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 SHAKSPERE 
 AND HIS FORERUNNERS
 
 The Chandos Portrait of Shakspere
 
 SHAKSPERE 
 
 AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 STUDIES IN ELIZABETHAN POETRY 
 
 AND ITS DEVELOPMENT FROM 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 VOLUME TWO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLED AY, PAGE & CO. 
 
 1902
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 
 J. B. LiPPINCOTT Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 Modern Culture Co. 
 
 Copyright, 1902, by 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & Co.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter XIII The Music of Shakspere's Time — I 
 
 To show that music was very dear to the English of Shakspere's 
 time, and that the latter himself was particularly devoted to it 
 — the popular love for music among the English much under- 
 estimated — development of the feeling in America — people in 
 all ranks of society in the sixteenth century either sang or 
 played upon some instrument — Henry VIII's personal taste for 
 music — Queen Elizabeth's musical achievements and Shak- 
 spere's allusion to them — "divisions"' — evidence in The 
 Winter'' 5 Tale of musical knowledge among the lowest classes 
 — ^universality of part-song intimated also in Twelfth Night — 
 base viols kept in the drawing-room for amusement of waiting 
 visitors — barber-shops had virginals in one corner — nature of 
 the virginals — the cittern found in the same place — the latter 
 the most popular instrument of the time — important functions 
 of the barber — many musical similes in the poetry of the 
 period — Thomas Tusser's advice to choose tuneful servants — 
 distaste for music associated with dishonesty — music in the 
 education of young ladies — musical scenes from Taming of the 
 Shrew — several music-teachers to royalty who came to un- 
 timely ends — great number of ballads — Chaucer's testimony as 
 to English love of music — Langland's Plowman reproaches 
 the clergy for knowing no "mynstralcy" — interesting to 
 note that with all this love for music there has never been a great 
 English composer — same conditions true of women — a hun- 
 dred and sixty-seven references to music in the plays, most of 
 which show Shakspere's passionate love for the art — instances 
 of his deep musical understanding in The Merchant of Venice 
 and Richard II — wonderful stories of the power of music in 
 ancient times — Saxo Grammaticus's tale of King Eric of Den- 
 mark and his harper — Rabbinical fable of Adam's soul — out- 
 line of next lecture. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XIV The Music of Shakspere's Time — II 
 
 v 
 
 28 

 
 vl CONTENTS 
 
 The music that Shakspere knew — "discant" — Pope Gregory 
 the Great and his antiphonarium, or collection of the Gregorian 
 chants — composers in Shaksperc's time did not attempt to 
 originate new tunes, but treated old ones contrapuntally — great 
 age of many of the Gregorian chants — Bishop Ambrose of 
 Milan and his use of psalms and hymns as a means of consola- 
 tion — St, Augustine's pleasure in the Ambrosian chant — 
 these hymns referred to by Pliny in the second century — the 
 world in possession of a stock of tunes as far back as the begin- 
 ning of our era, as shown by the Gospels — hymn sung by the 
 disciples on the evening of the Last Supper possibly used in the 
 churches to-day — some of our tunes probably much older than 
 the Christian era — definition of discant from the old play of 
 Damon and Pphias — Cuckoo Song the first English verse with 
 music attached — discovered on a monk's commonplace- 
 book in Harleian Library — slow progress of music in those 
 times — analysis of Cuckoo Song as a typical song of Shakspere's 
 day — this a " canon in the unison with a burden" — many 
 varieties, such as motett, fugue, round, etc. — "prolation " 
 and " division " — " extempore discant " and ** prick- 
 song " — origin of term •' counterpoint " — " plain song " and 
 "plain chant" terms closely associated with this contrapuntal 
 music — rage for part-songs in sixteenth century — story of Dr. 
 John Bull which illustrates this — religious objections to these 
 musical extravagances in the churches — the words a mere " pre- 
 tence for singing," according to Dr. Burney — an old poem 
 upon the woes of a music pupil — impressment of children in 
 order to keep up the cathedral choirs — Marbeck publishes 
 the Book of Common Prater Notes — versification of Psalms by 
 Sternhold and Hopkins — Dr. Christopher Tye's versification 
 of the Acts — his retort to Queen Elizabeth — Clement Marot 
 and Theodore Beza versify the Psalms in French — Calvin has 
 the Psalms set to music — some forgotten composers who as- 
 sisted in this work — some of the psalm-tunes of secular origin 
 — Clown's remark in Winter'' s Tale about the Puritan who 
 "sings psalms to hornpipes" — mention of Green Sleeves 
 and the Hundredth Psalm in The Merry Wives of Windsor — 
 the latter noble melody arranged by Claude Lejeune — some 
 other composers of sacred music — the most prominent forms 
 of secular music — derivations of the name and nature o^ the 
 madrigal — its great popularity — a typical madrigal by Thomas 
 Weelkes — first English ones written by William Bird — The 
 Triumphs of Oriana and its composers — Sir Hugh Evans 
 and his comical use of Marlowe's Come live with me — the 
 catch and the round — early forms of the Mother Goose 
 rimes in Shakspere's Taming of the Shrew — Pammelia and 
 Deuteromelia — nonsensical words to many of the catches — 
 musical declamation — different kinds of instrumental music —
 
 CONTENTS vii 
 
 part-songs played by instruments — music for virginals — Queen 
 Elizabeth' 5 Virginal Book — Dowland's Lachrimae — dances of 
 the time: tlie pavan, galliard, etc. — illustrations from Twelfth 
 Night — Sir John Davies's T'he Orchestra — Robert Dowland 
 and his "Frog Galliard" — mention of him in The Passionate 
 Pilgrim — his lute-playing and music — lutes and viols of the 
 period — Queen Elizabeth's musicians — the coranto, the paspy, 
 and the morris-dance — musical perception in Shakspere's 
 eighth sonnet — the music of Shakspere's life — music de- 
 pends on opposition — in the moral as in the physical world 
 the musical tone must be caused by two forces, the one acting 
 athwart the other — the fearful antagonisms and wonderful har- 
 monies we find in the life of this master poet. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XV The Domestic Life of Shakspere's Time — I . 6i 
 
 The treatment of domestic life to centre upon Shakspere himself 
 
 — Stratford, the Warwickshire fields and lands, and Kenilworth 
 cover the whole of English life — Shakspere's models for his 
 characters all about him — special meaning of " gentlemen" in 
 those days — evidence in Midsummer Nighf s Dream that Shak- 
 spere had visited Kenilworth — striking events of the world's 
 history just previous to and during Shakspere's time — summary 
 of these notable events that make up the " outer life of the Re- 
 naissance," from the invention of printing in 1440 to the death 
 of Shakspere in 1616. 
 
 Chapter XVI The Domestic Life of Shakspere's Time — II 73 
 
 To give a ground-plan of the romance of Shakspere's youth for 
 which time is lacking — the night visit of the Earl of Leicester's 
 man to John Shakspere, the glover — night work on the Earl's 
 gloves — young Shakspere starts out to deliver the parcel at 
 Long Ichington for the hunt — his lunch by the brookside — 
 falls asleep over Wyatt's "And wilt thou leave me thus?" — 
 Leicester's plans for the hunt — Queen Elizabeth rides off alone 
 and comes upon young Shakspere asleep — -she rallies Leicester 
 upon this new rival, and invites the boy to Kenilworth — Robert 
 Laneham, the Queen's usher, and his letter to Master Hum- 
 phrey Martin on the pageant — probably the original of Don 
 Adriano de Armado in Love'' s Labour's Lost — passages from 
 this letter and its amusing portraiture of the writer — the eat- 
 ables and drinkables consumed — detailed description of the 
 Queen's progress and reception — Gascoigne's account of the 
 Echo — Laneham's picture of the bear-baiting — the fireworks 
 
 — Arion, Triton, and the dolphin with music in his belly — 
 suggestions of Midsummer Night'' s Dream in all this — Shakspere 
 stops at the Warwick inn on his way home to see a play — the
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 inn-yards in which plays were then given — the inn-yard was 
 the original of the pit — our modern theatres constructed on the 
 same general model as these early makeshifts — first theatre 
 erected by James Burbagc in 1576 — John Heywood's inter- 
 lude of The Four P'' s and the spirit of the first English comedy 
 
 — nature of the interlude — Puttenham's sneer at "John Hey- 
 wood the Epigrammatist" — suggestion in The Four P'' s of 
 the porter's soliloquy in Macbeth — its flippant treatment of 
 great matters — childishness of sixteenth-century audience — 
 the interlude has really a moral purpose — Shakspere's own 
 more reverential nature — extracts from The Four P' s — ras- 
 calitv of the characters and low plane of the whole thing — the 
 contest in lying — childish idea of hell exhibited — the Palmer 
 wins the contest by declaring he never saw a vvoman out of 
 patience — good doctrine from the Pedler. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XVII The Domestic Life of Shakspere's Time — III 112 
 
 Last lecture dealt with several early founts of English humour 
 
 — now to consider the more serious side of sixteenth-cen- 
 tury life — to look at the books, sermons, and tragedies common 
 at that time — the great debate about this time over plays and 
 play-going — severe acts of Parliament against strolling players 
 
 — Corporation of London expels players from the city — unex- 
 pected effect of this measure — the first English theatre building 
 a result — erection of "The Theatre," "The Curtain," and 
 ** The Blackfriars " just outside the city limits — furious attack 
 of the clergy upon the stage — sermons against it by Wilcocks 
 and Stockwood — William Prynne's Histriomastix and Rankin's 
 Mirrour of Monsters — Stephen Gosson and his Schoole of Abuse 
 
 — his own change of mind — his inappropriate dedication to 
 Sidney — probability that young Shakspere read the Schoole of 
 Abuse — extracts from the book — its attack on poetry, music, 
 and the drama — his picture of theatre manners of the time — 
 his combative ending — a sample of Gosson's poetry — probable 
 effect of Gosson's tirade on young Will Shakspere — he goes to 
 London — goes to Paul's Cross to hear the sermon Sunday morn- 
 ing — an apropos sermon of Hugh Latimer's, though he dates thirty 
 years earlier — Latimer's sermons before Edward VI — his 
 strength and sweetness of character — extracts from his sermons 
 
 — text of his Good Friday sermon. 
 
 Chapter XVTII The Domestic Life of Shakspere's Time — IV 145 
 
 Young Shakspere goes to the play Sunday afternoon — the reason 
 for afternoon performances — takes a box at the Blackfriars — 
 description of a theatre of the time — lack of scenery — method 
 of changing the locality of the action — Ben Jonson's satires on
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 contemporary stage devices — extract from Every Man in his 
 Humour — representative plays of the time — Kyd's Spanish 
 Tragedy — Robert Greene and his abuse of Shakspere — his 
 Groatszvorth of Wit and its famous fling at his rival — Chettle's 
 apology for his own part in this — Greene's influence on Shak- 
 spere — the first English comedy and tragedy — Nicholas Udall 
 and his Ralph Royster Doyster — its date — plot of the play and 
 extracts — Anne Hathavvay's escapade — possibly some such ad- 
 venture the original of the many female masqueraders in men's 
 clothes in Shakspere' s plays — after a week Shakspere sees a 
 tragedy — Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst — style and argu- 
 ment of his Gorboduc, the first English tragedy — the quaint 
 " Domme Shew " that preceded it — extracts from the text. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XIX The Doctors of Shakspere's Time . .177 
 
 The modern doctor and modern medicine really begin in these 
 spacious times of the great Elizabeth — importance of the phy- 
 sicians in any picture of modern society — connection between 
 music and physic in the sixteenth century — Shakspere's por- 
 trayal of the ideal doctor, Cerimon, in Pericles — Cerimon pos- 
 sibly drawn from Shakspere's son-in-law. Dr. John Hall — the 
 elder John Hall and his Historical Expostulation Against the 
 Beastly Abuses both of Chirurgery and Physyke in Oure Tyme — 
 Dr. \Hal]'s ideas of the true "chirurgeon" — absurdities of his 
 Treatise on Anatomic — his account of several medical impostors: 
 Thomas Luffkin, " Mayster Wynkfelde," " one Nichols,"etc. 
 — Dr. Thomas Gale and his tale of the army surgeons — the 
 Doctor in Macbeth — Macbeth's "throw physic to the dogs," 
 and its parallel in Chaucer's Knight'' s Tale — connection be- 
 tween doctor and apothecary — the Apothecary in Romeo and 
 Juliet — extracts from Heywood's The Four P"* s — the Poti- 
 cary in this interlude — his curious list of drugs — Shakspere's 
 strange silence regarding tobacco — belief in its medicinal virtue 
 at this time — habit of smoking on the stage — passages illus- 
 trating this from Arber's Collections — Dr. Thomas Linacre, 
 founder of the College of Physicians — Italy the centre of med- 
 icine in 1480 — esteem of foreign physicians in England — 
 lampoon on this in The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom — length 
 of medical course at this time — Harvey and his discovery of 
 the circulation of the blood — his dignity under the attacks of 
 his enemies — Dr. John Harvey and his touching death words. 
 
 Chapter XX The Metrical Tests — I .... 203 
 
 Now to apply the theory of forms to the understanding of 
 Shakspere's character and verse — phenomena of tone-colour 
 reduce themselves to phenomena of rhythm — tone-colour, in fact.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 is simplv a combination of different-rated rhythms — the prin- 
 ciple of Opposition at the bottom of tone-colour as well as of 
 tune and rhythm — Tom Hood's comical plan for writing blank 
 verse in rime — illustrates ludicrously the fact that the ear 
 does not like several identical vowel-colours in succession — the 
 ear, on the contrary, does like several successive consonant-colours; 
 *' Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impedi- 
 ments" — these facts show that vowels and consonants have 
 precisely opposite tone-colour functions in verse — the vowels 
 represent accident, the chaos element, the consonants law, the 
 form element — in verse as in life these great contradictions 
 prevail — a glimpse of Shakspere's perception of this in AW s 
 Well that Ends Well — we are now at the convergence of two 
 distinct trains of study: the laws of poetic form, and form in 
 general, particularly that kind of form we call character — 
 direct aim of the Metrical Tests is the settling of dates — the 
 importance of this in tracing Shakspere's growth — the chro- 
 nology to be substantiated — Shakspere's three periods: of Care- 
 lessness, Bitterness, Forgiveness — the surprisingly intimate 
 revelations suggested by the mere sequence of the plays — dates 
 of these three phases of growth — all the comedies come in 
 the youthful Bright or Carelessness Period — in the only tragedy, 
 Romeo and Juliet, it is the young love and not the tragic death 
 of the lovers which is the real reason for being — the historical 
 plays of this period written from without, not from within — they 
 are in the manner of a young man who has not experienced 
 the twist and grind o'l life — in Henv^ VI and Richard III he 
 is really writing from Marlowe — in Richard II and King John 
 we find mainly playwright's work — Henry IF is really a 
 comedy with FalstafFin the main role — Henry V begins to show 
 more serious thought — evidently Shakspere has now had griefs 
 more stirring than the financial troubles of his father and the 
 death of his son Hamnet — after the brimming comedy of 
 Twelfth Night come suddenly two bloody tragedies, Julius 
 Co'sar and Hamlet — next appears that wretched slough. Mea- 
 sure for Measure, followed by false-hearted Cress ida — then 
 come the enormous single-passion tragedies: Othello, Lear, 
 Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Timon — evidences 
 of this bitter period in many of the sonnets from LXVI to 
 CXII — emergence from this bleakness into that heavenly 
 group of plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, Tempest, Winter'' s Tale, 
 and Henry VIII — Prospero in the epilogue to The Tempest 
 seems to stand for Shakspere himself — this calm of assured victory 
 also evident in the sonnets — apparent significance of the ini- 
 tialled pane of glass preserved at Stratford — the research to prove 
 that this moral advance was accompanied by a corresponding 
 advance in poetic technic — the five MetricalTests — Malone's 
 suggestion of the rime test — Rev. F. G. Fleay adds much ex-
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 actness to Malone's rest by making an actual table of the rimes 
 in different plays — his claim that the rime test is a final proof 
 of chronology too sweeping — there seems beyond question to 
 be a gradual decrease of rime as Shakspere grew older — in 
 short, the rime test is valuable only as cumulative evidence — 
 Englishmen since before Chaucer's time have embodied their 
 deepest feelings in rime — Surrey wrote his Virgil translation 
 without rime — noisy debate fifty years later among Harvey, 
 Nash, Greene, Puttenham, Webbe, Gascoigne, Spenser, and 
 Sir Philip Sidney regarding use of rime — Shakspere undoubtedly 
 reached the plane of artistic technic where he saw that rime 
 was appropriate for some matters and not for others, and used 
 it accordingly — nature of the end-stopped line — example 
 from Midsummer Night' s Dream — contrasting run-on lines from 
 The Tempest — stifi^iess produced by exclusive use of end- 
 stopped lines illustrated perfectly in Pope — freedom and vari- 
 ety afforded by avoiding this pause at end of each line — Shak- 
 spere' s greater freedom in use of run-on lines in the later plays 
 — this test generally confirms the chronology suggested by 
 rime test and internal evidences — the greater breadth of thought 
 suggested by the more majestic sweep of this kind of verse — 
 rhythmic functions of both rime and end-stopped lines those 
 of regularity or form — function of the run-on line exactly an- 
 tagonistic to this — the art of verse demands form but no monot- 
 ony, chaos but no lawlessness — story in Beda of the monk's 
 dream o^ hell — the artist similarly placed between the flame 
 wall of chaos and the ice wall of form — Sonnet CXIX 
 hints at the conversion of the hell of antagonism into the heaven 
 of art. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XXI The Metrical Tests — II . . . .231 
 
 The three remaining metrical tests — weak-ending lines in The 
 Tempest — division into weak and light endings not neces- 
 sary here — weak-ending is really a sort of run-on line — reason 
 for treating it separately is that Shakspere's use of it begins ab- 
 ruptly, at Macbeth — Professor Ingram's conclusions regarding 
 this test — Shakspere evidently quite changed his mind regarding 
 this verse form about Macbeth or a little earlier — nature of 
 the double-ending line illustrated musically — like the other later 
 developments just studied, this is a variation of the normal form 
 
 — this double-ending test confirms all the others — though 
 Shakspere's use of it increased noticeably in the later plays, his 
 enormous self-control is evidenced by the fact that it never ran 
 away with him, as it did with some of his contemporaries — ex- 
 ample of this in John Fletcher's work — interesting application 
 of this in determining authorship of special parts of Henry VIII 
 
 — Emerson's acute surmises on this point and the conjectures of
 
 xil CONTENTS 
 
 others authoritatively checked by the double-ending test — same 
 process in The Two Noble Kinsmen — the rhythmic accent test — 
 three wholly different kinds of accent : the pronunciation accent, 
 the logical accent, and the rhythmic accent — the last marks off 
 bars, or equal groups of sounds, in both poetry and music — as 
 in music so in verse the position of this accent may be changed 
 for the sake of variety — effect of this change is to vary the nor- 
 mal rhythmic pattern — it is therefore, like the double-ending, a 
 device against monotony — confusion among scholars regarding 
 these accents — as w^e should expect, Shakspere in his later plays 
 made freer use of this accent variation — no exact reductions to 
 numbers in this case, as the test is one formulated by the writer, 
 but the general change is very apparent — cumulative effect of 
 all this evidence obtained from such different sources — metrical 
 tests invaluable in checking conclusions as to Shakspere's artistic 
 growth — all the five tests unite in showing a tendency towards 
 freedom, relief from monotony, and individuality — that is, 
 the poet's advance is clearlv a more artistic balancing of the op- 
 positions which constitute verse — we can now see a poem as 
 form in art, a generalisation as form in science, a balanced char- 
 acter as form in morals — opposition underlies all the phases of 
 this balance — a table of oppositions or balances in Shakspere's 
 artistic and moral development — in next lectures to prove by 
 contrasting certain typical plays that the poet's advance in art 
 and morals is one and the same growth — man's three lines of 
 outlook are to God, man, and nature — admirable adaptation 
 of the plays selected to the illustration of all these points in 
 Shakspere's work. 
 
 Chapter XXII Man's Relations to the Supernatural as shown page 
 IN Midsummer Night'' s Dream, Hamlet, and The Tempest . 252 
 
 As already found, the tunes, rhythms, and colours of verse are all 
 due to diverse vibrations or oppositions of forces — Shakspere's 
 progress as a verse artist is towards a more artistic management of 
 oppositions of the esthetic demands of the ear — now to show 
 through the three plays above that in the same way he advanced in 
 the management of those moral oppositions which make up life 
 — evidence of his growth also in the opposition of character to 
 character, figure against figure, event against event in the dramas — 
 his freedom and emancipation from stiffness in these matters of 
 the playwright's art shown by contrasting the formality of The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona and the other early plays with the 
 more mature dramas — this again a tendency to variety — Midsum- 
 mer Night'' s Dream typical of the youthful Bright Period, as 
 Hamlet is of the Dark Real Period, and The Tempest of the Ideal 
 Forgiveness Period — date of the Dream fixed approximately by 
 Francis Meres's fVits Treasury — great weight of evidence places
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 it at 1595 or earlier — Ham/ei ph'mly falls about 1602, well into 
 the Dark Period — 7'be Tempest is placed by most scholars in 
 16 10 or 161 I — exact years do not matter at all, for over- 
 whelming evidence of every sort has fixed the succession in time 
 of these three plays — they surely represent three distinct epochs 
 in Shakspere's life — every man's life inexorably contains these 
 three epochs: the Dream, the Real, the Ideal — Shakspere's won- 
 derful emergence from the paralysis of the Real in Hamlet to the 
 Ideal in The Tempest — he has learned to balance all the oppo- 
 sitions — in the Midsummer Ntght' s Dream man is the sport of 
 Nature — *' Nature " there vaguely means the supernatural — 
 this is just the conception o^i the dreaming youth — chance 
 rules the world in such a conception — no faith or belief in the 
 Dream, but only imagination — life questions the dreaming poet, 
 and the first result is Hamlet, who answers by asking another 
 question — this lack of belief, combined with the belief of belief, 
 a striking but neglected characteristic of Hamlet — first in the 
 soliloquy he knows nothing of the after-death — then when 
 hesitating to kill the praying king he seems to have the most set- 
 tled convictions as to what will come after death — his "undis- 
 covered country " directly contradicts the whole vital episode of 
 the Ghost — our age characteristically the "Hamlet age" — 
 story of the Indian who tried to kill his friend as illustrating 
 perfect belief — in Hamlet mz.n's attitude toward the supernatural 
 is a dqubt underlying a belief that he believes — when we reach 
 The Tempest, in 16 10, we find a Providence indeed — and in- 
 stead of the vengeful Ghost o^ Hamlet the Providence now comes 
 to compass forgiveness and reconciliation — Shakspere has found 
 moral exaltation to be the secret of managing life's oppositions — 
 so it runs: first, man the sport of chance; second, doubting man 
 urged to revenge, but even this uncertain; third, "repentance, 
 forgiveness, and Providence rise like stars out of the dark oi Ham- 
 let'''' — the supernatural has changed from Oberon to a ghost, to 
 a man in God's image controlling the pucks and ghosts — 
 The Tempest fairy-tale, Ariel against Puck, is but an ideal 
 reconstruction of the youthful dream — Bulwer's essay on 
 the different appearances of things accompanying changes in 
 our powers of sight — we see the film or dreamy covering of 
 things as a beautiful face — the repulsiveness of being able to see 
 the muscles, nerves, veins, and bones: the real just below the 
 surface — analogy of this to the Hamlet period, where •* the for- 
 bidding network of death and murder and revenge and sin and 
 suffering starts out from underneath the smooth exterior of life " — 
 the infinite beauty to which this would change if we could see 
 the purpose and reason and function of each thing along with the 
 thing itself — the perfect analogy of all this to Shakspere — the 
 significance of the epilogues to these plays — at the end of the 
 Dream we have nothing; a fit ending; the epilogue to Hamlet is
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 really a sullen peal of guns, like inarticulate cries from beyond 
 the grave; while The Tempest closes with a passionate human 
 appeal from the master to his fellow-men. 
 
 Chapter XXIII Man's Relations to Man as Shown in page 
 Midsummer Night' s Dream, Hamlet, and The Tempest . 276 
 
 Summary of previous lecture — embarrassment of riches in 
 illustrating Shakspere's widening view of man's relation to his 
 fellow-man — study here to be confined to the three plays- 
 vvithin-plays, or anti-masques, that occur in these dramas: 
 Pyramus and Thisbe, The Mouse-trap (as Hamlet calls the 
 terrible murder scene of the players), and that masque of 
 the beneficent gods, Juno, Ceres, Iris, etc., arrayed by Pros- 
 pcro before his young lovers — in the first Shakspere is plainly 
 laughing at somebody; its motive is Ridicule — the motive of the 
 second is plainly Revenge — and the third begins and con- 
 tinues and ends in Blessing — evidence in Harvey's letters and 
 in a work of Greene's that Shakspere in the Dream was satiris- 
 ing Greene — the controversy between Greene and Shakspere 
 and Greene and Harvey — Shakspere never replied to his enemy's 
 abuse — Harvey answers on his own and Shakspere's account — 
 the flood of pamphlets augmented after Greene's death by four 
 from Harvey — Shakspere doubtless knew these pamphlets well 
 — various catchwords in these traceable through the Dream: 
 Greene's beggary, a dissertation on asses, and a mention ot 
 Greene's Arcadia, wherein occurs a passage singularly like 
 Pyramus's apostrophe to Thisbe — it seems evident from these 
 and allied clues that Shakspere in the Dream was merrily paying 
 off Greene for the Groatsworth of Wit — from this mild revenge 
 of ridicule we pass to the desperate horror of the revenge upon 
 which the Hamlet anti-masque is founded — and from this we 
 advance to the "large blue heaven of moral width and delight" 
 in The Tempest anti-masque — here Prospero calls down the 
 gods to shower blessings on his beloved — other plays show this 
 mature moral exaltation as well as The Tempest — in Pericles, 
 for instance, the picture of Cerimon is a notable illustration — 
 extracts from Pericles covering the casting overboard and revival 
 of Thaisa — in connection with the use of music as physic, 
 Herrick's poem "To Music, to Becalm his Fever." 
 
 Chapter XXIV Man's Relations to Nature as Shown in 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and The Tempest, 
 AND Conclusion ....... 
 
 Embarrassment of riches as great here as in the last lecture — to 
 choose again a special phase for comparison in the plays — simi- 
 larity of the Theseus and Hippolyta hunt to the hunt in Chaucer's 
 
 297
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 Knight's Tale — extracts from the Knight's Tale — Shakspere 
 makes the forest alive — the fairy scenes of Midsummer Night" s 
 Dream — the King and Queen hunt with their hounds "bred out 
 of the Spartan kind," amid this world of busy life, of cowslips 
 and dew and frolic and love — as Nature was riotous with life in 
 
 the Dream, so is she riotous with death in the Real in Hamlet 
 
 parallels to the Hamlet nature teaching in 2''he Origin of Species 
 and in Chaucer — triumphant rise of Shakspere in The Tempest 
 to a balanced view of Nature as both life and death — the hunt 
 from The Tempest — the poet's increase of sympathy with Na- 
 ture and all lower creatures finely shown in these two hunts — one 
 is a barbarian enmity against brute beasts, the other aims at the 
 reformation ot a fellow-creature — our own time has advanced 
 even beyond Shakspere in his matter of Nature love — this evi- 
 denced by the rise of physical science, modern Nature poetry, and 
 modern landscape-painting — summing up of the last five lectures 
 — the moral problem of life just like the artistic problem — de- 
 tailed summary of the whole course of lectures — specific analysis 
 of lines from the Dream and The Tempest to show the technical 
 superiority of the latter — the same genius which could so har- 
 moniously adjust the esthetic antagonisms of verse will with tem- 
 perance and self-control arrange life's moral antagonisms — there 
 is a point of technic beyond which the merely clever artist can 
 never reach — Shakspere, in the music of his verse, in the height 
 of his moral ideals, in the temperance and control of his life, is 
 "a whole heaven above" Greene, Marlowe, Nash, and his 
 other contemporaries — in short, even in technic only moral great- 
 ness can reach beyond a certain point — man himself is like one 
 of these tone-colours, tunes, or rhythmic elements — man's relation 
 to his fellows and to the main form of life illustrated by the gnat 
 swarm — ludicrous attempts in sixteenth century to make rhythm 
 visible to the eye by typography — Poe's vast simile of " the 
 beating of the Heart of God" — it is the poet who must gaze 
 on the gnats from the distance of the ideal to find out for man the 
 figure — conclusion.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Chandos Portrait of Shakspere Fr-ontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 King David, surrounded by Musicians and a Juggler ... 4 
 From a tenth-century MS. 
 
 A Fourteenth-century Representation of Violin-playing . . 6 
 
 A Seventeenth-century Concert 8 
 
 From the painting by Dominiquin 
 
 Musical Instruments of Shakspere's Time 10 
 
 An Ecclesiastical Concert 12 
 
 From the paintitig by Giorgione 
 
 A Lute Accompaniment of Shakspere's Time 14 
 
 Engraved by Andouinfrom the painting by Netscher pere 
 
 A Seventeenth-century Mandolin-player 20 
 
 Engraved by Aiidouin from the painting by Gerard Terburg 
 
 Pope Gregory the Great, w^ith his Father and Mother . . 28 
 
 From an old engraving 
 
 St. Ambrose 30 
 
 From an engraving in '^Vies des Ho>nmes Illustres'" 
 
 Facsimile of the " Cuckoo Song " 34 
 
 From the original MS. in the British Museum 
 
 Clement Marot 40 
 
 From an old engraving 
 
 Theodore Beza « 4^ 
 
 Title-page of Dowland's " First Booke of Songes "... 52 
 
 Sir John Davies 54 
 
 xvii
 
 xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Anne Hathaway's Cottage 62 
 
 The Church at Stratford-on-Avon 64 
 
 Charlecote 66 
 
 Drawn and engraved by T. Radclyffe 
 
 Shakspere's House at Stratford 74 
 
 Queen Elizabeth 80 
 
 From the picture formerly in the royal collection at St. James Palace 
 
 The Earl of Leicester 82 
 
 A Royal Progress of Queen Elizabeth 88 
 
 From a painting 
 
 Gate-house, Kenilworth Castle 90 
 
 From an engraving 
 
 George Gascoigne 94 
 
 Artificial Lake and Festivities in Honour of Queen Eliza- 
 beth's Visit 96 
 
 Old Inn showing Courtyard in which Plays were Performed 98 
 
 John Hey wood lOO 
 
 A Potecary and a Pardoner 102 
 
 Stage Directions for a Morality 104 
 
 From the " Coventry Mysteries" 
 
 A View of the Pit's Mouth 106 
 
 From the " Coventry Mysteries " 
 
 The Idea of Hell found in the Mystery Plays 108 
 
 Fro}n the " Coventry Mysteries " 
 
 The Locked Door iio 
 
 From an engraving in the " Coventry Alysteries " 
 
 A Soul in Torment 112 
 
 From the " Coventry Mysteries" 
 
 Mummers and Strolling Players of the Middle Ages in England 114 
 William Prvnne 116 
 
 The Swan Theatre ini6i4 118 
 
 The most westerly of the playhouses on the Bankside
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Morris-dancers I20 
 
 The Globe and the Bear Garden 122 
 
 Preaching before the King at Paul's Cross in 1620 . . .126 
 
 From a rare engraving 
 
 Bishop Latimer 132 
 
 Richard Tarleton, an Actor in Shakspere's Plays . . . .144 
 
 The Stage in the Red Bull Playhouse 146 
 
 Title-page of Ben Jonson's "Tragedies and Comedies" . . 148 
 
 Sackville 166 
 
 A Tragedy of the Period : Marlowe's " Edward II " . . .168 
 
 Dr. Thomas Linacre 198 
 
 From an engraving by H. Cook 
 
 William Harvey, and Chart of Circulation of the Blood , . 200 
 
 Title-page of First Folio 2iO 
 
 John Fletcher 236 
 
 First pkge of Original Edition of " Hamlet " 264 
 
 The Only Known Portrait of Thomas Nash 282 
 
 Puck 302 
 
 From an engraving by Charles Marr of the picture by Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds
 
 SHAKSPERE 
 AND HIS FORERUNNERS
 
 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— I 
 
 HAVE lately read a story by Mr. 
 Tyndall to the effect that upon a cer- 
 tain occasion he invited Mr. Faraday 
 into his laboratory to witness an ex- 
 periment. Just as he was about to 
 begin, Mr. Faraday said, " Stop : tell 
 me what I am to look for." Taking 
 my cue from a mind so great and so 
 trained as Faraday's, you will not think it a reflection upon 
 your intelligence if in the outset of my lecture I tell you 
 what you are to look for. I wish that, besides any en- 
 tertainment you might find in it, you may carry away 
 with you some definite idea of the facts which I am to 
 bring before you ; and judging from my own needs in 
 similar cases, I think that a brief synopsis of the lecture 
 may give you serviceable grouping-points for the somewhat 
 miscellaneous mass of circumstances which I must array. 
 I propose, then, first to show the great love which 
 Englishmen had for music in Shakspere's time, and the 
 extraordinary cultivation of it among all classes : for which 
 
 3
 
 4 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 purpose I shall give many citations from Shakspere and 
 contemporary writers. Second, I will endeavour to show, 
 hy quotations from Shakspere, that music was his best- 
 beloved art, and that he had a wonderful insight into its 
 deeper mysteries. Third, I will discuss the various kinds 
 of music which Shakspere was accustomed to hear, vocal 
 and instrumental, and shall endeavour to supply you with 
 the foundation for an instructive contrast between the 
 music of Shakspere's time and that of our own. 
 
 There is a wide-spread notion that the native soil of 
 music is in Italy and Germany, that the art is an alien one 
 in England and America, and that such inclination as we 
 English-speaking people have towards it is in the nature 
 of an "acquired taste." It is perfectly true that in origi- 
 nating music — in what is called musical composition — we 
 have not ever played a supreme part ; but the popular love 
 for music among English-speaking peoples has certainly 
 been much underestimated. As to the popular attitude 
 towards musical cultivation in the present day, you have 
 but to cast a glance about you in order to see how many 
 striking signs exist that even here in the United States 
 there is a great under-passion for music already beginning 
 to develope itself, although but a few years have passed 
 since we were all fighting starvation, winter, and the savage 
 too desperately to sing, save it might be a snatch betwixt 
 two strokes of the axe or two shots of the rifle. Consider 
 the thousands upon thousands of churches in our land, 
 each with its organ and its choir ; consider the multitudes 
 of musical concerts to which our people flock night after 
 night in theatre, in concert-room, in church chapel, in vil- 
 lage hall ; consider the underlying sentiment which has 
 brought about that scarcely any home in the United States is 
 considered even furnished which has not a piano in the par- 
 lour, and that scarcely any young woman's schooling does 
 not embrace "taking lessons" either in playing or in singing.
 
 King David, surrounded by Musicians and a juggler 
 Fiom a tenth-ccntiiry MS.
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 5 
 
 As we now go back to study the state of music in 
 Shakspere's time, we find that the English people of the 
 sixteenth century were enthusiastic lovers of the art. 
 There were professorships of music in the universities, and 
 multitudes of teachers of it among the people. The 
 monarch, the lord, the gentleman, the merchant, the 
 artisan, the rustic clown, the blind beggar, all ranks 
 and conditions of society, from highest to lowest, cul- 
 tivated the practice of singing, or of playing upon some 
 of the numerous instruments of the time. Early in 
 the century Henry VIII evinced his own personal love 
 for music, and thus established it as the fashion with 
 his royal countenance, Hollingshead in his chronicles 
 records that Henry VIII "exercised himself daylie in 
 shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the barre, 
 plaieing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songes 
 and making of ballades.'' You can find in the Peabody 
 Library some part-songs of King Henry VIII's composi- 
 tion which are not bad — for a king. After Henry VIII, 
 Queen Elizabeth preserved a genuine delight in music, 
 and with her queenly favour added such incentives to the 
 popular inclination that the art flourished in her reign with 
 the greatest vigour. The Queen herself was a good per- 
 former on the lute and the virginals. It is thought that a 
 compliment to her playing is intended in a passage in Act 
 
 III, Scene I of the first part of Shakspere's King Henry 
 
 IV. Mortimer, you remember, has married a beautiful 
 Welsh lady who can speak no English, while he can speak 
 no Welsh ; yet he is complimenting the dainty words 
 which fall from her lips, and declares : 
 
 I will never be a truant, love, 
 
 Till I have learned thy language : for thy tongue 
 
 Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned. 
 
 Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower. 
 
 With ravishing division, to her lute.
 
 6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 The ditties highly penned is a graceful allusion, likely, to 
 Qiieen Elizabeth's poems, some of which are, like Henry 
 VII I's m.usic, not bad for a queen. The word division 
 here is a technical term of the musical science of that time. 
 We shall presently see that their music was largely made 
 up of old immemorial tunes, redacted and made new by 
 all sorts of ingenious variations. These variations were 
 called, in general, " division " ; instead of saying " an 
 air with variations," as we do, they said " an air with 
 division." 
 / Coming down from these royal music-lovers, the as- 
 sertion just now made — that not only the monarch, but 
 all lower ranks of society, the nobleman, the private gen- 
 tleman, the merchant, the artisan, the clown, and the 
 beggar, assiduously cultivated music in Queen Elizabeth's 
 time — is not mere rhetoric, but is literally true. If I had 
 time, it would be easy to cite you quotation after quotation 
 from contemporary writers implying the common pursuit 
 and practice of music, at this time, by all classes of people. 
 I have just remarked that Henry VIII and Queen Eliza- 
 beth were good musicians. To leap at once to the other 
 extreme of society, I find in Shakspere's Winter s "Tale that 
 he could speak, without danger of hissing from the audi- 
 ence, of the rustic sheep-shearers as being able to sing 
 part-songs. In Scene II of Act IV, as the cunning Autol- 
 ycus strolls down the road singing. 
 
 When daffodils begin to peer, 
 With heigh ! the doxy over the dale, 
 
 presently comes on a clown, who begins to say over to 
 himself the numerous sweets and spices which his sister 
 has sent him to buy against a pudding for the sheep- 
 shearing feast. "Three pound of sugar; five pound of 
 currants ; rice — what will this sister of mine do with rice?
 
 A Fourteenth-century Representation of Violin-playing
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 7 
 
 But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she 
 lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays 
 for the shearers, three-man song-men ally and very good 
 ones ; but they are most of them means and bases" Here, 
 you see, twenty-four shepherds are represented as all 
 three-man song-men, that is, as able to sing their parts in 
 those concerted songs for three men which form such a 
 curious feature in the music of this time. The " means 
 and bases " were names of the two parts below the first 
 or treble in a three-part song, the part next below the 
 treble being the mean, and the lowest the base. Again, 
 I find Shakspere giving intimation of the universality 
 of the part-song in Scene III of Act II of Twelfth . 
 Night. The jolly Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are carousing "^ 
 in a room in Olivia's house. Presently the fool comes in 
 and sings them a love-song, and then Sir Toby proposes a 
 three-man song — as the clown called it — or catch. The 
 catch, you all probably understand, was a part-song in 
 which one begins a melody, the next waits a couple of 
 bars and then begins to sing the same melody, the third 
 waits still a couple of bars and then he also begins the 
 same melody. This is the general type of a sort of music 
 very popular in those days. The particular species called 
 a " catch " was always a jolly song, and often the words of 
 the second part were a play upon the words of the first ; 
 as, for example, the first voice would start out singing Ah^ 
 how Sophia^ and presently the second voice would begin 
 singing the same melody to words " catching " up the first, 
 as A house afire. Sometimes the catch had words 
 which really were chosen to catch the tongue by their 
 difSculty of pronouncing them ; as, for instance, a catch 
 which was sung in Shakspere's time called " Three blue 
 beans in a blue bladder, Rattle, bladder, rattle." The 
 general nature of the catch may be inferred from what
 
 8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 follows in Twelfth Night. After the fool's love-song, Sir 
 Toby roars out : 
 
 But shall we make the welkin dance, indeed ? Shall we rouse 
 ^ the night-owl in a catch that will draw three souls out of one 
 weaver ? 
 
 Sir And. An you love me, let's do 't : I am dog at a catch, 
 
 {^They sing a catch. ^ 
 
 And the nature of their music may be gathered from what 
 Maria and Malvolio presently say. 
 
 Enter Maria. 
 
 Maria. What a caterwauling do you keep here ! If my bdy 
 have not called up her steward Malvolio and bid him turn you 
 out of doors, never trust me. 
 
 Sir Toby. My lady's a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio's 
 a Peg-a-Ramsey, and Three merry men be we. Am not I con- 
 sanguineous ? am I not of her blood ? Tilly vally. Lady ! There 
 dwelt a tnan in Babylon^ l^dy., lady I 
 
 Enter Malvolio. 
 
 Alal. My masters, are you mad ? or what are you ? Have 
 you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at 
 this time of night ? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady's house, 
 that ye squeak out your cosief's [cobbler's] catches without any 
 mitigation or remorse of voice ? Is there no respect of place, 
 persons, or time in you ? 
 
 Sir Toby. We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Snick up ! 
 
 Here we find the two knights, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, 
 and a clown, singing a three-part song ; while Malvolio's 
 rebuke that they are gabbling like tinkers and squeaking out 
 cosier s (cobbler's) catches shows, as indeed we gather from 
 other evidence, that tinkers and cobblers were in the habit 
 of singing part-songs. To go to the other system in
 
 u 
 
 Cn 
 
 2 ■^
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 9 
 
 society, Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman^ requires that 
 personage to be able " to sing his part sure, and at first 
 sights and withal to play the same on a viol or lute." 
 
 The commonness of playing the viol is shown by the 
 circumstance that it was the custom in Shakspere's time 
 for a gentleman to keep a base viol hanging in the draw- 
 ing-room, upon which a waiting visitor could amuse him- 
 self Ben Jonson refers to this when one of his characters, 
 in heartening up a timid suitor to his work, says: "In 
 making love to her, never fear to be out for ... a base- 
 viol shall hang o' the wall, of purpose, shall put you in 
 presently." If we go from the gentleman's parlour to the 
 barber-shop of the sixteenth century, we find still more 
 unmistakable evidences of the popularity of music. People 
 would seem to have had more time in those days than 
 now, and do not appear to have minded waiting as much 
 as do brisker moderns ; and so the barber provided means 
 to amu^se those who were waiting their turn. For this 
 purpose he had the virginals in one corner — the virginals 
 being a stringed instrument, the precursor of our piano, in 
 which, by pressing keys like our piano-keys, the strings 
 were struck, not by a hammer as in our piano, but by a 
 quill or an elastic piece of wood, leather, or metal. A 
 virginal of Elizabeth's time is still preserved in the South 
 Kensington Museum in England. But besides the vir- 
 ginals you would find in the barber-shop a cittern — an in- 
 strument like our guitar in shape, with four double strings 
 of wire, tuned I | | (below the next t ) ; a gittern — an 
 instrument like the cittern, but smaller and strung with 
 sinew instead of wire, sometimes called " Spanish viol," 
 as in a catalogue of the musical instruments left in charge 
 of Philip van Wilder at the death of Henry VIII, which 
 mentions " four Gitterons, which are called Spanish 
 Vialls"; and a lute — an instrument larger than our
 
 lo SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 guitar, with a pear-shaped back, and eight frets which, in- 
 stead of brass Hke those on the mandolin, were made of 
 sinew kite-strings tied round the neck and gkied in place. 
 This lute would likely be the first instrument taken up by 
 a gentleman who was waiting while you were in the bar- 
 ber's hands. It was the most popular instrument of the 
 time, ranking like the piano at the present day. Here 
 you see a gallant of the period as he might appear to you 
 while the barber was rubbing your head. It is worth 
 while adding that the barber, though still a man of weight 
 and function in all communities, was a much more impor- 
 tant personage in sixteenth-century society. His pole, 
 with its stripes of red and white, was not then a merely 
 formal sign ; you would often see the original of it in his 
 shop, to wit, bare arm stretched out and the blood flow- 
 ing along it : for the barber had not ceased to be a chi- 
 rurgeon and to let blood from those who were ailing. 
 Moreover, the barber was dentist. If Shakspere had 
 wanted a tooth drawn he would have gone to the barber- 
 shop to get it done. And he managed to connect this un- 
 comfortable profession with music by the singular custom, 
 which prevailed among the barber-dentists, of tying the 
 teeth which he had drawn to the end of lute-strings and 
 hanging them in the window of the shop. Lutes were of 
 various sizes, from the arch-lute, the theorbo, etc., to the 
 mandore and mandolin, strung with eleven or twelve 
 strings, five doubled, sometimes all six doubled : tuned 
 
 Base Tenor Counter-tenor Great Mean 
 
 C F B flat D 
 
 Small Mean Minikin, Treble,or Chanterelle 
 
 G CC 
 
 I note, as additional evidence of the cultivation of music 
 in this time, how often the pcetsof the period draw strong
 
 
 ^;?^J-*--:»<T -.iJH yp). 
 
 jy*:^^^j^^».=,^ Ir 
 
 m^wM 
 
 Si&^jl "^ iJl(U( /^/^ 
 
 ^w*^*5^^'^K jM. 
 
 Upttg^A^r ii,^^I\ 
 
 
 
 
 ' ^ [ J it^'^ ■ 5*^ ^^/f^ it ^^^fi^ 
 
 
 I vSllfe^ [»■ mm'/^W^ 
 
 ^ ■°^ii® t'^ W/&'f^ ' / 
 
 ^«|p ^^^ r*^j^ 
 
 i^^^^^^i^r^ Ik 
 
 J^^^y M V 
 
 ''■'^^M^^'^ab M//' ^'^^ 
 
 ^^^^''s^P^^ ////// J^H 
 
 •^ •:-^R^*'^'"^™ii-4*^^"" N 
 
 W^i^M fW^^r^ 
 
 ('^■'^^"^^■l Mi III ■f^Y F''C 
 
 m£^ 
 
 ^ fi_^^- 
 
 c^"^" ^^ 
 
 Musical Instruments of Shakspere's Time 
 
 Viol 
 
 Recorder 
 
 Virginals
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME ii 
 
 similes from the playing upon musical instruments. Take, 
 for example, a passage from Ben Jonson's great comedy of 
 Every Man in his Humour^ when a character says of 
 another : " I can compare him to nothing more happily 
 than a barber's Virginals ; for every man may play upon 
 him." 
 
 Here, too, one cannot help recalling that wonderful 
 talk of Hamlet's in Act III, Scene II, to Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern. These two worthy gentlemen have 
 been trying to pump him, you remember, to make him 
 speak, and in various ways to play upon him. Presently, 
 
 Enter the Players^ xvith Recorders. 
 
 The recorder was a wind instrument something like a 
 clarinet in shape and like a flageolet in tone. 
 
 Ham. O, the recorders ! let me see one. . . . Will you 
 play upon this pipe ? 
 
 Guild.\ My lord, I cannot. 
 
 Ham. I pray you. 
 
 Guild. Believe me, I cannot. 
 
 Ham. I do beseech you. 
 
 Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord. 
 
 Ham. 'Tis as easy as lying : govern these ventages with your 
 fingers and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will dis- 
 course most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops. 
 
 Guild. But these cannot I command to any utterance of har- 
 mony ; I have not the skill. 
 
 Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make 
 of me ! You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my 
 stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would 
 sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass : and 
 there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ ; yet can- 
 not you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be 
 played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrunient you will, though 
 you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.
 
 12 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Again, quaint old Thomas Tusser, author of the Five 
 Hundred Points of Good Husbandry^ I570j advises every 
 housewife to always choose a servant who sings at work ; 
 he says : 
 
 Such servants are oftenest painfull and good 
 Who sing in their labour as birds in the wood. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, when next you are so unfortunate as to 
 go to an intelligence office, when you find that the candi- 
 date whom the gentlemanly proprietor calls up can cook, 
 it would be well to inquire also of her qualifications in 
 singing. 
 
 And old Merrythought, in Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 says : " Never trust a tailor that does not sing at his work, 
 for his mind is of nothing but filching." 
 
 This is indeed but another method of stating the 
 famous sentiment in Shakspere's Merchant of Venice^ 
 Act V, Scene 1, where Lorenzo concludes his ravish- 
 ing little conversation with Jessica about music by declar- 
 ing that 
 
 The man that hath no music in himself, 
 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils ; 
 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
 
 And his affections dark as Erebus : 
 
 Let no such man be trusted. 
 
 j I find quoted more than once during this period a 
 proverb which expresses the same idea in a more general 
 form, and which I suspect is an old Spanish saying 
 imported into England : 
 
 \ Who loves not music^ God loves not him. 
 
 \\ Again, music seems to have been as much a part of the 
 education of young ladies in Shakspere's time as now.
 
 C .'5. 
 
 c3 ^ 
 
 
 -r. <^ 
 
 o 
 
 o
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 13 
 
 Some of the most cunning scenes in The Taming of the 
 Shrew are connected with this circumstance. I cannot 
 help recalling these to you, in the briefest way. You 
 remember that Lucentio and Hortensio, the one disguised 
 as a scholar, the other as a musician, — or rather a teacher 
 of music, — procure themselves to be introduced into Bap- 
 tista's house as tutors to his daughters Katharina and 
 Bianca, both gentlemen being bent upon making love to 
 Bianca. Scene I of Act II is a room in Baptista's 
 house, where presently, after a stormy scene betwixt Katha- 
 rina and Bianca, enters Baptista ; then the two young 
 women go out, whereupon enter to Baptista Signior 
 Gremio, with Lucentio in the mean habit of a scholar, 
 Petruchio, with Hortensio disguised as a musician, and 
 Tranio, with Biondello bearing a lute and books. 
 
 Pet. {Speaking to Baptista) I am a gentleman of Verona, sir, 
 That . ^ . 
 
 Am bold to show myself a forward guest 
 Within your house, to make mine eye the witness 
 Of that report which I so oft have heard. 
 And, for an entrance to my entertainment, 
 I do present you with a man of mine, 
 
 (^Presenting Hortensio) 
 Cunning in music and the mathematics, 
 To instruct her fully in those sciences, 
 Whereof I know she is not ignorant : 
 Accept of him, or else you do me wrong : 
 His name is Licio, born in Mantua. 
 
 Bap. You're welcome, sir ; and he, for your good sake. . . . 
 
 Gre. Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am sure of it. 
 To express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly 
 beholden to you than any, I freely give unto you this young 
 scholar (Presenting Lucentio), that hath been long studying at 
 Rheims ; as cunning in Greek, Latin and other languages, as the
 
 14 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 other in music and mathematics : his name is Cambio ; pray, 
 accept his service. 
 
 Bap. A thousand thanks, Signior Gremio. Welcome, good 
 Cambio. . . . 
 
 Tra. Pardon me, sir. . . . 
 This Hberty is all that I request. 
 That, upon knowledge of my parentage, 
 I may have welcome 'mongst the rest that woo 
 And free access and favour as the rest : 
 And, toward the education of your daughters, 
 I here bestow a simple instrument, (^Pointing to the lute) 
 And this small packet of Greek and Latin books : 
 If you accept them, then their worth is great. 
 
 Bap. . . . Take you (To Hortensio) the lute, and you 
 
 (To LucENTio) the set of books; 
 
 You shall go see your pupils presently. 
 
 Holla, within ! 
 
 Efitcr a Servant. 
 
 Sirrah, lead 
 These gentlemen to my daughters ; and tell them both. 
 These are their tutors : bid them use them well. 
 
 It would seem that Hortensio, the pretended music- 
 teacher, first attempts to teach Katharina the Shrew. The 
 nature of the usage which the poor musician receives at 
 the hands of this pupil presently appears : 
 
 Reenter Hortensio, with his head broken. 
 
 Bap. How now, my friend ! why dost thou look so pale ? 
 
 Hor. For fear, I promise you, if I look pale. 
 
 Bap. What, will my daughter prove a good musician ? 
 
 Hor. I think she'll sooner prove a soldier : 
 Iron may hold with her, but never lutes. 
 
 Bap. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute ? 
 
 Hor. Why, no ; for she hath broke the lute to me. 
 I did but tell her she mistook her frets. 
 And bow'd her hand to teach her fingering;
 
 A Lute Accompaniment of Sliakspere's Time 
 Kngnivcd bv .Indonin from tlic paiiiliir^ by Xitscher peii.
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 15 
 
 When, with a most impatient devilish spirit, 
 
 Frets^ call you these? quoth she ; F II fume with them : 
 
 And, with that word, she struck me on the head, 
 
 And through the instrument my pate made way ; 
 
 And there I stood amazed for a while. 
 
 As on a pillory, looking through the lute j 
 
 While she did call me rascal fiddler 
 
 And twangling fack ; with twenty such vile terms. 
 
 As she had studied to misuse me so. 
 
 But afterwards the two pretended tutors get access to the 
 milder Bianca, and proceed to teach her, as far as they 
 can, the only lore in which either of them has any skill. 
 I will not dare to give this scene as a specimen of the sys- 
 tem employed by musicians in teaching their lady pupils 
 during Shakspere's time ; but it must be confessed the 
 methods are not without illustration In the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. The scene is the first of Act III : y^ Room in Bap- 
 tistas House. Enter Lucentio (the pretended Greek and 
 Latin tutor), Hortensio (the pretended musician), and 
 Bianca, whom I might as well call the pretended pupil, 
 for she could doubtless have taught both her masters in 
 that science of love which they really professed, and which 
 every woman understands by nature better than any man 
 does by study. The two tutors endeavour to outwit 
 each other in giving the first lesson : 
 
 Luc. {Scornfully addressing HoRTENSio) Fiddler, 
 forbear ; you grow too forward, sir : 
 Have you so soon forgot the entertainment 
 Her sister Katharine welcom'd you withal ? 
 
 Hor. But, wrangling pedant, this is 
 The patroness of heavenly harmony : 
 Then give me leave to have prerogative ; 
 And when in music we have spent an hour.
 
 i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Your lecture shall have leisure for as much. . . . 
 
 Bian. Take you your instrument, play you the whiles ; 
 His lecture will be done ere you have tun'd. 
 
 Hor. ( To Bianca) You'll leave his lecture when I am in tune ? 
 
 (HoRTENSiO retires.) 
 
 Luc. That will be never : tune your instrument. 
 
 Bian. Where left we last ? 
 
 Luc. Here, madam : 
 
 Hie ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia tellus ; 
 Hie steterat Priami regia celsa senis. 
 
 Bian, Construe them. 
 
 Luc. Hie ibat., as I told you before, — Simois., I am Lucentio, — 
 hie est, son unto Vincentio of Pisa, — Sigeia tellus, disguised thus to 
 get your love ; — Hie steterat, and that Lucentio that comes 
 a-wooing, — Priami, is my man Tranio, — regia, bearing my port, 
 — celsa senis, that we might beguile the old pantaloon. 
 
 Hor. (^Returning) Madam, my instrument's in tune. 
 
 Bian. Let's hear. {Hortensio plays.) O fie ! the treble jars. 
 
 Luc. Spit in the hole, man, and tune again. 
 
 Bian. Now let me see if I can construe it : Hie ibat Simois, 
 I know you not, — hie est Sigeia tellus, I trust you not, — Hie stet- 
 erat Priami, take heed he hear us not, — regia, presume not, — 
 celsa senis, despair not. 
 
 Hor. Madam, 'tis now in tune. 
 
 Luc. All but the base. 
 
 Hor. The base is right ; 'tis the base knave that jars. 
 How fiery and forward our pedant is ! . . . 
 (To Lucentio) You may go walk and give me leave a while : 
 My lessons make no music in three parts. 
 
 Luc. Are you so formal, sir ? well, I must wait, 
 {Aside) And watch withal ; for, but I be deceiv'd. 
 Our fine musician groweth amorous. 
 
 Hor. Madam, before you touch the instrument, 
 To learn the order of my fingering, 
 I must begin with rudiments of art ;
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 17 
 
 To teach you gamut in a briefer sort, 
 More pleasant, pithy, and effectual. 
 Than hath been taught by any of my trade : 
 And there it is in writing, fairly drawn. 
 
 Bian. Why, I am past my gamut long ago. 
 Hor. Yet read the gamut of Hortensio. 
 Bian. (^Reads) G2Ln\\i\. I am^ the ground of all accord^ 
 A re, to plead Hortensio' s passion ; 
 B mi, Bianca^ take him for thy lord., 
 
 C fa ut, that loves with all affection : 
 D sol re, one cliff two notes have I: 
 E la mi, show pity., or I die. 
 
 Call you this gamut ? tut, I like it not : 
 
 Old fashions please me best ; I am not so nice. 
 
 To change true rules for odd inventions. 
 
 Perhaps it is by the rebound of contrast that poor Hor- 
 tensio's broken head in this fictitious comedy carries 
 my mind to three all too real tragedies of this period, in 
 each of which an unfortunate musician had his head 
 broken beyond all mending. First in order comes poor 
 Mark Smeaton, who taught music to the lovely Anne 
 Bullen, and whom Henry VIII had executed upon a 
 pretext that (like Hortensio) he had taught her more 
 love than music ; four years later — in 1 540 — the same 
 Henry VIII hanged and quartered Thomas Abel, who 
 was musical tutor to his Queen Catherine, because Abel 
 wrote a tract against the divorce ; and twenty-six years 
 after this David Rizzio, the musical secretary of that poor 
 lovely Mary, was murdered in her very presence. 
 
 But I will not accumulate more circumstances or quo- 
 tations to show you the fact I started out to prove — that 
 the English in Shakspere's time were ardent music-lovers, 
 from the highest to the lowest orders of society. Every-
 
 i8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 where you heard the organ, the stately motett and involute 
 (canaro), the Puritan's psalm, the jolly catch, the melodi- 
 ous madrigal, the tinkling of citterns, gitterns, lutes, and 
 virginals, the soft breaths of recorders, the louder strains 
 of clarion, sackbut, shawm, hautboy, trumpet, cymbal, and 
 drum. Everybody sang ballads ; the number of ballads 
 printed in this time is simply enormous. There is a line 
 in Bishop Hale's satires which always brings up to me a 
 pleasant picture of old ballad-singing England, in which 
 he speaks of ballads as being 
 
 Sung to the wheel and sung unto the pail, 
 
 i.e., sung by those who sat at the spinning-wheel, and by 
 the milkmaids as they milked into the pails. 
 
 In an old piece called Martin Marsixtus, dating 1592, 
 is a livelier description of the flood of ballads which rained 
 upon England in this period ; he cries : " Every red-nosed 
 rhymester is an author. . . . Scarce a cat can look out of a 
 gutter, but out starts a half-penny chronicler and presently 
 a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited." Per- 
 haps I can fitly conclude this sketch of the popularity 
 of music in Shakspere's time with a remark made in 
 Summer s Last Will and Testament^ by Nash, a contempo- 
 rary writer. It seems that a package of lute-strings was a 
 customary present from a gallant to a young lady in that 
 time ; and it therefore shows the public favour towards 
 music in general and the lute in particular when we find 
 Nash's character here recording, " I knew one that ran in 
 debt in the space of four or five years above fourteen thou- 
 sand pounds in lute-strings and grey paper." 
 
 I have said that Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth 
 were musical amateurs and made it the fashion, but I do 
 not mean that the popular love for music in England 
 depended at all on this royal favour. We trace the same 
 devotion to music among Englishmen long before Henry
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 19 
 
 and Elizabeth. Chaucer is full of naive and cunning illus- 
 trations that England was as musical in the fourteenth 
 century as in the sixteenth. You will remember the Nun, 
 of whom I read in one of my earlier lectures, so exquisitely 
 described in the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales — 
 
 how 
 
 Ful wel sche sang the servise devyne, 
 
 Entuned in hire nose ful semyly. 
 
 Again, we find the young Squire, in the same Prologue, 
 "singing and floyting all the day." In this description 
 of the musical Friar even the Chaucerian vividness is 
 unwontedly bright : 
 
 Wel couthe he synge and playe on a rote. 
 
 Somewhat he lipsede for wantonnesse 
 
 To make his Englissche swete upon his tunge ; 
 
 And in his harpyng, when that he had sunge. 
 
 His eyghen twynkled in his hed aright 
 
 As don the sterres in the frosty night. 
 
 Of the poor scholar Nicholas, Chaucer says : 
 
 And al above there lay a gay sawtrye, 
 
 (The psaltery was an instrument of the harp species, some- 
 times triangular like this /<|||>\ 
 
 jn'H!uiuim\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'^\^ 
 and sometimes square.)
 
 20 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 On which he made, a-nightes, melodye 
 So swetely that al the chamber rang. 
 
 The Parish Clerk Absolon could 
 
 Pleyen songes on a small Ribible ; 
 Therto he sang a lowde quynyble. 
 And as wel coude he pleye on a giterne. 
 
 The ribible was an ancestor of the fiddle species. The 
 " lowde quynyble " was when the player sang the melody in 
 one key and played it in another key a fifth above ; as, for 
 example, when he sang a melody in the key of C and 
 played the same melody at the same time in the key of 
 G. Of course to a modern ear this would be intolerable ; 
 for the whole performance would consist of " consecutive 
 fifths," which are looked upon with horror and rigidly for- 
 bidden by the modern systems of thorough-base. It may 
 be interesting, however, to mention in this connection that 
 I myself have heard a similar performance, and have noted 
 that the consecutive fifth possesses a great fascination for 
 the stronger-tympanumed ears of those who have lived 
 outside the current of musical cultivation. I have heard, 
 among the backwoods fiddle-players of Georgia, two per- 
 sons play the same melody in fifths, that is, one playing it 
 in G while the other played it in C ; and after the first shock 
 of strangeness to my ear was over, I found the effect weird 
 and stirring beyond description. I have also heard the 
 Georgia crackers sing in this way, one screaming a loud 
 " quynyble " to the other, and this is even more striking 
 than the instrumental performance. In Chaucer also we 
 find that the carpenter's wife sang, and that as for 
 
 Her song, it was as lowde and yerne 
 As eny swalwe chiteryng on a berne.
 
 A Seventeenth-century Mandolin-player 
 Engraved by Aiidcuiiu /ro»i the painting by Gerard Terburg
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 21 
 
 The Pardoner, 
 
 Ful lowde he sang " Come hider, love, to me," 
 
 While the Sompnour 
 
 Bar to him a stif burdoun. 
 
 I shall have occasion to explain these " burdouns " pres- 
 ently. The Miller plays the " baggepipe," and there is 
 mention here and there of lutes, shawms, trumpets, and 
 organs. Even William Langland — who, although he 
 wrote in the same time with Chaucer, wrote, one may say, 
 in a different world, for he saw English life from the point 
 of view of a ploughman, while Chaucer saw it from that of 
 a courtier — even Langland, in his Vision of Piers Plow- 
 many indignantly reproaches the clergy that 
 
 They kennen no more mynstralcy, ne musik, men to gladde, 
 
 and he records of himself, 
 
 Ich can not tabre, ne trompe, ne telle faire gestes, 
 
 Ne fithelyn at festes, ne harpen, 
 
 Japen, ne jagelyn, ne gentillich pipe, 
 
 Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giterne, 
 
 implying, by his own singularity in this disability, that 
 it was common for others to be able to do some of these 
 things. 
 
 Thus we find Englishmen great music-lovers in Chau- 
 cer's period, and if I had time I could easily cite evidences 
 enough to show that this love of music was a legitimate 
 inheritance from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, with whom 
 this art was held in great esteem. 
 
 It is interesting, by the way, — before I leave this
 
 22 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 theme, — to ask the question, why is it that, while Eng- 
 lishmen have thus shown in all ages a genuine love for 
 music, and while (as I shall presently show more in detail) 
 the science of music was studied and the art cultivated 
 by scores of men possessing great abilities in the sixteenth 
 century and since, we have never yet developed a single 
 great English composer of music ? Without stopping to 
 answer this question, — indeed, I do not know how to 
 answer it, — perhaps it will be of interest to compare it 
 with a similar question regarding women. We all know 
 with what enthusiastic, even religious devotion women 
 have loved music in all ages, and particularly in this age ; 
 one may almost say music would have perished but for 
 the active sympathy of women for the art and its artists ; 
 and we all know, further, what brilliant heights of excellence 
 have been attained by women as executive musicians, both 
 in vocal and instrumental kinds : yet no woman has ever 
 yet composed any great music. Perhaps the solution of 
 both these questions is simply that never yet is not never 
 at all: it is not conclusive proof that a thing may not be 
 done in the future to show that it has not been done in 
 the past ; and perhaps women and Englishmen will both 
 write immortal music in the ages to come. 
 
 But having now established the musical character of 
 the age in which Shakspere lived in general, I go on fur- 
 ther to say that I find Shakspere in particular a special 
 adorer of music. I have counted one hundred and sixty- 
 seven references to music in his plays, nearly all of which 
 betray the tone of a passionate lover of the art. Not only 
 so, but 1 find occasionally little touches which give soHd, 
 if subtle, proof that the awful mystery of music had in a 
 shadowy way dawned on Shakspere's soul. A single line 
 in that immortal scene between Lorenzo and Jessica in 
 The Merchant of Venice reveals this :
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 23 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 Scene I. Behnont. Avenue to Portia's House. 
 
 Lorenzo. . . . How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings. 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins ; 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 
 
 Jessica breaks in upon this high talk with this intuition : 
 
 I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
 
 {Music.) 
 
 Jessica here pierces quite near to the root of the mat- 
 ter, namely, to that infinite underfeeling of serious and 
 illimitable desire which every one who knows music under- 
 stands and which no one who knows music will attempt to 
 describe.^ It seems much that any hint of this should 
 have dawned upon Shakspere, when we reflect that he 
 died, poor soul ! seventy years before Bach was born, a 
 hundred and fifty-odd years before Beethoven was born ; 
 
 1 The sharp contrast between the ing joy, or mirth, from the Anglo- 
 feeling here expressed by Jessica Saxon gligg, which meant music, 
 and the primitive conception of or song, Jessica's remark is the 
 music is strikingly shown by the first note we hear of the modern 
 derivation of our word glee^ mean- sorrow-cultus in music.
 
 24 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 that he knew nothing of the orchestra ; that, in short, he 
 never heard anything that we would call great music. I 
 find another subtle touch of this sort in that wonderful clos- 
 ing scene of the play of King Richard II. The poor fallen 
 monarch in his lonesome room of the castle of Pomfret, 
 where Bolingbroke has confined him, is meditating alone, at 
 night, but a few moments before his death. Presently the 
 twanging of lutes and viols is heard in the darkness below 
 his window ; some faithful soul has come to sound up to 
 him in this pathetic way that he has at least one friend 
 left living. The current of his thought seizes upon the 
 music and turns the stream of sound into its own sad 
 direction. 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 Scene V. Pomfret. The Castle. 
 
 King Richard. . . . Music do I hear ? (Afusic.) 
 
 Ha, ha ! keep time : how sour sweet music is, 
 When time is broke and no proportion kept ! 
 So is it in the music of men's lives. 
 And here have I the daintiness of ear 
 To check time broke in a disorder'd string; 
 But for the concord of my state and time 
 Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. 
 I wasted time, and now doth time waste me ; 
 
 . . . but my time 
 Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy, 
 While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock. 
 This music mads me ; let it sound no more ; 
 For though it have holp madmen to their wits, 
 In me it seems it will make wise men mad. 
 Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me ! 
 For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard 
 Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 25 
 
 Reflecting, as I said, upon the fact that Shakspere died 
 a century before the epoch of really great musical art, I 
 am struck with astonishment at the deep and almost ador- 
 ing reverence for music which lies everywhere revealed 
 through his writings. This astonishment, however, is 
 only part of a greater general problem : for, from this 
 point of view, how strange seem all the stories of the 
 power of music which come down to us from ancient times! 
 The Greeks had scarcely anything that we would call 
 music ; they had no harmony, their instruments were weak 
 in tone and limited in range, their melodies were crude 
 and poor ; yet what a cyclus of Greek stories about the 
 wonders wrought with music, culminating in that strange 
 fable of Orpheus, who could move trees, stones, and floods 
 with his melodies ! 
 
 Again, even among a people so barbarous as the early 
 Danes, it is related by Saxo Grammaticus that Eric, King 
 of Denmark, having heard that a certain harper could cast 
 men into all moods according to the tunes he played, 
 desired the harper to play, and presently the harper played 
 a fierce tune, under whose power the King became so 
 enraged that he attacked even his friends standing about, 
 and, having no weapon, killed several of them with his fist 
 before he could be appeased by a change in the melody. 
 Again, leaving the Indo-European peoples and passing 
 over to the great Semitic branch of the human race, I 
 have somewhere read a gigantic old fable — I cannot now 
 remember whether it was Rabbinical or Mohammedan — 
 that when God first moulded the body of Adam out of 
 the clay. He laid it along the ground, and invited the soul to 
 come and enter it. But the soul, upon first beholding the 
 body, was displeased and frightened at the cold and unsightly 
 mass lying there on the earth ; and the soul of Adam for a 
 long time could not be induced to enter his body, until
 
 26 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 finally the angel Gabriel came and sat at the feet of the 
 body and played on the flageolet a melody so ravishing 
 that the soul straightway entered in at the mouth of the 
 body, and Adam arose a perfect man. What a deep and 
 beautiful commentary do these stories make on the mys- 
 terious reality of music and on the mysterious growth of 
 man, when we think that they were invented ages before 
 the existence of any musical combinations which would 
 sensibly afi^ect the emotions of a modern hearer! 
 
 The mention of the music which Shakspere did not 
 hear now leads us quite naturally to the consideration of 
 that which he did hear, and 1 shall devote my next lecture 
 to that very interesting subject. I shall then explain the 
 two general kinds of music in Shakspere's time, to wit, 
 extempore discant and pricksong ; I shall then take up 
 in detail the sort of church music with Shakspere's con- 
 temporaries were accustomed to hear, both the formal 
 canons of the Church and the simpler psalms of the Puri- 
 tans ; I shall then consider the sorts of secular music 
 which Shakspere was accustomed to hear, particularly the 
 madrigal, the catch, and the ballad, on the vocal side, 
 and the dance-tunes on the instrumental side, particularly 
 the galliard, the passamezzo or paspy, the coranto, the 
 morrice-dance, and the pavan ; I shall next present some 
 account of the great English musicians of Shakspere's 
 time, who were in various ways very interesting men and 
 ought to be better known to us than they are. I hope to be 
 able to give you some actual reproductions of Shaksperian 
 music in illustration of these matters ; for this purpose I 
 have selected a very pretty canon of old John Taverner's 
 for five voices, which I found in the Peabody Library ; 
 also a part-song by John Milton, father of the poet, who 
 was a good musician. Then I have a madrigal of Shak- 
 spere's time, and I think I shall be able to find an old
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 27 
 
 catch such as the jolly Sir Toby roared out with his com- 
 panions in Olivia's house ; I have also a very pretty galliard 
 by Frescobaldi dating from 1637 ; a song called The Song 
 of Anne Bullen, and said to have been written by her not 
 long before her execution ; I have also the tune of Green- 
 sleeveSy which Shakspere mentions, and to which scores of 
 sonnets and ballads were sung ; and finally I have the 
 Cuckoo Song, which is a good specimen of a song with a 
 " burdoun " such as the Sompnour roared with the Par- 
 doner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. If I succeed in find- 
 ing the voices to sing these part-songs properly, it is my 
 desire to have the class meet at my own house, where we 
 shall have the piano and other facilities for music ; but of 
 that you shall have due notice, and, unless you have notice, 
 I will ask you to meet here as usual. I sincerely hope I 
 may be able to get up the voices for the music, so that 
 when you shall have heard it you will know what ideas 
 Shakspere had in his mind when the bewildered Ferdinand, 
 in The Tempest, following the sprite Ariel in the air, cries, 
 " Where should this music be ? i' th' air or th' earth ? " 
 
 . . . Sure, it waits upon 
 
 Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank, 
 
 Weeping again the king my father's wreck, 
 
 This music crept by me upon the waters, 
 
 Allaying both their fury and my passion 
 
 With its sweet air. . . . 
 
 This is no mortal business.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— II 
 
 N the last lecture I discussed the 
 general cultivation of music in Shak- 
 spere's time, and Shakspere's own spe- 
 cial fondness for the art. In the 
 course of the discussion we arrived at 
 a point where we found it surprising 
 that Shakspere should have had such 
 an exalted idea of the power of music 
 in view of the fact that he lived a century before that 
 development of the orchestra was accomplished which we 
 regard as the only adequate form of music. Thus in 
 considering the music which Shakspere did not hear, we 
 were led to think of the kind of music which Shakspere 
 did hear, and that is the subject of my lecture to-day. 
 
 I have more than once had occasion in different con- 
 nections to mention the term " discant." In Shakspere's 
 time that great species of musical form which bore this 
 name may be said to have reached its climax. It had 
 been a long time in doing so, however ; for, in order to 
 understand clearly the kind of music which for so many 
 years, nay, for so many centuries, ministered to the souls 
 of our elders in this world, v^^e must go back a thousand 
 
 z8
 
 Pope Gregory the Great, with his Father and Mother 
 
 From au old cngnn'ing
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 29 
 
 years beyond Shakspere. In the latter part of the sixth 
 century, Pope Gregory the Great collected and published 
 a number of melodies which had long been employed in 
 the church service, including, it is said, several melodies 
 of his own composition. This collection was called his 
 antiphonarium. Great store was set by it, insomuch that 
 it was kept fastened by a chain to the altar of St. Peter's, 
 in order that it might be convenient for reference and for 
 future additions to, or alterations in, the melodies which 
 it contained. Now these melodies, thus brought definitely 
 together by St. Gregory, played a part of paramount im- 
 portance in music for a thousand years on, and more. 
 You have all heard of what is called the " Gregorian 
 chant." This is a term applied to the tunes contained 
 in the antiphonarium of Gregory's. Observe that only a 
 part of these tunes were composed by Gregory. A large 
 number of them were already in existence, and had been 
 from time immemorial. Let me call your attention to 
 this circumstance here, which has most important bearing 
 on the matter of the present lecture. Nowadays, when 
 we think of a musical composer, we regard him as one 
 who originates melodies^ one who gives fresh tunes to the 
 world. You will find, as I proceed in the development 
 of my subject, that one great and cardinal distinction 
 of modern music as opposed to the music of Shakspere's 
 time is that the composers of that period did not address 
 themselves to the invention of new tunes so much as to 
 the contrapuntal treatment of old tunes. A number of in- 
 genious devices, which I shall presently explain, were 
 invented by which an old tune could be redacted into a 
 wonderful variety of musical effects, while still preserving 
 at least the outline of its individuality. 
 
 It would be an inquiry of deep fascination, even to 
 many who have no special interest in music, to trace the 
 
 xi
 
 30 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 origin of these melodies, known now as the Gregorian 
 chants, which for so many ages formed the stock in trade 
 of all musical invention in Europe. For almost the very 
 first step in the inquiry leads us back from the sort of 
 music which Shakspere was accustomed to hear to the 
 sort of music which our Lord Jesus Christ was accustomed 
 to hear. Permit me in a dozen words to point out at 
 least the path which this inquiry would follow. I have 
 said that Pope Gregory found a number of tunes in ex- 
 istence which he noted and fixed for succeeding ages. 
 Two hundred years before Gregory's time, an event some- 
 what similar occurred in the history of music, which I, for 
 one, can never recall to myself without emotion. In the 
 end of the fourth century. Bishop Ambrose of Milan, 
 together with his people, suffered great affliction under the 
 relentless persecutions of the Aryan empress Justina. It 
 is a naive and touching witness to that ideal of the con- 
 nection between music and the needs of our every-day life 
 which all fervent musicians should cherish and exalt, that 
 the good Bishop Ambrose, for the explicit purpose of 
 consolation in the midst of these afflictions, called in the 
 aid of music. Expressly for the solace of his suffering 
 people, he ordained that psalms and hymns should be 
 sung antiphonally in the churches, and he organised many 
 musical details to this end, perfecting the scale by a Greek 
 tetrachord which he selected, and finally giving rise to 
 what was known as the Ambrosian chant. I often please 
 myself with reflecting upon an artless little inconsistency 
 which I find in the confessions of St. Augustine,^ and 
 which bears a quite unconscious witness to the pleasure 
 which he found in this old Ambrosian chant. He would 
 seem — in a certain morbidness of feeling which very well 
 
 1 Lib. X, xxxiii, 50, cited in Magister Choralis by F. Zavier Haberl, 
 
 F. Pustet, 1877.
 
 St. Ambrose 
 From au ewj-yavhv' in " I'ic's dts HoniDics Ilhistres'
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 31 
 
 belongs to his time, and which probably all of us can par- 
 allel in our youthful religious experiences — to have been 
 a little afraid that he had no right to be moved too deeply 
 by the purely sensuous fall of musical tones on the ear, 
 but that he ought to be moved by those holy words of 
 scripture which were sung ; and so he says : " When I 
 remember the tears I shed at the psalmody of the church 
 in the beginning of my recovered faith, and how at this 
 time I am moved not with the singing, but with the 
 things sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and suit- 
 able modulation^ I acknowledge the great use of this insti- 
 tution." Of course, if he were moved only with " the 
 things sung," it would make no difference whether they 
 were sung "with a clear voice and suitable modulation " 
 or not ; and in this naive proviso the good ^saint's ear 
 very cunningly sets up its claim to be a sweet and holy 
 adviser of the soul. But this by the way. Here we find 
 in the fourth century still a stock of tunes constituting 
 the body of music ; and it was this stock which our Greg- 
 ory afterwards fixed and increased. 
 
 The next step backwards takes us from the fourth cen- 
 tury to the second. In the year no Pliny the Younger 
 wrote a letter to Trajan, in which he describes the Chris- 
 tians " meeting on a certain day before daylight and sing- 
 ing by turns a hymn to Christ as to a God." 
 
 And the next step in this inquiry takes us to Christ 
 himself On that climacteric evening when He and his 
 disciples sat at their last supper, after He had blessed the 
 bread and given it to them as his body, and the wine as 
 his blood, and had declared: " But I say unto you, I will 
 not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that 
 day when I drink it new with you in my Father's king- 
 dom," it would seem that the emotions of the moment had 
 risen to that point where words do not bring comfort ; and
 
 32 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 so I find the might of music working in the next verse (of 
 Matthew xxvi. 30), which records: " And when they had 
 sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives." 
 If we knew the tune of that hymn ! 
 
 Here, you observe, as far back as the beginning of our 
 era, we find the world in possession of a stock of tunes. 
 There can be little doubt that the melodies which the 
 disciples sang with Christ in person were handed down 
 and formed the body of those collections which Bishop 
 Ambrose — and after him Pope Gregory — brought toge- 
 ther ; and it is possible enough that the hymn which Christ 
 and his Apostles sang was sung yesterday in some church 
 of Baltimore; for we have tunes in our psalmody — not to 
 speak of the Gregorian tunes still surviving as plain chant 
 in the Catholic churches — which have come down from 
 quite immemorial times, and the path of church music, as 
 I have shown, leads directly back to this hymn which was 
 sung on the evening of the Last Supper. It leads, in 
 truth, much farther back than that : the Greek melodies 
 which must have formed the body of the apostolic hymns 
 carry us to times long before the Christian era — to old 
 pagan Greek times, to old Hebrew times, nay, to old 
 Egyptian times. 
 
 But to go farther in that direction is not within the 
 scope of this present lecture. I have given this brief sketch 
 of the tunes by which the Christians always testified (as 
 Tertullian hath it — Apology, chapter xxx) "in singing 
 their prayers . . . that they did not worship as men with- 
 out hope," in order to call your attention to the corpus of 
 melody which presented itself when the composers of Shak- 
 spere's time began their work. This corpus consisted 
 mainly of the Gregorian chants, with such additions and 
 improvements as had been here and there struck out by 
 the labours of isolated genius. 
 
 Now the general method of treating these fundamental
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 33 
 
 bases of music — or tunes — in Shakspere's time was that 
 which was called discant. Perhaps as good a definition 
 of discant as any occurs in Richard Edwards's notable old 
 play of Damon and Pythias^ the first tragedy lightened with 
 comedy which we have, dating from 1564, the year of 
 Shakspere's birth. Here it is said that the Collier sings a 
 " buffing base," while two of his fellows, Jack and Will, 
 " quiddell upon it." You will get a more vivid idea of 
 discant in general from a single example than from hours 
 of description. If, therefore, we analyse in the briefest 
 way a composition of this sort, you will immediately per- 
 ceive the fundamental idea upon which all the varieties of 
 discant were based. 
 
 For this purpose I have selected a piece which will 
 Illustrate at once the church music and the secular music 
 of the period — to wit, the Cuckoo Song. I have before 
 alluded to this beautiful composition; it is of interest as 
 the first English verse which we find with the music accom- 
 panying. It was discovered, as you remember, written on 
 the cover of what appears to have been a monk's common- 
 place-book, preserved in the Harleian Library. You will 
 doubtless be struck with the slow progress of music in those 
 days when you find me selecting a piece which dates — as 
 the Cuckoo Song does — from about a.d. 1240, to illus- 
 trate the kind of music prevalent in Shakspere's time, i.e., 
 four hundred years afterwards. It was, in truth, also with a 
 view to bringing out this fact that I chose the Cuckoo 
 Song; and from this point of view you will observe, by 
 the way, that an astonishing phenomenon is the develop- 
 ment which has taken place in music within the last two 
 hundred years. 
 
 Let us consider, then, what was equivalent to the 
 "buffing base " of the Collier, and see how Jack and Will 
 could " quiddell upon it." 
 
 At the bottom of the original leaf on which the
 
 34 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Cuckoo Song is written you will notice a strain marked 
 Pes. This pes, from the Latin word pes, meaning a foot, 
 was the burden, or, here, buffing base, upon which the rest 
 of the piece stood as upon 2. pes, or foot.^ It consists of 
 these notes, which I will put all in the treble clef for easier 
 comprehension : 
 
 t=t- 
 
 i^ -*-^— ' 
 
 :^^=t 
 
 Sum 
 
 er 
 
 IS 
 
 cum - en 
 
 in 
 
 Now when the Collier commenced to buff this base, Jack, 
 we will say, begins to quiddle upon it with this melody : 
 
 :t 
 
 -^••^ 
 
 Sum - er is y. . cum - en in. . Lhud - e sing cue - cu 
 
 Those of you who have studied harmony will easily see 
 that these two melodies would go together without discord. 
 But presently Will comes in with an additional complexity 
 in the way of quiddling. When Jack has reached the 
 fifth bar of his melody. Will begins to sing the first bar 
 of it, and continues then to the end, singing the same mel- 
 ody with Jack, but always just four bars behind, the mel- 
 ody being so composed that if it were divided into groups 
 of four bars each, counting from the beginning, any one of 
 these groups may be sung at the same time with any other 
 of the groups without discord. Here, now, are three 
 voices going. If there were other singers besides the Col- 
 lier and Jack and Will they too could enter. In the first 
 place the pes, or burden, here is so constructed that the 
 first four bars of it may be sung at the same time with the 
 last four. Therefore if, by the time the first four bars have 
 been sung, a fourth singer — we will say Tom — takes up 
 
 ^ Chaucer: The Pardonere sang, and the Sompnoure 
 •' Bar to him a stiff burdoun."
 
 ^^ 
 
 =^=^ 
 
 45: 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 mc& an5 %tngj ^ {>c^y ^nth^ngr aicai Tm^g llcn^ afaf 
 
 ■«- 
 
 ^ 
 
 -^"^ 
 
 _gL 
 
 
 3-^ 
 
 ^ ^ ''it 
 
 
 £^ 
 
 -i^ 
 
 
 WCt'C 
 
 Vtl tt^UCr Till* ln\gcEiifitl?iric*>>ai7aTl)i;r^tctTcrt^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 'lvftMat7al<5pauC\iirm ttic3u> i- li in 
 
 
 Facsimile of the "Cuckoo Song 
 
 Fjvw the original MS. in the British Muscinu
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 35 
 
 the burden and begins to sing the first bar of it as the other 
 one enters upon the fifth, both continuing thereafter to sing 
 straight on, repeating the pes, or burden, over and over until 
 the end is reached, we will have four voices going harmo- 
 niously. But, again, if, when the upper voice. Jack, has 
 reached his ninth bar and Will his fifth bar, still another 
 singer — we will say Dick — commences the first bar of 
 the same melody with Jack and Will, and then sings 
 straight on, it will harmonise ; and again, if a sixth singer 
 — whom we must call Harry — commences the same 
 melody at the end of the next four bars — that is, when 
 Jack is beginning his thirteenth bar — and sings on, we 
 will have six voices going in a true six-part song. This 
 is, in point of fact, the plan of the Cuckoo Song ; it was 
 written for six voices. The whole melody is as follows : 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 f- 
 
 -^•-. 
 
 l^ 
 
 \ Sum - er is y.. cum - en in.. Lhud - e sing cue - cu 
 
 :^ 
 
 Grow-eth sed and blow - eth med and spring-th th' und - e nu 
 
 £ 
 
 '&- 
 
 4- 
 
 Sing 
 
 cue 
 
 cu 
 
 4^ 
 
 ^^==t 
 
 :t 
 
 -7^ 
 
 Here you have a general illustration of contrapuntal 
 treatment. This particular method was called " canon in 
 the unison with a burden"; and you can easily see how 
 many varieties there might be, giving rise to the motett,
 
 26 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 the fugue, the round, and others which it would be too 
 technical to specify here. There were also methods of vary- 
 ing the melody itself; one of these was called " prolation," 
 where the notes were extended to twice or more times their 
 original length ; another method, the opposite of prolation, 
 was "division," where each note, instead of being length- 
 ened, was divided into two or more parts, this being the 
 method indicated in the quotation from i Henry IV, 
 given in my last lecture, which speaks of a tune 
 
 Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower. 
 With ravishing division, to her lute. 
 
 If these discants and variations were extempore — that 
 is, if the Collier should sit down and buff his turn, and 
 Will and Jack should strike in with extemporised parts to 
 harmonise with it — it was called " extempore discant "; 
 if there were written parts, it was called " pricksong " — 
 that is, song pricked or dotted with points on the paper. 
 This description of discant carries us to the original of the 
 word counterpoint : the melody being dotted down in points 
 on the paper, when one part ran along counter with the 
 other, as in the quiddling of Jack and Will and the Col- 
 lier, the points or notes would of course be counter, and 
 the system of part-music thus began to be called counter- 
 point. The method of discant is vividly implied in two 
 terms which were much in use at this time, and which 
 survive to this day in certain connections. The melody, 
 or tune, which was usually put in the tenor as the basis of 
 one of these quiddling compositions, was simple, and came 
 to be called "plain song" or "plain chant," in opposition 
 to the complex contrapuntal parts moving along with it; 
 and this general name shows the connection between the 
 Gregorian melodies and the subjects of such compositions,
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 37 
 
 the term now used in the Catholic Church for the Gre- 
 gorian service and melodies being " plain chant." The 
 simple melody is also still called in contrapuntal science 
 cantus firmus or canto fer mo ^ — i.e., the firm song, — in dis- 
 tinction from the changing counterpoint built upon it. 
 
 Of the rage among musicians in the sixteenth century- 
 after this part-music, and of the extent to which it was cul- 
 tivated, — particularly in church compositions, — it is diffi- 
 cult to give you an adequate idea. Perhaps a story which 
 is told of Dr. John Bull, a celebrated Enghsh musician 
 of this period, will sufficiently illustrate it. It was said 
 that Dr. Bull, after having attained great eminence in 
 counterpoint, went travelling on the Continent to see if he 
 could learn something new in the art. In this course, 
 without revealing his name, he engaged himself as a pupil 
 to the organist of St. Omer's. One day this musician took 
 his supposed pupil into a room connected with the cathe- 
 dral and showed him a composition written in forty parts, 
 boasting that he had exhausted the resources of counter- 
 point, and that the man did not live who could add another 
 part to the piece. The pretended pupil asked for pens, 
 ink and music-paper, and requested to be left alone in the 
 room for an hour or two. After a while he called in the 
 musician and showed him his piece with not only one new 
 part, but forty new parts, added. The musician at first 
 would not believe it ; but upon trying them over several 
 times, and finding them correct beyond doubt, suddenly 
 exclaimed, " You must be either the devil or Dr. Bull," 
 and — the narration quaintly adds — he thereupon fell at 
 the doctor's feet and " adored him." Of course a piece 
 with eighty different parts is absurdly impossible, and I 
 have related this story simply to show the wild excesses 
 of counterpoint in the sixteenth century. 
 
 These excesses, indeed, did not fail to meet with ob-
 
 38 SHAKSPERE "AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 jection at that time. In the Protestation of the Clargie 
 of the Lower House, presented to Henry VIII in 1536, 
 seventy-eight Fautes and Abuses of Religion are enume- 
 rated, one of which is that " Synging and saying of mass, 
 matins or even song is but ravyng, howlyng, whistelyng, 
 murmuryng, conjuryng and jogelyng, and the playing on 
 the organys a foolish vanitie." Later, in Elizabeth's 
 reign, many were greatly scandalised at what they called 
 " figurate and operose " music. Loud outcries were made 
 against " curious singing," as they stigmatised it, and the 
 " tossing the psalms from side to side." You can easily 
 see that in this system of counterpoint run mad the words 
 must suffer ; in fact, the words of the discant become a 
 mere " pretence for singing," as Dr. Burney has ingeni- 
 ously called them.^ Of course this music was not easy to 
 sing, and in earlier times, when the method of notation was 
 not so clear as nowadays, singers must have had great 
 difficulty to puzzle it out from the manuscript. I have 
 found an old poem, dating probably as far back as the 
 fourteenth century, which gives a ludicrously doleful ac- 
 count of the woes of a musical pupil. 
 
 Uncomly in cloystre, in coure ful of care, 
 
 I loke as a burdeyne, and listne till my lare ; 
 
 The song of the Ce sol fa does me syken sare, 
 
 And sitte statiand on a song a moneeth or mare. . . . 
 
 I herle at the notes, and heve hem al of herre : 
 
 Alle that me heres, weres that I erre ; 
 
 Of efFanz and elami, ne could I never are; 
 
 I fayle fast in the fa, it files al my fare. 
 
 Yet there ben other notes, sol and ut and la, 
 
 And that froward file, that men clepis fa ; 
 
 1 For instance, in one of Taverner's pare also the words of John Mil- 
 canons the nos (of nostrani) occu- ton's song, 
 pies 16^ bars in slow timej com-
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 39 
 
 Often he does me liken ille, and werkes me ful wa. 
 Might I him never hitten in ton for to ta. . . . 
 Qiian ilke note til other lepes, and makes him a-sawt, 
 That we calls a moyson in ge solventz en hawt ; 
 II hayl were thu boren — gif thu make defawt, 
 Thanne sais oure mayster, " que was ren ne vawt." 
 
 Insomuch as these songs were much sung by children 
 in the great churches in Elizabeth's reign, one trembles to 
 think of the drilling which the poor little wretches must 
 have had to undergo. 
 
 The following doleful complaint (Bright MS., Trans- 
 actions of the Shakspere Society for 18^8) is most ex- 
 pressive : 
 
 Of all the creatures, lesse or moe, 
 We lytle poore boyes abyde much woe. 
 
 , We have a cursyd master, I tell you all for trew ; 
 So cruell as he is was never Turk or Jue. 
 He is the most unhappiest man that ever ye knewe. 
 For to poor syllye boyes he workyth much woe. . . . 
 
 He'plokth us by the nose, he plucth us by the hawes, 
 He plucth us by the eares wyth his most unhapye pawes, 
 And all for this pevysh pryk song, not worth to strawes. 
 That we poore sylye boyes abyde much woe ! 1 . . . 
 
 There is, indeed, a circumstance connected herewith 
 which makes one tremble still more, and quite reconciles 
 one to the nineteenth century, with all its faults. I mean 
 the custom in Elizabeth's time of actually impressing 
 children and carrying them off from their homes for ser- 
 vice in the cathedral choirs. A royal writ signed by 
 
 1 See also the interesting song Long have I been a singing man, in the 
 same volume of the Shakspere Society's transactions.
 
 40 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Elizabeth is preserved which runs thus : " Wee therefore 
 by the tenour of these presents will and require that ye 
 permit and suffer. . . our said servants Thos. Gyles and his 
 deputie or deputies to take up in any cathedral or colle- 
 giate churches and in every other place ... of this our 
 realm of England and Wales suche child or children as he 
 or they shall finde and like of, and the same child . . . for 
 the use and service aforesaid with them ... to bring 
 awaye without anye your lette, contradictions, staye, or 
 interruption to the contrarie " ; and another section of 
 this dreadful instrument charges every one to help these 
 officers in performing their unnatural duty. 
 
 It would be peculiarly appropriate to the present lec- 
 ture if I could enlarge upon the circumstance that it was 
 about the middle of the period we are now discussing 
 that many matters of church music settled themselves 
 which form nowadays an intimate part of our life. In 
 1550 Marbeck published the Book of Common Praier 
 Notes^ which was a notation of the Episcopal Church 
 service in form substantially as we now know it. At this 
 time too began those translations of the Psalms which, in 
 better form, we are accustomed to sing. Following the 
 lead of Clement Marot in France, Sternhold and Hop- 
 kins versified the Psalms ; they were then set to tunes, 
 and in the year 1577 began to be published with the 
 Book of Common Prayer. You are doubtless all familiar 
 with the droning dismalness of these verses of Sternhold 
 and Hopkins. Perhaps you are not so familiar with a 
 versification of the Acts of the Apostles which was begun 
 about this same time by Dr. Christopher Tye, who was 
 one of the great musicians of Elizabeth's time. 
 
 Here are two stanzas from Dr. Tye's version of the 
 fourteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where, 
 luckily, he stopped :
 
 wrjif 
 
 Clement Marot 
 From an old t'liQivTiiii,
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 41 
 
 It chanced in Iconium, 
 As they ofttimes dyd use, 
 Together they into dyd cum 
 The sinagoge of Jues. 
 
 Where they dyd preche and onely seke 
 
 God's grace then to atcheve, 
 
 That they so spake to Jue and Greke 
 
 That many dyd beleve, 
 
 That many dyd beleve. 
 
 The music to which Dr. Tye set these verses was not 
 unHke them to a modern ear. In fact, to the contempo- 
 rary ear his compositions do not seem always to have 
 been agreeable ; for I find it related of him that some- 
 times when he was exploiting his counterpoint on the 
 organ in the chapel of Queen Elizabeth he played pieces 
 which contained — as old Anthony a- Wood says — " much 
 music^ but little delight to the ear," and when thereupon 
 the Queen sent " the verger to tell him that he played out 
 of tune, he sent word that her ears were out of tune." 
 
 Much of the psalmody of the Protestant churches 
 was also brought into form and collected at this time. 
 Marot in France had partly versified the Psalms ; this 
 version was completed by Theodore Beza, and Calvin 
 caused it to be set to easy tunes and published with the 
 Genevan catechism, for the purpose of being sung in the 
 churches. Many of these " easy tunes " are still found in 
 the hymn-books of the present day, under one and an- 
 other name. They are sometimes noble melodies, and 
 we should associate with them the names of some com- 
 posers who either wrote them or rescued them from 
 oblivion, particularly Claude Gondimel, Louis Bourgeois, 
 Guillaume Franc, and Claude Lejeune. It must be said, 
 however, that the psalm-tunes which were sung in Shak-
 
 42 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 spere's time were not always strictly orthodox in their 
 origin, as indeed some of the masses written abroad were 
 said to be founded upon tunes which were very " secu- 
 lar." Many good souls were scandalised at hearing sacred 
 words set to melodies which appeared originally in con- 
 nection with very profane verses. In fact, I should judge 
 this had become a common joke on the Puritans, from a 
 remark made by the Clown in Shakspere's Winter s Tale. 
 You will remember I cited a part of the Clown's speech 
 in Act IV, Scene II of this play in my last lecture for 
 another purpose — to prove that the four-and-twenty 
 sheep-shearers were all able to sing in part-songs. The 
 Clown says the four-and-twenty sheep-shearers are " three- 
 man song-men all, and very good ones ; but they are 
 most of them means and bases ; but one puritan among 
 theniy and he sings psalms to hornpipes^ 
 
 Perhaps the sturdy Puritans were only carrying out 
 the doctrine attributed to Luther, who was in favour of 
 impressing these secular melodies into the church service 
 upon the principle that he saw no reason why the devil 
 should have all the good tunes. 
 
 I find, however, another allusion in Shakspere that 
 brings vividly before us a noble old psalm-tune of his 
 time which is very familiar to all our modern ears. In 
 Merry Wives of Windsor^ Act II, Scene I, where Mistress 
 Page is discussing Jack Falstaff's letter with her sparkling 
 gossip Mrs. Ford, the latter lady says : " I would have sworn 
 his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words ; 
 but they do no more adhere and keep place together than 
 the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves." The 
 tune of this Hundredth Psalm was that majestic melody 
 which we all now associate with the Doxology, " Praise 
 God from Whom all Blessings Flow," and it would 
 seem, from Mistress Ford's use of it, to have been as
 
 / 
 
 Theodore Beza
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 43 
 
 strongly placed in the popular esteem in the sixteenth 
 century as in the nineteenth. I find it associated with the 
 name of Claude Lejeune in the early collections, but only 
 as arranger, not as author. 
 
 I must not leave the subject of the religious music of 
 this time without at least mentioning the names of Thomas 
 Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, and William Bird, who, along 
 with Dr. John Bull and Christopher Tye, cultivated the 
 art with great learning and devotion during this period. 
 
 In coming now to speak of the secular music of 
 Shakspere's time, we find the madrigal, the catch, and 
 the ballad standing out as the most prominent vocal 
 forms of it, and I must hasten to illustrate these. 
 
 To begin with the madrigal, nothing seems more 
 difficult than to settle the etymology of the name. One 
 writer has derived it from the Italian mandra^ a sheep- 
 fold, because it was usually set to words of a pastoral 
 nature \ but this flouts all principles of etymology and 
 seems absurd. Another, with as little reason, has derived 
 it from the name of a town in Portugal. The original 
 madrigal seems to have been a song of the same nature 
 with the villanella, or country-song ; it was usually 
 built upon a proverb or common saying. And this sug- 
 gests to my mind the most natural derivation of the word, 
 — from madre^ Spanish for mother, — upon the idea of 
 the madrigal being at first a mother-song, or nursery- 
 song, just as you will presently see the songs of our own 
 Mother Goose appearing as the words of popular catches 
 in Shakspere's time. Whatever be the derivation of the 
 word, the madrigal was the most popular form of serious 
 secular music in Shakspere's time, and somehow it seems 
 to me as if the genius of our Elizabethan musical com- 
 posers ran this way with a special leaning ; for of all the 
 compositions of that time the madrigals seem more inter-
 
 44 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 esting to a modern ear than any others I have seen. The 
 structure of the madrigal was peculiar. After what was 
 said of the Cuckoo Song, — which is a canon in the uni- 
 son, with the addition of a pes, or burden, — you will 
 easily understand from a slight illustration how the mad- 
 rigal differed from it. Here are the opening phrases of a 
 beautiful madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, dating from 1597. 
 It was written to that quaint-measured poem attributed to 
 Shakspere, in the Passionate Pilgrim, which you will all 
 remember from the first lines : 
 
 My flocks feed not, 
 My ewes breed not, 
 My rams speed not. 
 
 All is amisse. 
 Love is dying. 
 Faith's defying. 
 Heart's denying, 
 
 Causer of this. 
 
 - r^-f 
 
 -<9- 
 
 ■a- 
 
 'f9- 
 
 j2- 
 
 3:- 
 
 -*-t 
 
 x=x 
 
 -<s*- 
 
 --t- 
 
 --^- 
 
 -&- 
 
 ■m^ 
 
 -G- 
 
 -^-— 
 
 -.x~ 
 
 -5^- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Where, you observe, we have not a canon in the uni- 
 son, as in the Cuckoo Song, — that is, one voice singing 
 exactly the same notes as the other, at definite intervals 
 of rest, — but a partial canon of a different sort ; the 
 second voice, you see, sings the same melody with the 
 first two bars, but in a different key, and then passes off 
 into a new phrase of its own, making a kind of echo, or 
 report, of the first voice ; again the third voice comes in
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 45 
 
 here with the same melody of the first two bars of the 
 first voice, only this time neither in unison nor in a dif- 
 ferent key, but in the octave below — thus making a 
 different kind of echo, or report, from the other two voices. 
 And so it runs on throughout the madrigal, a little phrase 
 cunningly reappearing in some new form from each voice 
 here and there, like birds answering each other in a wood. 
 In fact, Samuel Daniel, in a song in one of his plays 
 which I quoted to you in another lecture, has beautifully 
 applied the word "report" — which was a technical term 
 to denote this answering and echoing of voices in a mad- 
 rigal — to the pipings of birds in a wood : 
 
 One bird reports unto another 
 In the fall of silver showers. 
 
 The first English madrigals appear to have been written 
 by the William Bird whom I mentioned just now. For- 
 eign madrigals, set to Italian words, had appeared before, 
 and it seemed to be doubted for a time whether English 
 words would go to madrigals ; but this doubt was soon 
 solved by the appearance of successful madrigals written 
 to English translations of Italian poems, and then to 
 original English poems. They now began to multiply 
 very rapidly. Perhaps the most notable collection of 
 them was a volume of madrigals, all in honour of Queen 
 Elizabeth, published at London in 1601, with the title of 
 The Triumphs of Oriana. Under the pseudonym of Ori- 
 ana, which is the name of the heroine in the famous old 
 romance of Amadis de Gaul^ Elizabeth was celebrated in a 
 thousand devices of melodious flattery. Indeed, the book 
 is said to have been a happy thought of some one about 
 the Queen, who caused it to be gotten up to divert her 
 mind after the sorrowful death of Essex. It will serve to
 
 46 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 place before your eyes at one view the most noted writers 
 of madrigals in Shakspere's time if I write the names of 
 the composers who contributed to The Triumphs of Oriana, 
 These were Michael Este, Daniel Norcom, Mundy, Gib- 
 bons, Bennet, Hilton, Marston, Carleton, Holmes, Nich- 
 olson, Tomkins, Cavendish, Cobbold, Morley, Farmer, 
 Wilbye, Hunt, Weelkes, Milton, Kirbye, Jones, Lisley, 
 and Johnson. Of these composers Thomas Weelkes and 
 John Wilbye are particularly celebrated as madrigal- 
 makers/ 
 
 No one can speak of the word madrigal without think- 
 ing of the exquisite use which Marlowe has made of it in 
 his world-famous song. Come live with me and be my love. 
 In the play I just now quoted, this song is comically men- 
 tioned by Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, where he 
 comes with Simple, looking for " Master Caius," in the 
 first scene of the third act. " Pless my soul ! " cries the 
 Welshman, " how full of cholers I am, and trembling of 
 mind ! " and then, to calm himself, he sings a verse of 
 Marlowe's song : 
 
 By shallow rivers to whose falls 
 Melodious birds make madrigals, etc. 
 
 Of the lighter kinds of secular music, the catch was the 
 most popular, and we find many allusions to it in Shak- 
 spere's plays. I briefly explained in my last lecture that 
 in the catch proper there was some trick or catch in the 
 words, as in that famous one of Calcott's where the first 
 voice sings " Ah, how Sophia," and the next catches this 
 with the phrase " A house afire " ; which in the rapid pro- 
 
 1 It is, by the way, a minute con- Fidessa, beginning with 
 
 tribution to the little we know So soone as peeping Lucifer, Aurora's starre, 
 
 of Bartholomew Griffin that the appear in one of these collections, 
 
 last six lines of his sonnet to set to music by John Farmer.
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 47 
 
 nunciation of that time would sound much Hke " Ah, how 
 Sophia." The round, however, is often confounded with j 
 the catch ; musically they do not differ, both the round 
 and the catch being varieties of the canon in the unison 
 illustrated by the upper parts of the Cuckoo Song. You 
 are all probably familiar with the round ; when I was a 
 boy we used to sing a very familiar one which began, 
 " Scotland's burning, Scotland's burning, fire, fire, fire, 
 fire, cast on water, cast on water," etc. It is interesting 
 to find among the rounds and catches of Shakspere's time 
 some early forms of the nursery-rimes which appear in 
 our Mother Goose. For example, in Act IV, Scene I, of 
 Ta ming qfj]j£_Khr£W^ where Grumio has been sent ahead 
 to Petruchio's country house to make a fire before he and 
 his bride arrive, presently Petruchio's other servant, Cur- 
 tis, comes in, and, the fire being built, calls out to Grumio, 
 " There's fire ready ; and therefore, good Grumio, the 
 news." ^ 
 
 " Why," says Grumio, " Jack^ hoy ! ho ! boy ! and as 
 much news as thou wilt." This Jack^ boy ! ho ! boy ! is 
 unintelligible until you know that these are the first words 
 of a popular catch in Shakspere's time which ran as follows : 
 
 Jack, boy, ho, boy, — news ! 
 The cat is in the well. 
 Let us ring now for her knell. 
 Ding, ding, dong, bell. 
 
 In which you recognise the rime of Mother Goose 
 
 which runs : 
 
 Ding, dong, bell ; 
 
 The cat's in the well ; 
 
 Who put her in ? 
 
 Little Johnny Green. 
 
 Who pulled her out ? 
 
 Little Johnny Stout.
 
 48 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 It is rather a curious coincidence that when I had written 
 thus far in my lecture the other day I happened to turn 
 to this scene between Grumio and Curtis in Taming of the 
 Shrew for another purpose, when I came upon an allusion 
 I had never before observed, to the very round which I 
 had just mentioned as being commonly sung in my boy- 
 hood, the " Scotland's burning, fire, fire, cast on water," 
 etc. A few lines before Grumio flouts Curtis with his 
 Jack, boy ! ho ! boy ! Grumio, half frozen by the cold, is 
 alone, trying to get a fire which he has to see started before 
 his master Petruchio arrives with the bride. As he is 
 shouting forth his complaints of the cold, Curtis, his fel- 
 low-servant, enters with the exclamation, " Who is that 
 calls so coldly ? " 
 
 Gru. A piece of ice : if thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from 
 my shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and 
 my neck. A fire, good Curtis. 
 
 Curt. Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio ? 
 
 Gru. O, ay, Curtis, ay : and therefore fire, fire ; cast on no 
 water. 
 
 T\{\s fire, fire ; cast on no water, is evidently a phrase out 
 of the round, Scotland's burning. 
 
 Two notable collections of catches of this period were 
 called, one Pammelia ^ — which is Greek for All the Melo- 
 dies — and another Deuteromelia, or Second Melodies, being 
 a sort of second part to Pammelia. The words to these 
 catches consist of all manner of sense and nonsense. For 
 
 1 Pammelia (Pan-melia) : •' Mu- acceptable. London : printed by 
 
 sick's Miscellanie, or mixed vari- William Barley for R. B. and H. 
 
 eties of pleasant Roundelays and W., and are to be sold at the Spread 
 
 delightful Catches of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Eagle at the great north door of St. 
 
 8, 9, 10 parts in one. None so Paul's, 1609. To the well-disposed 
 
 ordinary as musical, none so musi- to read, and to the merry-disposed 
 
 cal as not to all very pleasing and to sing."
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 49 
 
 instance, one — and a rather ghastly one which I doubt 
 not ladies will place in the category of nonsense — was in 
 the nature of an epitaph and expressed the following atro- 
 cious sentiments : 
 
 Here lies a woman, who can deny it : 
 
 She died in peace tho' she lived unquiet ; 
 
 Her husband prays, if o'er her grave you walk. 
 
 You would tread soft, — for if she wake, she'll talk. 
 
 Another, which contained some good sonorous vowels for 
 roaring, was this ; 
 
 Nose, nose, nose, nose, 
 Who gave thee that jolly red nose ? 
 Sinamont and ginger, nutmegs and cloves. 
 And that gave me my jolly red nose. 
 
 Which f ecalls that famous song, in the nature of a catch, 
 sung by lago in Othello^ Act III, Scene III : 
 
 Then let me the canakin clink, clink ; 
 And let me the canakin clink : 
 
 A soldier's a man ; 
 
 And life's but a span ; 
 Why then let a soldier drink.^ 
 
 Another catch, or round, which might go well enough 
 with this was to these words : 
 
 O metaphysical Tobacco ! 
 Fetched as far as from Morocco : 
 
 Thy searching fume 
 
 Exhales the rheum, 
 O metaphysical Tobacco ! 
 
 We find the name of " John Cooke " appearing in
 
 so SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 more than one round ; as, for example, in this one from 
 the Deutero7nelia collection : 
 
 I. C. U. B. A. K. (-nave) 
 And evermore will be : 
 Though John Cooke he says nay, 
 O what a Knave is he. 
 
 The true nature of the catch as distinguished from the 
 round in general is very well indicated by a couplet quoted 
 in the preface to Pammelia : 
 
 Mirth and music to the cunning catcher [i.e., catch-singer] , 
 Derth and physic to the coney-catcher — 
 
 where, besides the quaint rhymes of mirth and music to 
 derth and physic^ the catch lies in the assimilation o^ coney- 
 catcher to cunning catcher in rapid utterance. This preface 
 further affords a specimen of catch-translation in interpret- 
 ing the Latin, qui canere potest^ canat (i.e., whoever can 
 sing, let him sing) by catch that catch can^ as who should 
 say, whoever can sing, let him sing catches. This Catch 
 that Catch Can was the title of a collection of catches pub- 
 lished by John Hilton in 1562. 
 
 I must leave the subject of ballads — which were 
 spelled " ballets " in this time, or fa-las, as they were 
 often called — in order to say something, if only of the 
 briefest, about the instrumental music of Shakspere's time. 
 It is proper, before quite abandoning the subject of vocal 
 music, to mention that a favourite mode of it in Shakspere's 
 time — and a curious one to us, I fancy — was that of 
 musical declamation accompanied by an instrument. 
 This was the recitativo accompagnato of the Italians, some-
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 51 
 
 times called musica narrativa, or music in which a story 
 could be told. Its introducer in England, and most emi- 
 nent illustrator, was Nicholas Lanier. For example, a cele- 
 brated masque was written by Ben Jonson and Nicholas 
 Lanier to be performed in the style of recitativo accompa- 
 gnato. Not only was the music of this masque written by 
 Lanier, but he performed the vocal part of it, reciting the 
 poem in the musica narrativa way, with great effect. Lanier 
 did not confine himself, however, to the recitative, but 
 wrote many other musical compositions which appear in 
 the later collections of the time. Besides his name, it 
 would not be proper for me to omit mention of those of 
 Cooper (who after a visit to Italy styled himself Coperario) 
 and Ferabasco. 
 
 Secular instrumental music was usually one of the 
 following three sorts. Where it was concerted for orches- 
 tral instruments, it was often the parts of part-songs merely 
 played instead of being sung ; as indicated in the title of 
 one of William Bird's publications, printed in 1611: 
 Psalms, Songs, and Sonets; some solemne, others joyfully 
 framed to the life of the words, fit for voices or viols, of i^,a^, 
 5, and 6 parts. 
 
 The music for the virginals was usually a melody of 
 some sort — a dance-tune or old air — played by one 
 hand, while the other executed all manner of endless vari- 
 ations upon it. Several of these compositions of contem- 
 porary writers remain to us, notably a collection of them 
 in what is known as ^een Elizabeth's Virginal Book, and 
 they show passages of such difficulty as must have required 
 great technic for their execution upon the instruments of 
 that time. 
 
 Shakspere's well-known sonnet on the virginals comes 
 in most appropriately here :
 
 52 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 CXXVIII '- 
 r. 
 
 How oft when thou, my music, music play'st 
 Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds 
 With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st 
 The wiry concord that mine ear confounds. 
 Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap 
 To kiss the tender inward of thy hand. 
 Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap. 
 At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand ? 
 To be so tickled they would change their state 
 And situation with those dancing chips 
 O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait. 
 Making dead wood more blest than living lips. 
 Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, 
 Give them thy fingers, me thy lips, to kiss. 
 
 A third sort of instrumental music — and perhaps the 
 most highly esteemed, as such — is indicated in the title of 
 a publication by John Dowland, one of the most cele- 
 brated musicians of this period. This was called Lachri- 
 mae ; or Seaven Teares figured in seaven passionate Pavans ; 
 with divers other Pavans^ Galiards, and Almands^ set forth 
 for the Lute, Viols, or Violins, in five parts. These dances, 
 the Pavan, the Galliard, etc., are highly characteristic of 
 Shakspere's time, and merit some description. 
 
 The Pavan was a slow dance, always in \ time, or 
 at any rate common time, and was so called from pavo, a 
 peacock ; the significance of the name being that the 
 Pavan was a stately measure, and the spreading of the 
 long trains of the ladies, or of the long gowns in which it 
 was danced by noblemen, was like the spreading of the 
 peacock's tail. 
 
 It was customary after the slow movement of the Pa- 
 van to follow it up with the livelier dance known as the
 
 Title-page of Dowland's " First Booke of Songes "
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME S3 
 
 Galliard. Selden, in his "Table-talk," complains: "In 
 Queen Elizabeth's time gravity and state were kept up ; at 
 a solemn dancing, first you had the grave measures ; then 
 the corantos and Galliards ; and at length to Frenchmore 
 and the cushion-dance." Here, you observe, the order was 
 first, the Pavan, a slow and stately dance, in common 
 time ; then the Galliard, a liveher dance, in ^ (triple) 
 time ; then the cushion-dance, a still livelier measure, so 
 called from the cushion which in one of the figures had to 
 be brought for the dancer to kneel on. It will be in- 
 teresting to musical people to remark here that the 
 succession of movements in a sonata is supposed to be 
 connected with this practice of following up a dance of 
 slow time with one of faster movement, and the like ; an 
 idea which receives support when we think how much of 
 the instrumental music of this time consisted of these 
 dance, tunes, or of what were called "fantasias" upon 
 them. 
 
 In the Galliard, which thus followed the Pavan like a 
 comedy after a tragedy, the dancer would make four steps 
 forward, with the right and left foot alternately, and then 
 spring into the air. This characteristic caper of the dance 
 is mentioned by Shakspere: in Act I, Scene III, o{ Twelfth 
 Night, Sir Toby is unmercifully quizzing Sir Andrew 
 Aguecheek, who has just been bragging with his usual 
 stupidity upon his marvellous strange delight in " masques 
 and revels." Says Sir Toby : 
 
 What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight? 
 
 Sir And. Faith, I can cut a caper. 
 
 Sir Toby. And I can cut the mutton to 't. 
 
 Sir And. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong 
 as any man in lUyria. 
 
 Sir Toby. Wherefore are these things hid ? wherefore have 
 these gifts a curtain before them ? are they like to take dust, like
 
 54 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Mistress Mall's picture ? why dost thou not go to church in a 
 galliard and come home in a coranto ? . . . What dost thou mean ? 
 Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by the excellent 
 constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a 
 galliard. 
 
 Sir John Davies, in his poem The Orchestra^ which is a 
 charming description of the dance in general and of many 
 dances in particular, describes the Galliard as 
 
 A swift and wandering dance. 
 With passages uncertain to and fro, . . . 
 With lofty turns and caprioles in the air 
 Which to the lusty tunes accordeth fair. 
 
 A Galliard by John Dowland called the " Frog Gal- 
 liard" — I suppose from this jumping feature, or capriole, 
 as Sir John Davies calls it — became a great favourite in 
 Shakspere's time, and did duty not only as a dance tune 
 but as a song to which words were written. It was, in- 
 deed, a common practice then to adopt words to old tunes, 
 instead of writing music to words, as is now nearly always 
 done. Butler speaks of the " infinite multitude of ballads 
 with country-dances fitted into them." 
 
 This John Dowland whom I have just mentioned 
 is the famous lute-player referred to in the sonnet 
 printed as No. VI, in The Passionate Pilgrim^ for Shak- 
 spere's : 
 
 If music and sweet poetry agree, 
 As they must needs, the sister and the brother. 
 Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, 
 Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other. 
 Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
 Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; 
 Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such 
 As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
 
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 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME SS 
 
 Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound 
 
 That Phcebus' lute, the queen of music, makes ; 
 
 And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned 
 
 Whenas himself to singing he betakes. 
 
 One god is god of both, as poets feign; 
 
 One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. 
 
 A later criticism has determined this sonnet to belong, 
 not to Shakspere, but to Robert Nicholson. 
 
 Dowland seems from contemporary accounts to have 
 been an agreeable player on the lute, and his work just 
 now mentioned " sets forth " the tunes in it for the lute, 
 as well as for viols, etc. The manner of writing music for 
 the lute was peculiar. The tuning of the instrument 
 {accordatura) was as follows : 
 
 Base 
 C 
 
 Tenor 
 F 
 
 • 
 
 Counter-tenor Great Mean 
 B flat D 
 
 \ 
 
 Small Mean 
 G 
 
 Minikin, Treble, or Chanterelle 
 CC 
 
 Each string was represented by a line drawn across the 
 page, making a staff of six lines ; and the frets (of which 
 there were eight) were distinguished by letters a^ b^ r, etc.; 
 so that a letter a placed on the upper line meant that the 
 finger was to be placed on that string at the first fret; b on 
 the next line would mean place the finger on the tenor 
 string at the second fret ; and so on. This method of 
 notation was called " tablature," and music for the lute 
 was spoken of as being written "in tablature." 
 
 Dowland's pieces, you observe, were also arranged for 
 viols. These viols, which have since grown into such 
 commanding importance as the very foundation of the 
 orchestra, were just then beginning their development into 
 the noble instruments of modern times, though no one
 
 56 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 foresaw those marvellous capacities upon the strings with 
 which we are so familiar. It was the fashion in Shak- 
 spere's time for a gentleman to have a " chest of viols," 
 ^including instruments of various sizes, from the little or 
 treble violin through the larger sizes to the viola di gamba 
 and violoncello or bass viol. The viola di gamba is men- 
 tioned in Twelfth Night by our friend Sir Toby, who in 
 describing Sir Andrew Aguecheek to Maria tells her he 
 has three thousand ducats a year, " plays o' the viol-de- 
 gamboys, and speaks three or four languages word for word 
 without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature." 
 This viola di gamba was so called from the Italian word 
 gamba^ which you recognise as the same with the French 
 jambe^ leg ; and was so called because it was held between 
 the knees in playing. 
 
 In these arrangements of Dowland's for viols we 
 begin to see the faint foreshadowing of that enormous 
 development of concerted instrumental music which has 
 resulted in the grand orchestra of modern times and the 
 stupendous works of Haydn and Beethoven and Wagner. 
 There were in those days what were called " consorts " of 
 music ; but aside from these concerted pieces such as 
 Dowland's for viols, and others where the parts of part- 
 songs were played instead of being sung, the main Idea in 
 assembling instruments seems to have been simply to 
 make that " loud noise " which has been associated with 
 joy and festivity since, and indeed before, the Psalmist. I 
 find that Queen Elizabeth had in her pay a number of 
 musicians playing different instruments ; and perhaps I 
 cannot better sum up the bare outline of instrumental 
 music in Shakspere's time, which I have tried to eke out 
 here and there in these two lectures, than by giving the 
 list of her musicians as they appear upon the royal pay-roll 
 which has been preserved. There were then : i6 Trum-
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 57 
 
 peters, 2 Luters, 1 Harpers, 1 Singers, i Rebeck-player, 
 6 Sackbuts [the sackbut was a wind instrument with a 
 slide, the progenitor of the modern trombone], 8 "Vyalls," 
 I Bagpipe, 9 " Minstrilles," 3 Dromslades, 2 Flute-play- 
 ers, 2 Players on the Virginals. 
 
 Three other sorts of dances I cannot omit to mention, 
 though in the briefest way. These were the Coranto, or 
 current-traverse, which seems to have been an Italian form 
 of country-dance, somewhat like what we call the reel, 
 where two lines are formed and dancers advance from the 
 ends to meet and execute various figures in the middle ; 
 the Paspy (i.e., passepied^ or pass-foot) or Passamezzo, 
 which seems to have been a sort of rapid minuet ; and the 
 Morris-dance, which is commonly (though, I think, on 
 doubtful grounds) supposed to be Moorish-dance, and to 
 have been brought from Spain. Laneham, a writer who 
 gives us some minute descriptions of matters in the per- 
 sonal^ household of Queen Elizabeth, writing in 1590, 
 mentions a " lively Moris-dauns according to the auncient 
 manner ; six dauncers, Mawd-Marion and the fool." It 
 seems from other authorities that the Morris-dancers fol- 
 lowed a leader, guiding their movements by his, somewhat 
 as in the modern german. 
 
 In my first lecture on this subject I gave you several 
 citations from Shakspere's plays to show how he not only 
 loved music with sincere passion, but how often he wrote 
 passages which indicate gleams of insight into its mysteries. 
 I cannot better close this account of music in Shakspere's 
 time than by reading a sonnet in which he sends a keen 
 shaft of inquiry into a mysterious matter lying deep in 
 music as in all art. You remember Jessica's saying, which 
 I read : " I am never merry when I hear sweet music." 
 
 This sonnet advances a little farther and moots the 
 question, Why is it, if music makes us sad, that we culti-
 
 58 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 vate it ? Perhaps it has occurred to all of you to ask your- 
 selves why you should go eagerly to see a tragedy on the 
 stage which harrows up your feelings, in apparent opposi- 
 tion to those first principles of ordinary existence which 
 lead us to avoid — instead of seeking — that which gives 
 us pain. Shakspere, as I said, moots this subtle question 
 in the first part of the sonnet ; but he then leaves it, and 
 proceeds to make an argument out of musical concords to 
 induce his young friend to leave his single state and, as it 
 were, make himself a chord, instead of a single tone, by 
 marrying. The first phrase, " Music to hear," is an apos- 
 trophe to his friend equivalent to " O thou whose voice is 
 music to hear." 
 
 VIII 
 
 Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly ? 
 
 Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. 
 
 Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly ? 
 
 Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy ? 
 
 If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, 
 
 By unions married, do offend thine ear, 
 
 They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds 
 
 In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear. 
 
 Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, 
 
 Strikes each in each by mutual ordering ; 
 
 Resembling Sire and child and happy mother, 
 
 Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing : 
 
 Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one. 
 
 Sings this to thee, " thou single wilt prove none." 
 
 ,And now let us ascend, in conclusion, to a more general 
 view which goes to the root of the whole matter. From 
 the music of Shakspere's time let us pass to the music of 
 Shakspere's life. 
 
 Consider for a moment the singular fact that the prin-
 
 THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 59 
 
 ciple upon which all music depends is the principle of 
 opposition, ot antagonism. The least glance at the physi- 
 cal basis of sound will recall this clearly to your minds. 
 Here is a stretched string. As stretched, it is exerting 
 a force in this direction. If I pull it aside, disturb 
 it, — cross it, as it were, and trouble it, — with a force 
 acting athwart its own direction, it then, and then only, 
 gives forth its proper tone, makes its rightful music. 
 This principle is general throughout the physics of tone. 
 The vibration which produces a musical sound is always 
 set up by two forces, the one acting athwart the other. 
 
 Now it is not difficult to carry this idea over from 
 the physical into the moral world. If it is a fancy, it 
 is certainly not an unprofitable one, that a harmonious 
 life, like a musical tone, comes out of opposition. Be- 
 tween each man, and the world about him, there is a 
 never-ceasing antagonism. It is an antagonism which re- 
 sults from the very constitution of things. Just so far as 
 I am I, and you are you, so far must we differ ; the mys- 
 terious course of nature, which so often says No to our 
 TeSy with its death and its pain and its other mysterious 
 phenomena — this joins with the force of each individual 
 to oppose the force of each other individual. Everywhere 
 there is antagonism, opposition, thwarting. No person 
 who listens at this moment need go out of his own expe- 
 rience for a single day to find it. 
 
 Well, then, the problem of life may be said to be to 
 control these moral vibrations which are set up by our 
 troubles and crosses into those ordered beats which give 
 the musical tone, rather than those confused and irregular 
 pulses which result in mere unmusical noise. One man's 
 life is like the mere creaking of a wheel, the binding of a 
 saw, the griding of bough against bough, — mere unorgan- 
 ised noise, — while another man's is like that clear and
 
 6o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 perfect tone of music which results from regular vibrations 
 produced by two steady forces upon a proper material. 
 
 Now I find it delightful to think that our dear Master 
 Shakspere was one of the musical tones, and that he 
 wrested this music out of the most fearful antagonisms. 
 The loving study of Shakspere during the last twenty 
 years has developed what seems to me the certainty that 
 about midway of his career some terrible cloud came over 
 his life which for a time darkened his existence with the 
 very blackness of despair. If we divide his career into 
 three periods, we find that to his first period hQlong Love's 
 Labour s Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, and all the come- 
 dies ; here, however, in the second period, about 1601— 
 1602 and on, we find him writing those murky and bitter 
 tragedies of Hamlet, of Lear, of Macbeth, of Timon. His 
 antagonism has come, and has plucked him rudely out of 
 his position. 
 
 But at last marvellously he conquers it, and orders it 
 to sweet music. Here in the third period we find him 
 writing Cymbeline, Winter s Tale, Tempest, Henry VIII 
 — plays all breathing of reunion after absence, of recon- 
 ciliation, of forgiveness of injuries, of heavenly grace. So 
 he draws his oppositions to harmony ; so he converts his 
 antagonisms into ravishing sounds. 
 
 Permit me to hope, therefore, that when life shall come 
 to you, as the tutor of Katharina came to her, and shall 
 hand you your lute with frets on it, you will not cry with 
 the Shrew, " Frets, call you them ? I'll fume with them," 
 but will look upon the frets as simply the conditions of 
 harmony, and will govern your troubles to music.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME — I 
 
 N carrying out the programme laid 
 down at the beginning, I come in the 
 present lecture to discuss the Domestic 
 Life of Shakspere's Time. It is my 
 wish to make the treatment of this 
 subject centre directly upon Shakspere 
 himself. I desire to present not only 
 the domestic life of his time, but that 
 part of it which went on about the low-ceilinged and large- 
 raftered house in Henley Street, Stratford, where Shak- 
 spere was born, or in the quiet Warwickshire fields and 
 pleasant lanes betwixt Shakspere's home and Anne Hatha- 
 way's cottage a mile distant, or in the statelier rooms and 
 park-grounds of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote near by, 
 or in the magnificent castle of Kenilworth, which was only 
 a few miles distant and in which Leicester gave such royal 
 entertainment to Queen Elizabeth in the summer of 1575. 
 All these places connect themselves with the personal his- 
 tory of William Shakspere ; and I shall endeavour to bring 
 them before you, during my two lectures, in some such famil- 
 iar way as will add to those features of Shakspere's person- 
 ality which we have hitherto been endeavouring to piece out 
 
 61
 
 62 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 from his works. Observe that these spots I have men- 
 tioned in Stratford and the neighbourhood yield us exam- 
 ples of all the sorts of life in England. Working in the 
 fields about Stratford was many a rustic who might serve 
 as a model for Touchstone or for Audrey ; hardly a sum- 
 mer's day would pass that the boy Shakspere, strolling 
 about the country lanes, would not meet some tinker who 
 would at least suggest that profound rogue and merry 
 soul, Autolycus. Here we have the lowest class of Eng- 
 lish domestic life. Again, in the house of William Shak- 
 spere's father, John Shakspere, in Henley Street, and in 
 the cottage of Richard Hathaway, we have the life of the 
 tradesman, the comfortable burgess, the alderman, — for 
 Shakspere's father was alderman of Stratford before his 
 reverses began, — and of the substantial yeoman. Again, in 
 the manor of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charlecote we are pre- 
 sented with the mode of existence of the English country 
 gentleman, a grade higher than the middle class. " Gen- 
 tleman " in those days had, as you all remember, a much 
 more specialised meaning than in these : it was a pleasant 
 thing to be able to write one's name Bartholomew Griffin^ 
 Gent., or Samuel Daniel, Gent., and we find our master not 
 disdaining to see his name as William Shakspere, Gentleman, 
 after he had gone up to London, and had become not only 
 a popular playwright, but a man of substance, with interest 
 in the Blackfriars and the Globe theatres and with invest- 
 ments in real estate. Lastly, at Kenilworth Shakspere 
 might have seen when he was a boy the very highest phase 
 of English life — not only that of the nobility but that of 
 royalty itself. Perhaps it will interest you if I devote a 
 moment at this point to showing exactly how it is that this 
 castle of Kenilworth connects itself with Shakspere's exis- 
 tence. There is no eye-evidence that Shakspere was ever 
 at Kenilworth ; but a very pretty piece of circumstantial
 
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 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 63 
 
 testimony to the fact comes out by comparing a certain 
 passage in Shakspere's Midsummer Night's Dream with cer- 
 tain events which are known to have taken place at Kenil- 
 worth. The passage is that beautiful vision which Oberon 
 relates to Puck in Scene II of Act II, Oberon and 
 Titania have been disputing the possession of the Indian 
 boy, and have just parted, after such a gentle and airy tiff 
 as might be supposed to take place sometimes between a 
 fairy husband and wife. Oberon, resolving to wreak a 
 fantastic revenge upon Titania, wishes to get the mad- 
 doting flower called love-in-idleness, for the purpose of 
 dropping its juice on Titania's eyes. Calling Puck to him, 
 he relates how it happened that this flower acquired its 
 marvellous virtue of causing any one upon whose eyelids its 
 juice was laid to love the next live creature that should be 
 beheld, no matter how monstrous : 
 
 My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou remember'st 
 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 
 And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, 
 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath. 
 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres. 
 
 To hear the sea-maid's music. 
 
 Puck. I remember. 
 
 Obe. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not. 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal throned by the west, 
 And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow. 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon, 
 And the imperial votaress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
 
 64 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Whereupon the erring shaft of Cupid fell upon a little 
 flower, turned it from white to purple, and endowed it with 
 its marvellous powers. 
 
 Now it so happens that this passage describes, with an 
 exquisite mixture of fact and allegory, a series of events 
 which took place at Kenilworth some fifteen or twenty 
 years before. In the summer of the year 1575 Qvieen 
 Elizabeth came down from London to visit Leicester, who 
 was then in the very height of his ambitious purposes, 
 and in particular was moving heaven and earth to win the 
 hand of the Queen herself in marriage. He entertained 
 his royal mistress in a series of pageants which were so 
 magnificent and elaborate as to give them a supreme 
 place even in that reign of glorious festivities. The 
 chroniclers of the period have described these pageants in 
 full ; and among them was one which Shakspere is evi- 
 dently describing in the passage quoted — when, for the 
 entertainment of Queen Bess, Leicester had caused to come 
 over a sheet of water in his park a figure on a dolphin's 
 back, singing ; and inasmuch as Leicester was all this time 
 making the most vigorous love to Elizabeth, — who ap- 
 pears in this passage as the "fair vestal throned by the west," 
 — and as she escaped his toils and passed on " in maiden 
 meditation, fancy-free," you can imagine the grateful plea- 
 sure with which the Queen would have had all this scene 
 thus vividly recalled to her by Shakspere ; for the Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream was doubtless acted before the Queen, — 
 possibly written for that special purpose, — and Shakspere 
 probably anticipated in writing this speech of Oberon's the 
 delight with which her mind would recur to those " princely 
 pleasures of Kenilworth " which marked the heyday of her 
 life and of Leicester's brilliancy. 
 
 Now if, as I say, Shakspere witnessed these royal 
 masques at Kenilworth, — as well might have happened,
 
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 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 65 
 
 for he was then eleven years old, and Kenilvvorth was 
 close by Stratford, — we will have discovered, as I said, 
 points in the immediate neighbourhood of Shakspere's 
 home where he could have seen every phase of English 
 life, from that of the tramp and the tinker and the clown, 
 through that of the burgess and the country gentleman, up 
 to the court's and its brilliant queen's. 
 
 I shall, then, set forth all these surroundings of Shak- 
 spere's life in the most vivid way I can, and shall recur 
 with detail to the environment I have just now rapidly 
 sketched. 
 
 I have woven a little romance which I shall read, in 
 which, taking Shakspere as a boy in Stratford, I endeavour 
 to picture English life in his time by tracing some passages 
 in his own existence which I have made out of such facts 
 as I could gather regarding sixteenth-century existence, 
 only using my own fancy just enough to connect these 
 facts with Shakspere and with one another. 
 
 But I wish to bring this man's life before you from all 
 possible points of view ; and with that purpose, only as- 
 suring you that in the end you will find all converging 
 quite legitimately upon the subject, I beg to devote this 
 present lecture to two matters which will serve to give 
 depth and foundation to what might otherwise degenerate 
 into trivial details. These are, on the one hand, those 
 great events in the world's history which happened just 
 previous to and during Shakspere's time and which in a 
 thousand ways reacted upon and cropped out in all the 
 domestic life of his period: against which, on the other 
 hand, I wish to set those inner spiritual events which 
 took place deep within the soul of Shakspere, which went 
 on refining and deepening his character, and which made 
 him a wonderfully wiser and sweeter man when he re- 
 turned to Stratford about 1610 or 1612 than he was when
 
 66 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 he left it, some twenty-five years before, a youth, with all 
 the passions of this world burning in his veins. 
 
 Permit me, then, to recall to your memories several 
 interesting points in what one might call the Outer Life 
 of that marvellous period which reached from the middle 
 of the fifteenth century, 1450, to the end of the sixteenth, 
 1600 — a period which in the highest sense we may call 
 Shakspere's time, for he was the representative and the 
 consummation of it. 
 
 Then, after arraying these external facts before you, I 
 will ask leave to contrast with them the Inner Life and 
 development of Shakspere, which I think we can trace 
 with great satisfaction by a proper use of those appliances 
 which modern criticism has furnished us. 
 
 Here, then, you have a convenient outline of the pres- 
 ent lecture : we are to discuss the Outer Life of the Renais- 
 sance, and the Inner Life of Shakspere. 
 
 Take your minds back, then, to the middle of the fif- 
 teenth century. It is almost impossible to speak with 
 philosophic calmness of the prodigious series of events 
 which now begin to take place, not only in politics, but 
 in religion, in art, in science, in practical industries — in 
 pretty nearly the whole range of man's activity. 
 
 At the middle of the fifteenth century (1440-50 ) 
 Gutenberg and Faust lead off with the invention of print- 
 ing. Looking back on it from our standpoint in the nine- 
 teenth century, we can see that this marvellous discovery 
 is as if some mysterious Well-wisher knew the tremendous 
 conflict coming, and so thrust into the hands of the age 
 this mightiest weapon against ignorance, — Printing, — as 
 the arm in white samite rose out of the lake and placed the 
 great brand Excalibur in the hands of Arthur. 
 
 In T455 rage those Wars of the Roses between York 
 and Lancaster which for so long kept blood and terror —
 
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 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 67 
 
 red and white indeed — at struggle in the whole complex- 
 ion of English life. 
 
 In 1457 glass begins to be manufactured in England. 
 
 In 1 47 1 four very notable things happen: Wolsey, 
 the afterwards pathetic cardinal, is born ; Thomas a Kem- 
 pis, the sweet-souled imitator of Christ, goes to see his 
 Master; Albert Diirer is born; and, what is perhaps a 
 more significant circumstance than all, William Caxton, 
 the first EngHsh printer, sets up a printing-press at West- 
 minster, and English books straightway begin to multiply. 
 
 In 1473 Copernicus is born. In 1474 comes Michel- 
 angelo. 
 
 In 1477 they begin to make watches at Nuremberg; 
 and in the same year Titian is born. 
 
 In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition begins. 
 
 In 1483 Raphael appears in the world; and in the 
 same year Martin Luther is born. 
 
 In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovers America; 
 and in the same year five hundred thousand Jews are ban- 
 ished from Spain. 
 
 In 1497 Vasco da Gama sails to the East Indies by 
 the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 In 1500 Savonarola and Machiavelli are flourishing in 
 Italy. 
 
 In 1505 shillings begin to be coined in England; and 
 John Knox is born. 
 
 In 1509 gardening begins to flourish in England, 
 brought out of the Netherlands, and the people's fare is 
 greatly varied with vegetables. 
 
 In 1 512 Ponce de Leon lands on the coast of Florida; 
 and in 15 13 Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 A great year is 1517. Luther preaches against indul- 
 gences ; Erasmus and Melanchthon appear on the scene ; 
 gentle Roger Ascham, afterwards tutor to Queen Eliza-
 
 68 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 beth and Jane Grey, is born ; Europeans are seen at 
 Canton, China ; and Copernicus announces a comprehen- 
 sible system of the universe. 
 
 In 1 521 Gustavus Vasa begins to show the Swedish 
 people the sight of a man; while in the same year, far 
 down in the southwestward of the world, that brilliant 
 buccaneer Cortez is taking possession of the City of 
 Mexico. 
 
 In 1 521 Magellan discovers the Philippine Islands, 
 being the first man that ever sailed round the globe. 
 In 1 519 he had sailed from Spain; he kept a westerly 
 course for some three years, and finally his ship reached 
 home. 
 
 In 1524 a considerable part of Europe was thrown into 
 alarm by the prediction that another deluge was about to 
 come upon the earth, and people might everywhere be 
 seen building arks; the season, however, happened to be 
 unusually dry. In this year Palestrina is born. 
 
 In 1525 Sultan Baber establishes the great Mogul 
 empire in India. 
 
 In 1529 we first hear the name of Protestant, which is 
 applied in the Diet of Spires to those who protested 
 against the mother church of Rome. In this same year 
 Sir Thomas More is Lord Chancellor of England. 
 
 In 1533 Henry VIII marries Anne Bullen. In the 
 same year Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester 
 are born. 
 
 In 1534 Allegri (called Correggio from his Lombard 
 village) dies. 
 
 In 1535 Ignatius Loyola founds the order of Jesuits; 
 and Sir Thomas More is beheaded. 
 
 In 1538—39 more than six hundred monasteries and 
 religious houses are suppressed in England and Wales by 
 Henry VIII.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 69 
 
 In 1542 Mary Queen of Scots is born; and in the 
 following year the King of France first wears silk stockings. 
 
 In 1545 a very great event happens: though it was a 
 long time before people knew how great, and probably 
 many at this day have never heard the name of Vesalius, 
 who in this year brought out his work on anatomy. 
 
 In 1549 telescopes are invented; and Cervantes is 
 born, to delight all the ages with the figure of Don 
 Quixote. 
 
 In 1553 Lady Jane Grey is proclaimed Queen of Eng- 
 land, remains queen for ten days, is then deposed, and 
 soon after executed. In the same year Calvin causes 
 Servetus to be burned. 
 
 In 1554 the common people of England are forbidden 
 to wear silk. 
 
 In 1555 Ridley and Latimer are burned at Oxford. 
 
 In 1556 Charles V leaves a throne which commanded 
 Germany, Austria, Hungary, Spain, and the Netherlands, 
 and retires to a monastery. 
 
 In 1558 Elizabeth becomes Queen of England. 
 
 In 1 56 1 Francis Bacon is born. 
 
 In 1564 three very notable events happen: Galileo 
 is born at Pisa ; William Shakspere is born at Stratford ; 
 and John Calvin dies at Geneva. 
 
 In 1572 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in France 
 takes place. Sir Philip Sidney is in Paris at this time, and 
 finds refuge in the house of the English ambassador. In 
 this same year false hair is brought into England from 
 France, and the women thus acquire a new device against 
 time. 
 
 In 1577 Sir Francis Drake sails away from England 
 and goes round the globe, returning in three years, after 
 many dangers and hardships. He is the first English 
 circumnavigator.
 
 70 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 In 1579 the Netherland provinces under William of 
 Orange revolt ; and the next year Camoens dies. 
 
 In 1582 Tycho Brahe flourishes and greatly advances 
 astronomy. In the same year Pope Gregory introduces 
 the New Style calendar in Italy, the 5th of October being 
 counted the 15th. 
 
 In 1583 tobacco is brought from Virginia into Eng- 
 land. I think it notable, by the way, that Shakspere never 
 mentions tobacco at all in his plays. One would think 
 that a spectacle so odd as men puffing smoke from a weed 
 out of their mouths and nostrils would certainly have fur- 
 nished Shakspere with some allusion or other, for he was 
 always hitting off current matters which occupied the peo- 
 ple's minds in any way. Ben Jonson is full of it ; Cap- 
 tain Bobadilla, for instance, in Every Man in his Humour^ 
 invites Matthew — having first carefully ascertained that 
 Matthew has two shillings in his pocket to pay for it — to 
 go with him to an alehouse where they will have " a bunch 
 of radish and salt, to taste our wine, and a pipe of tobacco 
 to close the orifice of the stomach." Again, Cob, the 
 water-carrier, in describing this same Captain Bobadilla, 
 who is a lodger at Cob's house, says : " O, I have a 
 guest. . . . He does swear the legiblest of any man chris- 
 tened : By St. George; the foot of Pharaoh ; the body of me ; 
 as I am a gentleman and a soldier ; and withal he does take 
 this same filthy roguish tobacco the finest and the cleanli- 
 est ! It would do a man good to see the fume come forth 
 at's tonnels."^ 
 
 In I 584 Miles Standish is born. In the same year Sir 
 Walter Raleigh sails over to Virginia. 
 
 1 Cf. Sir John Hawkins's account Britons' substance, of which a 
 
 of tobacco in Lanier's Florida, and piece no bigger than a bean would 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne's and Stephen destroy the desire for food during 
 
 Gosson's account of the ancient two or three days, etc.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 71 
 
 In 1585 the first English colony in America is estab- 
 lished at Roanoke. 
 
 In 1587 Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded. 
 
 In 1589 Henry of Navarre comes to the throne of 
 France. In the same year English people begin to ride 
 in coaches. 
 
 In 1592 Montaigne finishes his essay-writing for this 
 world. 
 
 In 1595 Torquato Tasso dies. 
 
 In 1596 Descartes is born. 
 
 In 1598 Edmund Spenser becomes poet laureate of 
 England. 
 
 In the same year the Edict of Nantes carries joy to 
 the hearts of the Huguenots. 
 
 In 1600 the great East India Company of England is 
 established ; Charles I of England is born ; and Giordano 
 Bruno, a philosopher of very nimble wit, is burned at 
 Rome for heresy. 
 
 In 1 601 Essex is beheaded. 
 
 In 1603 many thousand persons perish of the plague in 
 London. In the same year James I, son of Mary Qiieen 
 of Scots, unites the crowns of England and Scotland upon 
 his own head. 
 
 In 1604 the great translation of the Bible which we all 
 now use is resolved upon by the conference of prelates 
 and ministers. 
 
 In 1606 Dr. Gilbert becomes acquainted with the 
 powers of electric conductors and non-conductors. 
 
 In 1608 people begin to eat with forks in England. 
 
 In 1609 the thermometer is invented. 
 
 In 1 6 14 Sir John Napier invents logarithms; and 
 New York City is founded by the Dutch. In this year 
 also a project which had an immense influence upon the 
 health and comfort of the people of London is carried out.
 
 72 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 The New River is brought to the city and suppHes it 
 with water. The inhabitants had previously been served 
 by water-carriers, who brought the water round in tankards 
 every morning, as our postman carries letters, to each 
 household. The poorer sort of people had to send 
 apprentices, servants, and children after their water. In 
 Ben Jonson's comedy of Every Man in his Humour^ 
 Cob, one of the main characters, is a water-carrier. And 
 when we think of the lavish way in which we use water 
 from our liberal reservoirs, it gives one a startling idea of 
 the housekeeping in those days when one finds a whole 
 household like Kitely's, in Jonson's comedy, dependent 
 on the water that one man, Cob, could bring ; for I find in 
 one passage where Kitely, the master of the household, re- 
 proaches Cob, who has been delayed on his rounds that day, 
 with the trouble he had caused, telling him the maids will 
 have him by the back^ i faith^for coming so late in the morning. 
 
 Perhaps in those days of the mighty consumption of 
 ale and sack the people shared in that aversion to water 
 which old Jack FalstafF expresses when he declares, with 
 loathing, water swells a man. 
 
 In 1615 Richard Baxter is born. 
 
 In 161 6 William Shakspere dies. 
 
 Here, then, you have before your eyes the outer life 
 of this wonderful age. 
 
 I ask you now to put the agility of your imaginations 
 to its proof, and to pass on from this dazzling array of 
 names and events whose influence is in many cases so 
 intimately connected with the every-day life not only of 
 Shakspere's time but of our own, for the purpose of look- 
 ing in upon some occurrences in the private life of Shak- 
 spere, which throw light upon the inner life we shall 
 discuss later, just as these historical facts help to explain 
 the inner life of those marvellous centuries under review.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— II 
 
 ANNOUNCED in my last lecture 
 that the present one would consist of 
 a romance which I had made, in which, 
 taking Shakspere for a hero, I pro- 
 posed to weave a picture of the man- 
 ners of his contemporaries, and so 
 complete my account of Domestic 
 Life in Shakspere's Time. 
 In coming to put together the facts that I had col- 
 lected with the story wherein I wished to embody them, 
 I have found that the limits to which my lecture is 
 confined would be wholly insufficient to develope the 
 narrative with any satisfaction. Of course under these 
 circumstances I sacrifice the story. I wish to give you as 
 many of the facts of Shakspere's environment and of his 
 age as possible ; and, as it is, there will be a melancholy 
 overplus, when I am done, of interesting matters which I 
 should have liked to present to you, but which I must 
 suppress for lack of time. 
 
 Instead of entirely sacrificing my story of Shakspere, 
 however, I can, without developing it, at least give you 
 as I go along a sort of ground-plan, or, rather, architect's 
 
 73
 
 74 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 bill, of it, that will serve to show how it could be con- 
 structed from the materials which I shall lay before you 
 in the shape of facts. 
 
 Without more ado, then, fancy that on the night of 
 Friday, July 8, in the year 1575, about twelve o'clock, 
 when all the good burgesses in Stratford were comfortably 
 asleep, the family of John Shakspere, residing in a double- 
 tenement house in Henley Street, were awakened by a 
 furious knocking at the front door. The eldest son of 
 the family — then only a couple of months past eleven 
 years of age — was the first to hear the noise. He was, 
 indeed, always a light sleeper — as if Destiny intended he 
 should lose as little as possible of the world which he was 
 afterwards to weave into his poems. And so, hastily spring- 
 ing from his bed, he knocked at his father's door. His 
 mother answered — for Mary Shakspere, like most mothers 
 who have brought up children, started from sleep at slight 
 sounds ; and distinguishing his mother's vigorous shake 
 of the stout alderman by her side, followed by the sudden 
 stoppage of the snores with which honest John Shakspere 
 was bugling the progress of the night, William passed 
 quickly down the steps, and was in the act of unbarring 
 the front door when his father called to him : " Hold, 
 William ! wouldst thou unbar the door to every knock, 
 like a dicing-house ? Let him thunder ; perhaps it is 
 some gallant, or drunken roisterer, that would have a 
 night's lodging and defile the house. I'll speak him from 
 the window." Hereupon John Shakspere thrust his head 
 from the window of a low chamber in the second story, 
 which projected over the lower part of the house, at the 
 same time calling out, " Who is this below there that 
 beats honest folk out of bed in the midnight ? " 
 
 " Marry, one that wishes he was where ye have just 
 come from," replied a voice from the street, where the
 
 -3 
 . 3 
 
 .n 
 

 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 75 
 
 family could dimly perceive a horseman who had dis- 
 mounted and was holding the bridle of his horse with one 
 hand while he banged the door with his riding-whip in the 
 other. " Open your door, Master Shakspere ; here is a 
 great ado as far off as Killingworth" — which was the com- 
 mon pronunciation of Keniiworth in those days — "and 
 Ichington, and there is no man but thee can mend it ; to wit, 
 the Queen, God save her Grace, is to be at KiUingworth 
 to-morrow, and my lord of Leicester hath had in a great 
 army of new serving-men and folk of all degree for his 
 pageants and his shows and his devil-may-tell-'em-alls, 
 and there is more men than gloves, and the usher must 
 needs have his gloves, and even he that is to play the sal- 
 vage man in the woods before the Queen must have his 
 gloves before her Grace's grace, and thou art to send by 
 me straightway all the gloves in thy shop to Killingworth, 
 or else, by the usher's moaning, the heaven and the earth 
 will clap together and Domesday come a thousand year 
 afore his time, — for lack of some dozen pieces of leather, — 
 and I would the usher were doomed to eat 'em, for send- 
 ing me on a fool's errand at night; and — hold." But 
 John Shakspere had by this time hurriedly descended and 
 opened his door, whereupon the servant — for they recog- 
 nised him as such by his blue livery — entered and fin- 
 ished his story. " And again. Master Shakspere, and 
 mind thou do this, or we will have two Domesdays to- 
 gether, grinding us like the upper and nether millstone. 
 My lord of Leicester's gentleman hath come flying to me 
 as I rode out of Killingworth Great Gate, and saith ; My 
 lord of Leicester to-morrow at Long Ichington shall feast the 
 ^ueen, and they will hunt from there to Killingworth in the 
 afternoon, and my lord of Leicester will call for his bravest 
 new pair of hunting-gloves, and, by the Mass, I cannot find 
 them to have them ready, for belike some of these new gentry
 
 76 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 in the castle have already stole 'em ; and my lord, if he have not 
 his gloves to prank in before the ^een, will have my head, — 
 saith my lord's gentleman ; and therefore thou, Master 
 Shakspere, art to fall straightway to thy work this very 
 instant, and upon the bravest pair of hunting-gloves thou 
 hast thou art to stitch the arms of my lord of Leicester, 
 with the two ragged staves of silver in white silk ; and 
 thou art then to despatch a trusty messenger on a fleet 
 horse to Long Ichington, who shall arrive by three of the 
 clock in the afternoon of to-morrow, and shall straightway 
 find my lord of Leicester's gentleman and hand him the 
 gloves thou shalt stitch." 
 
 It was but a few moments before the household of 
 John Shakspere presented the unusual scene of an entire 
 family working after midnight as if it were midday. The 
 package of gloves was made up, and the servant remounted 
 his horse and galloped back towards Kenilworth. John 
 and Mary Shakspere then went to work on Leicester's 
 gloves, he taking the right and she the left ; and, 
 while they stitched, William, with his eyes glistening, 
 begged that he might be allowed to carry the precious 
 package to Long Ichington. The father was against it : 
 the boy would have to set out before it was fairly light in 
 order to insure against accidents, and it was a lonesome 
 road, and the like arguments ; but the mother saw a wild 
 longing in his young eyes : a vague flash of a dream passed 
 before her of what might happen if William were in such 
 fine company, and so she urged his request. 
 
 The consequence was, in short, that before daylight on 
 the Saturday morning young William Shakspere made his 
 way on a good horse out of Stratford and took the road to 
 Long Ichington. As he passed along the deep Warwick- 
 shire hedges and under the boughs of many a great oak, the 
 unspeakable enchantment of the early summer morning
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 77 
 
 arose out of the grass and descended from the trees ; vague 
 forms of wood-creatures seemed to sail over to him out of 
 the forest upon the pungent waftures and odours of green 
 leaves and flowers, forms which afterwards became Peas- 
 blossom and Mustard-seed and that pretty company ; a 
 web, spun by an early summer spider across a narrow lane, 
 floated into his face, whereupon he fancied it the salutation 
 of some wood-elf, and cried out, Good mornings Cobweb. 
 Presently the power and the mystery of the deep green 
 woods came over his soul ; he burst into tears of unspeak- 
 able rapture, he sang at the top of his voice, while a great 
 dome of silver built itself in the sky before the rising sun, 
 the birds lifted up their voices, the little brooks rippled 
 across the road, the labourers came out into the fields, the 
 strolling tinker, the great wagon, passed him unnoticed, 
 the farm, the thorp, the country-seat, floated by him ; 
 and so he fared through the morning in a dream of vague 
 delight until midday, when the hot sun beating on his 
 head suddenly admonished him to look about. He pulled 
 himself together, and discovered during that operation 
 that he had an amazing appetite, having eaten nothing 
 since his early supper the night before. Upon asking the 
 distance to Long Ichington, he was told it was but a 
 short mile ; so, having three hours to spare, he determined 
 to avail himself of a piece of venison pasty which Mis- 
 tress Shakspere had stuffed into his pouch, before he left 
 home, for his breakfast. Observing that a brook flowed 
 across the way just ahead, he rode up to it, turned his 
 horse's head into the wood, and threaded his way between 
 the tree-trunks until he found a spot, some half-mile from 
 the highway, where the brook made a round and placid 
 pool, embowered in cool foliage. Here he dismounted, 
 fastened his horse to a swinging bough which would allow 
 him to nibble the grass, — " for I will eat with thee,
 
 78 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Flight," he said to the horse, patting his neck, " though I 
 cared not to munch by the roadside with Jack and Jill," 
 — and sat down on the bank. Here, with a little laugh 
 of luxury, he drew off his girdle and loosened his doublet. 
 He had caused his mother, some time previously, to sew 
 him up a sort of leathern pouch of a size sufficient to hold 
 two or three books which he owned and which he was 
 accustomed to carry with him in his long and lonesome 
 excursions about the country. As he opened the pouch 
 he perceived that his good mother, in her hurry, had stuffed 
 the pasty in with his books, and so he took all out to- 
 gether. He had recently made a great acquisition : this 
 was a copy of TotteTs Miscellany of Uncertain Authors 
 (the first printed book of modern poetry) ; and he now 
 eagerly embraced the chance to read a poem or two while 
 he was chewing his pasty. So he spread the book open 
 before him, and fell to, feeding body and soul at the same 
 time. Presently he came to that perfect parting-song of 
 Wyatt's, " And wilt thou leave me thus," which first 
 appeared in this book. Now Shakspere, though but 
 eleven years old, was completely gone in love. I do not 
 know why I should say though but eleven years old ; the 
 man knows not love who has not loved at eleven. Love 
 at eleven is like a dewdrop on the end of a grass-blade 
 before the sun is up, questioning neither its source nor its 
 fate, limpid, brilliant, round, perfect. Of course the lady 
 was older than himself, being Mistress Anne Hathaway, 
 whom he had but recently seen and fallen a victim to. 
 Now the tender words of the poem seemed to have been 
 written for him : he had rushed out of Stratford without 
 a chance to bid an eternal farewell to the goddess over at 
 Shottery. " And wilt thou leave me thus," he repeated 
 aloud.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 79 
 
 And wilt thou leave me thus ? 
 Say nay ! say nay ! for shame, 
 To save thee from the blame 
 Of all my grief and grame. 
 And wilt thou leave me thus ? 
 Say nay ! Say nay ! 
 
 And wilt thou leave me thus, 
 That hath loved thee so long 
 In woe and wealth among ? 
 And is thy heart so strong 
 As for to leave me thus ? 
 Say nay ! Say nay ! 
 
 At this moment, while he was making fantastic application 
 of the poem to his own case, longing that he might have 
 heard such words as these fall from the red lips of Mis- 
 tress Anne, a small bird flew into the green Paradise of 
 leaves just over his head and began to warble ; with a 
 smile, the boy gently leaned backward until he lay on the 
 grass, flat of his back, watching the bird. And so pres- 
 ently the rhythm of the poem melted vaguely into the 
 warble of the bird ; the plashing of the brook, the drowsy 
 swell and passing away of breaths of warm air among the 
 leaves, the mysterious under-lull of the noontide, came 
 over him with power ; the boy's eyes, unaccustomed to 
 the vigils and excitements of the day before, slowly closed, 
 and he passed away into a blissful slumber, in which, with 
 the fantastic absurdity of dreams, he found that Anne 
 Hathaway's name was changed to Elizabeth, and he was 
 seated by her, wildly declaring his passion. 
 
 Leaving him sound asleep in the gentle care of the 
 greenwood, let us now see what is toward at Long 
 Ichington. Here Leicester had received the Queen with a
 
 8o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 great feast, and after she had rested during the heat of the 
 day, about five o'clock they set out for Kenilworth Castle. 
 It had been arranged that they should hunt the hart on 
 the way ; and as it was but seven miles from Long 
 Ichington to Kenilworth, Leicester had planned that the 
 wayside hunt would bring them to the Great Gate of his 
 castle about eight in the evening, where he had in waiting 
 for the Queen the most magnificent preparations that had 
 ever been seen in England. Soon after the brilliant 
 cavalcade left Long Ichington, the Queen spurred her 
 horse into the forest. A great longing to be quite alone 
 among the great oaks possessed her ; and so, waving her 
 hand to her attendants, with instructions to Leicester to 
 follow, she galloped forward until she found herself out of 
 sight of humanity. Then she tossed the reins on her 
 horse's neck and slowly walked him over the turf betwixt 
 the oaks, inhaling the sweet pungent breaths that floated 
 about the forest, and saying to herself, " Would God the 
 air of courts was so sweet! Why be men's souls so foul, 
 and trees so fresh ? " Then she fell to meditating upon 
 Leicester and his love. Shall /, shall I not ? ran her 
 mind, in one of those inward debates between the woman 
 and the queen which she had so often to carry on. 
 Presently, while she was absorbed in thought, with head 
 declined on her bosom, her horse pointed his ears forward, 
 lifted his head, and stopped, in such a way as, though 
 gentle enough, had nearly thrown her from the saddle. 
 " What, Roger ! " she said, and, quickly recovering herself, 
 looked forward. A few feet distant she saw a slender- 
 limbed boy lying stretched on the green bank of a brook, 
 one hand resting on an open volume of poems, the other 
 lying near an undevoured slice of venison pasty. The 
 Queen's eyes sparkled ; she had all a woman's eye for a 
 cunning sight or a pretty situation. Dismounting from her
 
 V 
 
 Queen Elizabeth 
 From the picture formerly in the royal collection at St. James Palace
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 8i 
 
 horse, she stole on tiptoe to young Shakspere, — for it was 
 he, still dreaming of his love, — knelt by him, and bent over 
 to kiss the lips which were parted in the ravishing smile 
 of a dream. The rustle of her long drapery half awoke 
 the boy, and with eyes partly open, though not yet freed 
 from his dream, he murmured, " Elizabeth ! " Then, 
 coming to full consciousness, he opened his great eyes 
 wide on the radiant face which was bending over him, and 
 lay still, in a maze of wonder and pleasure. " Thou hast 
 the best taste of any lad in England ! " said the Queen, 
 and broke into peals of laughter which rang through the 
 forest. " To murmur Elizabeth at waking ! Do the 
 very boys in Warwickshire dream of me, Leicester ? " she 
 cried, as the earl made his appearance between the trees, 
 and rapidly advanced, in almost as great a maze as Shak- 
 spere's at seeing the figure of the Queen bending over 
 what seemed in the distance like the figure of a man. 
 " Leicester, here is thy most dangerous rival ! Do not 
 eye his book ! Here's a lad that eats his very venison 
 pasty seasoned with sonnets, sleeps by the sweetest pool 
 in all thy Warwickshire woods, and, to crown all, breathes 
 Elizabeth's name when he is but half awake ! " 
 
 " I pray Heaven the venison be not out of my park, 
 got by night ! " said Leicester, coming up to the Queen. 
 
 " Nay," she rejoined ; " we shall have thee claiming the 
 poetry next ; but thou canst not, for it is Wyatt's, God rest 
 his soul ! and not Leicester's." 
 
 At the second sound of his name young Shakspere for 
 the first time remembered his errand. 
 
 " I pray you," he said, "are you my lord of Leicester ? " 
 
 "Yea," cried the Queen, with a roguish tone, "and 
 would be my lord of the Universe an he had but his 
 way ! 
 
 " Then," continued Shakspere, " here is a packet for
 
 82 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 your Grace," and herewith he pulled out the hunting- 
 gloves and presented them to the earl. The Queen's 
 mirth deepened, while a slight shade of half-amused 
 chagrin crossed Leicester's face, as the boy proceeded to 
 relate the history of the packet. " Last night," he said, 
 " about midnight came one from Kenilworth to my father, 
 John Shakspere, the glover, of Stratford, and banged us 
 out of our beds at midnight, and said the Earl of Leices- 
 ter would hunt with the Queen to-day, and his Grace's 
 brave hunting-gloves were stolen, and his Grace's gentle- 
 man therefore bid my father send him a pair of the bravest 
 hunting-gloves to Long Ichington to-day against his 
 Grace's calling for them ; and here are they, worked with 
 his Grace's arms, and the two ragged staves of silver in 
 white silk," finished Shakspere, with some pride in the 
 prompt performance of his commission. 
 
 The Queen laughed, as this narrative concluded, till the 
 forest echoed, and rallied Leicester unmercifully. Pres- 
 ently she took up Shakspere's books and cried : " Mark 
 you, my lord of Leicester, upon what milk this baby 
 feeds ! Here is Kit Marlowe's tragedy of Tamburlaine 
 and of Edward the Second; and thumbed, too; and do 
 but listen, my lord of Leicester, to this " ; and here the 
 Queen struck an attitude and recited : 
 
 " And wilt thou leave me thus, 
 That hath loved thee so long 
 In woe and wealth among ? 
 And is thy heart so strong 
 As for to leave me thus ? 
 Say nay ! Say nay ! 
 
 Nay," continued the Queen, in a sudden caprice, as 
 Leicester moved with impatience to get her forward, " nay, 
 thine Elizabeth will not leave thee thus ; if thou drinkest
 
 The Earl of Leicester
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 83 
 
 in Marlowe and Wyatt, — thou hast a deep eye, look at 
 me straight! — if thou drinkest Marlowe so early, come 
 with me ; I hear my lord Leicester hath prepared me such 
 shows and plays and poesies at Kenilworth as never mortal 
 beheld. Mount, young Brakespere — " 
 
 " Shakspere," corrected the lad. 
 
 " Nay, if thou shake a spear, thou shouldst break it, 
 lad ; but come, Shakspere, with thine Elizabeth, to Kenil- 
 worth ! " And hereupon the Queen mounted with speed 
 and dashed off for Kenilworth at such a round pace that 
 Shakspere had great ado in following at a respectful 
 distance. 
 
 And thus it was that young William Shakspere came 
 to see the " princely pleasures of Kenilworth," which he 
 afterwards recalled to the mind of Queen Elizabeth by 
 Oberon's vision of Cupid, all armed, flying betwixt the 
 cold moon and the earth, in that passage of the Midsum- 
 mer Night's Dream which I read in my last lecture. 
 
 It is now proper I should give you some account of 
 what these princely pleasures were. For this purpose I 
 have selected some passages from a description of them, 
 written by one of the most conceited, asinine, mirth-pro- 
 voking dandies that ever handled a goose-quill, whose 
 acquaintance I cannot bear you should be without. I 
 mean Robert Laneham, who was usher to Queen Eliza- 
 beth's privy council, and who, as soon as he could get 
 time from the Kenilworth festivities, wrote a letter con- 
 taining a detailed account of them to his friend Master 
 Humphrey Martin, a " citizen and Merchant of London." 
 
 To introduce this fop — who, I have always thought, 
 must have sat as model for that heartbreaking fantastico, 
 Don Adriano de Armado, in Shakspere's Love's Labour s 
 Lost — before reading from his account of the Kenilworth 
 pageants, I must give you an unconscious portrait he has
 
 84 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 drawn of himself In the last part of the same letter — in 
 which, too, many items of the domestic life of the court 
 of Queen Elizabeth come out here and there : 
 
 " And yet you, being a mercer, a merchant, as I am, 
 
 '^my countryman born, and my good friend withal, whereby 
 
 I know you are compassioned with me ; methought it my 
 
 part somewhat to impart unto you how it is here with me, 
 
 and how I had my life, which indeed is this : 
 
 " A-mornings I rise ordinarily at seven o'clock ; then 
 ready, I go into the chapel ; soon after eight, I get me 
 commonly into my Lord's chamber, or into my Lord's 
 presidents. There at the cupboard, after I have eaten the 
 manchet served over night for livery, (for I dare be as 
 bold, I promise you, as any of my friends the servants 
 there ; and indeed I could have fresh, if I would tarry ; 
 but I am of wont jolly and dry a-mornings) ; I drink me 
 up a good bowl of ale ; when in a sweet pot it is defecated 
 by all night's standing, the drink is the better, take that 
 of me ; and a morsel in a morning, with a sound draught, 
 is very wholesome and good for the eyesight ; then I am 
 as fresh all the forenoon after, as I had eaten a whole 
 piece of beef. Now, sir, if the council sit, I am at hand ; 
 wait at one inch, I warrant you : If any make babbling, 
 * Peace,' say I, ' wot ye where ye are ? ' If I take a lis- 
 tener, or a pryer in at the chinks or at the lock-hole, I am 
 by and by in the bones of him ; but now they keep good 
 order, they know me well enough : If he be a friend, or 
 such a one as I like, I make him sit down by me on a 
 form or a chest ; let the rest walk, in God's name. 
 
 " And here doth my languages stand me in good stead, 
 my French, my Spanish, my Dutch, and my Latin ; some- 
 time among Ambassadors' men, if their masters be within 
 the council ; sometime with the Ambassador himself, if he 
 bid call his lacquey, or ask me what's o'clock ; and I war-
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 85 
 
 rant you I answer him roundly, that they marvel to see 
 such a fellow there : then laugh I, and say nothing. Din- 
 ner and supper I have twenty places to go to, and heartily 
 prayed to ; sometimes I get to Master Pinner ; by my 
 faith a worshipful gentleman, and as careful for his charge 
 as any her Highness hath. There find I always good 
 store, of very good viands ; we eat, and be merry, thank 
 God and the Qiieen. Himself in feeding very temperate 
 and moderate as you shall see any; and yet, by your leave, 
 of a dish, as a cold pigeon or so, that hath come to him 
 at meat more than he looked for. I have seen him even 
 so by and by surfeit, as he hath plucked off his napkin, 
 wiped his knife, and eat not a morsel more. . . . 
 
 " In afternoons and at nights, sometimes am I with 
 the right worshipful Sir George Howard^ as good a Gentle- 
 man as any that lives. And sometime at my Lady Sid- 
 ney s chamber, a Noblewoman that I am as much bound 
 unto, as any poor man may be unto so gracious a Lady ; 
 and sometime in some other place. But always among 
 the Gentlewomen by my good will ; (O you know that 
 comes always of a gentle spirit) ; and when I see company 
 according, then can I be as lively too. Sometimes I foot 
 it with dancing, now with my gittern, or else with my 
 cittern, then at the virginals ; you know nothing comes 
 amiss to me. Then carol I up a song withal ; that by and 
 by they come flocking about me like bees to honey ; and 
 ever they cry, ' Another, good Laneham^ another ! ' Shall 
 
 I tell you .? When I see Mistress (Ah ! see a mad 
 
 knave ; I had almost told all !) that she gives me once but 
 an eye or an ear ; why, then, man am I blest ; my grace, 
 my courage, my cunning is doubled ; she says sometime, 
 ' She likes it,' and then I like it much the better ; it doth 
 me good to hear how well I can do. And to say truth ; 
 what with mine eye, as I can amorously glint it, with my
 
 86 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Spanish sospires, my French heighes, mine Italian dulcets, 
 my Dutch hones [D. hoofshied, courtship], my double 
 releas [roulays — roulades?], my high reaches, my fine 
 feigning, my deep diapason, my wanton warbles, my run- 
 ning, my timing, my turning, and my twinkling, I can 
 gracify the matters as well as the proudest of them, and 
 was never yet stained, I thank God : by my troth, coun- 
 tryman, it is sometimes high midnight ere I can get from 
 them. And thus have I told you most of my trade, all 
 the livelong day ; what will you more, God save the Queen 
 and my Lord. I am well, I thank you. 
 
 " Herewith meaned I fully to bid ye farewell, had not 
 this doubt come to my mind, that here remains a doubt in 
 you which 1 ought (methought) in anywise to clear. 
 Which is, ye marvel perchance to see me so bookish. 
 Let me tell you in few words : I went to school, forsooth, 
 both at Paul's and also at St, Anthony's; In the fifth 
 form passed iEsop's fables, I wis, read Terence vos ist^ec 
 intro anferte, and began with my Virgil Tityre tu patulae. 
 I conned my rules, could construe and parse with the best 
 of them ; since that, as partly you know, have I traded the 
 feat of merchandise in sundry countries, and so got me 
 languages, which do so little hinder my Latin as, I thank 
 God, have much encreased it. I have leisure sometimes, 
 when I tend not upon the council ; whereby now I look 
 on one book, now on another. Stories I delight in ; the 
 more ancient and rare, the more irksome to me. If I told 
 you I liked William of Malmesbury so well, because of 
 his diligence and antiquity, perchance you would construe 
 it because I love malmsey so well : But faith, it is not 
 so ; for sift I no more sack and sugar (and yet never but 
 with company) than I do malmsey, I should not blush so 
 much adays as I do ; you know my mind. 
 
 Well, once again, fare ye heartily well. 

 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 87 
 
 " From the Court, At the City of Worcester, the 
 twentieth of August, 1575. 
 
 " Your Countryman, companion, and friend assuredly ; 
 Mercer, Merchant-adventurer, and Clerk of the Council 
 chamber-door, and also Keeper of the same : 
 
 " El Principe Negro, Par me, R. L. Gent. Mercer " ^ 
 (ending with a Latin verse). 
 
 This same coxcomb has much to say of the eatables and 
 drinkables : 
 
 " And how bountiful Ceres in provision was, guess by 
 this, that in little more than three days space, seventy-two 
 tuns of ale and beer were piped up quite ; . . . and yet 
 the Master Comptroller, Master Cofferer, and divers 
 Officers of the court, some honorable and sundry right 
 worshipful were placed at Warwick, for more room in the 
 castle. But here was no ho ! Master Martin, in devout 
 drinking alway ; that brought lack unlocked for ; which 
 being known to the worshipful my lord's good neighbors, 
 came there in two days' space, from sundry friends, a relief 
 of forty tuns, till a new supply was got again ; and then 
 to our drinking afresh as fast as ever we did." 
 
 I now read a passage or two to show what young Will 
 Shakspere saw or might have seen as he rode behind 
 Queen Bess and Leicester toward the Great Gate of Kenil- 
 worth Castle. 
 
 "On Saturday the ninth of July," says Laneham, "at 
 Long Ichington, a town and lordship of my Lord's, 
 within seven miles of Killingworth, his Honour made her 
 Majesty great cheer at dinner, and pleasant pastime in 
 hunting by the way after, that it was eight o'clock in the 
 evening ere her Highness came to Killingworth ; where in 
 the park, about a flight-shoot from the brays and first gate 
 
 1 Compare this letter with Don Adriano's in Lovers Labour'' s Lost, 
 
 addressed to the King.
 
 88 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 of the Castle, one of the ten Sibyls, that we read were all 
 Fatidica and Theobula^ as parties and privy to the Gods' 
 gracious good wills, comely clad in a pall of white-silk 
 pronounced a proper poesy in English rhyme and metre : 
 of effect, how great gladness her goodness' presence brought 
 into every stead where it pleased her to come, and espe- 
 cially now into that place that had so long longed after the 
 same ; ending with prophecy certain of much and long pros- 
 perity, health and felicity. This her Majesty benignly 
 accepting, passed forth unto the next gate of the brays, which 
 for length, largeness and use, (as well it may so serve) they 
 now call the tilt-yard, where a porter tall of person, big of 
 limb, and stern of countenance, wrapped also all in silk, 
 with a club and keys of quantity according, had a rough 
 speech full of passions, in metre aptly made to the pur- 
 pose : Whereby (as her Highness was come within his 
 ward) he burst out in a great pang of impatience to see 
 such uncouth trudging to and fro, such riding in and out, 
 with such din and noise of talk within the charge of his 
 office, whereof he never saw the like, nor had any warning 
 afore, nor yet could make to himself any cause of the mat- 
 ter. At last, upon better view and avisement, as he pressed 
 to come nearer, confessing anon that he found himself 
 pierced at the presence of a personage so evidently express- 
 ing an heroical sovereignty over all the whole estates, and 
 by degrees there beside, calmed his astonishment, pro- 
 claims open gates and free passage to all, yields up his 
 club, his keys, his office and all, and on his knees humbly 
 prays pardon of his ignorance and impatience ; which her 
 Majesty graciously granting, he caused his trumpeters that 
 stood upon the wall of the gate there, to sound up a tune 
 of welcome ; which, beside the noble noise, was so much 
 the more pleasant to behold, because these trumpeters, 
 being six in number, were every one eight feet high, in
 
 Leicester nearest the Queen 
 
 Lord Heensdon carries the 
 sword, in front 
 
 Lord Berleigh. with a white 
 stag 
 
 Before him Admiral Lord 
 Howard ?nd other noblemen 
 
 A Royal Progress of 
 Queen Elizabeth 
 
 From a painting 
 
 Lady Heensdon in white first 
 Elizabeth, sister of Lord 
 
 Heensdon and wife of Admiral 
 
 Howard 
 Other ladies, yeomen of the 
 
 guard, gentlemen pensioners, 
 
 etc.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 89 
 
 due proportion of person beside, all in long garments of 
 silk suitable, each with his silvery trumpet of five feet long, 
 formed taper-wise and straight from the upper part unto 
 the lower end, where the diameter was 16 inches over; 
 and yet so tempered by art, that being very easy to the 
 blast, they cast forth no greater noise, nor a more unpleas- 
 ant sound for time and tune, than any other common 
 trumpet, be it never so artificially formed. These har- 
 monious blasters, from the foreside of the gate, at her 
 Highness' entrance, where they began : walking upon the 
 walls unto the inner (court), had this music maintained 
 from them very delectably, while her Highness all along 
 this tilt-yard rode unto the inner gate, where the Lady or 
 the Lake, (famous in King Arthur's book) with two 
 nymphs waiting upon her, arrayed all in silks, awaited her 
 Highness's coming : From the midst of the pool, where 
 upon a movable island, bright blazing with torches, she 
 floated to land, and her Majesty with a well-penned metre 
 and matter after this sort : (viz.) First, of the ancestry or 
 the Castle, who had been owners of the same e'en till this 
 day, most always in the hands of the Earls of Leicester ; 
 how she had kept this Lake since King Arthur's days ; 
 and now, understanding of her Highness's hither coming, 
 thought it both her office and duty in humble wise to dis- 
 cover her and her estate : offering up the same, her lake, 
 and power therein, with promise of repair unto the Court. 
 It pleased her Highness to thank this lady, and to add 
 withall : ' We had thought indeed the Lake had been ours, 
 and do you call it yours now ? Well, we will herein com- 
 mune more with you hereafter.' 
 
 " This pageant was closed up with a delectable har- 
 mony of hautboys, shalms, cornets, and such other loud 
 music, that held on while her Majesty pleasantly so 
 passed from thence toward the Castle-gate ; whereunto.
 
 90 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 from the base-court, over a dry valley cast into a good 
 form, there was framed a fair bridge of twenty feet wide, 
 and seventy feet long, gravelled for treading, railed on 
 either part with seven posts on a side, that stood twelve 
 feet asunder, thickened between with well-proportioned 
 turned pillars. 
 
 " Upon the first pair of posts were set two comely 
 square wire cages, three feet long, and two feet wide ; and 
 high in them live bitterns, curlews, shovelers, hernshaws, 
 godwits, and such like dainty birds, of the presents of 
 Syhanus^ the God of fowl. On the second pair two great 
 silvered bowls, featly apted to the purpose, filled with 
 apples, pears, cherries, filberds, walnuts, fresh upon their 
 branches, and with oranges, pomegranates, lemons, and 
 pippins, all for the gifts of Pomona^ Goddess of fruits. 
 The third pair of posts, in two such silvered bowls, had 
 (all in ears green and old) wheat, barley, oats, beans, and 
 peas, as the gifts of Ceres. The fourth post, on the left 
 hand, in a like silvered bowl, had grapes in clusters, white 
 and red, gracified with their vine leaves : The match post 
 against it had a pair of great white silver livery pots for 
 wine : and before them two glasses of good capacity, filled 
 full ; the one with white wine, the other with claret, so 
 fresh of colour, and of look so lovely, smiling to the eye 
 of many, that by my faith methought, by their leering, 
 they could have found in their hearts, (as the evening was 
 hot) to have kissed them sweetly and thought it no sin : 
 And these were the potencial presents of Bacchus^ the God 
 of wine. The fifth pair had each a fair large tray, strewed 
 with fresh grass ; and in them conger, hurt, mullet, fresh 
 herrings, oysters, salmon, crevis, and such like, from 
 Neptunas^ God of the sea. On the sixth pair of posts 
 were set two ragged staves of silver, as my Lord gives 
 them in his arms, beautifully glittering of armour, there-
 
 :3 
 
 u 
 
 o 
 
 o
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 91 
 
 upon depending bows, arrows, spears, shield, head-piece, 
 gorget, corslets, swords, targets, and such like, for Mars* 
 gifts, the God of war. On the seventh post the last and 
 next to the Castle, were there pight two fair bay branches 
 of four feet high, adorned on all sides with lutes, viols, 
 shalms, cornets, flutes, recorders and harps, as the presents 
 of PhirbuSy the God of music, for rejoicing the mind, and 
 also of physic, for health to the body. 
 
 " Over the Castle-gate was there fastened a table beau- 
 tifully garnished above with her Highness's arms, and 
 featly with ivy wreaths bordered about, of ten feet square : 
 the ground black, whereupon, in large white capital 
 Roman fairly written, was a poem mentioning these gods 
 and their gifts, thus presented unto her Highness : which, 
 because it remained unremoved, at leisure and pleasure I 
 took it out, as foUoweth : 
 
 AD MAJESTATEM REGIAM 
 
 Jupiter hue certos cernens te tendere gressus, 
 Caelicolas PRINCEPS actutum convocat Omnes : 
 Obsequium praestare jubet TIBI quenque benignum. 
 Unde suas Sylvanus Aves, Pomonaque fructus, 
 Alma Ceres fruges, hilarantia vina Liaeus, 
 Neptunus pisces, tela et tutantia Mavars, 
 Suare Melos Phoebus^ solidamque ; longamque ; salutem. 
 Dii TIBI REGINA hac (curu sis DIGNISSIMA) 
 
 praebent : 
 Hoc TIBI, cum Domino, dedit se et werda KENELMI. 
 
 All the letters that mention her Majesty, which are here 
 put in capitals, for reverence and honour, were there made 
 in gold. 
 
 " But the night well spent, for that these verses by 
 torch-light could easily be read ; a poet, therefore, in a
 
 92 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 long, ceruleous garment, with side (i.e., long) and wide 
 sleeves, Venetianwise drawn up to his elbow, his doublet 
 sleeves under that, of crimson, nothing but silk; a bay 
 garland on his head, and a scroll in his hand, making first 
 an humble obeisance at her Highness's coming, and point- 
 ing unto every present as he spake, the same were pro- 
 nounced. Thus receiving the gifts, as she passed, and 
 how the posts might agree with the speech of the poet : 
 At the end of the bridge and entry of the gate, was her 
 Highness received with a fresh delicate harmony of flutes, 
 in performance of Phcebus presents. 
 
 " So passing into the inner court, her Majesty (that 
 never rides but alone) there, set down from her palfrey, 
 was conveyed up to her chamber : When after did follow 
 so great a peal of guns, and such lightning by fire-work a 
 long space together, as though 'Jupiter would have shown 
 himself to be no further behind with his welcome than the 
 rest of his Gods : and that he would have all the country 
 to know, for indeed the noise and flame were heard and 
 seen twenty miles ofi\ Thus much. Master Martin^ (that 
 I remember me) for the first day's bien venu. Be you 
 not weary, for I am scant in the midst of my matter. 
 
 " On Sunday, the forenoon occupied as for the 
 Sabbath-day, in quiet and vacation from work, and in 
 divine service and preaching at the parish church : the 
 afternoon in excellent music of sundry sweet instruments, 
 and in dancing of Lords and Ladies, and other worshipful 
 degrees, uttered with such lively agility, and commendable 
 grace, as whether it might be more strange to the eye or 
 pleasant to the mind, for my part indeed I could not 
 discern ; but it was exceedingly well, methought, in both. 
 
 " At night, late, as though Jupiter the last night had 
 forgot for business, or forborne for courtesy and quiet, 
 part of his welcome unto her Highness appointed, now 
 entering at the first into his purpose moderately (as mor-
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 93 
 
 tals do), with a warning piece or two, proceeding on with 
 increase, till at last the Altitonant (i.e.. High Thunderer) 
 displays me his main power ; with blaze of burning darts 
 flying to and fro, beams of stars coruscant, streams and 
 hail of fiery sparks, lightnings of wildfire on water and 
 land, flight and shooting of thunderbolts, all with such 
 continuance, terror and vehemency, that the heavens 
 thundered, the waters surged, the earth shook, and in such 
 sort surely, as had we not been assured that the fulminant 
 Deity was all hot in amity, and could not otherwise testify 
 his welcome unto her Highness, it would have made me 
 for my part, as hardy as I am, very vengeably afraid. This 
 ado lasted until the midnight was passed that it seemed 
 well with me soon after, when I found me in my cabin. 
 And this for the second day. 
 
 " Monday was hot, and therefore her Highness kept in 
 till five o'clock in the evening, what time it pleased her to 
 ride forth into the chase to hunt the hart of force : which 
 found anon, and after sore chased, and chafed by the hot 
 pursuit of the hounds, was fain of fine force, at last to take 
 sou. 
 
 The following passage I take from Gascoigne, who 
 relates the festivities at length, and who, with Goldingham 
 and Ferrers, had been sent for to arrange the poetic 
 devices and addresses. 
 
 There met her in the forest, as she came from hunting, 
 one clad like a savage man, all in ivy, who, seeming to 
 wonder at such a presence, fell to quarrelling with Jupiter 
 as followeth : 
 
 " Ho Echo — Echo^ ho, 
 
 where art thou, Echo^ where ? 
 Why, Echo^ friend, where dwell'st thou now ! 
 thou wont'st to harbour here. 
 i^Echo answered.) 
 
 Here. . . .
 
 94 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 " But thou me help, 
 
 I say my heart will break ; 
 And therefore even of courtesy, 
 
 I pray thee, Echo speak. 
 Echo. Speak. 
 
 " I speak ? yes, that I will, 
 
 unless thou be too coy. 
 Then tell me first what is the cause 
 that all the people joy ? 
 Echo. Joy- 
 
 " Joy ? surely that is so, 
 
 as may full well be seen : 
 But wherefore do they so rejoice ? 
 is it for King or Queen ? 
 Echo. Queen. 
 
 " Queen ? what, the Queen of Heaven \ 
 they knew her long agone : 
 No, sure, some Queen on earth, 
 
 whose like was never none. 
 Echo. None. 
 
 *' O then it seems the Queen 
 
 of England for to be, 
 Whose graces make the Gods to grudge : 
 methinks it should be she. 
 Echo. She. 
 
 "And is it she indeed ? 
 
 then tell what was meant 
 By every show that yet was seen, 
 good Echo be content. 
 Echo. Content." 
 
 And here is a scene from the domestic life of our 
 ancestors — all too common — which makes us a little
 
 
 
 g©?'.'- .,'i'' ■ 
 
 , :^_^ 
 
 
 -"■"■■ 
 
 '^^^"""^^fc 
 
 !' ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■V 
 
 .*<'. 
 
 J' )Vt^u.-"i: 0.-J. 
 
 CKOnCE GASCOIGXE. 
 
 George G 
 
 rge oascoigne
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 95 
 
 comfort that the times have surely bettered in some mat- 
 ters since then. Laneham's record says : 
 
 " Thursday^ the fourteenth of this July, and the Sixth 
 day of her Majesty's coming, a great sort of Ban-dogs 
 were there tied in the outer court, and thirteen bears 
 in the inner. Whosoever made the pannel, there were 
 enough for the guest, and one for challenge, an need were. 
 A wight of great wisdom and gravity seemed their fore- 
 man to be, had it come to a jury ; but it fell out that they 
 were caused to appear there upon no such matter, but 
 only to answer to an ancient quarrel between them and the 
 Ban-dogs, in a cause of controversy that had long de- 
 pended, been obstinately full often debated, with sharp and 
 biting arguments on both sides and could never be decided : 
 grown now to so marvellous a malice, that with spiteful 
 upbraidings and uncharitable chaffings, always they fret, as 
 any where the one can hear, see, or smell the other : and 
 indeed at utter deadly feud. Many a maimed member 
 (God wot) bloody face and a torn coat, hath the quarrel 
 cost between them ; so far likely the less yet now to be 
 appeased, as there wants not partakers to back them on 
 both sides. 
 
 " Well, Sir, the bears were brought forth into the 
 court, the dogs set to them to argue the points even 
 face to face ; they had learned counsel also on both parts. 
 Very fierce both the one and the other, and eager in 
 argument : if the dog in pleading should pluck the 
 bear by the throat, the bear with traverse would claw him 
 again by the scalp : Confess an he list, but avoid he could 
 not, that was bound to the bar ; and his counsel told him 
 that it could be to him no policy in pleading. Therefore 
 thus with 'fending and proving, with plucking and tug- 
 ging, scratching and biting, by plain tooth and nail on one 
 side and the other, such expense of blood and leather was
 
 <^6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 there between them, as a month's licking, I ween, will not 
 recover ; and yet remain as far out as ever they were. It 
 was a sport very pleasant of these beasts ; to see the bear 
 with his pink eyes leering after his enemies' approach, the 
 nimbleness and wait of the dog, to take his advantage, 
 and the force and experience of the bear, again to avoid 
 the assault : If he was bitten in one place, how he would 
 pinch in another to get free ; that if he was taken once, 
 then what shift with biting, with clawing, with roaring, 
 tossing and tumbling, he would work to wind himself from 
 them ; and when he was loose, to shake his ears twice or 
 thrice with the blood and slaver about his physiognomy, 
 was a matter of a goodly relief. 
 
 " As this sport was held at day-time, in the Castle, so 
 was there abroad at night very strange and sundry kinds 
 of fire-works, compelled by cunning to fly to and fro, and 
 to mount very high into the air upward, and also to burn 
 unquenchably beneath the water, contrary, ye wot, to fire's 
 kind : This intermingled with a great peal of guns, which 
 all gave both to the ear and to the eye the greater grace 
 and delight, for that with such order and art they were 
 tempered, touching time and continuance, that was about 
 two hours space." 
 
 But here we have a sweeter scene, which carries us 
 into the fairy-land of the Midsummer Night's Dream. The 
 Queen is standing on the bridge, looking off over the lake. 
 The time is late afternoon, the temperature is heavenly, 
 the green leaves are taking on that deeper air which they 
 assume towards the coming of the evening, the world is so 
 tranquil that voices and all sounds ring musically between 
 the green walls of the foliage and the gray walls of the 
 castle. 
 
 "... and the Lady, by and by, with her two nymphs 
 floating upon her moveable Islands, Triton on his mermaid
 
 a 
 
 s 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 <
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 97 
 
 skimming by, approached towards her Highness on the 
 bridge, — as well to declare that her Majesty's presence 
 had so graciously thus wrought her deliverance, as also to 
 excuse her not coming to court as she promised, and chiefly 
 to present her Majesty, as a token of her duty and good 
 heart, for her Highness' recreation, with this gift : which 
 was, Arion^ that excellent and famous musician ; in tire 
 and appointment strange, well seeing to his person, riding 
 aloft upon his old friend the dolphin, that from head to 
 tail was four and twenty feet long, and swam hard by these 
 Islands. Herewith, Arion^ for these great benefits, after 
 a few well-couched words unto her Majesty of thanks- 
 giving, in supplement of the same, began a delectable 
 ditty of a song well apted to a melodious noise ; com- 
 pounded of six several instruments, all covert, casting 
 sound from the dolphin's belly within : Arion^ the seventh, 
 sitting thus singing (as I say) without. 
 
 " Now, Sir, the ditty in metre so aptly endited to the 
 matter, and after by voice deliciously delivered. The 
 song, by a skilful artist into his parts so sweetly sorted ; 
 each part in his instrument so clean and sharply touched ; 
 every instrument again in his kind so excellently tunable ; 
 and this in the evening of the day, resounding from the 
 calm waters where the presence of her Majesty, and long- 
 ing to listen, had utterly damped all noise and din ; the 
 whole harmony conveyed in time, tune, and temper thus 
 incomparably melodious ; with what pleasure, {Master 
 Martin) with what sharpness of conceit, with what lively 
 delight, this might pierce into the hearers' hearts, I pray 
 ye imagine yourselves, as ye may ; for so God judge me, 
 by all the wit and cunning I have, I cannot express, I 
 promise you." 
 
 In these scenes I cannot help finding everywhere the 
 suggestions which, in after years, blossomed out into the
 
 98 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, First, for Theseus and Hip- 
 polyta hunting in the Grecian woods, we have Queen Bess 
 and Leicester hunting in the Warwickshire forests. Again, 
 a passage in Laneham's letter (which I did not read) relates 
 how some of the honest souls of Coventry — which was 
 but four miles from Kenilworth — came over one day, 
 and sought out Queen Bess, and offered to play for her 
 one of the good old Coventry plays; and I always fancy 
 that young Will Shakspere saw these men of Coventry on 
 this errand, and that he afterwards converted them into 
 that sweet company — of Bottom the weaver, and Snug, 
 and Quince, and Flute the bellows-mender — who play 
 Pyramus and Thisbe before Theseus. The ranting of 
 Pyramus, " Approach, ye furies fell," and the like, al- 
 ways makes me think that it must be a relic of young 
 Shakspere's perusal of Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Kyd's 
 Spanish Tragedy , on long summer holidays in the War- 
 wickshire woods ; while the fantastic and unreal woes of 
 Lysander and Demetrius and Hermia and Helena seem 
 to be the man's amplifications of the boy's old reveries 
 when he would tire of his book and lie flat and look into 
 the upward depths of the green oaks and dream of won- 
 ders and love-scenes that might go on in the woods. 
 
 Let us now fancy that after having beheld this scene 
 Shakspere returned to his home, to give an account of his 
 adventures to his parents. But on his way back he could 
 not forbear going by Warwick, the county town, only four 
 miles from Kenilworth, where a great crowd of the country 
 people, anxious to get a sight of Queen Bess, had collected, 
 to remain during the nineteen days throughout which the 
 Kenilworth festivities lasted. Of course Shakspere knew 
 that in such a crowd all manner ofjugglers and playerswould 
 be found driving their trades. He is mad to see one of 
 the plays. So, as soon as he canters into Warwick, he
 
 g 
 
 
 
 4-* 
 
 3 
 O 
 
 U 
 
 c 
 
 o 
 
 -a
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 99 
 
 makes for the inn. Here he finds that at three o'clock 
 in the afternoon some strolHng players are to perform an 
 interlude of John Heywood's, called The Four P's. The 
 hour which is to pass before they begin seems like an 
 eternity to the boy ; but it finally expires, and at the first 
 sounding of the horn he pays his penny and passes into 
 the yard of the inn. As you walk with him into this 
 yard you see the original model upon which our modern 
 theatres are built. The inn-yard of the time was a sort 
 of inner court, enclosed by the rooms of the inn, which 
 looked down upon it, with balconies running along each 
 side, thus : 
 
 j^;^>Pal 
 
 :■;^•':.;.r.■v•>xi^:V:v;•^V••■;^ 
 
 Jir^!?ni 
 
 
 m<u 
 
 i'.-.'-'/.-Av'i 
 
 
 c. 
 
 a, End balcony used as a stage ; b, side balcony used by 
 gentry ; c, courtyard used by the common people. 
 
 Shakspere stands on the ground of the yard, along with 
 the most of the audience. Here you see the original of 
 two terms afterwards in very common use : when Shak- 
 spere speaks of a passage which tickles the ears of the 
 groundlings, he means by " groundlings " those who stood 
 on the ground in what was long called the " yard," even 
 in the theatres, but afterwards came to be known as the 
 ** pit." The players are on the balcony at the rear ; more
 
 loo SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 pretentious visitors among the audience are seated in the 
 rooms here on the sides and at the back of the yard, look- 
 ing through the windows at the performance ; hence in 
 .Shakspere's time the " boxes," as we call them, and 
 loges of the theatres built in London were called " rooms." 
 At the time when young Shakspere is going into this 
 inn-yard, i.e., in 1575, you should remember, no theatres 
 are built. It was not until the following year, 1576, that 
 James Burbage erected the first theatre in London. But, 
 as I said, while the common sort are here standing in the 
 yard of the inn, and more pretentious ones are in the 
 rooms, the gallants and high-fliers are seated on stools on 
 the balcony or stage, right in the midst of the players.^ 
 Presently the horn sounds for the third time, and this is 
 the signal for the performance to begin. 
 
 This interlude, T'he Four P's^ by the way, represents 
 the spirit of the first formal English Comedy. It was 
 written probably as early as 1530, and when Shakspere 
 was beginning to write in 1598, decidedly better plays in 
 form were being produced here and there ; but it fairly 
 represents the plays we may regard as formative in Shak- 
 spere's plastic time, the kind of play he would have been 
 likely to see in the inn-yards of Coventry and Warwick 
 and Stratford when he was a boy. 
 
 The interlude was originally a mere short scrap to be 
 played for amusement between the acts of a mystery play 
 or morality ; but Heywood advanced it into an indepen- 
 dent sort of theatrical representation. This John Hey- 
 wood is mentioned by our old friend Puttenham as " John 
 
 1 This golden Asse, in this hard iron age, 
 Aspirith now to sit upon the stage : 
 Lookes round about, then views his glorious selfe. 
 Throws money here and there, swearing hang pelfe. 
 
 The Young Gallant' s Whirligig.
 
 John Heywood
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME loi 
 
 Heywood the Epigrammatist who for the myrth and 
 quicknesse of his conceits more than for any good learning 
 was in him come to be well benefited by the King." 
 
 I may mention that this interlude particularly con- 
 nects itself with Shakspere by the fact that in one part of 
 it you will find the suggestion which Shakspere probably 
 converted into that strange comical-dreadful soliloquy 
 of the Porter in Macbeth who dreamed he was porter of 
 hell, and describes the people whom he let in the gate. 
 In fact, with a good deal of confidence we may fancy our- 
 selves sitting in a Warwickshire inn-yard three hundred 
 years ago, with the boy Will Shakspere, listening to this 
 very play. 
 
 Here, then, advance the four P's upon the balcony of 
 the inn : the four P's being The P aimer ^ The Pardoner ^ 
 The Poticary^ and The Pedler. 
 
 They straightway fall to flouting each other, and verily 
 seem to be a quartette of as precious rascals as the world 
 could afford. And this reminds me to mention that in 
 reading from this old play I shall not feel quite comfor- 
 table without deprecating any appearance of sympathy with 
 what will seem, until you get to the end of it, its flippant 
 treatment of great matters. We shall hear much joking 
 about the Protestant idea of hell, and as much about the 
 Catholic idea of pardon. Neither of these will admit of 
 any application now; and we may all legitimately allow 
 ourselves to be amused with these old-time witticisms of 
 Heywood without the discomfort of possible irreverence, 
 in which, as to either Protestant or Catholic, your present 
 lecturer would be the last to join, if we reflect, first, that 
 this old sixteenth-century audience, among whom we are 
 now sitting along with young Will Shakspere to witness 
 this interlude, are really mere children who are playing 
 with the names of things which they do not understand, as
 
 I02 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 mere toys ; and, secondly, that there is really a moral 
 purpose involved in the presentation, as developed in the 
 last lines. Moreover, and most important of all, I ask 
 you to observe all through how infinitely above this child- 
 ish flippancy is Shakspere's attitude towards all reverential 
 things. Shakspere, indeed, makes us hate the sin and love 
 the sinner. Heywood is not so large. Shakspere is here 
 moral in the highest degree. How we misdirect our 
 spiritual charities ! The novel shows us a good man 
 struggling, and we sympathise with him, and hate the 
 weak fools in the book. But why should we be sorry for 
 a good man, in whatever stress ? Let us be sorry for 
 nothing in the world but a bad man. Let us extend our 
 sympathetic charity to him who is spiritually weak. Why 
 should we weep for Little Nell ? Let us weep for the old 
 gambler. This is Shakspere's morality. 
 
 A thousand details of the life of the time come out in 
 this old interlude : 
 
 Palmer. I am a Palmer, as ye se, 
 Which of my lyfe much part have spent 
 In many a fayre and farre countrie, 
 As pilgrims do, of good intent. 
 At Hierusalem have I bene. 
 Before Chryste's blessed sepulture, 
 The mount of Calvary have I sene, 
 A holy place ye may be sure. 
 To Josaphat and Olyvete 
 On fote, god wote, I wente ryghte bare 
 Many a salt tere dyd I swete 
 Before thys carkes coulde come thare. 
 
 He describes the places where he has been, the saints* 
 shrines, etc.
 
 A Poticary and a Pardoner
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 103 
 
 Pardoner. And when ye have gone as far as ye can 
 For all your labour and gostely intente 
 Ye will cum home as wyse as ye wente. 
 
 Palmer. Why, syr, dyspyse ye pylgrymage ? 
 
 Pardoner. Nay : I not dyspraise it 
 But yet I discomende your wit : 
 I pray you shew what the cause is 
 Ye wente all these pylgrymages ? 
 
 Palmer. Forsoth thys lyfe I dyd begyn 
 To rydde the bondage of my syn. 
 
 Pardoner. No we is your owne confessions lykely 
 To make yourselfe a fole quyckely. 
 Nowe marke in this what wyt ye have, 
 To seeke so farre and helpe so nye : 
 Even here at home is remedy ; 
 For at your dore myselfe doth dwell 
 Who could have saved your soule as well 
 As all your wyde wandrynge shall do 
 Though ye wente thryes to Jericho. 
 
 Palmer. But let us here fryst what ye are ? 
 
 Pardoner. Truly I am a Pardoner. 
 
 Palmer. Truly a pardoner ! that may be true ; 
 But a true pardoner doth not ensew. 
 Ryght selde is it sene, or never 
 That treuth and pardoners dwell together. 
 
 Pardoner. I say yet agayne my pardons are suche 
 That yf there were a thousand soules on a hepe 
 I would brynge them all to heven as good chepe 
 As ye have brought yourselfe on pylgrymage. 
 
 After some more squabbling the Palmer addresses the 
 Pedler : 
 
 What the devyll hast thou there at thy back ? 
 
 Pedler. What dost thou not knowe, that every pedler 
 In all kinds of trifles must be a medler ?
 
 I04 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Specyally in women's tryflinges ; 
 Those use we cheefly above all thinges. 
 . . . Gloves, pynnes, combes, glasses unspottyd. 
 Pomanders, hookes, and lasses knotted ; 
 ^ Brooches, rynges and all manner of bedes, 
 Laces round and flat, for women's hedes ; 
 Nedyls, threde, thymbell, shers, and all suche knackes ; 
 Where lovers be, no such thynges lackes ; 
 Sypers, (Cyprus) swathbandes, rybandes and sieve laces, 
 Gyrdyls, kyves, purses and pyncases. . . . 
 
 Pardoner. I praye you tell me what causeth this, 
 That women after theyr arysynge 
 Be so longe in theyr apparelyng ? 
 
 Pedler. Forsoth, women have many lettes. 
 And they be masked in many nettes ; 
 
 And he goes on to specify these " lets " and " nets " : 
 
 As frontlettes, fyllettes, partlettes, and bracelettes j 
 And then theyr bonettes and theyr poynettes. 
 By these lettes and nettes the lette is suche. 
 That spede is small whan haste is muche. 
 
 Then the Pedler attempts to sell them his wares ; but the 
 
 Palmer. Nay, by my trouth, we be lyke fryers; 
 We are but beggars, we be no byers. 
 
 Pedler. Well, though this journey acquyte no coste. 
 Yet thynke I not my labour loste; 
 Devyse what pastyme that ye thynke beste. 
 And make ye sure to find me prest. 
 
 Pot'tcary. Why ? be ye so unyversall. 
 That ye can do what so ever ye shall ? 
 
 Here this is a kind of interlude in the interlude,^ when we 
 
 1 In the anonymous play of Sir "exhibiting a play within a play." 
 Thomas More (1590?) My Lord (Why not a play within a play 
 Cardinal's players are introduced, within a play, etc. ?) When asked
 
 
 
 
 ^•*9 
 
 STAGE RIKJiCTiU.VS rOB THK MORrALITy or THE CVSTIJ': OK COOD PKKSE^KRAACK. , 
 
 Stage Directions for a Morality 
 From the " Cm'entry Mysteries"
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 105 
 
 have a perfect exhibition of the modern circus clown. 
 They proceed to devise some pastime ; the Poticary says 
 to the Pedler : 
 
 Then tell me thys, are you perfyt in drynkynge ? 
 
 Pedler. Perfyt in drynkynge, as may be wysht by thynkynge. 
 
 Poticary. Then after your drynking, how fall ye to wynkynge? 
 
 Pedler. Syr, after drynkynge, whyh the shot is tynkynge, 
 Some hedes be swynkynge, but myn will be synkynge, 
 And upon drynkynge, myn eyse will be pynkynge, 
 For wynkynge to drynkynge is alway lynkynge. 
 
 Poticary. If ye were desired thereto, 
 I pray you tell me can you synge ? 
 
 Pedler. Syr, I have som syght in syngynge. 
 
 Poticary. But is your brest * anythynge swete. 
 
 Here they fall to discussing the respective merits of their 
 crafts again, till presently the 
 
 Poticary. My craft is such that I can ryght well, 
 Sende my fryndes to heven and myselfe to helle. 
 . . . But for good order, at a worde, 
 Twayne of us must wayte on the thyrde 
 And unto that I do agree 
 For bothe you twayne shall wayte on me. 
 
 Pardoner. Nay, nay, my frende, that will not be : 
 I am too good to wayte on thee. 
 
 And it is only now that the real plot of the play emerges. 
 The four fall to disputing which is the worthiest of them ; 
 and in order to determine, they agree to try their skill* in 
 
 what plays are ready for representa- Dives and Lazarus, Lusty Juventus, 
 
 tion, the player replies: " Divers, and the Marriage of Wit and Wis- 
 
 my lord; The Cradle of Security, dom.'*'' 
 
 Hit nail o' tP head. Impatient l Cf. Twelfth Night, "hrcsC 
 Poverty, The Play of Four P's,
 
 io6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 something in which they are all commonly proficient. It 
 is difficult at first to find this something; but presently 
 the Pedler solves the trouble : he says they are all pro- 
 ficient in lying ; and they then agree that he who shall tell 
 the most monstrous falsehood shall be accounted best 
 man. Only compare, in passing, all this low plane with 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream ! 
 
 Palmer. By mi Lady, and I wolde be loth 
 To wayt on the better of you both. 
 
 Pedler. Yet be ye senser, for all thys dout, 
 Thys waytynge must be brought about ; 
 Men cannot prosper wylfully ledde ; 
 All thynge decay when there is no hedde. 
 Synnes ye cannot agree in voyce 
 Who shall be hed, there is no choyce 
 But to devyse some maner thynge 
 Wherein ye all be lyke conneynge. 
 And now have I found one masterye 
 That ye can do indyfferently ; 
 And is nather sellynge nor byenge 
 But even onely very lyenge. 
 And all ye three can lye as wel 
 As can the falsest devyll in hell. 
 
 The Pedler goes on to add that this is a matter in which 
 he can be judge, having some skill in it himself; where- 
 upon they elect him umpire and proceed to try their skill. 
 There is not time for detail, and we must come to the 
 main point,^ 
 
 Presently the Poticary happens to remark, quite inciden- 
 tally and merely as a sarcastic exclamation, to the Palmer, 
 Forsooth ye be an honest man^ whereupon the others cry out 
 
 1 See the subsequent chapter on "The Doctors of Shakspere's Time" 
 for a catalogue of quaint drugs here enumerated by the Poticary.
 
 !! i; I. !.' M ' > I r II , 
 
 -J 
 
 A View of the Pit's Mouth 
 From the " Coventry Mysteries'''
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 107 
 
 that that is certainly the most prodigious falsehood that 
 could be told ; but it is after discussion adjudged not to 
 count, as being an unpremeditated accident, and the Par- 
 doner proceeds to vaunt a wonderful rescue of a soul 
 which he recently performed ; and this is the reason of 
 being of the play. 
 
 Well syr then marke what I can say : 
 I have been a pardoner many a day, 
 And done greater cures gostely 
 Than ever he dyd bodily. 
 Namely thys one, which ye shall here, 
 Of one departed within thys seven yere. 
 
 A female friend of his had died suddenly. 
 
 . . . Nothynge could relese my woe 
 Tyll I had tried even out of hande 
 In what estate her soule dyd stande. 
 
 He goes first to Purgatory, but she was not there : so 
 
 ... I from thens to hell that nyght 
 
 To help thys woman yf I myght. 
 
 And fyrst to the devyll that kept the gate 
 
 I came and spoke after this rate. 
 
 All hayle, syr devyll, and made lowe courtesy; 
 
 Welcome, quoth he, thus smilyngly. 
 
 He knew me well, and I at laste 
 
 Remembered him syns longe time paste. . . . 
 
 For oft in the play of Corpus Christi 
 
 He hath playd the devyll at Coventry. „ . . 
 
 And to make my returns the shorter, 
 
 I sayd to this devyll, good mayster porter^ 
 
 For all old love, yf it lie in your power, 
 
 Helpe me to speake with my lord and your. 
 
 Be sure, quoth he, no tongue can tell 
 
 What tyme thou couldest have com so wellj
 
 io8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 For as thys daye lucyfer fell 
 
 Which is our festival in hell, 
 
 Nothynge unreasonable craved thys day 
 
 That shall in hell have any nay. 
 
 Wherfore stand styll, and I will wyt 
 
 If I can get thy safe condyt. 
 
 He taryed not but shortely got it 
 
 Under seale, and the devyll's hande at it. 
 
 In ample wyse, as ye shall here. 
 
 Thus it began : Lucyfere, 
 
 Be the power of god chyefe devyll of hell, 
 
 To all the devylls that there do dwell. 
 
 And every of them we sende gretynge 
 
 Under streyt charge and commandynge 
 
 That they aydynge and assystant be 
 
 To such a Pardoner, and named me. 
 
 So that he may at lybertie 
 
 Passe save without any jeopardy, 
 
 Tyll that he be from us extyncte 
 
 And clerely out of hell's precyncte. 
 
 Geven in the fornes of our palys 
 
 In our highe courte of maters of malys, 
 
 Suche a day and yere of our reyne. 
 
 God save the devyll, quoth I, amain. 
 
 Quod he . . . 
 
 Thou art sure to take no harme. 
 
 Thys devyll and I walkt arme in arme 
 
 So farre tyll he had brought me thyther 
 
 Where all the devylls of hell together 
 
 Stode in array in such apparell. 
 
 As for that day there metely fell ; 
 
 And here we have these children's ideas of hell. 
 
 Thcyre homes well gylt, theyr clowes full clene, 
 Theyr taylles well kempt, and, as I wene.
 
 The Idea of Hell found in the Mystery Plays 
 From tlic " Coventry Mysteries''''
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 109 
 
 With sothery butter theyr bodies anointed. 
 
 I never sawe devylls so well appoynted. 
 
 The mayster sat in his jacket 
 
 And all the soules were playing at racket. 
 
 None other rackettes they hadde in hande 
 
 Save every soule a good fyre brand : 
 
 Wherwyth they played so pretely 
 
 That Lucyfer laughed merely ; 
 
 And all the residew of the feends 
 
 Did laugh thereat ful wel like freends. 
 
 Anon all this route was brought in silens, 
 
 And I by an usher brought in presens 
 
 Of Lucyfer : then lowe, as wel as I could, 
 
 I knelyd, which he so well alowde, 
 
 That thus he beckte, and by saint Antony 
 
 He smyled on me well favourably 
 
 Bendynge his browes as brode as barn-durres, 
 
 Shakynge hys eares as ruged as burres, 
 
 Rolynge hys eyes as round as two bushels, 
 
 Flashynge the fyre out of his nosethryls ; 
 
 Gnashinge hys teeth so vayngloriously. 
 
 That we thought tyme to fall to flatery. 
 
 He falls to flattery, and then asks for the soul of his lady 
 friend. 
 
 So good to graunt the thynge I crave ; 
 And to be shorte, thys wolde I have ; 
 The soule of one which hyther is flytted 
 Delivered hens, and to me remitted, . . . 
 Thorough out the erth my power doth stande 
 Where many a soule lyeth in my hande 
 That spede in maters as I use them. 
 As I receyve them or refuse them. 
 Wherby, what time thy pleasure is, 
 I shall requyte any part of thys.
 
 no SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 The leste devyll here that can come thyther. 
 
 Shall chose a soule and brynge him hyther. 
 
 Ho, ho, quoth the devyll, we are well pleased : 
 
 What is hys name thou wouldst have eased ? 
 
 Nay, quoth I, be it good or evyll. 
 
 My comynge is for a she-devyll. 
 
 What calste her, quoth he, thou whoorson. 
 
 Forsooth, quoth I, Margery Coorson. 
 
 Now by our honour, says Lucyfer, 
 
 No devyll in hell shall withholde her; 
 
 And yf thou woldest have twenty mo, 
 
 Wert not for justyce they shoulde goo. 
 
 For all we devylls within thys den 
 
 Have more to do with two women 
 
 (How does this sound compared with Shakspere's Mi- 
 randa, Rosalind, Perdita !) 
 
 Then with all the charge we have besyde ; 
 Wherefore yf thou our frende wyll be tryed, 
 Apply thy pardons to women so 
 That unto us there come no mo. 
 To do my beste I promised by othe ; 
 Which I have kept, for as the fayth goth 
 At thys day, to heven I do procure 
 Ten women to one man, be sure. 
 Then of Lucyfer, my leve I take. 
 And streyt unto the mayster coke 
 I was hadde, into the kechyn 
 For Margerie's offyce was therein. 
 
 And so he has her forth to the gate, and sets her upon 
 the earth with great joy. 
 
 And on the meate were halfe rosted in dede 
 I take her then fro the spit in with spede. 
 But when she sawe thys brought to pas. 
 To tell the joy wherein she was ;
 
 The Locked Door 
 Fivm ail engraving in the " Coz'entry Mysteries"
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME iii 
 
 And of all the devylls for joy 
 
 Did rore at her delyvery 
 
 And how the cheynes in hell did rynge ; 
 
 And how all the soules therein dyd synge, 
 
 And how we were brought to the gate 
 
 And how we toke our leve thereat. 
 
 But the Palmer wins the prize of worth : he presently 
 declares that he never saw any woman out of patience : 
 this is adjudged the greatest possible falsehood. Finally, 
 after infinite chaffing and flouting, good doctrine comes 
 from the Pedler. 
 
 Pedler. Although they be of sundry kinds, 
 Yet be they not used with sundry myndes. 
 But as god onely doth all these move, 
 So every man onely for his love 
 With love and dred obediently 
 Worketh in these vertues unyformly. 
 Every vertue, if we lyste to scan. 
 Is plesaunt to god and thankful to man. 
 And who that by grace of the Holy Goste 
 To any one vertue is moved moste 
 That man by that grace that one apply 
 And therein serve God moste plentyfully. 
 Yet not that one so farre wyde to wreste 
 As lykynge the same to myslyke the reste. 
 For who so wresteth hys worke is in vayne ; 
 And even in that case I perceyve you twayne. . . . 
 Lykynge your vertue in suche wyse 
 That eche other's vertue ye doo dyspyse. 
 Who walketh thys way for god, wold finde hym 
 The further they seke hym the farther behynde hym.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME — III 
 
 N my last lecture I brought before you 
 several personages and matters of that 
 lighter character which we associate 
 with comedy. We had our pleasant 
 merrymaking over Robert Laneham 
 as he reveals himself in his fantastic 
 account of the Kenilworth festivities ; 
 we had our quiet smile at George 
 Gascoigne's simple-hearted narration of some of the same 
 events ; and we had our heartier laugh, not unmixed with 
 a certain sense of tragedy, over the witty descent into hell 
 of the rascally Pardoner in old John Heywood's interlude 
 of The Four P's. In other words : bringing together all 
 these terms I have used, — the pleasant merriment, quiet 
 smile of humour, the uproarious laugh tinged with terror 
 which wit produces, — you will observe that in that lecture 
 I endeavoured to set you by the earlier founts of that Eng- 
 lish humour which afterwards leaps out into the full stream 
 of Shakspere's comedies. You understand that The Four 
 F's was a late form of the interlude, soon giving into the 
 Ralph Royster Doyster of Nicholas Udall, which we may 
 consider the first completely framed English comedy. 
 
 I I 2
 
 
 r/. 
 
 
 
 \, 
 
 -iC^ 
 
 ^( i 
 
 \lj>> 
 
 mm 
 
 7^f^:^^i 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ;\\^v; 
 
 A Soul in Torment 
 From the " Ccn'oitry Mysteries "
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 113 
 
 Having endeavoured to put you in sympathy with so 
 much of the sixteenth-century domestic or social Hfe as 
 relates to the kind of comic plays and humourous person- 
 ages which Shakspere's early contemporaries were accus- 
 tomed to see, I wish in the present lecture to pursue the 
 same course with reference to the more serious side of 
 life. I should like to show you, first, what kind of a 
 book people would probably be reading in Shakspere's 
 early time ; secondly, what kind of a sermon the people 
 would hear when they went to church ; and thirdly, 
 what kind of a tragedy they would see when they went 
 to the theatre. For this purpose I am going to take 
 occasion to introduce to you three of the most serious, 
 strong and withal beautiful men who ever lived — to wit : 
 Stephen Gosson, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Sackville, 
 Lord Buckhurst. 
 
 You will remember that in the last lecture we left 
 Shakspere in the inn-yard of Warwick listening to a per- 
 formance of The Four P's, in the summer of 1575, when 
 he was a boy of eleven. It was just about this time that 
 a furious debate broke out in England upon the matter of 
 playgoing and plays generally. The quarrel had been 
 smouldering for some years. As early as 1572 Parliament 
 had passed an act which declared that " all Fencers Beare- 
 wardes Comon Players in Enterludes and Minstrels " 
 were " Roges Vacabounds and Sturdye Beggers " unless 
 they belonged to some " Baron of this Realme or to any 
 other honourable Personage of greater Degree." Upon 
 conviction ofany oneas a"Roge" or "Vacabound" within 
 the meaning of this act, he or she — for the act applied to 
 male and female alike — was for the first offence " to be 
 grevously whipped, and burnte through the gristle of the 
 righte Eare with an hot Yron of the compasse of an Ynche 
 aboute, manifestynge his or her rogyshe kinde of Lyef "
 
 114 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 A third offence was punished with death without benefit of 
 clere;y or sanctuary. 
 
 Three years later — that is, in the same year of the 
 Kenilworth reception — the Corporation of London 
 expelled all players from the city. This severe measure, 
 however, — as often happens, — had an effect precisely 
 opposite to its intent. It increased the evil which it 
 sought to diminish. The players, as I showed in my last 
 lecture, had been accustomed to performing in the yards 
 of the inns about London. But being now banished from 
 the city, they defiantly determined to go on playing as 
 near the city as possible ; and so the players proceeded to 
 erect special buildings for their purpose just outside the 
 city limits. Thus the banishing edict of the London Cor- 
 poration, instead of suppressing the drama, really developed 
 it, and gave us the first theatre-building in England. In 
 the following year three theatres were erected, all within a 
 short distance of the boundaries of London : one was 
 called " The Theatre," one " The Curtain," and a third 
 " The Blackfriars." The latter was built by John Bur- 
 bage, father to that Richard Burbage who was the friend 
 and fellow-actor of Shakspere. 
 
 This bold act of the players in setting up gorgeous 
 theatres under the very noses of their worships, the Lon- 
 don burghers, loosed a prodigious flood of debate over the 
 drama which can scarcely be said to have ended even at 
 the present day. The clergy began a furious attack on the 
 stage. In the very next year, 1577, we find Wilcocks 
 preaching a sermon at Paul's Cross in which he ascribed 
 the awful calamity of the plague which had been devas- 
 tating London to this fearful sin of the theatres about the 
 city. *' Looke," he cries, " but upon the common playes 
 in London, and see the multitude that flocketh to 
 them ; . . . beholde the sumptuous theatre houses, a
 
 
 "^g^t -jftBHiJ '*.'' " l^j^fs^ 
 
 '-«^- 
 
 Mummers and Scrolling Players of che Middle Ages in England
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 115 
 
 continual monument of London's prodigalitie and folly. 
 But I understande they are now forbidden by cause of the 
 plague. . . . The cause of plagues is sinne, if you looke to 
 it well; and the cause of sinne are playes ; therefore the 
 cause of plagues are playes." 
 
 In 1578 John Stockwood preaches a sermon at Paul's 
 Cross — which seems to have beena favourite position for the 
 anti-theatrical artillery — in which he mentions by name 
 two of the theatres which had been built a couple of years 
 before. " Wyll not a fylthye playe," says he, " wyth the 
 blast of a Trumpette, sooner call thyther a thousande, than 
 an houres tolling of a Bell bring to the Sermon a hundred ? 
 nay even heare in the Citie, without it be at this place, and 
 some other certaine ordinarie audience, where shall you 
 finde a reasonable companye ? Whereas if you resorte to 
 the Theatre, the Curtayne, and other places of Playes in 
 the Citie, you shall on the Lord's day have these places, 
 with many other that I can not reckon, so full, as possible 
 they can throng. . . . What do I speak of beastelye 
 Playes, against which out of this place every man crieth 
 out ? Have we not houses of purpose built with great 
 charges for the maintenance of them, and that without the 
 liberties, as who should say, then, let them saye what they 
 will say, we will play. I know not how I might with the 
 godly learned especially more discommende the gorgeous 
 Playing place erected in the fieldes, than to terme it, as they 
 please to have it called, a Theatre." 
 
 This debate produced many celebrated works. ^ You 
 all remember the Histriomastix of William Prynne, in the 
 time of Charles I, and his celebrated trial before the Star 
 
 1 Indeed, it pervaded the religious " the promised tears of repentance 
 
 discourses by way of simile as well prove not the tears of the onion 
 
 as of denunciation: "I pray upon the theatre." 
 God," runs a quaint exhortation.
 
 ii6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Chamber for alleged slanders in that book against the 
 Qiieen founded upon the part she had taken in a court 
 masque. William Rankin had written a still earher tirade 
 against the theatre, called the Mirrour of Monsters. 
 
 But the most powerful and in many respects the most 
 interesting work against the theatre was Stephen Gosson's 
 Schoole of AbusCy entered at Stationers' Hall in 1579. 
 Gosson — a Kent man — had gone up to London and had 
 taken to acting and to writing plays when he was still a 
 mere boy. His prematurity can be inferred from the fact 
 that he had acted, had produced at least three plays, had 
 seen the error of his course, had resolved to quit playing 
 and expose the abuses of the stage, and had written the 
 Schoole of Abuse for that purpose, all by the time he was 
 twenty-four years of age. 
 
 He gives us (in Playes Confuted^ a lively account of his 
 own change of mind. 
 
 " When I first gave my selfe to the studie of Poetrie, 
 and to set my cunning abroache, by penning Tragedies^ and 
 Comedies in the Citie of London : perceiving such a Gor- 
 dians knot of disorder in every playhouse as would never 
 be loosed without extremitie, I thought it better with 
 Alexander to draw ye sword that should knappe it asunder 
 at one stroke, then to seeke over nicely or gingerly to 
 undoe it, with the losse of my time and wante of successe. 
 This caused mee to . . . geve them a volley of heathen 
 writers. ..." 
 
 Gosson dedicated his book to Sir Philip Sidney — very 
 malapropos^ one might judge on other plentiful grounds 
 besides the express testimony we have in a letter of Ed- 
 mund Spenser's to Gabriel Harvey in 1579: " Newe 
 Bookes I heare of none, but only of one that writing a 
 certaine Booke called The Schoole of Abuse ^ and dedicating 
 it to Maister Sidney, was for hys labor scorned : if at leaste
 
 William Prynne
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 117 
 
 it be In the goodnesse of that nature to scorne. Suche follie 
 is it, not to regarde aforehande the incHnation and quahtie 
 of him, to whom we dedicate oure bookes." 
 
 Gosson's book, as I said, was entered at Stationers' 
 Hall in 1579. Now I find it easy to fancy that three or 
 four years after, — for there were replies and counter-replies 
 to the Schoole of Abuse which kept the book alive and 
 talked about for some time, — perhaps on some late sum- 
 mer afternoon of 1582, when William Shakspere was 
 eighteen years old, one of John Shakspere's neighbours 
 who belonged to the anti-theatre party may have dropped 
 into the house in Henley Street with a copy of Gosson's 
 Schoole of Abuse ^ in the hope of rescuing John Shakspere 
 from the fascinations of the drama. For John Shakspere 
 was most likely a lover of playing ; while he had been 
 alderman of Stratford we find that the players of the Earl 
 of Leicester and of the Earl of Worcester had acted in the 
 Guildhall of the town, and records remain of moneys paid 
 to such companies. It is not difficult, therefore, to fancy a 
 family party at John Shakspere's house in, say, 1582, when, 
 after some preliminary discussion of the point, — probably 
 often discussed before, — the neighbour draws forth his 
 volume of Gosson and proceeds to demolish John Shak- 
 spere's arguments, while at the other end of the room 
 William Shakspere is seated, with his keen ears open, say- 
 ing nothing. And so let us follow the good burgher as he 
 reads to Master Shakspere from Gosson's book here and 
 there. The Dedication begins with a quaint story of an 
 anti-climax, and soon acquaints one with one of Gosson's 
 characteristic assemblages of old saws and proverbs mixed 
 with metaphoric inventions of his own : 
 
 " Caligula, lying in France with a great army of fight- 
 ing menne, brought all his force on a sudden to the Sea 
 side, as though he intended to cutte over and invade Eng-
 
 ii8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 lande : when he came to the shore, his Souldiers were 
 presently set in araye, himselfe shipped in a small barke, 
 weyed Ancors, and lanched out ; he had not played long 
 in the Sea, wafting too and fro, at his pleasure, but he 
 returned agayne, stroke sayle, gave allarme to his souldiers 
 in token of battaile, and charged everie man too gather 
 cockles. . . . The title of my book doth promise much, 
 the volume you see is very little : and sithens I can not 
 beare out my follie by authoritie, like an Emperor, I will 
 crave pardon for my Phrenzie, by submission, as your 
 worshippes too commaunde. The Schoole which I builde 
 is narrowe, and at the first blushe appeareth but a dogge- 
 hole ; yet small cloudes carie water ; slender threedes sowe 
 sure stiches ; little heares have their shadowes ; blunt 
 stones whette knives; from hard rockes, flow soft springes ; 
 the whole worlde is drawen in a mappe ; Homers Iliades 
 in a nutte shell ; a Kings picture in a pennie ; little 
 chestes may holde greate Treasure ; a fewe Cyphers con- 
 tayne the substance of a rich Merchant; the shorteste 
 Pamphlette may shrowde matter ; the hardest heade 
 may give light ; and the harshest penne maye sette downe 
 somewhat woorth the reading." 
 
 He now proceeds to attack poetry, music, and the 
 drama, — which, he says, all hang together, — and begins 
 with a blast against the poets. Presently he is gotten 
 into this strain : " I must confesse that Poets are the 
 whetstones of wit, notwithstanding that wit Is dearly 
 bought : where honey and gall are mixed. It will be hard 
 to sever the one from the other. The deceitfull Phisi- 
 tion giveth sweete Syrropes to make his poyson goe down 
 the smoother : the Juggler casteth a mist to worke the 
 closer : the Syrens Song Is the Saylers wrack : the 
 Fowler's whistle, the birdes death : the wholesome bayte, 
 the fishes bane : the Harpies have Virgins' faces and
 
 -^ ^ 
 
 'Si
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 119 
 
 vultures Talentes : Hyena speakes like a friend, and de- 
 voures like a Foe : the calmest seas hide dangerous Rockes: 
 the Woolf jettes in Weathers felles : many good sen- 
 tences are spoken by Danus, to shadowe his knavery : and 
 written by Poets, as ornamentes to beautifye their woorkes, 
 and sette theyr trumperie too sale without suspect." 
 
 He now assembles a most surprising number of an- 
 cient stories and sayings in support of his doctrine. As, 
 for example : " Anacharsis beeing demanded of a Greeke, 
 whether they had not instruments of Musick, or Schooles 
 of Poetrie in Scythia^ answered, yes, and that without vice, 
 as though it were either impossible, or incredible, that no 
 abuse should be learned where such lessons are taught, 
 and such schooles maintained. 
 
 " Salust in describing the nurture of Sempronia^ says. 
 . . . She was taught . . . both Greek and Latine, she 
 could versifie, sing, and daunce, better than became an 
 honest woman. . . . 
 
 " But . . . as by Anarcharsis' report the Scythians 
 did it without offence: so one Swalowe brings not Summer. 
 . . . Hee that goes to Sea, must smel of the ship ; and 
 that sayles into Poets wil savour of Pitch. 
 
 " Tiberius the Emperour sawe somewhat, when he 
 judged Scaurus to death for writing a Tragidie : Augustus^ 
 when hee banished Ovid ; And Nero when he charged 
 Lucan, to put up his pipes, to stay his penne and write no 
 more." 
 
 And now, since " Poetrie and pyping have alwaies bene 
 so united togither," a further screed against music : 
 
 "Instruments" are "used in battaile, not to tickle 
 the eare but to teach every souldier when to strike 
 and when to stay, when to flye, and when to followe. 
 Chiron by singing to his instrument, quencheth Achiles 
 furye ; Terpandrus with his notes, layeth the tempest, and
 
 I20 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 pacifies the tumult at Lacedamon ; Homer with his 
 Musicke cured the sick Souldiers in the Grecian Campe, 
 and purged every man's Tent of the Plague. Thinke 
 you that those miracles coulde bee brought with playing 
 of Daunces, Dumpes, Pavins, Galiardes, Measures Fan- 
 eyes, or new streynes ? They never came where this 
 grew, nor knew what it meant. Pythagorus bequeathes 
 them a clookebagge, and condemnes them for fools that 
 judge musicke by sounde and eare. If you will bee good 
 Scholars, and profite well in the Arte of Musicke, shutte 
 your Fidels in their cases, and looke up to heaven : the 
 order of the spheres, the unfallible motion of the Planets, 
 the juste course of the yeere, and varietie of seasons, the 
 Concorde of the Elementes and their qualyties, Fyre, 
 Water, Ayre, Earth, Heate, Colde, Moysture and Drought 
 concurring togeather to the constitution of earthly bodies 
 and sustenance of every creature. The politike Lawes in 
 well governed common wealthes, that treade downe the 
 prowde, and upholde the meeke, the love of the King and 
 his subjectes, the Father and his childe, the Lord and his 
 Slave, the Maister and his Man . . . are excellent mais- 
 ters too showe you that this is right Musicke, this perfect 
 harmony. . . . Terpandrus when he ended the brabbles 
 at Lacedsemon, neyther pyped Rogero nor Turkelony^ but 
 reckning up the commodities of friendship, and fruites of 
 debate, putting them in mind of Lycurgus lawes, taught 
 them too treade a better measure. . . . 
 
 " The Argives appointed by their lawes great punish- 
 ments for such as placed above 7 strings upon any 
 instrument. . . . Plutarch is of opinion that the instru- 
 ments of 3 strings which were used before their time 
 passed al that have followed since. It was an old law and 
 long kept that no man shoulde according to his owne 
 humor, adde or diminish, in matters concerning that Art, 
 but walk in the paths of their predecessors.
 
 7^trj^t^.tl/A^^^.f'H«-9''j''rf-f'K.Mmr^i\- 
 
 Morris-dancers
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 121 
 
 " As Poetrie and Piping are Cosen germans : so piping 
 and playing are of great affinity, and all three chayned in 
 linkes of abuse. . . . Cookes did never shewe more 
 crafte in their junckets to vanquish the taste, nor Painters 
 in shadowes to allure the eye, then Poets in Theaters to 
 wounde the conscience. ... I judge cookes and Painters 
 the better hearing, for the one extendeth his arte no far- 
 ther then to the tongue, palate and nose, the other to the 
 eye ; and both are ended in outwarde sense, which is 
 common to us with bruite beasts. But these by the 
 privie entries of the eare, slip downe into the hart, and 
 with gunshotte of affection gaule the minde, where reason 
 and vertue should rule the roste." 
 
 He now goes on to describe behaviour at the theatres 
 In those days : " In Rome when Plaies or Pageants are 
 showne: Ovid chargeth his Pilgrims, to crepe close to the 
 Saintes, whom they serve, and shew their double diligence 
 to lifte the Gentlewomens roabes from the grounde . . . 
 to sweepe Moates from their Kirtles, ... to lay their 
 handes at their backs for an easie staye . . . too prayse 
 that, whiche they commende ; too lyke everything that 
 pleaseth them ; to presente them Pomegranates to picke 
 as they syt ; and when all is done to waite on them man- 
 nerly too their houses." 
 
 Here follows a lively picture of theatre manners in 
 Shakspere's time. "In our assemblies at playes in London^ 
 you shale see suche heaving and shooving, suche ytching 
 and shouldering, too sitte by women ; suche care for their 
 garments that they bee not trode on. Such eyes to their 
 lappes, that no chippes light in them ; such pillowes to 
 their backes that they take no hurt ; such masking in their 
 ears, I knowe not what ; such giving them Pippins to 
 passe the time ; . . . such smiling, such winking, and such 
 manning them home when the sportes are ended, that it 
 is a right Comedie to marke their behavior. ... I looke
 
 1-2 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 still when Players should cast me their Gauntlets, and 
 challenge a combate ... as though I made them Lords 
 of this misrule. . . . There are more houses than Parishe 
 churches, more maydes then Maulkin, more wayes to the 
 woode then one, and more causes in nature than Efficients. 
 The carpenter rayseth not his frame without tooles, nor 
 the Devill his woork without instrumentes ; were not 
 Players the meane, to make these assemblyes, such multi- 
 tudes wold hardly be drawne in so narowe roome. . . . 
 The abuses of plaies cannot be shown because they passe 
 the degrees of the instrument, reach of the Plummet, sight 
 of the minds, and for trial are never brought to the touch- 
 stone. . . . The very hyerlings of some of our Players, 
 which stand at reversion of VI. S. by the weeke, get under 
 Gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke," (and) " look askance 
 over the shoulder at every man of whom the Sunday be- 
 fore they begged an almes. 
 
 " Meantime, if Players bee called to accounte for the 
 abuses that growe by their assemblyes, I would not have 
 them to answere, as Pilades did for the Theaters of Rome, 
 when they were complayned on ; and Augustus waxed 
 angry : This resort O desar is good for thee^ for heere we 
 keepe thousandes of idle heds occupyed, which else peradven- 
 ture would brue some mischiefe. A fit cloud to cover their 
 abuse, and not unlike to the starting-hole that Lucinius 
 found, who, like a greedy serveiour, beeing sente into 
 France to governe the countrie, robbed them and spoyled 
 them of all their Treasure with unreasonable taskes ; at 
 the last when his cruelties was so loudely cryed out on 
 that every man hearde it ; and all his packing did savour 
 so strong, that Augustus smelt it ; he brought the good 
 Emperour into his house, flapped him in the mouth with 
 a smoth lye, and tolde him that for his sake and the safetie 
 of RomCy hee gathered those riches, the better to impover-
 
 c 
 -a 
 
 
 c 
 
 O
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 123 
 
 Ish the Country for ryslng in Armes and so holde the 
 poore Frenchmennes' Noses to the Grindstone for ever 
 after. A bad excuse is better, they say, than none at all. 
 Hee, because the Frenchman paid tribute every moneth, 
 into XIII Moneths divided the yeere : these because they 
 are allowed to play every Sunday, make IIII or V Sun- 
 days at least every weeke, . . . [All beasts have some 
 wisdom ; instances : ] The Crane is said to rest upon 
 one leg, and holding up the other, keepe a Pebble in her 
 clawe, which as sone as the senses are bound by approache 
 of sleep falles to the ground and . . . makes her awake, 
 whereby shee is ever ready to prevent her enemies. . . . 
 But wee [are always] running most greedily to those 
 places where we are soonest overthrowne. 
 
 " t cannot lyken our Affection better than to an 
 Arrowe, which getting lybertie, with winges is carryed 
 beyonde our reache ; kepte in the Quiver, it is still at 
 commaundment : or to a Dogge, let him slippe, he is 
 straight out of sight, holde him in the Lease, hee never 
 stirres : or to a colte, give him the bridle, he flinges 
 aboute ; raine him hard, and you may rule him : Or to a 
 ship, hoyst the sayles it runnes on head ; let fall the An- 
 cour, all is well : Or to Pandoraes boxe, lift uppe the lidde, 
 out flyes the Devill ; shut it up fast, it cannot hurt us. 
 
 " Let us but shut up our eares to Poets, Pypers and 
 Players, pull our feete back from resort to Theaters, and 
 turne away our eyes from beholding of vanitie, the great- 
 est storme of abuse will be overblowen, and a fayre path 
 troden to amendment of life. Were not we so foolish to 
 taste every drugge, and buy every trifle. Players would shut 
 in their shoppes, and carry their trashe to some other 
 Countrie. . . . Now if any man aske me why myselfe 
 have penned Comedyes in time paste, and inveigh so 
 eagerly against them here, let him know that semel insani-
 
 124 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 nimus omnes ; I have sinned, and am sorry for my fault : 
 hee runnes farre that never turnes, better late than never. 
 . . . Thus sith I have in my voyage sufFred wrack with 
 U/isseSy and wringing-wet scrambled with life to the shore, 
 stand for mee Nausicad with all thy traine till I wipe the 
 blot from my forehead, and with sweet springs wash away 
 the salt froath that cleaves too my soule. . . . 
 
 " This have I set downe of the abuses of Poets, Pypers 
 and Players which bringe us too pleasure, slouth, sleepe, 
 sinne, and without repentance to death and the Devill : 
 which I have not confirmed by authoritie of the Scriptures, 
 because they are not able to stand uppe in the sight of 
 God : and sithens they dare not abide the field, where the 
 word of God dooth bidde them battayle, but runne to 
 Antiquityes. ... I have given them a volley of prophane 
 writers to beginne the skirmishe, and doone my indevour 
 to beate them from their holdes with their owne weapons." 
 
 Before I leave Gosson 1 cannot resist giving you a 
 snatch of his poetry, which is comical enough and yet 
 shows through all the crookedness of metaphor and 
 thought a certain strength of feeling and nimbleness of 
 fancy which give one a solid liking for this evidently earnest, 
 pure-hearted and straight-souled man. This poem is not in 
 the Schoole of Abuse^ but is found disconnected in a work by 
 another author of the period. I give only a part of it : 
 
 O what is man ? Or whereof might he vaunt ? 
 
 From earth and ayre and ashes fyrst he came. 
 
 His fickle state his courage ought to daunt : 
 
 His lyfe shall flit when most he trustes the same. . . . 
 
 A lame and loathsome lymping legged wight 
 
 That dayly doth God's froune and furie feele ; 
 
 A crooked cripple, voyde of all delight, 
 
 That haleth after him an haulting heele 
 
 And from Hierusalem on stilts doth reele.
 
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 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 125 
 
 A wretch of wrath, a sop in sorow sowst, 
 A bruised barke with billowes all bedowst. . . . 
 The wreathed haire of perfect golden wire, 
 The cristall eyes, the shining Angel's face. 
 That kindles coales to set the heart on fyre. 
 When we doe think to runne a royalle race, 
 Shall sodeynly be gauled with disgrace, 
 Our goodes, our beautie, and our brave aray 
 That seem to set our heartes on heygh for aye; 
 Much like the tender floure in fragrant feelde 
 Whose sugred sap sweet smelling savours yeelde ; 
 Though we therein doe dayly lay our lust. 
 By dint of death shall vanish unto dust. 
 
 Now I find no difficulty in fancying that this tirade 
 against the theatres had much the same effect on young 
 Will Shakspere as banishment had upon the London 
 players. At eighteen, to be told that a thing is dangerous 
 is to resolve to do it. Very likely young Will Shakspere 
 lay awake much of the night after he had heard Gosson's 
 eloquence. 
 
 The result of his meditations was told, possibly, to 
 Anne Hathaway next day. It may be that he went over 
 to her house, and after they two got a quiet moment to- 
 gether he startled the girl by informing her that he had 
 determined to see London. Of course Anne wept, and 
 entreated him not to go ; but the fire burnt in him, and 
 go he must. Then suddenly Anne Hathaway's demeanour 
 changes : she consents, and with a certain air of mysterious 
 resolution helps him to get avvay. 
 
 So imagine him arriving late on a Saturday night in 
 the great city of London, a lonesome boy of eighteen, with 
 no definite aim, no palpable money, wondering, now that 
 he is here, why he is here, desolate over the utter uncon- 
 cern with which people pass him by, yet not without a
 
 126 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 sense that he has that in him which might work changes in 
 these matters. He goes to the Belle Savage Inn on Lud- 
 gate Hill. The yard of this inn had been a famous place 
 for plays before the theatres were put up ; but the land- 
 lord now descants mournfully to his young guest on the 
 loss of custom he has suffered since those driving days 
 when the performances kept his tapsters busy. 
 
 On the next morning — being Sunday — Shakspere 
 determines to hear a London sermon in the forenoon, 
 before going to the Blackfriars Theatre in the afternoon. 
 For this purpose he walks over to Paul's Cross. This 
 famous spot, from which so many great sermons were 
 preached in those days, was an open space near the cathe- 
 dral where great crowds assembled on Sunday to hear the 
 popular preachers of the time. The audience stood, or 
 sat on their horses or mules, in the open air during 
 the sermon. In bad weather they would adjourn to what 
 was called the " Shrouds," which seems to have been a 
 sort of covered place adjoining the walls of the cathedral. 
 
 Shakspere, therefore, with so many thoughts in his soul 
 that the world seems too small for them, stations himself 
 in the crowd and listens to the sermon. 
 
 Instead of giving you the discourse which young Shak- 
 spere might actually have heard on that day at Paul's Cross, 
 it will extend the range of my presentation considerably if 
 you will allow me to substitute a sermon — or rather some 
 representative extracts from several sermons — of Hugh 
 Latimer, dating some thirty years previous. This grand 
 man had indeed preached at Paul's Cross, — where our 
 young Shakspere is now standing, — about thirty-three 
 years before, to great crowds of people. I cannot resist 
 bringing him before you, because Latimer is one of those 
 men whose names we all know so well that we do not 
 know them at all. Every school-boy learns that Latimer
 
 
 rt 
 
 L^ ..: 
 
 T' i.-s witiT'j'KN ; ''n f^Mi/.si; Is'i'me; kuvc;£ C);f' pt-'vAY'Ek:''45^c ; 
 
 f A!' hs f K (J .S S. • 
 
 Preaching before the King at Paul's Cross in 1620 
 From a rare engraving
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 127 
 
 was burned at the stake in the reign of Queen Mary ; but 
 few men except specialists ever read a sermon of Latimer's. 
 It happened that in the year 1548 Latimer, then a man 
 of great renown and favour, was invited by King Edward 
 VI to preach seven sermons before him and the 
 court, one on each Friday during Lent. Latimer was 
 used to addressing kings from the pulpit : fifteen years 
 before he had preached to Henry VIII and had not hesi- 
 tated to declare his mind very plainly upon some points 
 wherein he differed from that monarch. But here now in 
 1549 we find him preaching in King Edward's garden at 
 Westminster, where the King had caused a pulpit to be 
 set up for him in the open air so that more people could 
 hear him. Latimer was now nearly sixty years old, and 
 these sermons, which are nearly extempore, have the most 
 touching flavour of that mingled authority and sweetness 
 which is won by a strong man who has lived and who 
 knows whereof he speaks. I find in them, too, a tender- 
 ness and earnestness which makes one feel as if they were 
 infused with some prophetic sense of the terrible fate which 
 awaited him. It was in truth but about six years before 
 the good old Latimer, instead of preaching to a king in 
 his garden, was burning in the fire at Oxford. 
 
 I wish to give you the seventh of this set of sermons 
 substantially as Latimer preached it. Before doing so let 
 me present you with a passage or two from the other six, 
 taken here and there, to illustrate Bishop Latimer's 
 methods of preaching as well as to exhibit sundry touches 
 of the manners of the time. 
 
 Here, for example, is one from the third sermon which 
 shows that the sturdy old man had the strength and adroit- 
 ness of Mr. Moody in turning to use all manner of homely 
 illustrations, and in making good-humoured points in his 
 own favour. After relating in this sermon how a certain
 
 128 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 man had accused him of sedition before the King for being 
 too plain-spoken in his preaching, and how he rebuked 
 him in the King's presence, he goes on to tell a story about 
 the same person : 
 
 " Ther is a certaine man that shortly after my first ser- 
 mon, beynge asked if he had bene at the sermon that day, 
 answered, yea : I praye you said he how lyked you him ? 
 Mary sayed he, even as I lyked hym alwayes, a sediciouse 
 fcllowe. Oh lord he pinched me ther in dede, nay he had 
 rather a ful bytte at me. Yet I comfort my self with that, 
 that Christ hym selfe was noted to be a sturrer up of the 
 people against the Emperoure, and was contented to be 
 called sediciouse. It becommeth me to take it in good 
 worthe, I am not better than he was. In the kings daies 
 that dead is, a meanye of us were called together before 
 hym to saye our myndes in certaine matters. In the end 
 one kneleth me downe, and accuseth me of sedicion, that I 
 had preached sediciouse doctryne. A heavye salutacion, 
 and a hard poynte of suche a mans doynge, as yf I shoulde 
 name hym, ye woulde not thinke it. The king turned to 
 me and sayed. What saye you to that syr ? Then I 
 kneled downe and turned me firste to myne accuser, and 
 requyred hym. 
 
 " Syr what fourme of preachinge woulde you appoynt 
 me to preache before a Kynge ? Wold you have me for to 
 preache nothynge as concernynge a Kynge in the Kynges 
 sermon ? Have you any commyssion to appoynt me 
 what I shal preache. Besydes this, I asked him dyvers 
 other questions, and he wold make no answere to none of 
 them all. He had nothing to saye. Then I turned me 
 to the Kynge, and submitted my selfe to hys Grace and 
 sayed I never thought my selfe worthy, nor I never sued 
 to be a preacher before youre grace, but I was called to it, 
 and would be willynge if you mislike me, to geve place to
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 129 
 
 mi betters. For I grant ther be a great many more worthy 
 of the roume then I am. . . . 
 
 " When I was in trouble, it was objected an[d] sayed 
 unto me, yat I was singular, that no manne thought as I 
 thought, that I loved a syngularyte in all that I dyd, and 
 that I tooke a way, contrary to the kynge, and the whole 
 parliamente, and that I was travayled with them, that had 
 better wyttes then I, that I was contrari to them al. 
 Marye syr thys was a sore thunder bolte. I thought it an 
 yrksome thinge to be alone, and to have no fellowe. I 
 thought it was possyble it myghte not be true that they 
 tolde me. ... So thoughte I, there be more of myne 
 opinion then I, I thought I was not alone. I have nowe 
 gotten one felowe more, a companyon of sedition, and wot 
 ye who is my felow ? Esai the Prophete. . . . 
 
 " I am contente to beare the title of sedicious with 
 Esai. Thankes be to God, I am not alone, I am in no 
 singularyte. This same man that layed sedycyon thus to 
 my charge, was asked an other tyme whether he were at 
 the sermon at Paules crosse, he answered that he was 
 ther, and beynge asked what news ther. Mary quod he, 
 wonderful newes, we were ther clean absolved, my 
 Mule and al had ful absolucion, ye may se by thys, 
 that he was suche a one that rode on a mule and that he 
 was a gentylman. 
 
 "In dede hys Mule was wyser than he, for I dare 
 saye, the Mule never sclaundered the Preacher. Oh what 
 an unhappy chaunce had thys Mule to carye suche an 
 Asse uppon hys backe. I was there at the sermon my 
 selfe, in the ende of his sermon he gave a generall absolu- 
 cion, and as farre as I remember these, or suche other 
 lyke were his wordes, but at the leaste, I am sure, thys was 
 hys meanynge. As manye as do knowledge your selves to 
 be synners, and confesse the same and standes not in
 
 ijo SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 defence of it, and hartelye abhorreth it, and will beleve in 
 the death of christ, and be conformable thereunto, Ego 
 absolvo voSy quod he. Now sayeth thys gentylman, his 
 mule was absolved. The preacher absolved but such as 
 were sorye, and dyd repente. Be lyke then she dyd 
 repent her stumblynge, hys Mule was wiser then he a 
 greate deale. I speake not of worldely wysedom, for 
 therein he is to wyse, yes, he is so wyse, that wyse men 
 marvayle howe he came truly by the tenth part of that he 
 hath. But in wisdome which consisteth In rebus dei. In 
 rebus salutis^ in godlye matters and appartaynyng to our 
 salvacion, in this wysdome he is as blynd as a beatel. 
 They be, I'anquam equus et Mulus, in qui bus non est intel- 
 lectus. Like Horses and Mules that have no under- 
 standynge. If it were true that the Mule repented hyr of 
 her stumbling I thynke she was better absolved than he. 
 I praye God stop his mouth, or els to open it to speke bet- 
 ter, and more to hys glory." 
 
 Again, in the fifth sermon he is boldly exposing the 
 then common practice of taking bribes in office, selling 
 appointments, and the like. " One wyl say, peradventure, 
 you speake unsemelye ... so to be agaynste the offi- 
 cers, for takynge of rewardes. . . . Ye consyder not the 
 matter to the bottome. Theyr offices be bought for great 
 sommes, nowe howe shall they receyve theyr money 
 agayne but by brybynge. . . . Some of them gave CC 
 poundes, some vC pounde, some II M pounde. And 
 how shal they gather up thys money agayne but by 
 healpynge themselves in theyre office? . . . If thei bei, 
 thei must needes sel, for it is wittily spoken. Vendere jure 
 potest) emerat ille prius^ he may lawefully sel it, he bought 
 it before. . . . Ommia venelia. Al thinges bought for 
 money. I mervaile the ground gapes not and devours 
 us. . . . Ther was a patron in England that had a bene-
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 131 
 
 fice fallen into hys hande and a good brother of mine 
 came unto hym and brought hym XXX Apples in a 
 dysh and gave them hys man to carrye them to hys 
 mayster. . . . This man commeth to his mayster and 
 presented hym wyth the dyshe of Apples, sayinge, Syr 
 suche a man hathe sente you a dyshe of frute, and desyreth 
 you to be good unto hym for such a benefyce. Tushe 
 tushe, quod he, thys is no apple matter. I wyll none of 
 hys apples. . . . The man came to the pryest agayne, and 
 toulde him what hys mayster sayed. Then quod the 
 priest, desyre hym yet to prove one of them for my sake, 
 he shal find them much better then they loke for. He 
 cutte one of them and founde ten peces of golde in it. 
 Mary quod he, thys is a good apple. The pryest standyng 
 not farre of, herynge what the Gentleman sayed, cryed out 
 and answered, they are all one apples I warrante you syr, 
 they grewe all on one tree, and have all one taste. Well, 
 he is a good fellowe, let hym have it, quod the patrone," 
 etc. 
 
 It is evidence of the venality of this time that the 
 honest bishop's denunciation did not much to impress his 
 audience, for presently I find him exclaiming, " It is taken 
 for a laughynge matter, wel, I wyl gooe on." 
 
 And then he does " gooe on," with a vengeance. His 
 sermons were, as I said, mostly extempore, and we there- 
 fore find them often prolix and wordy. But he can tell a 
 story in a few right English terms when he comes to it. 
 Listen to this, for example, as a model of concise narra- 
 tion. He is " going on," in the same strain of attack 
 upon bribery. It has, he continues, even gotten in the 
 courts, among judges and juries. " I can tell," he cries, 
 " where one man slew another, in a tounship, and was 
 attached upon the same, XII men were impaneled, the 
 man hadde frendes, the Shryve laboured the bench, the
 
 132 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 XI 1 men stacke at it and sayed, except he woulde dis- 
 burse XII crownes they woulde fynde hym gyltye. 
 
 " Meanes were found that the XII crownes was payed. 
 The quest commes in and sayes not giltye. Here was a 
 not gyltye for XII crownes. And some of the bench 
 were hanged, thei were wul served. . . . Crownes ? If 
 theyr crownes were shaven to the shoulders they were 
 served wel inoughe." 
 
 Again, in the sixth sermon he is stoutly upholding the 
 good of preaching : you must be saved by preaching, you 
 must come to church, he says ; better come with a bad 
 motive than not come at all ; and so he adds a story in 
 his quaint old way : 
 
 " I had rather ye shoulde come of a naughtye mynde, to 
 heare the worde of God, for noveltye, or for curiositie to 
 heare some pastime, then to be awaye. I had rather ye 
 shoulde come as the tale is by the Gentel-woman of Lon- 
 don : one of her neyghbours mette her in the streate, and 
 sayed mestres, whither go ye ? Mary sayed she, I am 
 goynge to S. Tomas of Acres to the sermon, I coulde 
 not slepe al thys laste night, and I am goynge now thether, 
 I never fayled of a good nap there ; and so I had rather 
 ye should a napping to the sermons than not to go at al. 
 For with what mind so ever ye come, thoughe ye come for 
 an ill purpose, yet peradventure ye may chaunce to be 
 caught or ye go, the preacher may chaunce to catche you 
 on hys hoke." 
 
 It would seem that his noble auditory was sometimes 
 noisy ; and he does not hesitate to rebuke them. For 
 example, in the sixth sermon I find him suddenly breaking 
 away from his matter to speak as follows : 
 
 " I remember nowe a saying of Sayncte Chrisostome, 
 and peradventure it myght come here after in better 
 place, but yet I wyll take it, whiles it commeth to my
 
 Bishop Latimer
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 133 
 
 mind. The saying is this. El loquentum eum audierunt in 
 siientio^ferinon locutionis non interrumpentes. They harde 
 hym, sayeth he, in Silence, not interruptynge the order of 
 his preachynge. He meanes they hard hym quietely, with- 
 out any shovelynge of feete or walkynge up and downe. 
 Suerly it is an yl mysordar, that foike shalbe walkyng up 
 and down in the sermon tyme (as I have sene in this place 
 thys Lente) and there shalbe suche bussynge and bussynge 
 in the preachers eare that it maketh hym often tymes to 
 forget hys matter. O let us consider the Kynges Maies- 
 tyes goodnes, Thys place was prepared for banketynge of 
 the bodye, and hys Maiestye hath made it a place for the 
 comforte of the soule. . » . Consider where ye be, fyrst 
 ye oughte to have a reverence to Godds word, and 
 thoughe it be preached by pore men, yet it is the same 
 worde that oure Savioure spoke. . . . Heare in silence, 
 as Chrisostom sayeth. It maye chance that sume in the 
 companye may fall sicke, or be diseased, if therbe any 
 suche, let them go away, with silence, let them leave their 
 salutacions till they come in the courte, let them departe 
 with silence." 
 
 Again, here is an extract which gives us a cunning re- 
 minder of the theological arguments common in those 
 days, and of Latimer's adroitness in this particular. He 
 is preaching of the time when the Saviour went into Simon 
 Peter's boat and told him to put forth from the shore. 
 His opponents, it seems, had made an argument of the 
 Pope's supremacy founded upon the fact that Christ chose 
 Simon Peter's boat rather than any other, and spoke to 
 Peter in the singular number instead of addressing other 
 disciples. Here is the bishop's treatment of that argu- 
 ment, in which, besides his polemic skill, come out some 
 pleasant touches of life in those days. 
 
 " Wei, he commes to Simons bote, and why rather to
 
 134 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Simon's bote then an other. 1 wyl aunswere, as I find in 
 experience in my selfe. I came hither to-day from Lam- 
 beth in a whirry and when I came to take my bote, the 
 water men came about me, as the maner is, and he wold 
 have me, and he wold have me. I toke one of them. 
 Nowe ye wyll aske me why I came in yat bote, rather 
 then in another, because I woulde go into that that I se 
 stande nexte me, it stode more commodiouslye for me. 
 And so did Christe by Simon's bote. It stode nerer for 
 him, he sawe a better seate in it. A good natural rea- 
 son. . . . 
 
 "It foloweth in the text due in ahum. Here comes in 
 the supremitye of the Byshoppe of Rome. . . . And their 
 argumente is thys : he spake to Peter onelye, and he spake 
 to hym in the singular number, ergo he gave him such a 
 preeminence above the rest. A goodly argument, I wene 
 it be a sillogismus, in quern terra pontus. I will make a 
 lyke argument, Oure Savioure Christe sayed to ludas, 
 whan he was about to betraye hym quod facis fac citius. 
 Nowe, whan he spake to Peter ther were none of his dis- 
 ciples by, but James and John, but whan he spake to 
 ludas they were al present. Wei, he sayd unto him, — 
 quod facis fac citius. Spede thy busines, yat thou hast in 
 thy heade, do it. . . . He spake in the singular number 
 to him, ergo he gave him some preeminence. By like he 
 made him a Cardinal!, and it mighte ful wel be, for they 
 have folowed ludas ever syns. Here is as good a grounde 
 for the Coledge of Cardinalles, as the other is for the 
 supremitie of the Bishop of Rome. Oure Saviour Christ 
 (say they) spake onely to Peter for preeminence, because 
 he was chiefe of the Apostles, and you can shewe none 
 other cause. Ergo thys is the cause why he spake to hym 
 in the singular number. I dare say there is never a whir-
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 135 
 
 riman at Westminster brydge, but he can answere to thys, 
 and gyve a naturall reason for it. 
 
 " He knoweth that one man is able to shove the bote, 
 but one man was not able to caste out the nettes, and there- 
 fore he sayed in the plural nomber, laxate retia : Louse 
 youre nettes ? and he sayed in the syngular number to 
 Peter, launch out the bote, why ? because he was able to 
 do it." 
 
 But I have too long delayed to present you some con- 
 nected discourse of Latimer's. For this purpose I have 
 selected the seventh sermon, which I give substantially, 
 though excising at least half It is often really comical, in 
 reading these sermons, to see the good bishop forget his 
 point, and go feeling about, with all sorts of odd sayings 
 and makeweight sentences, until he can find the track 
 again. This seventh sermon was preached by Bishop 
 Latimer just three hundred and thirty years ago last Fri- 
 day two weeks, being the Good Friday sermon with which 
 he closed his series before the young King Edward VI. 
 Observe how it is all so good and grandmotherly and 
 wise : every sentence has spectacles on its nose, with many 
 an occasional gleam of the deep old eyes peering over. 
 Thus he begins : 
 
 " ^ae cunque scripta sunt, nostrayn doctrinam scrlpta 
 sunt. Al thynges yat be written, thei be written to be 
 our doctrine. By occasion of thys texte (most honorable 
 audience) I have walked thys Lente in the brode filde of 
 scripture and used my libertie, and intreated of such mat- 
 ters as I thought mete for thys auditory. I have had a 
 do wyth many estates, even with the highest of all, I have 
 entreated of the dutye of Kynges, of the dutye of males- 
 trates, and ludges, of the dutye of prelates, allowyng that 
 yat is good, and disalovv^yng the contrary. I have taught
 
 136 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 that we are all synners, I thinke there is none of us al, 
 neither precher, nor hearer, but we maye be amended and 
 redresse our lyves. We maye all saye, yea all the packe 
 of us, peccavimus cum patribus nostris. 
 
 " This day is commonlye called good Fryday, although 
 everi day ought to be with us good fryday. Yet this day 
 we ar accustomed specially to have a commemoration and 
 remembrance of the passion of our Saviour Jesu Christ. 
 This daye we have in memory hys bitter Passion and 
 death, which is the remedy of our syn. . . . 
 
 " The place that I wyll intreat of is in the XXVI 
 Chapiter of saynte Matthewe, Howbeit, as I intreate of 
 it I wyll borrowe parte of Saynte Marke and saynt Luke, 
 for they have somewhat that Saynt Matthew hath not, and 
 especially Luke. The texte is, Tunc cum venisset Jesus 
 in villam quae dicitur-gethsemani. Then when Jesus came 
 — some have in villam^ some in agrum^ some in praedium. 
 But it is all one, when Christ came into a Graunge, into a 
 peace of land, into a fielde, it makes no matter, cal it what 
 ye wyl, at what tyme he had come into an honest mans 
 house and ther eaten hys pascquall lambe and instituted 
 and celebrate the lordes supper, and sette furth the blessed 
 communion, then when this was done, he toke his way to 
 the place where he knewe ludas would come. It was a 
 solitary place and thither he wente with hys leaven 
 Apostles. For ludas the twelfte was a boute his busines, 
 he was occupied aboute his marchandise and was provyd- 
 yng among the byshoppes and preistes, to come with an 
 imbushment of Jewes to take our saviour lesus Christ. 
 
 " And when he was come into this felde, or grandge, 
 this village, or ferme place, which was called Gethsemani, 
 there was a Garden, sayth Luke, into the whych he goeth 
 and leves VIII of hys disciples without ; howbeit, he ap- 
 poynted them what they shold do. He sayth, Sedete hicj
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 137 
 
 donee vadam illuc^ et orem. Sit you here whiles I go yon- 
 der and prai. 
 
 " Hee lefte them there and take no more with him but 
 III, Peter, James and John, to teach us that a soHtari 
 place is mete for prayer. ... He toke Peter, James and 
 John into thys garden. And why dyd he take them 
 wyth hym rather then other .? mary those that he had 
 taken before, to whom he had reveled in the hyl the trans- 
 figuracion and declaracion of his deitye, to se ye revelacion 
 of ye maiestye of his godhead : now in the garden he 
 reveled to the same ye infirmity of his manhood ; because 
 they had tasted of the swete, he would thei should taste 
 also of the sower. . . . And he began to be heavy in hys 
 mynd. . . . And as the soule is more precious then the 
 bodye even so is the paine of the soule more grevous then 
 the paynes of the body. Therfore ther is another which 
 writteth, horror mortis gravior ipsa morte. The horrour 
 and ugsomnes of death is sorer than death it selfe. This 
 is the moste grevous paine that ever christ suffered, even 
 this pang that he suffered in the garden. It is the most 
 notable place one of them in the whole storie of ye pas- 
 sion, when he sayed, Anima mea tristis est usque ad mortem. 
 My soule is heavy to death. There was offered unto him 
 nowe the Image of death, the Image, the sence, the 
 felynge of hell, for death and hell go both together. 
 
 " I wyll entreate of thys Image of hell, whyche is 
 death, Truelye no manne can shewe it perfectlye, yet I 
 wyl do the best I can to make you understand ye grevouse 
 panges that oure Savioure Christe was in when he was in 
 the garden ; as mans power is not able to beare it, so no 
 mans tong is able to expresse it. Paynters painte death 
 lyke a man without skin, and a body having nothing but 
 bones. And hel they paint it horible flames of brening 
 fier ; they bungell somwhat at it, thei come no thing nere
 
 138 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 it. But thys is no true payntynge. No paynter can 
 paynte hel unlesse he could paynte the torment and con- 
 demnation both of body and soule. . . . Death and hel 
 take unto them this evill favoured face of fine and thor- 
 ough sinne. Synne was their mother. . . . Therefore 
 they must have suche an Image as their mother sinne 
 would geve them. An ugsome thing and an horrible 
 Image must it nedes be that is brought in by such a thyng 
 so hated of God, yea this face of death and hell is so terri- 
 ble, that suche as hath bene wycked men had rather be 
 hanged than abyde it. As Achitophell that traytoure to 
 David lyke an ambyciouse wretche thought to have come 
 to higher promotion and therefore conspired with Absolom 
 against hys maiester David. He when he sawe hys coun- 
 sayle take no place, goes and hanges hym selfe, in contem- 
 plation of thys evyl favored face of death. ludas also 
 when he came wyth bushementes to take his maister Christe 
 in beholdyng thys horrible face hanged himselfe. 
 
 " Yea the electe people of God, the faythful havinge the 
 beholdynge of thys face, (though God hath always pre- 
 served them, suche a good God he is to them that beleve 
 in hym, that he wyll not suffer them to be tempted above 
 that, that they have bene able to beare) yet for all that, 
 there is nothynge that they complaine more sore then of 
 thys horrour of death. Go to Job. What sayeth he ? 
 Pereat dies in quo natus sum, sus-pendium elegit anima mea. 
 Wo worth ye day that I was born in, my soule wolde be 
 hanged, saying in his panges almooste he wyste not what. 
 Thys was when wyth the eye of hys conscience, and the 
 inwarde man he behelde the horrour of death and hel, not 
 for any bodylye payne that he suffred, for when he hadde 
 byles, botches, blaynes, and scabbes, he suffered them 
 pacientlye. . . . Kynge David also sayed, in contempla- 
 tion of thys ugsome face : Laboravi in genitu meo. I have
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 139 
 
 been sore vexed with sighyng and mourning. . . . Ther 
 be some writers that saies Peter, lames and lohn, were in 
 thys felynge at the same tyme, and that Peter when he 
 sayed : Exi a me domine quia homo peccator sum, did taste 
 some part of it he was so astonyshed, he wist not what to 
 saye. It was not longe that they were in thys anguyshe, 
 some sayes longer, some shorter, but Christ was ready to 
 comforte them, and sayed to Peter. Ne timeas. Be not 
 afraid. A frend of myne tolde me of a certayne woman, 
 that was XVIII yeares together in it. I knewe a man 
 myself Bilney, litle Bilney, that blessed martyr of GOD, 
 what tyme he had hys fagott, and was come agayne to 
 Cambrydge hadde suche conflyctes, wythin hym selfe, 
 beholdynge thys Image of death, that hys frendes were 
 afrayed to lette hym be alone, they were fayne to be wyth 
 hym daye and nyght, and comforted hym, as they coulde, 
 but no comfortes would serve. As for the comfortable 
 places of scripture to brynge theym unto hym, it was as 
 though a man would runne hym throughe the herte wyth a 
 sweard. Yet afterwarde for all thys he was revived, and 
 toke his death pacientlye, and dyed wel againste the Tiran- 
 nical sea of Rome. . . . Here is a good lesson for you my 
 fryendes. If ever ye come in daunger, in duraunce, in 
 pryson for godes quarrell, and hys sake (as he dyd for 
 purgatorye matters . . . ) I wyl advyse you fyrst and 
 above al thing to abjure al your fryendes, all your friende- 
 shipe, leave not one unabjured, it is they that shall undo 
 you, and not your ennemyes. It was his very friendes, 
 that brought Bylnye to it. By this it maye somewhat 
 appere what oure savyour Christe suffered, he doeth not 
 dissemble it hym selfe, when he sayth, my soule is heavye 
 to death, he was in so sore an Agony, that there issued 
 out of hym as I shal entreate anon, droppes of bloud, an 
 ugsome thing suerly, whiche his fact and dede sheweth us.
 
 I40 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 what horrible paynes he was in for oure sakes. . . . He 
 woulde not helpe hymselfe with his Godhede. ... he toke 
 before hym our synnes, our synnes, not the worcke of 
 synnes. I meane not so, not to do it, not to commit it, 
 but ... to chause it, to beare the stypende of it, and 
 that waye he was the great synner of the worlde, he bare 
 all the synne of the worlde on hys backe. ... It was as 
 if you woulde immagin that one man had commytted al the 
 synnes since Adam, you maye be sure he shoulde be pun- 
 ished wyth the same horrour of death in suche a sorte as al 
 men in the world shoulde have suffered. Feyne and put 
 case our savyour Christe had committed al the sinnes of 
 the world, al that I for my parte have done, al that you 
 for youre parte have done, and that anye manne elles hath 
 done, if he hade done all thys him selfe, his agony that he 
 suffered should have bene no greater nor grevouser, then 
 it was. 
 
 "... Well, he sayeth to his Discyples. Sytte here 
 and praye wyth me. He wente a lytle way of, as it were 
 a stones cast from them, and falles to hys prayer, and 
 saieth : Pater sipossibile est transeat a me calix iste. Father 
 if it be possyble. Awaye wyth thys bytter cuppe, thys 
 outragious payne. 
 
 " ... What does he now, what came to passe 
 nowe, when he had harde no voyce ? Hys father was 
 domme. He resortes to hys frendes, seking some comfort 
 at theyr handes, seynge he had none at his fathers hande, 
 he comes to hys disciples, and fyndes them a slepe, he 
 spake unto Peter, and saied. Ah Peter, arte thou a slepe, 
 Peter before had bragged stoutly, as though he woulde 
 have kylled, God have mercye upon hys soule. And nowe 
 when he shoulde have comforted Christ, he was a slepe, 
 not once busse, nor basse to him, not a word. . . . 
 
 " What shall we not resorte to oure frendes in tyme of
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 141 
 
 nede ? and trowe ye we shal not fynde them a slepe ? Yes 
 I warrante you, and when we nede theyr helpe most, we 
 shal not have it. But what shal we do, when we shall 
 fynde lacke in theym ? We wyll crye out upon theym, 
 upbrayde them, chyde, braule, fume, chaufe and backbite 
 them. But Christ dyd not so, he excused hys fryendes, 
 sayinge : 
 
 " Vigilate et orato spiritus quidem promptus est, caro 
 autem infirma. Oh (quouth he) watch and pray, I se wel 
 the spirite is ready, but the fleshe is weake. . . . 
 
 " But now to the passyon again. Christ had ben 
 with hys father, and felt no healpe, he had bene with hys 
 frendes, and had no comfort, he had prayed twyse, and 
 was not herd, what dyd he now ? dyd he geve prayer over ? 
 no, he goeth agayne to hys father, and sayeth the same 
 agayne, father if it be possyble awaye with this cup. . . . 
 He prayed thryse and was not herd, let us sinners praye 
 thre score tymes, folkes are very dul now adaies in 
 praier. . . . 
 
 " What comes of thys geve in the ende ? Wel, nowe 
 he prayeth agayne, he resorteth to his father agayne. 
 Angore correptus, prolixius orabat. He was in sorer paines, 
 in more anguishe, then ever he was, and therefore he 
 prayeth longer, more ardentlye, more farventlye, more 
 vehementilie, then ever he did before. ... It pleased 
 God to here his sonnes prayer, and sent hym an angell to 
 corroborate, to strengthen, to comforte hym. . . . When 
 the aungell had comforted hym, and when thys horroure 
 of deathe was gone, he was so strong, that he offered him- 
 selfe to ludas, and sayed. I am he. . . . The Jewes had 
 hym to Cayphas and Annas, and there they whypt hym, 
 and bet hym, they sette a crowne of sharpe thorne upon 
 hys head, and nayled hym to a tree, yet al thys was not 
 so bytter as thys horrour of death, and thys Agony, that
 
 142 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 he suffered in the gardayne in such a degree as is dewe to 
 al the synnes of the worlde, and not to one man's synne. 
 
 " Well, thys passion is our remedye, it is the satissfac- 
 tion for oure synnes. Hys soule descended to hell for a 
 tyme. Here is much a do, these newe upstartynge spir- 
 ites say Christ never descended into hel, neyther body nor 
 soule. In scorne they wil aske, was he ther, what did he 
 there ? What if we cannot tell what he dyd there? The 
 Crede goeth no further, but sayeth, he descended thither. 
 What is that to us if we cannot tell, seynge we were 
 taughte no further. Paulle was taken up into the third 
 heaven ; aske lykewyse what he sawe when he was carried 
 thyther ; you shall not fynde in scripture what he sawe or 
 what he dyd there ; shal we not therfore beleve that he 
 was there ? 
 
 " These arrogant spirites, spirites of vayne glorye, be- 
 cause they knowe not by any expre(e)sse scripture the 
 order of his doynges in hell, they wil not beleve that ever 
 he descended into hell. Indede thys article hathe not so 
 full scripture, so many places and testimonyes of scriptures 
 as other have; yet it hath enough : it hath II or III 
 textes, and if it had but one, one texte of scripture is of as 
 good and lawfull authoritye as a M. [thousand] and of as 
 certayne truth. It is not to be wayed by the multitude of 
 textes. . . . 
 
 " There be some greate clarkes that take my parte, 
 and I perceyve not what evill can come of it, in saying, 
 yat our Saviour Christe dyd not onely in soule descende 
 into hell, but also that he suffered in hel suche paynes as 
 the damned spirites dyd suffer there. Suerli, I beleve 
 vereli for my parte, that he suffered the paynes of hell pro- 
 porcionably, as it correspondes and aunsweres to the 
 whole synne of the worlde. He would not suffer onely 
 bodelye in the gardayne and upon the crosse, but also in
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 143 
 
 hys soule, when it was from the bodye, whyche was a 
 payne dewe for oure synne. Some wrytte so, and I can 
 beleve it, that he suffered in the very place, 1 cannot tell 
 what it is, call it what ye wil, even in the skaldinge house, 
 in the ugsomnes of the place, in the presence of the place, 
 suche payne as our capacitie cannot attayne unto ; it is some- 
 what declared unto us when we utter it by these effectes : 
 by fyre, by gnashynge of teth, by the worme that gnaweth 
 on the conscience. What so ever the payne is, it is a 
 greate payne that he suffered for us. I se no inconve- 
 nience to saye that Christe suffered in soule in hell. . . . 
 Whether he suffered, or wrastled with the spirites, or com- 
 forted Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I wyl not desier to 
 knowe ; if ye lyke not that which I have spoken of hys 
 sufferynge, let it go, I wyl not strive in it. I wil be 
 preiudice to nobody, weye it as ye list. I do but offer it 
 you to consider. It is like his soule did somwhat, the 
 thre dayes that hys bodye lay in the grave. To saye he 
 suffered in hell for us derogats nothing from his death, 
 for al thinges that Christ did before his suffering on the 
 crosse and after do worke oure salvacion ; if he had not 
 bene incarnat, he had not dyed ; he was beneficial to us 
 with al thinges he did. . . . 
 
 "... Oure Savioure Christe hath lefte behynd hym 
 a remembraunce of hys passion, the blessed communion, 
 the celebration of the Lordes supper, a lacke it hath bene 
 longe abused, as the sacrifices were before, in the oulde 
 law. . . . There comes other after, and they consider not 
 the fayth of Abraham, and the Patriarkes, but do theyr 
 sacrifice accordynge to theyre owne imaginacion, even so 
 came it to passe wyth oure blessed communion. ... If 
 he be gyltye of the bodye of Christ, that takes it 
 unworthely, he fetcheth greate comforte at it, that eate it 
 v/orthely. He doothe eate it worthelye that doeth it in
 
 144 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 fayeth. In fayeth ? in what fayeth ? ... It is no bryb- 
 ynge judges or justices faith, no rentreasers fayeth, no 
 lease mongers fayeth, no seller of benefices faith, but the 
 ^ fayth in the passion of oure Savioure Christ; we must 
 beleve that oure Savioure Christ hath taken us agayne to 
 hys favoure, that he hath delivered us hys owne bodye and 
 bloude to plead with the dyvel, and by merite of hys owne 
 passion, of his owne mere liberalitie. 
 
 " This is the fayth I tel you we must come to the 
 communion with. . . . Fayth is a noble duches, she hath 
 ever her gentleman usher going before her, the confessing 
 ofsinnes; she hath a trayne after her, the frute of good 
 workes, the walking in the commandments of god. He 
 yat beleveth wyll no[t] be idle, he wyl walke, he will do 
 his business ; have ever the gentleman usher with you. 
 So if ye wil trye fayth, remember this rule, consider 
 whether the trayne be waytinge upon her. If you have 
 another fayth then thys, ye are lyke to go [to] ye Scalding 
 house, and ther you shal have two dishes, wepynge and 
 gnashyng of teeth, muche good do it you, you se your 
 fare. If ye wil beleve and acknowledge your synnes you 
 shall come to ye blessed communion of the bitter passion of 
 
 Christ, worthily, and 
 so attayne 
 to ever- 
 -lastynge lyfe, to 
 the whiche the 
 father of hea- 
 ven bringe 
 you and 
 me. 
 
 A. M. E. N."
 
 
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 Richard Tarieton, an Actor in Sliakspere's Plavs 
 
 \r.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— IV 
 
 Ralph Royster Doyster and Gorboduc 
 
 N my last lecture young William Shak- 
 spere, being then a boy of eighteen on 
 his first visit to London, was left 
 standing amid the crowd which had 
 assembled at Paul's Cross on a certain 
 Sunday in the year 1582 to hear the 
 sermon. 
 
 I am sorry to say that the young 
 man did not stay as long as reverence demands after 
 the last amen of the services. The sermon had been 
 lengthy : it was now growing afternoon, and there was 
 barely time to reach the inn and snatch a hasty dinner be- 
 fore the play would begin. It was the custom at this 
 period for a theatrical performance to commence at three 
 o'clock in the afternoon ; evening performances were not 
 permitted, for the reason that they brought crowds on the 
 streets at night, and in these days a crowd on the street in 
 London meant brawls and troubles. 
 
 Shakspere's dinner was matter of small moment 
 under these circumstances. He disposed of it in a few 
 
 145
 
 146 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 minutes, and hastily made his way to the Blackfriars 
 Theatre. Here, as he mingled with the crowd at the 
 doors, a grave discussion went on within his mind. The 
 price of admission to the " yard " or pit of the theatre, 
 where he would have to stand throughout the perform- 
 ance in the midst of a motley throng of people, was six- 
 pence (it varied from one penny to sixpence), while the 
 better places were from a shilling to two shillings, the 
 best, half a crown. Shakspere had but a half-crown in all 
 the world ; yet an imperious desire to see the play unin- 
 terrupted and to the best advantage possessed him ; he 
 felt a dim prophecy of new plays smouldering in his 
 heart ; what was a mere trifle and amusement to other 
 people was matter of life and death to him. It was 
 therefore with a sort of sublime reliance upon the God who 
 takes care of genius — a reliance all the more sublime 
 since it was purely instinctive, and not explicit or formu- 
 lated in any way — that the young man advanced, handed 
 forth his whole earthly fortune, and asked for a place in 
 one of the boxes, or "rooms," as they were then called. 
 
 As he entered the " room " he observed that a hand- 
 some young cavalier, of charming form but slight in 
 stature, passed lightly in behind him and seated himself 
 modestly somewhat in the background. Beyond these 
 circumstances, however, Shakspere noticed nothing ; the 
 crowd, the novelty of the playhouse, all that wild fascina- 
 tion of the theatre which is plain enough to those who 
 have felt it and wholly unintelligible to those who have 
 not — these wrapped him away into an ecstasy of content. 
 He was not anxious for the play to begin: he could 
 have sat for hours so ; an indescribable glory and sweet- 
 ness of potential fame filled the air about him ; it was as if 
 he caught a breath from that perfect altar of love and 
 reverence which all the ages were to distil for him.
 
 The Stage in the Red Bull Playhouse
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 147 
 
 Sitting so, in a great calm, large-eyed, observant, 
 Shakspere heard the trumpet sound for the third time, 
 and recognised it as the customary signal for the play to 
 besin. 
 
 The large platform at the other end of the theatre 
 which now appeared before Shakspere's eyes was a very 
 much simpler affair than a modern stage. There were no 
 tall scenes, no complex arrangements of grooves and pul- 
 leys and " flies " and painted scenery such as constitute the 
 accessories of the most modest theatre in our time. As 
 the curtain parted in the middle and drew back to each 
 side, the actors appeared upon a platform which was hung 
 with arras, while, above, a hanging of some blue stuff rep- 
 resented the heavens. Projecting over the stage in the 
 background was a sort of porch or balcony which had 
 uses as various as the plays which were enacted before it, 
 ranging from Mount Olympus to the battlements of a 
 castle. There were at this time no painted scenes, such 
 as ours : when the place of the action changed the new 
 locality was conveyed to the audience by hanging out a 
 board with the name of the city or land painted on it ; 
 thus in one act a board would be hung out with 
 " Milan " on it, in large letters ; in the next act another 
 board might appear with "Verona" inscribed.^ If the 
 scenes were interiors, then some little simple stage 
 property might indicate changes : the appearance of a 
 bed, for instance, might indicate Dame Custance's apart- 
 ment ; a throne on some part of the stage might convert 
 it into a king's chamber of audience ; and so on. A little 
 later, however, I fancy that somewhat more elaborate stage 
 
 1 ** What childe is there that com- Thebes ?" See also page 63 et seq. 
 
 ming to a Play, and seeing Thebes of the Apologie for Players. Cf. 
 
 written in great letters upon an masque scene in Gondibert (Lon- 
 
 olde doore, doth believe that it is don, 1672), page 380.
 
 148 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 properties were used. In the Prologue to Ben Jonson's 
 Every Man in his Humour I find some comical allusions to 
 certain stage devices which were in use at the time that 
 play was written, and which appear to have excited great 
 disgust in the soul of the irascible Ben by their trans- 
 parent absurdity. I give you this Prologue here with the 
 less hesitation because it connects itself very pleasantly 
 with our hero's career as an actor afterwards, Shakspere 
 himself having played one of the parts in this comedy of 
 Jonson's in after years, probably that of Knowell. 
 
 Jonson, you observe, commences in the very Prologue 
 to abuse directly some of those vices of shallow artifice 
 and pretence which his comedy of Every Man in his Hu- 
 mour was intended to satirise indirectly : 
 
 Though need make many poets, and some such 
 As art and nature have not bettered much ; 
 Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage 
 As he dare serve 'the ill customs of the age. 
 Or purchase your delight at such a rate 
 As for it, he himself must justly hate. 
 
 And having thus generally condemned the playwrights 
 who truckled to the taste of the groundlings, he proceeds 
 to detail some of their absurd violations of the unities of 
 time and space : 
 
 To make a child now swaddled to proceed 
 Man, and then shoot up in one beard and weed 
 Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords 
 And help of some few foot and half-foot words 
 Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars 
 And in the tyring house bring wounds to scars. 
 He rather prays you will be pleased to see 
 One such to-day as other plays should be ;
 
 rr^ 
 
 t 
 
 TRAGEDIES 
 
 AND 
 
 COMEDIES 
 
 COLLECTED \1<[ i O 
 
 ONE VOLVME. 
 Viz. , ■ , 
 
 1. Antonio and MelUdd, 
 
 2. %^ntonio*s Revenge, 
 
 3. TheTragedtf of Sofhonish^^ , 
 
 4. rrhatyott yyUl, 
 
 5. The Favfne, 
 
 6. The V>Htch Conrte^an, 
 
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 (1 tol iiii< I -fc 
 
 
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 LONDON, 
 
 Printed by t^/. i»i formU/amSlied^isA 
 at the Harrow in Britaines'Bur(fg, 
 
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 — — • • ' — * I II I < r . i ■- ■ '*s| 
 
 — «« " '»- 11 i > I 
 
 I 
 
 Title-page of Ben Jonson's "Tragedies and Comedies"
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 149 
 
 Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, 
 Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please ; 
 Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard 
 The gentlewomen ; nor tempestuous drum 
 Rumbles to tell you when the storm doth come ; 
 But deeds and language such as men do use 
 And persons such as comedy would choose 
 When she would shew an image of the times 
 And sport with human follies, not with crimes. 
 
 With these hints of the appearance of the stage as Shak- 
 spere saw it in 1582, I am now to set before you the play 
 which he saw. In selecting for this purpose some repre- 
 sentative of the drama as it existed before Shakspere began 
 to write, I have found great trouble with the embarrass- 
 ment of riches. Perhaps the most popular play about 
 this time was T'he Spanish 'Tragedy^ by Thomas Kyd, a 
 play which has probably more bloodshed and red horror 
 in it than any other that ever was written. 
 
 I should have liked, also, to make you witness along 
 with Shakspere some play of his rival and good hater, 
 Robert Greene. If I could read to you Greene's Edward 
 II, or one of his comedies, I think you would agree with 
 me that he is quite the loveliest, brightest, and most musi- 
 cal writer that preceded Shakspere. He was only four 
 years older than Shakspere, but seems to have taken to 
 authorship earlier. Greene died in 1592, being then only 
 thirty-two years old. It was on his death-bed that he ex- 
 pressed that bitter hatred of Shakspere which has come 
 down to us. This expression was in the form of a pam- 
 phlet which Greene wrote in the course of his last illness, 
 and which was published by his executor, Henry Chettle, 
 soon after he died, under the title of Greene's Groatsworth 
 of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance. In this 
 pamphlet occurs the following famous sentence, in which
 
 I50 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Greene warns the players of his time against such fellows 
 as Shakspere : " Yes, trust them not ; for there is an 
 upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his 
 Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as 
 well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of 
 you ; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum^ is in his 
 owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." The 
 propriety of calling Shakspere a Johannes factotum was 
 that he could not only play but could write plays, either 
 original or adapted ; and the words " Tygers heart wrapt 
 in a Players hide" point to a line — "Oh tyger's heart 
 wrapt in a woman's hide" — which occurs in the third 
 part of King Henry VI^ and thus was probably intended 
 by Greene to hint at Shakspere's plagiarism from himself. 
 
 It is gratifying to record that this Henry Chettle who 
 published Greene's aspersion upon Shakspere almost im- 
 mediately retracted his own part in that business and 
 apologised for it in the most liberal way. It was only 
 some three months after the appearance of Greene's pam- 
 phlet that Chettle published one of his own, called Kind- 
 Harts Dream^ in which he takes occasion to say, regarding 
 his former injury to Shakspere : " I am as sory as if the 
 originall fault had beene my owne, because my selfe have 
 seene his [Shakspere's] demeanor no lesse civill, than he 
 exelent in the qualitie he professes ; besides, divers of 
 worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which 
 argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, 
 that aprooves his art." 
 
 I think, as I said, you would have found it interesting 
 to trace a distinct influence of Greene upon Shakspere 
 after seeing some of Greene's work. But I remember 
 that I have not yet brought before you either the first 
 English comedy or the first English tragedy : and these 
 two works are so important — as the most striking phase
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 151 
 
 in that transition from the old moraHties and interludes 
 to Shakspere's plays which I have been endeavouring to 
 trace out before you — that I have concluded to avail 
 myself of this last opportunity to acquaint you with them. 
 Let us suppose, then, that young William Shakspere — 
 whom we have kept all this time in his " room " or box at 
 the Blackfriars, waiting for the play to begin — during this 
 visit to the theatre saw the play called Ralph Royster Doy- 
 ster^ which is the first clearly developed English comedy, 
 and that on the following Sunday he went again to the 
 theatre and saw Gorboduc, otherwise called Ferrex and Por- 
 rex^ which is the first clearly developed English tragedy. 
 
 The comedy of Ralph Royster Doyster was written by 
 Nicholas Udall. His name is written also Woddall and 
 Woodall, and I think likely was called Woodall, which is 
 a good English name still existing within my knowledge. 
 The date of its composition was for some time uncertain ; 
 but about sixty years ago Mr. Collier happened to dis- 
 cover that in the third edition of Thomas Wilson's Rule 
 of Re as on y conteinyng the Arte of Logique, the author quotes 
 a very artful and comical letter written by one of the char- 
 acters in Udall's comedy (which I will presently read to 
 you) as an example of " Ambiguitie," that is, of " suche 
 doubtful writing, which by reason of poincting mai have 
 double sense, and contrari meaning," and mentions that 
 the letter is " taken out of an enterlude made by Nicholas 
 Udall." As Wilson's book was entered at Stationers' 
 Hall in 1 551, it fixes the date of Udall's play as before 
 that time. Udall was born in 1504 — sixty years, you 
 observe, before Shakspere. He was head-master of Eton ; 
 
 1 Gabriel Harvey says in one of his again: "If the world should ap- 
 
 letters: "I. . , have seen the mad- plaud to such roister-doisterly van- 
 
 brainest roister-doister in a country ity," etc. 
 dashed out of countenance." And
 
 152 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 and it is a little surprising, in view of the genial nature of 
 his comedy, to find that he was a pedagogue who did not 
 spare the rod on his boys. Old Thomas Tusser's Five 
 Hundred Points of Good Husbandries 15735 hints at Udall's 
 severity in a couple of stanzas which record Tusser's own 
 experience at Udall's school : 
 
 From Powles I went, to Acton sent 
 
 To learne straight wayes the Latin phraise, 
 
 Where fiftie three stripes given to mee 
 
 At once I had : 
 For faut but small, or none at all, 
 It came to passe, thus beat I was ; 
 See Udall see, the mercy of thee 
 
 To me poore lad. 
 
 Udall, though an intense Protestant, was in favour with 
 Qiieen Mary and helped her to translate Erasmus's Para- 
 phrase of the New Testament from the Latin into English. 
 He seems to have been altogether a worthy and faithful 
 man ; wrote several other plays and interludes which are 
 lost ; and died a few years before Shakspere was born. 
 
 The comedy of Ralph Royster Doyster was published 
 in 1566, though it was acted probably twenty years before. 
 The following are the dramatis personae as they appear in 
 the published play : 
 
 Ralph Royster Doyster. 
 
 Mathew Merygreeke. 
 
 Gawyn Goodluck, affianced to Dame Custance. 
 
 Tristram Trustie, his friend. 
 
 DoBiNET DouGHTiE, boy to Royster Doyster. 
 
 Tom Trupenie, servant to Dame Custance. 
 
 Sym Suresby, servant to Goodluck. 
 
 Scrivener. 
 
 Harpax.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 153 
 
 Dame Christian Custance, a widow. 
 Margerie Mumblecrust, her nurse. 
 Tibet Talkapace, 
 
 . . , her maidens 
 
 Annot Alyface, 
 
 Time^ about two days. 
 
 After the Prologue, which is in praise of mirth, — declar- 
 ing, among other things, that the author knows 
 
 Nothing more commendable for a man's recreation 
 Than Mirth which is used in an honest fashion, 
 For Myrth prolongeth lyfe and causeth health, 
 Mirth recreates our spirites and voydeth pensiveness. 
 Mirth increaseth amitie, not hindering our wealth, 
 Mirth is to be used both of more and lesse, 
 Being mixed with vertue in decent comlynesse, — 
 
 comes " Actus j, Scaena j," in which 
 
 Mathewe Merygreeke entreth singing: 
 
 M. Mery. As long lyveth the mery man (they say) 1 
 As doth the sory man, and longer by a day. 
 Yet the Grassehopper for all his sommer pipyng 
 Sterveth in winter with hungry gripyng, 
 Therefore another savd sawe doth men advise 
 They they be together both mery and wise. 
 
 And here a point of practical wisdom occurs to him : 
 
 Yet wisdom woulde that I did myselfe bethinke 
 Where to be provided this day of meat and drinke : 
 
 1 Compare Autolycus's song in Winter'' s Tale: 
 
 Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, 
 And meiTJly bent the stile-a ; 
 Your merry heart goes all the day, 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a.
 
 154 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 For know ye, that for all this merie note of mine, 
 He might appose me now that should aske where 1 dine 
 My lyving lieth heere and there, of God's grace. 
 Some time with this good man, sometyme in that place, 
 Sometime Lewis Loytrer biddeth me come neere, 
 Somewhyles Watkin Waster maketh us good cheere, 
 Sometime Davy Diceplayer when he hath well cast 
 Keepeth revell route as long as it will last. 
 Sometime Tom Titivile maketh us a feast. 
 Sometime with Sir Hugh Pye I am a bidden gueast, 
 Sometime at Nichol Neverthrives I get a soppe, 
 Sometime I am feasted with Bryan Blenkinsoppe, 
 Sometime I hang on Hankyn Hoddydoddies sleeve, 
 But thys day on Ralph Royster Doyster's by hys leeve. 
 For truely of all men he is my chiefe banker 
 Both for meate and money, and my chiefe shootanker. 
 
 Royster Doyster is the great prototype of that large class 
 of weak brethren who figure as " gulls " so prominently 
 in the later comedies, especially those of Ben Jonson. 
 Merygreeke goes on to give a very Hvely portrait of him : 
 
 All the day long is he facing and craking 
 
 Of his great actes in fighting and fraymaking ; 
 
 But when Royster Doyster is put to his proofe, 
 
 To keep the Queen's peace is more for his behoofe, 
 
 If any woman smylc or cast on hym an eye. 
 
 Up is he to the harde eares in love by and by. 
 
 And in all the hotte haste must she be hys wife, 
 
 Else farewell hys good days and farewell his life. . . . 
 
 But such sporte have I with him as I would not leese, 
 
 Though I should be bound to lyve with bread and cheese. . . . 
 
 I can with a worde make him fayne or loth, 
 
 I can with as much make him pleased or wroth, 
 
 I can when I will make him mery and glad, 
 
 I can when me lust make him sory and sad.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 155 
 
 I can set him in hope and eke in dispaire, 
 
 I can make him speak rough and make him speake faire. . . . 
 
 I wyll seeke him out : But Ice he commeth thys way, 
 
 I have yond espied hym sadly comming, 
 
 And in love for twentie pounde, by hys glommyng. 
 
 Scene II of the first act now begins : 
 
 Rafe Royster Doyster entering to Mathew Merygreeke. 
 
 R. Royster. Come death when thou wilt, I am weary of my 
 life. 
 
 M. Mery. I tolde you I, we should wo we another wife. 
 
 R. Royster. Why did God make me suche a goodly person? 
 
 M. Mery. He is in by the weke, we shall have sport anon, 
 
 R. Royster. And where is my trustie friende Mathew Mery- 
 greeke ? 
 
 M. Mery. I wyll make as I sawe him not, he doth me seeke. 
 
 R. Royster. I have hym espyed me thinketh, yond is hee. 
 Hough, Mathew Merygreeke, my friend, a worde with thee. 
 
 M. Mery. I wyll not heare him, but make as I had haste, 
 P'arewell all my good friends, the tyme away dothe waste, 
 And the tide they say tarieth for no man. 
 
 R. Royster. Thou must with thy good counsell helpe me if 
 thou can. 
 
 M. Mery. God keepe thee worshypfuU Maister Royster Doys- 
 ter, 
 And fare well the lustie Maister Royster Doyster. 
 
 R. Royster. I must needes speake with thee a worde or twainc. 
 
 M. Mery. Within a month or two I will be here againe, 
 Negligence in greate affaires ye knowe may marre all. 
 
 R. Royster. Attende upon me now, and well rewards thee I 
 shall. 
 
 M. Mery. I have take my leave and the tide is well spent. 
 
 R. Royster. I die except thou helpe, I pray thee be content, 
 Do thy part well nowe, and aske what thou wilt. 
 For without thy aid my matter is all spilt.
 
 156 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 M. Mery. Then to serve your turne I will some paines take, 
 And let all myne owne affaires alone for your sake. 
 
 And so Merygreeke falls to work, 
 
 M. Mery. What is this great matter I would fain knowe, 
 We shall fynde remedie therefore I trowe. 
 Do ye lacke money ? Ye knowe myne old offers, 
 Ye have always a key to my purse and coffers. . . . 
 
 R. Royster. Nay I have money plentie all thinges to discharge. 
 
 M. Mery. That knewe I ryght well when I made offer so large. 
 
 And so presently, after much talk, it comes out that Roy- 
 ster Doyster is in love. 
 
 M. Mery. Who is it ? 
 
 R. Royster. A woman yond. 
 
 M. Mery. What is her name ? 
 R. Royster. Hir yonder. 
 
 M. Mery. Whom. 
 R. Royster. Mistresse ah. 
 
 M. Mery. ¥y fy for shame, 
 Love ye, and know not whome ? 
 
 And so, after more talk, the lover looks about him and 
 cries : 
 
 She dwelleth m this house. 
 
 M. Mery. What, Christian Custance ? 
 
 R. Royster. Except I have hir to my wife I shall runne madde. 
 
 M. Mery. Nay unwise perhaps, but I warrant you for madde. 
 
 R. Royster. I am utterly dead unlesse I have my desire. 
 
 M. Mery. Where be the bellowes that blewe this sodeine fire ? 
 
 R. Royster. I heare she is worth a thousande pounde and more. 
 
 M. Mery. Yea, but learne this one lesson of me afore. 
 An hundred pounde of Marriage money doubtlesse 
 Is ever thirtie pound sterlyng, or somewhat lesse. 
 So that hir Thousande pounde yf she be thriftie
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 157 
 
 Is much neere about two hundred and fiftie, 
 Howbeit wowers and Widowes are never poore, 
 
 R. Royster. Is she a Widowe ? I love hir better therefore. 
 
 M. Mery. But I heare she hath made promise to another. 
 
 R. Royster. He shall goe without her, and he were my bro- 
 ther. . . . 
 
 M. Mery. Yet a fitter wife for your maship might be founde. 
 Such a goodly man as you, etc. (^Flattery ad nauseam.^ 
 
 R. Royster. I am sorie God made me so comely doubtlesse. 
 For that maketh me eche where so highly favoured, 
 And all women on me so enamoured. 
 
 M. Mery. Enamoured quod you ? have ye spied out that ? 
 Ah sir, mary nowe I see you know what is what. 
 Enamoured ka ? mary sir say that againe. 
 But I thought not ye had marked it so plaine. 
 
 R. Royster. Yes, eche where they gaze all upon me and stare. 
 
 M. Mery. Yea malkyn, I warrant you as muche as they dare. 
 And ye will not beleve what they say in the streete, 
 When your mashyp passeth by all suche as I meete 
 That sometimes I can scarce fynde what aunswere to make. 
 Who is this (sayth one) sir Lancelot du lake ? 
 Who is this, great Guy of Warwike, sayth an other ? 
 No (say I) it is the thirtenth Hercules brother. 
 Who is this ? noble Hector of Troy., sayth the thirde ? 
 No, but of the same nest (say I) it is a birde. . . . 
 Who is this? greate Alexander? or Charle le Maignef^ 
 No, it is the tenth Worthie, say I to them agayne : . . . 
 To some others, the thirde Cato I do you call. 
 And so as well as I can I aunswere them all. 
 Sir I pray you, what lorde or great gentleman is this ? 
 Maister Ralph Royster Doyster, dame, say I, ywis. 
 O Lorde (sayth she than) what a goodly man it is, 
 Woulde Christ I had such a husbande as he is. 
 O Lorde (say some) that the sight of his face we lacke : 
 It is inough for you (say I) to see his backe. 
 
 1 Charlemagne.
 
 158 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 His face is for ladies of high and noble parages. 
 With whom he hardly scapeth great mariages. 
 
 In the third scene Royster Doyster comes upon Mage 
 MuMBLECRUST, spinning on the distaffe^ Tibet Talkapace, 
 sowyngy Annot Alyface, knittyng ; and after a lot of ser- 
 vant-maids' talk, Royster Doyster offers them the com- 
 mon salutation of the time — a kiss. The old nurse 
 Mumblecrust takes hers without ado ; but when he comes 
 to Tib Talkapace, she draws back and chaffs him merci- 
 lessly, as by the following specimen : 
 
 R. Royster. I would faine kisse you too, good maiden, if I 
 
 myght — 
 Tib. Talk. What shold that neede ? 
 R. Royster. But to honor you, by this light. 
 I use to kisse all them that I love ... I vowe. 
 
 Tib. Talk. Yea, sir ? I pray you when dyd ye last kiss your 
 
 cowe. 
 
 And so finally Royster Doyster gets the old nurse Mum- 
 blecrust alone, and begins to curry her good offices with 
 her mistress. 
 
 R. Royster. Ah good sweet nourse. 
 
 M. Mumbl. A good sweete gentleman. 
 
 R. Royster. What ? 
 
 M. Munibl. Nay I can not tell sir, but what thing would you ? 
 
 R. Royster. Howe dothe sweet Custance, my heart of gold, 
 
 tell me how ? 
 
 M. Mumbl. She dothe very well, sir, and commaunde me to 
 
 you. . . . 
 
 R. Royster. I promise thee nourse I favour hir. 
 
 M. Mumbl. Een so sir. 
 
 R. Royster. Bid her sue to me for mariage. 
 
 M. Mumbl. Een so sir. 
 
 R. Royster. And surely for thy sake she shall speede.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 159 
 
 M. Mumbl. Een so sir. 
 
 R. Royster. I shall be contented to take hir, 
 
 M. Mumbl. Een so sir. 
 
 R. Royster. But at thy request and for thy sake. 
 
 M. Mumhl. Een so sir. 
 
 R. Royster. And come hearke in thine eare what to say. 
 
 M. Mumbl. Een so sir. 
 
 {Here lette him tell hir a great long tale in hir eare.) 
 
 In the next scene Royster Doyster and Merygreeke 
 ply the old nurse to bear a letter to the beloved Custance : 
 Merygreeke standing by and stuffing the old lady with 
 the most marvellous tales of Royster Doyster's powers 
 and strength — how that Royster was a great hunter, 
 
 Yea and the last Elephant that ever he sawe 
 As the beast passed by, he start out of a buske. 
 And e'en with pure strength of armes pluckt out 
 his great tuske : . . . 
 
 Why he wrong a club 
 Once in a fray out of the hande of Belzebub. 
 
 Whereupon the old nurse declares that he is " a sore man 
 by zembletee," and takes the letter. 
 
 Dame Custance scolds them all soundly for bringing 
 her a letter from any man, and here follow several scenes 
 of by-play among the servants, all of them resolving to be 
 revenged upon Royster Doyster for bringing them into 
 disfavour with their mistress. Meantime she declines even 
 to read the letter at first, and tosses it aside. Merygreeke 
 comes and offers the hand of Royster Doyster in mar- 
 riage, but she refuses with all contempt. She now reads 
 the letter, and her disdain is wrought to the highest pitch. 
 It seems that Royster Doyster had employed a scrivener 
 to compose the letter for him, but had copied it off him- 
 self, and, in copying, had so changed the punctuation as
 
 i6o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 to convert the sentiments from those of a love-letter Into 
 a tirade of abuse. How this is done comes out in the 
 third act. Custance, in the fourth scene, finds Mery- 
 greeke and Royster Doyster dawdHng before her house. 
 
 C. Custance. What gaudyng and foolyng is this afore my doore ? 
 
 M. Mery. May not folks be honest, pray you, though they be 
 pore ? 
 
 C. Custance. As that thing may be true, so rich folks may be 
 fooles. 
 
 R. Royster. Hir talke is as fine as she had learned it in 
 schooles. 
 . . . sweete heart . . . accept my service. 
 
 C. Custance. I will not be served with a foole in no wise. 
 When I choose an husbande I hope to take a man. . . . 
 
 M. Mery. Ye know not where your preferment lieth, I see. 
 He sending you such a token, ring and letter. 
 
 C. Custance. Mary, here it is, ye never saw a better. 
 
 M. Mery. Let us see your letter. 
 
 C. Custance. Holde, reade it if ye can. 
 And see what letter it is to winne a woman. 
 
 M. Mery. To mine owne deare coney hirde^ swete hearty and 
 pigsny 
 Good Mistress Custance present these by and by : 
 Of this superscription do you blame the stile ? 
 
 C. Custance. With the rest as good stuffe as ye redde a great 
 while. 
 
 M. Mery. Sweete mistresse where as I love you nothing 
 at all. 
 Regarding your substance and richesse chiefe of all, 
 For your personage, beautie, demeanour and wit, 
 I commende me unto you never a whit. 
 Sorie to heare report of your good welfare. . . . 
 And nowe by these presentes I do you advertise 
 That I minded to marrie you in no wise. 
 For your goodes and substance I coulde bee content 
 To take you as ye are. If ye mynde to bee my wyfe,
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME i6i 
 
 Ye shall be assured for the tyme of my lyfe 
 
 I will keepe ye ryght well from good rayment and fare, 
 
 Ye shall not be kepte but in sorow and care — 
 
 Ye shall in no wyse lyve at your own libertie, 
 
 Doe and say what ye lust, ye shall never please me. 
 
 But when ye are mery, I wil be all sadde. 
 
 When ye are sory, I will be very gladde. 
 
 When ye seeke your hearte's ease, I will be unkinde. 
 
 At no tyme in me shall ye muche gentlenesse finde. , . . 
 
 Thus good mistresse Custance, the lorde you save and kepe. 
 
 From me Royster Doyster, whether I wake or slepe. 
 
 Whereupon Custance cries in triumph : 
 
 Howe by this letter of love ? is it not fine ? 
 
 R. Royster. By the armes of Caleys, it is none of mine. 
 
 Af. Mery. Fie, you are fowie to blame, this is your owne hand. 
 
 C. Custance. Might not a woman be proud of such an hus- 
 
 bande ? 
 M. Mery. Ah that ye would in a letter shew such despite. 
 R. Royster. Oh I would I had hym here, the which did it 
 
 endite. 
 
 In the next scene he has brought before him the Scrivener 
 " the which did it endite," and hotly rebukes him : 
 
 R. Royster. All the stocke thou comest of later or rather 
 From thy fyrst father's grandfather's father's father. 
 Nor all that shall come of thee to the worldes ende, 
 Though to three score generations they descende, 
 Can be able to make me a just recompense. 
 For this trespasse of thine and this one offense. 
 
 The Scrivener is greatly astonished and will know what 
 is the matter. 
 
 R. Royster. I say the letter thou madest me was not good. 
 
 Scrivener. Then did ye wrong copy it of likelihood. 
 
 R. Royster. Yes, out of the copy worde for worde I wrote.
 
 i62 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 The Scrivener now conjectures that " in reading and point- 
 yng there was made some faulte," and to prove it pro- 
 duces the original ; adding to Royster Doyster's embarrass- 
 ment thereby, for that gentleman had bragged very loudly 
 'at sending the letter that it was written by himself. 
 " Howe saye you," says the Scrivener, " is this mine 
 originall or no ?" 
 
 R. Royster. The selfe same that I wrote out of, so mote I 
 
 go- 
 Scrivener. Looke you on your owne fist, and I will looke on 
 
 this, 
 And let this man be judge whether I read amisse. 
 
 Upon the Scrivener's reading, the letter sounds beautiful 
 and very tender, the trick being in the punctuation, as 
 you will easily perceive from a little study of the text and 
 breaking up of the lines. But Royster returns to the 
 pursuit. In the fourth act we find him standing by while 
 his factotum pleads for him. 
 
 "Will ye take him ? " says Merygreeke. 
 
 " I defie him," says Custance. " Waste no more wynde, 
 for it will never bee." 
 
 But Merygreeke will waste " wynde." 
 
 Gentle mistresse Custance now [says he], good mistresse 
 
 Custance, 
 Honey mistresse Custance now, sweete mistresse Custance, 
 Golden mistresse Custance now, white mistresse Custance, 
 Silken mistresse Custance now, faire mistresse Custance. 
 
 C. Custance. Faith rather than to mary with such a doltish 
 
 loute, 
 I woulde match mvselfe with a begger out of doute. 
 
 AI. Mery. Then I can say no more, to speede we are not like. 
 Except ye rappe out a ragge of your Rhetorike.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 163 
 
 But Royster Doyster, failing in grace, resolves to try 
 terror, and, egged on by the treacherous Merygreeke, who 
 arranges the whole business for a huge joke, he threatens 
 Mistress Custance that he will come with his whole follow- 
 ing and tear and burn and destroy her household utterly. 
 In the seventh scene of the fourth act we find him in a 
 ridiculous armour, with drums and colours, actually march- 
 ing upon the doomed house with his followers. In the 
 next scene the valiant Dame Custance sets her maidens in 
 array to withstand him. No better fun for Tib Talkapace 
 and Annot Alyface and the rest of them ; they fall upon 
 Royster Doyster with brooms and household utensils, 
 and the comedy becomes a pure farce. Tib accomplishes 
 a brilliant military manoeuvre by bringing up a terrible war- 
 like goose and letting it fly at the enemy ; Dame Custance 
 herself, who had at first fled by a previous arrangement 
 with Merygreeke, now returns and undertakes the redoubt- 
 able Captain Royster Doyster in single combat. Mery- 
 greeke flies to the rescue of his master, and, pretending to 
 defend him from the ferocious lady Custance, manages 
 ingeniously to miss her every time and to whack poor Roy- 
 ster Doyster, insomuch that the latter receives a fearful 
 drubbing, until finally Royster Doyster is utterly put to 
 rout and runs ofi\, pursued by the derision of the women. 
 In the fifth act Gawyn Goodlucke, the betrothed of 
 Dame Custance, appears on the scene, coming, it seems, 
 from sea, after an absence. There is at first some obstruc- 
 tive plot. His man Sym Suresby had come on ahead to 
 Dame Custance's house, and, having arrived there at a 
 moment when Merygreeke had been talking of the ring 
 and letter which Royster Doyster had sent, had posted 
 back to his master with talk that Dame Custance was 
 treating with another lover. But Gawyn Goodlucke 
 comes to find out for himself. He meets Tristram Trusty,
 
 i64 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 an old friend of his and of his betrothed, who vouches 
 for her constancy to Goodlucke and her contempt for 
 Royster Doyster ; so that finally, in the plenitude of his 
 happiness, Gawyn Goodlucke brings all together. Royster 
 Doyster is brought up and appeased, they all chaff him to 
 their heart's content, and so the play ends with a merry 
 song and a rimed prayer for the Queen. 
 
 At the end of the published play is given The Psalmo- 
 die^ which Merygreeke chants derisively when Royster 
 Doyster says he must die for the love of Custance : 
 
 Placebo d'llexi. Maister Royster Doyster wil streight go home 
 and die, 
 Oure Lorde Jesus Christ his soule have mercy upon ; 
 Thus you see today a man, to morrow John. 
 Yet saving for a woman's extreeme crueltie. 
 He might have lyved yet a moneth or two or three, 
 But in spite of Custance which hath him weried. 
 His mashyp shall be worshipfully buried. 
 And while some piece of his soule is yet hym within, 
 Some parte of his funeralls let us here beginne. 
 
 Dirige. He will go darklyng to his grave. 
 Neque lux^ neque crux^ nisi solum clinke 
 Never gentman so went toward heaven I thinke. . . . 
 Good night Roger olde knave, Farewel Roger olde Knave. 
 Good night Roger olde Knave, knave, knap. 
 
 Nequando. Audivi vocem^ Requiem csternam. 
 
 The Peale of belles rong by the parish Clerk 
 And Royster Doyster s four e tnen. 
 
 The first Bell a Triple^ 
 
 When dyed he ? When dyed he ? 
 
 The Seconde^ 
 
 We have hym. We have hym. 
 
 The thirde^ 
 
 Royster Doyster, Royster Doyster.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 165 
 
 The fourth Bell, 
 
 He commeth, He commeth. 
 
 The greate Bell, 
 
 Our owne, Our owne. 
 
 When the play ended, Shakspere moved out as well as 
 he could through the struggling throng. Just as he 
 gained the street, he observed that the handsome young 
 cavalier who had shared his box was apparently in haste to 
 get ahead of him. At the same moment Shakspere noticed 
 that the stranger, while quite elegantly appointed, wore his 
 sword awry and seemed to manage it awkwardly as if un- 
 accustomed to bear arms. In the next moment stronger 
 proof of this fact appeared ; for as the small cavaher quick- 
 ened his pace forward his sword dangled between his legs 
 and tripped him so that he fell flat on the ground. As 
 Shakspere ran forward and lifted the prostrate young gal- 
 lant from the earth, the latter, as if to thank him, turned 
 upon him a charming face which was now itself a very 
 pretty comedy of blushes and smiles ; and in the same 
 instant Shakspere recognised that the stranger was no other 
 than Anne Hathaway disguised in male costume. For the 
 moment he was quite stupefied with astonishment, while 
 Anne Hathaway's eyes shone and sparkled with unbounded 
 merriment at his serious face. As they walked back to the 
 Bell Savage Inn — for Anne Hathaway also lodged there — 
 Shakspere recovered himself, and presently the whole deli- 
 cious romance of the adventure took possession of him, 
 and he entered into it with the maddest abandonment. 
 What could be more delightful ? Two young lovers on 
 their first visit to London, one a poet with all the world in 
 his soul, the other an adoring, spirited, adventurous girl. 
 It seems that Anne Hathaway, when a child, had a great 
 passion for climbing trees, as I have known more modern
 
 i66 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 girls sometimes to have ; and her mother, like a wise 
 farmer's wife, had indulged her in a costume suitable for 
 this purpose, and had allowed her often to roam about the 
 woods dressed in her brother's clothes. Thus she had in 
 early life acquired that familiarity with her present costume 
 of which she had now availed herself to accompany Shak- 
 spere to London. 
 
 Perhaps this adventure, or some one like it, is the 
 original of all those employments of this device which 
 Shakspere so often makes. In As Tou Like It^ you all 
 remember, Rosalind dresses herself in boy's clothes and 
 finds her lover in the Forest of Arden ; In Air s Well 
 'That Ends Welly the sweet, womanly Helena dresses herself 
 In boy's clothes and follows her lover like a protecting 
 angel to France ; in Cymbeline, Imogen dresses herself In 
 boy's clothes and fares off towards her Leonatus ; in The 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona^ Julia arrays herself in boy's 
 clothes and seeks her absent Proteus ; while In The Mer- 
 chant of Venice^ Portia pranks it as a doctor of laws, 
 Nerlssa as a lawyer's clerk, and Jessica as a boy. 
 
 And so, after a week of glory in London Sunday came 
 round again, and Shakspere and Anne Hathaway went 
 again to the theatre. This time the play was a tragedy ; 
 let us say that it was Gorboduc^ the first English tragedy. 
 
 GorboduCy or Ferrex and Porrex^ was written by Thomas 
 Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, in collaboration with Thomas 
 Norton. Modern criticism has assigned to the latter, how- 
 ever, the smaller part of the work. Sackville, to whom 
 criticism has assigned the best share In the work, was a 
 great and strong soul and a true poet, by his famous Induc- 
 tion to The Mirrour for Magistrates ; and his portions of 
 the play of Gorboduc are not difficult to discriminate by 
 one who Is familiar with the musical terms and huge ima- 
 ginations of the Induction.
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 ■iffft r^>-.r-. t^^ fftj f 1^ fff. i«»-I^Ti^T?i^Vir«ftirW n^i^i^ii-nr TftllWlTf 
 
 niouias S,K'k\'ilic Earl ofDorfet. 
 
 J^/y/rn (He Orr^jfinal at KiictvIi". 
 
 
 g/^^g7-3^'^ ^ 
 
 John Thano 
 
 
 Sackville
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 167 
 
 Gorboduc was first acted in 1562. You will observe, as 
 I go on to read the substance of it, that it is a vast and 
 soHd mass of good thought and correct language. Sack- 
 ville was indeed endeavouring to impose the Hmitations of 
 the Greek tragedy upon EngHsh dramatic endeavour : 
 Gorboduc was a professed attempt to revive the methods of 
 the classic drama ; it had its chorus, its unities, and a stern 
 severity of treatment. It belongs to a period, you 
 remember, when the union of tragic and comic elements in 
 the same play would have been looked upon as worse than 
 folly by the greatest critics — a period when we find even 
 Sir Philip Sidney condemning in the strongest terms such 
 a blasphemous perversion of all the spiritual unities as the 
 introduction of wit into a tragedy. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney was, in fact, very fond of this very 
 play. " Gorboduc^'' he says in his Defense of Poesie^ " is full 
 of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to 
 the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable mo- 
 rality ; which it doth most delightfully teach, and thereby 
 obtain the very end of poetry." 
 
 The argument of the tragedy, as given in the quaint 
 and strong English of the old edition, is this (and if you 
 have ever meditated upon the subtle indications which are 
 revealed in the very choice of subjects you will be able to 
 formulate a certain moral status from the very plot as given 
 here ; I must ask you to observe also, by the way, the won- 
 derfully brief, pithy, and effective sentences which, I think, 
 make this argument a most notable piece of sixteenth-cen- 
 tury prose) : " Gorboduc, king of Brittanie, divided his 
 realme in his lifetime to his sonnes, Ferrex and Porrex. The 
 sonnes fell to discention. The younger killed the elder. 
 The mother that more dearely loved the elder, for revenge 
 killed the younger. The people moved with the crueltie 
 of the fact, rose in rebellion and slew both father and
 
 i68 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 mother. The Nobilitie assembled, and most terribly 
 destroyed the Rebels, and afterwards for want of issue 
 of the Prince, whereby the succession of the Crown 
 became uncertain, they fell to civil Warre, in which both 
 they and many of their issues were slain, and the land for 
 a long time almost desolate and miserably wasted." 
 
 The edition of 1571 has a naive address of the printer 
 to the reader which gives us a lively idea of the manner in 
 which plays were often stolen from their owners, the pro- 
 prietors of the theatres (either by reporters who copied 
 them ofF imperfectly during the representation and then 
 filled up the gaps out of their own stupid heads afterwards, 
 or in other ways), and sold to publishers, who thus gave to 
 the world such corrupt editions as those which have since 
 given us so much trouble in restoring the true text of 
 Shakspere. 
 
 " THE p. [printer] to THE READER. 
 
 " Where [as] this Tragedie was for furniture of part of 
 the grand Christmasse in the Inner-Temple, first written 
 about nine yeares agoe by the right honourable Thomas, 
 now Lorde Buckherst, and by T. Norton, and after shewed 
 before her majestie and never intended by the Authors 
 thereof to be published : yet one W. G. getting a copy 
 thereof at some young man's hand that lacked a little 
 money, and much discretion in the last great plage in 1565, 
 about 5 yeares past, while the said lord was out of Eng- 
 land, and T. Norton farre out of London, and neither of 
 them both made privie, put it forth exceedingly corrupted." 
 
 (Before each act of the play, what was called the Domme 
 Shew^ came forth and expressed by some allegorical pan- 
 tomime the substance of the act which was to follow.) 
 
 " Order of the Domme Shew before the first Act and 
 the Signification thereof: 
 
 1 Dumb-show.
 
 m The troiiblefome 
 
 W^jjc and lamentable death of 
 
 ^if Inward tlicfecond, King of 
 Jf 6vgUnd: -with the traoicaU 
 
 tall of prcud Mortimer: 
 
 And alfo the life and death oiVsirs Gau€flon\ 
 the great Sarle of Corncwall;, and mighty 
 
 fauoiitc of king Edirard the fccond, as it was 
 fu(flic]tielyad:cd by the right honor able . 
 the Earle of Pembrooke his 
 fernantes^ 
 
 Written by Chri. Marlow Centm 
 
 limprmtedat London by V^\chzri Bradocic^ 
 
 'A f^ Wf/^Mw /owjdwclljnsj-nccre HoB>burnc conduit^ ^ 
 : ySt thcftgne oftbiCHnHf, 1558. 
 
 A Tragedy of the Period : Marlowe's " Edward II."
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 169 
 
 '■'■Firsts the musicke of violenze began to play, during 
 which came in upon the stage sixe wild men clothed in 
 leaves. Of whom the first bare on his neck a fagot of 
 small stickes, which they all both severallye and together 
 assayed with all their strengthes to breake, but it could not 
 be broken by them. At the length one of them plucked 
 out one of the sticks, and broke it : and the rest plucking 
 out all the other stickes one after another, did easely breake 
 the same being severed, which being enjoyned, they had 
 before attempted in vaine. After they had this done, they 
 departed the stage and the musick ceased. Hereby was 
 signified that a state knit in unitie doth continue strong 
 against all force, but being divided, is easily destroyed ; as 
 befel upon duke Gorboduc dividing his lande to his two 
 sonnes, which he before held in monarchic, and upon the 
 discention of the brethren to whom it was divided." 
 
 NAMES OF THE SPEAKERS: 
 
 Gorboduc, King of Great Britain. 
 Vide N A, ^ueene and wife to King Gorboduc. 
 Ferrex, elder sonne to King Gorboduc. 
 PoRREX, younger sonne to King Gorboduc. 
 Cloyton, duke of Cornewall. 
 Fergus, duke of Albany e. 
 Mandud, duke of Lacgris. 
 GwENARD, duke of Cumberland. 
 EuBULUS, secretarie to the king. 
 Arostus, a counsellor to the kitig. 
 
 DoRDAN, a counsellor assigned by the king to his eldest son^ Ferrex. 
 Philander, a counsellor assigned by the king to his youngest son, 
 Porrex. 
 
 (Both being of the olde kinges counsel before^ 
 Hermon, a parasite remaining with Ferrex. 
 Tyndar, a parasite remaining with Porrex.
 
 lyo SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 NuNTlus, a messenger of the eldest brother's death. 
 NuNTlus, a messenger of duke Ferrex rising in arms. 
 Marcella, a lady of the queenes privie-chamber. 
 CnoRVS^foure auncient and sage men of Brittaine. 
 
 "Actus Primus, Scena Prima" opens with these musical 
 lines from Videna, Qvieen to King Gorboduc : 
 
 Videna. The silent night that bringes the quiet pawse, 
 From painefuU travailes of the wearie day, 
 Prolonges my carefull thoughtes, and makes me blame 
 The slowe Aurora, that so for love or shame 
 Doth long delay to shewe her blushing face ; 
 And now the day renewes my griefull plaint. 
 
 She goes on to complain that the king her husband intends 
 to give half the kingdom to the younger son, Porrex, in- 
 stead of giving it all to the elder, Ferrex, according to cus- 
 tom ; and she prophesies harm from it : " Murders, 
 mischief, or civill sword at length. Or mutual treason or a 
 just revenge." 
 
 In Scene II, Gorboduc, with his counsellors Arostus, 
 Philander, and Eubulus, appears. Observe the weight and 
 sweet dignity and courteousness of the speeches. Shak- 
 spere unquestionably drew liberal sustenance from this 
 source. Everywhere you see reproductions of the grave 
 politeness and musical cadence of these stately speeches 
 upon high matters. 
 
 Gorboduc. My Lords, whose grave advise and faithfull aide 
 Have long upheld my honour and my realme. 
 And brought me to this age from tender yeres 
 Guidyng so great estate with great renowne ; 
 Nowe more importeth me than erst to use 
 Your faith and wisdom whereby yet I reigne ;
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 171 
 
 That when by death my life and rule shall cease, 
 The kingdom yet may with unbroken course 
 Have certayne prince, by whose undoubted right 
 Your wealth and peace may stand in quiet stay : 
 And eke that they whom nature hath preparde 
 In time to take my place in princely state, 
 While in their father's tyme their pliant youth 
 Yeldes to the frame of skilfull governaunce, 
 Maye so be taught, and trayned in noble artes, 
 As what their fathers which have reigned before 
 Have with great fame devined down to them 
 With honour they may leave unto their seede. . , . 
 
 In Arostus's reply, note by the way the rhythmic ten- 
 dency to group terms by threes, particularly at the end of 
 a stately line, as in 
 
 To me, and myne, and to your native land. 
 
 or 
 
 Whose honours, goods, and lyves are whole avowed. 
 To serve, to ayde, and to defende your grace. 
 
 or 
 
 For kings, for kingdoms, and for common weales ; 
 
 and compare, in the opening of Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, Theseus's 
 
 With mirth, with triumph and with revelry. 
 
 These three groups are a sort of sporadic rhythm 
 agreeably varying the monotony of regular rhythms in 
 poetry. You will all remember how they were quite 
 characteristic of English prose not many years ago, when 
 they became, not sporadic, but regular rhythms. It is,
 
 172 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 indeed, a habit of composition which is apt to grow to 
 extremes if not watched. A pleasant story is told of a 
 most worthy clergyman who had fallen into the trichoto- 
 mous style, and who was betrayed by its necessities once, 
 in offering an extemporaneous prayer, as follows : " O 
 Lord, make all the /^tractable tractable, all the /«temper- 
 ate temperate, and all the />/dustrious dustrious." 
 
 Arostus goes on to respond to the King that his ad- 
 visers shall not 
 
 neede in boasting wise to shewe 
 Our trueth to you, nor yet our wakefull care 
 For you, for yours, and for our native lande. . . . 
 Doubt not to use our counsells and our aides 
 Whose honours, goods and lyves are whole avowed, 
 To serve, to ayde, and to defende your grace. 
 
 Gorboduc. My lordes, I thanke you all. This is the case. 
 Ye know, the Gods, who have the soveraigne care 
 For kings, for kingdoms, and for common weales, 
 Gave me two sonnes in my more lusty age. 
 Who nowe in my decaying yeres are growen 
 Well towardes ryper state of minde and strength 
 To take in hande some greater princely charge. . . . 
 When fatall death shall end my mortall life 
 My purpose is to leave unto them twaine 
 The realme divided in two sondry partes : 
 The one, Ferrex, myne elder sonne shall have, 
 The other, shall the younger Porrex rule. 
 
 They advise, some for, some against. But the old King 
 Gorboduc has made up his mind ; he proceeds to divide 
 the kingdom, and the two young kings depart to assume 
 their realms. Act 1 1 opens at the court of Ferrex, 
 with a scene between him, Hermon the parasite, and 
 Dordan the old counsellor, in which the parasite succeeds 
 in so far poisoning Ferrex's mind against his younger
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 173 
 
 brother as to persuade him to raise an army in order to 
 protect himself against possible invasion. The next scene 
 of the act is at the court of the younger brother, who has 
 heard of his elder brother's raising an army, and immedi- 
 ately resolves not only to do the same but to push forward 
 and be beforehand in invading Ferrex. We now come to 
 Act III. It opens with Gorboduc, surrounded by his 
 counsellors, to whom Nuntius the messenger has just 
 brought the wretched tidings of the war between the 
 brothers. Gorboduc is stricken to the soul with a sudden 
 vision of the terrible mistake he has made, and cries : 
 
 O cruell fates, O mindful wrath of goddes 
 Whose vengeance neither Simois stayned streames 
 Flowing with bloud of Trojan princes slaine, 
 Nor Phrygian fieldes made ranck with corpses dead 
 Of Asian kings and lordes, can yet appease, 
 Ne slaughter of unhappie Priam's race, 
 Nor Ilion's face made levell with the soile 
 Can yet suffice ; but still continued rage 
 Pursues our lyves and from the farthest seas 
 Doth chase the issues of destroied Troye, 
 Oh, no man happie till his ende be seene. 
 
 Hereupon follow disastrous tidings in quick succession, 
 culminating in the arrival of Nuntius with news that Porrex 
 has slain his elder brother and usurped his realm, the 
 scene ending with a majestic and mournful chant from the 
 chorus which begins : 
 
 The lust of kingdome knowes no sacred faith, 
 No rule of reason, no regarde of right, 
 No kindely love, no feare of heaven's wrath. 
 But with contempt of goddes, and man's despite. 
 Through blodie slaughter doth prepare the waies 
 To fatall scepter and accursed reigne.
 
 174 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Act IV now opens. Qiieen Videna is discovered alone. 
 After a considerable soliloquy she resolves to avenge her 
 favourite son's death by slaying her other son, his mur- 
 derer. Scene II now comes on, and shows us Porrex 
 standing repentant before his father and the counsellors, 
 receiving the weight of the King's wrath for his conduct. 
 Presently, — and here we have a quaint illustration of the 
 contempt of the old play for the unities, — without any 
 notification that Porrex has even gone out, and with the 
 intervention of only one or two short speeches of the 
 counsellors since Porrex himself was speaking, in rushes 
 Marcella, a lady of the Queen's, and horrifies them with 
 the news that Porrex has been stabbed in his sleep by the 
 Queen herself. After their first exclamations of horror, 
 she proceeds to relate his death in a very dramatic and 
 beautiful speech. Here is the only touch of love in the 
 whole play : 
 
 Marcella. But heare hys ruthful end. 
 The noble prince, pearst with the sodeine wound, 
 Out of his wretched slumber hastely start, . . . 
 When in the fall his eyes, even now unclosed, 
 Behelde the queene, and cryed to her for helpe ; 
 We, then, alas, the ladies which that time 
 Did there attend, 
 
 . . . hearing him oft call the wretched name 
 Of mother, and to crye to her for aide. 
 Whose direfull hand gave him the mortall wound, 
 Pitying, alas, (for nought else could we do) 
 His ruthefull ende, ranne to the wofull bedde, 
 Dispoyled straight his brest, and all we might 
 Wiped in vaine with napkins next at hand 
 The sodeine streames of bloud that flushed fast 
 Out of the gaping wound : O what a looke, 
 O what a ruthefull stedfast eye me thought 
 He fixt upon my face, which to my death
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 175 
 
 Will never part from me, when with a braide 
 A deepe fet sigh he gave, and therewithal, 
 Clasping his handes, to heaven he cast his sight. 
 And straight pale death pressing within his face, 
 The flying ghost his mortall corpes forsook. 
 
 After this relation of the manner of the young prince's 
 frightful death, Marcella, who appears — though by this 
 sole indication — to have loved the dead prince, falls into 
 a beautiful lament, which makes me think of Othello's 
 farewell to the instruments of war : 
 
 O queen of adamant, O marble brest. 
 
 If not the favour of his comely face. 
 
 If not his princely chere and countenance, 
 
 His valiant active armes, his manly brest. 
 
 If not his faire and seemely personage. 
 
 His noble limmes in such proportion cast 
 
 As would have wrapt a sillie woman's thought ; 
 
 If this mought not have moved thy bloodie hart. . . . 
 
 Should nature yet consent to slay her sonne ? . . . 
 
 Ah, noble prince, how oft have I behelde 
 
 Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling stede, 
 
 Shining in armour bright before the tilt. 
 
 And with thy mistresse sieve tied on thy helme. 
 
 Charge thy staffe, to please thy ladies eye, 
 
 That bowed the head-peece of thy frendly foe ! 
 
 How oft in armes on horse to bend the mace. 
 
 How oft in armes on foot to breaice the sworde. 
 
 Which never now these eyes may see againe ! 
 
 And in the fifth act we find all the direful facts come to 
 pass which were briefly rehearsed in the argument. The 
 people, enraged at the cruelties which go on in the court, 
 rise and slay the King and the Queen ; whereupon the four 
 dukes proceed to slay the rebellious people. Then the
 
 176 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 dukes fall to war for the succession ; everywhere there is 
 battle, bloodshed, and sudden death, till, as Mandud 
 says, we 
 
 beholde the wide and hugie fieldes 
 With bloud and bodies spread of rebelles slayne ; 
 The lofty trees clothed with corpses dead, 
 That strangled with the cord do hang thereon. 
 
 And finally, in the last lines of the play, Eubulus closes a 
 wild scream of lamentation with these words : 
 
 But now, O happie man, whome spedie death 
 
 Deprives of life, ne is enforced to see 
 
 These hugie mischiefes and these miseries, 
 
 These civill warres, these murders, and these wronges. 
 
 Of justice yet must God in fine restore 
 
 This noble crowne unto the lawfull heire : 
 
 p'or right will alwayes live, and rise at length, 
 
 But wrong can never take deepe roote to last.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 
 
 N endeavouring to reconstruct these 
 times of our Master Shakspere — the 
 spacious times of great Elizabeth, as 
 Tennyson calls them — I have been 
 struck with the circumstance that what 
 we may call the modern doctor and 
 modern medicine really begin in this 
 wonderful period, — this last half of 
 the sixteenth century, — just as so many other modern 
 matters first show themselves emerging out of the uni- 
 versally excited activities of that time. And thus I find 
 that in any proper picture of Shakspere's time the physi- 
 cians must form a prominent and striking figure, as 
 indeed they do in any picture of any time. We all know 
 how the ever-busy doctor, the never-refusing doctor, has 
 interwoven himself, in these modern times, into the whole 
 texture of our lives. We begin to call for him — I was 
 going to say — even before we are born; we continue 
 calling for him all through our lives when we are in bodily 
 trouble, often when we are in mental trouble — at midday 
 or at midnight ; when he has given us the prescription, we 
 always keep him a little while longer to talk to us, or 
 
 177
 
 178 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 rather to let us talk to him about our majestic selves — 
 that most interesting of topics which somehow scarcely any 
 of our acquaintances seem to appreciate except our doctor; 
 and finally, after having treated him all our lives as a 
 being entirely superior to the ordinary claims of humanity 
 regarding dinners and sleep and rest, we at last call for 
 him again when we are going to die, and then leave our 
 executors or administrators to higgle with him about his 
 bill after we are gone. So that practically, you observe, 
 the doctor is more than interwoven with our whole life, for 
 he is busied about us one way or another from before our 
 birth until after our death. 
 
 Thus, as I was saying, since the modern doctor stands 
 in the very foreground of modern society, and since the 
 modern doctor, — the follower of Vesalius and Harvey, — 
 as distinguished from the ancient doctor, l?egins just about 
 Shakspere's time, I felt a much more than merely anti- 
 quarian interest in collecting such references to him as I 
 could find in Shakspere and his contemporary poets, 
 together with such facts about the medicines and practice 
 peculiar to his class as might be of interest to a general 
 audience. 
 
 We have already studied somewhat the music of 
 Shakspere's time, a theme which connects itself 
 very charmingly with the physic of Shakspere's time 
 through the fact that music was regarded as physic 
 in Shakspere's time — as a true remedial agent, like 
 cassia and aloes and colocynth, and other drugs. And 
 there is even a further congruence between the two 
 lectures in the fact that now, without more ado, I can 
 begin my treatment of the present subject by introducing 
 to you, in a lovely scene from one of Shakspere's own 
 plays, a doctor actually engaged in employing music as a 
 medicine to restore a very sweet patient.
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 179 
 
 At the moment when we are to come upon him, Ceri- 
 mon has just had opened the chest containing the body 
 of the unfortunate Thaisa, and the piteous scroll from 
 Pericles asking that whoever finds her should bury her as 
 befits a queen. The first sight of the supposed dead body 
 at once awakes all the physician in Cerimon. He breaks 
 out, quick, sharp, decided : 
 
 This chanc'd to-night. 
 
 Sec. Gent. Most likely, sir. 
 
 Cerimon. Nay, certainly to-night ; 
 
 For look how fresh she looks ! They were too rough. 
 
 . . . Make fire within : 
 
 Fetch hither all the boxes in my closet. 
 
 (^Exit a Servant.) 
 
 Death may usurp on nature many hours, 
 
 And yet the fire of life kindle again 
 
 The o'erpressed spirits. I heard of an Egyptian 
 
 That had nine hours lien dead, 
 
 Who was by good appliances recovered. 
 
 Reenter Servant, with boxes^ napkins., and fire. 
 
 Well said, well said ; the fire and the cloths. 
 
 The rough and woful music that we have. 
 
 Cause it to sound, beseech you. 
 
 The vial once more : how thou stirr'st, thou block ! 
 
 The music there! I pray you, give her air. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 This queen will live : nature awakes ; a warmth 
 
 Breathes out of her : she hath not been entranc'd 
 
 Above five hours : see how she 'gins to blow 
 
 Into life's flower again ! 
 
 It is very delightful to think that this superb por- 
 traiture of the ideal doctor which Shakspere has given us 
 in the figure of Cerimon — a portraiture which ought to 
 be in gold letters and framed and hung up in every
 
 i8o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 medical college in the land — was possibly drawn from 
 an actual personage. We know, historically, that in the 
 year 1607 Dr. John Hall married Shakspere's youngest 
 daughter, Susannah. Now Shakspere's part of the play 
 o^ Pericles was probably written just about this time, and 
 it seems very likely that this son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, 
 furnished him with at least some of the features which go 
 to make up the noble Dr. Cerimon. He was himself 
 a writer, and was a physician of great repute in Stratford. 
 This physician may indeed have been the son of a certain 
 Dr. John Hall who wrote a work called An Historical Ex- 
 postulation Against the Beastly Abuses both of Chirurgery 
 and Physyke in Oure Tyme. 
 
 In rummaging about the Peabody Library some days 
 ago I came upon this work of Dr. John Hall's in one of 
 the volumes of the Percy Society's reprints. Before 
 describing the abuses. Dr. Hall gives us an ideal physi- 
 cian according to his views, and we can easily see that a 
 very lineal tradition from father to son might have made 
 the younger doctor a fair model for Shakspere's picture 
 of Cerimon. 
 
 Here are some of the elder Hall's ideas of the proper 
 chirurgeon ; and they let us into some curious features of 
 medical matters in his time. 
 
 " Why," says he, " is every rude, rustick, braynsicke 
 beast, fond fool, indiscreete idiote ; yea, every scoldinge 
 drabbe suffered thus ... to abuse this worthy arte upon 
 the body of man ? What avayleth the goodly orders 
 taken by our forefathers and auncient authores, that none 
 should be admitted to the art of chirurgery that are mis- 
 create or deformed of body ; as goggle or skwynte eyed, 
 unperfecte of sight, unhelthy of body, unperfecte of mynde, 
 not hole in his members, boystrous fingers or shakyng 
 hands. But contrarywyse that all that should be admytted 
 to that arte should be of clean and perfect sight, well
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME i8i 
 
 formed in person, hole of mynde and of members, sclender 
 and tender fingered, havyng a softe and stedfast hande : — 
 or as the common sentence is, a chirurgien should have 
 three dyvers properties in his person. That is to saie, a 
 harte as the harte of the lyon, his eyes like the eyes of an 
 hawke and his handes as the handes of a woman : what 
 avayleth this order, I saye, sithe the contrary in all poyntes 
 is put dayly in use, and that almost without hope of 
 redresse ? Seyng also that those auncient authors had not 
 only this regarde to the forme of the body, but also, and 
 as well, to the bewtie or ornament of the mynde, and an 
 honest conversation of him that should be admitted to 
 chirurgery, as are thes : He ought to be well manered, 
 and of good audacitie, and bolde when he may worke 
 surely; and contrariwise, doubtfull and fearfull in things 
 that be dangerous and desperate. He [ought to] be gen- 
 tyll to his patients, witty in prognostications, and forseyng 
 of dangers, apte and reasonable to answer and dissolve all 
 doubtes and questions belongynge to his worke. He must 
 also be chaste, sober, meeke and mercifull ; no extorcioner, 
 but so to accomplish his rewarde at the hands of the ryche 
 to maynteine his science and necessary lyvynges, that he 
 may helpe the poor for the only sake of God ; what mean- 
 eth it, I saye (those things considered) that so many sheepe 
 heads, unwytly, unlearned . . . dronkards, beastly glut- 
 tons, . . . envious, evill manered, shall thus myserably 
 be sufFred to abuse so noble an arte." ^ 
 
 But our author's Treatise of Anatomie gives us a mel- 
 ancholy view of the state of knowledge at that time, even 
 among such good intenders as himself" For example, 
 " May it not be proved," says he, " that the brayne (lyke 
 
 1 Cf. Nicholas Breton's "Worthy sixteenth-century cure-all in The 
 Physician" in Good and Bad, Two Noble Kinsmen : "This ques- 
 Brydges'' Archaica. " tion, aick between us, by bleeding 
 
 2 And there is a dismal hint of the must be cured."
 
 i82 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 unto the heavens) hangyth without any maner of staye or 
 proppe, to hold by the same ? Nay, it is so evident that 
 every learned anatomiste writeth of the same as a thynge 
 not to be doubted of, and therefore judge the same to have 
 a certayne lykeness with the heavenly nature." (Here is 
 an argument !) " And as the world hath two notable 
 lyghtes to govern the same, namely, the sonne and the 
 moone ; so hath the body of man, planted lykewyse in the 
 highest place, two lyghtes called eyes, which are the lyghtes 
 of the body as the sonne and the moon are the lyghtes 
 of the world. And it is also wrytten of some doctors, that 
 the brayne hath VII concavities, being instruments of the 
 wyttes, which answer unto the VII spheres of the planetes." 
 But the good doctor now goes on to give us many lively 
 pictures of the travelling quacks that went about England, 
 and here we come to a terribly effective foil to his bright 
 ideal of the physician. We are apt nowadays to think 
 that the times are frightfully full of quacks and cure-alls 
 and all manner of medical impostures ; but from the long 
 list of wretched charlatans which Hall gives here, and the 
 description of their pretensions, their ignorance, and their 
 brutal juggleries, we are forced to believe that Shakspere's 
 day was far more cursed in this kind than ours. Here, 
 for example, are two or three of these charlatans, as Dr. 
 Hall saw them : ^ 
 
 " Fyrst there came into the towne of Maydstone, in 
 the yere of our Lorde 1555 a woman which named her- 
 selfe Jane. . . . This wicked beast toke her inn at the 
 signe of the Bell . . . when she caused within short space 
 
 1 The Apologie for Poetrie has a which afterwards send Charon a 
 
 vicious fling by the way at the regular great number of soules drowned in 
 
 practitioners: "How often, thinke a potion before they come to his 
 
 you, doc the Phisitians lye, when Ferry?" 
 they aver things good for sicknesses.
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 183 
 
 to be published that she could heale all maner, both inward 
 and outward diseases. One powder she carried in a bladcr, 
 made of the herbe daphnoydes and anise seed together, 
 which she (as an onelye sufficient remedie for all grefes) 
 administered unto all her foolish patients, in lyke quantitie 
 to all people neyther regarding tyme, strength nor age." 
 He tells how she worked away at a sick child who finally 
 died of her terrible doses ; whereupon she ran away ; and 
 the irate doctor adds exultingly that in running away 
 she stole " the sheets, pillow-beres and blankets " from 
 the landlord's bed, and not only that : it was discovered 
 after she left that she had ordered the servant at the inn 
 to bring her up muscadel wine whenever she ordered 
 beer. 
 
 " Then again in the next year came to Maydstone one 
 Robert Harris, professing by only looking in one's face to 
 tell what they had done and what had chaunced to them all 
 their lyfe tyme before. And for jestyng a lyttell agaynst 
 the madness of this deceaver, I had a dagger drawne at 
 me not long after. 
 
 " Again, a couple of years afterward came one Thomas 
 Lufkyn, a cloth-fuller by trade, who had been long absent 
 from the towne, in which time he had been roving abroad, 
 and had become a physician, a chirurgien, an astronomier, 
 a palmister, a phisiognomier, a sothsayer, a fortune devyner, 
 and I cannot tell what. . . . This deceaver was the beast- 
 liest beguiler by his sorcerys that ever I herd of, making 
 physike the only colour to cover all his crafty thefte and 
 mischieves, for he set uppe a byll at hys fyrste commynge, 
 to publishe his beyng there, the tenour whereof was in 
 effect as followeth : — If any manne, womanne, or childe bee 
 sicke, or would be let blood, or bee deseased with any 
 maner of inward or outwarde grefes, as al maner of agues, 
 or fevers, plurises, cholyke, . . . goutes . . . bone ache
 
 i84 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 . . . and pavne of thejoynts . . . let them resorte to the 
 sygne of the Sarazen's Hedde, in the easte lane, . . , and 
 they shall have remedie, 
 
 By me, Thomas Luffkin. 
 
 Unto this divell incarnate reserted all sortes of vayne 
 and indiscrete persons, as it were to a God, — especially 
 women to know how many hisbands . . . they should 
 have, and whether they should burie their husbands then 
 lyving. . . . There was not so great a secret that he 
 would not take it upon him to declare ... by astro- 
 nomie. Well, the ende of hys being there was as it is 
 commen wyth them all, wythoute anye difference, for he 
 sodainlye was gone wyth many a poore man's moneye, 
 whyche he had taken beforehand promisinge them 
 helpe, which onlye he recompensed wyth the winge of his 
 heles." 
 
 And then came another different medical impostor 
 calling himself Master Wynkfelde, pretending to tell all 
 diseases by looking at people's faces. Upon a certain 
 occasion sending a verbal prescription to the apothecary, 
 the apothecary asked the messenger why Wynkfelde did 
 not write for his things, whereunto the messenger answered 
 that " Mayster Wynkfelde was a right Latynist, for he 
 could wryte no Englysh. By this ye may perceave he 
 was a well learned man." Many adventures he had, and 
 much report ; presently it turned out that Master Wynk- 
 felde " had III wyves lyving at present." Whereupon he 
 had to flee ; and Hall adds, "The truthe was ... he had 
 no learnyng in the world, nor could reade English (and 
 as I suppose knewe not . . . a b from a bateldore) . . . 
 yet made he the people believe that he could speke Latin, 
 Greek and Hebrue." And again there came a woman 
 professing to have travelled everywhere, administering
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 185 
 
 physic ; ^ but upon being examined by the authorities as 
 to her knowledge and her certificate to practise medicine, 
 " she sayde she was never before so examined . . . neither 
 sawe she ever the place that a woman could finde so little 
 curtesie ; . . . nevertheless she was expelled the town." 
 Finally there came one Nichols who had a very prosperous 
 career ; and the sturdy Hall got him up for examination 
 and showed that he did not know one medicine from an- 
 other, and that he thought cassia was so called because it 
 was like a case ; but still he remained and practised. 
 " One day this man made his vaunte that he sawe his 
 maister close a man's head together that was cleft from the 
 crown of his head down to the necke, who sayde he was 
 after healed, and did live. This shameless lye, beyng 
 hearde of a mery man was quited, on this sorte. Tushe^ 
 (sayd this mery man) I have heard of as great a matter as 
 this ; for a certayne man fallyng into the hands of theves 
 was robbed, and his head so smoothe cutte oflF that it 
 stoode styll upon his necke tyll he rode home ; whose wyfe 
 metyng him at the doore, perceived his bosome bloudy, 
 and asked him if his nose had bledde ; which wordes when 
 the man heard, he tooke his nose in his hand to blow it, 
 and therewith threw his head in at the dore. And now," 
 says the doctor, " I leave this . . . monster least I should 
 too much weary the lovynge reader." But he cunningly 
 goes on. Paragraph after paragraph he begins : " I will 
 omit to tell of So-and-so, who did so-and-so " : omitting 
 also one Carter who was a sorcerer and did so-and-so ; 
 and he will also " omitte to tell of Grygge the Poulter " 
 who did so-and-so; and of the "joyner" in London, a 
 Frenchman, who did so-and-so ; and so on. 
 
 ^ Cf. the Lady Loose-pain in the cient lady leeches and the modern 
 Percy Ballad. It would be inter- women doctors, 
 esting to compare in detail the an-
 
 1 86 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 It may be well enough, however, to cap these specimens 
 of sixteenth-century quackery with an account of a certain 
 wholesale quackery written by a medical friend with whom 
 our Dr. John Hall seems to have been intimate — Dr. 
 Thomas Gale — in 1563. Gale had served in the army, 
 and in one place he says : " I remember when I was in the 
 wars in the time of the most famous prince, King Henry 
 VIII, there was a great rabblement there, that took upon 
 them to be surgeons. Some were pig-doctors, some were 
 horse doctors, some tinkers and coblers. This noble sect 
 . . . got themselves . . . for their notorious cures, called 
 dog-leachers, for in two dressings they did commonly 
 make their cures so that they neither felt heat nor cold 
 nor no manner of pain after. But when the Duke of 
 Norfolk, who was then general, understood how the sol- 
 diers did die, and that of small wounds, he sent for me 
 and certain other surgeons ; and we made search through 
 all the camp and found many of the same good fellows 
 which took upon them the name of surgeons, — not only 
 the name but the wages also. We asking of them whether 
 they were surgeons or no, they said they were. . . . Then 
 we demanded of them what chirurgcry stuff they had to 
 cure men withal, and they would show us a pot or box, 
 wherein was such trumpery as they did use to grease 
 horses heels withal . . . and such like. And other that 
 were coblers and tinkers, they used shoemaker's wax, 
 with the rust of old pans, and made therewithal a noble 
 salve as they did term it. But in the end this worthy 
 rabblement was committed to the Marshalsea and threat- 
 ened by the duke's grace to be hanged . . . except they 
 would declare what they were, and in the end they did 
 confess, as I have declared to you." ^ 
 
 ICf. Chettle's Kind Hearths Dream: *' To the impudent discreditors of 
 Phisickes Art, either speedy Amcndcmcnt or punishment." (The
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 187 
 
 After looking upon these pictures, we need not be sur- 
 prised to find that Shakspere, among the thousand types of 
 characters which he studied, gives us some views of the 
 doctor quite different from that of Cerimon. For exam- 
 ple, compare the celebrated passage in Act V, Scene III 
 oi Macbethy where we get a vivid glimpse of the relations 
 very likely to subsist between a man of affairs, like Mac- 
 beth, and a man of pure ideas, like a doctor. It is in 
 Scene I of this act, you remember, that the Doctor is first 
 introduced. Lady Macbeth's gentlewoman has happened 
 to see the guilty Qiieen walking in her sleep ; and, not 
 knowing what to do about it, has called in the Doctor — 
 showing that old times were very much like modern ones 
 in this particular. We have in this scene the wonderful 
 sleep-walking speech of Lady Macbeth, while the gentle- 
 woman and the Doctor stand close ; and the Doctor, after 
 she retires, concludes : " More needs she the divine than 
 the physician." But in Scene III we have the wild Mac- 
 beth one minute cursing the servant who brings him news 
 of the English, the next minute calling for his armour, and 
 then turning to the physician. " How does your patient, 
 doctor ? " he asks. 
 
 Doct. Not so sick, my lord, 
 
 As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, 
 That keep her from her rest. 
 
 Mach. Cure her of that. 
 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain. 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stufFd bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart ? 
 
 tooth-drawers had acquired the name of Kind-heart — possibly because 
 some famous dentist bore this name and so cognomened the tribe.)
 
 i88 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Doct. Therein the patient 
 
 Must minister to himself. 
 
 Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,i etc. 
 
 And it is not surprising to hear the Doctor presently 
 declaring : 
 
 Were I from Dunsinane away and clear, 
 Profit again should hardly draw me here.- 
 
 This Throw physic to the dogs always reminds me of a 
 cunning passage in Chaucer's Knight's Tale when Arcite 
 has been thrown and fearfully crushed by his horse, and 
 after telling how all the leechcraft of the time — bleeding 
 being the main resort — has been tried to no purpose, 
 because nature hath now no " dominacioun " over the 
 man's body, Chaucer exclaims in one of his peculiar bright 
 sallies : 
 
 And certeynly when Nature wil not wirche, 
 Farwel phisilc ; go here the man to chirche. 
 
 It is interesting to think that etymologically "physic" 
 means nature : cf Greek ^oaixd?, natural, from <f uot?, na- 
 ture ; and we can here get a realising sense of the dis- 
 tance to which the meaning of a word may depart from its 
 original sense when we here find Chaucer using nature 
 and physic as two precisely contradictory terms, though 
 physic originally meant exactly nature and nothing more. 
 
 It would seem that the functions of the apothecary and 
 the doctor were not so distinct in Shakspere's time as at 
 present, and so a view of the doctors of this period must 
 embrace also a glimpse at the apothecary. As such a 
 glimpse, recall that powerful description of the apothecary 
 in Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene I. Balthasar brings the 
 
 1 Cf. AWs Well that Ends Well, ^ Cf. Dr. Pinch in Comedy of Er- 
 Act I, Scene I : *' He hath aban- rors. Act IV, Scene IV, and Dr. 
 doned his phj'sicians, madam," etc. Caius in Merry Wives, passim.
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 189 
 
 mortal news from Verona that Juliet is dead ; and, in his 
 customary lightning way, Romeo instantly resolves to go 
 and die alongside her dear body. And then, how to die ? 
 " Let's see for means." And straight the idea of poison 
 comes. 
 
 I do remember an apothecary, 
 And hereabouts a' dwells, which late I noted 
 In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, 
 Culling of simples ; meagre were his looks ; 
 Sharp misery had worn him to the bones : 
 And in his needy shop 
 
 (doubtless Shakspere is here picturing some actual apothe- 
 cary's shop he had seen) 
 
 a tortoise hung. 
 An alligator stuft'd and other skins 
 Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves 
 A beggarly account of empty boxes. 
 Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds. 
 Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses. 
 Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. 
 Noting this penury, to myself I said. 
 An if a man did need a poison now. 
 Whose sale is present death in Mantua, 
 Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. . . . 
 What, ho ! apothecary ! 
 
 Enter Apothecary. 
 
 Apoth. Who calls so loud ? 
 
 Romeo. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor ; 
 Hold, there is forty ducats : let me have 
 A dram of poison ; such soon-spreading gear 
 As will disperse itself through all the veins. 
 That the life-weary taker may fall dead. 
 And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath 
 As violently as hasty powder fired 
 Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
 
 I90 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Apoth. Such mortal drugs I have ; but Mantua's law 
 Is death to any he that utters them. 
 
 Romeo. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness, 
 And fear'st to die ? famine is in thy cheeks, 
 Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, 
 Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back, 
 The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law : 
 The world affords no law to make thee rich -, 
 Then be not poor, but break it, and take this. 
 
 Apoth. My poverty, but not my will, consents. 
 
 Romeo. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will. 
 
 Apoth. Put this in any liquid thing you will, 
 And drink it off; and, if you had the strength 
 Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight. 
 
 Romeo. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls. 
 Doing more murder in this loathsome world. 
 Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell : 
 I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. 
 Farewell : buy food, and get thyself in flesh. 
 Come, cordial and not poison, go with me 
 To Juliet's grave ; for there must I use thee. 
 
 Several items in this apothecary picture lead me now to 
 bring before you a very lifelike account of the rascally 
 apothecary, given by a writer whom we may call Shakspere's 
 contemporary, though he is a few years before Shakspere. 
 I mean old John Heywood, of whom we have already had 
 a taste in another connection. In that same interlude called 
 'The Four P's — the four P's being, you remember, The 
 Palmer (Pilgrim), The Pedler^ The Poticary^ and The Par- 
 doner — he introduces us to four very notable characters, 
 and manages to make them lampoon themselves very 
 effectually in the absurd dialogue which they carry on 
 throughout this interlude. 
 
 After some flouting and gibing at each other's rascality 
 — and they are certainly as precious a quartette of rascals
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 191 
 
 as ever gulled the people — the Pardoner, you will recall, 
 begins to brag of the efficacy of his bulls and indulgences 
 and pardons. 
 
 I say yet againe [says he] my pardons are suche 
 
 That yf there were a thousand soules on a hepe 
 
 I wold brynge them all to heaven, as good chepe, 
 
 As ye have brought yourselfe on pylgrymage 
 
 In the least quarter of your vyage ; 
 
 With smale cost and without any payne 
 
 These pardons bring them to heaven playne ; 
 
 Geve me but a peny or two pens 
 
 And assone as the soule departeth hens. 
 
 In half an houre, or three quarters at the moste, 
 
 The soule is in heven, with the holy ghost. 
 
 Here the Poticary strikes in : 
 
 Sende ye any soules to heaven by water? 
 
 Pardoner. If we doo sir, what is the mater ? 
 
 Poticary. By god, I have a drye soule shoulde thyther; 
 I praye you let our soules go to heven togyther : 
 So bysy you twayne be in soules helth 
 May not a poticary come in by stelth ? . . . 
 No soule, ye knowe, entreth heven gate, 
 Tyll from the bodye he be separate : 
 And whome have ye knowen dye honestly 
 Without helpe of the potycary ? 
 Nay, all that commeth to our handlynge. 
 Except ye happe to come to hangynge ; 
 That way perchanse, ye shall not myster 
 To go to heven without a glyster. 
 But ye be sure I wold be wo 
 If ye shoulde chaunce to begyle me so, 
 As good to lye with me a nyght 
 As hang abrode in the mone light.
 
 192 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Syns of our soules the multitude 
 I sende to heven when all is vewd. 
 Who should but I then all togyther 
 Have thanke of all theyr comynge thyther ? 
 
 Pardoner. If ye kyl'd a thousande in an houre space, 
 When come they to heven, dyenge out of grace ? 
 
 Poticary. If a thousande pardons about your necks 
 were teyd. 
 When came they to heven yf they never dyed ? 
 
 And here we have a curious list of the names of apothe- 
 caries' drugs ; 
 
 Poticary. Here is a syrapus de Byzansis 
 A lytell thynge is inough of thys : 
 For even the weyght of one scryppal 
 Shall make you as strong as a cryppul. 
 Here are other as diosialos, 
 Diagalanga and sticados 
 Blanka, manna, diaspoliticon, 
 Mercury sublyme and mitridaticon, 
 Pellitory and arscfetita 
 Cassy and colloquintida. 
 These be the thynges that breke all stryfe. 
 Between man's sycknes and his lyfe. . . . 
 
 This list of medicines leads me now to speak of one drug 
 which played a much more important part in the phar- 
 macy of Shakspere's time than ours, though we use it 
 much more freely than then, under a very different rubric. 
 I mean tobacco. When Shakspere was just emerging 
 into manhood — twenty or twenty-one years old, say — 
 tobacco was widely regarded as one of the most wonderful 
 medicines the world had ever known, and was often pre- 
 scribed by physicians in case of sickness. Indeed, — as 
 you will presently see by some citations from contempo-
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 193 
 
 rary writers, — many regarded it as a perfect cure-all, and 
 thought that tobacco-smoke, if sent into the body, would 
 chase out diseases, just as hunters smoke game out of 
 hollow trees. Some of the literature of this subject is so 
 curious, and reveals to us so many of the crude notions 
 which our ancestors — even the wisest among them — 
 held regarding the human organs and the action of medi- 
 cines upon them, that I think you will be interested in 
 several citations from writers of Shakspere's time relating 
 to the medicinal virtues of tobacco. Singularly enough, 
 I can cite you nothing on tobacco from Shakspere. So 
 far as I now recollect, there is not a single word about 
 tobacco, or the remotest allusion to it, in all his plays and 
 poems. This is the more remarkable because other 
 writers of his time abound in allusions to it ; a whole war 
 of books and pamphlets in prose and verse was carried on 
 about tobacco, in which even King James was one of the 
 disputants ; and in a thousand ways we see that the won- 
 derful rapidity with which tobacco took hold of the English 
 people had excited great attention long before Shakspere 
 died. Although Shakspere was a man when people began 
 to smoke tobacco (or to drink tobacco, as it was then 
 called — you asked a friend to drink tobacco with you), 
 the custom had become so common that we find King 
 James early in the seventeenth century foreboding that it 
 would ruin the health of his whole people. And, what is 
 more specially to the point here, smoking appears to have 
 been carried on at the theatres more vigorously than any- 
 where else. I find this often mentioned, and Shakspere 
 himself must have had to act day after day in the midst 
 of a stage reeking with smoke from the pipes in the pit 
 and those affected by the gallants who used to sit on the 
 stage among the players. But withal never a word from 
 Shakspere about tobacco : and it must certainly be regarded
 
 194 SHAKSPERK AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 one of the most curious silences, that one whose eye never 
 missed anything in his time has omitted to make any record 
 of what we may perhaps fairly call the most novel sight of 
 his age — the sight of people everywhere swallowing the 
 smoke of a drug and puffing it out again from mouth and 
 nostrils. 
 
 Here are some citations giving the early stories and 
 opinions about this drug when it was first being intro- 
 duced into England and France.^ 
 
 The first mention of the herb in English seems to be in 
 a translation, by "John Frampton, Marchant," of a Spanish 
 work which Nicholas Monardes issued at Seville in 1571. 
 Frampton says in the dedication to his first edition (1577): 
 " Retourning right worshipfull, home into Englande oute 
 of Spaine, and now not pressed with the former toiles of 
 my old trade, I to passe the tyme to some benefite of my 
 countrie, and to avoyde idlenesse : tooke in hande to 
 translate out of Spanishe into Englishe, the thre bookes 
 of Doctour Monardes of Scvill, the learned Phisition, 
 treating of the singuler and rare vertues of certaine Hearbes, 
 Trees, Oyles, Plantes, Stones, and Drugges of the Weste 
 Indies. ..." 
 
 Among the " singuler and rare vertues " of the " Hearbe 
 I'abaco'' ("an Hearbe of much antiquitie," the proper name 
 of which " amongest the Indians is Picielt^ for the name 
 Tabaco is geven to it by our Spainardes, by reason of an 
 Island that is named Tabaco ") was that of divination : 
 
 " One of the mervelles of this hearbe, and that which 
 bringeth most admiration, is, the maner howe the Priestes 
 of the Indias did use it, which was in this manner: when 
 there was emongest the Indians any manner of businesse, 
 of greate importaunce, in the which the chiefe Gentlemen 
 
 1 See King James's •* Essayes in Poesie " and **Counterblaste to Tobacco" 
 in Arber's English Reprints, pages 81 et seq.
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 195 
 
 called Casiques^ or any of the principall people of the 
 countrie, had necessitle to consult with their Priestes, in 
 any business of importance ; they went and propounded 
 their matter to their chiefe Priest, forthwith in their pres- 
 ence, he tooke certayne leaves of the T'abaco^ and cast them 
 into the fire, and did receive the smoke of them at his 
 mouth, and at his nose with a Cane, and in taking of it, he 
 fell downe uppon the ground, as a Dead man, and remayn- 
 ing so, according to the quantitie of the smoke that he had 
 taken, when the hearbe had done his worke, he did revive 
 and awake, and gave them their answeres, according to the 
 visions, and illusions which he sawe, whiles he was rapt in 
 the same manner, and he did interprete to them, as to him 
 seemed best, or as the Devill had counselled him, geving 
 them continually doubtful answeares, in such sorte, that 
 howsoever it fell out, they might say that it was the same, 
 which was declared, and the answeare that he made. 
 
 "In like sort the rest of the Indians for their pastime, 
 doe take the smoke of the 'Tabaco, too make themselves 
 drunke withall, and to see the visions, and thinges that 
 represent unto them that wherein they doe delight : and 
 other times they take it to knowe their businesse, and suc- 
 cesse, because conformable to that, whiche they have seene 
 beyng drunke therewith, even so they judge of their 
 businesse. And as the Devil is a deceaver, and hath the 
 knowledge of the vertue of hearbes, so he did shew the 
 vertue of this Hearb, that by the meanes thereof, they 
 might see their imaginations, and visions, that he hath 
 represented to them, and by that meanes deceave them." 
 
 Under the name o{ Nicotiane (modern nicotine — after 
 a French John Nicot, who was ambassador in Portugal, 
 and who sent it to France as a wonderful medicine) the 
 " hearbe " now acquired a reputation for working most 
 wonderful cures of all sorts. Nicot's own story of its dis-
 
 196 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 covery by him occurs in Liebault's edition of Charles 
 Estienne's Farming and the Country House [U Agriculture 
 et Maison Rustique) : 
 
 " Maister lohn Nicot^ Counseller to the King, being 
 Embassadour for his Maiestie in Portugall, in the yeere of 
 our Lorde. 1558. 59. 60. went one day to see the Prysons 
 of the King of Portugall : and a Gentleman beeyng the 
 keeper of the sade Prisons presented him with this hearb, 
 as a strange Plant brought from Florida. The same 
 Maister Nicot^ having caused the said hearb to be set in 
 his Garden, where it grewe and multiplied marvellously, 
 was uppon a time advertised, by one of his Pages, that a 
 young man, of kinne to that Page made asaye of that 
 hearbe brused both the hearbe and the luice together 
 uppon an ulcer, which he had upon his cheeke . . . where- 
 with hee found himselfe mervellously eased. Therefore 
 the saide Maister Nicot caused the sicke younge man to 
 bee brought before him, and causing the saide hearb to 
 bee continued to the sore eight or ten dales, this said Noli 
 me tangere was utterly extinguished and healed. . . . 
 
 " Within a while after, one of the Cookes of the sayde 
 Embassadour having almost cutte off his thombe, with a 
 great chopping knyfe, the Steward of the house of the 
 sayde Gentleman ran to the sayde Nicotiane^ and dressed 
 him therewith five or six tymes, and so in the ende thereof 
 he was healed : from that time forward this hearbe began 
 to bee famous throughout Lishebron^ where the court of 
 the kyng of Portugall was at that present, and the vertue 
 of this sayde hearbe was extolled, and the people began to 
 name it the Ambassadours hearbe." People came from 
 all parts to be cured of ulcers, and many other afflictions, 
 ranging apparently from ringworm to " shorte breath " ! 
 
 " Moreover," continues Liebault, " the inhabitantes of 
 Florida do nourish themselves certaine tymes, with the
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 197 
 
 smoke of this Hearbe, which they receave at the mouth 
 through certaine coffins, suche as the Grocers do use to 
 put in their Spices." 
 
 It was in this matter of receiving its smoke at the 
 mouth " through certaine coffins " that tobacco began to 
 occupy a large amount of attention from Englishmen dur- 
 ing the last decade of the sixteenth century. It seems 
 probable, by the way, that Sir Walter Raleigh had far less 
 to do with the introduction of tobacco into England than 
 had Master Ralph Lane ; and the well-known tale of his 
 being doused while smoking by his servant, who thought 
 his master on fire, exists in too many variations to be con- 
 sidered very trustworthy. 
 
 The controversy which soon arose over this new and 
 strange custom is very ingeniously presented by Ben Jon- 
 son in his comedy of Every Man in his Humour (acted 
 November 25, 1596): 
 
 Says Bobadilla : 
 
 Body of me : here's the remainder of seven pound, since yes- 
 terday was sevennight. It's your right Trtnidado : did you never 
 take any, signior ? 
 
 Stephana. No truly sir ? but i'le learne to take it now since 
 you commend it so. 
 
 Bobadilla. Signior beleeve me, (upon my relation) f&r what I 
 tel you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the Indies 
 (where this herbe growes) where neither my selfe, nor a dozen 
 Gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of 
 any other nutriment, in the world, for the space of one and twentie 
 weekes, but Tabacco onely. Therefore it cannot be but 'tis most 
 divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kinde so, it 
 makes an Antidote, that (had you taken the most deadly poyson- 
 ous simple in all Florence, it should expell it, and clarifie you, 
 with as much ease, as I speak. And for your greene wound, your 
 Bahamum.,2iX\A your are all mere gulleries and trash to it, espe-
 
 198 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 cially your Ti-'inidado ; yonr Newcotian is good too: I could say 
 what I know of the vertue of it, for the exposing of rewmes, raw 
 humors, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind ; but 
 I professe my selfe no quack-salver : only thus much : by Hercules 
 I doe holde it, and will affirme it (before any Prince in Europe) to 
 be the most soveraigne and pretious herbe, that ever the earth 
 tendred to the use of man. 
 
 Cob presently has his say on the other side : 
 
 By gods deynes : I marie what pleasure or felicitie they 
 have in taking this rogish Tabacco : it's good for nothing but to 
 choake a man, and fill him full of smoake, and imbers : there were 
 foure died out of one house last weeke with taking of it, and two 
 more the bell went for yester-night, one of them (they say) will 
 ne're scape it, he voyded a bushell of soote yester-day, upward and 
 downeward. By the stockes ; and there were no wiser men then 
 I, rid have it present death, man or woman, that should but deale 
 with a Tabacco pipe ; why it will stifle them all in the'nd as 
 many as use it ; it's little better than rats bane. 
 
 King James himself took a leading part in the battle 
 over tobacco. His Counterblaste to Tobacco is a piece of 
 invective against the users of the herb that seems to have 
 difficulty in finding words strong enough. It winds up: 
 " A custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, 
 harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in 
 the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the 
 horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse." 
 
