y";^^^>^M>i2^-^ Annals of the Life of Shakespeare. Copyright, 1901 By THE UNIVERSITY SOCIETY c. 1^ Shakespeare's Birthplace, 1769. {From the Gcnflonnn' s Afao-azine.) 1564. In the Parish Register preserved in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Straford-on-Avon, War- wickshire, is enshrined the following brief record of Shakespeare's nativity — the entry of his baptism, which, it may be assumed, took place during the first week of the child's life : — 1564. April 26. Gulielnius iilius Johannes Shakspere. A fairly old tradition fixes April 22 or 23 as the poet's birthday; the latter date, the day of St. George, Eng- (Facsimile of the Registry of Shakespeare's Baptism.) if xf 1564 ANNALS OF THE land's patron saint, is fittingly associated with the birth of England's national poet. The researches of generations of students have put us in possession of many minute facts connected with Shake- speare's family history, with the environments of his early life, and with the various elements that may have con- tributed to the fostering of his mighty intellect. The " Johanues Shakespeare," \\ illiam Shakespeare's father, mentioned in the entry of baptism, was a person of importance in the borough at the time of the birth of his first son and third child. The son of Richard Shake- speare, a farmer of Snitterfield, a village about three miles distant, he appears to have settled at Stratford about 155 1, and to have traded in all sorts of agricultural prod- uce and the like. The municipal books attest his grow- ing prosperity, though the earliest notice, in April 1552, refers to a fine paid by him for having a dirt-heap before his house in Henley Street. Successively " ale-taster," town councillor, one of the four constables of the court- leet, affeeror {i.e. an.assessor of fines for offences not ex- pressly penalised by statute), chamberlain, he attained to the rank of alderman in 1565, head-bailiff in 1568, and chief alderman in 1571. John Shakespeare's prosperity seems to date from the time of his marriage, in 1557, with Mary, youngest daugh- ter of Robert Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote, As- ton Cantlowe, near Stratford, probably distantly con- nected with the ancient and distinguished Arden family of Warwickshire. Robert Arden possessed property at Snitterfield, and among his tenants there was Richard Shakespeare, John's father. Mary Arden was the young- est of seven daughters ; her father, dying in 1556, left her the chief property at Wilmcote, called Ashbies, extend- ing to fifty-four acres, together with a sum of money ; she had also an interest in some property at Snitterfield ; with her sister Alice she was appointed executrix of her father's w^ill. LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1568=9 On September 15, 1558, their first child, Joan, was bap- tised in the church of Holy Trinity ; the second, Mar- garet, on December 2, 1562; both children died in in- fancy. Two or three months after the birth of their third child, William, a terrible plague ravaged Stratford. The birth-place of the poet was in one of two adjoin- ing houses in Henley Street, possibly in the room now shown to reverent pilgrims. Of the two houses upon the The village of Wilmecote or Wincot in 1852. north side of the street, the one on the east was pur- chased by John Shakespeare in 1556, but that on the west (though there is nothing connecting it with him before 1575) has been known "from time immemorial" as " Shakespeare's Birthplace," perhaps from the circum- stance of its being occupied until 1806 by descendants of the poet. 1568=9. As bailiff, John Shakespeare entertained actors at Stratford, the Queen's and Earl of Worcester's companies — evidently for the first time in the history of the town. 1577=8 ANNALS OF THE 1571. At the age of seven, according to the cus- tom of the time, WilHam Shakespeare's school-hfe prob- ably began : he no doubt entered the Free Grammar School at Stratford, known as " the King's New School." The teaching at the school during Shakespeare's school- course was under efficient control; Walter Roche, Fel- low of Corpus Christi College, and rector of Clifford, was appointed master in 1570, and Thomas Hunt, curate (and subsequently vicar) of the neighbouring village of Lud- dington, held the office in 1577. Court yard of the Grammar School, Stratford. (From an engravhtg by Fairholi.) 1575. Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leices- ter at Kenilworth. William may have witnessed the Kenilworth festivities ; in the next year two accounts were published {cp. Preface to Midsummer Night's Dream). 1577«8. About this time William was removed from school, owing to his father's financial difficulties. Fourteen was the usual age for boys to leave school and commence apprenticeship, if they were not preparing for a scholarlv career. LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1577=8 The Stratford records give us the clearest evidence that John Shakespeare's prosperity had come to an end : his attendance at the council meetings became more and more irregular, and he was unable to pay, in 1578, an assess- ment of fourpence weekly for the relief of the poor levied on the aldermen of the borough, and in 1579 a levy for the purchase of weapons. In the former year he was forced to mortgage " the land in Wilmcote called Ash- bies " for £40 to Edmund Lambert, his brother-in-law, to revert if repayment were made before Michaelmas 1580: in the latter year, their interest in the Snitterfield property was sold for £40 to Robert Webbe (Alexander W'ebbe was the husband of Agnes Arden, