy memory 
 which ever Hngers upon pure and early pleasures. 
 But, as in real life again, Shakespeare's charac- 
 ters, during their mimic existence, depend upon 
 and develop each the other. We see how they are 
 mutually worked upon and moulded. And in this 
 interdependence and reciprocal influence, more 
 than in mere structure of plot, consists the unity 
 of Shakespeare's plays as organic wholes. His 
 personages are not statuesque, with sharp, un- 
 changing outlines. His genius was not severe 
 and statuesque, as for instance Dante's was. His 
 men and women are notably flexile ; and not only 
 so, but they seem to have that quality of flesh 
 and blood which unites changeableness with iden- 
 tity, — as a man's substance changes, and his 
 soul grows older, year by year, and yet he is the 
 same person. It is not only the story in Shake- 
 speare's dramas which makes progress, but the 
 characters of the personages. Lear, Romeo, Mac- 
 beth, Othello, are, as the phrase is, not the same 
 men at the end of the play as at the beginning. 
 Their experience has modified their characters. 
 Yet they are the same, though qiianto nmtatiis ! 
 This it is which exhibits Shakespeare's supreme 
 peculiar power. What he did, for instance, for 
 lago, was not to make him a villain, but to pro- 
 vide the ready-made villain with a soul. He 
 worked out in poetry a great psychological prob- 
 lem. Given such and such hellish deeds, what 
 
 12 * ^ 
 
274 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 kind of a man is he who does them ? and how 
 does he think, and feel, and act ? So as to the 
 incident of Romeo's sudden transfer of his love 
 from Rosaline to Juliet ; Shakespeare found that 
 in the old story. But it was he who, in using that 
 incident and in working out the lover's character, 
 drew a distinction not indicated in the story, and 
 which until then had, I believe, not been drawn 
 in any work of imagination, and made Romeo's 
 first love that fierce desire for possession into 
 which sometimes the whole strength of a man's 
 nature is diverted, while his second is that union 
 of passion, tenderness, respect, and self-devotion 
 which is the highest type of love between the 
 sexes. Shakespeare indicates the nature of this 
 distinction in the quaint phrase of the chorus at 
 the end of the first act. 
 
 " Now old desire doth in his death -bed lie, 
 And young affection gapes to be his heir." 
 
 The same distinction is drawn between the two 
 loves of the Duke in Twelfth Night, the earlier of 
 which was love at first sight. He says of his first 
 meeting with Olivia, 
 
 " That instant was I turned into a hart ; 
 And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, 
 E'er since pursue me." 
 
 And when he finds his mistress has bestowed 
 upon Cesario the love she refused to him, he turns 
 upon her in wrath, and threatens the object of her 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 275 
 
 affection. Romeo is enamored of Rosaline, as 
 Orsino is of Olivia ; so he is enamored of Juliet ; 
 but in the first passion of neither is there any ele- 
 ment of self-devotion. It does not fill, although it 
 usurps, his entire nature ; and therefore it is easily- 
 driven out by one which has all its strength, and 
 what it has not, — completeness. This distinction 
 is much more carefully made in Twelfth Night 
 than in Romeo and yidiet ; partly because of the 
 different courses of the two plots, but partly also 
 because the comedy was the fruit of maturer 
 powers than those which produced the tragedy. 
 
 Shakespeare made souls to his characters : he 
 did not give them his own. It is now the most 
 commonly recognized truth in regard to him, that 
 he is a self-oblivious poet. But this is not true of 
 him without important qualification. In his son- 
 nets, whether they were written in his own person 
 or another's, he was not oblivious of self On 
 the contrary, his own thoughts, his own feelings, 
 constantly appear. He pours out his own woes 
 with a freedom in which he equals, but with a 
 manliness in which he far surpasses, Byron. It is 
 as a dramatist that he is self-oblivious ; and he is 
 so to a degree too absolute, it would seem, for the 
 ever-conscious people of the world to apprehend. 
 Else we should not hear, as we continually do 
 hear, an opinion or a course of conduct sustained 
 with an air of triumph by the citation of Shake- 
 speare's opinion in its favor. For there is hardly 
 
2/6 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 a course of conduct or an opinion upon a moral 
 question which cannot be thus supported. Shake- 
 speare disappeared in his personages ; and it is 
 they who speak, and not their creator. The value, 
 nay, the very meaning, of what his creatures 
 say, must be measured by their characters and 
 the circumstances under which it is spoken. It 
 is not William Shakespeare who says, even in 
 jest, that a perfect woman is fit only "to suc- 
 kle fools and chronicle small beer," — it is that 
 coarse, jeering villain, lago. Nor is it he who 
 says that "to be slow in words is woman's only 
 virtue," — it is a cynical clown called Launce. It 
 was not Shakespeare who called the first Tudor 
 "shallow Richmond." We may be sure that no 
 one knew better than he that the man who be- 
 came Henry the Seventh was deep, prudent, and 
 far-seeing, although not greatly wise. It was 
 Richmond's enemy, Richard, who said that ; and 
 said it not to himself, but to one of his own fol- 
 lowers. Let no one who delights in rich gar- 
 ments complacently think that Shakespeare com- 
 mends a habit as costly as the purse can buy. 
 That advice was given by a shrewd old courtier, 
 at a time when sumptuous apparel was the recog- 
 nized sign of a certain social standing. 
 
 Attempts have been made, on the one hand, to 
 show that Shakespeare was an infidel, and, on the 
 other, that he was a Roman Catholic. Both might 
 have been equally successful. A Bishop has, by 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 277 
 
 ingenious and elaborate collation of passages of 
 the player's works, set forth certain religious prin- 
 ciples and sentiments derived from the Bible as 
 Shakespeare's. But by a like process just the 
 opposite might have been shown with equal cer- 
 tainty. In this regard, as in all others, what 
 Shakespeare wrote was the outgrowth of charac- 
 ter and circumstance. Religious subjects could 
 not be treated with more solemnity than by some 
 of his personages, as the reader of Henry the 
 Eighth, Richard the Second^ and Measure for Meas- 
 itre will remember ; nor, on the other hand, could 
 the most imposing dogmas of divinity be touched 
 with more daring or more disrespectful hands 
 than are laid upon them in King Henry the 
 Fourth, Cymbeline, Macbeth, and Much ado about 
 Nothing. 
 
 It is thus upon every question. Because a 
 usurper, wishing to build up in himself a belief 
 that he rules by the grace of God, says, 
 
 " There 's such divinity doth hedge a king 
 That treason can but peep to what it would, 
 Acts little of his will," 
 
 it no more follows that Shakespeare believed in 
 the absolute and divine right of kings, than, be- 
 cause one of Jack Cade's followers lays it down 
 that the command, labor in thy vocation "is as 
 much to say as let the magistrates be laboring 
 men, and therefore should we be magistrates," 
 it follows that he was a radical democrat. For 
 
278 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 he made both the usurper and the demagogue. 
 Shakespeare's entire absorption in his personages, 
 and his substitution of their consciousness for his 
 own, are perhaps most remarkable in Antony and 
 Cleopatra, in which the passion of the queen for 
 her new lover is manifested with a feminine con- 
 sciousness of sex which approaches the miracu- 
 lous. In the fourth scene of the second act of this 
 play Cleopatra addresses to a messenger from Italy 
 a few words which, although but an eager demand 
 for his news, are of such intense sexuality that in 
 these days the passage, although really harmless, 
 is not quite quotable out of its setting. Her sex 
 and that of him of whom she is enamored are con- 
 stantly in this woman's mind and on her tongue. 
 And here I will remark that in this tragedy there 
 is not one worthy character ; which is evidently 
 by the author's design. Shakespeare's dramatic 
 instinct kept even Octavia more out of sight than 
 she is in the story which he followed, because he 
 knew that otherwise Cleopatra might become des- 
 picable, and so lose all her interest. He meant 
 that we, no less than Antony, should abandon our- 
 selves entirely to the fascinations of the serpent of 
 old Nile, and that we should sympathize with his 
 wanton queen in her sneer at " the married wo- 
 man," and resent her " still conclusion." I confess 
 that, when I read Antony and Cleopatra, I look with 
 cold aversion upon Octavia, — Octavia, beautiful, 
 wronged, and noble. In her uneasy jealousy of 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 270 
 
 her married rival Cleopatra inquires minutely as 
 
 to her personal traits, and among other questions 
 
 asks, " Is she shrill-tongued or low ? " In this 
 
 query Shakespeare either indicates a very subtle 
 
 knowledge on the part of Cleopatra, or uses her 
 
 to express one of his own strong personal tastes. 
 
 For a sweet voice, one of woman's chiefest charms, 
 
 is yet one of the last she thinks of enumerating 
 
 either in her own attractions or another's. But 
 
 Shakespeare makes Coriolanus meet his wife with 
 
 the greeting, " My gracious silence ! " and we all 
 
 remember poor broken-hearted Lear sobbing over 
 
 his dead Cordelia, 
 
 " Her voice was ever soft, 
 Gentle, and low, — an excellent thing in woman." 
 
 Indeed, from all of Shakespeare's plays we can 
 gather little more as to his personal tastes than 
 that he had a great aversion to high voices, false 
 hair, and painted cheeks in women. Yet this is 
 an indication, not of his individuality, but of his 
 manhood. 
 
 It would seem as if in all Shakespeare's thickly 
 peopled plays we might at least find one charac- 
 ter which he meant should represent his own. 
 But the longer and the closer our study of those 
 plays, the more clearly it appears that of all his 
 creatures none think his thoughts or express his 
 preferences, except his fools. And perhaps the 
 Fool in Ki7ig Lear more nearly represents Shake- 
 speare's tone of mind and view of life than any 
 
28o SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 other of his personages. All Shakespeare's fools 
 are wise ; but this one has wisdom enough to 
 teach prudence to men of the world, and to set up 
 a college of philosophers. A tinge of sadness, 
 almost of melancholy, tempers all the sallies of 
 his wit. He is as true as Kent and as tender as 
 Cordelia. Comparison to him were a compliment 
 to any other man than Shakespeare. His use 
 of the Jester exhibits in a striking manner two 
 marked traits of Shakespeare's method ; one, the 
 ease with w^hich he adapted himself to circum- 
 stances and bent his mighty genius to the little 
 needs of his profession ; the other, the profusion 
 with which he poured out his thoughts and the 
 impartiality with which he bestowed his labor. 
 He seems never to have husbanded his resources, 
 or thought any work beneath his dignity. It is 
 a poor workman who complains of his tools ; and 
 Shakespeare, finding the fool in possession of an 
 established place upon the stage, and thus essential 
 to the popularity of his plays with a mixed audi- 
 ence, instead of rebelling against or fretting at his 
 necessity, made him the vehicle of his sentiment, 
 his fancy, his practical wisdom, and even of his 
 pathos. That modification of the Jester called 
 the Clown appears even in Hamlet, although not 
 until the last act. We may not unreasonably 
 suppose that, had Shakespeare's motive in writing 
 his plays been to develop a "central thought," 
 he would have composed such a play as Hamlet 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 28 1 
 
 without clowns. But the new tragedy comes to 
 be talked over in the green-room, and Burbadge 
 says : " Why, Master Shakespeare, this is an ex- 
 cellent play, — a right masterful tragedy. But 
 methinks that some of our people will not know 
 what your prince would be about ; and moreover, 
 although the play be somewhat overlong, there is 
 no part for the Clown. People when they come 
 to the Black-friars expect to see Kempe or Armin, 
 above all them that stand in the yard ; and I 
 need not tell so thrifty a fellow as thou art, that 
 pence count in the long run as well as shillings." 
 And old Philip Henslow, if he happen to be pres- 
 ent, says : " Right, Master Burbadge, I put out lit- 
 tle money on a play that hath in it neither Clown 
 nor Jester." Then Shakespeare takes his manu- 
 script home again, and adds the Grave-diggers ; 
 working them in without remorse and with little 
 trouble. Thus it was that Shakespeare labored. 
 In the mere construction of his plays, although 
 he sometimes exhibited great skill, as for instance 
 in The Tempest, Othello, and The Merchant of 
 Venice, he neither conformed to nor elaborated 
 any principles of art not known before he entered 
 upon his career. 
 
 Shakespeare has minor personages, but no 
 slighted characters. They all have individuality, 
 and he will waste on a messenger a sentiment or 
 a simile that would grace a hero's tongue or add 
 dignity to a royal proclamation. The pcrsonnage 
 
282 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 prostatique of the pseudo classic French stage has 
 no place in Shakespeare's drama. This complete- 
 ness of his minor characters is the more remark- 
 able, because he has whole scenes which were 
 manifestly written merely to meet the exigencies 
 of stage management. Such for instance is the 
 second scene of the third act of OtJiello. It con- 
 sists of but six lines, and merely gives a glimpse of 
 Othello as he goes to walk upon the works. But 
 it separates two others, in both of which Cassio 
 appears, at the end of the first and the beginning 
 of the second ; and it tells us that lago is to meet 
 Othello upon the works, from which they after- 
 ward enter together, the latter already made a 
 little sensitive upon the subject of his lieutenant's 
 nearness to his wife. And in The Merry Wives 
 of Windsor the first scene of the fourth act, in 
 which Sir Hugh Evans plays pedagogue to Wil- 
 liam Page, has nothing whatever to do with the 
 plot, but it serves to separate the scene in which 
 Falstaff receives his second invitation from that 
 which exhibits the entertainment to which he is 
 invited. These are mere contrivances to preserve 
 the appearance of probability in action, which, 
 when it has its formal name, is called the unity of 
 time and place. It would have been well, for in- 
 stance, in this respect, if a scene could have been 
 thrown in between the first and second of the 
 first act of AlVs Well that Ends Welly which pre- 
 sent one of the most striking examples of Shake- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 283 
 
 speare's disregard of that unity. For although 
 one is at Rousillon and the other at Paris, Ber- 
 tram and Parolles appear in both; the latter's 
 entrance before the King in his palace being sep- 
 arated by only seven short speeches from his exit 
 at Rousillon to accompany Bertram on his jour- 
 ney. But of how small importance is such dis- 
 crepancy ! No dramatic interest is broken by it ; 
 no essential propriety violated. It would be open 
 to no objection in a story ; and in regard to their 
 construction English plays are only acted stories. 
 But in fact Shakespeare, as we have just seen, was 
 put to shifts in common with the merest journey- 
 man playwright that ever wrote to-day to get him 
 bread to-morrow. Yet these straits only minis- 
 tered occasion to his genius. He went to his 
 work like a faithful servant ; but he did it like a 
 king. The very superfluous scene in TJie Meriy 
 Wives of Windsor, just cited, one of the least 
 important its author wrote, bears unmistakable 
 marks of his hand, and for its character and hu- 
 mor will always be read with pleasure. 
 
 Hardly less remarkable than Shakespeare's vig- 
 orous and vivid style of dramatic portraiture are 
 the range of his subjects and the variety of his 
 characters. He left no department of his art un- 
 tried, and sounded the dramatic lyre from its low- 
 est note to the top of its compass. The same 
 hand that struck from it the woes of Lear and 
 the troubled harmonies of Hamlet's soul drew 
 
284 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 forth also its most fantastic strains, and left us in 
 The Comedy of Errors a farce equally extravagant 
 and jocular. No other writer has so run through 
 the scale of humanity. In this respect it is safe 
 to say that Shakespeare will never be surpassed, 
 because he left no important type of character 
 untouched. From Hamlet to Abhorson, from 
 Imogen to Mistress Quickly, what a descent ! 
 Yet between these extremes the full gradation is 
 maintained. Nay, the lower extreme is passed. 
 Caliban bridges the gap between the human crea- 
 ture and the brute ; and Crab stands upon the 
 other side, with cur-like thanklessness for a char- 
 acter as sharply drawn as his master's. 
 
 Whence did Shakespeare draw the characters of 
 such a multitude of various and well-defined per- 
 sonages } From models t Did he, as some would 
 have it, keep watch upon the world around him, 
 and, seizing upon the individuals that suited his 
 purposes, put them into his dramas } Great paint- 
 ers have thus filled their canvases ; and drama- 
 tists of high rank have manifestly drawn their 
 characters from people whom they saw around 
 them. Hence it is that we find the same face 
 doing duty for like character in the works of paint- 
 ers from Raphael to Leech, so that we recognize 
 their pictures by traces of some lovely woman 
 or some strongly marked man whose traits have 
 seized upon their imaginations. Hence, that 
 throughout Beaumont and Fletcher's and Jon- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 285 
 
 son's plays, and much more in those of inferior 
 dramatists, the men and women who fulfil certain 
 functions, good or bad, have an unmistakable re- 
 semblance. But among Shakespeare's personages 
 there is not this familiar likeness. There is no 
 likeness whatever, except in the style of their por- 
 trayal. These are plainly from the same mint, but 
 do not, like those, seem to have been struck with 
 the same die. Gustave Dore is the only painter 
 who shows a similar fecundity. Had Shakespeare, 
 working as he did merely to make money, drawn 
 his characters from models, he surely must have 
 fallen into a habit which would have saved him 
 much labor and have satisfied his audience. He 
 would have had his stock of models ; and those, 
 worked into each new plot as they were needed, 
 speaking his fancy, his wisdom, his wit, and his hu- 
 mor, and dressed in different costume, would have 
 filled the eye and ear of his public. It is true that 
 he must have observed ; he was probably the most 
 observant of men, as well as the most reflective ; 
 and his works had of necessity the advantage of 
 his observation, as well as of his reflection and his 
 imagination. Nor did the greatness of his mind 
 absolve it from the law of development and pro- 
 gress common to humanity. Although wise in his 
 youth, — and his early plays show wisdom, — he 
 must, by the very exercise of his faculties and the 
 habit of introspection, have grown wiser as he 
 grew older. But if we may judge by the ruling 
 
286 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 sentiment of his plays, while he seems early to 
 have understood the world, he seems also to have 
 long retained the hope and trustfulness of youth. 
 When we consider that The Merry Wives of Wind- 
 sor. King Henry the Fifth, and Hamlet were writ- 
 ten within two years, we shall see that it is diffi- 
 cult, if not impossible, to mark his periods by sen- 
 timent, choice of subject, or manner of treatment. 
 It is only by his literary or external style that we 
 trace his passage from youth to maturity. Other- 
 wise Shakespeare seems to have had moods, not 
 periods. Age, too, although it brings more ac- 
 quaintance with mankind, does not necessarily 
 bring better knowledge of human nature. That 
 knowledge is not an aggregation, but a growth ; its 
 germ is born with him who has it, and it spreads 
 from within. Individuals are mere opportunities 
 for its development, occasions for its manifesta- 
 tion. That Shakespeare availed himself of all 
 such opportunities and occasions, that he tested 
 his judgments by experiment and his concep- 
 tions by comparison, that he watched in the men 
 and women around him the operation of those 
 laws to which his creations must conform, cannot 
 reasonably be doubted. It is probable, too, that 
 he found here and there a trait, or even a charac- 
 ter, which, though not a model, was a suggestion. 
 His women especially show the fruit of this kind 
 of study. A painter of mere talent, but of fine 
 taste and dexterous hand, may elaborate a perfect 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 287 
 
 figure from models none of which are perfect ; but 
 a painter of great genius, constantly studying and 
 observing, makes his knowledge a part of himself, 
 and produces many figures, not by various combi- 
 nations of remembered forms, but by independent 
 creations instinct with the knowledge which he 
 has assimilated and the laws which he has mas- 
 tered. Of the latter kind was Shakespeare's 
 study and Shakespeare's knowledge. That he did 
 not draw his personages from life is manifest from 
 the facts that all the principal of them, those the 
 creation of which made his fame what it is, are 
 such as he could not possibly have seen, except in 
 mental vision, and that the experiences through 
 which they pass, and by which their living proto- 
 types most have manifested their intellectual and 
 moral traits to him, are such as he could not have 
 had the opportunity of observing. Did Shake- 
 speare ever meet a mad king, a king whose con- 
 scious kingliness is supreme even in his madness, 
 but whose dawning madness tinges the first man- 
 ifestations of his kingly power ? As well suppose 
 that he had met a Caliban. Shakespeare's mind 
 contained, but it had not received, his characters. 
 In that play so marvellously full of thought, 7;i£?/- 
 lus and Cressida, perhaps the most thoughtful of 
 his works, Ulysses rises to the full height of our 
 idea of the wandering Ithacan. Whence came 
 this Ulysses t Not from Homer's brain ; for al- 
 though Homer tells us that the king of Ithaca 
 
288 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 was "divine" and "spear-renowned," and "well 
 skilled in various enterprise and counsel," the 
 deeds and words of the hero as represented by 
 the great poet hardly justify these epithets. Here 
 we see that Shakespeare was even wiser than the 
 Homeric ideal of human wisdom. For Shake- 
 speare made our Ulysses. It was but his name 
 and his reputation that had come down from an- 
 tiquity. It was the character that corresponded 
 to and justified these that Shakespeare supplied, 
 in this instance as in many others. He did not 
 restore a limb, or even supply a head ; but, as if 
 catching and filling the outline of a shadow van- 
 ished for centuries, he surmounted with the speak- 
 ing substance of that shadow an inscribed and 
 empty pedestal. 
 
 Shakespeare thus used the skeletons of former 
 life that had drifted down to him upon the stream 
 of time and were cast at his feet, a heap of mere 
 dead matter. But he clothed them with flesh and 
 blood, and breathed life into their nostrils ; and 
 they lived and moved with a life that was individ- 
 ual and self-existent after he had once thrown it 
 off from his own exuberant intellectual vitality. 
 He made his plays no galleries of portraits of his 
 contemporaries, carefully seeking models through 
 the social scale, from king to beggar. His teeming 
 brain bred lowlier beggars and kinglier kings than 
 all Europe could have furnished as subjects for his 
 portraiture. He found in his own consciousness 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 289 
 
 ideals, the like of which for beauty or deformity 
 neither he nor any other man had ever looked 
 upon. In his heart were the motives, the pas- 
 sions, of all humanity ; in his mind, the capability, 
 if not the actuality, of all human thought. Na- 
 ture, in forming him alone of all the poets, had 
 laid that touch upon his soul which made it akin 
 with the whole world, and which enabled him to 
 live at will throughout all time, among all peo- 
 ples. Capable thus, in his complete and sym- 
 metrical nature, of feeling with and thinking for 
 all mankind, he found in an isolated and momen- 
 tary phase of his own existence the law which 
 governed the life of those to whom that single 
 phase was their whole sphere. From the germ 
 within himself he produced the perfected individ- 
 ual, as it had been or might have been developed. 
 The eternal laws of human life were his servants 
 by his heaven-bestowed prerogative, and he was 
 yet their instrument. Conformed to them because 
 instinct with them, obedient to, yet swaying them, 
 he used their subtle and unerring powers to work 
 out from seemingly trivial and independent truths 
 the vast problems of humanity ; and standing ever 
 within the limits of his own experience, he read 
 and reproduced the inner life of those on the lof- 
 tiest heights or in the lowest depths of being, with 
 the certainty of the physiologist who from the 
 study of his own organization recreates the mon- 
 sters of the ante-human world, or of the astrono- 
 13 s 
 
2Q0 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 mer who, not moving from his narrow study, an- 
 nounced the place, form, movement, and condition 
 of a planet then hid from earthly eyes in the abyss 
 of space. 
 
 Shakespeare thus suffered not even a temporary 
 absorption in his personages ; he lost not the least 
 consciousness of sellhood, or the creator's power 
 over the clay that he was moulding. He was 
 at no time a murderer at heart because he drew 
 Macbeth, or mad because he made King Lear. 
 We see that, although he thinks with the brain 
 and feels with the soul of each of his personages 
 by turns, he has the power of deliberate intro- 
 spection during this strange metempsychosis, and 
 of standing outside of his transmuted self, and 
 regarding these forms which his mind takes on 
 as we do ; in a word, of being at the same time 
 actor and spectator. 
 
 This wonderful duality in unity is perhaps most 
 striking in Shakespeare's representation of in- 
 sanity. It is comparatively easy to understand 
 how the normal action of one mind is taken on 
 by another ; because sane men think and act 
 in accordance with known and unchanging laws. 
 The union in the dramatist of a thorough knowl- 
 edge of human nature with the dramatic faculty 
 insures, therefore, a natural development of char- 
 acter in his personages. But in the creation 
 of a personage whose faculties are supposed to 
 be deranged, and thus absolved from the opera- 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 291 
 
 tion of the laws of our common nature, how is 
 the dramatist to keep true to that which itself 
 has no keeping ? Attempts to represent insanity 
 usually produce only a repulsive extravagance of 
 word and action, which neither provokes mirth 
 nor excites sympathy. But Shakespeare seems 
 not to have found even this limit to his power 
 of thinking and feeling with the creatures of his 
 imagination. He has portrayed insanity in nearly 
 every form in which it is known to the students 
 of psychological pathology ; and so true do they 
 find him to nature, even in disorganization, their 
 analysis only discovering that his intuition has 
 been beforehand, that they, like all other ob- 
 servers of mankind, from testing him by nature 
 have come to studying nature in him. With 
 delicate and unerring discrimination he distin- 
 guishes between the various kinds of mental 
 derangement, and even follows the disorder in 
 its advancing stages from the first unsettling of 
 the reason until the mind lies wrecked before us, 
 — as in Ophelia, a sweet flower crushed and per- 
 fumeless, or in Lear, a grand and awful ruin. 
 
 Our inability to follow or to comprehend the 
 working of Shakespeare's mind in no way dimin- 
 ishes our capacity of apprehending or appreciating 
 its creations. Man conceives, or receives, the very 
 idea of God, because there is in him some Divine 
 capacity ; and his god, that which he worships, 
 is ever the measure of his moral and intellectual 
 
292 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 elevation. This axiom is of general application. 
 But most especially in his appreciation of so lofty 
 and universal an intelligence as Shakespeare's 
 does a man show the elevation or the meanness, 
 the richness or the poverty, the purity or the foul- 
 ness, of his own soul. It is a vain notion, put forth 
 by some who should know better, that much study, 
 reflection, and earnest endeavor are required to 
 understand Shakespeare rightly. Culture and dis- 
 cipline and natural powers of analysis are doubt- 
 less demanded for the explanation of motives and 
 characteristic traits of Shakespeare's personages, 
 and to the unravelling of some of his involved 
 passages (which are very few), or following of 
 some of his highest flights of fancy. But almost 
 all of us must have something of Shakespeare la- 
 tent in our souls, voiceless and unexpressed ; else 
 we should be incapable of that sympathetic com- 
 prehension of his thoughts and his characters, the 
 existence of which among ever-increasing mul- 
 titudes for many generations is the only possi- 
 ble condition of his peculiar and enduring fame. 
 Some men, it is true, will never understand him 
 in some passages, and some, happily for the world 
 very few, will not be able to understand him at all 
 by any study or reflection of which they are capa- 
 ble. This from no proneness of the poet to par- 
 adox, or to eccentric or sentimental views of life, 
 or to over-subtlety of thought. For although of all 
 poets he is most profoundly psychological, as well 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 293 
 
 as most fanciful and most imaginative, yet with him 
 philosophy, fancy, and imagination are penetrated 
 with the spirit of that unwritten law of reason 
 which we speak of as if it were a faculty, common 
 sense. His philosophy is practical, and his prac- 
 tical views are fused with philosophy and poetry. 
 He is withal the sage and the oracle of this world. 
 Subjects which are essentially, and in other hands 
 would seem, prosaic and almost sordid, are raised 
 by him into the realms of poetry, and yet in lan- 
 guage so clearly expressive of their essential char- 
 acter as to be adopted as shrewd maxims by the 
 worldly wise. 
 
 In this constant presence and rule of reason in 
 his most exalted flights, we recognize again a trait 
 of the English origin and character of his genius, — 
 a trait which is at the foundation of its eminence, 
 even in the realm of imagination, but at which 
 other people often jeer. Even in our passions we 
 will ask, " Why .? " and say, " Because." " Voila;' 
 cries the French maid in one of the few passages 
 of insight in Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, — " Voila 
 till vrai Anglais ! II est mnoureiix, et cependaiit il 
 veut raison7ter" 
 
 Many people have given themselves serious 
 concern as to the moral influence of Shakespeare's 
 plays ; and critics of great weight, fulfilling their 
 function, have gone down far and stayed down 
 long in the attempt to fathom the profound moral 
 
294 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 purpose which they are sure must be hidden in the 
 depths of these mighty compositions.* But the 
 direct moral influence of Shakespeare is nothing ; 
 and we may be sure that he wrote with no moral 
 purpose. He sought only to present life ; and 
 the world which he shows us, like that in which 
 we live, teaches us moral lessons according to our 
 will and our capacity. Johnson, meaning censure 
 of " his first defect," wrote Shakespeare's highest 
 praise in this respect, in saying of him that " he 
 carries his persons indifferently through right or 
 wrong, and at the close dismisses them without 
 further care, and leaves their example to operate 
 by chance." That word "indifferently" is Shake- 
 speare's eulogy. He gives the means of study, 
 and leads insensibly to reflection. Men resent or 
 turn away from conviction at the lips of others, 
 which they will receive and lay to heart if they 
 hear it from the lips of the inward monitor. And 
 even children see through and despise the shallow 
 device which makes goodness always lead to hap- 
 piness, and flout the stories which conduct them 
 
 * The feeling of the latter half of the last century, and of the 
 earlier years of the present, upon this subject, is well represented 
 by the following passage from the Dramatic Censor's article 
 \y^Q)Xv Richard the Third: — 
 
 "Having now given a general delineation of the plot and 
 arrangement of the scenes, it becomes necessary to inquire for 
 the moral, without which no dramatic piece can have intrinsic 
 worth." — Vol. I. p. 9, ed, 1770. 
 
 This notion in a very stupendous form seems to have seized 
 hold of the Germans of the last and present generations. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 295 
 
 through artificial paths to bring them out upon 
 a moral. Man, however gifted, can never teach 
 more than life and nature ; and among gifted men 
 there has been only Shakespeare who could teach 
 as much. The moral unity which distinguishes 
 his plays is not, as some, especially among the 
 Germans, would have it, the result of a moral pur- 
 pose deliberately planned and well worked out; 
 but of the fact that those dramatic poems were 
 the spontaneous manifestation of one great, sym- 
 metrical mind, in complete and intimate accord- 
 ance with nature. Shakespeare is able to teach as 
 much as nature, nay, even more than unmitigat- 
 ed nature does, for two reasons. One is, that he 
 presents us something which is not nature, but a 
 perfect reflex of nature. It is strange, but true as 
 strange, that imitation generally interests us more 
 than reality. The very reflection of a beautiful 
 landscape in a mirror wins our attention more, 
 nay, seems more beautiful, than the landscape it- 
 self Seen in a Claude glass it becomes a picture, 
 a quasi work of art, which we study, over which 
 we muse, and to which we again and again recur ; 
 while the scene itself, if we see it often, may become 
 to us an unnoticed part of our daily life, like the 
 rising of the sun, that daily miracle. And so the 
 mirror which, following his own maxim, Shake- 
 speare holds up to nature, is more studied by us 
 than Nature herself, and by means of it nature is 
 better understood. The phenomena are brought 
 
296 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 by him within the range of our mutual vision. 
 Reduced in their dimensions, but kept perfect in 
 proportion and true in color, they are transferred 
 to and fixed upon his pages ; and we can take 
 down from our shelves these specimens of thought 
 and passion, and muse and ponder over them at 
 leisure. This is measurably true of all imagi- 
 native writing ; but it is pre-eminently true of 
 Shakespeare's. 
 
 But the chief reason of Shakespeare's ability to 
 teach us as much as nature is a breadth of moral 
 sympathy, a wide intellectual charity, which makes 
 him as impartial as nature. His mirror tinges 
 the scene which it reflects with no color of its 
 own. The life-giving rain of his genius falls 
 equally on the just and the unjust ; and as the 
 sunshine and the shower develop both tares and 
 wheat according to their kind, so he never seeks 
 to modify the nature or the seeming of that which 
 he quickens into life ; and he is never more im- 
 partial than when he is most creative. What viler 
 or more loathsome creature than Parolles was ever 
 spoken into being ? who is never more disgusting, 
 though he may be more irritating or ridiculous, 
 than in his interview with Helena on his first ap- 
 pearance. Yet in this very dialogue, unquotable 
 though it be, what insight, what wisdom, what 
 practical sense, are developed through this wretch, 
 though we detest the creature as Helena does, 
 and as Shakespeare meant we should, for uttering 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 297 
 
 then and there the conclusions of his keen but 
 degraded judgment ! Yet we look upon this 
 abominable creature with admiration ; nay, he fas- 
 cinates us by his exquisite loathsomeness, which 
 is as proper to him as crawling to a reptile. As 
 Helena herself says in the words which Shake- 
 speare furnished her, concentrating in these four 
 Hues all that I have just tried to say, and elevat- 
 ing it into poetry with that apparently uncon- 
 scious exercise of supreme mastery over expres- 
 sion which must make every man who holds a 
 pen despair, — 
 
 " These fix'd evils sit so fit in him 
 That they take place, when virtue's steely bones 
 Look bleak in the cold air. Withal full oft we see 
 Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly." 
 
 It was this quality of universal sympathy in his 
 mental constitution which enabled Shakespeare 
 to unite to the knowledge of man and of truth 
 that knowledge of men and of things which is 
 called knowledge of the world. He seems to 
 have had this latter knowledge in as great a de- 
 gree as that more abstract knowledge which made 
 him a great dramatic and philosophical poet, and 
 to have been the most perfect man of the world 
 whose name appears upon the roll of literature. 
 All that we know of his life shows him in full pos- 
 session of this great qualification of the perfect 
 social man, so rarely found in poets ; and his 
 works are pervaded with its exhibition. Consider 
 13* 
 
298 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 well such characters as Angelo, Parolles, Faulcon- 
 bridge, Polonius, Jaques, Falstaff, such gentlemen 
 as Bassanio, Mercutio, Prince Henry, Cassio, An- 
 tony (in yulius CcEsar), and see what knowledge, 
 not only of the human heart, but of society, of 
 manners, of actual life, in short, to return to the ac- 
 cepted phrase, what knowledge of the world, these 
 characters display. It is this knowledge, this tact, 
 which enables him to walk so firmly and so deli- 
 cately upon the perilous edge of essential decency, 
 and not fall into the foul slough below, where the 
 elegant dramatists of the last century lie wallow- 
 ing. This he does notably, for instance, in Faul- 
 conbridge and Falstaff, — Falstaff, a gentleman by 
 birth and breeding, but coarse, gross, mean, and 
 selfish, a degraded castaway, yet, with consum- 
 mate tact and exquisite art never allowed to be 
 vulgar or repulsive, and whose matchless humor 
 makes his company delightful. 
 
 It has been objected to the assertion of the am- 
 plitude of Shakespeare's mind, and to the gener- 
 osity of his character, that he always represents 
 the laborer and the artisan in a degraded position, 
 and often makes his ignorance and his uncouth- 
 ness the butt of ridicule. The charge is brought 
 by reformers and philanthropists of such narrow 
 views that they cannot see that art is not the 
 pioneer, but the landscape gardener, of society. 
 Shakespeare, although he thought as a philoso- 
 pher, wrought as an artist ; and art has to do 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 299 
 
 with the facts of the world before it, ideahzing 
 them, but not changing their nature. Three hun- 
 dred years ago the husbandman and the mechanic 
 were degraded in the world's eyes ; and Shake- 
 speare, the healthiness of whose understanding is 
 as remarkable as any trait of his genius, knew that 
 the world's appreciation is generally right of men 
 in mass, and that these hard-handed men had all 
 the consideration that was their due, though not 
 all the rights or advantages. It is always so. In- 
 dividual men may fail to receive a just apprecia- 
 tion ; but as surely as water finds its level, classes 
 of men always rise to the standing that they 
 can maintain. It is because the workingman, 
 whether his labor be rude or skilled, has raised 
 himself, has in fact become another man, that the 
 world now awards him a consideration which he 
 did not receive in the days of Queen Elizabeth. 
 Shakespeare, although he represented the world 
 as he saw it, was no panegyrist of things as they 
 were, no mere laudator temporis acti. He was no 
 sycophant to power. Whatever might have been 
 the faults of others in this regard, (and they seem 
 to have been fewer and less in the mother country 
 in those days than in the present,) Shakespeare 
 did not hesitate to tell kings and nobles all the 
 truth, and even to put it into their own mouths. 
 In bitterness of soul King Richard II. utters in 
 the following passage at once a sarcasm and a 
 confession : — 
 
300 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 " For within the hollow crown, 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king, 
 Keeps Death his court : and there the antic sits. 
 Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp ; 
 Allowing him a breath, a little scene 
 To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks ; 
 Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
 As if this flesh, which walls about our life. 
 Were brass impregnable, and, humor'd thus, 
 Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
 Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell, king ! 
 Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood 
 With solemn reverence : throw away respect, 
 Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty. 
 For you have but mistook me all this while : 
 I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, 
 Need friends. Subjected thus. 
 How can you say to me, I am a king ? " 
 
 And Shakespeare's favorite among his kings, 
 Harry the Fifth, says, when disguised as a com- 
 mon soldier, " I think the king is but a man, 
 as I am ; the violet smells to him as it doth to 
 me; the element shows to him as it doth to 
 me ; all his senses have but human conditions ; 
 his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he ap- 
 pears but a man." One passage of Cymbeline is 
 too remarkably in point to be passed by ; for 
 although it is addressed by a princess to, as 
 she supposes, two mountaineers, it unites an as- 
 sertion of the most catholic and radical equality 
 with a quiet, cutting satire upon the conventional 
 distinctions of rank and privilege. Arviragus 
 asks Imogen, " Are we not brothers ? " and the 
 princess answers, 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 301 
 
 " So man and man should be ; 
 But clay and clay differs in dignity, 
 Whose dust is both alike." 
 
 Shakespeare himself, in his personal opinions 
 and inclinations, is so little traceable in his works, 
 that we can only judge of his feeling toward the 
 wretched and oppressed by the intimate sympa- 
 thy which he shows with their privations and their 
 sufferings, and also their lowly pleasures. Could 
 this be better shown than in these lines spoken 
 again by King Henry the Fifth ? 
 
 " Not all these, laid in bed majestical, 
 Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave ; 
 Who, with a body fill'd, and vacant mind, 
 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread. 
 Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, 
 But like a lackey, from the rise to set, 
 Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night 
 Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn, 
 Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse. 
 And follow so the ever-running year, 
 With profitable labor, to his grave : 
 And but for ceremony, such a wretch. 
 Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, 
 Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king." 
 
 Again, in Kmo- Lear, Edgar's disguising himself 
 as an Abraham man gave Shakespeare an oppor- 
 tunity, which so thrifty a householder as he was 
 might well have seized, to hold up those tramping 
 pests of our forefathers to condemnation, or at 
 least to ridicule. But his picture presents the suf- 
 ferer's side of the case, and tells us how he " eats 
 
302 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall- 
 newt and the water, swallows the old rat and the 
 ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing 
 pool, and is whipped from tything to tything, and 
 stocked, punished, and imprisoned." Shakespeare 
 must have well known the ways of the begging 
 impostor ; but he chose to show us in this most 
 touching manner the dreadful extremities and suf- 
 ferings of the vagrant pauper. 
 
 The little that remains to be said is of a general 
 nature. 
 
 Shakespeare's art was not simple, its manifesta- 
 tion was not serene. Simplicity and serenity are 
 the highest ideal in the arts of design. The Greeks 
 attained it in their sculpture and their temples ; 
 Raphael, in his Madonnas ; and even in landscape 
 art, the highest style is that which, rising above 
 the representation of phenomenal effects, presents 
 the ideal of Nature in her wonted phases. But 
 this limitation does not hold in literature ; and 
 especially in dramatic literature, in which action, 
 complication, intensity, and variety approaching 
 incongruity, are compatible with, if not essential 
 to, the attainment of the highest excellence. Gre- 
 cian architecture is simple and severe, but not 
 therefore the highest type of architecture. And 
 Shakespeare's genius may be well compared (and 
 possibly the comparison is not new) to a Gothic 
 cathedral, vast, grand, and solemn in its general 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 303 
 
 aspect, and single in its total impression, yet on 
 closer view seen to bear the stamp of various pe- 
 riods, and to be filled with airy, light, upspringing 
 columns, and minutely decorated with delicate tra- 
 cery, and grotesque, humorous, and even indeco- 
 rous details, correspondent to each other, yet all 
 unlike though seeming like, and, to an eye capable 
 of the great whole, blending into rich harmony. 
 
 There are these three, — Homer, Dante, and 
 Shakespeare. And these three have pre-eminence 
 in right of their imaginations. Homer saw with 
 placid mental eye the people and the deeds that 
 he describes, as clearly as if they had passed be- 
 fore him in the flesh; Astyanax shrinking from 
 his father's flashing helm and threatening crest ; 
 Hector striding across the battle-field, his huge 
 shield rattling, as he walked, against his neck and 
 ankles ; the opposing hosts, assembled upon the 
 plain, whose swaying spears and waving plumes, 
 seen from afar, showed dark broad ripples, like 
 cat's-paws on the water. Dante, with more inci- 
 sive word-touch, if not more penetrating vision, 
 puts before us Ugolino and his boys dying one 
 by one of hunger; the Centaur with an arrow 
 parting his beard upon his jaws before he speaks ; 
 or those two tormented alchemists who leaned 
 against each other like pans set up to dry, and 
 scraped the scales from their leprous bodies in 
 prurient agony. But Shakespeare's imagination 
 was more than this. Homer and Dante saw : 
 
204 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 he not only saw, but was. His art is more than 
 imagination, more than fancy, more than philos- 
 ophy, more than their aggregation. It is their 
 union in one nameless faculty. Indeed, it is 
 only after recurring to Homer and Dante, and to 
 Milton, Virgil, and Horace, that we know how 
 far, how immeasurably far, is the step from the 
 lofty cumulation of all their qualities to Shake- 
 speare's quality. It is almost like that from the 
 finite to the infinite. As we add number to num- 
 ber, until numbers cease to have significance, and 
 then at last spring to the idea of infinite, to which 
 we cannot otherwise approach, so we put together 
 all the qualities of all other poets, and then, see- 
 ing our failure to reach the Parnassian summit 
 by heaping Pelions upon Ossas, we break ofi" and 
 leap to Shakespeare. 
 
 Shakespeare worked all his wonders with the 
 lordliness of a supreme master ; yet, we may be 
 sure, not without labor. Certain men have higher 
 tasks, and for them higher faculties, than others : 
 he, highest. But nothing is attained by human 
 powers, however transcendent, without paying for 
 it man's price, — toil. There is no such thing as 
 real impromptu. There is only the ready use on 
 present occasion of the fruits of past exertion ; — 
 
 " Che, seggendo in piuma, 
 In fama non si vien, ne sotto coltre." * 
 
 But may not the time arrive when the world 
 
 * Inferno, Canto XXIV. 1. 47. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 305 
 
 will say, We have had enough of Shakespeare ? 
 May not men become pardonably weary of hear- 
 ing of this one matchless man, and so ostracize 
 him for his very excellence ? It might possibly 
 be so, if men lived forever ; but generation suc- 
 ceeds to generation, and to each one he is new, 
 and so will be new as long as the tongue in which 
 he wrote is spoken. To each fresh reader Shake- 
 speare brings more than one life can exhaust, and 
 those who have studied him longest are they who 
 are best assured that no man ever laid his head 
 so close upon the great heart of Nature, and 
 heard so clearly the throb of her deep pulses. 
 For this reason the man who studies Shakespeare 
 and attempts the unfolding of his characters is 
 not engaged in mere literary criticism, is not a 
 literary parasite ; he is dealing with the most hid- 
 den and elemental truths of man's knowledge of 
 mankind ; and for this reason, too, it is, that he 
 who has really any thoughts of his own upon 
 Shakespeare to give to the world is sure of a 
 kindly disposed audience. For very few, even of 
 the most sensitive souls and penetrating intellects, 
 have felt for themselves and perceived for them- 
 selves all the beauty and the strength and the 
 wisdom of those marvellous works that were writ- 
 ten with the immediate purpose only of drawing 
 full houses to the Black-friars Theatre in London 
 in the days of Good Queen Bess. 
 
3o6 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 All that I have inadequately said is true, and 
 yet it is no less true that Shakespeare revealed to 
 the world no new truth in ethics, in politics, or in 
 philosophy. He was not an intellectual discov- 
 erer. If the plague had not spared him in his 
 cradle, the great movements of the world would 
 have been deprived of no direct impulse coming 
 from his mind. They would have gone on with- 
 out him, much as they have gone on under the 
 influence of his writings. No social or political 
 development of his race or of mankind would 
 have been checked, except in so far as a diffusion 
 of intellectual and moral culture and refinement 
 might have been retarded. For man's knowledge 
 of himself would have been very much more lim- 
 ited, because of the lack of those works which af- 
 ford at once the most alluring temptations to the 
 study of human nature and the best field and 
 school for its pursuit. The English, or, if we 
 choose to call it so, the Anglo-Saxon race, both 
 in Europe and in America, would have lacked a 
 certain degree of that general elevation of mental 
 and moral tone, and that practical wisdom, which 
 distinguish it among the peoples. A source of 
 pleasure more exquisite and more refining than is 
 elsewhere to be found, of instruction more nearly 
 priceless than any except that which fell from the 
 lips of Jesus of Nazareth, would not have been 
 opened. Thus, though Shakespeare exercised no 
 direct influence upon the world's progress, that 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 307 
 
 which he has exercised indirectly is large and is 
 constantly increasing, and it will increase with the 
 diffusion of our race, and an acquaintance with its 
 literature. 
 
 It has been before remarked, that the drama- 
 tists of Shakespeare's time, writing' only to please 
 the people, had only to consult the general taste, 
 and were free from any restraint except that im- 
 posed by their own judgment. Some of them did 
 attempt to work, measurably at least, according 
 to classical formulas, and these failed entirely to 
 attain the ends which they had in view, — popu- 
 larity and profit. Of the rest, all, with one or 
 two exceptions, being without a trusty monitor, 
 external or internal, fell into monstrous extrava- 
 gance, coarseness, conceit, and triviality. But 
 Shakespeare, save for his conformity to mere out- 
 side fashion, was entirely unlike his contempo- 
 raries. He is among them, but not of them. 
 Their minds run in the same channel, but do not 
 mingle. The powerful and pellucid current of his 
 thought flows swiftly and clearly side by side with 
 their sluggish and turbid outpourings, leaving 
 them behind, and taking no tint or taint from its 
 surroundings. To him there was gain instead 
 of loss in the disregard of formulas. Creative 
 genius is mostly great, not by means of for- 
 mulas, but in their despite. Almost inevitably 
 it provokes censure by breaking through estab- 
 lished rules ; a truth which has at last obtained 
 
3o8 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 such recognition that defiance of rule is some- 
 times ignorantly set up as evidence of genius, — 
 of which only individuality and inherent vitality 
 and strength are witnesses. The so-called extrav- 
 agances of genius establish its claims by them- 
 selves becoming formulas for minds of lower 
 rank ; and thus schools are formed, of which no 
 one is really great except the founder. Yet the 
 highest order of poets, the seraphs of the art, do 
 not have followers, because they soar too high 
 in the empyrean for the manner of their flight 
 to be observed and imitated. It is the second- 
 rate men, great yet second, who form schools. 
 For their way of working is discernible, compre- 
 hensible, imitable. But the supremely divine is 
 ever a mystery. This is especially true of Shake- 
 speare. As he worked in the manner of no 
 school, so he founded none. He adopted the old 
 forms indeed, and he labored with the same ar- 
 tistic motive, as well as the same material objects, 
 as his contemporaries and immediate predecessors 
 and successors. But this produced no living like- 
 ness between their offspring. His plays and those 
 of Marlowe, Jonson, Massinger, Marston, Middle- 
 ton, Ford, and Field have neither in their dra- 
 matic nor their poetical traits the least family like- 
 ness ; none, in fact, except a certain affluence and 
 strength of diction, and certain colloquial tricks 
 of expression, characteristic of the period. The 
 mistakes which have been made upon this subject 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 309 
 
 by writers of mark are so great as to cast a doubt 
 upon the soundness of all critical judgment. Al- 
 though Shakespeare worked not only among a 
 throng of dramatists and poets, but even occasion- 
 ally with some of them, there is in truth no more 
 striking fact in the history of literature than the 
 solitary position and peculiar character of his ge- 
 nius. Beaumont and Fletcher, and all that crew, 
 who came after him, although more brilliant than 
 Peele and Marlowe, and all that crew, that went 
 before him, caught no fire from his soul, no light 
 from his intellect. He rose upon the world eclips- 
 ing a few twinkling stars and one fitful meteor ; 
 and after his grand career he sank like a midsum- 
 mer sun, in full splendor, leaving no moon behind 
 him to prolong his reign by shining with his re- 
 flected glory.* 
 
 May the world expect another Shakespeare } 
 Not unless circumstances corresponding to those 
 which produced this Shakespeare should occur 
 again. Shakespeare marked a stage in the world's 
 progress, or at least in the history of a race which 
 since his time has more than any other influenced 
 that progress. He appeared at the period when 
 the English character, slowly forming through 
 centuries, had attained its typical development ; 
 when the English language had assumed a form 
 
 * Yet I remember seeing in a bookseller's catalogue, at the 
 end of a book published at the beginning of the last century, the 
 announcement of a tragedy, yane Shore I believe, " in Shake- 
 speare's style, by N. Rowe." 
 
310 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 from which it has not varied sensibly for three 
 centuries, and when our race, having freed itself 
 from the restraints of feudalism, had attained the 
 most symmetrical and harmonious social develop- 
 ment possible to it under an established gradation 
 of classes. The English nobleman three centuries 
 ago, whether called by herald lord or gentleman, 
 was a spontaneous product of a healthy soil, a 
 goodly tree nourished by fibres that pierced the 
 mould of centuries. But he had flourished his 
 appointed time ; and before the prerogative of 
 the Tudor his root began to perish, and under 
 the sun of the Reformation his branches to with- 
 er ; and since then aristocracy in England has 
 been living, year after year, a fictitious life, and 
 year after year has needed more props to keep 
 its sapless form above the ground, which its de- 
 cay and fall will enrich for another spontaneous 
 outgrowth. It was to express the spirit and give 
 form to the ideas of such a completed period in 
 the history of the English people, as well as to 
 utter the eternal truths, or rather it was to speak 
 those truths with the voice of that period, that he 
 who was " of an age " as well as " for all time " 
 appeared. A new Shakespeare may be born to 
 us ; but only as the fruit of new conditions. He 
 can only appear when essential civilization, not 
 mere outward refinement, has advanced so far as 
 to have established radically new relations among 
 men, and when our language has so far changed 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. 
 
 311 
 
 as to be the fitting vehicle for the expression of a 
 new philosophy, a new worldly wisdom, a new 
 range of sympathy, new sentiment, both high and 
 homely, and a new cast of thought. For in him 
 of whom we speak the old has had its full expres- 
 sion. It may be doubted whether these conditions 
 will, even in the new England, ever be fulfilled. 
 But should they be, then Nature, at once chary 
 and inexhaustible, never working in vain, but ever 
 prompt and able to supply the needs which she 
 creates, will produce another Shakespeare, because 
 then, and not till then, another will be required. 
 
AN ACCOUNT 
 OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA 
 
 TO THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 THE remains of our early drama may be re- 
 garded from two principal points : one, that 
 of the lover of what is old for the mere sake of its 
 antiquity ; the other, that of the critical student of 
 this department of English literature. The labor, 
 or the pastime, of the former investigator may be 
 protracted almost at his pleasure ; for the mate- 
 rial is ample, although it is probable that not one 
 in ten of the English plays written before the 
 time of Shakespeare have escaped destruction. 
 But the task of the latter, weary and endless al- 
 though it seems at first, soon shortens by its very 
 lack of interest. For it does not take long to dis- 
 cover that, with two or three exceptions, the ex- 
 isting English plays written before the year 1580 
 offer to the modern reader only an unvarying suc- 
 cession of platitude, triviality, coarseness, and bom- 
 bast, rarely relieved even by traits which indicate 
 the manners and the customs of the people to 
 please whom they were produced. The practised 
 student soon learns to take in the qualities of one 
 of these performances at a rapid glance. The 
 
3i6 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 dreariness of a desert, seen at first sight, is not 
 known the more surely by an examination of the 
 grains of sand which form its dry, interminable 
 waste ; nor is it necessary to a knowledge of the 
 English drama before the time of Shakespeare 
 sufficient to the appreciation of the state in which 
 he found it, that the reader should be dragged 
 step by step over the ground which his guide has 
 previously explored. Therefore, as this historical 
 sketch regards the literary rather than the anti- 
 quarian aspect of that drama, it may well be brief, 
 even while it seeks to present all that, either by 
 intrinsic or relative interest, can illustrate its 
 theme. 
 
 The English drama, like the Greek, has a pure- 
 ly religious origin. The same is true of the dra- 
 ma of every civilized people of modern times. It 
 is worthy of particular remark, that the theatre, 
 denounced by churchmen and by laymen of emi- 
 nently evangelical profession as base, corrupting, 
 and sinful, not in its abuse and its degradation, but 
 in its very essence, should have been planted and 
 nourished by churchmen, having priests for its first 
 authors and actors, and having been for centuries 
 the chief school of religion and of morals to an 
 unlettered people. The taste for dramatic repre- 
 sentation seems to be innate in man. He loves 
 to simulate and to see others simulate character, 
 and seem, without deceit, other than they are. He 
 finds pleasure in the consciousness that the per- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 317 
 
 sonage before him, still more that he himself, is 
 both John Smith and Julius Caesar. No people, 
 however rude and savage, except some of the more 
 degraded tribes of Africa, have been yet discov- 
 ered with whom dramatic performance of some 
 kind, although coarse and rudimentary, was not 
 a customary amusement. And when the great 
 showman of the day exhibits a dwarf, he shrewdly 
 takes advantage of this craving, and, not trusting 
 to the mere monstrosity of his little monster, he 
 sends him before the people in the character of 
 Achilles or Napoleon ; nay, even ventures thus to 
 show the Iron Duke himself his own picture in 
 little. Theatrical representations have probably 
 continued without interruption from the time of 
 ^schylus. Even in the dark ages, which we look 
 back upon too exclusively as a period of gloom, 
 tumult, and blood-shedding, people bought and 
 sold, and were married and given in marriage, 
 and feasted and amused themselves as we do now ; 
 and we may be sure that among their amusements 
 dramatic representations of some sort were not 
 lacking. 
 
 The earliest dramatic performances in the mod- 
 ern languages of Europe, of which we have any 
 record or tradition, were representations of the 
 most striking events recorded in the Hebrew 
 Scriptures and in the Christian Gospels, of some 
 of the stories told in the Pseudo Evangelium or 
 spurious Gospel, and of legends of the saints. 
 
3i8 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 On the Continent these were called Mysteries ; in 
 England, both Mysteries and Miracle-Plays. When 
 miracle-plays were first performed, it seems quite 
 impossible to determine ; and indeed, from the 
 universality of the taste for dramatic representa- 
 tions, there can hardly be a more perplexing or 
 fruitless task than the attempt to discover the 
 time and place of their origin. The ancient He- 
 brews had at least one miracle-play. It was found- 
 ed upon the exodus of their people from Egypt. 
 Fragments of this play, in Greek iambics, have 
 been preserved to modern times in the works of 
 various authors. The principal characters are 
 Moses, Zipporah, and God in the Bush. The au- 
 thor, one Ezekiel, is called by Scaliger the tragic 
 poet of the Jews. His work is referred by one 
 critic to a date before the Christian era ; others 
 suppose that he was one of the Seventy Transla- 
 tors ; but Warton, my authority in this instance, 
 supposes that he wrote his play after the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem, hoping by its means to warm 
 the patriotism and revive the hopes of his deject- 
 ed countrymen. 
 
 The Eastern Empire long clung to all the glo- 
 ries to which its name, its language, and its posi- 
 tion gave it a presumptive title ; and the tragedies 
 of Sophocles and Euripides were performed after 
 some fashion at Constantinople until the fourth 
 century. At this period, Gregory Nazianzen, arch- 
 bishop, patriarch, and one of the fathers of the 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. ^ig 
 
 Church, banished the pagan drama from the Greek 
 stage, and substituted plays founded on subjects 
 taken from the Hebrew or the Christian Scriptures. 
 St. Gregory wrote many plays of this kind him- 
 self; and Warton says that one of them, called 
 Xpto-To? iraa'^wv, or Christ's Passion, is still ex- 
 tant.* In this play, which, according to the Pro- 
 logue, was written in imitation of Euripides, the 
 Virgin Mary was introduced upon the stage, mak- 
 ing then, as far as we know, her first appearance. 
 St. Gregory died about A. D. 390. Gregory's re- 
 ligious plays more than rivalled his other theo- 
 logical writings in the favor of the people ; for, as 
 Warton also mentions, St. Chrysostom, who soon 
 succeeded Gregory in the see of Constantinople, 
 complained that in his day people heard a come- 
 dian with much more pleasure than a minister of 
 the Gospel. St. Chrysostom held the see of Con- 
 stantinople from A. D. 398 to A. D. 404. In this 
 quarter, also, another kind of dramatic represen- 
 tation, that of mummery or masking, developed 
 itself in a Christian or modern form. It is known 
 that many of the Christian festivals which have 
 come down to us from the dark ages were the 
 fruits of a grafting of Christian legends upon 
 pagan ceremonies ; a contrivance by which the 
 priests supposed that they had circumvented the 
 heathen, who would more easily give up their re- 
 
 * History of English Poetry, Sec. XXXIV., Vol. II. p. 517, ed. 
 1840. 
 
320 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 ligion than their feasts and their hoUdays. And 
 the introduction of reUgious mumming and mask- 
 ing by Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople, 
 about the year 990, has been reasonably attributed 
 to a design of giving the people a Christian per- 
 formance which they could and would substitute 
 in place of the bacchanalian revels. He is said by 
 an historian of the succeeding generation to have 
 " introduced the practice which prevails even at 
 this day, of scandalizing God and the memory of 
 his saints on the most splendid and popular festi- 
 vals, by indecent and ridiculous songs and enor- 
 mous shoutings, .... diabolical dances, exclama- 
 tions of ribaldry, and ballads borrowed from the 
 streets and brothels." The Feast of Fools and the 
 Feast of Asses, the latter of which was instituted 
 in honor of Balaam's beast, had this origin. Such 
 mingling of revelry and religion as these feasts, 
 and of amusement and instruction in the faith as 
 the mysteries, suited both the priestly and the 
 popular need of the time ; and they soon found 
 their way westward, and particularly into France. 
 Here, not long after, the Feast of Asses was per- 
 formed, and in this manner. The clergy walked on 
 Christmas-day in procession, habited to represent 
 Moses, David, the prophets, other Hebrews and 
 Assyrians. Balaam, with an immense pair of 
 spurs, rode on a wooden ass, which enclosed a 
 speaker. Virgil was one of the procession, which 
 moved on, chanting versicles and dialoguing in 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 32 1 
 
 character on the birth of Christ, through the body 
 of the church, until it reached the choir * The 
 fairs of those days, which were the great occasions 
 of profit and amusement, offered opportunities for 
 the performance of these " holy farces," or of the 
 soberer mysteries of miracle-plays, of which the 
 priests did not fail to avail themselves ; and thus 
 this rude form of religious drama spread grad- 
 ually, but not slowly, throughout Europe. 
 
 With regard to one country alone, Italy, is 
 there question as to the early prevalence of the 
 miracle-play. In all departments of art and lit- 
 erature the Italians imitated the Greeks. Vol- 
 taire supposed that they soon adopted the relig- 
 ious drama from Constantinople ; but Riccoboni, 
 who is the chief authority upon this subject, held 
 the contrary. We have seen that Gregory in- 
 troduced the performance of Christian plays at 
 Constantinople in the latter part of the fourth 
 century. But in Italy the pagan, or Latin, thea- 
 tre held its own, or what we must call its own, 
 for centuries afterward, even by the side of the 
 Christian drama. Riccoboni indeed seems to 
 have thought that only the pagan drama, in a 
 gradually degenerating form, was known in Italy 
 for seven or eight hundred years later ; and he 
 will have it that the very pied and patched dress 
 of the modern Harlequin is a remnant of the cos- 
 
 * Warton's History of English Poetry, Sec. VI., Vol. II. p. 29, 
 
 ed 1840. 
 
 14* U 
 
^22 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 tume of the mimes of the Latin stage. It would 
 seem rather a perpetuation of the party-colored 
 dress of the Fools of the chivalric period. But be 
 this as it may, Warton and his editor Price found 
 that religious plays were performed in Italy at a 
 period very much earlier than either Riccoboni or 
 Crescembini supposed ; in fact, that they were 
 common as early as 1250. And it is, in my judg- 
 ment, improbable to the verge of impossibihty 
 that this form of the drama, (in the creation of 
 which priests were the chief agents,) should not 
 have been known in Italy before it came into 
 vogue in countries farther west, and more remote 
 from the spring, at that time, of all religious and 
 intellectual movement. Indeed, it is to the free- 
 masonry of the priesthood, and to the fact that the 
 priests travelled much from country to country, 
 and communicated freely with each other, and es- 
 pecially upon religious and public matters, that 
 we may attribute the universal prevalence of the 
 religious drama in all Christian countries through- 
 out the later feudal ages. In the natural order 
 of things this species of performance would pass 
 from Italy to France, and from France to Eng- 
 land ; and the supposition that it was brought 
 into the latter country across the Channel is sup- 
 ported by the fact, that there is evidence that the 
 first religious plays performed in England were 
 translations from the French. Some yet extant 
 have passages in that language scattered through 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 323 
 
 them ; a fact which can be most reasonably ac- 
 counted for by the supposition that these iso- 
 lated passages are parts of the original, left un- 
 translated in the manuscripts which have come 
 down to us. It has even been supposed that the 
 first miracle-plays produced in England were per- 
 formed in French. Possibly this supposition is 
 well founded ; but we may be sure that these 
 plays soon received an English dress. For the 
 miracle-plays were used by the priesthood for the 
 religious instruction, not only of those who could 
 not read, among whom were the Norman nobles 
 who could understand French, but also, and chief- 
 ly, of the middle and lower classes, to whom 
 French was almost as incomprehensible as the 
 Latin in which their prayers were vicariously 
 mumbled. Miracle-plays seem to have been, in 
 some measure at least, the fruit of the same lau- 
 dable desire on the part of the Roman Catholic 
 priesthood for the instruction of their people in 
 religious truth, to which we owe the rhymed 
 homilies or Gospel paraphrases of the thirteenth 
 century, in which the lesson of the day, read of 
 course in Latin, was translated, amplified, and il- 
 lustrated in octosyllabic rhymes, which were read 
 to the people by the priest. Six ancient manu- 
 script collections of these homilies are known to 
 exist ; and in the prologue to the oldest one of 
 them, which is of the fourteenth century, and 
 which has recently been printed, the writer ex- 
 
324 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 pressly says that he has undertaken his task of 
 thus preaching in English that all may under- 
 stand what he says ; because both clerks and ig- 
 norant men can understand English, but all men 
 cannot understand Latin and French.* 
 
 * Here follows the passage above cited : — 
 
 " Forth! suld ilke precheour schau, 
 The god that Godd hauls gert him knau, 
 For qua sa hides Godes gift, 
 God may chalange him of thift. 
 In al thing es he nouht lele, 
 That Godes gift fra man wil sele, 
 Forthi the litel that I kanne, 
 Wil I schau til ilke manne, 
 Yf I kan mar god than he, 
 For than lif Ic in charite. 
 For Godes wisdom that es kid, 
 And na thing worthe quen it is hid, 
 Forthi wil I of my pouert, 
 Schau sum thing that Ik haf in hert, 
 On Ingelis tong that alle may 
 Understand quat I wil say, 
 For laued men hauls mar mister, 
 Godes word for to her. 
 Than klerkes that thair mirour lokes, 
 And sees hou thai sal lif on bokes, 
 And bathe klerk and laued man, 
 Englis understand kan, 
 That was born in Ingeland, 
 And lang haues ben thar in wonand, 
 Bot al men can noht, I wis, 
 Understand Latin and Frankis, 
 Forthi me think almous it isse, 
 To werke sum god thing on Inglisse, 
 That mai ken lered and laued bathe, 
 Hou thai mai yem them fra schathe. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 325 
 
 The earliest performance of a miracle-play in 
 England of which any record has been discovered 
 took place within about ten years previous to 1 1 19. 
 The play, founded upon the legend of St. Catha- 
 rine, was written by Geoffrey, afterward Abbot 
 of St. Alban's, before he became abbot, and was 
 performed in Dunstaple. So says Matthew Paris 
 in his Lives of the Abbots, which was written be- 
 fore 1240. Geoffry, a Norman monk and a mem- 
 ber of the University of Paris, became Abbot of 
 St. Alban's in 11 19. But his miracle-play was no 
 novelty ; for Bulaeus, the historian of the Univer- 
 sity of Paris,* tells us that it was at that time 
 
 And stithe stand igain the fend, 
 And til the blis of heuen wend." 
 
 English Metrical Homilies^ fro7n MSS. of the Four- 
 teenth Century. 4to. Edinburgh, 1862. 
 
 The particular manuscript collection from which this passage 
 is taken has special philological interest, as its editor, Mr. John 
 Small, remarks, because, as indeed the passage above shows, the 
 homilies which it has preserved were composed in the North of 
 England at a very early period, when the Anglo-Saxon was pass- 
 ing into English, and when the Anglo-Norman French was yet 
 in use among the higher classes. Its special interest is enhanced 
 also by the fact that it shows that the same broad dialect of Eng- 
 lish was common at that period to Scotland south of the Gram- 
 pians and to the North of England. The manuscript contains 
 internal evidence that the homilies were read by the priests to 
 the people ; for in the midst of the second homily are some 
 Latin hexameters with this rubric : " Isti versus omittantur a lec- 
 tore quando legit Anglicum coram laycis^ 
 
 * I have seen neither Mathew Paris's Historia Major, &c., nor 
 Bulasus's Historia Universitatis Parisiensis. Both are cited by 
 Markland and Warton, who are here my authorities. 
 
326 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 common for teachers and scholars to get up these 
 performances. Fitz-Stephen, Thomas a Becket's 
 contemporary and biographer, also records that 
 in London, during or soon after the life of that 
 stiff-necked priest, who was put to death in 1 1 70, 
 there were performed in London religious plays 
 representing the miracles wrought by saints or 
 the sufferings and constancy of martyrs.* These 
 miracle-plays, or mysteries, derived their name 
 from the fact that, whether founded upon the Old 
 or the New Testament, the spurious gospel attrib- 
 uted to Nicodemus, or church tradition, they al- 
 most without exception represented a display of 
 supernatural power. Made the means of teach- 
 ing not only religious history but religious dog- 
 mas, these miracle-plays often represented a dis- 
 play of supernatural power in the support of 
 those dogmas ; and naturally that one most in 
 need of such extra -rational aid, transubstantia- 
 tion, received the most of this bolstering. One 
 of the oldest manuscript miracle-plays extant, the 
 manuscript being, in the judgment of experts, as 
 old as 1460-70, is upon this subject. It is called 
 The Play of the Blessed Sacrament, and drama- 
 tizes a miracle said to have been worked in the 
 forest of Aragon in the year 1461 ; but doubtless 
 
 * " Londonia pro spectaculis theatralibus, pro ludis scenicis, 
 ludos habet sanctiores, representationes miraculorum, quae sanc- 
 ti confessores operati sunt, seu representationes passionum quibus 
 claruit constantia martyrum." — Fitz-Stephen's Description of 
 London, ed. Pegge, 1773, p. 73. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 327 
 
 the tradition is older. Among the characters are 
 Christ, five Jews, a bishop, a curate, a Christian 
 merchant, a physician, and his man. The mer- 
 chant, whose name is Aristorius, in the crude style 
 of these plays thus describes himself : 
 
 " Ffor off all Aragon I am most myghty of sylver and of gold, 
 Ffor and yt wer a countre to by now wold I nat wond. 
 
 Syr Arystory ys my name ; 
 A merchante myghty of a royall araye ; 
 
 Fful wyde in this worlde spryngyth my fame, 
 Fere kend and knowen the sothe for to saye." 
 
 The last line of this extract is noteworthy as in- 
 dicative of the existence, even in remote times, of 
 the merchant's pride in his mercantile honor, in 
 having his word as good as his bond, however 
 questionable may be the character, in other re- 
 spects, of some of his transactions, as in the case 
 of this Aristorius. The principal Jew, whose 
 name is Jonathas, induces Aristorius to steal the 
 Host and sell it to him for one hundred pounds. 
 Then Jonathas and his Hebrew companions take 
 it to his house for experimental purposes. They 
 stab it ; it bleeds. They are about to plunge it 
 into a caldron of boiUng oil ; but Jonathas goes 
 mad with the Host in his hand. He still keeping 
 his hold, the rest nail the wafer to a post, and at- 
 tempt to drag him away. They accomplish their 
 purpose with the loss of his hand, which comes 
 off and clings to the wafer. The physician is sent 
 for, and his man entering first makes sport by a 
 
328 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 burlesque laudation of his master, who is not 
 forthcoming, and as to whom he makes the follow- 
 ing proclamation : — 
 
 " Yff ther be eyther man or woman 
 That sawe master Brundyche of Braban, 
 Or owyht of hym tel can, 
 
 Shall wele be quit hys mede. 
 He hath a cut berd and a flatte noose, 
 A therde bare gowne and a rent hoose, 
 He spekyth never good matere nor purpoose, 
 
 To the pyllere ye hym lede." 
 
 The physician arrives and offers his services ; but 
 both master and man are driven out as meddling 
 quacks. Jonathas's hand with the Host in it is 
 then thrown into the caldron, which immediate- 
 ly boils up with blood. The Jews then heat an 
 oven red-hot, and cast in the wafer. The oven 
 bleeds at the chinks and bursts asunder, and the 
 figure of Jesus issues from it, before which the 
 Jews prostrate themselves and become Christians 
 on the spot. The bishop then forms a religious 
 procession, enters the Jew's house, and addresses 
 the figure, which changes to bread again. Aris- 
 torius confesses his crime, and is ordered, by way 
 of penance, to give up buying and selling. The 
 bishop then "improves the occasion" offered by 
 this comic-pantomime-like performance, and closes 
 the play by a rhymed homily upon the doctrines 
 of the Trinity and Transubstantiation. Certain 
 peculiarities of language indicate that the author 
 was a North of England man ; and there are 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 329 
 
 traces in the composition of the old Anglo-Saxon 
 alliterative verse. There is more art in the con- 
 struction of this play, rude as it is, than in any 
 other of the early English plays of its kind. 
 
 There were neither theatres nor professional 
 actors in England, indeed in Europe, at the period 
 when miracle-plays first came in vogue. The 
 first performers in these plays were clergymen ; 
 the first stages or scaffolds on which they were 
 presented were set up in churches. Evidence that 
 this was the case has been discovered in such pro- 
 fusion, that it is needless to specify it more partic- 
 ularly in this place, than to remark that councils 
 and prelates finally found it necessary to forbid 
 such performances either in churches or by the 
 clergy. But it is worthy of remark, that evidence 
 of the ecclesiastical character of the first actors 
 of our drama is preserved in dramatic literature 
 to this day in the Latin words of direction, Exit 
 and Exeimt. The stage directions in the miracle- 
 plays (like the direction to the priest as to read- 
 ing the metrical homily quoted on page 324) were 
 partly, and at first it would seem entirely, in Lat- 
 in, which it is needless to say no layman, and not 
 all clergymen, could then understand. Even in 
 Shakespeare's day Latin held its own in the head- 
 ings of the acts and scenes, — Actus PrimuSy 
 Scceiia Seamda, and so forth. After the exclusion 
 of the clergy from the religious stage, lay broth- 
 ers, parish clerks, and the hangers-on of the priest- 
 
330 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 hood naturally took the place of their spiritual 
 fathers, under whose superintendence, or, to speak 
 precisely, management, the miracle-plays were 
 brought out. Excluded from the church itself, 
 like the strange Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, 
 like that dance the miracle-play found fitting ref- 
 uge in the church-yard. But it was finally for- 
 bidden within all hallowed precincts, and was then 
 presented upon a movable scaffold or pageant, 
 which was dragged through the town, and stopped 
 for the performance at certain places designated 
 by an announcement made a day or two before. 
 At last the presentation of these plays fell entirely 
 into the hands of laymen, and handicraftsmen be- 
 came their actors ; the members of the various 
 guilds undertaking respectively certain plays which 
 they made for the time their specialty. Thus 
 the Shearmen and Taylors would represent one ; 
 the Cappers another ; and so with the Smiths, the 
 Skinners, the Fishmongers, and others. In the 
 Chester series, Noah's flood was very appropri- 
 ately assigned to the Water-dealers and Drawers 
 of Dee. It is almost needless to remark, that fe- 
 male characters were always played by striplings 
 and young men. Women did not appear upon 
 the English stage until the middle of the seven- 
 teenth century. It would seem that the priests 
 appeared only as amateurs, and that their perform- 
 ances were gratuitous. But when laymen, or at 
 least when handicraftsmen undertook the busi- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 331 
 
 ness, they were paid, as we know by the memo- 
 randums of account still existing.* 
 
 With regard to one place of performance and 
 one play, though not in England, there has been 
 preserved a record full of interest. Riccoboni gives 
 in his catalogue of old printed Italian plays the 
 following as the title-page of an ancient miracle- 
 play : '' Delia Passione da Nostro Signore Giesu 
 Christo, rapresentata il Giovedi santo nel Colish di 
 Romal' — by which we see that the Coliseum, it- 
 self the scene of many a Christian martyrdom, 
 the place where many a disciple of Paul fought 
 with wild beasts, as his teacher had fought at 
 Ephesus, became in the course of a few hundred 
 years the theatre on which were represented the 
 life and sufferings and death of the Greatest 
 Teacher, to their faith in whom those martyrs 
 offered up themselves, a bloody sacrifice, in that 
 vast human slaughter-house. 
 
 Writers of chronicle and history, and sometimes 
 
 * The following items of account are taken from one of many 
 memorandums discovered by Mr. Sharp in the archives of Cov- 
 entry, and published in his Essay on the Coventry Mysteries : — 
 
 " Md. payd to the players for corpus christi daye 
 
 Imprimis, to God 
 
 ij' 
 
 Itm to Cayphas 
 
 iij' iiij* 
 
 Itm to Heroude 
 
 iij' iiij* 
 
 Itm to Pilatt is \vyff 
 
 xf 
 
 Itm to the Bedull 
 
 iiij"* 
 
 Itm to one of the knights 
 
 ij« 
 
 Itm to the devyll and Judas 
 
 xviij^ " 
 
332 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 even of family genealogy, in the Middle Ages, 
 disdained to skip to the deluge, and take creation 
 for granted ; and the writers of miracle-plays were 
 in this respect like-minded. The disposition to 
 go back to the beginning of all things is a trait 
 of rude and unlettered periods. Stowe records 
 the performance at London, in the year 1409, of 
 a play " which lasted eight days, and was of mat- 
 ter from the creation of the world," — a dramatic 
 protracted meeting which quite puts to shame 
 the assistance at the famous representation of 
 Monte Christo in Paris ; and Lidgate wrote a se- 
 ries of miracle-plays, also beginning with the cre- 
 ation. Indeed, that event is the starting-point of 
 two of the three great collections of English mir- 
 acle-plays which have come down to us. But we 
 may be sure that the writers set out from there 
 only because of the difficulty of getting back far- 
 ther ; and in fact the third series, the Chester, 
 does begin with the fall of Lucifer, and the au- 
 thors of the other two contrive to work that inci- 
 dent into the play on the Creation. 
 
 The most ancient manuscript of an English 
 miracle-play yet discovered is that of one called 
 The Harrowing of Hell^ which very formidable 
 title, however, merely signifies the harrying, the 
 invasion and spoliation of hell by Christ, — the 
 event alluded to in the Apostles' Creed by the 
 words, " He descended into Hell." This play is 
 founded upon a passage in the apocryphal Gos- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 333 
 
 pel of Nicodemns, and represents the descent of 
 Christ into Hell to set free Adam and Eve, Abra- 
 ham, Moses, John the Baptist, and other holy per- 
 sons. In it Satan enters into a discussion with 
 Christ as to the injustice of carrying off his, i. e. 
 Satan's, property. But Christ accomplishes his 
 purpose without resistance, and binds Satan until 
 the day of judgment. Indeed, in spite of its title, 
 this play is of a most peaceful character, and is 
 filled with words rather than action. Both lan- 
 guage and versification are very rude, as may be 
 seen in the following lines spoken by Christ : — 
 
 " Helle gates y come nou to, 
 And I wolle that heo un do. 
 Wer ys nou this gateward ? 
 Me thunketh he is a coward." 
 
 There are a prologue, an epilogue, and ninq 
 speakers. The manuscript is supposed to have 
 been written about 1350.* But that date does 
 not of course help us to determine when the play 
 was composed, or give it priority in this respect 
 to others which have been preserved in more mod- 
 ern writing. The Harrowing of Hell is supposed 
 with probability to have formed part of a series ; 
 and its subject has its place in collections which 
 from their completeness have greater interest and 
 importance. 
 
 The three sets of miracle-plays above men- 
 
 * It is among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, and 
 has been printed by Mr. Halliwell. 
 
o^A THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 tioned are known as the Towneley, the Coventry, 
 and the Chester Collections. The Towneley Col- 
 lection is supposed to have belonged to Widkirk 
 Abbey, and is hence sometimes called the Wid- 
 kirk Collection. The manuscript, in the opinion 
 of Mr. Collier, is of the time of Henry VI.* The 
 Coventry Collection is so called because there is 
 reason to believe that it was the property of the 
 Gray Friars of Coventry, who were famous for the 
 performance of miracle-plays at the feast of Cor- 
 pus Christi. The principal part of the manu- 
 script copy extant was written in the year 1468, 
 as appears by that date upon one page of the vol- 
 ume.f The Chester Collection, of which there 
 
 * The following are the subjects of the thirty plays in the Towne- 
 ley series. I. The Creation and the Rebellion of Lucifer. IL 
 Mactatio Abel. III. Processus Noae cum filiis. IV. Abraham. 
 V. Jacob and Esau. VI. Processus Prophetarum. VII. Pha- 
 rao. VIII. Caesar Augustus. IX. Annunciatio. X. Salutatio 
 Elizabeths;. XL Pastorum. XII. Alia eorundem. XIII. Ob- 
 latio Magorum. XIV. Fugatio Josephi et Marise in Egiptum. 
 XV. Magnus Herodus. XVI. Purificatio Mariae. XVII. Jo- 
 hannes Baptista. XVIII. Conspiratio Christi. XIX. Calaphi- 
 satio. XX. Flagellatio. XXI. Processus Crucis. XXII. Pro- 
 cessus Talentorum. XXIII. Extractio Animarum. XXIV. 
 Resurrectio Domini. XXV. PeregrinL XXVI. Thomas Indias. 
 XXVII. Ascensio Domini. XXVIIL Judicium. XXIX. Laz- 
 arus. XXX. Suspensio Judae. 
 
 t The Coventry series contains forty-two plays upon the fol- 
 lowing subjects : — I. The Creation. IL The Fall of Man. III. 
 The Death of Abel. IV. Noah's Flood. V. Abraham's Sacri- 
 fice. VI. Moses and the Two Tables. VII. The Genealogy of 
 Christ. VIII. Anna's Pregnancy. IX. Mary in the Temple. 
 X. Mary's Betrothment. XL The Salutation and the Concep- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 335 
 
 are three existing manuscript copies, the oldest 
 only of the year 1600, belonged to the city of 
 Chester. Their author was one Randle, a monk of 
 Chester Abbey.* They were played upon Whit- 
 sunday by the tradesmen of that city ; and Mr. 
 Markland, one of the earliest, and, in the phrase 
 
 tion. XII. Joseph's Return. XIII. The Visit to Elizabeth 
 XIV. The Trial of Joseph and Mary. XV. The Birth of Christ 
 XVI. The Adoration of the Shepherds. XVI I. The Adora 
 tion of the Magi. XVIII. The Purification. XIX. The Slaugh 
 ter of the Innocents. XX. Christ Disputing in the Temple 
 XXI. The Baptism of Christ. XXII. The Temptation. XXIII, 
 The Woman taken in Adultery. XXIV. Lazarus. XXV. The 
 Council of the Jews. XXVI. The Entry into Jerusalem. 
 XXVII. The Last Supper. XXVIII. The Betraying of Christ. 
 XXIX. King Herod. XXX. The Trial of Christ. XXXI. Pi- 
 late's Wife's Dream. XXXII. The Crucifixion. XXXIIL The 
 Descent into Hell. XXXIV. The Burial of Christ. XXXV. The 
 Resurrection. XXXVL The Three Maries. XXXVIL Christ 
 appearing to Mary Magdalen. XXXVIII. The Pilgiim of Emaus. 
 XXXIX. The Ascension. XL. The Descent of the Holy Ghost. 
 XLI. The Assumption. XLII. Doomsday. 
 
 * We have the testimony of the " Banes " (i. e. banns or pro- 
 logue), that this Chester series of miracle-plays was written by 
 " Done Randall, moonke of Chester Abbey," ^^^th the intention 
 of instructing the people in the Bible, and also of affording them 
 merry entertainment. 
 
 " This moonke, not moonke-like, in scriptures well scene, 
 In storjes travilled with the best sorte ; 
 In pagentes set fourthe, apparently to all eyne. 
 The old and newe testament with livelye comforte ; 
 Intermingling therewith, onely to make sporte. 
 Some things not warranted by any writt. 
 Which to gladd the hearers he would men to take yt." 
 
 This prologue was written some time, possibly a century or more, 
 after the production of the plays themselves. 
 
336 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 of his day, most ingenious writers upon this sub- 
 ject, has pretty clearly established that they were 
 first produced in 1268, four years after the estab- 
 lishment of the feast of Corpus Christi, under the 
 auspices of Sir John Arneway, Mayor of Chester.* 
 A brief analysis of some of the plays of the 
 Coventry series will give a correct notion of the 
 characters of these queer compositions. A pro- 
 logue in stanzas, spoken alternately by three vex- 
 illators, tells in detail the subjects of the forty-two 
 plays. The first, The Creation, is opened by God, 
 who, after declaring in Latin that he is Alpha 
 and Omega, the beginning and the end, goes on 
 in English to assert his might and his triune ex- 
 istence, and then announces his creative inten- 
 tions. A chorus of angels then sing in Latin the 
 Tibi omnes angeli, &c. of the Te Deum. Lucifer 
 next appears, and asks of the angels whether they 
 
 * The Chester series contains but twenty-four plays, upon the 
 following subjects : — I. The Fall of Lucifer. II. De Creatione 
 Mundi. III. De Diluvio Nose. IV. De Abrahamo, Melchise- 
 dech et Lotte. V. De Mose et Rege Balak, et Balaam Propheta. 
 VI. De Salutatione et Nativitate Salvatoris. VII. De Pastoribus 
 greges pascentibus. VIII. De tribus Regibus Orientalibus. IX. 
 De Oblatione Tertium Regum. X. De Occisione Innocentuna. 
 XL De Purificatione Virginis. XII. De Tentatione Salvatoris. 
 XIII. De Chelidomo et Resurrectio Lazari. XIV. De Jesu in- 
 tranto domum Simeonis Leprosi. XV. De Coena Domini. XVI. 
 De Passione Christi. XVII. De Descensu Christi ad Inferos. 
 XVin. De Resurrectione Jesu Christi XIX. De Christo ad 
 Castellum Emmaus. XX. De Ascensione Domini. XXI. De 
 Electione Matthise. XXIL Ezekiel. XXIIL De Adventu An- 
 tichristi. XXIV. De Judicio extremo. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 33: 
 
 sing thus in God's honor or his, asserting that he 
 is the most worthy. The good angels declare for 
 God; the bad, for Lucifer. God then dooms him 
 to fall from heaven to hell. Lucifer submits to 
 his sentence without murmuring, and expresses 
 his emotion only in a manner most likely to de- 
 prive the scene of any semblance of dignity it 
 might otherwise have exhibited.* 
 
 The second play, The Fall of Man, opens with a 
 speech by Adam, and a reply by Eve, in which they 
 set forth their happy condition and the command 
 concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
 The serpent then appears and tempts Eve to vio- 
 late this command. The action, if action it must 
 be called, follows in the most servile manner, and 
 with no expansion, the narrative in Genesis ; and 
 
 * '■'■ Deus. Thu Lucyfere ffor thi mekyl pryde, 
 I bydde the ffalle from hefne to helle ; 
 And alle tho that holdyn on thi syde, 
 In my blysse nevyr more to dwelle. 
 At my comawndement anoon down thou slyde, 
 With merthe and joye nevyr more to melle, 
 In myschyf and manas evyr xalt thou abyde, 
 In byttyr brennyng and fyer so felle, 
 In peyn evyr to be pyht. 
 " Lucyfer. At thy byddyng thi wyl I werke, 
 And pas fro joy to peyne smerte, 
 Now I am a devyl ful derke, 
 
 That was an aungelle bryht. 
 
 " Now to helle the wey I take, 
 
 In endeles peyn ther to be pyht. 
 flfor fere of fyre a fart I crake, 
 
 In helle doonjoone myn dene is dyth." 
 
 15 V 
 
338 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise.* It is 
 clear that the representatives of the types of man- 
 kind appeared upon the stage innocently free from 
 " the troublesome disguises that we wear " ; and 
 that they afterward very faithfully followed the 
 Hebrew lawgiver's narrative in the use of fig- 
 leaves.f It has been urged that the nakedness in 
 this scene was a supposed nakedness ; that shame 
 could not have been so utterly disregarded as it 
 must have been had these speeches and these 
 directions a literal significance. But the manners 
 of the time, as they are shown in old books and 
 prints, justify the acceptance of these passages in 
 their plain and simple meaning. We are apt to 
 forget how much of what we call shame is purely 
 conventional, — as purely so as the horror of a 
 Turkish woman at uncovering her face before a 
 
 * Here is Eve's lamentation : 
 
 " Eva. Alas ! alas ! and wele away, 
 That evyr towchyd I the tre ; 
 I wende as wrecche in welsom way, 
 In blake busshys my boure xal be. 
 In paradys is plente of pleye, 
 ffayr frutys ryth gret plente. 
 The satys be schet with Godys keye. 
 My husbond is lost because of me. 
 
 Leve spowse now thou fonde. 
 Now stomble we on stalk and ston, 
 My wyt awey is fro me gon, 
 Wrythe on to my necke bon, 
 
 With hardnesse of thin honde." 
 
 t In the Chester miracle-play the stage direction is, "Then 
 shall Adam and Eve stand nackede^ and shall not be ashamed.^'' In 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 339 
 
 strange man. It is related in the Life of William 
 Blake, the painter, a pure and good man, that a 
 Mr. Butts on visiting him found him and his wife 
 sitting entirely naked in the summer-house in their 
 garden. He shrank back astounded ; but " Come 
 in," cried Blake, " it 's only Adam and Eve, you 
 know." They had been reading the Paradise 
 Lost, and like the actor who blackened himself 
 all over that he might more thoroughly enter into 
 the character of Othello, they, to realize the situa- 
 tion of Adam and Eve in Eden, had adopted the 
 costume worn previous to the temptation. And 
 this was no solitary instance. Blake frequently 
 went naked ; so in her own room did Mrs. Blake ; 
 and the children went about the house and to the 
 door to admit friends naked. It may be said that 
 Blake was crazy ; but his wife was not, nor were 
 his children. 
 
 the Coventry play, Adam speaks thus, immediately after he has 
 eaten the apple : — 
 
 " Adam dicet sic. 
 Alas ! alas ! fFor this fals dede, 
 
 My flesly frend my fo I fynde, 
 Schameful synne doth us unhede, 
 
 I se us nakyd before and behynde. 
 Oure lordes wurd wold we not drede, 
 
 Therfore we be now caytyvys unkynde, 
 Oure pore prevytes fFor to hede, 
 
 Summe ffygge-levys fayn wolde I fynde, 
 ffor to hyde oure schame. 
 Womman, ley this lefif on thi pryvyte, 
 And with this leff I xal hyde me, 
 Gret schame it is us nakyd to se, 
 
 Oure lord God thus to grame. " 
 
340 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 In the third play, Cain and Abel, the only note- 
 worthy points are, first, that Cain speaks very dis- 
 respectfully of Adam and his counsels, saying that 
 he cares not a haw if he never sees him ; and 
 next, that, when Abel's offering is accepted and 
 consumed by fire, Cain breaks out into abuse of 
 him, calling him a " stinking losel." * This, by 
 the way, is one of the few representations of con- 
 temporary manners furnished by these miracle- 
 plays. If we accept them as truthful in this re- 
 gard, we must credit our forefathers with a ready 
 resort to foul language when they were angered. 
 Afterward, in the play on NoaJis Flood, Lamech 
 calls a young man " a stinking lurdane " ; and 
 in that on The Woman taken in Adultery, the 
 Scribes and Pharisees call her forth to be taken 
 to judgment in language far more pharisaic than 
 
 * Cain's speech, which follows, will give a notion of the lan- 
 guage and action of the play at its point of highest interest. 
 
 " Caytn. What ? thou stynkyng losel, and is it so ? 
 Doth God the love and hatyht me "i 
 Thou xalt be ded, I xal the slo, 
 
 Thi Lord thi God thou xalt nevyr se ! 
 Tythyng more xalt thou nevyr do, 
 
 With this chavyl bon I xal sle the, 
 Thi deth is dyht, thi days be go, 
 
 Out of myn handys xalt thou not fle. 
 With this strok I the kylle. — 
 Now this boy is slayn and dede. 
 Of hym I xal nevyr more han drede ; 
 He xal hereafter nevyr ete brede. 
 
 With this gresse I xal hym hylle." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 341 
 
 decent.* The Towneley mystery, which repre- 
 sents the first fratricide, is even more grotesque 
 and indecent than that in the collection which we 
 are examining. Cain comes upon the stage with 
 a plough and team, and quarrels with his plough- 
 boy for refusing to drive the oxen. Abel enters, 
 bids speed the plough to Cain, and in reply is 
 told to do something quite unmentionable. After 
 Abel is killed, the boy counsels flight for fear of 
 the bailiffs. Cain then makes a mock proclama- 
 tion, which his boy blunderingly repeats ; and after 
 this clownish foolery, Cain bids the audience fare- 
 well before he goes to hell. 
 
 The personages in the fourth play, NoaJis Floods 
 are God, Noah and his wife, his three sons and their 
 wives, an angel, Cain, Lamech, and a young man. 
 Noah and his family talk pharisaic morality for 
 about the first third of the play. God then declares 
 his displeasure, and that he "wol be vengyd"; 
 to which end he will destroy all the world except 
 Noah and his family. The angel announces the 
 coming flood to Noah, and bids him build a ship to 
 save himself, his household, and "of every kyndys 
 
 * ^^ Scriba. Come forthe, thou stotte ! com forthe, thou scowte ! 
 Come forthe, thou bysmare and brothel bolde ! 
 Come fforthe, thou hore, and stynkynge byche clowte ! 
 How longe hast thou suche harlotry holde ? 
 " Phariseus. Come forth, thou quene ! come forthe, thou scolde ! 
 Com forth, thou sloveyn ! com forthe, thou slutte ! 
 We xal the teche with carys colde, 
 A lytyl bettyr to kepe tlii kutte." 
 
342 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 bestes a cowpyl." Noah and his family go out to 
 build the ship, and Lamech enters blind, and con- 
 ducted by a young man. In spite of his infirmity, 
 at the suggestion of his guide, he shoots at a sup- 
 posed beast in a bush ; but, like another hapless 
 person known to rhyme who " bent his bow," he 
 hits what he did not shoot at, and kills Cain, who 
 mysteriously happens to be in the bush. Aroused 
 to wrath, and moved by fear of the fate predicted 
 of him who should slay Cain, Lamech kills the 
 young man who had misled him into shooting at 
 the beast. He goes out, and Noah comes in with 
 his ship, — '' et stathn intrat Noe cum iiavi cantan- 
 tes." This ship, as we learn from the direction in 
 the corresponding play of the Chester Mysteries, 
 was customarily painted over with figures of the 
 beasts supposed to be within, as if they had struck 
 through and come out like an eruption.* In that 
 play, too, and also in the corresponding Towneley 
 play, Noah's wife refuses to enter the ark. In- 
 deed, in these plays she is represented as an ar- 
 rant scold. In the first scene she berates Noah, 
 
 * " Then Noe shall goe into the arke with all his familye, his 
 wife excepte. The arke must be boarded round about, and up- 
 pon the hordes all the beastes and fowles hereafter rehearsed must 
 be painted, that there wordes maye agree with the pictures." To 
 Noah's request that she will come into the ark, his wife, in the 
 Chester play, thus replies : — 
 
 " Yea sir set up your saile, 
 And rowe forth with evil haile, 
 For withouten anie saile 
 
 I will not out of this toune. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 343 
 
 who gives her as good as she sends, and both 
 swear roundly by the Virgin Mary ; and as to 
 going into the ark, the patriarch, "the secunde 
 fathyr," as he styles himself, edifies the female part 
 of the audience by fairly flogging his wife into it 
 with a cart-whip. The flood comes on, (we have 
 returned to the Coventry plays,) Noah and his 
 family speak thirty lines of dialogue, and then he 
 says : — 
 
 " XI.'' days and nyghtes hath lasted this rayn, 
 
 And xl." days this grett flood begynnyth to slake ; 
 This crowe xal I sende out to seke sum playn, 
 Good tydynges to brynge, this massage I make." 
 
 The crow does not return, and the dove is sent, 
 " qua redeimte cum ramo viride olivce," as the 
 stage direction says, Noah and his family leave 
 the ark, singing, " 3Iai'e vidit etfiigit,'' &c. 
 
 The fourteenth play, which represents the Trial 
 of yoseph and Mary on accusations based upon 
 the latter's mysterious pregnancy, is opened by a 
 crier, who summons the jurors, and people who 
 
 ** But I have my gossepes everich one, 
 One foot further I will not gone ; 
 They shal not drown by St. John, 
 And I may save ther life. 
 
 " They loved me ful well by Christ ; 
 But thou will let them in thi chist, 
 Ellis row forth, Noe, when thou list 
 And get thee a newe wife." 
 
 But Noah neither lets them in his chist, nor gets him a new 
 wife. 
 
344 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 have causes, to come into court. Although the 
 trial is supposed, of course, to take place in Pales- 
 tine before the Christian era, it is presided over 
 by " my lorde the buschop," and the people sum- 
 moned are Englishfolk of the lower class, whose 
 surnames have plainly been given to them on ac- 
 count of their occupation or their personal traits. 
 The crier lets us into a judge's secret, by warning 
 those who have causes to be tried to put money 
 in their purses, or their cause may speed the 
 worse.* In the next play, which is entitled The 
 
 * " Den, Avoyd, seres, and lete my lorde the buschop come, 
 And syt in the courte the lawes ffor to doo ; 
 And I xal gon in this place them for to somowne, 
 
 Tho that ben in my book the com't se must com too. 
 I warne 30W here alle abowte, 
 That I somown 30W alle the rowte, 
 Loke je fayl, for no dowte, 
 
 At the court to pere. 
 Bothe John Jurdon, and Geffrey Gyle, 
 Malkyn Mylkedoke, and fayr Mabyle, 
 Stevyn Sturdy, and Jak at the Style, 
 And Sawdyr Sadelere. 
 
 " Thom Tynkere and Betrys Belle, 
 Peyrs Potter and Whatt at the Welle, 
 Symme Smalfeyth and Kate Kelle, 
 
 And Bertylmew the Bochere. 
 Kjrtt Cakelere and Colett Crane, 
 Gylle Fetyse and fayr Jane, 
 Powle Pewterere and Pernel Prane, 
 
 And Phelypp the good Flecchere. 
 
 " Cok Crane and Davy Drydust, 
 Luce Lyere and Letyce Lytyltrust, 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 345 
 
 Birth of Christ, Mary, as she and Joseph are on 
 their way to Bethlehem, longs for cherries from a 
 tree which they pass. Joseph is old, lazy, and 
 huffish, and tells her that the tree is too high, 
 and that he may get her cherries who got her 
 with child. Whereupon Mary prays for the cher- 
 ries, and the boughs bend down to her ; at which 
 sight Joseph repents.* Plainly there were prop- 
 Miles the Myllere and Colle Crakecrust, 
 
 Bothe Bette the Bakere, and Robyn Rede. 
 
 And loke 3e ryngewele in sour purs, 
 
 ffor ellys 30ur cawse may spede the wurs, 
 
 Thow that se slynge Goddys curs 
 
 Evyn at myn hede, ffast com away. 
 
 Bothe Boutyng the Browstere, and Sybyly Slynge, 
 
 Megge Merywedyr and Sabyn Sprynge, 
 
 Tyffany Twynkelere, ffayle ffor nothynge, 
 The courte xal be this day." 
 
 * " Maria. Now, my spowse, I pray 30W to behold, 
 How the cheryes growj^n upon 3on tre ; 
 flfor to have therof ryght ffayn I wold, 
 
 And it plesyd 30W to labore so meche for me. 
 " Joseph. 30ur desyre to ffulfylle I xal assay sekyrly, 
 
 Ow to plucke 30W of these cheries ; it is a werk wylde, 
 ffor the tre is so hy3 it wol not be lyghtly, 
 
 Therfore lete hym pluk 30W cheryes begatt 30W with childe. 
 " Maria. Now, good Lord, I pray the graunt me this boun, 
 To have of these cheries, and it be 30ur wylle : 
 Now, I thank it God, this tre bowyth to me downe ! 
 I may now gaderyn anowe, and etyn my ffylle. 
 " Josephe. Ow, I know weyl I have offendyd my God in Trinyte, 
 Spekyng to my spowse these unkynde wurdys ; 
 ffor now I beleve wel it may non other be, 
 
 But that my spowse beryght the kyngys son of blys ; 
 He help us now at oure nede ! " 
 15* 
 
34^ 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 erties, and even machinery, upon the stage at this 
 rude and early period ; and indeed the Usts of 
 properties (for they seem always to have been 
 so called) which have been preserved, show that 
 no small pains were taken to portray the glories 
 and the horrors of the various scenes presented, 
 and especially in the imitations of such miracu- 
 lous events as that of the bowing down of the 
 branches of the cherry-tree. 
 
 The seventeenth play. The Adoration of the 
 Magi, introduces the most famous character in 
 these dramas, Herod. He is always represented 
 in them, not only as wicked and cruel, but as a 
 tremendous braggart. He raves and swaggers 
 and swears without stint ; his favorite oath being 
 by Mahound, i. e. Mohammed ; for in all respects 
 these miracle-plays set chronology at defiance. 
 The speeches put into his mouth more than any 
 others are written in the old Anglo-Saxon alliter- 
 ative style, of which Piers Ploughman s Vision 
 is a well-known example.* Herod, in spite of 
 
 * Perhaps the most characteristic speech of his, in every re- 
 spect, is the following from The Slaughter of the Innocents. 
 " Herodes Rex. I ryde on my rowel ryche in my regne, 
 Rybbys fful reed with rape xal I sende ; 
 Popetys et paphawkes I xal puttyn in peyne, 
 With my spere prevyn, pychyn, and to-pende. 
 ' The gowys with gold crownys gete thei nevyr ageyn, 
 To seke tho sottys sondys xal I sende ; 
 Do howlott howtyn hoberd and heyn. 
 
 Whan here barnys blede undyr credyl bende ; 
 Sharply I xal hem shende ! 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. ^47 
 
 his heathenism, his cruelty, his profanity, and his 
 braggadocio, perhaps by reason of them, used to 
 be a favorite character with young men of spirit 
 and parts who were stage-struck. Chaucer, it 
 
 The knave childeryn that be 
 In alle Israel countre, 
 Thei xul have blody ble, 
 
 fFor on I calde unkende. 
 
 " It is tolde in Grw, 
 His name xulde be Jhesu 
 
 I-fownde. 
 To have hym 3e gon, 
 Hewe the flesche with the bon, 
 
 And gyff hym wownde ! 
 Now kene knyghtes, kythe sour craftys, 
 
 And kyllyth knave chylderyn and castyth hem in clay; 
 Shewyth on 30ur shulderes scheldys and schaftys, 
 
 Shapyht amonge schel chowthys ashyrlyng shray ; 
 Doth rowncys rennyn with rakynge raftys, 
 
 Tyl rybbys be to rent with a reed ray ; 
 Lete no barne beleve on bete baftys, 
 Tyl a beggere blede be bestys baye 
 Mahound that best may ; 
 I warne 30W my knyghtes, 
 A barn is born I plyghtys, 
 Wolde clymbyn kynge and kyknytes, 
 And lett my lordly lay. 
 
 " Knyghtys wyse, 
 Chosyn ful chyse, 
 Aryse ! aryse ! 
 
 And take 30ur tolle ! 
 And every page 
 Of ij. 3ere age, 
 Or evyr 3e swage, 
 
 Sleythe ilke a fool. 
 
348 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 will be remembered, says, in the Miller's Tale, of 
 his " Absolon that joly was and gay" : 
 
 *' Sometime to shew his lightness and maistrie 
 He plaieth Herode on a skaffolde hie." * 
 
 But more than by the indecency, the coarse- 
 ness, the bombast, and the vapidity of these mira- 
 cle-plays, we are astonished and repelled by the 
 degrading familiarity with which they treat the 
 most awful and most moving incidents of the 
 Gospel history. The Last Supper was actually 
 
 " On of hem alle 
 Was born in stalle, 
 ffolys hym calle 
 
 Kynge in crowne. 
 With byttyr galle, 
 He xalle down falle, — 
 My myght in halle 
 
 Xal nevyr go down." 
 
 * Absolon was parish-clerk; but the costume and habits of 
 some of the lay gallants who played Herod is set forth in the fol- 
 lowing passage, spoken by the Devil in the twenty-fifth play, The 
 Council of the Jews. It has no dramatic significance, but is an 
 interesting and doubtless a truthful portraiture of the period, 
 even as to the side-locks that " harbor quick beasts that tickle 
 men." 
 
 " Byholde the dyvercyte of my dysg}^syd varyauns, 
 Eche thyng sett of dewe nateralle dysposycion, 
 And eche parte acordynge to his resemblauns, 
 £fro the sool of the ffoot to the hyest asencion. 
 
 " Off ffyne cordewan a goodly peyre of long pekyd schon ; 
 Hosyn enclosyd of the most costyous cloth of crenseyn ; 
 Thus a bey to a jentylman to make comperycion, 
 
 With two doseyn poyntys of cheverelle, the aglottes of sylver 
 feyn. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 349 
 
 played ; the Crucifixion was actually played ; and 
 even the Resurrection was not too sacred or mys- 
 terious a subject to be represented. Conforming 
 both to the religious spirit and the taste of the 
 time, the clerical dramatist spared his audience 
 the sight of no indignity, of no torture, suffered 
 by Christ ; but took delight in representing all 
 the physical circumstances attending his death 
 with gross and audacious particularity.* 
 
 " A shert of feyn Holond, but care not for the payment ; 
 A stomachere of clere reynes the best may be bowth ; 
 Thow poverte be chef, lete pride ther be present. 
 
 And alle tho that repreff pride, thou sette hem at nowth. 
 
 " Cadace wolle or flokkys, where it may be sowth. 
 
 To stufife withal thi dobbelet, and make the of proporcyon ; 
 Two smale legges and a gret body, thow it ryme nowth, 
 set loke that thou desyre to an the newe faccion. 
 
 " A gowne of thre serdys, loke thou make comparison, 
 Unto alle degrees dayly that passe thin astat ; 
 A purse withoutyn mony, a daggere for devoscyon ; 
 And there repref is of synne, loke thou make debat. 
 
 " With syde lokkys I schrewe thin here to thi colere hangyng 
 downe. 
 To herborwe qweke bestys that tekele men onyth ; 
 An hey smal bonet for curyng of the crowne, 
 
 And alle beggeres and pore pepyll have hem in dyspyte. 
 Onto the grete othys and lycherye gyf thi delyte ; 
 
 To maynteyn thin astate lete brybory be present ; 
 And yf the lawe repreve the, say thou wylt ffyth, 
 And gadere the a felachep after thin entent." 
 
 * The following passage, it will be seen, shows that the Cruci- 
 fixion was represented even to the minutest of its attendant cir- 
 cumstances : — 
 
350 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 And as we close our examination of the mira- 
 cle-plays a reflection of their mingled childishness 
 
 " Than xul thei pulle yhesu out of his clothis, and leyn them to- 
 gedyr ; and ther thei xul pullyjt hym down and leytt along on the 
 cros, and after that Jiaylyn hym thereon. 
 
 ^^ Primus Judceus. Come on now here, we xal asay 
 Yf the cros for the be mete ; 
 Cast hym down here in the devyl way, 
 How long xal he standyn on his fete ? 
 
 " Secundics Jicdceus. Pul hym down, evyl mote he the ! 
 And gyf me his arm in hast ; 
 And anon we xal se 
 
 Hese good days thei xul be past ! 
 
 " Tertitis Judceus. Gef hese other arm to me, — 
 Another take hed to hese feet ; 
 And anon we xal se 
 
 Yf the borys be for hym meet. 
 
 " Quartus Judceus. This is mete, take good hede ; 
 Pulle out that arm to the sore. 
 Primus Judceus. This is short, the devyl hym sped, 
 Be a large fote and more. 
 
 " Secundus Judceus. ffest on a rop and pulle hym long, 
 And I xal drawe the ageyn ; 
 Spare we not these ropys strong, 
 Thow we brest both flesch and veyn ! 
 
 " Tertius Judceus. Dryve in the nayle anon, lete se, 
 And loke and the flesch and sennes welle last. 
 Quartus Judceics. That I graunt, so mote I the ; 
 Lo ! this nayl is dreve ryth wel and fast. 
 
 " Primics Judceus. ffest a rope than to his feet, 
 And drawe hym down long anow. 
 Secundus Judceus. Here is a nayl for both good and greet, 
 I xal dryve it thorwe, I make a vow ! 
 
 " Here xule thei leve of and dawncyn abowte the cros shortly.'''' 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 351 
 
 and temerity must be uppermost in the mind of 
 every reader. Had it not been done, it would 
 seem almost impossible that such subjects could 
 be so unworthily treated by men of sense and ed- 
 ucation, which the better class of Roman Catholic 
 priests were, even in the days when these plays 
 were written. Here were the grandest themes 
 handled by authors to whom they were matters 
 of religious faith and supreme concern ; and all 
 that was done was to degrade, to beUttle, and to 
 make ridiculous. The rudeness of the people for 
 whose instruction and pleasure the miracle-plays 
 were produced, and the gross and material char- 
 acter of religion at that day, account, in a great 
 measure, for this shocking contrast between sub- 
 ject and treatment. But yet it would seem that, 
 though rude and simple, these compositions might 
 have preserved some touch of the spirit of the 
 Hebrew writers from whom their subjects were 
 taken, and who themselves wrote for a people 
 only a little advanced beyond the pale of semi- 
 barbarism. And one subject, by remarkable co- 
 incidence, was treated with a certain degree of 
 simplicity and pathos by the writers of all of the 
 three great collections of English miracle-plays. 
 This was the story of Abraham and Isaac. And 
 it is worthy of special remark, that it was a sub- 
 ject of which the interest is purely human, or at 
 least that part of the subject in question which 
 exhibited paternal love on the one side and filial 
 
nc2 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 love and devotion on the other, which raised all 
 these writers out of their slough of coarseness and 
 buffoonery into the region of healthy sentiment. 
 The Coventry series, which we have been exam- 
 ining, offers the best treatment of this incident ; 
 which in itself, and in the barest relation of it, 
 is, if one can repress an outbreak of rebellious 
 indignation and disbelief, the most pathetic and 
 heart-breaking told in all the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 With an extract from this composition, which I 
 shall put into modern language, I shall close this 
 notice of English miracle-plays. 
 
 " Isaac. All ready father, even at your will, 
 
 And at your bidding I am you by 
 With you to walk over dale and hill, 
 
 At your calling I am ready. 
 To the father ever most comely 
 
 It behoveth the child ever obedient to be ; 
 I will obey, full heartily, 
 
 To everything that ye bid me. 
 
 ^^ Abraham. Now, son, in thy neck this fagot thou take 
 
 And this fire bear in thy hand, 
 For we must now sacrifice go make, 
 
 Even after the will of God's command. 
 Take this burning brand, 
 
 My sweet child, and let us go ; 
 There may no man that liveth upon land 
 
 Have more sorrow than I have woe. 
 
 " Isa. Father, father, you go right still, 
 
 I pray now, father, speak unto me. 
 Abra. My good child, what is thy will ? 
 
 Tell me thy heart, I pray to thee. 
 Isa. Father, fire and wood here is plenty, 
 
 But I can see no sacrifice j 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. ^,$3 
 
 What ye will offer fain would I see, 
 That it were done at best advice. 
 
 ^^Abra. God shall that ordain that is in heaven, 
 
 My sweet son, for this offering ; 
 A dearer sacrifice may no man name 
 
 Than this shall be, my dear darling. 
 Isa. Let be, dear father, your sad weeping, 
 
 Your heavy looks aggrieve me sore. 
 Tell me, father, your great mourning, 
 
 And I shall seek some help therefor 
 
 ** Abra. Alas ! dear son, for needs must me 
 
 Even here thee kill, as God hath sent ; 
 Thine o\\ti father thy death must be, — 
 
 Alas that ever this bow was bent ! 
 With this fire bright thou must be brent ; 
 
 An angel said to me right so ; 
 Alas ! my child, thou shalt be shent ! 
 
 Thy careful father must be thy foe. " 
 
 Isaac yields to what Abraham tells him is the 
 Divine command, which yet he says makes his 
 heart " cling and cleave as clay." 
 
 ^^ Isa. Yet work God's will, father, I you pray, 
 And slay me here anon forthright ; 
 And turn from me your face away. 
 
 My head when that you shall off smite. 
 
 " Abra. Alas ! dear son, I may not choose, 
 
 I must needs here my sweet son kill ; 
 My dear darling now must me lose, 
 
 Mine own heart's blood now shall I spill. 
 Yet this deed ere I fulfil, 
 
 My sweet son, thy mouth I kiss. 
 Isa. All ready, father, even at your will 
 
 I do your bidding, as reason is. 
 
 " Abra. Alas ! dear son, here is no grace, 
 But need is dead now must thou be. 
 
 w 
 
354 'A^HE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 With this kerchief I hide thy face ; 
 
 In the time that I slay thee 
 Thy lovely visage would I not see, 
 
 Not for all this world's good." 
 
 It is true that the incident here represented is 
 in itself the most touching that can be conceived ; 
 but the author of the play has amplified and 
 worked out the very brief account in Genesis in 
 a dialogue which, rude although it be, is natural, 
 simple, and touching. The conditions of the 
 action are monstrous and incredible, if we leave 
 out the supernatural element ; and the situation, 
 unrelieved by the ever-present consciousness that 
 the sacrifice is not to be made, would be too heart- 
 rending for contemplation. But an unquestioning 
 belief in the supernatural, even to the literal ac- 
 ceptance of the figurative style and extravagant 
 phraseology of the Orient, was assumed by the 
 writers of miracle-plays. The son's love, sub- 
 mission, and self-devotion, and the father's an- 
 guish, are expressed with tenderness and truth. 
 Abraham's silent woe as they walk together is 
 exhibited with really dramatic power in Isaac's 
 exclamation, " Father, father, ye go right still " ; 
 and Abraham's reply, "Tell me thy heart," and 
 his after exclamation, "Alas that ever this bow 
 was bent ! " are full of pathos. And when at last 
 the child tells the father to do God's will, yet begs 
 him to turn away his face when he strikes, and 
 Abraham kisses his son and hides from his own 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 355 
 
 eyes the boy's lovely visage, the interest is wrought 
 up to such a pitch that supernatural intervention 
 is indignantly demanded by the holiest instincts 
 of that very nature which supernatural interven- 
 tion has so pitilessly outraged. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that the most interest- 
 ing story related in the Hebrew Scriptures, and 
 that best suited for dramatic representation, the 
 story of Joseph, appears in neither of the English 
 series of miracle-plays. There is, however, a very 
 formidable French play upon the subject, one an- 
 cient copy of which exists, printed in Gothic let- 
 ter. It is entitled Moralite de la Vendition de 
 yoseph* 
 
 The personages of this drama are forty-nine in 
 number. The list includes, beside Jacob, Joseph 
 and his eleven brothers, Pharaoh, Potiphar and 
 his wife, and the officers or attendants of their 
 households, among whom of course are Pharaoh's 
 
 * " Moralite de la vendition de Joseph filz du patriarche Jacob, 
 comment ses freres esmeuz par envye, sassemblerent pour le faire 
 mourir, mais par le vouloir de Dieu apres lavoir piteusement oul- 
 trage le devalerent en une cisterne, et enfin le vendirent a des 
 marchans gallatides et ysmaelites, lequelz de rechief le vendirent 
 a Putifard en egypte ou il fut au prez de Pharaon Roy dudict 
 egipte. Lequel fut tempte de luxure par plusieurs jours de sa 
 maistresse a laquelle il laissa son manteau et senfouit, dequoy il 
 en fut en prison, mais peu de temps apres il interpreta les songes 
 de Pharaon, Et a faict si bonne pulsion en egipte qil a este diet 
 et appelle le saulveur de tout le pays, comme plus amplement 
 est escript en la saincte bible au trenseptieme et douze aultres 
 chapitres en suyvant du livre de genese. Et est ledict Joseph 
 figure de la vendition de nostre saulueur Jhesucrist." 
 
35^ 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 chief buticr and chief baker, a certain King Cor- 
 delamor, unknown to the Hebrew story, with his 
 attendants, and also three allegorical personages, 
 Envy, Pity, and Justice, and finally God himself. 
 This play was produced about the end of the fif- 
 teenth or the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
 The only ancient copy known to exist was printed 
 about 1 5 30. Ninety copies were printed in fac-sim- 
 ile, in 1835, at the expense of the Prince d'Essling. 
 The introduction of King Cordelamor indicates a 
 great advance by the author of this play in the 
 art of dramatic construction. The story as it is 
 told in Genesis gives no reason, either for the im- 
 prisonment of Pharaoh's chief butler and chief 
 baker, or for the hanging of the latter and the 
 pardon of the former, — the very incidents upon 
 which the whole story turns, and by which Jo- 
 seph's elevation is brought about. This reason 
 the author of the French play furnishes ; or, in 
 other words, he undertakes to supply a motive for 
 the action of his drama. King Cordelamor opens 
 the play by announcing, with an amusing confu- 
 sion of geographical lines, that he has for a long 
 time desired to conquer and destroy Babylon, 
 which, with all the realm of Egypt, is justly his, 
 although it is held by the usurper Pharaoh, who 
 obtained it Cordelamor does not know exactly 
 how. 
 
 " Tout le pays egipcien 
 Selon raison doubt estre mien 
 Pharaon la possession 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 357 
 
 En tient, et le dit estre sien 
 Par ie ne scay quel fol moyen 
 Quil a par usurpation 
 Car par droicte succession 
 Je doy la domination." 
 
 A Centurion, in whose hearing he utters his com- 
 plaints, says that he knows a way of accompHsh- 
 ing the desired end, which, although quite proper, 
 is not strictly honorable. 
 
 " Je scay ung moyen conuenable 
 Mais il nest pas fort honnorable. " 
 
 Cordelamor takes the idea at once, and says that 
 Pharaoh must be poisoned. 
 
 *' II le faudroit empoysonner 
 Et luy donner en trahison 
 En son manger quelque poyson 
 Qui tout le cueur luy creueroit." 
 
 But, says a Decurion, " Who will give it to him ? 
 there is the difficulty." The ready Centurion 
 says that the usurper's baker and butler must be 
 bribed to do the deed. 
 
 " II fauldroit a son pennetier 
 Et a son bouteillier parler 
 Et a segret les apeller 
 Promettre les mons et les vaulx 
 Or et argent chiens et oyseaulx 
 Mais quilz vous voulsissent promettre 
 A estre traistres a leur maistre 
 Et luy bailler a son breuaige 
 En son pain ou en son potaige 
 Quelque grant poyson mortifere." 
 
 Cordelamor sends the Decurion into Egypt to 
 
358 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 accomplish this purpose, and he goes, saying that 
 his master shall hear from him in two days. And 
 here the rudeness of the stage, and the ease with 
 which the imagination of the audience enabled 
 the dramatist to defy the unities of time and place, 
 appear. The previous dialogue has been spoken 
 upon the staging or pageant. Now the stage di- 
 rection is, " Pausa. Reced. et dicat," — "A pause. 
 He comes down and says." — What he says is that 
 he sees one of Pharaoh's people near yonder door. 
 The person is the chief baker ; who, being tempt- 
 ed, consents. After the conference, another pause 
 and the ascent of the Decurion are directed. 
 "Pausa. Decurion ascend." The Decurion re- 
 ports his success, and Cordelamor promises the 
 Decurion and the Centurion that, if he ever pos- 
 sess Egypt, they shall be his best rewarded friends 
 and counsellors. Then a little pause, " Pausa par- 
 va," is directed, and the Chief Baker soliloquizes, 
 saying that he must get the Chief Butler into the 
 plot. Pharaoh then appears and gives his " Mais- 
 tre d'hotel " orders for a great feast to all his lords 
 and chivalry. Then Jacob and his sons appear. 
 Jacob has a long speech, beginning, 
 
 " O haulte deite 
 Parfaicte auctorite 
 Plaine de dignite 
 Humblement je rends grace 
 A vostre majeste 
 Qui mon antiquite 
 Par grand felicite 
 Comforte en ceste place." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 359 
 
 In this speech the patriarch, with a knowledge 
 of geography rivalling that of King Cordelamor, 
 recounts the incidents of the dream and the angels* 
 ladder, which took place as he was on his way to 
 "the city of Mesopotamia." In this scene the 
 jealousy of Joseph and Benjamin on the part of 
 their ten brothers is developed, and Jacob gives 
 the former the coat of many colors, — " la robe 
 polimite." Another pause is directed, with the 
 descent of all the sons to the ground, except Jo- 
 seph and Benjamin, who are directed to remain. 
 Then, apparently upon another scaffold. Pity and 
 Justice have a long conference with God, in which 
 God, who acts through the play as a sort of cho- 
 rus, announces that he intends that Joseph's expe- 
 rience and fate shall typify that of Jesus Christ. 
 Another pause ; and Judah soliloquizes his envy 
 of Joseph on account of "la belle robe polimite." 
 
 " Une robe que le grant diable 
 y ait sa part est bien donne." 
 
 Again a pause ; and God commands dreams to 
 visit Joseph. 
 
 " Des songes pour clariffier 
 Mes sainctes predications 
 Grandes sermociations." 
 
 After another pause, Joseph tells his dream. The 
 consequences are of course those told in the origi- 
 nal story. Judah exclaims : 
 
 **Quoy, faire Roy de ce garson 
 Le grant dyable denfer memport 
 
360 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Se mieulx nameroys estre mort 
 Quant a ma part que ie lendure." 
 
 Joseph and his brothers go home by remounting 
 the scaffold. " Les filz montent es eschaffaulx et 
 ioseph remonte." Envy soon afterward appears, 
 and thus describes herself as a mingling of covet- 
 ousness, malice, and slander, in a passage of no 
 little delicacy and spirit : — 
 
 " La haine ie croistray bien souef 
 Car ie scay bien tourner la clef 
 De tout vetil 
 
 Dequoy il en viendra meschef 
 Car de tous maulx ie suis Ie chef 
 Par mon babil. 
 
 Jen ay fait mourir plus de niil 
 Et mettre plusieurs en exil 
 Quant ie me fume. 
 II nest homme tant soit subtil 
 Qui osast leuer Ie sourcil 
 cest ma coustume. 
 
 II nest homme que ie ne plume 
 Amours damys ie boy et hume 
 comme brouet. 
 
 Legiere suys comme une pleume 
 Et pesant comme une enclume 
 Eu vng paquet. 
 
 Quant il deslye mon caquet 
 Ma langue va comme vng traquet 
 Sans nul arrest. 
 
 Plustost elle tourne que vng rouet 
 Plus souple que nest vng fouet 
 Quant il me plaist." 
 
 Envy approaches Joseph's brethren, and in a 
 long interview, and with much subtlety, incites 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 361 
 
 them to Joseph's destruction, and they all, except 
 Reuben, agree to slay him. Jacob sends his son 
 with "la belle robe polimite" to seek his breth- 
 ren. The student of language will observe in 
 these lines evidence of the great antiquity of 
 this composition : — 
 
 " Touteffois ioseph il te fault 
 Aller en sichen bas ou hault 
 Scavoir ou ilz sont, car ie craing 
 Quil ne leur soit venu besoing 
 Vaten veoir comme tout se porte." 
 
 So also, in the following speeches upon Joseph's 
 appearance among his brethren, like indications : — 
 
 " Juda Ho bon guet, voicy le songeart 
 Que tout lemond se evertue 
 Davoir bon cueur 
 
 " Ruben Jay graut regart 
 Ad ce fait 
 
 " yuda II fault quon le tue 
 Remyde nya 
 
 " Ruben Sang a me mue 
 
 Car le cas est fort inhumain 
 Humanite me redargue 
 
 " Juda Chya chya cest a demain 
 
 A luy premier mettray le main 
 Nostre conclusion est telle." 
 
 Joseph is enthroned in mockery ; his scoffing 
 brethren bow down to him ; he is buffeted by 
 each in turn, and, having been bound to a column, 
 scourged. The Ishmaelites, who are accompanied 
 by their Prince, now enter, not upon the scaffold, 
 16 
 
362 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 but the ground ; for they come with beasts laden 
 with merchandise. The stage directions are very 
 particular : " Nota que icy ilz ont des cheuaulx 
 et bestes chargez de marchandises. Ilz charge 
 leur cheuaulx." Afterward, when the Prince is 
 about to appear, " Icy fault que le prince soyt 
 prest"; and again, when the bargain for Joseph 
 is struck, " II fault icy vingt deniers." Pharaoh 
 gives his feast ; but the dishes are hardly placed 
 upon the table when the King's physician detects 
 poison in some of them. The Chief Baker is ac- 
 cused, and he accuses the Chief Butler ; and both 
 are put under guard, and afterward thrown into 
 prison. The Ishmaelites, arriving in Egypt, sell 
 Joseph to Potiphar for thirty pieces of silver. 
 Here Joseph's boyhood is brought to a close by 
 a stage direction : " ^ La fin du petit ioseph." 
 Thus far the part was doubtless played by a lad ; 
 afterward by a man, when the direction is given, 
 "^Joseph le grant commence." Potiphar soon 
 expresses to Joseph before his wife his entire con- 
 fidence in him, and then goes on a short journey. 
 Here a pause is directed, because, it is said, Joseph 
 should absent himself from the barrier, i. e. the 
 front of the staging, — " Pausa, car ioseph se doibt 
 absenter de la barriere," — the occasion being a 
 confession in soliloquy, by Mrs. Potiphar, how 
 much she is enamored of her husband's steward. 
 Hereafter the play follows the story with great 
 exactness, but also with great expansion. King 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA, 
 
 363 
 
 Cordelamor, having fulfilled his function, on learn- 
 ing the miscarriage of his plot, disappears from the 
 scene. Joseph is tempted by his mistress in the 
 bluntest possible language, and with much repe- 
 tition, and in reply preaches to her in the most 
 edifying manner. When he is taken to prison, 
 the sergeant who has him in charge tells the jailer 
 of what he is accused, upon which the latter slan- 
 derously remarks : 
 
 " Sil est vray ce seroit mal fait 
 Mais ainsi que ie puis comprendre 
 Femmes peuent donne a entendre 
 Des faulcetez aulcuneffoys. " 
 
 The baker is hanged before the eyes of the audi- 
 ence upon a gallows, "en forme de croix poten- 
 cer," and afterward cut down. Joseph's triumph 
 and the gathering in of the corn seem to have 
 been represented with great care for what may be 
 called scenic effect, if we may judge by the partic- 
 ularity of the stage directions ; and much help 
 to the imagination of the audience was plainly 
 looked for from the separation of the actors by 
 the staging. The directions, " Estant a terre dit," 
 and "II remont en hault," are of very frequent 
 occurrence. The play follows the events of 
 Joseph's life down to the burial of Jacob. Its 
 length is enormous. It contains nearly eight 
 thousand lines ; twice as many as Hamlet. 
 
 An examination of this French moralite, so 
 called, is not strictly in place in an account of the 
 
3^4 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 English stage, upon which it was not presented 
 either in translation or by imitation. But the na- 
 ture of its subject connected it with the miracle- 
 plays, from which we are about to part ; and the 
 peculiarity of its construction, its interesting and 
 novel admixture of character, the particularity of 
 its stage directions, and the evident splendor and 
 faithfulness to reality with which it was per- 
 formed, connect it also with that period of our 
 drama to the consideration of which we are about 
 to pass, and have induced me to bring it — and it 
 is here brought for the first time, I believe — to 
 the attention of the English reader. 
 
 II. 
 
 Rude, gross, and childish as the miracle-plays 
 were, they yet contained the germ of our drama ; 
 and from them its development, slow but never 
 checked, can be traced up to the sudden and 
 splendid maturity of the Elizabethan era. The 
 Coventry series, which we have just been examin- 
 ing, differs from the Towneley and the Chester 
 series by the introduction of allegorical characters 
 into some of the plays. In the earlier miracle- 
 plays the personages all belonged to the religious 
 history the course of which they were written 
 to teach ; and the author confined his work to 
 the putting of Scriptural story or saintly legend 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 365 
 
 into the form of dialogue and soliloquy. But as 
 time wore on, virtues, vices, and even modes of 
 mental action, were impersonated, and mingled 
 upon the pageant or the scaffold with patriarchs, 
 apostles, and saints. Thus the eighth of the Cov- 
 entry series, TJie Barrenness of Anna, is opened 
 with a kind of prologue or introductory chorus 
 by Contemplation, a character which reappears 
 in the series ; and in The Salutation and Con- 
 ception, the Virtues, collectively embodied, with 
 Truth, Pity, and Justice, perform functions like 
 those of the Greek chorus. At last, in The 
 Slaughter of the InnocentSy Death i^Mors) takes 
 part in the action ; and in some of the other 
 plays, impersonal Detractors, Accusers, and Con- 
 solers also appear. In the three Digby miracle- 
 plays * there is one founded upon the life of Mary 
 Magdalen, which is interesting in this respect. 
 And in the first of the set, which represents the 
 conversion of St. Paul, it is noteworthy that, of 
 two devils who are among the characters, one is 
 named Belial and the other Mercury ! The first 
 is instructed to enter thus : " Here to enter a 
 Dyvel with thunder and fyre, and to avaunce hym 
 selfe, saying as folowyth ; and his spech spoken, to 
 syt downe in a chayre." While he is thus making 
 himself comfortably at home in a devilish way, 
 
 * So called because they are preserved among the Digby 
 MSS. in the Bodleian Library. See Collier's A?i7ials of t/ie 
 Stage, Sec, Vol. H. p. 230. 
 
366 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 and complaining of the lack of news, his attend- 
 ant or messenger comes in, according to this di- 
 rection : " Here shall entere a nother devyll, called 
 Mercury, with a fyering, coming in hast, cryeing 
 and rorying." After a consultation as to the 
 bad way their friend Saul appears to be in, to 
 wit, peril of salvation body and soul, they both 
 "vanyshe away with a fyrye flame and a tem- 
 pest." * The play on the Life of Mary Magdalen, 
 rather a late miracle-play, was intended to be a 
 spectacle of unusual attraction. It required four 
 pageants or scaffolds. Tiberius, Herod, Pilate, 
 and the Devil, personages of apparently equal 
 dramatic dignity, had each his own station before 
 the audience, and the entrance of the last is thus 
 directed : " Here shal entyr the prynce of dev- 
 ylls in a stage, and hell onder neth that stage." 
 Indeed, the representation of hell, or of hell- 
 mouth, into which demons and their victims were 
 sent, was a standing, and, it would seem, a much 
 prized, scenic effect in the performance of the 
 miracle-plays. In the account-books of the ex- 
 penses of the Coventry plays there are many 
 charges for " the repayring of hel-mought." f To 
 return to the play of Mary Magdalen, — a ship ap- 
 pears between the scaffolds ; the mariners spy the 
 castle of Mary, which the Devil and the Seven 
 Deadly Sins besiege and capture. Lechery ad- 
 
 * Collier, as above. 
 
 t Sharpe's Dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries, 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 367 
 
 dresses the heroine in a speech, the following ex- 
 tract from which will give a notion of the style 
 of the composition : — 
 
 " Hayl, lady, most lawdabyll of alyauns ! 
 Heyl, orient as the sonne in his reflexite ! 
 Much pepul be comfortyd be your benygnant affyauns ; 
 Brighter than the bornyd is your bemys of bewte : 
 Most debonarius with your aungelly velycyte." 
 
 The appearance of the Seven Deadly Sins and 
 of the Kings of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil 
 in this play, as ten distinct characters, is not only 
 very curious, but is a noteworthy step toward the 
 next stage of our drama, which now took the al- 
 legorical form of the Moral-Play. Of character 
 and action, in a true dramatic sense, the miracle- 
 plays, with one or two exceptions to be noticed 
 hereafter, had really none. The personages came 
 upon the stage and described themselves, giving a 
 dry catalogue of their qualities, conditions, and 
 relations, and then went formally through the 
 speech and action prescribed for them in Scrip- 
 ture or legend. But when allegorical personages 
 began to multiply, as they did, in the miracle- 
 plays, they began also to interfere with and modi- 
 fy this slavish adherence to Scripture story and 
 Church tradition ; until finally these personages, 
 who, it will be seen upon a moment's reflection, 
 represent an extraneous human element, and are 
 in fact a clumsy embodiment alternately of the 
 mental conditions of the other characters and of 
 
368 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 the audience, obtained possession of the stage, and 
 completely expelled the angels, saints, and patri- 
 archs, in aid of whose waning power to interest 
 the people they had been created. 
 
 In a moral-play pure and simple, the person- 
 ages are all embodiments of abstract ideas, and 
 the motive of the play is the enforcement of moral 
 truth as a guide of human conduct. The abstract 
 ideas may be virtues, as Justice, Mercy, Compas- 
 sion ; or vices, as Avarice, Malice, Falsehood ; or 
 a state, condition, or mode of life, as Youth, Old 
 Age, Poverty, Abominable Living ; or an embodi- 
 ment of the human race, as in the character Every 
 Man in the moral-play of that name ; or of a part 
 of it, as in the play of Lusty Juvenilis ; or of the 
 end of all men, for in these compositions Death 
 itself is not unfrequently embodied. But there 
 were two permanent, and, so to speak, stock char- 
 acters, which were as essential to a moral-play as 
 Harlequin and Columbine to an old pantomime. 
 These were the Devil and the Vice ; the former 
 being an inheritance from the miracle-plays, but 
 the latter a new creation. Exactly why and how 
 this personage came into being with the moral- 
 play, we do not know ; but may it not have been 
 with the purpose of having ever present an em- 
 bodied antithesis to the motive of the play, — 
 morality } That the name was derived from the 
 nature of the character would seem manifest with- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 369 
 
 out a word, were it not that other and fantastic 
 derivations have been suggested.* The Devil was 
 represented as the hideous monster evolved by the 
 morbid religious imagination of the dark ages, 
 having horns, at least one hoof, a tail, a shaggy 
 body, and a visage both frightful and ridiculous. 
 The Vice wore generally, if not always, the cos- 
 tume of the domestic fool or jester of the period, 
 which is now worn by the clown of the circus. 
 He was at first called the Vice ; but as the Vice 
 became a distinct line of character, as much as 
 walking gentleman on our stage, or ptre noble on 
 the French, his name and his functions were 
 afterward those of Infidelity, Hypocrisy, Desire, 
 and so forth. Sometimes the part of a gallant or 
 a bully was written for the Vice, and was named 
 accordingly ; and sometimes he was called Iniqui- 
 ty. When he bore this name, he would seem to 
 have been not a mere buffoon or clown, making 
 merriment with gibes and antics, but a senten- 
 tious person with all his fun ; for Shakespeare 
 makes the following descriptive mention of this 
 kind of Vice : 
 
 "Thus, like \\\q. formal N'\c&, Iniquity, 
 I moralize two meanings in one word." 
 
 Richard the Third, Act III, Sc. I. 
 
 But the Vice generally performed the mingled 
 functions of scamp, braggart, and practical joker. 
 
 * The reader who cares to see them may find them stated and 
 confiited in Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare^ VoL I. p. 466. 
 16* X 
 
370 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 There was a conventional make-up for his face. 
 Barnaby Rich, in his Adventitres of Britsamis, 
 published 1592, says that a certain personage had 
 " his beard cut peecke a devant, turnde uppe a lit- 
 tle, like the Vice of a playe." He was armed 
 with a dagger or sword of lath, with which he 
 beat the Devil, — that personage having his re- 
 venge, almost invariably, at the end of the play, by 
 taking his tormentor upon his back and running 
 off with him into "hell-mought." There has been 
 a notable and mysterious moral significance dis- 
 covered in this beating of the Devil by the Vice, 
 of the master by the servant. I cannot see it. It 
 seems plainly that the object of the performance 
 was merely to make coarse fun for coarse peo- 
 ple ; the contrivers, to be sure, not lacking wit so 
 utterly as to fail to make both the temporary 
 annoyance and the final retribution fall upon the 
 supremely bad personages. 
 
 In one of the Clown's songs in Twelfth Nighty 
 Shakespeare describes in a few words the func- 
 tion of the Vice, his quickness of movement, his 
 weapon, and his tormenting of the Devil. 
 
 " I am gone, sir, 
 
 And anon, sir, 
 I '11 be with you again, 
 
 In a trice, 
 
 Like to the old Vice, 
 Your need to sustain ; 
 
 " Who with dagger of lath 
 In his rage and his wrath 
 Cries, Aha ! to the Devil." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 371 
 
 Moral-plays were at first performed upon the 
 pageants or scaffolds from which they were driv- 
 ing the miracle-plays. But at last it was thought 
 that people might better go to the play than have 
 the play go to them ; and it was found that barns 
 and great halls were more convenient for both 
 actors and audience than movable scaffolds. Yet 
 later, people discovered that best of all avail- 
 able places were inn-yards, where windows and 
 galleries and verandas commanded a view of a 
 court round which the house was built. Some- 
 times moral-plays were written to be played in the 
 interval between a feast or dinner and a banquet ; 
 the banquet having corresponded to what we call 
 the dessert, and having been usually served in 
 another room. Hence the name of "Interlude," 
 which was frequently given to these plays. Yet 
 the name "Interlude" came to be almost con- 
 fined to a kind of play shorter than a moral-play, 
 and without allegorical characters or significance, 
 and so better suited to the occasion for which it 
 was intended. John Hey wood was the master of 
 this kind of play-writing, if, indeed, he were not 
 its inventor ; but his proper place is at a later 
 period of our little history. 
 
 The oldest English moral-play yet discovered 
 exists in manuscript, and is entitled The Castle of 
 Perseverance^ It was written about 1450. The 
 
 * Once in possession of Dr. Cox Macro ; it passed into the col- 
 lection of Mr. Hudson Gurney, who submitted it to Mr. Collier. 
 See that gentleman's Annals of the Stage, &c., Vol. II. p. 278. 
 
372 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 principal character is Humanum Genus, an em- 
 bodiment of mankind, whose moral enemies, the 
 World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Mundus, Caro, 
 and Belial), open the play by a conference, in 
 which they boast of their powers.* Mankind (Hu- 
 manum Genus) then appears, and announces that 
 he has just come into the world naked, and imme- 
 diately a good and a bad angel present themselves, 
 and assert their claims to his confidence. He 
 gives himself up to the latter, who through the 
 agency of the World places him in the hands of 
 Voluptuousness and Folly (Voluptas and Stulti- 
 tia ; but let it suffice to say that all the charac- 
 
 * This triad was a great favorite with the authors of moral- 
 plays. There is extant a unique copy of a French moral-play 
 with the following title : " Moralite nouvelle, de Mundus : Caro : 
 Demonia. En laquelle verrez les durs assautz et tentations quilz 
 font au Chevalier Chrestien : Et comme par conseil de son bon 
 esprit, avec la grace de Dieu, les vaincra, et a la fin aura le Roy- 
 aume de paradis. Et est a cinq personnages. Cest a savoir. Le 
 chavalier chrestien, Lesprit, La chair, Le monde, et le Dyable." 
 Notwithstanding the assaults mentioned in its title, this moral- 
 play has none of the life and action of the English play upon 
 the same subject. It is a dull talk between the five person- 
 ages, in which Lesprit rarely speaks without quoting Saint Paul 
 with great particularity. The French miracle-plays and moral- 
 plays are always much more "talky" than ours. So early ap- 
 peared that difference between the dramatic taste of the two 
 peoples, — the one inclining to action, the other to speech. The 
 single existing ancient copy of this moral-play (which is accom- 
 panied by a farce, Les deux savetiers) is printed in Gothic letter, 
 and evidently came from the press in the early part of the six- 
 teenth century. Like others of the printed plays of that period, 
 it is in a very singular form, the page being in height about four 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 273 
 
 ters have Latin names). Backbiter then makes 
 him acquainted with Avarice and the other dead- 
 ly sins, of whom Luxury — in these plays always 
 a woman — becomes his leman. The good angel 
 sends Confession to him, who is told that he is 
 come too soon, he having then more agreeable 
 matters in hand than the confessing of sin. But 
 at last, by the help of Penitence, Mankind is re- 
 claimed, and got off into the strong Castle of Per- 
 severance, in company with the Seven Cardinal 
 Virtues. Belial and the Deadly Sins lay siege to 
 the castle ; the leader having first berated and 
 beaten his forces for having allowed his prey to 
 escape him.* Belial and the Sins are defeated, 
 
 times its width. This form was adopted as most convenient for 
 the play-lovers of that day to carry to the theatre. Ninety fac- 
 simile copies of this singular and interesting play-book, and also 
 of La Ve7iditio7i de Joseph and Les Blaspheinateiirs de Dieti, which 
 were originally printed in the same form, at about the same time, 
 and of each of which but a single ancient copy exists, were 
 printed at the expense of the Prince d'Essling. 
 
 * Belial thus incites his followers to the assault : — 
 
 " I here trumpys trebelen all of tene : 
 The wery world walkyth to werre .... 
 Sprede my penon upon a prene 
 And stryke we for the now undyr sterre. 
 Schapyth now your sheldys shene 
 Yone skallyd skouts for to skerre .... 
 Buske ye now, boys, belyve. 
 For ever I stond in mekyl stryve 
 Whyl Mankind is clene lyve." 
 
 Mr. Collier, from whom I copy them, justly remarks upon a 
 certain degree of life and spirit in these rude lines. 
 
374 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 chiefly by the aid of Charity and Patience, who 
 pelt them with roses from the battlements. But 
 Mankind begins to grow old ; and Avarice under- 
 mines the castle, and persuades him to leave it. 
 Garcio (a boy) claims all the goods which Mankind 
 has gathered with the aid of Avarice, when Death 
 and the Soul appear ; and the latter calls on Pity 
 for help. But the bad angel takes the hero on 
 his back and sets off with him hellward. The 
 scene changes to heaven, where Pity, Peace, Jus- 
 tice, and Truth plead for him with God, and we 
 are left to infer that Man is saved. God speaks 
 the moralizing epilogue. A rude drawing on the 
 last leaf of the manuscript shows the Castle with 
 a bed beneath it for Humanum Genus, and five 
 scaffolds for God, Belial, the World, the Flesh, 
 and Avarice. 
 
 Mr. Collier is of opinion that so carefully con- 
 structed and varied an allegory "must have had 
 predecessors in the same kind " ; but this sup- 
 position seems to me by no means necessary. 
 An allegorical purpose once formed, the mira- 
 cle-plays furnished all the necessary precedents 
 for the development of the idea. In another 
 play in the same collection, called Mind, Willy 
 and Understanding, Anima, the soul, also ap- 
 pears, and, having been debauched by the three 
 personages who give the play its name, she " ap- 
 perythe in most horribul wyse, fowlere than a 
 fend," and gives birth to six of the deadly sins 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 375 
 
 according to this direction : " Here rennyt out 
 from undyr the horrybull mantyll of the Soule six 
 small boys in the lyknes of devyllys, and so re- 
 torne ageyn." Conscious of her degradation, she 
 goes out with her three seducers, and it is di- 
 rected that "in the going the Soule syngyth in 
 the most lamentabuU wyse, with drawte notes, as 
 yt ys songyn in the passyon wyke." In the end, 
 Mind, Will, and Understanding are converted 
 from their evil ways, to the great joy of Anima. 
 
 John Skelton, poet laureate to Henry VH. and 
 his son, wrote two moral plays. The Necromajicer 
 and Magnificence. A copy of the latter still ex- 
 ists ; and one of the former was seen and de- 
 scribed by Collins, although it has since been lost. 
 The characters are a Necromancer, the Devil, a 
 Notary, Simony, and Avarice ; and the action is 
 merely the trial of the last two before the Devil. 
 The Necromancer calls up the Devil and opens 
 the court. The prisoners are found guilty, and 
 are sent straightway to hell. The Devil abuses 
 the Conjurer for rousing him too early; but in 
 the end they have a dance together in hell, at 
 the end of which Sathanas trips up the Conjurer 
 and disappears in flame and smoke. This play, 
 which was played before King Henry VH. at 
 Woodstock on Palm Sunday, was printed in 
 1504. When Magnificence was produced we do 
 not know, as its title-page is without date ; but 
 Skelton mentions it in a poem printed in 1523. 
 
376 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Its purpose is to show the vanity of Magnificence. 
 The hero, Magnificence, eaten out of house and 
 home by a rabble of friends called Fancy alias Lar- 
 gess, Counterfeit-countenance, Crafty-conveyance, 
 Cloked-collusion, Courtly-abusion, and Folly, falls 
 into the hands of Adversity and Poverty ; and 
 finally is taken possession of by Despair and Mis- 
 chief, who persuade him to commit suicide, which 
 he is about to do, when Good-hope stays his hand, 
 and Redress, Circumspection, and Perseverance 
 sober him down to a humble frame of mind. The 
 piece is intolerably long, and much of it is writ- 
 ten in that wearisome verse called Skeltonic* 
 To relieve it, some fun is introduced, which is of 
 the coarsest kind, but which was probably more 
 to the taste of all the poet's audience, high and 
 low, than his heavy moralizing.! 
 
 * Of which the following passage is an example : — 
 
 " For counterfet countenaunce knowen am I : 
 This worlde is full of my foly. 
 I set not by hym a fly 
 That cannot counterfet a lye, 
 Swere and stare and byde thereby, 
 And countenaunce it clenly, 
 And defende it manerly. 
 A knave will counterfet now a knyght, 
 A lurdayne lyke a lorde to fyght, 
 A mynstrell lyke a man of myght, 
 A tappyster lyke a lady bryght. 
 Thus make I them wyth thryft to fyght ; 
 Thus at the last I brynge hym ryght 
 To tyburne, where they hange on hyght." 
 
 t As, for instance, the following passage quoted by Mr. Collier, 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. -^^j 
 
 Of pure moral-plays the reader has probably- 
 had quite enough ; but two others may well be 
 noticed, on account of traits peculiar to them. In 
 one, called The Loiiger thou Livest the more Foole 
 thou art, the chief character is Moros, a mischiev- 
 ous fool, who enters upon this direction : " Here 
 entreth Moros, counterfaiting a vaine gesture and 
 a foolish countenance, synging the foote of many 
 songes, as fools were wont." This brings to mind 
 Shakespeare's fools and clowns, who are always 
 singing the foot of many songs ; and we see that 
 the making them do so was no device of his, but a 
 mere faithful copying of the living models before 
 him ; though the lyric sweetness and the wit and 
 the wisdom which he puts into their mouths were 
 in most instances, we may be sure, his own. The 
 other moral-play in question. The Marriage of 
 Wit and Science,* is remarkable, not only for its 
 very elaborate and ingenious, though equally dull 
 
 in which Folly wins a wager that he will laugh Crafty-convey- 
 ance out of his coat. 
 
 " \Here foly niaketh semblaunt to take a lowse from crafty convey^ 
 aunce shoulder. "[ 
 Fancy. "What hast thou found there ? 
 Foly. By god, a lowse. 
 
 Crafty-convey . By cockes harte, I trow thou lyste. 
 Foly. By the masse, a spanyshe moght with a gray lyste. 
 Fancy. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! 
 
 \Here crafty convatince putteth of his gowne, 
 Foly. Put on thy gowne agayne, for now thou hast lost. 
 Fancy. Lo, John a bonam, where is thy brayne .'' " 
 
 * Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society. 
 
378 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 and wearisome allegory, but for the fact that it is 
 regularly divided into acts and scenes, which is 
 not the case with even many of the early comedies 
 and tragedies by which the miracle-plays were 
 succeeded. One of the very latest of the moral- 
 plays was The Three Lords ajid TJiree Ladies of 
 London, which was written after 1588, and printed 
 in 1590. But, as its title would indicate, this is in 
 reality a kind of comedy ; and it is also remarka- 
 ble as being written for the most part in blank- 
 verse. 
 
 III. 
 
 As allegory had crept into the miracle-plays, 
 and, by introducing the impersonation of abstract 
 qualities, had gradually worked changes in their 
 structure and their purpose which finally pro- 
 duced the moral-play, so personages intended as 
 satires upon classes and individuals, and as rep- 
 resentations of the manners and customs of the 
 day, year after year took more and more the place 
 of the cold and stiff abstractions which filled the 
 stage in the pure moral-play, until at last Comedy, 
 or the ideal representation of human life, appeared 
 in English drama. Thus in Tom Tyler and his 
 Wife, which, according to Ritson, was published 
 in 1578, and which contains internal evidence that 
 it was written about eight years before that date, 
 the personages are Tom Tyler, his good woman, 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 379 
 
 who is a gray mare of the most formidable kind, 
 Tom Tailor, his friend. Desire, Strife, Sturdy, 
 Tipple, Patience, and the Vice. In The Conflict 
 of Conscience^ written at about the same date, 
 among Conscience, Hypocrisy, Tyranny, Avarice, 
 Sensual-suggestion, and the like, appear four his- 
 torical personages, Francis Spiera, an Italian law- 
 yer, who is called Philologus, his two sons, and 
 Cardinal Eusebius. Mr. Collier also mentions a 
 political moral-play, written about 1565, called Al- 
 bion Knight, in which the hero, a knight named 
 Albion, is a personification of England, and the 
 motive of which is satire upon the oppression of 
 the commons by the nobles. But before this 
 date, and probably in the reign of Edward VI., 
 Bishop Bale had written his Kynge yohari, a play 
 the purpose of which was to further the Reforma- 
 tion, and which partook of the characters of a 
 moral-play and a dramatic chronicle-history.* In- 
 deed, neither the reformers nor their opponents 
 were slow to take advantage of the stage as a 
 means of indoctrinating the people with their pe- 
 culiar views ; and as the government passed alter- 
 nately into the hands of Papists and Protestants, 
 plays were suppressed, or dramatic performances 
 interdicted altogether, as the good of the ecclesi- 
 astical party in power seemed to require.f In the 
 
 * See the Introduction to King John, Vol. VI, p. 10 of the 
 author's edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
 t The curious reader will find in Hawkins's Origin of the Eng- 
 
380 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 very first year of Queen Mary's reign, 1553, a po- 
 litico-religious moral-play, called Respublica, was 
 produced, the purpose of which was to check the 
 Reformation. The kingdom of England is imper- 
 sonated as Respublica ; and, by the author's own 
 admission. Queen Mary herself figures as Nemesis, 
 the goddess of redress and correction.* 
 
 John Heywood, whose interludes have been 
 already mentioned, produced his first play before 
 the year 1 5 2 1 ; yet, in turning our eyes back two 
 generations to glance at his compositions, we may 
 obtain perhaps a more correct view of the manner 
 in which the English drama was developed, than 
 if we had examined them in the order of time. 
 Heywood was attached to the court of Henry VHI. 
 as a singer and player upon the virginals. His 
 interludes were short pieces, about the length of 
 one act of a modern comedy. Humorous in their 
 
 lish Drama a reprint of Lusty yuventus, which was written in the 
 reign of Edward VI., and which is sufficiently thoroughgoing in 
 its denunciation of the corruptions of the Church of Rome to 
 satisfy the straitest Puritan. The personages quote Scripture, 
 and in the midst of their speeches give chapter and verse with a 
 merciless particularity which rivals that of Mause Headrigg. 
 One of them is actually named God's Merciful Promises, May 
 not the extraordinary names sometimes given by the Puritans to 
 their children, rising from Thankful and Submit to Fight-the- 
 good-fight-of-faith and Through-much-tribulation-thou-shalt-en- 
 ter-into-the-kingdom-of-Heaven (called " for short " Trib), have 
 been at first taken from favorite characters in moral-plays, writ- 
 ten in support of the Reformation ? 
 
 * Described in Collier's edition of Shakespeare's Works, 1843, 
 Vol. I. p. xviii. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 381 
 
 motive, and dependent for all their interest upon 
 extravagant burlesque of every-day life, upon the 
 broadest jokes and the coarsest satire, they were 
 indeed but a kind of farce. That which is re- 
 garded as Heywood's earliest extant production 
 is entitled A Mery Play betwene the Pardoner aiid 
 the Frere, the Curate, and Neyboitr Pratte. The 
 Pardoner and the Friar have got leave of the Cu- 
 rate to use his church, the former to show his 
 relics, the latter to preach ; both having the same 
 end in view, — money. They quarrel as to who 
 shall have precedence, and at last fight. The Cu- 
 rate, brought in by this row between his clerical 
 brethren, attempts to separate and pacify them ; 
 but failing to accomplish this single-handed, he 
 calls Neighbor Pratt to his aid. In vain, however ; 
 for the Pardoner and the Friar, like man and wife 
 interrupted in a quarrel, unite their forces and 
 beat the interlopers soundly. After which they 
 depart, and the play ends. In The Four P's, 
 another of Heywood's interludes, the personages 
 are the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and 
 the Pedler. In this play there is little action ; 
 and the four worthies, after gibing at each other's 
 professions for a while, set out to see which can 
 tell the biggest lie. After much elaborate and 
 ingenious falsehood, the Palmer beats by the sim- 
 ple assertion that he never saw a woman out of 
 patience in his life ; at which his opponents " come 
 down " without another word. The satire in these 
 
382 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 plays is found in the inconsistency between the 
 characters of the personages and their profes- 
 sions, and particularly in the absurd and ridic- 
 ulous pretensions of the clergymen as to their 
 priestly functions and the nature of their relics. 
 In The Pardoner and the Friar, the Pardoner pro- 
 duces " the great too of the holy trynyte," and 
 
 " of our Ladye a relyke full good, 
 Her bongrace, which she ware with her French hode 
 Whan she wente oute al wayes for sonne bornynge " ; 
 
 also, "Of all helowes the blessed jaw-bone"; and 
 in The Four P's, there is "a buttocke-bone of 
 Pentecoste." And yet Heywood was a stanch 
 Romanist. 
 
 Another of Heywood's interludes, yohan, Tyb, 
 and Sir Jhan, is equally severe upon the clergy 
 of his day. Johan pretends to be master of his 
 own house, and, in Tyb's absence, threatens to 
 beat her when she comes home. She returns and 
 overhears him ; calls him to account, and he backs 
 out. She brings home a pie and orders Johan to 
 go and invite Sir Jhan, the priest, to eat it in their 
 company. He believes all is not right between 
 the priest and Tyb, but he is obliged to obey. 
 The priest comes, and Johan is sent out to get 
 water. While he is gone, it becomes plain that Sir 
 Jhan and Tyb understand each other. He returns 
 without water, the pail having leaked ; and while 
 he is mending it with wax, the precious pair eat 
 up the pie in spite of his complaints. At last he 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 383 
 
 dashes down the pail in a rage, when they fall 
 upon him and beat him till the blood runs, and 
 go out together. He assumes the airs of a victor, 
 until it occurs to him that they have gone "to 
 make hym a cokwolde," which catastrophe he 
 rushes out to prevent, and the curtain falls. 
 
 There are certain passages in Heywood's plays, 
 which, considering the period at which he wrote, 
 are remarkable for genuine humor and descrip- 
 tive power, as well as for spirited and lively versi- 
 fication ; * and coarse and indecent as his produc- 
 
 * See the following description of an alleged visit to hell by 
 the Pardoner, in The Four P''s : — 
 
 " Thys devyll and I walket arme in arme, 
 So farre, tyll he had brought me thyther, 
 Where all the devylls of hell togyther 
 Stode in a ray, in suche apparell 
 As for that day there metely fell. 
 Theyr homes well gylt, theyr clowes full clene, 
 Theyr taylles well kempt, and as I wene, 
 With sothery butter theyr bodyes anoynted ; 
 I never sawe devylls so well appoynted. 
 The mayster devyll sat in his jacket, 
 And all the soules were playinge at racket. 
 None other rackettes they hadde in hande, 
 Save every soule a good fyre brand ; 
 Wherewith they played so pretely, 
 That Lucyfer laughed merely ; 
 And all the resedew of the feinds, 
 Did laugh thereat ful wel like freends. 
 But of my frende I sawe no whyt, 
 Nor durst not axe for her as yet. 
 Anone all this rout was brought in silens, 
 And I by an usher brougt in presens 
 
384 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 tions must be pronounced, they exhibit more real 
 dramatic power than appears in those of any other 
 playwright of the first half of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 Heywood founded no school, seems to have had 
 no imitators : there is no line of succession be- 
 tween him and the man who must be regarded 
 as the first writer of genuine English comedy. 
 We have seen that plays in which characters 
 drawn from real life mingled with the allegorical 
 personages proper to moral-plays were written as 
 late as 1570. Such were Tom Tyler and his Wife 
 and The Conflict of Conscience, mentioned above. 
 
 Of Lucyfer : the lowe, as wel I could, 
 I knelyd, whiche he so well alowde, 
 That thus he beckte, and by saynt Antony 
 He smyled on me well favouredly, 
 Bendynge his browes as brode as barne durres, 
 Shakynge hys eares as ruged as burres ; 
 Rolynge his eyes as rounde as two bushels ; 
 Flastynge the fyre out of his nosetryls ; 
 Gnashinge hys teeth so vaynglorously, 
 That me thought tyme to fall to fiatery, 
 Wherewith I tolde, as I shall tell. 
 
 plesant pycture ! O prince of hell ! 
 Feutred in fashyon abominable, 
 
 And syns that is inestimable 
 For me to prayse, the worthyly, 
 
 1 leve of prayse, as unworthy 
 
 To geve the prays, besechynge the 
 To heare my sewte, and then to be 
 So good to graunt the thynge I crave." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 385 
 
 But as early as the year 155 1, Nicolas Udall, who 
 became Master of Eton and afterward of West- 
 minster, had written a play divided into acts and 
 scenes, with a gradually developed action tending 
 to a climax, and the characters of which were all 
 ideal representatives of actual life ; a play which 
 was, in short, a comedy. The play is named, after 
 its hero, Ralph Roister Doister. The scene is laid 
 in London ; and Ralph, who is a conceited, rattle- 
 pated young fellow about town, and amorous with- 
 al, fancies himself in love with Dame Custance, a 
 gay young widow with " a tocher," as he thinks, 
 of a thousand pounds and more. But upon this 
 point Matthew Merrygreek,* his poor kinsman 
 and attendant, a shrewd, mischievous, timeserving 
 fellow, remarks to him, that 
 
 " An hundred pounde of marriage-money doubtlesse, 
 Is ever thirtie pounde sterlyng, or somewhat less ; 
 So that her thousande pounde, yf she be thriftie 
 Is much neere about two hundred and fiftie. 
 Howbeit, wowers and widowes are never poore." 
 
 Which shows that our ways, in this respect at 
 least, have not changed much from those of our 
 forefathers three hundred years ago. When the 
 play opens, Custance is betrothed to Garvin Good- 
 luck, a merchant who is then at sea. But Merry- 
 greek crams his master with eagerly swallowed 
 
 * " Merry-Greek " was slang, three hundred years ago, for what 
 we now call a jolly fellow. " Then she 's a merry Greek indeed." 
 Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Sc. 2. 
 
 17 Y 
 
386 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 flattery, and puts him in heart by telling him 
 that a man of his person and spirit can win any 
 woman. Ralph encounters three of Custance's 
 handmaids, old and young ; and by flattering 
 words and caresses tries to bring them over to 
 his side. He leaves a letter with one of them for 
 Custance, which is delivered, but not immedi- 
 ately opened. The next day Dobinet Doughty, 
 the merchant's servant, brings a ring and token 
 from Master Goodluck to Dame Custance ; but 
 Madge, having got a scolding for her pains in de- 
 livering Ralph's letter, refuses to carry the ring 
 and token. Other servants entering, Dobinet in- 
 troduces himself as a messenger from the Dame's 
 betrothed husband ; and they, especially one Ti- 
 bet Talkapace, being delighted at the idea of a 
 wedding, and mistaking the man who is thus to 
 bless the household, fall out as to who is to deliver 
 Ralph's presents. But Tib triumphs by snatch- 
 ing the souvenirs and running out with them to 
 her mistress. A reproof to Tib, in her turn, ends 
 the second act. The third opens with a visit by 
 Merrygreek to Dame Custance, that he may find 
 out if the ring and token have worked well for 
 his master's interest. But he only learns from 
 Dame Custance that she is fast betrothed to Good- 
 luck ; that she has not even opened Ralph's letter, 
 but knows that it must be from him, — 
 
 " For no man there is but a very dolte and lout 
 That to wowe a widowe would so go about." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 387 
 
 She adds, that Ralph shall never have her for his 
 wife while he lives. On receiving this news, 
 Ralph declares that he shall then and there in- 
 continently die ; when Merrygreek takes him at 
 his word, pretends to think that he is really dying, 
 and calls in a priest and four assistants to sing a 
 mock requiem. Ralph, however, like most disap- 
 pointed lovers, concludes to live ; and Merrygreek 
 advises him to serenade Custance and boldly ask 
 her hand. So done ; but Custance snubs him, 
 and produces his yet unread letter ; which Merry- 
 greek reads to the assembled company, with such 
 defiance of the punctuation that the sense is per- 
 verted, and all are moved to mirth, except Ralph, 
 who in wrath disowns the composition. Dame 
 Custance retires ; and Merrygreek, again flattering 
 his master, advises him to refrain himself awhile 
 from his lady-love, and that then she will seek 
 him ; for as to women, 
 
 '* When ye will, they will not ; will not ye, then will they." 
 
 Ralph threatens vengeance upon the scrivener 
 who copied his letter ; but when the penman 
 reads it with the proper pauses, he finds out who 
 is the real culprit ; and thus the third act ends. 
 
 The fourth opens with the entrance of another 
 messenger from Goodluck to Dame Custance. 
 While he is talking to the lady, Ralph enters, 
 ostentatiously giving orders about making ready 
 his armor, takes great airs, calls Custance his 
 spouse, and tells the messenger to tell his master 
 
388 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 that "his betters be in place now." The angered 
 Dame summons maid and man, and turns Ralph 
 and Merrygreek out of doors ; but the latter soon 
 slips back and tells her that his only purpose is to 
 make sport of Ralph, who is about returning 
 armed "to pitch a field" with his female foes. 
 Roister Bolster soon enters, armed with pot, pan, 
 and popgun, and accompanied by three or four 
 assistants. But the comely Dame, who seems to 
 be a tall woman of her hands, stands her ground, 
 and, aided by her maids, "pitches into" the enemy, 
 and with mop and besom puts him to ignominious 
 flight ; in which squabble the knave Merrygreek, 
 pretending to fight for his rich kinsman, manages 
 to belabor him soundly. At the beginning of the 
 fifth act Garvin Goodluck makes his appearance, 
 and Sim Suresby tells him of what he saw and 
 heard at his visit to Dame Custance. Goodluck 
 is convinced of the lady's fickleness. She arrives, 
 and would welcome him tenderly ; but of course 
 there is trouble. Finally, however, on the evi- 
 dence of Tristram Trusty, she is freed from sus- 
 picion ; and Ralph, petitioning for pardon, is in- 
 vited to the wedding supper, and the play is at an 
 end. It is rather a rude performance, but it con- 
 tains all the elements of a regular comedy of the 
 romantic school ; and it must be confessed that 
 many a duller one has been presented to a mod- 
 ern audience.* 
 
 * The following extract from the opening of the third scene 
 of Act IV. of this comedy is a fair example of its style : — 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 389 
 
 Yet ruder and coarser than Ralph Roister Dois- 
 ter, and less amusing, is Gammer Gtirtons Needle, 
 which until 18 18 was supposed to be the earliest 
 extant English comedy ; but which was not writ- 
 ten until about thirty years later than Udall's 
 play, it having been first performed, as Malone 
 reasonably concludes, at Christ College, Cam- 
 bridge, in 1566. Its author was John Still, after- 
 ward Bishop of Bath and Wells, who was born in 
 
 " C. Ciistance. What meane these lewde felowes thus to trouble 
 
 me still ? 
 Sym. Suresby here, perchaunce, shal thereof deme som yll, 
 And shall suspect me in some point of naughtinesse. 
 And they come hitherward. 
 Sym. Suresby. What is their businesse ? 
 Ctist. I have nought to them, nor they to me, in sadnesse. 
 Sure. Let us hearken them ; somewhat there is, I feare it. 
 Ralph Royster. I wil speake out aloude best, that she may 
 
 heare it, 
 Merrygreek. Nay, alas ! ye may so feare hir out of hir wit. 
 Royster. Nay by the crosse of my sworde, I will hurt hir no whit. 
 Merry. Will ye doe noe harme in deede ? Shall I trust your 
 
 worde ? 
 Royster. By Roister Doister's fayth, I will speak but in borde. 
 Sure. Let us hearken them : somewhat there is, I feare it. 
 Royster. I will speake out aloude, I care not who heare it. — 
 Sirs, see that my harnesse, my tergat, and my shield, 
 Be made as bright now as when I was last in fielde, 
 As white as I shoulde to warre againe to morrowe : 
 For sicke shall I be but I worke some folke sorrowe. 
 Therefore see that all shine as bright as sainct George, 
 Or as doth a key newly come from the smith's forge. 
 I woulde have my sworde and harnesse to shine so bright 
 That I might ther with dimme mine enemies' sight : 
 I would have it cast beames as fast, I tell you playne, 
 
390 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 1543. The personages in this play are all, with 
 two or three exceptions, rustics, and their lan- 
 guage is a broad provincial dialect. The plot 
 turns upon the simple incident of Gammer Gur- 
 ton's loss of her needle while she is mending her 
 servant Hodge's breeches. Sharp is the hunt 
 through five acts after this needful instrument ; 
 Hodge even pretending to have an interview with 
 the Devil upon the subject. But the needle is 
 
 As doth the glittryng grass after a showre of raine. 
 
 And see that, in case I should have to come to armyng, 
 
 All things may be ready at a minute's warning. 
 
 For such a chaunce may chaunce in an houre, do ye heare ? 
 
 Merry. As perchaunce shall not chaunce againe in seven 
 
 yeare. 
 Royster. Now draw we neare to hir, and heare what shal be 
 
 sayde. 
 Merry. But I woulde not have you make hir too much afrayde. 
 Royster. Well founde, sweete wife (I trust) for al this your 
 
 soure looke. 
 Cust. Wife ! Why cal ye me wife ? 
 
 Sure. Wife ! this gear goeth acrook. 
 
 Merry. Nay Mistresse Custance, I warrant you our letter 
 Is not as we redde e'en nowe, but much better ; 
 And where ye half stomaked this gentleman afore, 
 For this same letter ye wyll love hym nowe therefore ; 
 Nor it is not this letter though ye were a queene 
 That shoulde breake marriage betweene you twaine, I weene. 
 Cust. I did not refuse hym for the letter's sake. 
 Royster. Then ye are content me for your husbande to take. 
 Cust. You for my husbande to take ! Nothing lesse, truely. 
 Royster. Yea, say so sweete spouse, afore strangers hardly. 
 Merry. And though I have here his letter of love with me, 
 Yet his rings and his tokens he sent keepe safe with ye. 
 Cust. A mischief take his tokens, and him and thee too." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 391 
 
 not found until Hodge, having on the mended 
 garment, is hit " a good blow on the buttocks " by 
 the bailiff, whose services have been called in ; 
 when the Clown discovers that Gammer Gurton's 
 needle, like Old Rapid's in the Road to Rtduy 
 does not always stick in the right place. The 
 second act of this farrago of practical jokes and 
 coarse humor opens with that jolly old drinking- 
 song, beginning, 
 
 " I cannot eat but little meat, 
 My stomach is not good," 
 
 which may be found in many collections of lyric 
 verse. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Whether it was that moral-plays satisfied for a 
 long time our forefathers' desire for serious enter- 
 tainment, and furnished them sufficient occasion 
 for that reflection upon the graver interests and 
 incidents of human life which it is tragedy's chief 
 function to suggest, or whether the public, wearied 
 by the sententious gravity of the moral -plays, 
 (which, however, their authors had often sought 
 to reheve by humorous character and incident,) 
 demanded, on the introduction of real life into 
 the drama, that only its light and merry side 
 should be presented, it is certain that Comedy en- 
 tered upon the English stage much in advance of 
 her elder sister. It is barely possible that a play 
 
392 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 upon the story of Romeo and Juliet was performed 
 in London before the year 1562 ;* but the earliest 
 tragedy extant in our language is Feri'ex aiid Por^ 
 reXy or Gorboduc, all of which was probably writ- 
 ten by Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, but to 
 the first three acts of which Thomas Norton has 
 a disputed claim. This play is founded on events 
 in the fabulous chronicles of Britain. The prin- 
 cipal personages are Gorboduc, King of Britain 
 about B. C. 600, Videna, his wife, and Ferrex and 
 Porrex, his sons. But nobles, counsellors, para- 
 sites, a lady, and messengers make the personages 
 number thirteen. The first act is occupied with 
 the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc to his 
 sons, and the talk thereupon. The second, to the 
 fomenting of a quarrel between the brothers for 
 complete sovereignty. The third, to the events 
 of a civil war, in which Porrex kills Ferrex. In 
 the fourth, the Queen, who most loved Ferrex, 
 kills Porrex while he is asleep at night in his 
 chamber ; and the people rise in wrath and 
 avenge this murder by the death of both Videna 
 and Gorboduc. The fifth act is occupied by a 
 bloody suppression of this rebellion by the nobles, 
 who in their turn fall into dissension ; and the 
 land, without a rightful king and rent by civil 
 strife, becomes desolate. This tragedy was writ- 
 ten for one of the Christmas festivals of the Inner 
 
 * See the Introduction to Romeo and Juliet, in the author's 
 edition of Shakespeare's Works. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 393 
 
 Temple, to be played by the gentlemen of that 
 society ; and by desire of Queen Elizabeth it was 
 performed by them at Whitehall on the i8th of 
 January, 1561. It is plain that the author of this 
 play meant to be very elegant, decorous, and clas- 
 sical ; and he succeeded. Of all the stirring 
 events upon which the tragedy is built, not one is 
 represented ; all are told. Even Ferrex and Por- 
 rex are not brought together on the stage, and 
 Videna does not meet either of them before the 
 audience after the first act. Each act is intro- 
 duced by a dumb show, intended to be symbolical 
 of what will follow, — a common (ievice on our 
 early stage, which was ridiculed by Shakespeare 
 in the third act of Hamlet ; * and each act, ex- 
 cept the last, is followed by a moralizing and 
 
 * " The Order and Signification of the Domme Shew before the 
 
 fourth Act. 
 
 " First the musick of howeboies began to playe, during which 
 there came from mider the stage as though out of hell, three fu- 
 ries, Alecto, Megera, and Ctisiphone, clad in blacke garmentes 
 sprinkled with bloud and flames, their bodies girt with snakes, 
 their heds spred with serpentes in stead of heire, the one bearing 
 in her hand a snake, the other a whip, and the third a burning 
 firebrand ; ech driving before them a king and a queene, which 
 moved by furies unnaturally had slaine their owne children. The 
 names of the kings and queenes were these, Tantalus, Medea, 
 Athamas, Ino, Cambises, Althea ; after that the furies and these 
 had passed about the stage thrise, they departed and than the 
 musick ceased : hereby was signified the unnaturall murders to 
 follow, that is to say Porrex slaine by his owne mother ; and of 
 King Gorboduc and Queen Videna, killed by their owne sub- 
 jects." 
 
 17* 
 
294 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 explanatory chorus recited by "four ancient and 
 sage men of Britain." 
 
 Ferrex mid Porj'ex is remarkable as being the 
 first English play extant in blank verse ; and prob- 
 ably it was the first so written. It is to be won- 
 dered at that, even in this respect, it was ever 
 taken as a model. For although Sir Philip Sidney 
 in his Defence of Poesie, finding fault with Ferrex 
 and Porrex for its violation of the unities of time 
 and place, admits that it is " full of stately speeches 
 and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height 
 of Seneca his stile, and full of notable morality, 
 which it doth most deUghtfully teach," yet it may 
 be safely said that another play so lifeless in move- 
 ment, so commonplace in thought, so utterly un- 
 dramatic in motive, so oppressively didactic in lan- 
 guage, so absolutely without distinction of char- 
 acter among its personages, cannot be found in 
 our dramatic literature. From Ferrex and Porrex 
 we turn even to the miracle-plays and moral-plays 
 with relief, if not with pleasure. Some notion of 
 its tediousness may be gathered from the fact, that 
 it closes with a speech one hundred lines in length, 
 and that the first act is chiefly occupied with 
 three speeches by three counsellors, which to- 
 gether make two hundred and sixty verses.* 
 
 * Of its style, the following passage, in which its most excit- 
 ing incident, the murder of Porrex, is announced, is a favorable 
 specimen. 
 
 " Marcella. O where is ruth, or where is pitie now .-* 
 
 "Whether is gentle hart and mercy fled } 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 395 
 
 This play demands notice because it is our first 
 tragedy, our first play written in blank verse, but 
 
 Are they exil'd out of our stony brestes, 
 
 Never to make returne ? is all the world 
 
 Drowned in bloud, and soncke in crueltie ? 
 
 If not in women mercy may be found, 
 
 If not (alas) within the mother's brest 
 
 To her owne childe, to her owne flesh and bloud ; 
 
 If ruthe be banished thence, if pitie there 
 
 May have no place, if there no gentle hart 
 
 Do live and dwell, where should we seeke it then ? 
 
 " Gorboduc. Madame (alas), what meanes your wofull tale ? 
 
 " Marcella. O silly woman I ! why to this houre 
 Have kinde and fortune thus deferred my breath, 
 That I should live to see this dolefull day ? 
 Will ever wight beleve that such hard hart 
 Could rest within the cruell mother's brest, 
 With her owne hand to slaye her onely sonne ? 
 But out (alas) these eyes behelde the same. 
 They saw the driery sight, and are become 
 Most ruthefull recordes of the bloody fact. 
 Porrex (alas) is by his mother slaine. 
 And with her hand a wofull thing to tell ; 
 While slumbring on his carefull he restes. 
 His hart stabde in with knife is reft of life. 
 
 " Gorboduc. O Eubulus, oh draw this sword of ours 
 And pearce this hart with speed ! O hatefull light, 
 O loathsome life, O sweete and welcome death, 
 Deare Eubulus, worke this we thee besech ! 
 
 " Eiibnhis. Pacient your grace, perhappes he liveth yet. 
 With wound receaved but not of certaine death. 
 
 " Gorboduc. O let us then repayre unto the place 
 And see if Porrex live, or thus be slaine. 
 
 " Marcella. Alas, he liveth not it is to true. 
 That with these eyes, of him a pereless prince, 
 Sonne to a king, and in the flower of youth. 
 Even with a twinkle a sensless stocke I saw." 
 
39^ 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 for no other reason. It had no perceptible effect 
 upon, and marks no stage in, the progress of the 
 English drama. In that regard it might as well 
 have been written in Greece and in Greek, or 
 in ancient British, by Gorboduc himself; for, in 
 either case, its motive and plan could not have 
 been more foreign to the genius of English dra- 
 matic Hterature. And here it is proper to say, that 
 translated plays, and plays adapted from Greek 
 and Latin authors, of which there were many 
 performed in the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, 
 are passed by without notice in this account, not 
 merely because they were translations and adap- 
 tations, but because, not being an outgrowth of 
 the English character, they were entirely without 
 influence upon the development of the English 
 drama, in an account of which they therefore have 
 no proper place. They were not seeds that took 
 root ; but lifeless foreign bodies cast upon the 
 ground, to bury themselves by their own weight, 
 in the process of time, out of sight and out of 
 memory. Nor do the translations and adaptations 
 of Italian plays, of which not a few were made 
 at about the same period, seem to have had any 
 more vitality or assimilative power ; although 
 one of them. The Supposes, translated from Ari- 
 osto by George Gascoigne, and acted at Gray's 
 Inn in 1566, must be mentioned as the earliest 
 extant play in English prose. The fact is signifi- 
 cant, indeed, that none of the many plays espe- 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 397 
 
 cially written for the court, and for the learned 
 societies and the elegant people of that day, have 
 left any traces even of a temporary influence 
 upon our stage. Our English drama, unlike that 
 of France, had its germ in the instincts, and its 
 growth with the growth, of the whole English 
 people. 
 
 It must be confessed that up to, and even past, 
 the beginning of the Elizabethan era,* the plays 
 which were produced to satisfy the taste of our 
 forefathers were rude, gross, unsymmetrical, and 
 heterogeneous ; and that their apparently discord- 
 ant elements were rarely bound together by any 
 stronger bond of unity than the mere scenic suc- 
 cession of events. Of character there was little ; 
 of keeping, no more ; probability was defied, de- 
 corum violated. The individual traits of the per- 
 sonages in a play were rather described by each 
 other, or even by themselves, than developed ; 
 and the feelings which the poet deemed proper 
 to any dramatic situation were enumerated rather 
 than expressed. The more cultivated people of 
 that time saw all these defects, except the last ; 
 and yet, as cultivated people often do, devised for 
 them the wrong remedy.f Not seeing or not re- 
 
 * The era which bears the name of Elizabeth, because the men 
 who made it illustrious were her contemporaries, commenced 
 after the beginning, and stretched beyond the end, of her reign. 
 Its limits may be taken as 1575 - 1625. 
 
 t George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cos- 
 
398 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 garding the fact that our drama was a new and 
 native growth, they judged it by a foreign stand- 
 ard, and would have conformed it to an effete and 
 foreign type. In this Enghsh drama, rude, coarse, 
 and confused as it appears, there was yet a native, 
 inherent vitality. Supported by the strong Eng- 
 lish imagination, it could defy the unities of time 
 
 Sandra, the incidents of which Shakespeare used in his Measure 
 for Measure, and which wa.s published in 1578, gives us the fol- 
 lowing criticism upon the English drama of that day : — 
 
 "The Englishman in this quallitie is most vaine, indiscreete, 
 and out of order : he first groundes his worke on impossibilities : 
 then, in three howers, ronnes he throwe the worlde : marryes, ■ 
 gets children, makes children men, men to conquer kingdomes, 
 murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth 
 divils from Hel. And (that which is worst) their ground is not so 
 unperfect as their workinge indiscreete ; not waying, so the peo- 
 ple laugh, though they laugh them (for their follies) to scorn. 
 Manye tymes, to make myrthe, they make a clowne companion 
 with a Kinge : in theyr grave Councils they allow the advise of 
 fools : yea, they use one order of speach for all persons, a grose 
 Indecorum," &c. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, in a passage of his Defence of Poesie, (writ- 
 ten about 1583,) which has been often quoted, but which is too 
 important to be omitted here, says : — 
 
 " Our Tragedies and Comedies are not without cause cried out 
 against, observing rules neither of honest civilitie nor skilfull Po- 
 etrie. Excepting Gorboduck (againe I say of those that I have 
 seene) which notwithstanding, as it is full of statelie speeches, and 
 well sounding phrases, climing to the height of Seneca his stile, 
 and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully 
 teach, and so obtaine the verie end of Poesie, yet in truth it is 
 very defections in the circumstances, which grieves me, because 
 it might not remaine as an exact modell of all Tragedies. For it 
 is faulty in place and time, the two necessarie companions of all 
 corporal! actions. For when the Stage should alway represent 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. ^qq 
 
 and place ; but in obedience to the English love of 
 moral truth, it struggled after that greater unity, 
 the unity of dramatic interest. With a contempt 
 of the conventional peculiarly English, it sought 
 the presentation of an idealized picture of real 
 life, which life is neither pure tragedy nor pure 
 comedy, and in which mirth and sadness, kings 
 
 but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should 
 be, both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day, 
 there is both many dayes and manie places artificially imagined. 
 But if it bee so in Gorboduck, how much more in all the rest, where 
 you shall have Asia of the one side, and Affrick of the other, and 
 so many other under-kingdoms, that the Player, when he comes 
 in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will 
 not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walke to 
 gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a gar- 
 den. By and by we hear newes of a shipvvrack in the same 
 place ; then, we are to blame if we accept it not for a rocke. 
 Upon the backe of that comes out a hideous monster with fire 
 and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take 
 it for a cave ; while, in the meantime, two armies flie in, repre- 
 sented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard hart 
 will not receive it for a pitched field ? Now, of time they are 
 much more liberal ; for ordinarie it is that two young Princes fall 
 in love : after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of 
 a fair boy ; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready 
 to get another child, and all this in two houres' space : which 
 how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and art hath 
 taught, and all ancient examples justified, and at this daye the 
 
 ordinarie players in Italic wil not erre in But besides these 
 
 grosse absurdities how all their Playes be neither right Tragedies 
 nor right Comedies, mingUng Kings and Clownes, not because 
 the matter so carieth it, but thrust in the Clowne by head and 
 shoulders, to play a part in Majestical matters with neither de- 
 cencie nor discretion ; so as neither the admiration and commis- 
 eration, nor right sportfulness is by their mongrell Tragi-comedy 
 obtained." 
 
400 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 and 'downs, do mingle.* It clung to its confused 
 collocation of heterogeneous materials, because it 
 was striving to work them together into a natural 
 symmetry, — a symmetry not austere, limited, and 
 geometrical, like that of a Doric temple, in which 
 one half is the exact counterpart of the other, and 
 the details are the repetition of a single form, but 
 large and free, yet true, like the symmetry of 
 mountains and of trees, in which the masses are 
 irregular and the details unlike, while yet there is 
 perfect balance, and a harmony the more satis- 
 fying that it is not constant concord and repeated 
 sameness. 
 
 Our drama, advancing through centuries, had 
 slowly reached this stage of growth, where if its 
 development had been stayed its history would 
 have been utterly without interest, except to the 
 literary antiquarian, when suddenly its homely, 
 uncouth bud burst into flower so sweet, of beauty 
 so glorious, so perennial, as ever after to gladden, 
 to perfume, and to adorn the ages. The rapid- 
 ity of this transition is astonishing. It is almost 
 like magical transformation. In less than twenty 
 
 * There is conventionality enough and to spare in the every- 
 day life of people of English race in the United States, and still 
 more in that of the same race in Great Britain. But they see, 
 and, more, they feel, the unnatural restraint of pure convention- 
 alism. They act under it with an awkward self-consciousness. 
 They scorn it, and have some contempt for themselves for their 
 conformity to it. Whereas the people of the continent of Europe 
 believe in it, accept it without a question, enter into it heartily, 
 and act under it unconsciously. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 4OI 
 
 years from the time when the best plays yet pro- 
 duced by EngHsh authors were intrinsically un- 
 worthy of a place in literature, the English stage 
 had become illustrious. This change was brought 
 about by the great and increasing taste of the 
 day for dramatic performances, which called into 
 the service of the theatre every needy hand that 
 held a ready pen. A crowd of young men left 
 the learned professions in London, or, abandoning 
 rustic homes, flocked thither, to make money by 
 writing plays. Among these men seven attained 
 distinction ; and yet not only so inferior, but of 
 so little intrinsic, enduring interest was the work 
 of six of them, that, with one, and hardly one, 
 exception, their names would not have been 
 known outside of purely literary circles but for 
 the seventh. They were Thomas Kyd, John Lilly, 
 George Peele, George Chapman, Robert Greene, 
 Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. 
 Of the six, the oldest whose age is known to us 
 was only ten years the senior of the seventh ; and 
 the most eminent, Marlowe, was born but two 
 years before him.* Shakespeare got to work in 
 London very early in life. He was using his pen 
 there as a dramatic writer before he was twenty- 
 four years old.f These men were therefore in 
 
 * Lilly was born about 1553, Peele about the same year, Chap 
 man in 1559, Greene about 1560, Marlowe about 1562, Shake- 
 speare in 1564. The date of Kyd's birth can only be conjectured. 
 
 t See Section XH. of the Essay on the Authorship of Kittg 
 
 z 
 
402 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 both the strictest and the broadest sense his con- 
 temporaries, — his contemporaries as men and as 
 authors. The mere fact that he found four of 
 them, Kyd, Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, in the 
 front rank of dramatic writers on his arrival in 
 London, does not properly entitle them to consid- 
 eration as his predecessors in the English drama. 
 Being so absolutely contemporaneous with him in 
 age, they could be justly regarded as his prede- 
 cessors only as having been the founders of a 
 school of which he was an eminent disciple, or to 
 which he had established a rival or a successor. 
 But he stood to them in neither of these relations. 
 He and they were all, with a single exception, of 
 one school, of which neither one of them was the 
 founder. With this one exception, these men 
 were all striving to do the same thing, at the 
 same time, in the same way. The time had come 
 when it was to be done, and the time brought the 
 men who were to do it, each according to his 
 ability. And not only were their aims identical, 
 but there is the best reason, short of competent 
 contemporary testimony, for believing that four 
 of them, including Shakespeare, were co-laborers 
 upon still existing works.* 
 
 Henry the Sixth, Vol. VII. of the author's edition of Shake- 
 speare's Works. 
 
 * See the Introduction to the Tamiitg of the Shrew, and the 
 Essay upon King Henry the Sixth, in the author's edition of 
 Shakespeare's "Works. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 403 
 
 The exception to this unity of purpose was 
 John Lilly, the Euphuist. Lilly is known in dra- 
 matic literature as the author of eight comedies 
 written to be performed at the court of Eliza- 
 beth.* They are in all respects opposed to the 
 genius of the English drama. They do not even 
 pretend to be representations of human life and 
 human character, but are pure fantasy-pieces, in 
 which the personages are a heterogeneous med- 
 ley of Grecian gods and goddesses and impossi- 
 ble colorless creatures with sublunary names, all 
 thinking with one brain and speaking with one 
 tongue, — the conceitful crotchety brain and the 
 dainty, well-trained tongue of clever, witty John 
 Lilly. They are all in prose, but contain some 
 pretty, fanciful verses called songs, which are as 
 unlyric in spirit as the plays in which they appear 
 are undramatic. From these plays Shakespeare 
 borrowed a few thoughts, but they exercised no 
 modifying influence upon his genius, nor did they 
 at all conform to that of the English drama, upon 
 which they are a mere grotesque excrescence. 
 
 Chapman, one of the elder and the stronger of 
 the six above named, is not known as the author, 
 even in part, of any play older than Shakespeare's 
 
 * Lilly's plays are Efidimion, Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, 
 Gallathea, Mydas, Mother Bofnbie, The Woman in the Aloone, and 
 Love''s Metamorphosis. The Maid''s Metamorphosis, which was 
 published anonymously in 1600, has been attributed to him, as 
 also has A Warning for Faire Women, which was published anon- 
 ymously in 1599 ; but neither of them bears traces of his style. 
 
404 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 earliest performances. He probably entered upon 
 dramatic composition at a somewhat later period 
 in life than either of the others ; and as a drama- 
 tist is properly to be passed over in this place as 
 not having been Shakespeare's predecessor in the 
 mere order of time by even that very brief period 
 which may be admitted in the cases of Peele, 
 Greene, and Marlowe. Upon the styles of these 
 three dramatists I have remarked elsewhere* that 
 I cannot entirely assent to the opinion enter- 
 tained by many persons, that Marlowe's talents 
 were very far superior to those of the two others, 
 at least as far as Peele is concerned. Marlowe 
 was indeed the most gifted dramatic writer of his 
 time, in our language, except Shakespeare. His 
 imagination sometimes shaped out living forms, 
 though monstrous ; and from the murky clouds 
 of his bombast there shoot fitful gleams of real 
 poetic fancy. Peele's plays, it is true, lack some 
 of the fire and fury of Marlowe's ; but they are 
 also without much of his fustian. His charac- 
 ters are less strongly marked than Marlowe's, but 
 they are also less absurd and extravagant, and in 
 my opinion they are equally well discriminated ; 
 but that is little praise. Peele's David and Bath- 
 seba is a play which, for the genuineness of its 
 feeling, if not for the harmony of its verse, Mar- 
 lowe might have been glad to own ; and The Bat- 
 tle of Alcanzar is in the same furious, savage vein 
 
 * Essay upon the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 405 
 
 with his Tamburlame, and equal, if not superior, 
 to it in sense and keeping. It is also noteworthy 
 that the prologue to VqqIqs Arraigmnent of Paris, 
 which was published in 1584, when Marlowe was 
 but twenty years old, and before he had taken his 
 Bachelor's degree at Cambridge, is, for union of 
 completeness of measure with variety of pause, 
 unsurpassed by any dramatic blank verse, that 
 of one play excepted, written before the time of 
 Shakespeare. In forming a comparative judg- 
 ment as to Marlowe, it must be borne in mind that 
 there is good reason for believing that Edward 
 tJie Second, his best play in versification, no less 
 than in style, sentiment, and character, was writ- 
 ten after 1590, and after the production of The 
 First Part of the Contention, and The True Tragedy 
 of Richard, Dnke of York, in which he had some 
 lessons in dramatic versification from Shake- 
 speare.* 
 
 With regard to these dramatists there only re- 
 mains to be noticed the claim which has been set 
 up for one of them,f Marlowe, that he was the 
 first who used blank verse upon our public stage, 
 and " the first who harmonized it with variety of 
 pause." As to which I will only say briefly, that 
 although it is probably true that he in his Tam- 
 
 * See the Essay on the Authorship of JiTm^ Henry the Sixth, 
 before mentioned. 
 
 t By Mr. Collier in his History of English Dramatic Poetry, 
 &c., and Mr. Dyce in his Life of Shakespeare. 
 
4o6 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 biirlahie made one of the earliest efforts to bring 
 blank verse into vogue in plays written for the 
 general public, and to substitute the roll and flow 
 of measured rhythm for the feebler and more mo- 
 notonous music of rhyme in dramatic poetry in- 
 tended for uncultured as well as cultured ears, I 
 cannot find in this endeavor reason for giving him 
 the credit due to an innovator, much less that 
 which belongs to an inventor. Blank verse, as 
 we have seen, was used in plays produced for 
 special occasions and audiences many years be- 
 fore Marlowe wrote ; and he, writing only for the 
 general theatre -going public, seems merely to 
 have used and somewhat improved an instrument 
 which he found made to his hand. 
 
 Among the dramatists who preceded Marlowe 
 in the use of blank verse on the public stage is 
 one who, in my judgment, wrote it with a spirit 
 and freedom which Marlowe himself hardly ex- 
 celled. This dramatist is the unknown author of 
 Jeronimo. A continuation of this play, called 
 The Spanish Tragedy^ or Hieronimo is mad again, 
 was one of the most popular dramas of the Eliza- 
 bethan era. It was written, as we know on the 
 testimony of Thomas Heywood, by Thomas Kyd ; 
 and hitherto it has been maintained, perhaps I 
 should rather say assumed, that Kyd was also the 
 author of yerojiiino. But it seems to me very 
 clear that the fact that Kyd did write The Spanish 
 Tragedy is conclusive against his authorship of 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 407 
 
 the elder play. It is hardly possible that they are 
 by the same writer. And as yeronimo is a typi- 
 cal play of the transition period between the pre- 
 Elizabethan and the Elizabethan drama, the ques- 
 tion as to its authorship may be here opportunely 
 examined. There is no contemporary testimony, 
 direct or indirect, upon this subject. Hey wood's 
 evidence is limited to the authorship of The Span- 
 is Ji Tragedy.* Ben Jonson, who makes the only 
 other contemporary allusion to Kyd's performance, 
 refers only to the same play. In the Introduction 
 to CyntJiids Revels^ where he indulges his cynical 
 humor at the expense of his immediate predeces- 
 sors and his contemporaries, Jonson makes one 
 of the interlocutors, speaking of the critics in the 
 audience, say: "Another, whom it hath pleased 
 nature to furnish with more beard than brain, 
 prunes his mustachio, lisps, and with some score 
 of affected oaths, swears down all that sit about 
 him, 'That the old HieronimOy as it was first acted^ 
 was the only best and judiciously penn'd play of 
 Europe.' " And in the immediately preceding 
 speech, he makes this allusion : " O, (I had almost 
 forgot it, too,) they say the timbrce or ghosts of 
 some three or four plays departed a dozen years 
 since have been seen walking about your stage 
 here." Now the ghost of the lover in Jeronimo 
 
 * Heywood says : " Therefore Mr. Kyd in the Spanish Tragedy, 
 upon an occasion presenting itself, thus writes : 
 
 *Why, Nero thought it no disparagement,' " &c. 
 
4o8 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 is brought in as chorus in The Spanish Tragedy ; 
 and this circumstance, coupled with the proximity 
 of the two speeches above cited, makes it plairi 
 that Jonson had the latter play in mind, as prin- 
 cipal among the three or four to which he refers. 
 Cynthia s Revels having been produced in 1599, 
 this gives us 1587 as the date, not at which "the 
 old Hieroitimo " was first acted, as hitherto it 
 has been somewhat strangely assumed, but about 
 which it had become old and worn enough for a 
 playwright, cynical and vain like Jonson, to place 
 it among those which had " departed," although it 
 was often acted during the dozen years which he 
 had in mind. We know that it is The Spanish 
 Tragedy to which Jonson refers as "the old Hie- 
 ronimo^' not only because he uses the name 
 Hieronimo, instead of Jeronimo, but because he 
 refers to it " as it was first acted " ; which shows 
 that in 1599 the play in question was not per- 
 formed as Kyd had left it, but had been " newly 
 revived and polished according to the decorum of 
 these days," as Tailored ajtd Gismiinda, written in 
 1568, is announced to have been, on its title-page, 
 printed in 1592. It was a common practice at 
 that time thus to revive and polish old plays 
 which had achieved and retained public favor. 
 Now of the two plays before us The Spanish 
 Tragedy was the popular favorite ; and that we 
 know, from Henslowe's Diary, was twice added 
 to by Jonson himself between the time of his 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 409 
 
 gibe at it and 1602. But yeronimo, although not 
 published until 1605, when at least four editions 
 of The Spanish Tragedy had been issued, includ- 
 ing two which contained, as their title-pages 
 announced, the "new additions" which Jonson 
 made,* shows no trace of alteration or addition, 
 and no announcement of any appears upon the 
 title-page, which absence we may take as more 
 than a negative pregnant.f Ben Jonson was not 
 alone in his contempt of The Spanish Tragedy. 
 It is jeered at by many writers of the Elizabethan 
 era, including Shakespeare. The great favor with 
 which it was popularly regarded seems to have 
 nettled the dramatists of that day, and justly; for 
 it is a very feeble and ridiculous performance, 
 which probably owed its theatrical popularity to 
 the murder and suicide which plentifully enliven 
 
 * " The Spanish Tragedie, containing the lamentable ende of 
 Don Horatio and Bel-imperia : with the pittiful death of old Hie- 
 ronimo. — Newly corrected and amended of such grosse faultes as 
 passed in the former impression. At London, Printed by Wil- 
 liam White, dwelling in Cow lane, 1599." 
 
 " The Spanish Tragedie, containing the lamentable ende of Don 
 Horatio and Bel-imperia : with the pittifull death of olde Hieron- 
 imo. Newly corrected, amended, and enlarged, with new addi- 
 tions of the Painter's part and others, as it hath of late been di- 
 vers times acted. Imprinted at London by W. W. for T. Pavier, 
 and are to be solde at the signe of the Cat and Parrots near the 
 Exchange. 1602." 
 
 t " The First Part of Jeronimo. With the Warres of Portugall, 
 and the Life and Death of Don Andrsea. Printed at London for 
 Thomas Pavyer, and are to be solde at his shop, at the entrance 
 into the Exchange. 1605." 
 18 
 
4IO 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 its action,* and to the extravagance of its situa- 
 tions. Jeroniino escaped such gibes as those which 
 were levelled at The Spanish Tragedy ; and well 
 it might ; for it is a very much better composition 
 than its successor : in construction, though rude, 
 at least not inferior, and far superior in dramatic 
 and poetic power.f 
 
 In the absence of testimony as to Kyd's author- 
 ship of Jeroiiimo, internal evidence must decide 
 the question, if it can be decided. For as to sub- 
 ject and personages, (which are, so to speak, iden- 
 tical in that play and in The Spanish Tragedy^ 
 they, and not only they, but in a certain degree 
 
 * Nine several extinctions of life by hanging, stabbing, and 
 shooting, and in one case by both, take place before the audience 
 in The Spanish Tragedy. They are thus recounted with gusto 
 by the Ghost at the end of the play : — 
 
 " Aye, now my hopes have end in their effects, 
 When blood and sorrow finish my desires, 
 Horatio murdered in his father's bower ; 
 Vile Serberine by Pedringano slain ; 
 False Pedringano hang'd by quaint device, 
 Fair Isabella by herself misdone, 
 Prince Balthazar by Belimperia stabb'd ; 
 The duke of Castile and his wicked son, 
 Both done to death by old Hieronimo ; 
 My Belimperia fallen, as Dido fell ; 
 And good Hieronimo slain by himself, 
 Ay, these were spectacUs to please my soul." 
 
 t But Mr. Collier says, " As a dramatic production Jeronhno 
 is in every respect below The Spaizish Tragedy,'''' which he calls 
 "a very powerful performance." — History of Dramatic Poetry ^ 
 Vol. III. pp. 208, 209. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 411 
 
 plot, and even language, were looked upon as com- 
 mon property in the early part of the Elizabethan 
 era, when play-writing was a trade and plays were 
 patchwork. A comparison of the. play which we 
 know Kyd did write with that which we do not 
 know he wrote, shows that they are utterly unlike 
 in construction, in characterization, and in every 
 distinctive quality of style. Both are defiant of 
 the unities, and even of the possibilities, of time 
 and place ; but the action of the elder play, Je- 
 ronimo, is direct, spirited, and manly ; that of the 
 later, The Spanish Tragedy, is confused, languid, 
 and childish. In characterization both are weak 
 when compared with Shakespeare's, or even Mar- 
 lowe's works ; but compared with each other, 
 the elder is the stronger and more original, the 
 later at best feebly copying the traits of the elder. 
 But it is in style that their unlikeness is most 
 striking. Blank verse and rhyme are mingled in 
 both, Jeronimo containing a larger proportion of 
 the latter. But so far is this from being an indi- 
 cation that Jeronimo is the earlier and The Span- 
 ish Tragedy the later work of a man who was 
 ridding himself of the trammels of rhyme, and 
 gaining freedom of versification by practice and 
 example, that the very rhymed couplets of the 
 former are freer and more varied than the blank 
 verse of the latter, which is formal and monoto- 
 nous, with a pause in sense and rhythm at the end 
 of almost every line; while the blank verse of 
 
412 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 Jeronimo has often an ease and breadth and va- 
 riety never attained by the author of The Span- 
 ish Tragedy, or by any other dramatist before 
 Shakespeare, except occasionally by Marlowe.* 
 In merely interlocutory passages, where speeches 
 consist of but a few words, the author of the elder 
 play composes his verses of the speeches of va- 
 rious characters, or disregards the completion of 
 a verse, and writes merely in measured rhythm. 
 Kyd, on the contrary, gives a perfect line or two 
 to each speaker. f One peculiarity of the versifi- 
 
 * " Come, valiant spirits ; you peers of Portugal 
 That owe your lives, your faiths and services. 
 To set you free from base captivity : 
 O let our fathers' scandal ne'er be seen 
 As a base blush upon our free-born cheeks : 
 Let all the tribute that proud Spain receiv'd 
 Of those all captive Portugales deceased, 
 Turn into chafe, and choak their insolence. 
 Methinks no moiety, not one little thought 
 Of them whose servile acts live in their graves. 
 But should raise spleens big as a cannon-bullet 
 Within your bosoms : O for honor, 
 Your country's reputation, your lives freedom, 
 Indeed your all that may be termed revenge. 
 Now let your bloods be liberal as the sea ; 
 And all the wounds that you receive of Spain, 
 Let theirs be equal to quit yours again. 
 Speak Portugales : are you resolved as I, 
 To live like captives, or as freeborn die." 
 
 t The following brief passage from Jeronimo exhibits the au- 
 thor's manner in such passages as are above referred to. 
 " Jeron. What ! have I almost quited you 1 
 Andrea. Have done 
 
 Impatient marshal. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 413 
 
 cation of Jeronimo is very striking : this is the 
 frequent insertion of a hemistich in the midst of 
 a speech in blank verse of several lines. Eigh- 
 teen instances of this occur in that short play, 
 but not one in the much longer Spanish Tragedy. 
 The student of Shakespeare will remember many 
 such in Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet. Mar- 
 lowe does not use them. The supposition that 
 this peculiarity in yeronimo may be due to imper- 
 fection of the manuscript, or the carelessness with 
 
 Balth. Spanish combatants, 
 
 What ! do you set a little pigmy marshal 
 
 To question with a prince .'' 
 
 Andrea. No, Prince Balthezar 
 
 I have desired him peace that we might war." 
 This presents a striking contrast to the following passage from 
 The Spanish Tragedy, which shows Kyd's style in like circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " Lorenzo. Sister, what means this melancholy walk ? 
 Beli7nperia. That for a while I wish no company. 
 Loren. But here the Prince has come to visit you. 
 Bel. That argues, that he lives in liberty. 
 Balthazar. No, madam, but in pleasing servitude. 
 Bel. Your prison then, belike, is your conceit, 
 Balth. Ay, by conceit my freedom is enthralled. 
 Bel. Then with conceit enlarge yourself again. 
 Balth. What if conceit have laid my heart to gage ? 
 Bel. Pay that you borrowed and recover it. 
 Balth. I die if I return from whence it lies. 
 Bel. A heartless man, and live ? a miracle ! 
 Balth. Ay, lady, love can work such miracles. 
 Loren. Tush, tush, my lord, let go these ambages, 
 And in plain terms acquaint her with your love. 
 Bel. What boots complaint when there 's no remedy ? " 
 
4J4 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 which the only existing edition was printed, is 
 precluded by the fact that these hemistichs gen- 
 erally rhyme with the following line. Fifteen of 
 the eighteen instances in question have this pecu- 
 liarity, — in itself a remarkable trait of style.* 
 The Spanish Tragedy is filled with classical allu- 
 sions, its author having brought the Greek my- 
 thology constantly into his service, yeronimo is 
 absolutely free from this cheap exhibition of schol- 
 
 * Of this rhymed hemistich, and also again of the freedom and 
 harmonious variety of pause which distinguish the blank verse in 
 yeronimo, the following brief passages are examples. 
 
 " Lorejizo. Andrea 's gone embassador ; 
 Lorenzo is not dreamt on in this age : 
 Hard fate, 
 
 When villains sit not in the highest state ! 
 Ambition's plumes, that flourish'd in our court, 
 Severe authority has dash'd with justice ; 
 And policy and pride walk like to exiles 
 Giving attendance, that were once attended." 
 
 *' 'T is said we shall not answer at next birth 
 Our father's faults in heaven ; why then on earth ? 
 Which proves and shows that which they lost 
 By base captivity, 
 
 We may redeem by honor'd valiancy : 
 We borrow naught : our kingdom is our own : 
 He 's a base king that pays rent for his throne." 
 
 " And thou long thing of Portugal, why not } 
 Thou that art full as tall 
 As an English gallows, upper beam and all, 
 Devourer of apparel, thou huge swallower, 
 My hose will scarce make thee a standing collar. 
 What, have I 'quited you t " 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 415 
 
 arship, if we except a single mention of Mars, and 
 the introduction of Charon, whose names and 
 functions were familiar to the general public of 
 that period. But The Spanish Tragedy is not 
 only distinguished by this trait ; it has Latin quo- 
 tations in the midst of its speeches. An entire 
 speech of one of the personages is in Latin. Ital- 
 ian and Spanish are also quoted. This use of for- 
 eign language occurs sixteen times in the play. 
 In one instance, and that where the situation is 
 most touching, the principal personage quotes 
 from the ^neid fourteen lines of Dido's last dy- 
 ing speech and confession. But in Jeronimo, al- 
 though it is about half as long as its continuation, 
 not one word of Latin, Spanish, or Italian occurs. 
 This peculiarity of The Spanish Tragedy Shake- 
 speare ridicules in The Tamhig of the Shrew ; 
 and it is one which might be expected in Kyd, 
 who was a scholar and a translator more than a 
 poet. The difference in the spelling of the name 
 of the principal personage common to both plays 
 becomes, under these circumstances, significant. 
 It has been supposed that this was due to the dis- 
 covery by Kyd, in the interval between the produc- 
 tion of the two plays, " that Jeronimo was rather 
 Italian than Spanish." But a mistake like the 
 one supposed is exactly the one into which the 
 author of The Spanish Tragedy and the transla- 
 tor of Garnier's Cornelia would not be likely to 
 fall. Who wrote yerormno we do not know. 
 
4i6 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 But can there be a doubt that Kyd was not its 
 author ? 
 
 The Spanish Tragedy had been written, as we 
 have seen, long enough before 1587 to be then an 
 old story. We may be equally sure that the play 
 of which it is a continuation had preceded it some 
 years. In structure yero7iimo bears strong traces 
 of the pre-Elizabethan era. It opens with a dumb 
 show, explanatory of the situation of the charac- 
 ters before the action commences ; * the action 
 does not "grow to a point," and the play conse- 
 quently reads less like a tragedy than an episode 
 of history, dramatized with little constructive art. 
 Quite one half of the play is in rhyme ; and among 
 its dramatis personcB one is allegorical, — Revenge. 
 This personage and the Ghost of Andrea, the 
 slain lover, who appears with him in the last scene 
 of Jeronimo, are also used by Kyd in The Span- 
 ish Tragedy ; but in that they merely form a cho- 
 rus, and neither mingle in nor influence the ac- 
 tion. The traits of Jeronimo just mentioned, and 
 particularly the first and last, are indicative of a 
 period earlier than that known as the Elizabethan 
 
 * " Sound a signet, and pass over the stage. Enter at one door 
 the King of Spain, Duke of Castile, Duke Medina, Lorenzo, and 
 Rogero ; at another door, Andrea, Horatio, and Jeronimo. Je- 
 ronimo kneels down, and the King creates him Marshal of Spain. 
 Lorenzo puts on his spurs and Andrea his sword. The King 
 goes along with Jeronimo to his house ; after a long signet is 
 sounded, enter all the Nobles with covered dishes to a banquet. 
 Exeufit omnes. That done, enter all again as before." 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 417 
 
 era ; while the versification and characterization 
 belong to that era, and indeed would disgrace 
 none of its dramatists except Shakespeare him- 
 self, and are hardly unworthy of his prentice hand. 
 Dumb shows went out as the Elizabethan dram- 
 atists began to occupy the stage ; and allegory 
 is the distinctive trait of the period of the moral- 
 plays, although, as we have seen, it yielded place 
 gradually to real life. The use of dumb show, 
 and especially the introduction of an allegorical 
 character among the dimnatis persoiice of a trage- 
 dy of real life, written in blank verse, of which 
 no other example is known to me, distinctly mark 
 the transitional type of yeronimo ; which may 
 be regarded as a fine and characteristic example 
 of English tragedy in the stage of its develop- 
 ment immediately preceding that which produced 
 Shakespeare. And indeed this play and its con- 
 tinuation, in spite of the crudeness of both and 
 the childishness of the latter, seem to have left 
 stronger traces of influence upon Shakespeare's 
 works than any other or than all others written 
 by his predecessors or his contemporaries.* 
 
 * A critical examination and comparison of these two trage- 
 dies would be an interesting and perhaps not unfruitful task ; but 
 enough of these pages cannot be spared for that purpose. The 
 reader who desires to examine them for himself will find both 
 yeronimo and The Spanish Tragedy among Dodsley's Old Plays, 
 and the latter in Hawkins's Origin of the English Drania. It is 
 my intention to undertake, in an Essay supplementary to this 
 volume, a critical examination of these two tragedies and their 
 relations to Shakespeare's works. 
 
 18* AA 
 
4i8 
 
 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 The English drama, and not the theatre and 
 the stage, before the time of Shakespeare, is the 
 subject of this account ; but it may be fitly closed 
 with a very brief description of the play-houses 
 and the theatrical management of his early years. 
 The general use of inn-yards as places of dra- 
 matic amusement has been already mentioned in 
 the course of remark upon the moral-play ; and 
 when Shakespeare arrived in London at least 
 three inns there, the Bull, the Cross Keys, and the 
 Bell Savage, were thus regularly occupied. But, 
 by a striking coincidence, with the Elizabethan 
 era of our drama came theatres proper, — buildings 
 specially adapted to the needs of actors and au- 
 diences. Shakespeare found three such in the 
 metropolis, — four, if to The Theatre, The Curtain, 
 and The Black-friars, we are to add Paris Garden, 
 where bear-baiting shared the boards with comedy. 
 All the theatres of Shakespeare's time were prob- 
 ably built of wood and plaster. Of the three above 
 mentioned, the Black-friars belonged to the class 
 called private theatres, we know not why, unless 
 because the private theatres were entirely roofed 
 in, while in the others the pit was uncovered, and 
 of course the stage and the gallery exposed to the 
 external air. A flag was kept flying from a staff 
 on the roof during the performance. Inside, there 
 was the stage, the pit, the boxes and galleries, 
 much as we have them now-a-days. In the pub- 
 lic theatres the pit, separated from the stage by a 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 419 
 
 paling, was called the yard, and was without seats. 
 The price of admission to the pit, or yard, varied, 
 according to the pretensions of the theatre, from 
 twopence, and even a penny, to sixpence ; that 
 to the boxes or rooms, from a shilling to two shil- 
 lings, and even, on extraordinary occasions, half a 
 crown. 
 
 The performance usually commenced at three 
 o'clock in the afternoon ; but the theatre appears 
 to have been always artificially lighted, in the 
 body of the house by cressets, and upon the stage 
 by large, rude chandeliers. The small band of 
 musicians sat, not in an orchestra in front of the 
 stage, but, it would seem, in a balcony projecting 
 from the proscenium. People went early to the 
 theatre, for the purpose of securing good places, 
 and while waiting for the play to begin, they read, 
 gamed, smoked, drank, and cracked nuts and jokes 
 together ; those who set up for wits, gallants, or 
 critics liked to appear upon the stage itself, which 
 they were allowed to do all through the perform- 
 ance, lying upon the rushes with which the stage 
 was strewn, or sitting upon stools, for which they 
 paid an extra price. Pickpockets, when detected 
 at the theatre, seem to have been put in an extem- 
 pore pillory on the stage, among the wits and gal- 
 lants, at whose tongues, if not whose hands, they 
 doubtless suffered. Kempe, the actor, in his Nine 
 Dales Wonder, A. D. 1600, compares a man to 
 " such a one as we tye to a poast on our stage for 
 
A20 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 all the people to wonder at when they are taken 
 pilfering." 
 
 Certain very peculiar dramatic companies of 
 Shakespeare's time should not be passed by here 
 entirely without notice. They were composed en- 
 tirely of children. The boys of St. Paul's choir, 
 those of Westminster school, and a special com- 
 pany called the Children of the Revels, were the 
 most important. The first two companies acted 
 under the direction of the Master of St. Paul's 
 choir, and of the school, the last under that of the 
 Master of the Revels. Their performances were 
 much admired, and the companies of the adult 
 actors at the theatre were piqued, and perhaps 
 touched in pocket, by the public favor of these 
 younkers. Shakespeare shows this by the com- 
 plaint which he puts into Rosencrans's mouth, in 
 Hamlet. Their audiences were generally composed 
 of the higher classes, and they acted plays of es- 
 tablished reputation only. This appears from the 
 following passage in yack Drums Entertainment, 
 published in 1601, which was itself played by the 
 children of Paul's, as appears by its title-page. 
 
 " Sir Edward. I sawe the children of Pawles last night, 
 And troth they pleas'd me prettie prettie well. 
 The Apes in time will do it handsomely. 
 
 " Planet. I faith I like the audience that frequenteth there, 
 With much applause : A man shall not be choakte 
 "With the stench of Garlicke, nor be pasted 
 To the barmy lackett of a Beer-brewer. 
 
 *' Brabant jii. Tis a good gentle audience, and I hope the Boys 
 Will come one day into the Court of Requests. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 42 1 
 
 " Brabant Sig. I, and they had good playes, but they produce 
 
 Such mustie fopperies of antiquitie 
 
 As do not sute the humorous ages backs 
 
 With cloathes in fashion." 
 
 Sig. H. 3. b. 
 
 The performance was announced by three flour- 
 ishes of trumpets. At the third sounding, the 
 curtain, which was divided in the middle from top 
 to bottom, and ran upon rods, was drawn, and, 
 after the prologue, the actors entered. The pro- 
 logue was spoken by a person who wore a long 
 black cloak and a wreath of bays upon his head. 
 The reason of which costume was, that prologues 
 were first spoken by the authors of plays them- 
 selves, who wore the poetical costume of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, such as we see it in the old portraits of 
 Ariosto, Tasso, and others. When the authors 
 themselves no longer appeared as Prologue, the 
 actors, who were their proxies, assumed their pro- 
 fessional habit. Poor Robert Greene, the de- 
 bauched playwright and poet, begged upon his 
 miserable death-bed that his coffin might be 
 strewed with bays ; and the cobbler's wife at 
 whose house he died respected this clinging of 
 the wretched author to his right to Parnassian 
 honors, and fulfilled his request. 
 
 In the early part of the Elizabethan era, it was 
 common for all the actors who were to take part 
 in the play to appear in character and pass over 
 the stage before the performance began. This 
 was a relic of the days of the miracle-plays and 
 moral-plays. 
 
422 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 In the course of the piece, he who played the 
 clown would favor the audience with outbreaks 
 of extemporaneous wit and practical joking, in 
 virtue of a time-honored privilege claimed by the 
 clowns to "speak more than was set down for 
 them." Indeed, extempore dialogue seems to have 
 been permitted to, if not expected from, the rep- 
 resentatives of comic characters. Such directions 
 as the following, in Greene's Tu Quoque, A. D. 
 1614, are not uncommon : — 
 
 ^^Here they two talke a7id rayle what they listj then 
 Rash s^eakes to Staynes. 
 
 '''■All Speake. Ud's fool dost thou stand by and do 
 nothing? Come talke and drown her clamors. 
 
 " Here they all talke and Joyce gives over weeping and 
 Exit:' 
 
 Between the acts there was dancing and sing- 
 ing ; and after the play, a jig ; which was a kind 
 of comic solo, sung, said, acted, and danced by the 
 clown, to the accompaniment of his own pipe 
 and tabor. Each day's exhibition was closed by 
 a prayer for the Queen, offered by all the actors 
 kneeling. 
 
 The stage exhibited no movable scenery. It 
 was hung with painted cloths and arras ; and 
 when tragedy was played, the hangings were, 
 sometimes at least, sable. Over the stage was a 
 blue canopy, called " the heavens." But although 
 there was no proper scenery, there was ample 
 provision of rude properties, such as towers, 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 423 
 
 tombs, dragons, pasteboard banquets, and the like. 
 Furniture was used of course, and was in many- 
 cases the only means of indicating a change of 
 scene ; which indeed, in most cases, was left to the 
 imagination of the audience, helped, it might be, 
 as Sir Philip Sidney says, if the supposed scene 
 were Thebes, by " seeing Thebes written in great 
 letters on an old door." * Machinery and trap- 
 doors were freely used, and gods and goddesses 
 were let down from and hoisted up to the heav- 
 ens, in chairs moved by pulleys and tackle that 
 creaked and groaned in the most sublunary and 
 mechanical manner. At the back of the stage 
 was a balcony, which, like the furniture in the 
 Duke Aranza's cottage, served " a hundred uses." 
 
 * Such stage directions as the following show how very rude 
 were the devices for indicating a change of scene in the latter 
 part of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
 turies : — 
 
 " Enter Sybilla, lying in childbed, with her child lying by her.'''' — 
 Heywood's Golden Age, 161 1. 
 
 ^^ JSnter a Shoemaker sitting on the stage at work, yenkin to 
 him.'''' — Greene's George-a- Greene, 1599. 
 
 In the following passage the audience were evidently expected 
 to " make believe " that a few steps across the stage were a going 
 to the town's end : — 
 
 " Shoemaker. Come, sir, will you go to the town's end now, sir ? 
 
 " yenkin. Ay, sir, come. — Now we are at the town's end ; 
 say you row ? " — Idem, tit sicpra. 
 
 In the plays of that period, after a murder or killing in combat, 
 the direction is generally to the survivor, " Exit with the body." 
 There was no device by which the dead body could be shut out 
 from the audience, that the next scene might go on without its 
 presence. 
 
^24 THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 It was inner room, upper room, window, balcony, 
 battlements, hillside. Mount Olympus, — any place, 
 in fact, that was supposed to be separated from 
 and above the scene of the main action. It was 
 in this balcony, for instance, that Sly and his at- 
 tendants sat while they witnessed the perform- 
 ance of The Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 The wardrobes of the principal theatres were 
 rich, varied, and costly. It was customary to buy 
 for stage use slightly worn court dresses and the 
 gorgeous robes used at coronations. Near the 
 end of the last century, Steevens tells us, there 
 was "yet in the wardrobe of Covent Garden 
 Theatre a rich suit of clothes that once belonged 
 to James I." Steevens saw it worn by the per- 
 former of Justice Greely in Massinger's New Way 
 to pay Old Debts, The Allen Papers and Hens- 
 lowe's Diary* inform us fully upon this point. 
 In the latter there is a memorandum of the pay- 
 ment of £Ae I4i". (equal to $\2(S) for a single 
 pair of hose; and by the former we see that £i6 
 (equal to ^400) was paid for one embroidered vel- 
 vet cloak, and £20\os. (equal to ^512) for an- 
 other. Costume of conventional significance was 
 also worn ; for Henslowe records the purchase, at 
 the large price of ^3 ioj., of "a robe for to goo 
 invisibell." 
 
 A comparison of the prices paid for dresses 
 with those paid for the plays in which they were 
 
 * Both printed by the Shakespeare Society. 
 
THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 
 
 425 
 
 worn shows us that the absence of scenery and 
 of stage decoration, to which it has been supposed 
 we owe much of the rich imagery in the EHza- 
 bethan drama, was due only to poverty of re- 
 source, and not to the higher value set by the 
 public, and consequently by the theatrical propri- 
 etors, upon the intellectual part of their entertain- 
 ment. The highest sum which Henslowe records 
 as having been paid by him before 1600 as the 
 full price of a play is £8, not half what was given 
 for a cloak that might have been worn in it ; the 
 lowest sum is £4, not as much as the hero's hose 
 might have cost. By 161 3 theatrical competition 
 had raised the price of a play by a dramatist of 
 repute to ;^20, which, being equal to ^500 of the 
 present day, was perhaps quite as much as the 
 proprietors could afford, and was not an inadequate 
 payment for such plays as went to make up the 
 bulk of the dramatic productions of the day. 
 Happily, nearly all of these have perished, and of 
 those which have survived, the best claim the at- 
 tention of posterity only because Shakespeare 
 lived when they were written. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
 
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