 Yet in spite of the kingly displeasure which did not 
 even stop at words but proclaimed fines and " corporal! 
 Punishments " for the disobedient, it is astonishing to see 
 how rapidly the practice of smoking grew. " Barnabee 
 Rych Gentleman, Servant to the Kings most Excellent 
 Maiestie," says in 16 14:
 
 Dr. Thomas Linacre 
 
 First president of the R.iyal College of Physicians 
 From an engraving by H. Cook
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 199 
 
 " I have heard It tolde that now very lately, there hath 
 bin a Cathalogue taken of all those new erected houses that 
 have set uppe that Trade of selling Tobacco, in London 
 and neare about London : and if a man may beleeve what 
 is confidently reported, there are found to be upward of 
 7000. houses that doth live by that trade." He goes on 
 presently : " It may well bee supposed to be but an ill 
 customed shoppe, that taketh not five shillings a day, one 
 day with another, throughout the whole yeare, or if one 
 doth take lesse, two other may take more : but let us 
 make our account, but after 1 shillings sixe pence a day, for 
 he that taketh lesse than that, would be ill able to pay his 
 rent, or to keepe open his Shop Windowes, neither would 
 Tobacco houses make such a muster as they doe, and that 
 almost in every . . . by-corner round about London. 
 
 " Let us then reckon thus, 7000. halfe Crouns a day, 
 amounteth justto 3 19,375 poundes a yeare. Summa totalis^ 
 All spent in smoake." 
 
 And yet our Shakspere, who seems to sum up in his 
 plays the whole world of his fellow-men, and whose term 
 of writing corresponds almost exactly to these thirty years 
 during which his countrymen, from knowing nothing of 
 tobacco, came to consume hundreds of thousands of 
 pounds' worth each year, does not so much as mention 
 the herb or the practice of smoking. 
 
 I should have liked to give some account of the more 
 famous physicians of this time in England ; of " that 
 famous Phisition, Master Thomas Twyne " ; of Dr. 
 Thomas Linacre, the founder of the London College of 
 Physicians, who went over from England in 1484 to Italy 
 and studied medicine in Florence, where he was companion 
 to the children of the great Lorenzo de' Medici. Italy 
 was at this time the centre of medical learning: the 
 learned refugees from Constantinople had found an
 
 200 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 asylum there, and attendants upon their lectures were 
 attracted from all parts of the world. Foreign physicians 
 were greatly esteemed in England ; and I find cunning 
 indications cropping up here and there in contemporary 
 literature that perhaps they were sometimes esteemed more 
 because they were foreign than because they displayed any 
 superiority over native doctors. For example, in an old 
 play called The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom there is a 
 lampoon upon a quack aping these foreign doctors or out- 
 landish men, like this : 
 
 Now you shall hear how finely Master Doctor 
 
 Can play the outlandish man. 
 
 (And he apes the foreigner) : 
 
 Ah, by Got, me be the Doctor, 
 
 Me am the fine knave, I tell ye. 
 
 Me have the excellent medicine 
 
 For the blaines and the blister. . . . 
 
 The bee have no so many herbes 
 
 Whenout to suck honey 
 
 As I can find shifts whereby to get money. 
 
 But the length of the medical course pursued at this time 
 in Italy would astonish the young gentlemen who are so 
 impatient of a few months before they can enter the world 
 as doctors. Dr. Linacre must have remained fifteen years 
 in Italy, studying in Florence, Rome, and Padua, before 
 he came back to England and began his career. 
 
 I should also have liked particularly to dwell upon the 
 life of William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of 
 the blood at this time, and who, you remember, was a con- 
 temporary of Shakspere. 
 
 It was in 1616 that he put forth his doctrine of the 
 circulation of the blood. Harvey is an instructive person, 
 particularly when we think of the trouble that often fell
 
 William Harvey, and Chart of Circulation of the Blood
 
 THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 201 
 
 upon him in consequence of his discoveries. Aubrey re- 
 ports that he had heard Harvey say that "after his booke 
 of the Circulation of the Blood came out, he fell mightily 
 in his practice and . . . 'twas believed by the vulgar he 
 was crack-brained." What a curious crisscross of things 
 it is that the vulgar should believe Harvey crack-brained 
 and accept as wise men the ignorant charlatans whom we 
 saw them running after in Dr. John Hall's book ! 
 
 Yet Harvey lived to see his doctrine established. And 
 the metaphysician Hobbes, well enough acquainted with 
 the vanity of such success, spoke of him as " the only man 
 I know that conquering envy, hath established a new 
 doctrine in his life-time." People knew in a vague sort 
 of way, before Harvey, that the blood moved ; but they 
 were utterly ignorant of what made it move ; and even in 
 Shakspere's time we find a writer speaking of the liver as 
 the fountain of the blood — evidently fancying that, from 
 some cause or other, the blood spouted out of the liver as 
 a fountain out of the ground. Servetus appears to have 
 narrowly missed forestalling Harvey's Exercitatio anato- 
 mica de motu cordis et sanguinis. Harvey's own position 
 against his antagonists was dignified and noble. He says 
 in one of his own works that scarce a day has passed that 
 he has not heard both good and evil of his doctrine. 
 Some with great disdain opposed him ; others dispraised 
 with childish slight his dissections and his frogs and ser- 
 pents ; but he thinks it unworthy of a philosopher and a 
 searcher of the truth to return bad words for bad words, 
 and thinks he will do better and more advised if with the 
 light of true and evident observations he shall wipe away 
 those symptoms of incivility. He died in 1657, after great 
 gifts to the College of Physicians. 
 
 And I cannot better close this meagre lecture than by 
 citing the words of another young physician of this period
 
 202 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 named Harvey, who appears to have been altogether a 
 beautiful soul, and to have died lamented at a very early 
 age. This was Dr. John Harvey. In some letters of 
 the learned Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney 
 and particularly of Edmund Spenser, I find a short but 
 touching allusion to the death of Dr. John Harvey, who 
 was his brother. " He that lived not to see nine and 
 twenty years, ... in Norfolk," says Gabriel, "... as 
 skilful a physician for his age as ever came there. I . . . 
 can never forget that sweet voice of the dying cygnet." 
 And then follow the dying words of his brother: "O 
 frater, Christus est optimus medicus^ et mens solus medicus. 
 Vale Galene^ valete humane artes : nihil divinum in terris, 
 praeter animmn aspirant em ad coslos. (0 brother^ Christ is 
 the best physician^ and my only physician. Farewell Galen, 
 farewell human arts : there is nothing divine in the world, 
 except the soul aspiring to the heavens.y*
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS— I 
 
 Rime Test and Run-on and End-stopped Line Test 
 
 jND now, having studied various con- 
 ditions of the hfe and Hterature of 
 Shakspere's day, let us again devote 
 our attention for a while to some con- 
 siderations of the forms of his poetry, 
 and to tracing from the poems their 
 development along certain artistic 
 and spiritual lines. In the remaining 
 lectures we shall begin to apply the theory of forms 
 already developed ^ to the understanding of that general 
 formulation of the phenomena of life which we call Shak- 
 spere's character, just as we shall apply the special doc- 
 trines to the understanding of that special formulation of 
 the phenomena of sound which we call Shakspere's verse. 
 Note in the first place that phenomena of tone-colour, 
 as we saw in the case of phenomena of pitch, reduce 
 themselves in the last analysis to phenomena of rhythm." 
 
 ^ See The Science of English Verse. ciently attended to that a play can- 
 2 It is, by the way, a circumstance not ever really be said to have 
 which I think has not been suffi- metre. It is always prose measure.
 
 204 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 We have found that a tone-colour was the joint product of 
 several tones, as, for instance, the flute C was 
 
 known ^ gg: as such because it combined the upper 
 partials, j ^ ~^ while the same tone on the oboe would 
 sound ^ -^- difi"'erently because the even tones here 
 would be obscured and the odd ones relatively more 
 prominent. But since this tone simply represents so 
 many vibrations, we may call it a 250-rhythm ; and this 
 is a 500-rhythm, and so on ; and thus we find that the 
 tone-colour is simply a combination of a number of dif- 
 ferent-rated rhythms acting simultaneously upon the ear. 
 
 But we have found also that the principle of Opposi- 
 tion is at the bottom of all rhythm. Since, then, tone- 
 colour analyses into rhythm, and rhythm into Opposition, 
 we may strike out the intermediate term in our minds and 
 regard tone-colour — as we have found reason to regard 
 tune, and rhythm proper — as another phase of the great 
 organising principle of Opposition. 
 
 And here we may add the second of our two contri- 
 butions, by considering the curious minuteness with which 
 we find this principle flowering out into the most unex- 
 pected efi^ects in verse. 
 
 and measured rhythmically, not tenance in silence, or doing any of 
 
 metrically. For let us examine by those hundred things that constitute 
 
 the absolutely accurate method of the actor's part while the audience 
 
 musical notation what is meant by is looking at him, not listening) 
 
 a ** pause" as Mr. Furnivall, Mr. almost destroy the metrical charac- 
 
 Ellis, Mr. Fleay, etc., use that ter of dramatic blank verse. Our 
 
 word. It is a rest in music; the blank verse is not blank verse, that 
 
 interposition of it as they wish is, not 5's, at ail — as may be easily 
 
 wholly changes the metre ; in fact, seen by dividing up the verse prop- 
 
 thc interposition of it as demanded eriy in musical notation for rests, 
 
 by the exigences of dramatic busi- etc. (See The Science of Etiglish 
 
 ness (the long pause while one is ^erse.) 
 making eyes, or adjusting the coun-
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 
 
 205 
 
 For example, collate, in this view, two singularly dif- 
 fering preferences of the ear as between the artistic manner 
 of using vowel-colours and the artistic manner of using 
 consonant-colours in English verse. Here, for example, is 
 a line from Tom Hood's poem written in illustration of 
 his comical " Plan for Writing Blank Verse in Rhyme." 
 The plan was for making the three last words of each line 
 rime with each other, though no two lines rimed together — 
 which Hood, writing in the person of a needy poetaster, 
 trumpeted as a discovery that placed him alongside of 
 Newton, Harvey, and Columbus. The poem begins : 
 
 Even is come, and from the dark park, hark, 
 The signal of the setting sun — one gun ! 
 
 and ends : 
 
 While ribbons flourish and a stout shout out 
 
 That upward goes shows Rose knows those bow's woes. 
 
 Now you remember that, in discussing the colours of verse, 
 one of the first matters presented to you was the proper 
 variation of vowel-colours in each line, so that not more 
 than two Hke colours should be consecutive, and so on — 
 a variation which, although scarcely ever thought of by the 
 lay reader, is absolutely vital to the success of any work in 
 verse. Here in Hood's poem the principle is even more 
 strongly illustrated, you see, by showing that an irresis- 
 tibly comic effect is produced by what we may call — using 
 Professor Sylvester's happy term in a somewhat different 
 sense — these vowel-syzygies. In short, we may formulate 
 the principle that our ear does not like several identical vowel- 
 colours in succession. 
 
 But how curious this seems when we come to collate
 
 2o6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 it with the fact that our ear does like several consonant- 
 colours in succession ! 
 
 For example, in Shakspere's line, 
 
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
 Admit impediments, 
 
 we found that there were actually ten /-colours and six 
 »2-colours, and that these were very graciously recognised 
 and coordinated by the ear. Or, again, in that very justly 
 famous line of Tennyson's which my friend Dr. William 
 Hand Browne has recalled to me as a beautiful illustration 
 of consonant-colours in artistic syzygy. 
 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmur of innumerable bees, 
 
 besides the very striking syzygy of m'^^ there are other 
 predominances of consonant-colour which show in the 
 most striking manner how the ear in its reception of con- 
 sonant-colours is delighted with the very resemblances which 
 it cannot tolerate in vowel-colours. Now from these two 
 facts the inference is clear that in verse there are two 
 precisely opposite functions of vowels and consonants, 
 when coordinated as syzygetic tone-colours — besides, of 
 course, all the other functions discharged by them when 
 coordinated with reference to other particulars : the vowel- 
 colours in the line must differ, the consonant-colours 
 must agree, to give the ear its pleasure. In other 
 words, the vowel-colours represent the chaos element, the 
 consonant-colours the form element, in our opposition 
 list : the vowel-colours represent accident, the consonant- 
 colours law. 
 
 We can here advance to the principle that this Oppo- 
 sition, in larger applications, is the life of verse^ as we shall
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 207 
 
 hereafter more fully find : and so in verse, as in actual 
 life, prevail these great contradictions which I have here 
 set down as a partial list of limiting forms of thought. 
 How wonderfully Shakspere knew and felt all this, just as 
 well in his life as in his verse, we shall, I hope, come to see 
 in these remaining lectures when we analyse his verse in 
 the light of the Metrical Tests which are now to be ex- 
 plained. Meantime, here is a glimpse of his perception 
 of it, which occurs in All's JV ell that Ends Well., Act IV, 
 Scene III, where the First Lord says : 
 
 " The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and 
 ill together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults 
 whipt them not ; and our crimes would despair, if they 
 were not cherished by our virtues." 
 
 In coming now to apply the theory of verse, which 
 has been already developed, to the examination of the 
 Metrical Tests, please carefully observe that we are 
 arriving at the convergence of the two distinct trains of 
 study which we have been carrying on, to wit : the tech- 
 nical train, resulting in the physical theory of verse, which 
 has given us the laws of poetic form in special ; and the 
 larger train, which has resulted in showing us at least some 
 of the laws of form in general — and particularly of that 
 kind of form in the affairs of behaviour which we call 
 character. Now these Metrical Tests, which are to be 
 discussed in this lecture and the next, have for their direct 
 object the settling of the dates of Shakspere's plays. At 
 first thought this does not seem to be a very important 
 matter ; we associate dates with antiquaries and dry-as- 
 dusts, and many a man may feel inclined to say. Why 
 potter about your dates and chronologies? If the plays 
 are good, they are good, whether they were written in 
 1590 or in 1610. 
 
 But it so happens that here a whole view of the
 
 2o8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 greatest mind which the human race has yet evolved hangs 
 essentially upon dates : it so happens that the entire 
 process of Shakspere's growth as man and artist comes 
 blazing out upon us in clear and — to me, I confess — 
 startling sequence the instant we admit the chronology of 
 his plays to be presently given. How this comes about — 
 how it befalls that our study of Metrical Tests, which we 
 begin as a mere antiquarian research into dates, straight- 
 way transforms itself into a probe and touchstone of 
 Shakspere's whole development as a moral and artistic 
 being — will come out clearly from a very brief considera- 
 tion of the diagram which is here shown. 
 
 BRIGHT PERIOD 
 
 DARK PERIOD 
 
 HEAVENLY PERIOD 
 
 Carelessness 
 
 
 Bitterness 
 
 Forgiveness 
 
 1590-1601 
 
 
 1601-1608 
 
 1608-1613 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost 
 
 (1590) 
 
 All's Well (?i6oi-2) 
 
 Pericles (1608) 
 
 Comedy of Errors 
 
 (1591) 
 
 Julius CKsar (1601) 
 
 Cymbeline (1609) 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 (?i59i) 
 
 Hamlet (1602) 
 
 Tempest (1610) 
 
 ( 
 
 ? I 596-7) 
 
 Measure for M. (1603) 
 
 Winter's T. (1610-I1) 
 
 2 and 3 Henry VI 
 
 (1591-2) 
 
 Troilus and C. (?l6o3) 
 
 Henry VIII (1612-13) 
 
 Two Gentlemen of V. 
 
 (1592-3) 
 
 (Rev. ?i6o7) 
 
 
 Richard III 
 
 (1593) 
 
 Othello (1604) 
 
 
 Midsummer N. D. 
 
 (1593-4) 
 
 Lear (1605) 
 
 
 Richard II 
 
 (1594) 
 
 Macbeth (1606) 
 
 
 King John 
 
 (1595) 
 
 Antony and C. (1607) 
 
 
 Merchant of Venice 
 
 (1596) 
 
 TimonofA. (1607-8) 
 
 
 I and 2 Henry IV 
 
 (1597-8) 
 
 Coriolanus (1608) 
 
 
 Taming of the Shrew 
 
 (?i597) 
 
 
 
 Merry Wives of W. 
 
 (?i598) 
 
 
 
 Much Ado About N. 
 
 (1598) 
 
 
 
 Henry V 
 
 (1599) 
 
 
 
 As You Like It 
 
 (1599) 
 
 
 
 Twelfth Night 
 
 ( 1 600-1) 
 
 
 
 Omitting Titus Andronicus, i Henry VI, and T~vo Noble Kinsmen, in which 
 Shakspere's part is either unfledged or doubtful. 
 
 Reserving till a later lecture the actual proof of these 
 dates, and merely requesting you for the present to accept
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 209 
 
 this chronological scheme as a working hypothesis if you 
 should wish to be cautious, I ask you now only to con- 
 sider the importance which our Metrical Tests would as- 
 sume if they should be found upon due examination to 
 confirm, by cumulative evidence upon evidence, the ar- 
 rangement here given. As you run your eye along this 
 list, and slowly recall and compare the main motives of 
 plot after plot, what surprising revelations of Shakspere's 
 inward development rise up out of the mere sequence 
 thus displayed, and take form before the mind! One 
 almost feels like shrinking back — as if one had suddenly 
 opened the door of Shakspere's room while he was saying 
 his prayers. 
 
 And, to put this development clearly before you, 
 allow me to recall in a flying way the main points sug- 
 gested by this chronological scheme and to be confirmed 
 or not by the Metrical Tests. 
 
 Shakspere began writing about the year 1588, when he 
 was twenty-four years of age, and ceased about 161 2 or 
 1 6 13, when he was nearly fifty. This term of his author- 
 ship naturally, even necessarily, divides itself into three 
 periods, each of which includes, I think, a very strikingly 
 marked phase of growth. The first period begins about 
 1590 and ends about 1601 ; the second begins about 
 1602 and ends in 1608 ; the third begins in 1608 and 
 ends in 16 13. The common characteristics among the 
 plays in each of these groups point in the most unequivo- 
 cal manner to the workings of Shakspere's spirit. 
 
 Here, in the first — what I have called the Bright or 
 Carelessness — period, you perceive the vivacious ima- 
 gination of the youth — who has but lately flown out of 
 the quiet Warwickshire fields up into the gay life of Lon- 
 don — rioting about the contemporary world and down 
 through the ages like a young swallow in the early morn-
 
 2IO SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 ing, now flitting his wing in the water, — and Hke as not 
 muddy water, — now saihng over the meadow-grass, now 
 sweeping through the upper heights of heaven. Notice 
 first that all the comedies belong to this period. Love s 
 Labour s Losiy Two Gentlemen of Verona^Midsummer Night's 
 Dream J Merchant of -Venice^ As Tou Like It, 'Twelfth 
 Night — this debonair and immortal set of plays comes 
 in the first ten years of Shakspere's life as a writer in 
 London. 
 
 There is but one strict tragedy, — Romeo and Juliet, — 
 and here the real reason of being is not the tragic death of 
 the lovers, but their young love, which is depicted with the 
 unspeakable fire and freshness of a young imagination. 
 Romeo and Juliet is simply a bridegroom's passionate song, 
 set ofi^with a funeral-hymn for a foil. 
 
 Besides these you notice the purely historical plays. 
 Now these do not seize upon some one awful passion or 
 crime, like Othello or Lear or Macbeth or Hamlet, but they 
 are written to comply with the popular and patriotic de- 
 mand for this kind of play, — written more from without 
 than from within, — and they deal with their subjects in what 
 seems to me a distinctly lighter and less personal manner 
 than later plays — the manner of a young man who has 
 not yet been brought into any actual conflict or dreadful 
 grind with the forces of nature and of accident and of pas- 
 sion and of the twist of life, in his own personal relations 
 with his fellow-men. In the 2 and j Henry VI, and in 
 Richard III 'WQ. behold the influence of Marlowe's powerful 
 historical plays on our poet ; he is writing more from Mar- 
 lowe than from Shakspere. In Richard II and King John 
 we find him taking two weak and unlovely kings for title 
 heroes, and doing much work as a playwright. In / and 2 
 Henry IV he has fallen in love with old Jack FalstafF; and
 
 :? 
 
 Mr.WTLLIAM 
 
 BHTAKESPEARES 
 
 COMEDIES, 
 HISTORIES, & 
 TRAGEDIES. 
 
 Puhlillied accoiilia^ to the True Originall Copies. 
 
 i'l mted by Ifaac laggard, and Ed. Blount, i 6i \ 
 
 ff^su-^ac^ 
 
 Title-page of First Folio
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 211 
 
 these plays, although ranging among the historical series 
 by virtue of their titles, really should go among the come- 
 dies in right of those of their dramatis personam, who have 
 retained most hold upon the world's regard. In Henry V 
 we find some show of a serious thought. The wild young 
 Prince Hal, who even in his revels has always impressed 
 us as being among them, not of them, — a sort of amateur 
 roisterer, not a professional light-o'-wit like FalstafF and 
 his crew, — has discovered, on the death of his father, that 
 he too has actual personal relations with life : the meaning 
 of duty, of responsibility, of the fact of one's fellow-men, 
 dawns upon him ; and he makes a magnificent king and 
 manful warrior whom Shakspere paints in glory. Whether 
 Prince Hal's reformation means that Shakspere is now 
 awaking, amid that gay life which flutters about in the 
 comedies of this period, to some graver and deeper neces- 
 sities of life, is a question. Something is thrusting him into 
 larger fields of thought. And this much is clear : that it 
 must be something very terrible, very profoundly shaking 
 his heart. For he has had griefs before now which do not 
 seem to have so stirred him. His old father, John Shak- 
 spere, from the state of a successful glove-maker and pros- 
 perous burgess of Stratford, has some time ago fallen into 
 money troubles ; insomuch that when a commission is 
 appointed in 1592 to ascertain whether the Warwickshire 
 people approve themselves good followers of the estab- 
 lished religion by going to church at least once a month, 
 according to the orthodox regulation, it is found that John 
 Shakspere does not attend, and the reason assigned in the 
 report of the commission is that he is afraid of being 
 arrested for debt. Moreover, in addition to such evi- 
 dences that things do not go on well down in Stratford, 
 in 1596 William Shakspere's only son, Hamnet, dies.
 
 212 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 But yet, as we see by looking at the dates of these works, 
 the hilarious spirit of the man continues to turn out 
 comedy after comedy, and we find Much Ado About Nothings 
 As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and the like, all writ- 
 ten after his son Hamnet's death. So, I say, if the mis- 
 fortunes of his father and the death of his son do not 
 sober his spirit, it must needs be that some prodigious 
 wrench of his soul comes from some hand or other about 
 this time. 
 
 At any rate, after this brimming and crystal comedy of 
 Twelfth Night in 1601, here come suddenly two bloody 
 tragedies — Julius desar and Hamlet — in the same and 
 following years. Brutus and Hamlet, these are the two 
 heartbreaking characters which Shakspere draws at this 
 time : both men of strength and parts, yet not of quite 
 strength and parts enough for the need of the moment ; 
 both of them born into a time out of joint, and both — 
 instead of exultantly accepting the responsibility which is 
 thrown upon them of reforming evil — shirking the duty 
 and crying, O cursed spite, 'That ever I was born to set it 
 right! Following upon these, you see, in the next year 
 comes Measure for Measure, that wretched slough of a 
 play. Never did the world hear a more dismal business 
 than this plot — all murky with shame and weakness and 
 brutality and low suffering and death and dark questions, 
 so that the strong and saintly Isabella scarcely relieves its 
 oppressive atmosphere. Then we have the inconceivable 
 treachery of the false-hearted Cressid ; and here it is worst 
 of all to find our sweet Shakspere preaching worldly wis- 
 dom and Poor Richard maxims. Closely following these 
 come the enormous single-passion tragedies : Othello 
 murders his wife for a causeless jealousy; Lear and his 
 daughters and best friends all die in a heap, all the deaths 
 being brought on by one unfortunate blunder of a silly old
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 213 
 
 man ; Macbeth murders sleep and loyalty and his good 
 King, all at a stroke, for ambition ; Antony betrays wife 
 and country for lust ; Coriolanus turns outlaw for re- 
 venge ; and Timon twists the neck of the world for 
 misanthropy. These plays are like a mortal outcry of 
 grief. The poor master seems to be wondering, in all 
 this melodious amazement, if the world is really going to 
 be too hard for him, as it was for Hamlet and Brutus 
 and Timon. I seem to find the taste of this bitter period 
 in many of the sonnets, notably in several from Sonnet 
 LXVI to Sonnet CXII. 
 
 Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, 
 
 wails the first of these piteous sonnets. 
 
 No longer mourn for me when I am dead 
 Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell 
 Give warning to the world that I am fled 
 From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell, 
 
 begins the seventy-first. 
 
 O, lest the world should task you to recite 
 What merit lived in me, that you should love 
 After my death, — dear love, forget me quite. 
 For you in me can nothing worthy prove 
 Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, 
 
 says the seventy-second. 
 
 Alas, 'tis true [says the one hundred and tenth] 1 have 
 
 gone here and there. 
 And made myself a motley to the view, 
 Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, 
 Made old offences of affections new ;
 
 214 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Most true it is that I have look'd on truth 
 Askance and strangely. 
 
 Again, in the next sonnet, he continues this strain : 
 
 O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide. 
 The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand : 
 Pity me then and wish I were renew'd. 
 
 While in Sonnet XC we have this lamentable outbreak : 
 
 Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now; 
 
 Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross. 
 
 Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow. 
 
 And do not drop in for an after-loss : 
 
 Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scap'd this sorrow. 
 
 Come in the rearward of a conquered woe ; 
 
 Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 
 
 To linger out a purpos'd overthrow. 
 
 If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, 
 
 When other petty griefs have done their spite, 
 
 But in the onset come : so shall I taste 
 
 At first the very worst of fortune's might ; 
 
 And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, 
 Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so. 
 
 But, as suddenly as he entered it, our strong man emerges 
 from this Dark Period into one which, without wishing to 
 be fanciful, I have found no other name for than the 
 Heavenly Period. He is, as his sonnet says, renewed. 
 Instead of the bleak storms of the Hamlet and Macbeth 
 time, now we have the great and beautiful calm of a spirit
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 215 
 
 which, after having seen and shared in all the crime and 
 all the grief of the world, has at length attained God out 
 of knowledge and good out of infinite pain. If you con- 
 template this group of plays which I have here placed in 
 the last period, you find them all hinging upon the sweet 
 that follows the bitter : Pericles^ Cymbeline, Tempest, Win- 
 ter s "Tale, Henry VIII, all these, in great and noble mu- 
 sic, breathe of new love after estrangement, of the recovery 
 of long-lost children, of the kissing of wives thought dead, 
 of reconciliation, of new births of old happiness — most of 
 all, of sweeping magnanimity, of heavenly forgiveness. If 
 we listen to that epilogue of 'The Tempest, we cannot help 
 believing that it is the old poet Shakspere himself who 
 is writing his last play, or believes he is, and who, in the 
 guise of Prospero, is laying down the mantle of his magic 
 and preparing to depart from the lonesome island of this 
 world into the Strange Country. Now, he says in this 
 epilogue which is spoken by Prospero, Now my charms 
 are all overthrown. And what strength I have s mine own. 
 Which is most faint ; and you cannot forget the beautiful 
 and passionate fervour of his closing appeal : 
 
 As you from crimes would pardoned be, 
 Let your indulgence set me free. 
 
 And finally we seem to discover the recollection of this 
 great struggle, and of his final triumphant emergence from 
 it into the calm of assured victory, in many of his sonnets. 
 It seems most probable that after Shakspere's eventful 
 London career he went back to Stratford about 161 2, or a 
 little before, and quietly took up the life of a simple citi- 
 zen with wife, children, grandchild, and friends, and so 
 lived there until his death. The calm content which could 
 enable him to do this doubtless came into his spirit con-
 
 2i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 temporaneously with all these plays of sweetness and for- 
 giveness. 
 
 1 take great pleasure in contemplating what seems to 
 be the only genuine relic of Shakspere preserved at Strat- 
 ford, and which brings vividly to our eyes this period of 
 peaceful reunion with his wife and of tranquil life in the 
 tranquil Warwick country. The relic I speak of is a 
 round piece of glass some four or five inches in diameter 
 on which are painted the letters W and A — for William 
 and Anne — under the common letter S, for Shakspere^ 
 with the date 1615, as if it were a sort of memorial of the 
 enclosure of the life of this once parted William and Anne 
 in a final circle of harmony, reconciliation, and pardon. 
 
 Here, then, we have the ground-plan of Shakspere's 
 career, and our research is now to convince us not only 
 that this is true but that this advance in moral scope is 
 accompanied by — or, better, is only another phase of — a 
 corresponding advance in Shakspere's technic as a verse- 
 artist. 
 
 The Metrical Tests which I am to bring before you are 
 five in number : the Rime Test, the Run-on and End- 
 stopped Line Test, the Weak-ending Test, the Double- 
 ending Test, and the Rhythmic Accent Test. The first 
 of these in the historic order was the rime test, and I may 
 therefore properly begin with some account of that. 
 
 It is just about a hundred years ago since Malone — 
 whose name you all recognise as that of one of the most 
 acute editors of Shakspere — remarked, in the course of 
 certain comments on the play of Love s Labour s Lost^ that 
 rimes were much more frequent in those of Shakspere's 
 plays which seemed to belong to the early portion of his 
 authorial career than in those of the later portion ; and he 
 concluded his remark by observing : " Whenever, of two 
 early pieces, it is doubtful which preceded the other, I
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 217 
 
 am disposed to believe (other proofs being wanting) 
 that play in which the greater number of rhymes is 
 found, to have been first composed." But this obser- 
 vation of Malone's remained in the condition which I 
 have heretofore described as inexact criticism for a long 
 time. In the year 1874 a paper by the Rev. F. G. Fleay 
 was read before the New Shakspere Society, in which that 
 scholar took up Malone's idea and carried what he called 
 Malone's " qualitative analysis " to the far more accurate 
 plane of quantitative analysis. In other words, Mr. Fleay 
 went patiently to work and counted the actual number of 
 rimes in Shakspere's plays : and having thus arrived at a 
 basis for exact conclusions, he set down the plays in the 
 order of the relative frequency of their rimes, and boldly 
 claimed that this tabulation must represent the actual order 
 in which those plays were written by Shakspere, upon the 
 theory that Shakspere gradually more and more disused 
 the effect of rime as he grew older. In Mr. Fleay 's 
 Table (pages 218, 219), Love's Labour s Lost shows 1,082 
 rimes out of a total of 2,789 lines, and so on. 
 
 Of course it was to be expected that in announcing 
 a theory so novel as to propose reducing a whole artistic 
 career to numbers and showing it up in terms of 2, 4, and 
 6, the theorist went too far. Without now going into the 
 details of the matter, we may fairly consider ourselves 
 entitled to say, as summing up the present stage of the 
 rime test, that upon applying all the numerous other evi- 
 dences and tests which scholarship has accumulated there 
 seems to be no doubt that a steady decrease in the number 
 of rimes is shown, as between Shakspere's early plays and 
 his later 'ones, so that there are, for instance, in general, 
 many less rimes in the plays of the second period than in 
 those of the first, and many less in those of the third period 
 than in those of the second.
 
 2i8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 METRICAL TABLE OF SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. 
 
 1 
 
 O "i 
 
 o 
 
 X 
 
 V. 
 
 < 
 
 u 
 - < 
 
 
 O 
 
 8 
 
 J o 
 o z 
 
 U 
 h 
 < 
 Z 
 K 
 III 
 
 H 
 &1 
 Z 
 
 z 
 
 o 
 
 c/) 
 
 a. 
 
 12) 
 
 O 
 u 
 o 
 
 Q 
 
 u 
 < 
 
 bl 
 
 to 
 u 
 
 K 
 
 < 
 
 u 
 
 < 
 
 s 
 
 III 
 
 3 
 
 •< 
 
 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 CO 
 
 ■* 
 
 Love's L. Lost. 
 Midsum. N. D. 
 Com. of Errors. 
 Rom. and Jul. 
 Richard II. 
 
 Richard III. 
 King John. 
 
 1 Henry IV. 
 
 2 Henry IV. 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 T. Gent, of V. 
 Mer. of Ven. 
 Twelf. Night. 
 As you Like it. 
 Merry Wives. 
 Much Ado, &c. 
 
 All's Well. 
 Meas. for Me. 
 
 Troylus and C. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 Cymbeline. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Othello. 
 
 King Lear. 
 
 Julius Caesar. 
 Coriolanus. 
 Antony and C. 
 Tempest. 
 Winter's Tale. 
 
 I. 
 
 PLAYS OF FIRST 
 
 (RIMING) 
 
 PERIOD. 
 
 
 
 
 2789 
 
 1086 
 
 579 
 
 1028 
 
 54 
 
 32 
 
 7 
 
 236 
 
 71 
 
 194 
 
 4 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 — 
 
 2251 
 
 441 
 
 878 
 
 731 
 
 138 
 
 63 
 
 29 
 
 i.5» 
 
 
 
 
 .S 
 
 3 
 
 — 
 
 1770 
 
 240 
 
 1150 
 
 380 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 137 
 
 04 
 
 — 
 
 109 
 
 ^ 
 
 8 
 
 q 
 
 — 
 
 3002 
 
 405 
 
 2111 
 
 486 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 118 
 
 62 
 
 28 
 
 
 10 
 
 20 
 
 lb 
 
 ',''■ 
 
 2644 
 
 — 
 
 2107 
 
 537 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 148 
 
 12 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 n 
 
 17 
 
 26 
 
 22 
 
 I] 
 
 . HISTORIES 
 
 OF 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 
 
 
 
 3599 
 
 55? 
 
 3374 
 
 170 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 570 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 20 
 
 39 
 
 13 
 
 23 
 
 2553 
 
 — 
 
 2403 
 
 150 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 54 12 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 I 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 3170 
 
 1464 
 
 1622 
 
 84 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 60 4 
 
 - - 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 16 
 
 16 
 
 3437 
 
 i860 
 
 T417 
 
 74 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 203 Pistol 64 1.] 
 
 3 
 
 13 
 
 7 
 
 — 
 
 3320 
 
 1531 
 
 1678 
 
 lOI 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 Pist. 
 ^9' .571.]'^ 
 
 — 
 
 2 
 
 13 
 
 10 
 
 4 
 
 III. COMEDIES 
 
 OF 
 
 SECOND PERIOD 
 
 
 
 
 
 2060 
 
 409 
 
 1510 
 
 116 
 
 — 
 
 15 
 
 203 
 
 16 
 
 — 
 
 18 
 
 8 
 
 IS 
 
 32 
 
 8 
 
 2705 
 
 673 
 
 1896 
 
 93 
 
 34 
 
 9 
 
 297 
 
 4 
 
 — 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 16 
 
 22 
 
 2 
 
 2684 
 
 1741 
 
 7t>3 
 
 120 
 
 — 
 
 60 
 
 152 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 23 
 
 5 
 
 2904 
 
 1681 
 
 925 
 
 71 
 
 130 
 
 97 
 
 211 
 
 10 
 
 — 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 33 
 
 I 
 
 3018 
 
 2703 
 
 227 
 
 69 
 
 
 19 
 
 32 
 
 [Pistol 39 1.] 
 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 — 
 
 2823 
 
 2106 
 
 643 
 
 40 
 
 18 
 
 16 
 
 129 
 
 22 
 
 — 
 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 
 4 
 
 IV. 
 
 2981 I 1453 I 1234 
 2809 I 1134 I 1574 
 
 3423 
 
 1186 
 
 2025 
 
 196 
 
 — 
 
 16 
 
 441 
 
 '993 
 
 158 
 
 1588 
 
 118 
 
 129 
 
 — 
 
 3901 
 
 3448 
 
 638 
 
 2585 
 
 107 
 
 — 
 
 32 
 
 726 
 
 3924 
 
 1208 
 
 2490 
 
 81 
 
 — 
 
 60 
 
 S08 
 
 3324 
 
 541 
 
 2672 
 
 86 
 
 — 
 
 25 
 
 646 
 
 3298 
 
 903 
 
 2238 
 
 74 
 
 — 
 
 «3 
 
 567 
 
 726 [84!. in vision] 
 " [861. in play] 
 
 VI. PLAYS OF FOURTH PERIOD. 
 
 10 
 
 46 
 
 62 
 
 13 
 
 8 
 
 28 
 
 43 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 15 
 
 31 
 
 18 
 
 20 
 
 53 
 
 55 
 
 II 
 
 19 
 
 66 
 
 71 
 
 13 
 
 18 
 
 34 
 
 lib 
 
 22 
 
 2440 
 
 165 
 
 2241 
 
 34 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 369 — — 
 
 — 
 
 14 
 
 31 
 
 55 
 
 6 
 
 3392 
 
 829 
 
 2521 
 
 42 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 708 — — 
 
 — 
 
 3 
 
 33 
 
 76 
 
 19 
 
 3964 
 
 255 
 
 2761 
 
 42 
 
 — 
 
 6 
 
 613 - - 
 
 — 
 
 14 
 
 38 
 
 84 
 
 31 
 
 2068 
 
 458 
 
 1458 
 
 2 
 
 — 
 
 96 
 
 4761 54l.inmasq.] 
 
 2 
 
 16 
 
 47 
 
 5 
 
 2758 
 
 844 
 
 1825 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 57 
 
 639I32I. inch 
 
 or.] 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 19 
 
 13 
 
 6 
 33? 
 
 16 
 2 
 
 13 
 6 
 
 23 
 
 5 
 14 
 10 
 
 5 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 COMEDIES OF THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 280 I 2 I 12 I 223! 8 I 14 I — I 7 I 31 I 31 I 5 I 14 
 73 I 22 I 6 I 338) — I — I — I 10 I 29 1 66 I 5 I 47 
 
 V. TRAGEDIES OF THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 43 
 18 
 
 42 
 47 
 78 
 
 50 
 
 16 
 42 
 61 
 II 
 16 
 
 VII. PLAYS IN V^^HICH SHAKSPERE WAS NOT SOLE AUTHOR. 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 Two Noble K. 
 Pericles. 
 Timon of A. 
 
 2754 
 
 67? 
 
 2613 
 
 16 
 
 — 
 
 12 
 
 "95 
 
 2734 
 2386 
 
 2358 
 
 179 
 
 418 
 
 59° 
 
 2468 
 1436 
 1560 
 
 54 
 225 
 184 
 
 18 
 
 33 
 
 1079 
 
 I20 
 257 
 
 [46I. inProl. 
 
 2 
 
 iq 
 
 18 
 
 3 
 
 32 
 
 & Epilogue . 
 
 9 
 
 19 
 
 46 
 
 17 
 
 S 
 
 [222l.Gower . 
 
 '7 
 
 49 
 
 59 
 
 2b 
 
 18 
 
 - 1 -1- 
 
 15 
 
 28 
 
 54 
 
 30 
 
 37 
 
 VIII. FIRST SKETCHES IN EARLY QUARTOS. 
 
 Rom. and Jul. 
 Hamlet. 
 Henry V. 
 Merry Wives. 
 
 T. of Shrew. 
 Titus Andron. 
 
 1 Henry VI. 
 
 2 Henry VI. 
 
 3 Henry VI. 
 Contention. 
 True Tragedy. 
 
 2066 
 2068 
 1672 
 
 1395 
 
 261 
 
 509 
 
 898 
 
 1207 
 
 1451 
 1462 
 
 774 
 148 
 
 354 
 54 
 30 
 40 
 
 92! 28 I — I — 
 
 43 — 209 [36 1. in play] 
 
 38 [fairies] 19' — 
 
 7 
 
 26 
 
 30 
 
 21 
 
 92 
 
 13 
 
 45 
 
 7b 
 
 37 
 
 30 
 
 I 
 
 25 
 
 35 
 
 3' 
 
 15 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 DOUBTFUL 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2671 
 
 S16 
 
 I97I 
 
 169 
 
 15 
 
 — 
 
 260! — 
 
 — 
 
 49 
 
 4 
 
 18 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 5 
 
 2525 
 
 43 
 
 2338 
 
 144 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 154 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 4 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 9 
 
 12 
 
 2693 
 
 _ 
 
 2379 
 
 314 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 140 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 5 
 
 S 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 12 
 
 3032 
 
 448 
 
 2562 
 
 122 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 255! — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 8 
 
 25 
 
 15 
 
 21 
 
 12 
 
 2904 
 
 — 
 
 2749 
 
 155 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 346 - 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 13 
 
 II 
 
 14 
 
 II 
 
 7 
 
 1952 
 
 381 
 
 I57I 
 
 44 
 
 — 
 
 
 54 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 
 14 
 
 16 
 
 32 
 
 44 
 
 2101 
 
 ■"" 
 
 2035 
 
 66 
 
 ~*" 
 
 
 148 — 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 14 
 
 21 
 
 29 
 
 38 
 
 34 
 
 
 
 FR 
 
 OM D 
 
 R. F 
 
 LEA 
 
 y's pap 
 
 ER I 
 
 N T 
 
 HE J 
 
 'RO( 
 
 :eed 
 
 ING 
 
 S
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 
 
 219 
 
 TABLE OF RATIOS OF RIME-LINES 
 
 IN RIME-SCENES TO BLANK-VERSE LINES IN EACH PLAY. 
 
 (first approximation.) 
 comedies. histories and tragedies. 
 
 First period. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost .6 
 
 Mid. Night's Dream 
 Comedy of Errors 
 
 1st Pt of 2 Gent, of Ver. 
 1st Plot of Twelfth Night 
 
 Merchant of Venice 
 Much Ado, &c. 
 Merry Wives of Windsor 
 As You Like It 
 
 CoTipln. of 1 2th Night. Prose. 
 Com. of Tam. of the Shrew * 
 
 All's Well, &c. (rewrit. ) 
 Measure for Measure 
 
 I 
 
 Richard II. 
 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 & Cress. 
 
 4-3 
 
 7 
 
 1st Plot of Troy. 
 
 8.4 
 
 7-5 
 
 2nd do. do. 
 
 
 n-6 
 
 Second period. 
 
 
 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 
 * 
 
 16 
 
 John 
 
 
 16 
 
 21 
 
 i I Henry IV. 
 
 
 19 
 
 22 
 
 \ 2 Henry IV. 
 
 
 19 
 
 19 
 
 ( Henry V. 
 
 
 19 
 
 Third period. 
 
 22 
 
 Julius Cassar 
 
 
 * 
 
 22 
 
 ' Hamlet 
 
 about •^o 
 
 
 Othello 
 
 )) 
 
 30 
 
 1 
 
 Lear 
 
 >> 
 
 30 
 
 
 Macbeth .? 
 
 >> 
 
 * 
 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 >> 
 
 30 
 
 i Part of Pericles 
 
 I Part of Timon of A. 
 
 3* 
 
 
 23 
 
 Fourth period. 
 
 
 
 1 Compln. of Troyl. and Cres. 
 
 
 54-5 
 
 1 Coriolanus 
 
 
 60 
 
 Julius Caesar ? 
 
 
 * 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra 
 
 
 66 
 
 Fifth period. 
 
 
 
 729 ( Part of Two N. Kinsmen 
 
 
 281 
 
 infinity ' 
 
 Part of Henry VIII. 
 
 
 infinity 
 
 ( Tempest 
 
 I Winter's Tale 
 
 The above table is corrected up to the date of my present investigations (May 17, 1874) 
 from one published in The Academy by me (March 28, 1874). 
 
 My reasons for all alterations will be given in my special paper on each play. They are 
 based chiefly on more scientific application of the rime-test, aided by the tueak-ending test, 
 the middle-syllable test, and above all by the casura-test, which is next in importance to the 
 rime-test: and has helped me much in making a different division of the plays in some 
 instances. Cymbeline, however, was misplaced through another cause, a numerical blunder ; 
 which I have now corrected. As these investigations extend, this table will require further 
 correction. 
 
 Much Ado and Merry Wi-ves are apparently out of order. There is so much prose in 
 them that two rimes would be a sufficient difference to justify their present position: this 
 number is too small to overbalance other considerations which will be given in due time. 
 
 F. G. Fleay. 
 
 OF THE NEW SHAKSPERE SOCIETY FOR I 874.
 
 220 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 But while this general line of advance is clear, when 
 the theory is pressed to the extent of holding that we can 
 minutely determine priority as between two plays which 
 we know to have been written close together but whose 
 exact dates we do not know, and that we can confidently 
 assume the play containing the greater percentage of rimes 
 to have been written earlier — though it may be only a few 
 months earlier — than the play with the smaller percen- 
 tage, then surely we must pause, we must indeed say 
 No, unless all the other considerations and tests support 
 the conclusion : in which event the rime test is certainly 
 admirable as cumulative evidence. For example, proceed- 
 ing upon the relative number of rimes alone, Mr. Fleay 
 places the Midsummer Night's Dream here a long time 
 before The 'Two Gentlemen of Verona. But loving and 
 acute criticism finds many indications that this is not the 
 proper order as between those two plays, and it would 
 certainly seem that a sober view would never allow the 
 rime test alone to outweigh all those indications, when we 
 consider (i) that the growing disuse of rimes, unquestion- 
 able as between large periods, cannot, from the very nature 
 of the mind, be taken to have gone on, like the growth of 
 a Madeira vine, at the uniform ratio of so many inches a 
 day, and (2) that there would be some plays whose fan- 
 ciful nature might naturally call for treatment in rime, 
 such as the Midsummer Night's Dream, while a more 
 serious play like The Two Gentlemen of Verona — which I 
 have always thought was a very earnest sort of comedy — 
 might as appropriately contain less of rime. When we 
 investigate the history of English rime, we find that rime 
 has been unquestionably the favourite artistic form in 
 which the Englishman has habitually embodied his prayers, 
 his thoughts of death, his aspirations, all his deepest feel- 
 ings, ever since a long time before Chaucer. Suddenly in
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 221 
 
 the sixteenth century we hear Surrey chanting his transla- 
 tion of Virgil in the old Chaucer rhythm but without the 
 Chaucer rime; and then, fifty years afterwards, we come 
 across a noisy debate about rime which went on just as 
 Shakspere was beginning to be a craftsman in verse, 
 Harvey and Nash and Greene and Puttenham and Webbe 
 and Gascoigne and even Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney all 
 appearing on one side or other. Now the light of these 
 facts streams all along the path of Shakspere's advance as a 
 craftsman, and certainly reveals that general line of develop- 
 ment as one which by the most natural course in the 
 world proceeded, not, as Mr. Fleay's very pardonable 
 eagerness would have it, by a uniform rate of disuse of 
 rime, but to the much higher plane of artistic technic 
 where rime came to be regarded as a perfectly appropriate 
 vehicle for some kinds of matters and as a less appropriate 
 one for other kinds of matters, making the whole question 
 of the use or non-use of rime a question of artistic propri- 
 ety. That Shakspere so regarded it, and that every word- 
 artist who looks at matters from a lofty point of view must 
 so regard it, I have no doubt. 
 
 With these precautions, then, we may safely use the 
 rime test. The practical application of it will presently 
 be illustrated v/hen we come to make the special contrast 
 between the Midsummer Nighfs Dream and T'he 'Tempest^ 
 in summing up all the doctrines developed in these 
 lectures. 
 
 Meantime, let us now go on to a view of a wholly dif- 
 ferent metrical test from the rime test, namely, the 
 remarkable change in Shakspere's habit of versification 
 shown by the great difference in the relative numbers of 
 what are called run-on lines and end-stopped lines in his 
 later plays as compared with his earlier ones. 
 
 An end-stopped line in verse is a line in which a
 
 222 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 comma or other punctuation-mark, or a break in the sense, 
 compels the voice to pause at the end of the line in read- 
 ing, and thus to mark off that hne sharply for the ear as a 
 group of five bars. 
 
 For example, take the following stately speech of 
 Theseus in that heavenly opening of the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream: 
 
 Go, Philostrate, 
 Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments ; 
 Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth : 
 Turn melancholy forth to funerals ; 
 The pale companion is not for our pomp. 
 
 (^Exit Philostrate.) 
 
 And Theseus turns to Hippolyta. 
 
 Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword, 
 And won thy love, doing thee injuries ; 
 But I will wed thee in another key, 
 With pomp, with triumph and with revelling. 
 
 Now here, you observe, each line ends with a pause of the 
 sense and of the voice. Each line is here, therefore, an 
 end-stopped line. On the other hand, take an example 
 of the run-on line from "The 'Tempest. Prospero, in 
 Scene II of Act I, is describing to Miranda the treachery 
 of his brother, who had ousted him from his kingdom : 
 
 To have no screen between this part he played 
 
 And him he played it for, he needs will be 
 
 Absolute Milan. Me, poor man, my library 
 
 Was dukedom large enough : of temporal royalties 
 
 He thinks me now incapable; confederates 
 
 (So dry he was for sway) wi' the King of Naples, etc.
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 223 
 
 Here, you observe, no line ends with a comma, and at the 
 end of none is there any occasion for a reader's voice to 
 pause. On the contrary, each mark of punctuation, each 
 pause of the reader's voice, occurs somewhere in the body 
 of the line. Now, before advancing farther, I ask you to 
 notice the precise effect of using these two very different 
 kinds of lines — the end-stopped and the run-on. The 
 end-stopped, you must observe immediately, if used con- 
 tinually gives a stiff character to the verse. In the speech 
 of Theseus I just quoted it happens to be well enough, 
 for a certain large formality and regulated pomp seem 
 suited to his kingly state ; but you have no difficulty in 
 perceiving that the general effect of a continuous succes- 
 sion of such lines is to give a stilted, wooden, and monot- 
 onous character to the movement of the verse. You are 
 all familiar with that exaggeration of this stiffness which 
 reaches its height when not only a comma but a rime 
 terminates every line, as in the verses of the Pope school. 
 A quotation from Pope, which is quite in point in more 
 ways than one, occurs to me, and illustrates this wooden- 
 ness perfectly. Pope, using the same line with blank 
 verse, you observe — the five-barred iambic — drones 
 through page after page like this, fondly thinking it a copy 
 of the " exact Racine." 
 
 He is speaking of the superiority of French verse to 
 English, and remarks apologetically : 
 
 Not but the tragic spirit was our own, 
 And full in Shakspere, fair in Otway, shone ; 
 But Otway failed to polish or refine, 
 And fluent Shakspere scarce effaced a line : 
 E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, 
 The last and greatest art — the art to blot. 
 
 The lines move two and two, by inexorable couples, like 
 charity-school children in procession, each pair holding
 
 224 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 hands ; and the exactness becomes presently intolerable to 
 the modern ear. 
 
 On the other hand, notice the freedom, the elasticity, 
 the possibilities of varied swing, which come as soon as 
 the pause is allowed to pass the end of the line and fall 
 wherever it likes in the body of the next line. Here the 
 poet has almost the scope of prose with the rhythmic 
 pulse and beat of verse ; it is, in fact, nothing more than 
 uprose mesuree. 
 
 Now if we examine Shakspere's plays with rcicrence 
 to his use of these two sorts of lines, — the end-stopped 
 and the run-on, — we find that in the early plays, that is, 
 in the plays which we know by indisputable external evi- 
 dence to be early, he used the end-stopped lines almost 
 exclusively, while in the late plays there is an increase in 
 the number of run-on lines so great and striking as to 
 offer a notable proof of advance in his technic. The 
 versification of the late plays is freer, more natural, and 
 larger in music than that of the early plays. This 
 metrical test agrees perfectly with the order of the plays 
 which is here placed before you based upon other evi- 
 dences. Now careful Shakspere students, proceeding upon 
 the hint of end-stopped and run-on lines, which was given 
 first, I think, by Bathurst, have counted the number of 
 end-stopped lines and the number of run-on lines in all 
 Shakspere's plays, and have calculated their percentages 
 relatively to the whole number of lines in each play ; and 
 it is invariably found that while he used the end-stopped 
 or stiff line almost exclusively in the earlier plays, he 
 varied it more and more with the run-on or free line in 
 the later plays. For example : in 'The Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona^ which is one of the earliest plays, it is found that 
 there are ten times as many end-stopped lines as run-on 
 lines ; while in The Tempest^ which, you remember, is one
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 225 
 
 of the very latest plays, there are only about three times 
 as many. Stating it in another way, Shakspere uses about 
 three times as many run-on lines in T'he Tempest as he 
 does in T^he 'Two Gentlemen of Verona. Between other 
 plays the proportion is still greater. Thus in the Comedy 
 of Errors^ which is one of the early plays, the propor- 
 tion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines is only as i to 
 10.7 ; while in Cymbeline, which belongs to the latest 
 group, the proportion is as i to 2.52 : that is, there are 
 more than four times as many of the free lines in Cymbe- 
 line as there are in The Comedy of Errors. But again : in 
 Love's Labour s Lost, which is among the first plays, the 
 proportion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines is only as 
 I to 18.14, while in The Winter s Tale it is as i to 2.12; 
 that is, in The Winter s Tale Shakspere has used about 
 nine times as many of the run-on or free-form lines as in 
 Love's Labour s Lost. Here we see Shakspere's growth 
 in technic so far brought to mathematical measurement 
 that when estimated by this particular metrical test the 
 plays arrange themselves substantially in that order which 
 their other internal characteristics would lead us to sus- 
 pect and which the external evidence forces us to admit. 
 It does not require that one should be practically familiar 
 with versecraft in order to recognise in the use of these 
 run-on lines a certain advance in breadth of view which 
 simply embodies in technic that spiritual advance in 
 majesty of thought, in elevation of tone, in magnanimity, 
 in largeness of moral scope, which you perceive as you 
 reflect upon the plots of the plays as here chronologically 
 arranged. When the line runs on, as in my quotation 
 from The Tempest, you see that it acquires a larger port 
 and a more sweeping carriage. It has quite the same 
 efi^ect as the long phrase in music compared with the short 
 phrase. Those of you who heard the Romance in the
 
 226 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Suite by Bach played at the Peabody concerts last winter 
 will remember the sense of heavenly breadth and infinite 
 expanse given by the length of the musical phrases which 
 Bach has there employed ; and if you compare the 
 grandeur of these phrases with the slighter-proportioned 
 phrases of an ordinary waltz or march, you will have a 
 good musical analogue of the difference between Shak- 
 spere's later verse, which is full of run-on lines, and his 
 earlier verse, which is full of end-stopped ones ; while at 
 the same time you will have a good musical analogue of 
 the difference between the moral width and nobleness of 
 such plays as T'he Winter s 'Tale and The Tempest and all this 
 forgiveness-and-reconciliation group, and the wild, deli- 
 cious riot and undebating abandon of the comedy group, 
 the Bright Period. 
 
 And now there is but a moment to carry these two 
 metrical tests we have been discussing over into the larger 
 plane and bring them into their proper relations in the 
 larger scheme of form in general. 
 
 For this purpose let us note precisely the very differ- 
 ent rhythmic functions of rime and of the end-stopped line 
 on the one hand, and of the run-on line on the other 
 hand. A rime at the end of two lines marks off those 
 two lines as a discrete rhythmic group in a very distinct 
 manner for the ear; and if the rime recur regularly 
 throughout the verse then a striking rhythmic pattern is 
 clearly defined throughout the whole series of sounds by 
 this recurrent tone-colour. Just so, the pause or rest at 
 the end of an end-stopped line has the rhythmic effect of 
 grouping all the bars of sound in that line into one larger 
 bar, as it were, and thus of presenting the ear with that 
 pattern — a five-pattern if it be a five-barred line like 
 these, a four-pattern if it be a four-barred line, and so 
 on. In other words, just so long as a succession of end-
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 227 
 
 stopped lines continues in blank verse, just so long does 
 the ear run a regular formal pattern of 5's through the 
 mass of sounds. 
 
 The rhythmic function, therefore, of the rime and of 
 the end-stopped line is a function of regularity, or form. 
 But precisely antagonistic is the rhythmic function of the 
 run-on line. Here, instead of marking off regular sets, of 
 five bars in a set, by the line group as defined through the 
 end-stop, we interrupt the pattern, we disturb the regu- 
 larity, we break the form, by placing the pause at different 
 and unexpected points so as to mark off groups of bars 
 larger or smaller than the line group. In short, it is easy 
 to see that the rhythmic function of the run-on line is to 
 disestablish the very rhythmus which it is the function of 
 the end-stopped line and the rime to establish. If now 
 we remember the opposition list headed by the words 
 Form — Chaos ^ as limiting terms of thought, we see 
 
 1 We find the poet or maker [ixolt]- its chaos, so the scientific imagina- 
 
 T?J^) presiding at the genesis of a tion rhythmises its chaos, we have 
 
 poem to be exactly the image of as parallel terms of opposition : 
 the Maker presiding at the genesis 
 
 of a world : both are rhythmising Generalisation Particular 
 
 chaos, both weaving patterns of 
 
 tune, of rhythm proper, and of ^^ • i i • 
 
 ^ r r ' Lromg on to assemble various terms 
 
 tone-colour upon the woof of r • • i • i i 
 
 , . , or opposition which have been 
 
 things, as dimly hinted in the old j • i j- 
 
 ^ used in these discussions, we may 
 
 saying, God made the world by , , 
 
 . ■' place here 
 measure, weight, and tune. Hence, 
 
 remembering the doctrine of oppo- 
 sition in rhythm or nature, let us Aristotle's Katholon Kathekaston 
 
 oppose the terms : ^^^ ^'^ The Individual 
 
 The others Myself 
 
 Form Chaos Altruism Egoism 
 
 Love Selfishness 
 Then, bearing in mind that just as 
 
 the poetic imagination rhythmises And through the good spirit op-
 
 228 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 immediately that the rime and the end-stopped line belong 
 on this Form side, because they tend to form, while 
 the run-on line belongs on this Chaos side, because it tends 
 toward chaos. 
 
 Now these opposite rhythmic functions lead us to a 
 large principle which rules over all the work of the verse- 
 craftsman as it rules over all art and all form. The ear 
 will neither tolerate rigid form, nor lawless chaos, in 
 sounds. It must have form. Form, in art, is like that 
 agreeable-disagreeable fellow of whom it was said : 
 
 He had so many quips and cranks about him, 
 There is no living with him nor without him. 
 
 posed to the evil spirit whose sin find reason to call limiting forms of 
 
 was selfishness we have thought. According as a given 
 
 philosophy approaches near to one 
 
 or the other, so it takes its charac- 
 
 And through this evil which was ter. Philosophies, as well as life, 
 
 said to come oi' selfishness or live in this little lane between 
 
 liberty we have these two mysterious contradictions. 
 
 These limiting forms bound our 
 Foreknowledge Freewill ^^^^^ ^j^^^^^j^^ ^^ ^-^^^^ ^-^^ ^^^^ 
 
 Design Accident 
 
 Belief Scepticism 
 
 like those two darknesses which 
 appear in the pathetic story of the 
 
 >> 
 
 Now, to do no more at present old Anglo-Saxon Thane. " Sir, 
 
 than to supply the means of profit- said he, describing the heathen life, 
 
 ably collating these partial terms, when the missionary had been un- 
 
 our life is a sort of lane which is folding to the assembly the wonders 
 
 bounded by these great contradicto- of revelation, " Sir, like as at night 
 
 ries. We live between them, as when one ray of light streams from 
 
 we live between those two other tne illuminated hall, and a sparrow 
 
 great contradictories, the mys- flits across from the darkness on one 
 
 tery of birth and the mystery of side to the darkness on the other, 
 
 death, which we shall presently find so is the life of man." 
 taking their appropriate place in this Now, such being the opposition 
 
 list of terms. We cannot deny of things, we shall find our Shak- 
 
 either : we must accept both. spere rhythmising his spheres and 
 
 Here, then, we have a few of what, atoms, making music from antago- 
 
 when we complete the list, we may nism, making good of ill.
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 229 
 
 In other words, the ear insists upon having form but no 
 monotony, and chaos but no lawlessness. The more form 
 you give me, the better, says the ear ; and at the same 
 time says. The more chaos you give me, breaking the uni- 
 formity of your forms, the better. 
 
 We shall find this principle of opposite functions 
 greatly enlarging itself in the next lecture. Meantime, 
 looking upon this enormous chasm between the limiting 
 forms of thought and of procedure which the artist must fill, 
 and wondering at the miracle of it, I am reminded of a 
 story which comes to us from old Beda. It is related that 
 upon a certain occasion a good father died, but afterwards 
 came again to life. During his short sleep of death he had 
 a vision of hell, which he remembered and told. He 
 thought that he beheld a profound and terrible gulf, which 
 was bounded on the one side by an infinite wall of flame, 
 on the other by an infinite wall of ice. Between these two 
 awful boundaries vibrated a prodigious swarm of souls in 
 search of rest, now flying to the wall of flame, driven by it 
 over towards the wall of ice, again repelled by that towards 
 the wall of flame. 
 
 When we think that the artist is placed over just such 
 a gulf, between two like walls, driven now towards the 
 flame of chaos which would consume all things to ashes, 
 now toward the ice of form which would chill all things to 
 deadness, we must needs wonder anew at the divine miracle 
 of genius which not only in verse, but in life, thus placed, 
 rescues itself from these awful oppositions, and converts 
 this hell of antagonism into the heaven of art. It is by 
 this process of converting a hell into a heaven that we 
 find Shakspere crying, in that wonderful Sonnet CXIX : 
 
 What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
 Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within, 
 Applying fears to hopes and hopes to fears, 
 Still losing when I saw myself to win !
 
 230 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 What wretched errors hath my heart committed, 
 Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never ! 
 How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, 
 In the distraction of this madding fever ! 
 O benefit of ill ! now I find true 
 That better is by evil still made better; 
 And ruin'd love, when it is built anew, 
 Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. 
 So I return rebuk'd to my content, 
 And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS — II 
 
 Weak-ending, Double-ending, and Rhythmic Accent Tests ; 
 Complete List of Limiting Forms 
 
 
 1 
 
 N the last lecture we had some account 
 of two of the five proposed Metrical 
 Tests, namely, the Rime Test and the 
 Run-on and End-stopped Line Test. 
 Let us now study the three remaining 
 ones : the Weak-ending, the Double- 
 ending, and the Rhythmic Accent 
 Tests. Aweak-ending line is onewhich 
 ends in some merely connective word, such as a conjunction 
 or a preposition or an auxiliary verb, instead of ending, as 
 is most natural and as a large majority of lines do end, in a 
 noun or a verb or some such important vocable. Words 
 like and^ for^ that^ if^ uporiy be, could^ or, and the like, are 
 specimens of weak endings. For example, take these 
 lines from The Tempest : 
 
 Some food we had, and some fresh water, that 
 A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, 
 . . . did give us, 
 
 where that is a weak ending ; 
 
 231
 
 232 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 I find my zenith doth depend upon 
 A most auspicious star, 
 
 where upon is a weak ending ; 
 
 A freckled whelp hag-born — not honour'd with 
 A human shape, 
 
 where wiih is a weak ending ; 
 
 Weigh'd between loathness and obedience, at 
 Which end o' the beam she'd bow, 
 
 where at is a weak ending. 
 
 These examples will be sufficient to make you recog- 
 nise the weak ending without difficulty : it is always some 
 merely relational word which would leave the thought 
 incomplete without the word in the next Hne. Weak end- 
 ings have been divided into two classes, one called the 
 Light Ending and one the Weak Ending proper, a Light 
 Ending being a word such as am^ be, could^ an auxiliary verb 
 in general, or a pronoun, /, they, etc. ; while a Weak End- 
 ing proper is any one of the still less important words, such 
 as and, if, or, but, and the like. For the purpose of the 
 present account, however, we can conveniently and accu- 
 rately include both these classes under the general term of 
 Weak Endings. 
 
 Now the weak-ending line as a metrical test differs 
 in an interesting particular from the others. You observe 
 that the weak-ending hne is indeed only a species of run- 
 on line ; in the lines last quoted, for example, 
 
 Weigh'd between loathness and obedience, at 
 Which end o' the beam she'd bow, 
 
 one sees immediately that the preposition at inevitably 
 runs the mind and the voice on to find its regimen end in
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 233 
 
 the next line. Since, then, the weak-ending line is only 
 one sort of run-on line, there would be no necessity for 
 erecting it into a special class if it were not for the pecu- 
 liarity that while Shakspere's use of the run-on line 
 increased (as we saw) gradually on the whole from his first 
 plays to his last ones, his use of the weak-ending line may 
 be said to begin abruptly, far on in his career, at Mac- 
 beth. To reduce this statement to numbers, according to 
 the table of Professor Ingram, with whose name we may 
 specially associate the weak-ending test, in the Comedy of 
 Errors^ which is an early play, there is not a single weak- 
 ending line ; in l^he 'Two Gentlemen of Verona not one ; in 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream there is one ; in As You Like 
 It there are two ; in Twelfth Night there are four : but 
 when we get to Macbeth we find suddenly twenty-three, 
 and then in Antony and Cleopatra the number jumps up to 
 ninety-nine, while in The Tempest^ with only about half the 
 whole number of verse-lines in Antony and Cleopatra^ we 
 have sixty-seven weak endings, equivalent to about one 
 hundred and thirty as compared with the other play. 
 
 This numerical exhibit — without going into more 
 details of it, which any of you who may desire can find in 
 Professor Ingram's Table of Weak Endings, published in 
 Part II of the New Shakspere Society's Transactions for 
 1874 — this numerical exhibit would seem to give us 
 beyond doubt a keen glimpse into the process of Shak- 
 spere's mind as regards versification. It seems clear that 
 up to a certain point he avoided the weak-ending line in 
 making his verse ; and that at that point, about Macbeth 
 or a little earlier, he entirely changed his opinion about 
 it, and thereafter permitted himself to use the weak-ending 
 line with perfect freedom. This result we might, indeed, 
 have looked for. The weak-ending line is, as we just now 
 saw, only one species of run-on line ; and the same process
 
 234 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 in his mind which led him to use the run-on Hne with 
 more and more freedom must have led him to use the 
 weak-ending line with like freedom. 
 
 Let us now advance to the fourth of our Metrical 
 Tests, that called the double-ending test. The 
 nature of the double-ending line may be precisely seen by 
 comparing one with the musical notation of a normal or 
 single-ending line, which I have here made. For example : 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 J 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 1 
 
 1/ 
 
 In 
 
 maid 
 
 en 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 » 
 
 » 
 
 « 
 
 l^ 
 
 1 
 
 U 
 
 1 
 
 U 
 
 
 1 - 
 
 ta - 
 
 tion 
 
 fan - 
 
 cy 
 
 fre 
 
 med 
 
 is a normal line, ending in the single quarter-note " free." 
 But 
 
 ' r I J r I u r I * r I * j * I 
 
 This wide chapp'd ras - cal, would thou mightst lie drown -ing 
 
 differs from it strikingly, you observe, in the last bar. 
 Here we find the quarter-note is split into its two equiva- 
 lent eighth-notes, and the bar has three sounds in it 
 instead of two. In other words, this is a double-ending 
 line. Notice that the last sounds need not be syllables 
 of the same word, but may be two independent words. 
 This we see in the next lines : 
 
 OH! I HAVE SUFFER'D 
 • \ P • • • • • • • 
 
 & r I f r I ' r I • r I J j ^ , 
 
 With those that I saw suf - fer: a brave ves - sel 
 
 Who had, no doubt, some no - ble crea - tares in her 
 
 The line ending in " vessel " shows the double ending as 
 two syllables of the same word, while the next shows it as 
 two words — " in her." Note, then, that just like the dis- 
 use of rime, just like the run-on line, just like the weak- 
 ending line, the double-ending line is a variation of the 
 normal form J is a departure from regularity of structure in
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS :l2S 
 
 the verse. Regularity of structure demands the normal 
 bar, which is a bar of two sounds bearing to each other the 
 relations of duration and intensity indicated by these musi- 
 cal signs : but the double-ending line shows us this normal 
 type of bar departed from, so as to offer the ear three 
 sounds instead of two in the bar. Note, too, that this 
 departure is made at what we may fairly call the most 
 prominent point in the whole line, namely, the last bar in 
 the line. For since in every normal end-stopped line a 
 pause is made after this last bar, for the purpose of mark- 
 ing off for the ear the group of bars contained in that line, 
 the ear gets in the habit of listening for that bar, and thus 
 any variation in that bar is more pronounced than it would 
 be at any other point of the verse-structure. 
 
 These considerations are enough to show that the dou- 
 ble ending is a very striking innovation upon the normal 
 rhythmic movement, and that any verse in which double- 
 ending lines should be frequent would present a very strik- 
 ing characteristic, as opposed to verse in which it was rare. 
 
 When, therefore, we come to apply this test like the 
 others to Shakspere's verse, and find — as we might natu- 
 rally expect from what has gone before — that the plays 
 shown to be late by the other tests are also shown to be 
 late by this test, we are driven to confess that the evidence 
 is accumulating in a way that sets up a strong probability 
 in favour of this general scheme of chronology. To>give 
 some exact determination of these matters : according to 
 the table of double endings prepared by Mr. Fleay, there 
 are in Loves Labour s Lost only 9 double endings ; in 
 Midsummer Night' s Dream there are 29 ; in Two Gentlemen 
 of Verona we advance to 2.03 ; in As Ton Like It to 211 ; 
 when we get into the second period Macbeth shows 
 us 1^^^, Hamlet 508, and Othello 646 double endings; 
 while when we come to the third period Cymbeline yields
 
 236 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 us 726 double endings and Ihe Tempest (with about 
 1,400 less lines in its total than Cymbeline, nevertheless) 
 yields 476 double endings. The steady advance here is 
 most striking ; and when we compare the extremes, taking 
 an early play like the Midsummer Night's Dream with only 
 29 double endings and opposing it to The Tempest with 
 its 476, we are certainly confronted by a very notable 
 change in Shakspere's versification. 
 
 And here let us pause a moment to note one curious 
 feature in Shakspere's use of the double ending, remark- 
 ably illustrating that enormous self-control of his which I 
 shall have occasion to develope in the next lecture. While 
 it is true that Shakspere gradually found so much more 
 freedom in using the double-ending line that his late 
 play Cymbeline shows us the enormous disproportion of 
 726 double endings when compared with his early play 
 Love' s Labour s Lost^ which has only 9 — while, I say, the 
 double ending thus evidently grew in its charm for him, 
 yet note that it never ran away with him, as it did with 
 some other poets of his time. The significance of this 
 remark will come out if we compare Shakspere's em- 
 ployment of the double ending with that of a famous 
 dramatist who had the honour of being part author with 
 Shakspere in one of his greatest plays, and perhaps in 
 others — 1 mean John Fletcher. A short time ago an 
 English scholar who has great faith in the Metrical Tests, 
 the same Mr. Fleay, carefully examined, with reference 
 to the double endings, a number of plays written by 
 Fletcher alone, including several thought to be written by 
 him, but not known by positive evidence to be so, the 
 whole number of Fletcher plays being seventeen. Upon 
 counting the double endings the following results ap- 
 peared — and as I read off two or three of these deter- 
 minations, compare the least of them with the greatest
 
 Sit^rtBoctiy Bvanr, fivm a. Ant' print ty Krtua. 
 
 John Fletcher
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 237 
 
 number of double endings in any of Shakspere's plays: in 
 Fletcher's phy of Custom of the Country were found 1,756 
 double endings; in Women Pleased appeared 1,823; ^^ 
 Wild Goose Chase appeared 1,949 ; in the Humorous Lieu- 
 tenant 2,193; and in The Loyal Subject 2,266 double 
 endings. 
 
 These figures show us unmistakably how a peculiarity 
 of versification like the double-ending line can take hold 
 of a writer's artistic taste, much as tobacco can take hold of 
 his physical taste, and can grow into an inexorable habit. 
 Now when we compare these thousands of Fletcher's 
 double endings with the modest scores and hundreds of 
 Shakspere, we come face to face with that manful control 
 and balance in artistic matters which we shall presently 
 find ruling in just the same way over Shakspere's whole 
 moral conduct. 
 
 While we are thus comparing Shakspere's and Fletcher's 
 employment of the double ending, let us take the appro- 
 priate occasion to see how the Metrical Tests are applied 
 to other important matters besides determinations of 
 chronology. Consider, for example, the recent investiga- 
 tions into the play of King Henry Fllly which would 
 seem not only to have settled quite conclusively that the 
 play was written by Shakspere and Fletcher, but to have 
 separated with great accuracy the precise scenes and lines 
 which were written by Fletcher from those which were 
 written by Shakspere. Now in this determination the 
 double-ending metrical test was used with singular effect 
 in reducing to exactness such vague opinions as were 
 before held on this matter. It had been before suspected 
 by several writers that in this play of King Henry VIII 
 another hand was discernible besides Shakspere's. Per- 
 haps the most interesting citation I could make in this 
 connection is from our own Ralph Waldo Emerson. That
 
 238 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 deep-seeing eye had detected a great difference between 
 parts of King Henry VIII in artistic construction. In 
 his essay on Shakspere, in Representative Men^ Mr. Emer- 
 son says : "In Henry VIII I think I see plainly the crop- 
 ping out of the original rock on which his [Shakspere's] 
 own finer stratum was laid." These parts of it were 
 " written by a superior thoughtful man with a vicious ear. 
 I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. 
 The lines are constructed on a given tune." Here, 
 Emerson does not seem to have suspected Fletcher ; but 
 how inimitably do his words describe that dramatist — " a 
 superior thoughtful man with a vicious ear ! " Fletcher, 
 however, had been conjectured as the co-writer by others 
 as long ago as 1850. In that year Mr. Spedding pub- 
 lished a paper in which many considerations were adduced 
 to show Fletcher's part in Henry VIII^ and this was fol- 
 lowed by an independently worked out judgment of Mr. 
 Samuel Hickson's, published in Notes and ^eries during 
 the same year. 
 
 But these judgments were necessarily more or less 
 vague, because depending more or less upon that variable 
 element between individuals which astronomers call the 
 personal equation; and at this point the Metrical Tests 
 come in with most satisfactory effect to confirm previous 
 conclusions with great exactness. You remember that we 
 just now found from Mr. Fleay's table of the double 
 endings in a group of Fletcher's plays that the num- 
 bers ranged 1,700, 1,900, 2,000, and so on. Now it 
 involved only the work of adding up all these figures for 
 each play and dividing the total by the number of plays to 
 get an average of double endings which might be con- 
 sidered fairly characteristic of Fletcher's work when 
 taken in connection with the total number of verse-lines 
 considered. Such an average was found to be 1,777, and
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 239 
 
 this number then became — as you easily see — a sort of 
 graph or sign-manual of Fletcher, so that in going through 
 the play of Henry VIII it was almost as if many passages 
 were enclosed in brackets and signed with Fletcher's name. 
 
 By using the double-ending test, — particularly with 
 reference to a peculiarity of Fletcher's in this connection 
 which I could not explain here without going into too 
 much technical detail, — and by checking such conclu- 
 sions with other tests and with various more general con- 
 siderations of style and matter, the respective scenes, 
 passages, and even lines of Shakspere and Fletcher in the 
 play of Henry VIII have been sorted out with a minute- 
 ness which is truly interesting. The metrical and other 
 tests, employed in such number and variety, constitute a 
 kind of sieves or screens like those employed in the coal- 
 yards to sort out the different sizes of coal — separating 
 here the big Shakspere lump in one bin, there the smaller 
 Fletcher lump in another, and so on. 
 
 While in this connection I ought to mention that the 
 play of T^he I'wo Noble Kinsmen, which is usually put into 
 the back part of our ordinary editions of Shakspere and 
 classed as a doubtful play, has also been, as one might 
 say, chemically treated with the Metrical Tests, particularly 
 with the average double-ending test just now described, 
 with the result of confirming in the most satisfactory man- 
 ner judgments based on other considerations ; and perhaps 
 we may fairly consider not only that Shakspere is now 
 established to be part author of The Two Noble Kinsmeny 
 — the other being Fletcher, — but that we know with much 
 accuracy every passage which is Shakspere's and every 
 passage which is Fletcher's throughout the play. 
 
 And now let us pass on to the fifth and last metrical 
 test to which I have proposed to invite your notice. 
 Consider this fourth bar in the line
 
 240 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 *U r I • r I • r 1 • r U c t \ 
 
 With those that I saw suf - fer : a brave ves - sel 
 
 Remembering that, as we often saw in studying rhythm, 
 the musical sign a represents the rhythmical accent, here 
 you see that the rhythmical accent falls upon a word which 
 does not take an accent in ordinary speech : we would not 
 say. 
 
 With those that I saw suffer : a brave vessel, 
 
 but " a brave vessel." Of course every one, however 
 little acquainted with versecraft, knows that the normal 
 method by which the verse-maker indicates the point 
 where the rhythmic accent should fall in his verse is to 
 arrange words which have a certain well-known accentua- 
 tion in our ordinary speech in such a manner that each 
 syllable taking the ordinary accent falls at the place where 
 the rhythmic accent is intended to be. Thus in writing, 
 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free, 
 
 the poet Indicates to us that the rhythmic accent must fall 
 upon " maid-," " med-," " fan-," etc., by so arranging 
 the words of which these syllables are part that the voice 
 puts the accent at those points where it would fall in 
 ordinary speech. 
 
 This seems simple enough when thus approached ; 
 and you might wonder at even so much preliminary de- 
 tail about accent if it were not stated that this subject has 
 been hopelessly confused by some of the most earnest and 
 otherwise successful Shakspere scholars through the failure 
 to discriminate between the different sorts of accent which 
 are in ordinary use among English-speaking people. The 
 value of such a discrimination will appear if I briefly recall 
 to your minds a clear conception of at least three wholly
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 241 
 
 different phenomena which are all termed " accent." 
 There are several more ; but these will suffice for the 
 matter now in hand. 
 
 In ordinary English speech every word of more than 
 one syllable is pronounced with an unequal intensity upon 
 some special syllable ; and this syllable thus accented is 
 fixed in each word. Thus content^ admirable^ etc., where 
 the syllables con- and ad- are clearly differentiated from 
 their neighbours by their relative intensity. Let us call 
 this the pronunciation accent, for the sake of distinction. 
 But, again, we have a distinct accent from this, exercising a 
 wholly different function in our speech. That is the 
 logical accent, which we place upon every important word 
 in a sentence. This accent, you see, concerns the whole 
 word in its relation to its neighbouring words, not a syllable 
 in relation to neighbouring syllables. Thus we say : " Did 
 you want this book or that book?" when the logical an- 
 tithesis between this and that is indicated by their respective 
 accents — this accent, mark, consisting not only of a rela- 
 tive variation in intensity but also of a variation in pitch. 
 The voice is perceptibly not only more forcible but higher 
 on this than on that in the given sentence. Let us, then, 
 call this the logical or word accent, in distinction from the 
 other, the pronunciation or syllable accent. 
 
 But, again, there is a third accent, differing entirely in 
 function from these two ; that is, the rhythmic accent, 
 which is common to both poetry and music, and which 
 plays exactly the same part in every piece of verse as in 
 every piece of music. This part is to point off the whole 
 series of sounds for the ear into those equal groups which 
 are called bars. In every musical composition it is under- 
 stood that the first note in each bar, no matter what may 
 be its pitch or duration or tone-colour, is to be singled out 
 by a slight increase in its intensity, so that the ear instantly
 
 142 
 
 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 recognises the boundaries of each bar as the piece is played, 
 and is thus able to coordinate bar with bar throughout the 
 whole piece. This is the rhythmic determinant of every 
 musical piece, this recurrence of the rhythmic accent at 
 exactly equal intervals of time upon the first tone in each 
 bar. Now each bar in a line of poetry is in exactly the 
 same way indicated to the ear by including its beginning 
 and its terminus between two slight variations in intensity 
 which mark its first tone and the first tone of the next bar. 
 Without such a system of marks the rhythms which we 
 call trochaic, iambic, etc., would be marked off with much 
 less distinctness to the ear. But note, as of paramount 
 importance in this particular test we are now studying, 
 that just as the place of the rhythmic accent in any bar of 
 mxusic may be changed for a moment from the first note 
 in the bar to any other note in it, and that this change is 
 often made, in one bar or two bars, simply for the purpose 
 of variety, — of breaking up the monotonous succession of 
 bar after bar, all accented on the same corresponding 
 note, — so in verse the same breaking of the bar-monotony 
 occurs when the verse-maker, instead of placing a syllable 
 which takes the pronunciation accent or a word which 
 takes the logical accent (" maid-," and " free ") in the 
 rhythmically accented place of the bar, allows a syllable or 
 word (" a brave vessel ") to fall in that place which does 
 not take the other accent in ordinary speech. In music 
 a special sign is used to indicate this change, and in read- 
 ing the notes, the musician, when he sees that sign, does 
 not accent the first note in the bar, but accents the note 
 which has the sign over it. Please note that in verse, as in 
 music, the effect of this changing the relative place of the 
 rhythmic accent is to vary the rhythmic pattern set up by 
 the general systematic recurrence of this accent at the 
 beginning of the bar, where the ear has learned to look
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 243 
 
 for it. It is instructive, for the use presently to be made 
 of all this discussion of metrical tests, to note how precisely- 
 parallel is this variation of monotony by change in accent 
 with that variation of monotony which we just now saw 
 effected by the double ending. Then, when the ear had 
 learned to look for two sounds in each bar, — and particu- 
 larly for two sounds and a pause in that special bar which 
 terminates the line, — we found that Shakspere more and 
 more tended to give three sounds in that bar — that is, 
 the double-ending line — in order to vary the bar-struc- 
 ture agreeably from its rigid form. 
 
 I have thought it worth while thus to discriminate the 
 true function of the rhythmic accent as distinguished from 
 the pronunciation accent and the logical accent, specially be- 
 cause one of the greatest modern scholars has founded a 
 whole theory of blank verse upon what is clearly a confu- 
 sion of these accents, with the result of arriving at conclu- 
 sions which are wholly absurd as to their general effect, 
 and which as to their special effect would rob Shakspere's 
 verse of its most wonderful and subtle features. 
 
 If, then, regularity of verse-structure is determined by 
 the regular recurrence of the rhythmic accent on a given 
 note in each bar, and if a temporary change in the place of 
 the accent would tend to relieve the monotony of the 
 rhythmic flow, we should expect to find, from what has 
 been revealed of Shakspere's progress by the other tests, 
 that he became more and more fond in his later plays of 
 placing such unimportant words as a^ in, of, the, etc., in the 
 accented place of the bar, so as in effect to change the 
 accent by throwing the voice upon some more important 
 word or syllable. 
 
 Here I am not able to present you with any exact 
 reductions to numbers, as in the case of the other metrical 
 tests we have studied. The possibility of such a test as
 
 244 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 this rhythmic accent test occurred to me last summer 
 while writing a work on English verse ; but other press- 
 ing occupations have prevented that patient count which 
 would have to be made by taking every line in Shakspere's 
 plays, applying it to this normal type of blank verse, and 
 setting down every time where an unimportant word like 
 ^, ifiy fhe, or the like fell under the place of the rhythmic 
 accent. The importance of such a test would be very 
 great. Without now taking time to detail the special 
 technical value of this rhythmic accent test, it is easy to 
 infer its general value by considering that necessarily the 
 degree of probability established by these evidences in- 
 creases, not in arithmetical ratio, but in a more than geo- 
 metrical ratio with every new test. The evidence, you 
 observe, is cumulative : the effect of every new test is not 
 only to multiply the probability as many times as there are 
 tests in all, but much more. 
 
 We have now considered the special function of our 
 five Metrical Tests in determining the relative dates of 
 Shakspere plays ; and so many cautions have already been 
 given in various connections with each one that it is not 
 necessary to do more, in summing up our conclusions, than 
 to say that, while no one or two or more metrical tests 
 must be pushed to over-minute determinations in settling 
 the place of a play within small limits, — that is, while we 
 must carefully avoid over-minuteness in applying them, — 
 on the other hand, we can make them of very high value 
 in checking other conclusions and in setting up broadly 
 discriminated periods in Shakspere's artistic growth. 
 
 And now let us assume a higher point of view, and 
 regard the general revelation, made to us by a/I the Metri- 
 cal Tests, of the line of Shakspere's advance as an artist in 
 verse-making. It is at this point that we can see the line 
 of his artistic advance uniting with that of his moral
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 245 
 
 advance ; and we can now effect a complete junction 
 between the two trains of discussion, embracing so many 
 details. 
 
 For consider the general line of artistic tendency in 
 Shakspere, which all the Metrical Tests we have studied 
 agree in disclosing, (i) We found that he tended more 
 and more, from the early plays to the late ones, to disuse 
 rime ; and since the rime recurring at the end of each line 
 is a very striking method of marking off^ a regular line- 
 group for the ear, of impressing a regular pattern of fives 
 upon the ear, the disuse of rime is clearly an advance 
 towards freedom, towards the relief from monotony, towards 
 the greater display of individuality in verse. 
 
 (2) If you carry this on to the next test you find it 
 showing a precisely similar advance towards freedom by 
 another particular of verse-construction. We found that 
 the end-stopped line, just like the rime, marked off^the end 
 of each line very strikingly for the ear by the pause which 
 comes after it, and thus made a regular grouping of fives ; 
 while the run-on line broke up this regular grouping by 
 running one line into another, and thus relieved the monot- 
 ony of the rhythm ; and thus the clear and notable increase 
 in the number of run-on lines in the late plays simply rep- 
 resented the same progress towards freedom, towards indi- 
 viduality, towards relief from monotony, which the disuse 
 of rime indicated. 
 
 (3) Then the weak-ending test, which was simply a 
 species of run-on line, showed us, by the great increase of 
 weak endings in the late plays over the early ones, the 
 same progress towards relief from monotony, towards free- 
 dom, towards individuality. 
 
 (4) Then the double-ending test, with its 476 occur- 
 rences — that is, 476 variations of the normal bar — in T'he 
 Tempest, contrasted with only 29 such variations in the
 
 246 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Midsummer Nighi's Dream^ showed us exactly the same 
 tendency towards variations of monotonous regularities, 
 towards freedom, towards individuality. 
 
 (5) And finally the changes of the normal rhythmic 
 accent, which are certainly far more numerous in 'T/ie 'Tem- 
 pest than in A Midsummer Night's Dream, exhibit the 
 same artistic growth. But now, on the other hand, mark 
 carefully that these departures towards freedom are not 
 wild, like Fletcher's ; Shakspere in the later plays still 
 uses rime, still has the greater number of his lines regular 
 or end-stopped, still has the greater number of his endings 
 normal instead of abnormally weak or double, still has the 
 greater number of his rhythmic accents in the normal regu- 
 lar places instead of the abnormal irregular places. In 
 other words, the artistic advance towards freedom is a con- 
 trolled temperate advance, in which the law of verse, the 
 regularity of verse-structure, is preserved reverently, while 
 it is merely varied with the occasional departures. 
 
 In short, Shakspere's general advance is clearly a more 
 artistic balancing of the oppositions which constitute verse ; 
 and this idea enables us now to present a perfectly clear 
 statement of that artistic advance in terms of our theory of 
 oppositions, and thus to bring out this artistic advance as 
 only one side of his general moral advance. 
 
 For this purpose, let us place these oppositions of 
 regularity and irregularity, of monotony and variety, — 
 upon the artistic balancing of which the whole music of 
 verse depends, — let us place, I say, these oppositions on 
 the sides of our opposition diagram, to which they 
 belong. You will remember that through a great variety 
 of details and principles, accumulating from lecture to lec- 
 ture, we have climbed to a point of view which commands 
 the whole field of form so far as to show in parallel lines a 
 poem as a form in art, a generalisation as form in science, a
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 247 
 
 balanced character as form in morals or behaviour ; and 
 we have found the principle of opposition underlying this 
 matter in every one of its widely differing phases, from the 
 opposition of forces which cause the minute rhythms of 
 sound and light and the great rhythms of the periodic 
 planets, to those oppositions of verse-structure, rime 
 and no rime, end-stopped line and run-on line, sin- 
 gle-ending and double-ending, and the like, which we 
 have just seen Shakspere using to make his verse good ; 
 and finally to those oppositions in the moral structure of 
 things which every man must balance in order to make 
 his character good. Now let us recur to those limiting 
 terms of this universal opposition which form vanishing- 
 points into which all the lines of man's activity, spiritual, 
 physical, artistic, moral activity, must run ; let us, I say, 
 recur to these terms, and set before our eyes the artistic 
 advance of Shakspere revealed by the Metrical Tests in 
 similar terms. Here, starting with the fundamental terms 
 of opposition, Form and Chaos, and using no more of the 
 list than necessary for the present purpose, we have in na- 
 ture, as including all forms. 
 
 Form Chaos 
 
 and correlatively in those forms produced by drawing a 
 scientific induction. 
 
 Generalisation Detail 
 
 and correlatively in those forms connected with character, 
 
 Law Freedom 
 
 Regularity Irregularity 
 
 Love Self 
 
 Not-me Me
 
 248 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 and since the me is what we are immediately conscious of, 
 the not-me intermediately, we have the correlative 
 
 Possible Actual 
 
 and these give us clearly the 
 
 Ideal Real 
 
 and so on. Now let us put our metrical matters into this 
 same nomenclature : We find that the rime is the regular 
 element in verse, and that Shakspere balances it with its 
 opposite irregular element, and we have as regularity ele- 
 ment. 
 
 Rime used Rime disused 
 
 and similar 
 
 End-stopped Line Run-on Line 
 
 Strong-ending Line Weak-ending Line 
 
 Single-ending Line Double-ending Line 
 
 Regular Accent Irregular Accent 
 
 Here we have the task of the three next and concluding 
 lectures of this course marked out plainly before our eyes. 
 It is proposed to prove (i) that the very same advance 
 which has been revealed by the Metrical Tests between the 
 beginning and the end of Shakspere's career in his verse- 
 technic is clearly revealed to us in his character ; (2) that 
 just as we saw Shakspere more artistically balancing the 
 necessary oppositions of verse-structure in The 'Tempest^ 
 1 610, than in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 1590, so we 
 can clearly see him more artistically balancing those oppo- 
 sitions in life and in morals which go to make up charac- 
 ter-structure if we rightly investigate his utterances ; in 
 short, that Shakspere's advance in art and his advance in
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 
 
 249 
 
 morals is one and the same growth, resulting in this direc- 
 tion as a finer verse-structure, in that direction as a finer 
 character-structure. 
 
 And now, to prove this theorem, let us take the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream^ which we can prove by all sorts of 
 evidence, positive, indirect, external, internal, metrical 
 tests, higher tests, and all, to represent Shakspere's first 
 period, and let us contrast this with T'he '■tempest^ which 
 we can prove nearly as conclusively to represent his last 
 period. Note that never were two ends of an artist's life 
 so beautifully framed for a contrast as these two plays. 
 It will give definite direction to our appreciation of this if 
 we reflect (as outlined in a previous lecture) that there are 
 three comprehensive directions in which we may trace a 
 man's view of the world : in the direction of the lower, 
 that is, his views of man's relations towards nature ; the 
 level direction, that is, his views of man's relations towards 
 his fellow-man ; and the higher direction, that is, his views 
 of man's relations towards God. 
 
 God 
 
 Nature 
 
 Fell 
 
 ow-man 
 
 ?i595 
 
 1602 
 
 1610 
 
 Dream Period 
 
 Real Period 
 
 Ideal Period 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 The Tempest 
 
 Now it so happens that these two plays. Midsummer 
 Night's Dream and The Tempest^ contain just the material 
 for deducing Shakspere's ideas upon these points. In 
 both we have man's relation towards nature, — nature
 
 250 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 tricksy in the Puck and Oberon ot the one, nature con- 
 quered and drawing water for man in the allayed tempest 
 and the monster servant Cahban of the other ; again, the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream shows us man's relations to 
 man in the twist and cross of love which never runs 
 smooth (this famous quotation is from the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream)y while The 'Tempest shows us the same re- 
 lations to one's fellow-men in the affairs of power, of ambi- 
 tion, of state, of fatherhood, of love, of forgiveness, and 
 so on. And, to make their fitness for comparison grow to 
 the exquisite degree, both these plays are a sort of fairy- 
 tales, admitting unbounded freedom of treatment and un- 
 shackled by any such considerations of time or place or 
 environment as would prevent Shakspere from giving his 
 full and untrammelled utterance. 
 
 In the next three lectures, then, we will see what we can 
 find of Shakspere's opinions in these three great relations 
 of man. And finally, if this discussion shall then be 
 allowed to have made out its case, if we shall then find 
 this artistic and moral advance thus inseparable, we may 
 recognise that supreme value of the poet which was posited 
 at the beginning of these lectures. For we must then 
 find that it is he who balances these terrible oppositions of 
 life, balances them, not in ignorance, not by shutting his 
 eyes upon them, but by that enormous faith which, seeing 
 them, is not dismayed. It is he, the poet, who moves 
 with level eye down this lane of life hedged about with 
 these mysteries, and keeps Love and Reconciliation alive 
 with art and music. It is our Shakspere who, when we 
 find him, after his dream of Youth here, after his terrible 
 shock with the Real here in Hamlet, — using his art to 
 allay tempests and to bring all things right and to set forth 
 Prospero's prodigious forgiveness of his brother's injury, —
 
 THE METRICAL TESTS 
 
 251 
 
 It is our Shakspere who then makes us cry, amid the heart- 
 breaking perplexities of life's oppositions and complex 
 antagonisms, Sursum corda ! Here is a poet who met these 
 oppositions and managed them ; and do but listen to our Shak- 
 spere singing in the dark I
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO THE SUPERNATURAL AS 
 
 SHOWN IN "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," 
 
 "HAMLET," AND "THE TEMPEST" 
 
 N the last lecture not only did two 
 trains of discussion come fairly to- 
 gether and coalesce, but a number of 
 other strands of thought which have 
 been presenting their ends here and 
 there twined into the main result. 
 Permit me for a single moment to 
 present this coalescence of all our in- 
 quiries freshly before your minds from a common point of 
 view, as affording the proper light in which we are now to 
 contrast these wonderful plays of Shakspere. 
 
 You remember that as we studied those phenomena of 
 sound which are connoted under the term Verse, we 
 found that all our three largest classifications — the Tunes 
 of Verse, the Rhythms of Verse, and the Colours of Verse 
 — were in reality due to rhythmic vibration in various 
 forms, and, going further, we found that all rhythmic vi- 
 bration seemed to be produced by the Opposition of 
 Forces. In short, after having viewed a great many 
 technical details of verse-construction, the outcome ap- 
 
 252
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 253 
 
 peared to be that the poet, in arranging the tunes of verse, 
 the rhythms of verse, and the colours of verse, was simply 
 managing a diverse set of vibrations, that is, of oppositions 
 — managing these as the material of his poetic art. The 
 diagram 
 
 Tunes of Verse 
 
 Rhythms of Verse V = Vibrations = Oppositions 
 
 Colours of Verse 
 
 brings this outcome clearly before your mind. 
 
 But then the theory of oppositions came upon us from 
 quite another direction. In two lectures we studied the 
 Metrical Tests ; and having examined Shakspere's early 
 verse as compared with his late verse by these tests, we 
 found that his whole progress as an artist in versification 
 was towards a more artistic management of oppositions^ these 
 oppositions being a wholly different set from those last 
 named, a set depending upon the singular esthetic de- 
 mands of the ear in listening to series of sounds. We 
 found that the ear demanded regularity in verse-structure : 
 but that it also demanded with equal rigour the very op- 
 posite of that, namely, irregularity ; and since by the rime 
 test we found Shakspere ever more artistically balan- 
 cing the rime line, which represented regularity, against the 
 blank line, which represented its opposite irregularity, the 
 end-stopped line (regularity) against run-on line (irregu- 
 larity), 
 single-ending (regularity) against double-ending (irregu- 
 larity), 
 strong-ending (regularity) against weak-ending (irregu- 
 larity), 
 normal accent (regularity) against abnormal accent (irregu- 
 larity).
 
 > = Oppositions 
 
 254 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 we were here led to contemplate Shakspere's artistic 
 management of a wholly different set of oppositions, these 
 being the oppositions of the esthetic demands of the ear, 
 instead of, as before, the oppositions of forces, which 
 result in periodic or rhythmic vibration. The next 
 diagram here, then, will present this outcome clearly to 
 your eyes, viz.: 
 
 Rimed vs. Blank Line 
 
 End-stopped vs. Run-on Line 
 Single-ending vs. Double-ending 
 Strong-ending vs. Weak-ending 
 Normal Accent vs. Abnormal Accent/ 
 
 Thus we discovered that Shakspere grew all the time 
 in the artistic management of these verse-oppositions. 
 
 We are now to go on and show, by the comparison of 
 these plays, the Midsummer Night's Dream as representa- 
 tive of Shakspere's youthful period, and 'The 'Tempest as 
 representative of his perfectly mature period, that just as 
 he advanced in the artistic management of these rhythmical 
 oppositions, so he advanced in the artistic management of 
 those moral oppositions which make up human life as 
 these esthetic and physical oppositions make up verse. 
 And we are to see if it is not, after all, the same exaltation 
 of faculty, or genius, which arrives at supreme excellence 
 in the due ordering of moral oppositions with that which 
 arrives at supreme excellence in the due ordering of 
 esthetic oppositions. 
 
 It will add a valuable weight of cumulative evidence to 
 this now pending inquiry if I here ask your notice of a
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 255 
 
 still different set of artistic oppositions which Shakspere 
 clearly learned better and better how to manage as he 
 grew older. These are the oppositions of character against 
 character, of figure against figure, of event against event, 
 which are arranged with so much more freedom in later 
 plays than in earlier ones. You observe that all these 
 oppositions here in our diagrams concern Shakspere's art 
 as verse-maker : the oppositions I now speak of concern 
 his art as drama-maker, as playwright. Notice in how 
 many of the early comedies there is a suspicion of stiffness, 
 arising from the tendency to present every figure in the 
 play with a kind of contrasting figure or foil to set it off, 
 or at least with a kind of echo or companion. For ex- 
 ample, in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona we have Valen- 
 tine, the symbol of constancy in love, set off with his 
 contrast and foil, Proteus, the symbol of inconstancy ; the 
 one is named from the Valentine of St. Valentine's day, 
 you observe, the other from the old Proteus of the Greek 
 mythus who changed his shape at will and so represented 
 the inconstant lover. Further, we have Speed, the servant 
 of Valentine, set over against Launce, the servant of Pro- 
 teus ; and so on. Again, in the Comedy of Errors we have 
 Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant Dromio of Ephe- 
 sus set over against their twins Antipholus of Syracuse 
 and Dromio of Syracuse. Again, in Love's Labour s Lost 
 we have King Ferdinand set over against the Princess, 
 Biron against Rosaline, Dumain against Katherine, Longa- 
 ville against Maria, Armado against Jaquenetta, and so 
 on, till at the last the whole company go off in pairs, 
 every Jack having his Jill. Again, in Midsummer Night's 
 Dream we have Theseus against Hippolyta, Lysander 
 against Hermia, Demetrius against Helena, by way of 
 echoes ; and, by way of foils, a group of clowns against a 
 group of fairies, a rude ass against a dainty queen, a
 
 256 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe turned into its opposing 
 farce, and so on; while — to cite no more examples — in 
 Romeo and "Juliet we have the enmity of Montague and 
 Capulet set off against the love of Montague and Capulet, 
 bridal scene set off against burial scene, love against death. 
 In short, at first, if we narrowly scrutinise Shakspere's 
 early management of his oppositions as playwright, we 
 perceive everywhere a tendency of things to go in pairs, 
 to move by twos, in short, a tendency towards direct and 
 pronounced oppositions. But if we consider the later 
 plays with reference to this matter, there is a clear advance 
 towards less pronounced pairing of figures and events, in 
 short, towards less direct oppositions. There are still 
 oppositions of this sort ; there must be : the esthetic sense 
 of proportion in the spectator demands them, just as the 
 esthetic sense of the ear demands these other oppositions. 
 But also, in the present series of oppositions, we find, as I 
 said, Shakspere using more art in ordering these play- 
 wright's oppositions, more temperately and exquisitely 
 adjusting figure to figure and foil to foil, when we come to 
 the later plays, just as we found him exercising precisely 
 the same temperance and wise control in ordering the 
 oppositions of effect in verse-technic. This relation of 
 the stiff oppositions of the early plays to the freer and 
 more graceful oppositions of the later plays may be very 
 clearly illustrated to the eye by asking one's self, if we had 
 two lines to arrange in the most pleasant relations to each 
 other, — the most pleasant relations, that is, for satisfying 
 the eye's sense of proportion, — how should we go about 
 it ? Well, Shakspere goes about it in the early plays by 
 making both lines exactly equal in length and laying one 
 exactly athwart the middle of the other, presenting the 
 effect of this cross to the eye :
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 257 
 
 T" 
 
 while in the later plays he arranges them, with a more 
 delicate sense of proportion, in a form much more pleasing 
 to the eye, by abolishing the direct, flat opposition of 
 equal hne to equal line and centre to centre and direction 
 to direction, and taming it down, as it were, with the sub- 
 stitution of a shorter line for the crossing one, and the 
 moving up of the crossing-point to a place where every 
 eye will take more pleasure in the figure, like this : 
 
 Now, then, in going on to look at these plays, we shall 
 find, I think, that the same miraculous sense of propor- 
 tion which has resulted in the finer ordering of these 
 versecraft oppositions and these playwright's oppositions 
 results, too, in the finer ordering of the moral oppositions 
 of life. Let us see if this be not so by contrasting the 
 views of life presented here in Midsummer Nighfs Dream 
 with those in 'The Tempest, linking both to the inter- 
 mediate view in Hamlet. 
 
 Here I will write the succession of these plays, in
 
 258 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 order that their relations in time might be clearly before 
 your eyes : 
 
 1595 1602 1610 
 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream Hamlet The Tempest 
 
 Here, you observe, we have the Midsummer Night's Dream y 
 dating about 1595 ; and if you will recall the more extended 
 chronology which was developed during the last two lec- 
 tures, you will observe that this date 1595 may be called 
 the full flush of Shakspere's youthful period as a writer, 
 when he had passed beyond the raw inexperience of his 
 first attempts as playwright, and had certainly gathered his 
 powers together sufficiently to express his whole thought 
 of that time with marvellous force and beauty. We may 
 therefore regard the Midsummer Night's Dream as beauti- 
 fully representative of the very heyday of his youthful 
 period ; and so we may regard Hamlet as representative 
 of his Dark Period, when the rude shock of the real had 
 come upon him ; and The Tempest as equally representative 
 of that wondrous period of calm when he had conquered 
 the real, when he had learned to forgive, when he showed 
 his whole state of mind in that group of plays which hinge 
 upon reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries — Cymbeline^ 
 Winter s Tale^ Tempest^ Henry ///, and so on. I should 
 have liked to array before you all the evidences, external 
 and internal, of the precise dates here given ; but this 
 would have involved an indulgence in minute scholarship 
 which would not have suited such a course as the present, 
 and, even passing this objection, it would have been im- 
 possible to devote so much time as would be required for 
 a matter which of itself has a voluminous literature. So 
 perhaps it will suffice as to the question of dates if I say 
 as to A Midsummer Night's Dream that its date is quite 
 clearly fixed for us within certain limits through its men-
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 259 
 
 tion by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, JVits 'Trea- 
 sury^ published in 1598, where he speaks of it as if it were 
 an already well-known play of Shakspere's. We thus 
 know positively that the Midsummer Night's Dream was 
 written before 1598; various scholars have assigned it 
 various places within that period : the New Shakspere So- 
 ciety, building upon various evidences, places it as early as 
 1590-91, Mr. Fleay puts it in 1592, Drake has it 1593, 
 Malone i 594, Stokes 1 595 (upon what seems to me a very 
 rational view of all the evidences), and Gervinus also in 
 1595, We are therefore perfectly safe in assuming that 
 the enormous weight of scholarly opinion is clearly in 
 favour of a date at least by 1595, if not earlier. 
 
 Again, in the case of Hamlet : while Stokes gives 1 599 
 as the date when it was written and 1600 the date of its 
 revision by Shakspere, Malone gives 1600, Mr. Fleay 
 1 601, and Gervinus, Delius, and the New Shakspere 
 Society agree in assigning the date 1602 ; so that, while — 
 as you will please carefully observe — either of those dates 
 would subserve the purpose of the present demonstration 
 (which only requires Hamlet to have been written about 
 1600), and you see from the dates I have just given that 
 the whole consensus of scholarship does point to about 
 that period, perhaps we may fairly assume the weight of 
 opinion to favour the date 1602, which is well on into the 
 Dark Period, when he was writing all those grim and bitter 
 tragedies of Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Timon of Athens, 
 Troilus and Cressida, and the like. 
 
 And lastly, in the case of The Tempest, there are such 
 positive external and quasi-external evidences pointing to 
 about the year 16 10 as that in which Shakspere wrote it 
 that I find Stokes, Fleay, the New Shakspere Society, 
 Gervinus, Delius, Malone, and Drake all fixing indepen- 
 dently upon i6ioor 1611, while Chalmers fixes upon a
 
 26o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 date so late as 1613. Personally I am well disposed 
 towards 1613, but certainly the overwhelming weight of 
 scholarship is in favour of 16 10 or 161 i. 
 
 In the order of time, then, which is here given we may 
 consider ourselves upon a safe basis for judgments as to 
 Shakspere's growth. The keenest scholarship, the freest 
 discussion, the widest search for external evidence, the 
 most careful checking of conclusions by the Metrical 
 Tests one after another, have all been applied to establish 
 this general succession in time of these three plays ; and it 
 is not in the least necessary to commit ourselves to the 
 exact years here given in order to feel sure that these three 
 plays represent three perfectly distinct epochs, separated 
 from each other by several years, in Shakspere's spiritual 
 existence. 
 
 Leaving, then, the question of chronology with satis- 
 faction to this extent, mark, now, — by way of a sweeping 
 outline which we will presently fill out with details and 
 support with citations, — mark how completely these three 
 plays form perfect types of three periods which inexorably 
 occur in the life of every man, distinctly marked in the 
 life of the man who thinks, vaguely but no less really in 
 the life of the most thoughtless. Here is the young 
 Shakspere's view of life : his thought is mainly upon love 
 and acting, hence Theseus and Hippolyta, hence Lysander 
 and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena, hence Bottom 
 and Snout and their fellow-players; his eye, though a young 
 eye, is sufficiently keen to have seen already that love 
 does not run smoothly, that many a popular stage-play is 
 as absurd as Pyramus and ThisbCy that many a popular 
 actor, or popular poet, who has come to be the fashion 
 and has got the world in love with him, is no more than 
 a Bottom with an ass's head on his shoulders, so that 
 Titania coying the ass's cheeks is but the sight so often
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 261 
 
 seen when the world Is petting a popular statesman, or 
 actor, or poet, who will presently go out of fashion and be 
 as much despised by succeeding ages as Bottom will be 
 when Titania's eyes are uncharmed : in short, the young 
 eye already sees the twist and cross of life, but sees it as 
 in a dream : and those of you who are old enough to look 
 back upon your own young dream of life will recognise 
 instantly that the dream is the only term which represents 
 that unspeakable seeing of things without in the least realis- 
 ing them which brings about that the youth admits all we 
 tell him — we older ones — about life and the future, and, 
 admitting it fully, nevertheless goes on right in the face of 
 it to act just as if he knew nothing of it. In short, he 
 sees as in a dream. It is the Dream Period. But here 
 suddenly the dream is done. The real pinches the young 
 dreamer and he awakes. This, too, is typical. Every 
 man remembers the time in his own life, somewhere from 
 near thirty to forty, when the actual oppositions of life 
 came out before him and refused to be danced over and 
 stared him grimly in the face : God or no God, faith or no 
 faith, death or no death, honesty or policy, men good 
 or men evil, the Church holy or the Church a fraud, life 
 worth living or life not worth living — this, I say, is the 
 shock of the real, this is the Hamlet period in every 
 man's life. 
 
 And finally, — to finish this outline, — just as the man 
 settles all these questions shocked upon him by the real, 
 will be his Ideal Period. If he finds that the proper man- 
 agement of these grim oppositions of life is by goodness, 
 by humility, by love, by the fatherly care of a Prospero 
 for his daughter Miranda, by the human tenderness of a 
 Prospero finding all his enemies in his power and forgiv- 
 ing their bitter injuries and practising his art to right the 
 wrongs of men and to bring all evil beginnings to happy
 
 262 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 issues, then his Ideal Period is fitly represented by this 
 heavenly play in which, as you recall its plot, you recognise 
 all these elements. Shakspere has unquestionably emerged 
 from the cold paralysing doubts of Hamlet into the human 
 tenderness and perfect love and faith of The Tempest^ a 
 faith which can look clearly upon all the wretched crimes 
 and follies of the crew of time, and still be tender and lov- 
 ing and faithful. In short, he has learned to manage the 
 Hamlet antagonisms, to adjust the moral oppositions, with 
 the same artistic sense of proportion with which we saw 
 him managing and adjusting the verse-oppositions and the 
 figure-oppositions. 
 
 And now, with this general direction of Shakspere's 
 moral growth before us, let us descend to some details of 
 it as they shine out in these plays. And remembering 
 the useful division of man's possible relations in life as 
 given in the last lecture, let us inquire. What is the attitude 
 of man towards the supernatural in these three plays ? 
 
 Beginning with the Midsummer Night's Dream^ clearly 
 man is the sport of vague, unseen powers, of the powers of 
 Nature. It must be observed with the greatest care, for 
 proper views on this matter, that there is a sense of the 
 word Nature in which it means exactly the supernatural, 
 and perhaps this is the most common sense in which it is 
 thought by many persons. Those who have vague beliefs, 
 or who do not wish to specify their beliefs at the particular 
 moment, will say, for example, that Nature has made man 
 thus and so, or Nature has arranged this and that order, 
 or that such a matter is a law of Nature — meaning, you 
 observe, always what is meant by the supernatural when 
 other senses of the word Nature are thought. Now this 
 purposely vague use of Nature by one who has a vague 
 belief is exactly the conception of the dreaming youth, and 
 here in the Midsummer Night's Dream the powers of
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 263 
 
 Nature are playing with man as the supernatural, some- 
 times crossing him, sometimes blessing him, but with no 
 reason or order in either cross or blessing. The logical 
 outcome of it, here, is simply chance. Chance is Oberon 
 and Puck and Titania : Lysander loves Hermia and 
 Demetrius loves Hermia; Helena loves Demetrius and 
 Demetrius hates Helena. Presently a chance mistake of 
 the careless minister of chance. Puck, reverses these con- 
 ditions, and things are more hopelessly twisted than ever: 
 Demetrius dotes on Helena, Helena dotes on Lysander, 
 Titania dotes on an ass ; the whole world of love is awry, 
 and a laughing or bad-humoured spirit working it all, no 
 reason guiding him, nothing but caprice for a conscience. 
 
 In short, here is no formulated faith at all in Shak- 
 spere. Why have any faith ? What is faith ? He does not 
 know the meaning of it. The world is rich ; life is full. If 
 there is a twist and a contradiction in things, why, come 
 forward, imagination ; I will build me a better world. Down 
 with care and dismal thought and death ; this is May-time ; 
 let us go forth into the greenwood and do our observance. 
 Such seems the final utterance of this dream : no belief 
 formulated, and, if the logical result should be drawn, — 
 though he has not had time to draw it, of course, — 
 nothing but a Puck and an Oberon at the helm of things, 
 the one tricksy by nature, the other peevish or smiling as 
 the humour takes him — in short, chance regnant. 
 
 But here life arises, puts out a stern finger, and says 
 to our young Shakspere : " Answer me these questions 
 straightway: What is death, and why is it ? How comes it 
 that the Omnipotent allows such crimes as the murder of 
 Denmark's king by the wife of his bosom ? What is the 
 ministry of revenge in this life ? How far may a man pay off 
 murder with murder ? What is duty to a time out of joint ? 
 What is love, what is religion, what is the soul, what is the
 
 264 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 grave ? Answer me ! The truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth." And what answers Hamlet? 
 From beginnnig to end he never really makes up his mind. 
 Hamlet is morally an interrogation-point. He answers 
 ' life's question by asking another question : Ought I to do 
 this or that ? To be or not to be ? Shall I believe this Ghost 
 or doubt him? Shall 1 stab the King or not stab him ? Shall I 
 be insane or shall I not be insane ? Ought I to avoid this 
 awful mission of setting right a disjointed time, or accept 
 it ? ^ Thus the real thrusts at Hamlet, and Hamlet 
 thrusts not back, but leaps aside. Perhaps, with all the 
 floods of Hamlet commentary and Hamlet literature, this 
 absolute lack of belief, combined with the yearning belief that 
 he does believe^ in Hamlet, has never been properly in- 
 sisted on. Permit me to call your attention to a very 
 clear and striking instance of it. Let us analyse Hamlet's 
 thought in the soliloquy, and then lay it alongside his 
 thought at a very important moment only a little while 
 afterward. First, he is pondering the question of the 
 after-death — to be or not to be ? And the outcome of his 
 pondering is simply that we do not and cannot know what 
 comes after death ; that that absolute and inexorable 
 
 1 The French proverb says Q^ui parte thought. The proverb means the 
 
 //i/f,/)cr/^^/7/;f (Who bears a sword, peace of defeat, Christ's utterance 
 
 bears peace). But it is in a very the peace of victory. And compare 
 
 different sense that Christ antici- with either of these the cowardly 
 
 pated this saying when he declares, Hamlet's cry : " The time is out of 
 
 I comenot to bringpeace, but a sword, joint: O cursed spite. That ever I 
 
 The proverb refers to that peace was born to set it right ! " Cf. old 
 
 which comes from dread of one's Gabriel Harvey's saying: "It is 
 
 neighbour's sword, Christ to that enough for one, yea, for the best one, 
 
 which results from struggle against to carry the burthen of his own 
 
 old superstition and final emergence transgressions and errors. " 
 into the serenity of higher planes of
 
 / 
 
 The Tragicall Hiftoric of 
 
 HAMLET 
 
 Prince of Denmarke, ' 
 
 riling cn/t^ iien\ 
 Enter trfo Qentinth. J '^niiiruc: 
 
 
 J 
 
 .':S' 
 
 Tand: who b that? 
 Tis,L 
 
 1. .Oyou^onaemoft carefully vpon your watch, 
 I 2. Andifyounicetc/I/4rctf//«/and//ffrrf/«?, 
 
 [ • The partncrrofmyw^Uch, bid them make hade. 
 
 5 • 1. 1 will : Sec who goes there. 
 
 ( Snter Horntio and MurctHHt, 
 
 \ Her. Friends to this ground. 
 
 \ ■ M^r. And Icegemen to the Dane, 
 
 \ O farewell honed fouldier , who hath relccucd you? 
 
 I I . Bdirndrdo hath my place, giue you good night. 
 
 f Mar. Holla, Bamardo. 
 
 1* Say, is Hsratio there? 
 ^' Hor. Apccccofhim. 
 
 ! 2. WeIco:ne Hordtia^ welcome good M4reeUfU^ 
 
 AiAr, , What hath this thing appcar'd againe to night 
 
 2. I haucfcenc nothing. 
 
 May. Hortuio faycs tis but our fantafic, " 
 And wil not let beliefe take hold of him. 
 Touching this dreaded fight twice feenc by vr> 
 
 B . • There- 
 
 i 
 
 First page of Original Edition of " Hamlet "
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 265 
 
 ignorance is the very respect that makes calamity of so long 
 life, as against suicide which could end it : 
 
 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely. 
 The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes. 
 When he himself might his quietus make 
 With a bare bodkin ? who would these fardels bear. 
 To grunt and sweat under a weary life. 
 But that the dread of something 
 
 (something — what we know not) 
 
 after death. 
 The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will. 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 Than fly to others that we know not of? 
 
 But in a httle while we find that Hamlet does not really 
 believe we are so ignorant of what is to happen after death : 
 we find that death is so far from being an undiscovered 
 country to him that he really believes, or believes he be- 
 lieves, that we know all about it. For look what he pres- 
 ently does, and argues. The 'To be soliloquy is in Act III, 
 Scene I ; presently in Scene III, that is, only two scenes 
 farther on in the same act, Hamlet, on the way to his 
 mother for that dreadful interview, comes unawares behind 
 the guilty King, who is kneeling at his prayers. If Ham- 
 let ever desired to put this monster out of the way, now is 
 the time : but he does not stab him ; and why ? Why, 
 because, as he alleges, of a perfectly clear conviction as to 
 what will happen to the King after deaths a point which a 
 moment ago he said neither he nor any other man had or
 
 266 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 could have any clear convictions on at all. Hear him, 
 with the soliloquy in your mind. As Hamlet, pacing along 
 the corridor towards his mother's room, suddenly finds the 
 King there praying, his back turned to Hamlet, absorbed, 
 unconscious of an enemy, defenceless, the thought rushes 
 over him and stops him like a shot, kill him now. Now, 
 he says, 
 
 might I do it pat, now he is praying; 
 And now I'll do't : and so he goes to heaven : 
 And so am I reveng'd ? That would be scann'd : 
 A villain kills my father ; and for that, 
 I, his sole son, do this same villain send 
 To heaven. 
 
 Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. 
 . . . And am I then reveng'd. 
 To take him in the purging of his soul, 
 When he is fit and season'd for his passage ? 
 
 (That is, in saying his prayers.) 
 No. 
 
 Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid bent : 
 When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage, . . . 
 At gaming, swearing, or about some act 
 That has no relish of salvation in't ; 
 Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven 
 And that his soul may be as damn'd and black 
 As hell, whereto it goes. 
 
 Just now death was an undiscovered country ; we knew 
 and could know nothing of what happens in it : now we 
 know all about it; we know heaven and hell; we know 
 that if a villain be killed while he is saying his prayers he 
 will go to heaven, and that if he be killed while he is 
 asleep he will go to hell; and I Hamlet believe that I 
 believe this, and so I will not take this opportunity for 
 revenge. Nay, how absurd is Hamlet's undiscovered
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 267 
 
 country from which no traveller returns, when even 
 now the ghost of his father, who had travelled beyond 
 death, returns^ and discovers to Hamlet how he is doomed 
 to walk for a certain time, and so on ! Thus we see that 
 the key to Hamlet's character is that half-belief which 
 does not know that it believes, but only believes that it 
 believes, and so twists its belief from moment to moment 
 to suit its mood, and hence a thousand inconsistencies. 
 This shifting the belief to suit the desire, this half-belief 
 which is worse than no belief, seems wonderfully charac- 
 teristic of our present age, and well may it be called the 
 Hamlet age. I do not know how I can better illustrate 
 this curious and puzzling state, which is so characteristic of 
 much that we flatter as belief, than by recalling an incident 
 which occurred a short time ago, and which seemed to me 
 to illustrate a whole belief, the opposite of Hamlet's half- 
 belief, in a most admirable manner. Four or five years 
 ago I happened to be in St. Augustine when a party of 
 Indians arrived who had been captured in the West and 
 sent to this far-away place by the government, for con- 
 finement as notorious disturbers of the peace on our 
 Western frontier. When these Indians left the cars at 
 the station, I observed that one of them was very ill, and 
 that another was nursing the sick man. I was greatly im- 
 pressed with the tenderness of the rude nurse, and with 
 the evident love which underlay his ministrations. The 
 sick Indian was sent to the hospital, and his friend, who I 
 afterwards learned was his cousin, was allowed to go with 
 him and nurse him. On the next night the sick one 
 grew worse, and was told that he must presently die. 
 Soon afterward he called to his cousin to hand him his 
 bundle from under his cot ; fumbling in it, he drew out a 
 knife which he had secreted there, and, while h'is cousin 
 was tenderly leaning over him, he suddenly plunged the
 
 268 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 open blade into his cousin's breast. The feebleness of 
 death was upon him, and the wound was slight; and 
 presently, when the commotion over this singular act had 
 subsided, the hospital people asked the dying Indian what 
 conceivable reason he could have for desiring to murder 
 his best friend in such a manner. He replied : " I am going 
 to the Happy Hunting Grounds; I wished to kill him, 
 that he might go with me : I love him so that I cannot 
 part with him." 
 
 No undiscovered country here ; and this rude whole 
 faith is a good foil to set off Hamlet's cultivated half-faith. 
 In short, the attitude of man towards the supernatural in 
 Hamlet is that of practical doubt underlying a belief that 
 he believes : the most wretched and perplexing of all con- 
 ditions. Even when the Ghost comes from the undis- 
 covered country to give him light, he never quite knows 
 whether to doubt the Ghost or not, in the midst of all his 
 plots based on the Ghost's information. 
 
 But if we go on to see how this condition of mind as 
 to the supernatural has arranged itself by 1610, we are 
 met with a faith as fine and clear as the Indian's, and as 
 intelligent as the Indian's was ignorant. In The 'Tempest 
 there is a Providence indeed. We find Him shining, here 
 and there, all through. In Act I, Scene II, when Pros- 
 pero has been telling Miranda how he, and she, a pitiful 
 infant, were put into the open boat and turned out to the 
 wild sea, Miranda says : 
 
 O the heavens ! 
 What foul play had we, that we came from thence ? 
 Or blessed was't we did ? 
 
 Prospero replies: 
 
 Both, both, my girl : 
 By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence ; 
 But blessedly holp hither.
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 269 
 
 Acknowledging, of course, that there is One who blessedly 
 helps. 
 
 Again, we have it In terms. Presently, after hearing 
 the tremendous story of their voyage in the open boat, 
 Miranda cries : 
 
 How came we ashore ? 
 and Prospero answers : 
 
 By Providence divine. 
 
 More than that, the character of this Providence is very 
 different from any that has before appeared. In Hamlet 
 Piovidence is sending a ghost back out of the jaws of 
 darkness, for what purpose? To organise Revenge. In 
 The 'Tempest Providence sends supernatural powers to 
 Prospero to organise Forgiveness. Now^ cries Hamlet, 
 when he finds the King in his power, now might I stab 
 him pat. But listen to Ariel and Prospero talking in the 
 first scene of the fifth act of T'he Tempest. The charms 
 have all worked, things gather to a head, Prospero's ene- 
 mies are all in his power, he could stab them all at one 
 stroke if he liked, and they are not saying their prayers, 
 either. But Ariel, darting up and reporting these matters, 
 savs : 
 
 If you now beheld them, your affections 
 Would become tender. 
 
 Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit ? 
 
 Ariel. Mine would, sir, were I human. 
 
 Prospero. And mine shall. . . . 
 
 Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, 
 Yet . . . 
 
 the rarer action is
 
 270 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent, 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 Not a frown further. 
 
 And so, when the wondering wrecked company are led in 
 by Ariel, after a while Prospero says : 
 
 For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother 
 Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive 
 Thy rankest fault, — all of them. 
 
 And it is a most heavenly touch of the fulness of this 
 pardon when presently, stricken with overwhelming com- 
 punction as he looks into the cell and sees Ferdinand and 
 Miranda playing chess, the brother laments : 
 
 But, O, how oddly will it sound that I 
 Must ask my child forgiveness ! 
 
 and Prospero quickly interrupts : 
 
 There, sir, stop : 
 Let us not burden our remembrance with 
 A heaviness that's gone. 
 
 Which is almost like a paraphrase of St. Paul's Forgetting 
 what is behind, let us press forward, ^nd so forth. And so 
 Prospero's art and Prospero's forgiveness rise above the 
 most galling oppositions of life, and we see that Shakspere 
 has found out moral exaltation to be the secret of manag- 
 ing all the moral antagonisms of existence. How changed 
 is the attitude of man towards the supernatural, here, from 
 what it was in the dream play of the Midsummer Night, 
 and in the real play of Hamlet! In the first, man is the 
 sport of chance ; in the second, man knows not what is 
 above ; in the third, repentance, forgiveness, and Provi- 
 dence rise like stars out of the dark of Hamlet.
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 271 
 
 In the next two lectures we will trace those cunning 
 and often amusing revelations of the attitude of man to- 
 wards his fellow-man and towards nature proper which will 
 complete our examination of these plays. Meantime let 
 me close this lecture with remarking that it is instructive to 
 observe from a different point of view the three phases of 
 the supernatural presented by these plays. The supernat- 
 ural, you see, is in all these plays. In Midsummer Night's 
 Dream it is a flippant Oberon ; in Hamlet it is a ghost ; - 
 here in 'Tempest it is in the first place God, and in the sec- 
 ond place man made in God's image controlling the pucks 
 and ghosts who formerly controlled him. Puck, the bright 
 trickster, changes to Ariel, the bright minister, through the 
 intermediate ghost, the dark messenger. Thus the Ideal 
 Period has come round by a wonderful cyclus to be simply 
 the Dream Period reinformed with a new youth, and 
 Shakspere's age, with its fairy-tale, The Tempest^ is but a 
 new and immortally fine reconstruction of his youth, with 
 its fairy-tale, the Dream. I cannot think of the manner 
 in which this glimmering Puck melts into this sombre 
 ghost, and this ghost into the radiant Ariel, without re- 
 calling a series of ideas which I found some years ago 
 in a long-forgotten essay of Bulwer's. He was draw- 
 ing a comparison between the different appearances things 
 would present to us if slight changes were made in the 
 powers of our sense of sight ; and these changes strikingly 
 represent the actual changes in views of things which we 
 have here been tracing as between Shakspere's youth and his 
 ripeness. Said Bulwer, in substance : Our present eyesight 
 takes only the view which comes from the surface of things, 
 whence the ray of light glances and strikes our retina. 
 What we see, therefore, under present conditions, is a sort 
 of film, or dreamy covering of things. That is, what we 
 call a beautiful face really applies only to the colours and
 
 272 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 outlines of the skin which covers the actual framework of 
 the face. Now, before going on, let us analogise this to 
 the state of the young man's eyes, the state of Shakspere's 
 eyes in the Midsummer Night's Dream^ seeing only the sur- 
 face of things, seeing things as in a dream, not seeing the 
 real at all, not realising anything. 
 
 But suppose, continued Bulwer, that by a slight change 
 the rays of light did not bound back from the surface, — 
 say from the skin of the face, — but penetrated beneath 
 that, and only bounded back from the muscles, nerves, 
 veins, and bones. What an inconceivably repulsive place 
 would the world become! In looking then^ior instance, 
 at our beautiful face, we would see only that reticulation of 
 nerves and veins and muscles which makes a medical plate 
 so horrible ; we would see the two holes of the skull for 
 nostrils ; we would see a ghastly grin instead of a captivat- 
 ing smile. 
 
 And here, again, before going further, let us analo- 
 gise this to the young man's first sight of the real in life, 
 that is, to our Shakspere's Hamlet period, when the for- 
 bidding network of death and murder and revenge and sin 
 and suffering starts out from underneath the smooth ex- 
 terior of life, as the network of veins and muscles and so 
 on starts out from the maiden's cheek to the more power- 
 ful vision. This Hamlet period is, indeed, just that in 
 which the rays of light begin to come to us, not from the 
 surface of things, but from the reality of things ; and we 
 see how our Shakspere is paralysed with horror at the 
 sight. 
 
 But Bulwer does not leave us in this condition. Sup- 
 pose again, he says, that our eyes should acquire an in- 
 finitely greater power, so that they should see not only the 
 underlying realities of things but should actually see the 
 purpose and reason of being and function of each thing along
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 273 
 
 with the thing itself. Suppose, to carry on the example, 
 that, along with the revolting network of muscles and veins 
 and bones in the human face, we should actually see the 
 functions of each one — how each part was beautifully co- 
 adapted with the other, how the muscle played and swelled 
 and contracted, how the generous blood ever leaped along 
 the artery with nutriment and built up the exquisite struc- 
 ture of the face, depositing this little atom here and this 
 there, and keeping up the form and contour of the flesh, 
 how the nerves thrilled with a sudden impulse that ran 
 into the sensorium and told of colour and of music, and so 
 on. Then, then, if we saw along with these things their 
 working and their final end and purpose, the world which 
 a moment before was hideous as the real would now be- 
 come infinitely beautiful as the ideal. 
 
 And so it became to Shakspere : bright but unreal in 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, when he saw only the external ; 
 hideous in Hamlet, when he saw only the real ; perfectly 
 beautiful in T'empest, when he saw all things together, all 
 things related to a common purpose, nothing common or 
 unclean, because everything was dignified by its functional 
 relation to that purpose — in short, when he saw the world 
 in its ideal. And, finally, I cannot better sum up the re- 
 lations of these three plays than by calling your attention 
 to their epilogues from the point of view of our present 
 status. 
 
 At the end of the Midsummer Night's Dream exeunt 
 Oberon, Titania, and their train, and Puck concludes all 
 with this epilogue : 
 
 If we shadows have offended, 
 Think but this, and all is mended. 
 That you have but slumber'd here, 
 While these visions did appear.
 
 274 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 And this weak and idle theme, 
 No more yielding but a dream, 
 Gentles, do not reprehend : 
 If you pardon, we will mend. 
 And, as I'm an honest Puck, 
 If we have unearned luck. 
 Now to scape the serpent's tongue. 
 We will make amends ere long ; 
 Else the Puck a liar call : 
 So, good night unto you all. 
 Give me your hands, 
 
 (that is, the applause of your hands) 
 
 if we be friends. 
 And Robin shall restore amends. 
 
 Here we have — nothing : fit end of a dream. 
 
 When we come to Hamlet^ there is no set epilogue, 
 but they are to bury Hamlet, and to shoot over his grave 
 as a tribute to his soldierhood ; and the stage-direction is, 
 Exeunt, bearing ojfthe bodies : after which a peal of ordnance 
 is shot off. So the epilogue is really a peal of guns, and 
 truly to this lamentable play there could be no fitter 
 epilogue than these sullen shots from behind the curtain, 
 like inarticulate cries from beyond the grave. 
 
 But, lastly, to T'he Tempest we have a set epilogue ; and 
 such a farewell as it is ! 
 
 Bearing in mind the flippant departure of Puck from 
 the stage, and remembering how likely it is that either 
 'J'he 'Tempest was Shakspere's last play, or that he thought 
 it would be, we cannot listen unmoved to the passionate 
 human appeal of Shakspere in this epilogue as a personal 
 supplication from the master to his fellow-men whom he 
 had so long entertained with his art. The stage-direc- 
 tion is :
 
 MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 275 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 Spoken by Prospero 
 
 Now my charms are all o'erthrown, 
 And what strength I have's mine own, 
 Which is most faint : 
 
 (Not promising, as in Midsummer Night's Dream, to do 
 better next time if you will but pardon the faults of this.) 
 
 now, 'tis true, 
 I must be here confin'd by you, 
 Or sent to Naples. Let me not. 
 Since I have my dukedom got, 
 And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell 
 In this bare island by your spell ; 
 But release me from my bands 
 With the help of your good hands: 
 Gentle breath of yours my sails 
 Must fill, or else my project fails. 
 Which was to please. Now I want 
 Spirits to enforce, art to enchant ; 
 And my ending is despair. 
 Unless I be reliev'd by prayer. 
 Which pierces so, that it assaults 
 Mercy itself, and frees all faults. 
 As you from crimes would pardon'd be. 
 Let your indulgence set me free.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN AS SHOWN IN 
 
 "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," -HAMLET," 
 
 AND "THE TEMPEST" 
 
 N the last lecture we examined these 
 three plays with reference to the ideas 
 of man's relations to the supernatural 
 which appear in the lines and between 
 the lines of them. We found such a 
 clear and notable advance from the 
 conscienceless Pucks and Oberons and 
 tricksy chances which rule the world 
 in A Midsummer Night's Drea?n, through the weak and 
 ineffective belief of belief in Hamlet, to the large and clear- 
 eyed reliance upon the goodness and the ultimate purpose 
 of things in T^he 'Tempest, as seems to argue that infinite 
 widening of Shakspere's spiritual range and scope which 
 lands him here fairly in that wished-for state of every fer- 
 vent artist — the state which beholds with unfilmy and 
 unglozing eye all the contradictions of this life, but which 
 is nevertheless not compelled by them to look upon life 
 as a mere Midsummer Night's Dream of grotesque mis- 
 haps and crisscrosses and absurdities ; but regards it more 
 as a Tempest raised by a conscientious power for a gentle 
 
 276
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 277 
 
 purpose, and guided by that power to an end which de- 
 velopes forgiveness, large behaviour, love, and all the 
 better qualities of the Prosperos, the Alonsos, the An- 
 tonios and the Sebastians of this world. We are now to 
 study these same plays for the purpose of seeing whether 
 they show any corresponding enlargement in Shakspere's 
 conceptions of man's relations to his fellow-men and of 
 man's relations to physical nature. 
 
 And first, of man's relations to his fellow-men. These 
 plays are so exuberantly filled with indications of Shak- 
 spere's greatly widening perceptions upon this matter as 
 he successively emerged from the Dream Period and the 
 Hamlet Period that I scarcely know when I have ever 
 been more perplexed by the embarrassment of riches than 
 in selecting the special matters to which I might most 
 profitably ask your notice. The immense enlargement of 
 Shakspere's horizon as to the right behaviour of man 
 towards man in T^he "Tem-pest as compared with A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream might be developed from so many 
 texts out of these plays, and from as many points of com- 
 parative view, as to fill many volumes. But only men- 
 tioning this embarrassment of riches as explaining the 
 very limited presentation which can be made in any one 
 lecture — I have determined to confine the investigation 
 here to the three very interesting plays-within-plays, or 
 anti-masques, which appear in these three works of Shak- 
 spere's. You all remember, of course, that, framed in all 
 the gorgeous and grotesque and filmy tracery of this 
 dream, we have the play of Pyramus and Thisbe within 
 the play of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then we have 
 the terrible play of the murderer pouring poison into 
 the King's ear and getting the love of his wife, acted 
 before Hamlet's uncle and mother — the play which, 
 when the King asks, What do you call this play ? Hamlet
 
 278 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 answers, T^he Mouse-trap. And finally we have that ex- 
 quisite masque of the gods — Juno and Ceres and their 
 train — which the wise and potent Prospero arrays before 
 his two young lovers, Ferdinand and Miranda. Now 
 note by way of a preliminary outline the aim, or ground- 
 motive, of each of these anti-masques. Here we have 
 Bottom and Snug the joiner and Starveling the tailor 
 and the other clowns performing the tedious-brief tragical 
 comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe to grace the wedding of 
 Theseus and Hippolyta, and the manner in which the 
 poetic speeches of the actors travesty real speeches shows 
 clearly that Shakspere is having his good-humoured laugh 
 at somebody ; so that we may say the ostensible motive 
 of the anti-masque is a light and playful amusement for a 
 great warrior and his bride, while the underlying thought 
 is a gentle fun over somebody's play-writing ; that is to 
 say, the ground-motive is Ridicule. 
 
 Here in Hamlet the motive of the anti-masque is 
 quite as clear : it is to entrap the King's conscience into a 
 clear betrayal of his guilt in murdering his brother and 
 usurping Denmark ; that is to say, the ground-motive of 
 this anti-masque is Revenge. Here, lastly, in l^he 'Tempesty 
 Prospero, a student of nature, a physicist, — who is never- 
 theless also a man with man's delights and passions, and 
 an artist, — brings about the anti-masque of Juno and 
 Ceres in grateful and exuberant delight over the happy 
 issues of his own working, before the eyes of the two 
 whom he most loves, to bless their marriage ; in short, the 
 underlying motive here is Blessing. We may then write 
 Ridicule, Revenge, Blessing as mnemonic words which 
 embody the prominent ideas that remain when we strip 
 away the unessential accessories of these three anti- 
 masques. 
 
 But now let us look a little more closely at these
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 279 
 
 plays-within-plays, and put some flesh upon the bones of 
 this outline. In considering the anti-masque o^ Py ramus 
 and Thisbej here, I have thought that perhaps I could 
 make this necessarily dry analysis somewhat more interest- 
 ing to you by hinging it upon an inquiry as to who was 
 the person satirised — if we may use so harsh a term for 
 such hilarious ridicule as this — in the figure of Bottom, 
 the Ass, and in the thunderous lines of Pyramus and 
 Thisbe. It so happens that since the last lecture in which 
 we were comparing these plays, in recalling certain pas- 
 sages from one of Gabriel Harvey's letters written in 
 1592, and from a work of Robert Greene's a little earlier, 
 I was struck with the reemergence in my mind of several 
 hints or thoughts from those passages as I read again this 
 mock-play of Pyramus and 'Thisbe; and with my mind 
 thus directed I eagerly took up a search which has quite 
 satisfied me that in this figure of Bottom, the Ass, and of 
 Snug, the joiner, and in these absurd speeches of Pyramus 
 and Thisbe, Shakspere is laughing at the one man whom 
 history has ever acquainted us with as his enemy — I 
 mean at Robert Greene. The instant I started in this 
 direction, every moment yielded a fresh evidence. In 
 arraying some of these evidences before you, as I now 
 proceed to do, we shall find at every step glimpse after 
 glimpse upon Shakspere's ideas of the proper behaviour of 
 man to his fellow-man — which is the final aim of our 
 research to-day. 
 
 Permit me to recall to you two very famous liter- 
 ary quarrels of Shakspere's time, which will, I think, put 
 us at the very status of thought and frame of mind in 
 which Shakspere wrote the Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 One of these quarrels shows us the figures of Robert 
 Greene, Shakspere, and Henry Chettle in certain relations 
 to each other ; the other shows us Robert Greene, Shak-
 
 28o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 spere, and Gabriel Harvey in certain relations to each 
 other. 
 
 Sometime in the autumn of the year 1592, Henry 
 Chettle, acting as Hterary executor of the then widely cele- 
 brated and popular dramatist Robert Greene, who was just 
 dead, published a work of the latter's called Greene s Groats- 
 worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance^ to which 
 I have already called your attention. It is in this work, 
 you remember, that the sentence occurs in which Greene 
 makes his famous fling at Shakspere. Let me, however, 
 read that sentence exactly as it occurs, and with it a word 
 or two from its neighbouring sentences, which I think we 
 will presently find quite clearly working in Shakspere's 
 mind as he wrote the Pyramus and Thisbe of Midsummer 
 Night's Dream. Greene is going on to abuse several con- 
 temporary writers. " Yes," says he, " trust them not ; for 
 there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that 
 with his I'ygers heart wrapt in a Players hide^ supposes he is 
 as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of 
 you ; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum^ is in his 
 owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." I need 
 not recall to you, I am sure, the well-known circumstances 
 which point to Shakspere as the person Greene is here 
 abusing : the word Shake-scene, the evident parody in the 
 line Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide of a line in the 
 play of King Henry Vly third part, and so on. But now, 
 remembering simply as catchwords for future use this 
 line which I have here written, let us gather one or two 
 more catchwords — whose use we will presently see, 
 from the context. Greene goes on to say, presently : " In 
 this I might insert two more, that both have writ against 
 these buckram Gentlemen : but let their owne works serve 
 to witnesse against their owne wickednesse, if they persever 
 to maintaine any more suche peasants. For other new
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 281 
 
 commers I leave them to the mercy of these painted mon- 
 sters^ who (I doubt not) will drive the best minded to 
 despise them : for the rest, it skils not though they make 
 a jeast at them." From this keep the catchwords 
 "peasants," "painted monsters," and "jeast." Now, 
 simply noticing on the way that we never hear a word 
 from Shakspere in reply to this bitter invective of Greene's, 
 let us pass on to the letter of Gabriel Harvey's which I 
 just now mentioned. Before Greene — evidently a trucu- 
 lent fellow — had thus attacked Shakspere, he had in- 
 volved himself in a fierce quarrel with Gabriel Harvey. 
 (Harvey, I may mention, was a less-known but very 
 learned writer of this time, the intimate friend of Spenser 
 and Sir Philip Sidney.) In a work called A Snip for an 
 Upstart Courtier^ Greene had very vulgarly libelled Har- 
 vey's ancestry. But Harvey was not so controlled as 
 Shakspere : he broke forth in a public reply to Greene's 
 insult. Presently Thomas Nash became involved in the 
 quarrel on Greene's side, and the result was a considerable 
 body of pamphlets filled with the most wonderful abuse,^ 
 but, also, luckily for modern scholars, with many instruc- 
 tive allusions which greatly add to our knowledge of con- 
 temporary writers. 
 
 It was in the course of this quarrel between Greene, 
 Nash, and Harvey, which lingered on even after Greene 
 was dead, that Harvey published a series of four pamphlets 
 which he called FOURE LETTERS, and certaine Sonnets ; 
 especially touching ROBERT GREENE, and other parties, by 
 him abused. 
 
 1 Harvey declares Greene " a trivial no consideration but pure Nashery." 
 
 and triobular author for knaves and But it is impossible to get an idea of 
 
 fools"; and again he breaks forth : the extraordinary personal vilifica- 
 
 *' No honesty, but pure Scogginism ; tion without reading the pamphlets 
 
 no religion, but precise Marlowism ; themselves.
 
 282 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 It is not necessary to do more than remind you that 
 these four letters, touching, as they say, Robert Greene and 
 certain parties by him abused, would surely prove interest- 
 ing reading to Shakspere, who was one of those very 
 parties, who was a rising young dramatist now beginning 
 to win some of that fame which the popular Robert 
 Greene had just yielded up with his breath, and who, finally, 
 was too dignified to engage in the war of words, how- 
 ever keenly he might feel the provocation. The letters, 
 I say, must have been interesting matter for young Shak- 
 spere's eyes ; and, with this thought in your minds, I now 
 ask your attention to a passage or two in a couple of 
 Harvey's letters which will materially increase our list of 
 catchwords and of clue-ideas to be presently traced through 
 the tangles of Pyramus and Thisbe. 
 
 For example, in Harvey's third letter he calls Greene 
 " that terrible Thundersmith of termes," which please add 
 to your list. Again, in another letter Harvey quotes 
 that most pathetic note of Robert Greene's to his poor 
 abandoned wife : 
 
 Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soul's 
 
 rest, that thou wilt see this man paid : for if he and his wife had 
 
 not succoured me, I had died in the streets. 
 
 Robert Greene. 
 
 Here is the idea of Greene's beggary, and presently we shall 
 see reason for putting this with two expressions which we 
 find in Harvey's third letter, where in one place we find 
 him calling Greene a " Minion of the Muses," and in an- 
 other place a " beggar." 
 
 Again, at a certain point of one of Harvey's letters he 
 runs off into a most wonderful learned excursus upon 
 asses : Balaam's ass, the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and an 
 astonishing number of other famous beasts of the ass tribe
 
 The Only Known Portrait of Thomas Nash
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 283 
 
 — mentioning almost every literary ass known to us except 
 " bully Bottom." Again, the idea of satirising living persons 
 in comedy occurs in that one of Harvey's pamphlets in 
 this quarrel called Pierce's Supererogation^ where he cries, 
 " Nay, if you shake the painted scabbard at me " (the 
 painted scabbard being here a symbol of the satiric lam- 
 poon in comedy) " I have done." 
 
 Finally, an expression in Harvey's third letter connects 
 itself with a positive clue which lights up our whole path 
 very clearly. He is describing the great popularity of 
 Greene : Greene, he says, is " freshly current " ; and he 
 adds very prettily : " Even Guicciardini s silver history, and 
 Arista's golden cantos, grow out of request : and the 
 Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia is not green enough . . . 
 but they must have Greene's Arcadia. . . . O straunge 
 fancies ! O monstrous new-fanglednesse I " 
 
 And now let us see what Greene's Arcadia will yield 
 us. This work of Greene's — one of the most popular of 
 that series of pastorals which every one remembers as par- 
 ticularly represented by Sir Philip Sidney's youthful pro- 
 duction. The Countess of Pembroke' s Arcadia^ and by Spen- 
 ser's eclogues — was called Menaphon or Arcadia. It has 
 the usual rout of shepherds and shepherdesses and green 
 fields and love-talk, together with more than the usual 
 complement — as it seemed to me after reading it some 
 years ago — of the most absurd and silly plots and situa- 
 tions and speeches and songs that ever made a sensible per- 
 son laugh. But now, with this general idea of Greene's 
 Arcadia^ let me call attention to one special passage of it 
 which is certainly absurd enough, but is here purposely 
 absurd ; at least, Greene is endeavouring to give a realistic 
 picture of a very rude shepherd swain singing his senti- 
 ments to a very rude shepherdess. This is called the 
 Eclogue of Carmela and Doron : and we shall presently
 
 o84 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 see how even Shakspere's clown's travesty of it contrasts in 
 delicacy and height with these wretched low-pitched, pal- 
 pable-gross ideas. Doron speaks, in Greene's eclogue : 
 
 Carmela dear, even as the golden ball 
 That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes, 
 When cherries' juice is jumbled therewithal ; 
 Thy breath is like the steam of Apple-pies. 
 
 Thy lips resemble two cucumbers fair ; 
 Thy teeth like to the tusks of fattest swine; 
 Thy speech is like the thunder in the air; 
 Would God thy toes, thy lips, and all were mine. 
 
 Now to apply this series of clue-ideas and catchwords. 
 
 Remembering the situation, — Shakspere abused by 
 
 Greene, but not replying ; Harvey abused by Greene, and 
 
 replying in pamphlets which Shakspere must have read, 
 
 and one of which, indeed, probably refers to Shakspere in 
 
 very charming terms, — fancy Shakspere, in this status of 
 
 things, setting to work at the Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 Here, in the first place, we have a perfectly solid basis to 
 
 build on in the evidence this verse affords that Shakspere 
 
 had Greene in his mind, in some connection, as he was 
 
 writing Py ramus and This be. For compare with Doron s 
 
 Eclogue, here, Thisbe's piteous lament over Pyramus as 
 
 she comes and finds him slain by the lion. Thus she 
 
 moans : 
 
 These lily lips, 
 
 This cherry nose. 
 These yellow cowslip cheeks, 
 
 Are gone, are gone : 
 
 Lovers, make moan : 
 His eyes were green as leeks. 
 
 Here we have (i) not only the general similarity of ludi- 
 crous comparisons of rude lovers, but (2) the special simi-
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 285 
 
 larlty of making those comparisons take the particular 
 direction of fruits and vegetables, and (3) the iden- 
 tity of terms in the cherry which typifies the beautiful 
 nose of Shakspere's Pyramus and stains the lovely eyes 
 of Greene's Carmela. I think no reasonable doubt 
 remains that here we have come clearly upon the idea 
 of Greene in Shakspere's mind as he is writing Pyramus 
 and Thisbe. 
 
 And now, if we take this hint and hold it like the 
 point of a magnet among all these iron-filings of hints 
 which I have scattered here, we find them instantly clus- 
 tering about it into a very palpable lump of probabilities. 
 For example, take this idea, here, of the Tygers heart 
 wrapt in a Players hide, Greene's own contemptuous allu- 
 sion to Shakspere as a plagiarist, and see how exquisitely 
 and gaily Shakspere turns the idea upside down — as 
 natural for a dream — and throws back this hide over 
 Greene's head. For listen to Bottom and his captivating 
 asses discussing, not a tiger's heart in a player's hide, but 
 a player's heart in a lion's hide. 
 
 Bottom. Masters, you ought to consider with yourselves : to 
 bring in — God shield us! — a lion among ladies is a most dread- 
 ful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion 
 living ; and we ought to look to 't. 
 
 Snout. Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion. 
 
 Bottom. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must 
 be seen through the lion's neck : and he himself must speak 
 through, saying thus, or to the same defect, — ' Ladies,' — or 
 'Fair ladies, — I would wish you,' — or 'I would request you,' — 
 or 'I would entreat you, — not to fear, not to tremble: my life 
 for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of 
 my life : no, I am no such thing ; I am a man as other men are '; 
 and there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly he 
 is Snug the joiner.
 
 286 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 All we want, of course, here is a suggestion, not a precise 
 allegory. Shakspere never makes a precise allegory: that 
 is for the more creeping wits of time ; any man of average 
 cleverness can take a given allegorical scheme or modus, 
 run it on through a lot of details, and work it out into 
 stiff and wooden figures — the body, for instance, as a 
 commonwealth with members, etc.; but Shakspere, while 
 he always builds upon the real, while he always takes from 
 this and that actual model, while he always keeps one foot 
 on the earth, so that, as I radically believe, there is not a 
 line nor a feature in his whole works for which he could 
 not give a good substantial sanction and original in actual 
 nature as hint or suggestion — while, I say, he always 
 builds so, he never builds woodenly or angularly, he never 
 tries to make a simile stand on four legs, he never carries 
 out a suggestion to the small and cloying point of alle- 
 gory or of exact opposition. Just glancing, here, at the 
 exact manner in which this shows us the same artistic 
 management with that of the oppositions of verse which I 
 have heretofore presented to you, let us now return to 
 say again that Shakspere's figure, here, of Snug, a player 
 in a lion's hide, is quite as near to Greene's figure of a 
 tiger's heart in a player's hide as we would ever expect 
 Shakspere to come. And so let us go on to see how all 
 these items begin now to come about the idea that Shak- 
 spere is gently satirising Greene. Here we have the word 
 " peasants "; and it occurs near this line of Greene's in 
 such a way as naturally enough to make it possible that a 
 mere vague untraced association has made Shakspere — 
 whom Greene here calls 2. peasant — take the group of 
 Athenian peasants and make them players and put one of 
 those peasant players in a lion's hide. 
 
 Again, here is Greene's "painted monster'' \ and that 
 is not only what Bottom is, but we find Puck using the
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 287 
 
 word where he tells his master Oberon, in Act III, Scene 
 II, " My mistress with a monster is in love." 
 
 Again, here is Greene's idea of making a jest at them, 
 and Shakspere is taking the hint and making the jest at 
 them. 
 
 Again, — and we must fancy all the time, here, that 
 Shakspere has been reading these things of Greene's and 
 these letters of Harvey's, and that just those detached 
 words or ideas are now floating up to him out of them 
 which remain, to every one, after the main connection or 
 matter of anything read, perhaps carelessly and hastily, 
 has vanished away, — again, here is Harvey calling Greene 
 " that terrible Thundersmith of termes " ; and surely 
 Bottom is one in " The raging rocks," etc. {Midsummer 
 Night's Dream^ Act I, Scene II), or in 
 
 Approach, ye Furies fell ! 
 
 O Fates, come, come, 
 
 Cut thread and thrum ; 
 Quail, crush, conclude, and quell ! 1 
 
 Again, in Act V, Scene I, where Theseus is asking what 
 sports are toward to beguile the evening, in the list we 
 find a tableau or spectacle called 
 
 The thrice three Muses mourning for the death 
 Of Learnings late deceased in beggary. 
 
 And here we have Greene's letter, quoted by Harvey, 
 alluding to his own beggary ; Harvey's expression in his 
 letter, calling Greene " the Minion of the Muses " ; to 
 
 1 Cf. with the poetic bombast of of Harvey and Breton (in Brydges's 
 
 Pyramus and This be the prose ro- Ar chaic a) a.nd.o^'Lznch.dim^ % Letters 
 
 domontade of Holofernes and Don from Kenilworth, and of Master 
 
 Adriano de Armado; and compare Rhombus in Sidney's masque. The 
 
 with both the pedantic affectations Lady of the May.
 
 28i, SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 which we may add Greene's well-known pride in his own 
 learning — he was fond of calling himself Doclor Utriusque 
 Academic<£^ etc. 
 
 Again, when, in Act III, Scene I, Puck has done his 
 wondrous work upon Bottom in the brake, and they have 
 all run away at the apparition of Bottom translated, pres- 
 ently reenters Snout and cries, 
 
 O Bottom, thou art changed ! what do I see on thee ? 
 
 and Bottom replies. 
 What do you see ? you see an ass-head of your own, do you ? 
 
 we are introduced to that heartbreaking and immortal 
 ass whom Titania presently coys, and whom we cannot 
 help associating with Greene when, in the light of all these 
 suggestions, we find Harvey's curious suggestion of this, 
 that, and the other ass, particularly of Balaam's Ass re- 
 buking his master. 
 
 Again, we have the suggestion, in Harvey's letter, of 
 lampooning a rival in the " painted scabbard " passage I 
 quoted. And, finally, the propriety of making Greene 
 an ass who for a time wins the doting affection of the 
 world, as the ass wins Titania's, and then suddenly goes 
 out in neglect and scorn, as Bottom the Ass goes out of 
 Titania's favour when her eyes regain their normal condi- 
 tion : the propriety of this, I say, grows convincing when 
 we find here, in the same letter of Harvey's, and in prox- 
 imity to all these other hints which we have been tracing, 
 this vivid picture of Greene's popularity given by Harvey, 
 showing generally how everybody was reading him, and 
 particularly — to clinch all our conclusions together — 
 how everybody was reading that very Arcadia in which 
 occurs this Doron s Eclogue which we found Shakspere cer-
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN -89 
 
 tainly had in his mind, probably using it just to teach 
 these people how they might be rude and grotesque, and 
 still be decent and ideal. 
 
 I might multiply these hints with many resemblances, 
 if there were time. But perhaps I have given quite 
 enough to show that, in all probability, Shakspere, 
 throughout his anti-masque of Pyramus and Thisbe as 
 played by Bottom and Snout and Snug and the other 
 clowns, was having his little retaliatory laugh at his rival 
 Greene, who had abused him in the Groatsworth of Wit. 
 
 But now go on to this pitiful Hamlet Period and com- 
 pare the sportive anti-masque of Pyramus and Thisbe 
 with the grim Mouse-trap anti-masque of Hamlet to 
 ensnare the King. The underlying motive, you see, of the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream anti-masque is revenge in its 
 mildest form — the form of ridiculing an opponent. And 
 please observe that it is not at all necessary to this com- 
 parison which I am now making to accept my theory just 
 advanced, that Robert Greene is the particular person ridi- 
 culed ; that somebody is being ridiculed in these thunderous 
 terms of Pyramus and Thisbe, and these ludicrous realisms 
 of the plastered Wall holding up his fingers for a chink, 
 and so on, — one cannot but believe that Shakspere would 
 laugh at stage properties and other pitiful realistic devices, 
 — that somebody is being ridiculed, I say, probably no one 
 will deny. And all that my present line of comparison 
 requires is the change from this light, sportive, good- 
 natured, dreamy revenge — this ridicule — of the anti- 
 masque here in Midsummer Night's Dream to the 
 desperate horror of this Hamlet anti-masque. 
 
 But, not dwelling upon that, when we advance from 
 the vengeful anti-masque of Hamlet to the anti-masque 
 in The Tempest, we come out of the very smoke and brim- 
 stone of the pit into a large blue heaven of moral width
 
 290 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 and delight. Frospero has raised his Tempest ; he and 
 busy Ariel have brought this and that scattered strand of 
 circumstance together ; here is the grave and beautiful 
 Ferdinand adoring his daughter Miranda; the benefaction 
 of his Tempest is about to appear : and in the warm glow 
 and exaltation of his love he calls down the gods — mark 
 you, this is the man Prospero calling down Juno and 
 Ceres and Iris at his bidding to show their beneficent 
 glories and to shower their benevolent offerings for the 
 pleasure of his beloved. This anti-masque gives us man 
 in the culmination of his glory as toward his fellow-man. 
 He who calls down the gods to minister to his beloved, 
 this Prospero, is he who, having his enemies in his power, — 
 enemies far worse than the wordy Greene of this Dream 
 Period, enemies even more malignant than the abominable 
 King and Queen of the Hamlet Period, — having such 
 enemies in his power, has greatened beyond ridicule, has 
 enlarged beyond revenge, has learned the truth of true love, 
 the dignity of man toward his fellow, the wonder and 
 miracle of forgiveness — in fine, the true ideal behaviour and 
 relation of man to his fellow-man. 
 
 In the next lecture, which will conclude this course, the 
 relations of man to nature as shown in these plays will be 
 traced, and a summary proof offered as to the final out- 
 come of all this demonstration in these lectures, that the 
 technical and moral advance of Shakspere, which we have 
 followed up by so many clues from the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream to The Tempest^ is simply one whole ad- 
 vance, and that a less moral soul than Shakspere's would 
 have been equally incapable of either the artistic verse- 
 craft, the artistic drama-craft, or the artistic moral-craft 
 which we find in these late plays. 
 
 Meantime, lest you should fear that I have selected 
 these special plays because others would serve less well, 
 let me conclude this lecture by reading you a scene from
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 291 
 
 a less-known play of Shakspere's, in which an ideal of man's 
 relations to man, of man's proper behaviour to man, is 
 shown upon the same lofty plane as the Prospero ideal. 
 I refer to Scene II in Act III o{ Pericles. It is just at this 
 scene that the hand of Shakspere becomes apparent in this 
 play. Here in the noble figure of Cerimon he shows us 
 the man of science, the physician, moving about his home, 
 attending to his medical practice, reviving the weak, — 
 charitable, courteous, grave, energetic, at once the scien- 
 tific physician and the artistic physician. It is pleasant to 
 think that Shakspere got at least some features for this 
 picture of the great physician I am about to read from an 
 actual model. As I have already pointed out, in the year 
 1607 Dr. John Hall, who was a physician of great repute 
 in Stratford, and one of whose books, HalFs Cures^ still 
 remains to us, married Shakspere's daughter Susannah ; 
 and it may well be that this son-in-law furnished Shak- 
 spere with at least as much of a model as Shakspere ever 
 wanted for the basis of any conception. 
 
 To my judgment, there is nothing lovelier than this 
 scene in all Shakspere. The situation is this : Pericles, 
 Prince of Tyre, being in a foreign land in disguise on 
 account of circumstances which I need not take time to 
 relate, loves and marries the beautiful Thaisa, and they live 
 happily for a time. Presently Pericles has news that his 
 people call him home to be their governor, and sets sail 
 with Thaisa for his own Tyre. On the way, a great storm 
 arises off Ephesus, and, physically overcome with the ter- 
 rors of the tempest, Thaisa seems to die. The sailors de- 
 mand that she shall be thrown overboard immediately, 
 their superstition being that a dead body on board ship 
 provokes the storm to greater fury. So the sorrowing 
 Pericles has up a coffer, calked and bitumened, wraps the 
 seeming corpse tenderly in spices and rich robes, lays along- 
 side it a casket of jewels, and places upon all a paper stat-
 
 292 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 ing that this is the wife of Pericles, and that if the coffer 
 should be washed ashore, he who finds it shall give fair 
 burial to it and take the casket of jewels for his fee. 
 
 The coffer with this rich freight is cast into the sea, and 
 the ship sails on. 
 
 The scene now changes to Ephesus, and shows us a 
 room in the house of Cerimon, our doctor. And the rest 
 let these wonderful words of Shakspere tell. I will only 
 ask you to observe the grave and noble dignity of the phy- 
 sician Cerimon, his devotion to his science, and the side- 
 lights we get upon his grand charity and service to his fel- 
 low-men through the praises of the two gentlemen who 
 presently appear. Into the room 
 
 Enter Cerimon, a Servant^ and some Persons who have been 
 
 shipwrecked. 
 
 Cer. Philemon, ho ! 
 
 Enter Philemon. 
 
 Phi/. Does my lord call ? 
 
 Cer. Get fire and meat for these poor men : 
 It has been a turbulent and stormy night. 
 
 Serv. I have been in many ; but such a night as this, 
 Till now, I ne'er endured. 
 
 Cer. Your master will be dead ere you return ; 
 
 There's nothing can be minister'd to nature 
 
 That can recover him. (To Philemon) Give this to the 'pothe- 
 cary. 
 
 And tell me how it works. (^Exeunt all but Cerimon.) 
 
 Enter two Gentlemen. 
 
 First Gent. Good morrow. 
 
 Sec. Gent. Good morrow to your lordship. 
 
 Cer. Gentlemen,
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 293 
 
 Why do you stir so early ? 
 
 First Gent. Sir, 
 Our lodgings, standing bleak upon the sea 
 Shook as the earth did quake ; 
 The very principals did seem to rend 
 And all to topple : pure surprise and fear 
 Made me to quit the house. . . . 
 But I much marvel that your lordship, having 
 Rich tire about you, should at these early hours 
 Shake off the golden slumber of repose. 
 'Tis most strange. 
 
 Nature should be so conversant with pain, 
 Being thereto not compell'd. 
 
 Cer. I hold it ever. 
 
 Virtue and cunning were endowments greater 
 Than nobleness and riches : careless heirs 
 May the two latter darken and expend, 
 But immortality attends the former.. 
 Making a man a god. 'Tis known, I ever 
 Have studied physic, through which secret art. 
 By turning o'er authorities, I have, 
 Together with my practice, made familiar 
 To me and to my aid the blest infusions 
 That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones ; 
 And I can speak of the disturbances 
 
 That nature works, and of her cures \ which doth give me 
 A more content in course of true delight 
 Than to be thirsty after tottering honour. 
 Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, 
 To please the fool and death. 
 
 Sec. Gent. Your honour has through Ephesus pour'd forth 
 Your charity, and hundreds call themselves 
 Your creatures, who by you have been restor'd : 
 And not your knowledge, your personal pain, but even 
 Your purse, still open, hath built Lord Cerimon 
 Such strong renown as never shall decay.
 
 294 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Enter two or three Servants^ with a Chest. 
 
 (Which is the coffer Pericles cast into the sea a few hours 
 before.) 
 
 Serv. So ; lift there. 
 
 Cer. What is that ? 
 
 Serv. Sir, even now 
 Did the sea toss upon our shore this chest : 
 'Tis of some wrack. 
 
 Cer. Set it down, let's look upon 't. 
 
 Sec. Gent. 'Tis like a coffin, sir. 
 
 Cer. Whate'er it be, 
 
 'Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight : . . o 
 How close 'tis caulk'd and bitumed ! 
 Did the sea cast it up ? 
 
 Serv. I never saw so huge a billow, sir. 
 As tossed it upon shore. 
 
 Cer. Come, wrench it open : 
 Soft ! it smells most sweetly in my sense. 
 
 Sec. Gent. A delicate odour. 
 
 Cer. As ever hit my nostril. So, up with it. 
 O you most potent gods ! what's here ? a corse ! 
 
 First Gent. Most strange ! 
 
 Cer. Shrouded in cloth of state ; balm'd and entreasur'd 
 With full bags of spices ! A passport too ! 
 Apollo, perfect me i' the characters ! {Reads from a scroll.) 
 
 Here I give to understand., 
 
 If e'er this coffin drive a-land^ 
 
 /, King Pericles., have lost 
 
 This queen., worth all our mundane cost. 
 
 Who finds her., give her burying ; 
 
 She was the daughter of a king : 
 
 Besides this treasure for a fee., 
 
 The gods requite his charity ! 
 
 If thou liv'st, Pericles, thou hast a heart 
 That even cracks for woe ! This chanc'd to-night. 
 Sec. Gent. Most likely, sir.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO MAN 
 
 295 
 
 Cer. Nay, certainly to-night; 
 
 For look how fresh she looks ! They were too rough 
 That threw her in the sea. 
 
 And here all the man and all the physician rises in him : 
 he is now the artist, alive with energy and intelligence. 
 
 Make fire within : 
 Fetch hither all the boxes in my closet. (^Exit a servant.) 
 
 Death may usurp on nature many hours, 
 And yet the fire of life kindle again 
 The o'erpressed spirits. I heard of an Egyptian 
 That had nine hours lien dead. 
 Who was by good appliances recovered. 
 
 Reenter Servant^ with boxes^ napkins^ and fire. 
 
 Well said, well said ; the fire and the cloths. 
 The rough and woful music ^ that we have. 
 Cause it to sound, beseech you. 
 The vial once more : how thou stirr'st, thou block ! 
 
 1 As to using music medicinally, cf. Hamlet III, II, 293; also Robert 
 Herrick's poem To Music, to Becalm his Fever: 
 
 Charm me asleep and melt me so 
 
 With thy delicious numbers, 
 That, being ravish'd, hence I go 
 Away in easy slumbers. 
 Ease my sick head 
 And make my bed. 
 Thou power that canst sever 
 From me this ill ; 
 And quickly still, 
 Though thou not kill, 
 My fever. 
 
 Thou sweetly canst convert the same 
 
 From a consuming fire 
 Into a gentle-licking flame, 
 And make it thus expire. 
 Then make me weep 
 My pains asleep^ 
 
 And give me such reposes 
 That I, poor I, 
 May think thereby 
 I live and die 
 
 'Mongst roses. 
 
 Fall on me like a silent dew, 
 
 Or like those maiden showers 
 Which, by the peep of day, do strew 
 A baptism o'er the flowers. 
 Melt, melt my pains 
 With thy soft strains ; 
 That, having ease me given, 
 With full delight 
 I leave this light, 
 And take my flight 
 For heaven.
 
 296 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 The music there ! I pray you, give her air. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 This queen will live : nature awakes ; a warmth 
 
 Breathes out of her: she hath not been entranc'd 
 
 Above five hours : see how she 'gins to blow 
 
 Into life's flower again ! 
 
 First Gent. The heavens, 
 
 Through you, increase our wonder, and set up 
 Your fame for ever. 
 
 Ce7-. She is alive ; behold. 
 
 Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels 
 Which Pericles hath lost. 
 Begin to part their fringes of bright gold : 
 The diamonds of a most praised water 
 Do appear to make the world twice rich. Live, 
 And make us weep to hear your fate, fair creature, 
 Rare as you seem to be. 
 
 Tbaisa. O dear Diana, 
 
 Where am I ? Where's my lord ? What world is this .? ^ 
 
 Sec. Gent. Is not this strange .? 
 
 First Gent. Most rare ! 
 
 Cer. Hush, gentle neighbours ! 
 Lend me your hands ; to the next chamber bear her. 
 Get linen : now this matter must be look'd to. 
 For her relapse is mortal. Come, come ; 
 And ^sculapius guide us ! 
 
 {Exeunt., carrying Thaisa away.^ 
 
 ^Observe the order of these ques- "Where's my lord?" as the next 
 tions, revealing, first, the return of thought always present ; fourth, 
 identity, "I " ; second, space ; third, ' * What world is this .? ' '
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE AS SHOWN IN 
 
 "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," *' HAMLET," AND 
 
 "THE TEMPEST," AND CONCLUSION 
 
 N the last two lectures we have found 
 a great enlargement in the faculty of 
 balancing and adjusting those opposi- 
 tions which arise (i) out of man's re- 
 lations to the supernatural, and (2) 
 out of man's relations to his fellow- 
 man. 
 
 We are now to complete this por- 
 tion of our programme by inquiring if any correlative 
 widening of Shakspere's horizon as to the relations of man 
 to Nature displays itself as we examine this representative 
 play of Shakspere's youth, A Midsummer Night's Dream^ 
 in contrast with this representative play of his maturity. 
 The Tempest, through the transition period represented by 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Let me remark in the outset of this inquiry, as I was 
 obliged to in the last lecture, that here the embarrassment 
 of riches is quite as great as there, and that — confined as 
 it must be to one lecture — I must beg you to accept a 
 single phase of a matter which can be looked on from many 
 
 297
 
 298 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 points of view and which might be exhaustively treated 
 only in many lectures or volumes. 
 
 Without more ado — come, then, let us take a walk into 
 Nature with our young Master Shakspere in this dream- 
 time of his, and see what he could see at that stage of him 
 in flowers and grasses and trees. And for the most fresh 
 and brilliant excursion in the world let us fare forth a-hunt- 
 ing here with Theseus and Hippolyta into the woods, 
 hounds capering and horns all busy, and then let us com- 
 pare this hunt with a certain wild hunt in 'The Tempest. It 
 will help my present purpose if we take with us the next 
 finest open-air poet after Shakspere in the world, Dan 
 Chaucer. And luckily nothing is easier than to bring 
 these together on this particular hunt. The whole frame- 
 work and atmosphere of A Midsummer Night's Dream 
 is drawn by Shakspere, as you remember, from that 
 most symmetrically delightful of all Chaucer's poems. The 
 Knight's Tale — the first of the Canterbury Tales as ordi- 
 narily printed. We might very fairly call The Knight's Tale 
 Chaucer's Midsummer Night's Dream. It is a temptation 
 I can scarcely resist to go through The Knight's Tale and 
 show from point to point the cunning transformations and 
 enlargements which Shakspere made out of it in weaving 
 his Midsummer Night's Dream. But this must be passed 
 by ; and now, concentrating our attention on Theseus and 
 Hippolyta, let us see for a moment how Chaucer carries 
 them into the midst of Nature a-hunting in the greenwood, 
 as bringing us nearer to the ideal Shakspere has in his 
 mind. At the time of the hunt in Chaucer's story the 
 situation is this: Theseus has just wedded Hippolyta, has 
 just returned from the Theban wars with the two young 
 captive knights Palamon and Arcite, and now, having 
 served Mars, as Chaucer says, he eagerly turns to Diana 
 — that is, he turns from war to hunting. It is early of a 
 May morning, when lovers cannot sleep till sunrise, but
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 299 
 
 must up and forth to the woods and gather odorous chap- 
 lets and do their observance to the season of love. Says 
 Chaucer : ^ 
 
 The busy larke messager of day, 
 Salueth in hire song the morwe gray ; 
 And fyry Phebus ryseth up so bright 
 That al the orient laugheth of the light, 
 And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
 The silver dropes, hongyng on the leves. 
 
 And in such a season we are now led to 
 
 mighty Theseus, 
 That for to honte is so desirous 
 And namely the grete hert in May, 
 That in his bed ther daweth him no day, 
 That he nys clad, and redy for to ryde 
 With hont and horn, and houndes hym byside. 
 For in his hontyng hath he such delyt 
 That it is al his joye and appetyt 
 To been himself the grete hertes bane. 
 For after Mars he serveth now Dyane. 
 
 Cleer was the day, as I have told or this, 
 And Theseus, with alle joye and blys, 
 With his Ypolita, the fayre queene. 
 And Emelye, clothed al in greene. 
 On hontyng be thay riden ryally. 
 And to the grove that stood ther faste by. 
 In which ther was an hert as men him tolde, 
 Duk Theseus the streyte wey hath holde. 
 And to the launde he rydeth him ful right, 
 Ther was the hert y-wont to have his flight. 
 And over a brook, and so forth in his weye. 
 This duk wol have of him a cours or tweye 
 With houndes, which as him luste to commande. 2 
 
 1 Morris, Aldine Chaucer, vol. ii, page 46, line 633. 
 2 Ibid, page 52, lines 815-837.
 
 300 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Here, then, is Chaucer's hunting-party, Chaucer's 
 Theseus and Hippolyta, Chaucer's horn and hounds. 
 FHtting now along two hundred years, here is the same 
 wood near Athens, the same fresh EngHsh air, the early 
 morning, the dew, the glistening leaf, the mighty Theseus, 
 the radiant Hippolyta, the hunting-train, and all, in 
 Shakspere's version. But this wood into which Shak- 
 spere's Theseus and Hippolyta are now pacing is more 
 alive than Chaucer's. Chaucer's, it is true, has the two 
 young lovers Palamon and Arcite, who are met in the 
 wood alone to fight until one shall kill the other and thus 
 determine who shall have Emily ; and above the two 
 lovers Chaucer allows us to see the dim forms of their 
 patron gods, Mars and Venus. But Shakspere, closely 
 following Chaucer in bringing his Theseus and Hippolyta, 
 on a hunt, into a wood full of lovers, instead of the classic 
 figures of Mars and Venus has put a Teutonic fairy in 
 every flower-bell, and the whole forest has started into life 
 in the dainty forms of Oberon and Titania and Puck and 
 Peaseblossom and Cobweb and Mustardseed. The two 
 scenes of Act I are indoors : Scene I in Theseus's palace, 
 Scene II in Peter Quince's house. But in Act II, Scene 
 I we are carried into the wood, and here straightway come 
 sailing in Puck on one side and a Fairy on the other. 
 Let me rapidly recall the Nature-pictures and Nature- 
 personations up to the hunt of Theseus. The Fairy 
 explains : 
 
 Over hill, over dale. 
 
 Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
 
 Over park, over pale, 
 
 Thorough flood, thorough fire, 
 
 I do wander everywhere. . . . 
 
 And I serve the fairy queen, 
 
 To dew her orbs upon the green.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 301 
 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be : 
 
 In their gold coats spots you see ; 
 
 Those be rubies, fairy favours, 
 
 In those freckles live their savours : 
 I must go seek some dewdrops here. 
 And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. 
 
 And then Puck prepares us for the quarrel of the fairy 
 King and Queen ; it is about the Indian boy, and so on ; 
 Oberon will have him,Titania will have him. 
 
 And now they never meet in grove or green, 
 By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, 
 But they do square, that all their elves for fear 
 Creep into acorn cups and hide them there. 
 
 Then Puck explains his own reason of being, which is 
 mischief pure and simple : to skim milk, to make the 
 churnings bootless, to mislead night wanderers, to beguile 
 bean-fed horses and ancient gossips and amuse Oberon. 
 And hereupon the whole company of Nature-figures float 
 into the scene : enter from one side Oberon and train ; 
 from the other side Titania and train ; they quarrel : 
 
 111 met by moonlight, proud Titania. 
 What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence. 
 
 And presently we have this wondrous Nature-picture, 
 in which please note the storm — far unlike the Tempest 
 — is merely a peevish result of a silly elfin quarrel. 
 Titania is reproaching the jealous Oberon: 
 
 Never, since the middle summer's spring, 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 By paved fountain or by rushy brook. 
 Or in the beached margent of the sea. 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind.
 
 302 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. 
 
 Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, 
 
 As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea 
 
 Contagious fogs ; which, falling in the land. 
 
 Have every pelting river made so proud, 
 
 That they have overborne their continents : 
 
 The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, 
 
 The ploughman lost his sweat ; and the green corn 
 
 Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard : 
 
 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 
 
 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock ; 
 
 The nine men's morris is filled up with mud ; 
 
 And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, 
 
 For lack of tread, are undistinguishable : 
 
 The human mortals want their winter here ; 
 
 No night is now with hymn or carol blest : 
 
 Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, 
 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air. 
 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound : 
 
 And through this distemperature we see 
 
 The seasons alter : hoary-headed frosts 
 
 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose ; 
 
 And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown 
 
 An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds 
 
 Is, as in mockery, set : the spring, the summer. 
 
 The childing autumn, angry winter, change 
 
 Their wonted liveries ; and the mazed world. 
 
 By their increase, now knows not which is which : 
 
 And this sa?ne progeny of evils comes 
 
 From our debate^ from our dissension ; 
 
 We are their parents and original. 
 
 And then Puck brings the juice of the flower love-lies- 
 bleeding, and works with it about the wood, here and 
 there: 
 
 Lord [he says] , what fools these mortals be ! . . . 
 
 [And whcnl two at once woo one ;
 
 Puck 
 
 !n the " Midsummer Night's Dream" 
 From an engraving by Charles Marr of the picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 303 
 
 That must needs be sport alone ; 
 And those things do best please me 
 That befall preposterously. 
 
 And so, into this wood, alive with Puck and Oberon, 
 alive with small soldiers warring with rere-mice for their 
 wings, alive with spotted snakes of double tongue, with 
 thorny hedgehogs, newts, and blindworms, with nightin- 
 gales and clamorous owls, weaving spiders, beetles, worms 
 and snails, ounces, cats, bears, pards, and boars, ousel- 
 cocks, so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill, throstles 
 with notes so true, wrens with little quill, the finch, the 
 sparrow, and the lark, the plain-song cuckoo gray, — into 
 this wood, alive with Lysander loving Helena, Helena 
 loving Demetrius, Demetrius Hermia, and Hermia Ly- 
 sander, where Pyramus and Thisbe and Quince and 
 Snug and Bottom translated to an ass are pranking to 
 make the very trees split their sides — here, in Act IV, 
 Scene I, while horns are being winded within, come pacing 
 Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and the hunting-train, and 
 the talk is of hounds and their music. 
 
 Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester ; 
 For now our observation is perform'd ; 
 And since we have the vaward of the day. 
 My love shall hear the music of my hounds. 
 Uncouple in the western valley ; let them go : 
 Despatch, I say, and find the forester. 
 
 {^Exit an attendant.'^ 
 We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top, 
 And mark the musical confusion 
 Of hounds and echo in conjunction. 
 
 Hippolyta. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once. 
 When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear 
 With hounds of Sparta : never did I hear
 
 304 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Such gallant chiding ; for, besides the groves, 
 The skies, the fountains, every region near 
 Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard 
 So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. 
 
 Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind. 
 So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells. 
 Each under each. A cry more tuneable 
 Was never hoUa'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, 
 In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly : 
 Judge when you hear. 
 
 So ! What a brave world it is, of cowslips and dew and 
 frolic and love and the King and Queen a-hunting ! Life, 
 busy life, everywhere in Nature : little elves of life a-work 
 down in the kingcups and clover, killing cankers in the 
 musk-rose buds, foraging for Bottom's honey-bags, dis- 
 tressing or blessing lovers — everywhere this Nature of 
 Shakspere's in the Midsummer Night's Dremn is all riant 
 and rich with multiform life ; we may sum up the whole 
 view of it in saying that here Nature is given to us as a 
 debonair type of physical life. 
 
 But with this figure — Life — before our eyes, look 
 what a grim opposite of it rises up and stares it in the 
 face out of this Hamlet Period. Bring your pretty painted 
 unreal figure of Life in Nature up here upon the cold 
 platform of this castle of Elsinore, and hold it a moment ; 
 here, under the sarcastic stars, in the mortal midnight, 
 stalks forth out of the darkness another form which 
 Physical Nature wears — the form of Death. The Ghost of 
 Hamlet's father, the murdered King in the Mouse-trap 
 masque, the stabbed body of Polonius, the skull of Yorick, 
 the grave of Ophelia, the bare bodkin, the poisonous herb
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 305 
 
 of Laertes — this also is Nature. Was Nature all riotous 
 with life in the dream ? Behold, she is quite as riotous 
 with death in the reality : for, indeed, an you come to it, 
 all life must turn into death. 
 
 This seems to be the essential Nature-utterance of the 
 Hamlet epoch in Shakspere. 
 
 Let us pause upon it a moment. 
 
 I cannot think of the uprising of this sad face of death 
 before our dear Master Shakspere in Hamlet from beneath 
 the kingcups and clover and cowslips of the dream, as 
 being the inevitable opposition into which Physical Nature 
 resolves itself, and which every man must grapple with 
 and manage at some time or other of his spiritual career, 
 here — I cannot think of this dual form of Nature without 
 recalling some memorable words in Mr. Darwin's Origin 
 of Species. I am fond of bringing together people and 
 books that never dreamed of being side by side : often I 
 find nothing more instructive ; and so permit me to quote 
 some words here and there in Mr. Darwin's book which 
 seem to me to give a very precise and scientific account of 
 the very opposition which I have here been trying to 
 bring out as between Nature, the mother of life, in Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, and Nature, the mother of death, 
 in Hamlet. 
 
 I read here and there from T'he Origin of Species.^ 
 
 Mr. Darwin is discussing the struggle for existence. 
 " Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the 
 universal struggle for life, or more difficult . . . than con- 
 stantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be 
 thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy of 
 nature . . . will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. 
 We behold the face of nature bright with gladness"; as 
 Shakspere in this dream-time ; " we do not see, or we 
 
 1 Edition of D. Appleton & Co., 1 877.
 
 3o6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us 
 mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly 
 destroying life ; or we forget how largely these songsters, 
 or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds 
 and beasts of prey." Again : "In looking at nature, it is 
 most necessary . . . never to forget that heavy destruc- 
 tion inevitably falls either on the young or old, during 
 each generation or at recurrent intervals." ^ 
 
 Nay; from another point of view, science puts the 
 matter before us with a wider sweep than this. Not only 
 does Nature show us a lot of creatures living at each other's 
 expense — the shortest summary of Darwin's view being 
 that brief and terrible cyclus in this very Hamlet (of the 
 man that eats the fish that ate the worm that ate the man in 
 his grave) — not only do we live at the expense of others' 
 deaths, but at the expense of our own. All action is death : 
 the word that now goes to you goes leaving behind it 
 some dead atoms of tissue that died to send it out ; the 
 very silent act of your attention to those words is main- 
 tained by the death of tissue ; life is but a slow death. 
 Nay, who says it all more cunningly than Chaucer in that 
 very couplet I have sometime quoted for a mere rhythmic 
 illustration ? 
 
 For sikerlik whan I was born, anon 
 
 Deth drew the tappe oflyf and lete it goon. 
 
 This, then, is the pale apparition that raises its head out 
 of Hamlet and confronts the rosy Puck of the dream. 
 Here our Master Shakspere finds himself decisively called 
 on to rise into some plane of thought where he can look 
 with tolerance upon this Janus-faced Nature, one face life, 
 one face death. 
 
 1 See also pages 55, 57, 58 of The Origin of Species.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 307 
 
 And here in The Tempest he does rise triumphantly 
 into that plane. Here, with open eye, with unblenching 
 front, he looks upon Nature, now as life, now as death. 
 Why unblenching ? Because, whether as life or whether 
 as death, she is equally his friend and helper. Of Nature 
 as life take, for instance. Act IV, Scene I, line 60 and 
 following. Iris, in the anti-masque, is caUing : 
 
 Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas 
 
 Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease ; 
 
 Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep. 
 
 And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep ; 
 
 Thy banks with peonied and lilied brims. 
 
 Which spongy April at thy best betrims. 
 
 To make cold nymphs chaste crowns ; and thy broom-groves. 
 
 Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, 
 
 and so on. Here is Nature as fertility, as life : but Pros- 
 pero has not forgotten Nature as death. She comes in 
 upon this very scene. Presently, while the nymphs are 
 dancing in the anti-masque, the stage-direction says : 
 
 Prospero starts suddenly^ and speaks ; after which^ to a strange^ hol- 
 low^ and confused noise ^ they heavily vanish. 
 
 Pros. (Jside) I had forgot that foul conspiracy 
 Of the beast Caliban and his confederates 
 Against my life : the minute of their plot 
 Is almost come. (To the Spirits) Well done! avoid; no more.' 
 
 Fer. This is strange : your father's in some passion 
 That works him strongly. 
 
 Mir. Never till this day 
 
 Saw I him touch'd with anger so distemper'd. 
 
 Pros. You do look, my son, in a mov'd sort. 
 As if you were dismay'd : be cheerful, sir. 
 Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
 
 3o8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
 
 Arc melted into air, into thin air: 
 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded. 
 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made on ; and our little life 
 
 Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd ; 
 
 Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled : 
 
 Be not disturb'd with my infirmity : 
 
 If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell, 
 
 And there repose : a turn or two I'll walk. 
 
 To still my beating mind. 
 
 Fer. and Mir. We wish you peace. {Exeunt^ 
 
 And he has peace. Presently, in the end of the same 
 scene, we look upon him using the powers of Nature to 
 bring about good ends. Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano 
 are seen. The stage-direction is : 
 
 A noise of hunters heard. Enter divers spirits., in shape of hounds^ 
 and hunt them about [that is, Caliban and Trinculo, etc.], Pros- 
 pero and Ariel setting them on. 
 
 Here is a hunt to put beside that of Theseus and Hippo- 
 lyta which we just now joined. 
 
 Pros. Hey, Mountain, hey ! 
 
 Ariel. Silver ! there it goes. Silver ! 
 
 Pros. Fury, Fury ! there. Tyrant, there ! hark, hark ! 
 
 (Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are driven out.) 
 . . . Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour 
 Lie at my mercy all mine enemies : 
 Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou 
 Shalt have the air at freedom : for a little 
 Follow, and do me service. (^Exeunt.)
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 309 
 
 Mark these hounds of Prospero's. What a different 
 breed they are from those of Theseus, bred out of the 
 Spartan kind ! Nothing could more finely typify the 
 great height of Nature-view to which Prospero is risen 
 above Theseus than the comparison of these two hunts. 
 Theseus's hunt is the sport of the young man in that bar- 
 barian time of youth which recks not nor thinks at all of 
 the pain of lower creatures, a time when the man is really 
 a beast among beasts, taking his pleasure of the bear, the 
 deer, the game, — as he calls it, — just as the pointer takes 
 his pleasure of the partridge. To bay the bear, to hunt 
 the great hart in May — noble sport : but sport for whom ? 
 For Theseus and Hippolyta? But how about the bear, 
 the deer ? No sport for them to fly hither and thither in 
 agonies of fright, and presently to be gashed and torn into 
 reeking strips by the hot-toothed hounds.^ It could not 
 be long before Shakspere would emerge into a life that 
 looked with tenderness and reverence upon all creatures of 
 Nature less in degree than himself; it could not be long 
 before he would become incapable of any pleasure that 
 hinged merely upon the pain of whatever brute beast; it 
 could not be long before to him there was more glory in 
 the contemplation of one violet than in all the bears 
 Theseus's hounds ever baited, and more excitement in 
 chasing the visions of beauty that rise and fly about the 
 greenwood than in the wildest hunt of Theseus after the 
 greatest hart round Athens, In this passage from the 
 barbarian enmity of the boy against the beast to the gentle 
 grandeur of the man which takes all the beasts of the field 
 into its love, and is tender to them both because they are 
 less powerful than man and because they are parts or a 
 beautiful Nature, a process of change is involved which 
 presents a most interesting phase in our more modern 
 times as compared with Shakspere's. For I think it is 
 1 Cf. Charles Lamb's story of the mad dog.
 
 3IO SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 clear that, what with modern physical science and rnodern 
 landscape-painting and modern Nature-poetry, we have 
 drawn even closer to Nature, we have gotten upon even 
 sweeter terms with her, than Shakspere did or could in the 
 state of Nature-knowledge at his time. The modern 
 world has emerged, as Shakspere emerged, from what we 
 may call the barbarism of youth into what we may simi- 
 larly call the civilisation of maturity. And in the con- 
 tinuation of just such a process as we have found in 
 Shakspere from the brutal hunt of Theseus to the moral 
 hunt of Prospero, the one with no greater aim than the 
 blood of a poor beast, the other with so high an aim as the 
 reformation of an erring fellow-man — in such a process 
 the general spirit of our race has, I say, advanced beyond 
 Shakspere until now this advance presents two phases, one 
 in science, one in poetry, which are, I think, among the 
 finest and most notable features of the modern time. The 
 scientific phase shows itself in the extraordinary rise of 
 physical science during the last hundred years. ^ Puck is 
 not dead : he has only changed his name to electricity and 
 increased his speed. 
 
 But besides the phase of Nature-communion which we 
 call physical science there is the other artistic phase. Who 
 can walk among dear and companionable oaks without a 
 certain sense of being in the midst of a sweet and noble 
 company of friends ? 
 
 For to him who rightly understands Nature she is 
 even more than Ariel and Ceres to Prospero ; she is more 
 than a servant conquered, like Caliban, to fetch wood and 
 draw water for us : she is a friend and comforter and 
 sweetheart. 
 
 But, at any rate, Prospero is on far better terms with 
 Nature than was Theseus^ and far better than Hamlet. 
 
 1 See also chapter iii.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 311 
 
 And so, having used all the faculty of Nature for beneficent 
 ends, even her tempests and her hounding spirits, — that 
 is, having used Nature as life, — presently, at the end of 
 Act V, we find him contemplating the use of Nature as 
 death with a not despairing or unfriendly spirit. " Sir," 
 he says to the King and his brother and all. 
 
 Sir, I invite your Highness and your train 
 
 To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest 
 
 For this one night ; which, part of it, I'll waste 
 
 With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it 
 
 Go quick away : the story of my life. 
 
 And the particular accidents gone by 
 
 Since I came to this isle : and in the morn 
 
 I'll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples, 
 
 Where I have hope to see the nuptial 
 
 Of these our dear-belov'd solemnis'd; 
 
 And thence retire me to my Milan, where 
 
 Every third thought shall be my grave. 
 
 As we have just seen, the attitude of man towards 
 Nature now is even sweeter than that of Shakspere. When 
 we think how beautifully the modern man is making love 
 to her, with our modern physical science and our mod- 
 ern landscape-painting and our modern Nature-poetry, — 
 making love to Nature and wedding her, after the long war 
 of our less happy ancestors with Physical Nature, — surely 
 the modern man may say to her, as Theseus said to 
 Hippolyta : 
 
 [Nature] , I woo'd thee with my sword. 
 And won thy love, doing thee injuries ; 
 But I will wed thee in another key, 
 With pomp, with triumph and with revelling. 
 
 In short, to review in one word the results of our study 
 during the last five lectures, just as when we studied these
 
 312 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 three plays with reference to their verse-structure by means 
 of the Metrical Tests, and found an enormous advance 
 from this Dream Period to this Ideal Period, in Shakspere's 
 artistic management of those curiously opposed esthetic de- 
 mands of the ear which must be satisfied in order to make 
 beautiful verse, so now, when we have examined these 
 same plays with reference to the moral ideals they show us 
 of the attitude of man towards the supernatural, towards 
 his fellow-man, and towards Physical Nature, we find the 
 moral problem to be essentially like the artistic problem ; 
 we find it to consist of moral oppositions meeting the man 
 at every turn just as esthetic oppositions meet the artist at 
 every turn ; we find that just as the ear would have regular- 
 ity, and at the same time would have irregularity, through 
 a hundred phases of opposition, in verse, so life insists 
 upon its phases of opposition — the control of the super- 
 natural against the free will of the man, the love of the 
 fellow-man against the love of self, the helpfulness of Phy- 
 sical Nature against the obstructiveness of Physical Nature : 
 and just as we found Shakspere accepting the esthetic laws of 
 opposition and using them to make heavenly ideals of music, 
 so we have found him accepting the moral laws of opposi- 
 tion — instead of blindly fighting them, as so many of us 
 do in so many various ways — and using them in heavenly 
 ideals of behaviour. 
 
 And now allow me to recall your attention for a brief 
 moment to the ground we have passed over, so that I may 
 leave you with some definite outline in your minds of at 
 least the main points of our inquiry. 
 
 You will remember that we began by discovering that 
 every formal poem is primarily a series of sounds, — either 
 of sounds for the ear or of sound-signs for the eye which 
 are translated into sounds by the ear, — and that, this being
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 313 
 
 the case, the science of verse was really one of the physical 
 sciences, being the knowledge of the relations between the 
 words of a poem considered strictly as sounds. We then 
 found that sounds can differ from each other only in four 
 ways, namely, in point of duration, as longer or shorter; 
 in point of pitch, as higher or lower ; in point of intensity, 
 as louder or softer ; and in point of tone-colour, as flute- 
 colour, violin-colour, horn-colour, reed-colour, and the 
 like.^ Now when we took all the possible eifects of verse 
 and referred them to these four physical principles of the 
 differences between sounds, we found them straightway ar- 
 ranging themselves into three great classes, namely, of the 
 rhythms of verse, the tunes of verse, and the colours of 
 verse. I then proceeded to discuss these separately. I 
 set before you several different sorts of rhythm, especially 
 the iambic, the dactylic, and the trochaic, explained the 
 peculiar force of each, and illustrated them from both An- 
 glo-Saxon and modern poetry ; and I ascended from these 
 details of rhythm to that general view of the subject in the 
 course of which we found that as modern science has gen- 
 eralised the whole universe into a great congeries of modes 
 of motion, so rhythm pervades all these modes : everything 
 not only moves, but moves rhythmically, from the ether- 
 atom in light to the great space globes ; and so we get back 
 by the most modern scientific path to the old dream of 
 Pythagoras which blindly guessed out the music of the 
 spheres. 
 
 Passing from rhythm to the tunes of verse, we found 
 first that a large part of the ordinary communications 
 of speech are made by tunes which are spoken, not by 
 words ; I showed that the intervals through which the 
 
 1 As noted in chapter i, much of this having been treated finally by Mr. 
 technical discussion was omitted Lanier in The Science of English 
 from the present work, the subject Verse.
 
 314 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 voice moves in speech constitute tunes just as well 
 marked as those which are sung ; and that we had some- 
 how accumulated a great stock of these little speech-tunes, 
 which so modified the meanings of tunes that the same 
 words might be made to have a dozen different significa- 
 tions, according to the tunes in which they were spoken. 
 I then illustrated several of these tunes by writing them 
 in musical notes, explaining that they could only be 
 written approximately, because the present system of 
 musical notation provides signs only for whole tones and 
 half-tones, while the speaking voice uses not only these 
 intervals but a great many smaller ones — thirds, fourths, 
 fifths, and certainly as small as eighths of tones. I went 
 on to show how enormously the resources of language 
 were increased by the use of these tunes, with which the 
 simplest set of ordinary words might be made to take on 
 the most delicate shades of meaning, now tender, now 
 savage, now ironical, now non-committal, and so on. An 
 example of this is the German comedy called Come Here, 
 in which the powers of a young actress are tested by 
 making her entire role consist of the two words Come here, 
 with which she carries her auditors through many phases 
 of emotion by simply uttering the same words in different 
 tunes. I finally showed how, in the long development 
 of art, music and words had gradually dissolved the close 
 union which subsisted between them in the Egyptian and 
 Greek times, when the song and the musical declama- 
 tion were the main forms of music, and how they had 
 finally differentiated themselves into two arts, the one an 
 art of pure tone distinct from words and finding its ex- 
 pression in the purely instrumental orchestra, the other an 
 art of pure speech-tunes, distinct from musical tones and 
 finding its expression in the recitation and public reading 
 which have become so popular in modern times.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 315 
 
 I then advanced to the third class of poetic effects, to 
 wit, that of the colours of verse. We found that the 
 vowels and consonants which make up words would be 
 wholly undlstinguishable from each other except for their 
 differences in that peculiar matter which is called tone- 
 quality, or tone-colour, or, as Mr. Tyndall translates the 
 German Klang-Farbe^ clang-tint. As the fiute-quality or 
 colour differs from the oboe-quality or colour, that from 
 the violin-quality, and that from the horn-quality, so 
 the vowel differs from the vowel d", that from the vowel 
 a^ and so on ; and only in this way. I proved this to you, 
 and illustrated it in several ways, mentioning Wheatstone 
 and Helmholtz as the scientists to whom we owe the most 
 weighty obligations for their brilliant discoveries in this 
 matter. Inasmuch, then, as all vowels and consonants, 
 scientifically considered, are phenomena of tone-colour, all 
 those great verse-effects which depend upon vowels and 
 consonants are effects of tone-colour, and we agreed to call 
 them the Colours of Verse. I then directed your 
 attention to four great varieties of effects based upon 
 vowels and consonants as such, to wit, rimes, alliterations, 
 agreeable distributions of successive vowels in a line, and 
 agreeable junctions of the terminal consonants of one 
 word with the initial consonant of the next word. Treat- 
 ing these separately, I defined exactly what a rime is, in 
 contradistinction to the vague ideas commonly held upon 
 it ; and I then showed how the finest use of rimes is not 
 for mere jingle, but to mark off rhythms for the ear. I 
 then gave you various examples ot the artistic use by 
 poets of the other colours of verse, the alliterations, the 
 distribution of vowels, the junctions of consonants, and 
 several other matters which make or mar a verse but 
 which would not ordinarily be thought of by those who 
 have never done the actual work of the poet. 1 then
 
 3t6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 showed you how the rime, which brings together two 
 sounds differing as to their consonant-quaHty but aHke as 
 to their vowel-quality (go, so)y was a physical analogue of 
 the metaphor which links together two conceptions, that 
 differ generally, by some special point of resemblance ; and 
 I advanced from this to the conception that the poet, who 
 deals in metaphor, thus puts the universe together, while 
 the scientist pulls it to pieces, the poet being a synthetic 
 workman, the scientist an analytic workman ; and how 
 thus it is clear that while the scientist plucks apart the 
 petals of faith, it is the business of the modern poet to set 
 them together again and so keep the rose of religion whole. 
 
 This ended the first division of lectures on the Tech- 
 nic of Verse. 1 then passed on to the next division. 
 
 Starting at the very beginning of English poetry in the 
 seventh century, I gave you some account of Anglo-Saxon 
 poetry, of its relations to Chaucer in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury and to the Scotch poets of the fifteenth century, and 
 finally to Shakspere. In the course of these lectures I en- 
 deavoured to place before you in some vivid way the 
 change in man's attitude towards the supernatural (or 
 God), towards Nature, and towards his fellow-man — illus- 
 trating these contrasts by three sets of poems : The Ad- 
 dress of the Soul to the Dead Body and Hamlet , Beowulf and 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, and St. Juliana and Love's 
 Labour s Lost. We found in Midsummer Night's Dream 
 an entire breaking down of the restraint and terror between 
 man and Nature — so noticeable in Beowulf and all the 
 early poetry — and almost as startling a change in the atti- 
 tude of the Elizabethan towards woman. I introduced to 
 you Cynewulf, whose name, but not whose figure, has 
 come to us ; and I read you the Anglo-Saxon poem in 
 which we find his name cunningly concealed in Runic 
 letters which are embedded in the body of the text.
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 317 
 
 In the course of these lectures I read you in full three 
 notable Anglo-Saxon poems. The Phoenix^ The Legend of St. 
 Juliana^ and The Address of the Soul to the Dead Body, and 
 gave you some illustrations of the Anglo-Saxon text. In 
 the course of these lectures I also presented several readings 
 from Chaucer, from the Scotch poets William Dunbar and 
 Gavin Douglas, and from the mystery plays of the 
 Towneley Series. Having thus placed before you some 
 idea of the relations of Shakspere to the first thousand 
 years of our poetry, — for we found some of the Anglo- 
 Saxon poems (notably Beowidf in its earlier form) taking 
 us back at least to the sixth century, a thousand years be- 
 fore Shakspere was born, — I passed to the minor poetry 
 of the sixteenth century, with the view of showing his re- 
 lations to his own time, and gave you four lectures on the 
 sonnet-writers from Surrey and Wyatt to Drummond and 
 Habington. In the course of these we found that the 
 sonnet has never been allowed its full importance as the 
 primal form of modern English poetry ; that Surrey and 
 Wyatt, while they borrowed the form from Italy, soon nat- 
 uralised it, and it became then, as it has remained ever 
 since, the favourite poetic vehicle for every poet who wishes 
 to express his own most private personal emotions. In- 
 vestigating, then, the nature of the sonnet, we found that 
 every good sonnet is nothing more nor less than a little 
 drama, with an opening, a plot, and a crisis or catastrophe 
 at the end. We then examined with special detail the 
 sonnets of Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, William 
 Habington, Sir Philip Sidney, William Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden, Barnaby Barnes, and Shakspere ; for the son- 
 nets of my old favourite Bartholomew Griffin I referred 
 you to my paper on that poet, which, by the way, has since 
 appeared in the International Review for March.^ In dis- 
 1 See, in Music and Poetry, " A Forgotten English Poet."
 
 3i8 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 cussing the sonnets of Shakspere we came upon many clear 
 features which would go to make up a good representation 
 of the spiritual visage of the man : we found him tender ; we 
 found him looking to the fate of his poetry in future times; 
 we found him setting forth the very loftiest ideal of manly 
 friendship ; we found him forgiving freely the most desper- 
 ate crime which man can commit against man ; we found 
 him suffering anguish without bitterness and contemplating 
 death without regret. 
 
 In the next two lectures, wishing to bring Shakspere 
 before us in a sort of physical and tangible way, I endea- 
 voured to show how he talked ; and for this purpose I dis- 
 cussed the pronunciation of English in Shakspere's time. 
 We found it differing widely from our own pronunciation, 
 the as being greatly broader, the /'s being rounder, the e's 
 less reedy than our own. I then gave you more exact de- 
 tails of this pronunciation, explained the palaeotype sys- 
 tem of indicating it, and put you in possession of the main 
 researches of Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, the English scholar 
 to whose monumental work on this subject we owe most of 
 our knowledge of it. I mentioned also the labours of our 
 own countrymen Messrs. Noyes and Peirce, and Mr. 
 Richard Grant White, in this connection. I then illus- 
 trated the whole matter by reading you part of a play in 
 the Shakspere pronunciation as it has been recovered by 
 Ellis and his co-labourers. 
 
 After this side-glance at some of the literary conditions 
 of Shakspere's time, we proceeded to study other condi- 
 tions, artistic and social. 
 
 In the next two lectures I discussed the music of 
 Shakspere's time. I gave you numerous citations from 
 Shakspere's works to show not only that music was the 
 art which he loved best of all, but that he had an insight 
 into the depths of music which was quite wonderful con-
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 319 
 
 sidering what kind of music he must have been accus- 
 tomed to hear. In this connection I unfolded to you with 
 some detail the slight progress which was made by music 
 from the time of Gregory to that of Palestrina, and 
 showed you how almost all that we call music, especially 
 orchestral music, is a wholly abrupt modern development 
 dating from nearly a hundred years after Shakspere died. 
 I then explained the discant, and passed to the different 
 kinds of music in vogue in the sixteenth century : the 
 church music, with its motetts, its canons, its endless fugues ; 
 the secular song-music, with its rounds, catches, ballads, 
 and Northern tunes, or Scotch music ; the instrumental 
 music for the organ, the virginals, the lute, etc. ; the 
 dance-tunes — the pavan, the galliard, the paspy, the 
 morris, etc. I showed by numerous quotations from 
 Shakspere and contemporary works how universal was the 
 knowledge of music — that is, of pricksong, as it was called 
 — in his time, and how it was a common part of every man's 
 education that he should be able to sing his part in a part- 
 song ; and I gave some account of the musical instruments 
 of the time, the virginals, the lute, the chests of viols, the 
 recorder, and the like. 
 
 I then took up the domestic life of Shakspere's time. 
 For the purpose of bringing his whole daily environment 
 vividly before you, I constructed a little thread of story 
 which showed us Shakspere now in his home in Henley 
 Street, Stratford; now wandering through the sweet War- 
 wickshire woods to the cottage of the Hathaways a mile off; 
 now happening by a lucky accident to witness the gorgeous 
 pageants with which Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth 
 at Kenilworth in 1575 ; now attending the performance of 
 Heywood's interlude of The Four P's at Warwick ; now 
 hearing a neighbour read Gosson's Schoole of Abuse ^ a lively 
 book of the period; now running off to London and hear-
 
 320 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 ing a sermon at Paul's Cross and two plays at the Black- 
 friars Theatre. In this connection I sketched also those 
 wonderful world-events which had happened in various 
 countries since 1492 up to Shakspere's birth, and side by 
 side with them I placed a number of small events, such as 
 the wearing of the first silk stockings, the raising of the 
 first garden vegetables, the beginning of the use of forks at 
 table, and the like, in England, which belong to this period. 
 In close conjunction with these outer events I laid before 
 you a chronological arrangement of Shakspere's plays as 
 representing the inner events which took place in his soul 
 during his marvellous life. In one or two of these con- 
 nections I read before you, in their complete forms, the 
 following works : Robert Laneham's letter describing the 
 Kenilworth festivities ; John Hey wood's interlude of 
 The Four P's ; Latimer's sermons before King Edward 
 VI, in the Westminster Palace garden, during Lent of 
 1 549 ; Nicholas Udall's play of Ralph Royster Doyster, the 
 first English comedy ; and Sackville and Norton's play of 
 GorboduCj the first English tragedy. 
 
 Next I gave a brief glance at the verse tests with 
 which modern criticism has begun to confirm those chron- 
 ological arrangements of Shakspere's plays that give us 
 such a startling insight into his moral growth — tests 
 which mark the rise of exact method in the science of 
 criticism. We then went on, in the light of the physical 
 theory of verse already enunciated, to study the Metrical 
 Tests. Thus armed, we proceeded to try both the verse 
 theory and the Metrical Tests by examining three plays, 
 representing the three periods of Shakspere's artistic and 
 moral growth, to see if the results of technical analysis and 
 the results of moral analysis would agree : and we have 
 now just found that nothing could be more perfect than 
 the precisely parallel advance which Shakspere displays in
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 321 
 
 The Tempest over the Midsummer Night's Dream ^ both in 
 the technical beauty of his verse and the moral beauty of 
 his ideals of behaviour; and we have finally connected 
 these two, technical beauty and moral beauty, finding that 
 technical beauty consists in the harmonious adjustment of 
 esthetic oppositions, while moral beauty consists in the 
 harmonious adjustment of moral oppositions : so that, pass- 
 ing to their common element, we find the verse technic 
 and the moral technic to be simply two phases of the 
 artistic adjustment of oppositions. 
 
 This appears much plainer in the concrete than in 
 the abstract. Here is a little strain from the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream ^ which I have opposed with one from The 
 Tempest. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream ^ Act I, Scene I : 
 
 Helena. How happy some o'er other some can be ! 
 Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. 
 But what of that ? Demetrius thinks not so ; 
 He will not know what all but he do know : . . . 
 Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind ; 
 And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. 
 
 The Tempest : 
 
 Prospero. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and 
 groves ; 
 And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 When he comes back; you demi-puppets that 
 By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make, 
 Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice 
 To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid — 
 Weak masters though ye be — I have bedimm'd 
 The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds. 
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault
 
 322 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder 
 Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolt ; the strong-bas'd promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
 The pine and cedar : groves at my command 
 Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let 'em forth 
 By my so potent art. 
 
 Let us in the briefest way run over the technical particulars 
 in which the latter verse is superior to the former. You 
 remember we found that a number of patterns run 
 throughout every verse-structure which in effect constitute 
 two opposing systems, the regular system and the irregu- 
 lar system. Now here in this Midsummer Night's Dream 
 passage the regular system predominates to such an 
 extent as to make the verse palpably stiff. If we examine 
 it with reference to all the divisions of verse-phenomena 
 we studied, its stiffness and over-regularity become more 
 apparent. Those divisions were the tunes, the rhythms, 
 and the tone-colours of verse. Well, consider these 
 tunes. Each line, you observe, has its tune, precisely 
 balanced by the tune of the next line ; the cadence of the 
 tune falls always at the same point — the end of the line ; 
 and thus all the tune-cadences belong to the regular system. 
 Again, in the rhythms the regular system prevails just 
 as overwhelmingly : the primary rhythm is perfect, all 
 along, short syllable, long syllable, short, long : 
 
 /^ /^ y\ /^ /^ 
 
 How hap- I py some | o'er oth- | er some j can be 
 
 Again, the secondary rhythm, the bar system, is unbroken; 
 each bar has exactly two sounds to the bar. Again, the 
 tertiary rhythm, the line system, is rigidly maintained ; 
 every line has exactly five bars, exactly ten syllables, 
 and this group of five bars is inexorably marked off for
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 323 
 
 the ear by the recurrent rime at the end of each line. 
 And thirdly, to go no farther with the rhythmic examina- 
 tion, if we look at the tone-colours we find the e — e^ 
 
 — 0, ind — ind linking themselves together into perfectly 
 regular patterns of tone-colour strikingly marked off for 
 the ear. All rime ; every line end-stopped ; not a single 
 weak ending, or double ending, or change of the rhythmic 
 accent. 
 
 But now, if we turn from this to The Tempest passage, 
 we must needs be amazed at the multitudinous means 
 which are here used of varying all this regular system of 
 verse-effects. Here, pursuing the same order of exam- 
 ination, if we look at the tunes, we find that the first line 
 has its tune-cadence at the end, while the second opposes 
 this with a grand, long, sweeping phrase of two lines and a 
 half, like the long phrases of Bach and Beethoven, to which 
 
 1 referred when we were studying this effect ; here, again, 
 we have a long tune-phrase, here a shorter one, here a 
 shorter one, here a great sweeping one, then a shorter one, 
 a shorter one, and a grand one; and so on — the regular- 
 ity nobly relieved with irregularity. Leaving the tunes of 
 verse, if we look at the rhythms we get the same result. 
 The primary rhythm, that is, the alternation of short 
 and long sound, and the secondary rhythm, that is, the 
 regular grouping of a short and a long sound into bars, is 
 still kept up, for the regular system ; but the larger 
 rhythmic groups, the line group and phrase group, are 
 greatly more irregular. First, there is no rime to mark 
 off the line into regular groups of five bars and ten sounds 
 each ; secondly, the end-stopped line (regular) is finely 
 relieved by these run-on lines ending in " foot," " that," 
 "rejoice," "aid," " bedimm'd," "vault," "up," and so 
 on ; in fact, the whole line-grouping is broken up, and 
 nearly every phrase, instead of ending rigidly at the end of
 
 324 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 the line, ends somewhere in the body of the line; again, 
 the weak ending, that carries out the same principle with 
 the run-on line ; again, the double endings, " fly him," 
 " pastime," " thunder," " promontory " (four double end- 
 ings, you see, in this short passage, though there are only 
 twenty-nine in the whole of the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream)y relieve the bar system by presenting the ear with 
 bars consisting of three sounds to relieve the long succes- 
 sion of bars which consist of only two sounds ; and finally 
 the frequent shiftings of the rhythmic accent from its 
 normal place, as " and do fly him," " when he comes 
 back," "puppets that," "green-sour," "to the dread rat- 
 tling thunder," etc., all show us a great number of irregular 
 elements charmingly introduced into the rhythmic pattern. 
 
 And finally, as to the tone-colour patterns : we find the 
 vowel-colours varying in almost every contiguous word, we 
 find the consonant-colours varying, scarcely any alliteration, 
 scarcely any consonant-syzygies, in short, aii the tone- 
 colour effects making for the irregular system, as pleas- 
 ingly opposed to the regular system. And with what a 
 result ! These lines are a purely vocal pleasure to pro- 
 nounce, a purely auditory pleasure to hear as the ear goes 
 on and coordinates the elements of all these rhythmic pat- 
 terns, without reference to the wondrous ideal pictures 
 which they set before the mind ! 
 
 Surely the genius which in the heat and struggle of 
 ideal creation has the enormous control and temperance to 
 arrange and adjust in harmonious proportions all these 
 esthetic antagonisms of verse, surely that is the same 
 genius which in the heat and battle of life will arrange the 
 moral antagonisms with similar self-control and temper- 
 ance. Surely there is a point of technic to which the 
 merely clever artist may reach, but beyond which he may 
 never go, for lack of moral insight ; surely your Robert 
 Greene, your Kit Marlowe, your Tom Nash, clever poets
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 325 
 
 all, may write clever verses and arrange clever dramas ; but 
 if we look at their own flippant lives and pitiful deaths and 
 their small ideals in their dramas, and compare them, tech- 
 nic for technic, life for life, morality for morality, with this 
 majestic Shakspere, who starts in a dream, who presently 
 encounters the real, who after a while conquers it to its 
 proper place (for Shakspere, mind you, does not forget 
 the real ; he will not be a beggar nor a starveling ; we have 
 documents which show how he made money, how he 
 bought land at Stratford ; we have Richard Quincy's letter 
 to " my lovveinge good frend and contreyman Mr. Wm. 
 Shakspere, deliver thees," asking the loan of thirty pounds 
 " uppon Mr. Bushells and my securytee," showing that 
 Shakspere had money to lend), and finally turns it into the 
 ideal in T^he 'Tempest ; if we compare, I say, Greene, Mar- 
 lowe, Nash, with Shakspere, surely the latter is a whole 
 heaven above them in the music of his verse, as well as in 
 the temperance and prudence of his life, as well also as in 
 the superb height of his later moral ideals. Surely, in 
 fine, there is a point of mere technic in art beyond which 
 nothing but moral greatness can attain, because it is at this 
 point that the moral range, the religious fervour, the true 
 seership and prophethood of the poet, come in and lift 
 him to higher views of all things. 
 
 For, indeed, when we look upon man, vibrating between 
 these oppositions, what is he more like, each in his little life 
 making his little round of moral rhythm, than one of 
 these tone-colours, one of these tunes, one of these 
 rhythmic elements, here in the verse ? 
 
 I once had a quaint illustration of all these complex re- 
 lations to other lives, and to the final form and purpose of 
 things, with which perhaps I may fitly conclude this lec- 
 ture and this course, particularly as showing the power of 
 the small to illustrate the large. I was one day wandering 
 on a lonesome horseback stroll along the beach of the At-
 
 :^i6 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 lantic Ocean on the Georgia coast. It was late in an 
 afternoon of the early summer, and the sun was near the 
 horizon. Presently I left the beach and turned into a 
 captivating side road that curved off through the deep 
 woods. The air was heavy with the half-tropical perfumes 
 of wood flowers ; the sparkleberry hung in great clusters 
 along the narrow roadway, the long vines trailed and wove 
 their tangles about oak and pine, and between the big 
 trunks of the trees the level sun sent shafts of rich yellow 
 light slanting across the road. Presently one of these 
 shafts of light happened to fall upon a great swarm of a 
 sort of large silver-winged gnats which is peculiar to that 
 region, and I stopped my horse and sat still to observe the 
 motions of the swarm. They were dancing in the light, 
 just in front of me, immediately above a shrub which is 
 their home. This singular gnat-dance seemed — and I 
 believe that is the conclusion of naturalists — to be sim- 
 ply for pleasure ; and it was most curious to note the gen- 
 eral outline of the figures formed by the myriads of tiny 
 silver creatures in the sunbeam. Apparently in response 
 to the commands of some leader, this general outline 
 would change every moment : sometimes the swarm would 
 suddenly extend upward and make a quite perfect column ; 
 then it would contract into a lozenge-shaped figure ; then 
 swell into a circle ; then form a square ; and so on — each 
 of these outlines being formed by minute variations in the 
 direction of flight of each individual gnat, for each was vi- 
 brating rapidly in his own little independent round ; and 
 as each extended his excursion this way or that, the main 
 figure of the entire swarm would result. Each gnat was, 
 in short, ^.rhythmic atom^ and nothing could better illustrate 
 the varieties of form producible in nature by the changing 
 motions of the atoms underlying those forms. Then the 
 swarm, as it ever kept dancing, changing, would make me
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 327 
 
 think of that pretty conceit of Sir WiUiam Davenant's, 
 who, in describing a dance in the seventeenth century, said : 
 
 And had the music silent been 
 The eye a moving tune had seen. 
 
 The swarm was a moving tune. And again, as with a sudden 
 whir of all the little dancers the figure would change to a loz- 
 enge, it was like those ludicrous attempts in the sixteenth 
 century to make rhythm visible to the eye by changing the 
 length of each line so that the words would present a defi- 
 nite form, such as this, which was called the Lozenge form. 
 This is a love-letter from Temir the warrior to Kermesine, 
 who has captured him. 
 
 THE LOZENGE : FROM PUTTENHAM 
 
 Fiue 
 
 Sore batailes 
 
 Manfully fought 
 
 In blouddy fielde 
 
 With bright blade in hand 
 
 Hath Temir won & forst to yeld 
 
 Many a Captaine strong & stoute 
 
 And many a king his Crowne to vayle, 
 
 Conquering large countreys and land, 
 
 Yet ne uer wanne I vie to rie, 
 
 I speake it to my greate glo rie, 
 
 So deare and joy full vn to me, 
 
 As when I did first con quere thee 
 
 O Kerme sine, of all myne foes 
 
 The most cruell, of all myne woes 
 
 The smartest, the sweetest 
 
 My proude Con quest 
 
 My ri chest pray 
 
 O once a daye 
 
 Lend me thy sight 
 
 Whose only light 
 
 Keepes me 
 
 Aliue.
 
 328 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS 
 
 But acrain sometimes the whole swarm, animated by a 
 sudden impulse, would sweep down into the dark leaves 
 of its home shrub like magic : nothing would be seen, and 
 I could scarcely realise that the air was so suddenly 
 r vacant ; then it would as suddenly sweep out again, and 
 there would be the little dancers, each holding his little 
 rhvthmic round. And here, as the sunbeam lighted up 
 these dancing gnats, now rushing forth into space, now 
 collapsing into a central point, one could not but think of 
 that enormous idea of Edgar Poe's in his Eureka^ where 
 he developes from the simple postulates of attraction and 
 repulsion and a uniform matter the course of creation : 
 how the matter is diffused out into space, how the two 
 opposite principles immediately set individual portions of 
 it whirling off into worlds and stars and systems, how the 
 very same principle must after a while compel these same 
 worlds to cluster back about their systems and the whole 
 to return into a central point, the Creator, to be again 
 diffused into space, again reabsorbed, and so on, until he 
 winds up with that comparison which I think sometimes 
 is the mightiest in our language — that comparison ', of 
 this successive outsending and inbringing of the worlds 
 by the Creator at the centre of things to the beating of the 
 heart of God. So the great swarm of gnats had its 
 systole and diastole, and beat like the pulse of the worlds. 
 And thus, finally, with each ever-dancing gnat repre- 
 senting, now the round of the atom in all those forms 
 which we call nature, now the function of the sound- 
 vibration as an element in that form which we call verse, 
 now the huge periodicity of the whirling world in space, — 
 and with all these individual elements vibrating each in 
 his own little sphere of life, combining into larger forms 
 which perhaps no individual gnat dreamed of, just as our 
 little spheres of activity in life surely combine into some
 
 MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE 329 
 
 greater form or purpose which none of us dream of, and 
 which no one can see save some unearthly spectator that 
 stands afar off in space and looks upon the whole of 
 things, — I was impressed anew with the fact that it is the 
 poet who must get up to this point and stand off in 
 thought at the great distance of the ideal, look upon the 
 complex swarm of purposes as upon these dancing gnats, 
 and find out for man the final form and purpose of man's 
 life. In short, — and here I am ending this course with the 
 idea with which I began it, — in short, it is the poet who 
 must sit at the centre of things here, as surely as some great 
 One sits at the centre of things Yonder, and who must 
 teach us how to control, with temperance and perfect art 
 and unforgetfulness of detail, all our oppositions, so that 
 we may come to say with Aristotle, at last, that poetry is 
 more philosophical than philosophy and more historical 
 than history. 
 
 Permit me to thank you earnestly for the patience 
 with which you have listened to many details that must 
 have been dry to you ; and let me sincerely hope that, 
 whatever may be your oppositions in life, whether of the 
 verse kind or the moral kind, you may pass, like Shak- 
 spere, through these planes of the Dream Period and the 
 Real Period, until you have reached the ideal plane from 
 which you clearly see that wherever Prospero's art and 
 Prospero's love and Prospero's forgiveness of injuries rule 
 in behaviour, there a blue sky and a quiet heaven full of 
 sun and stars are shining over every tempest.
 
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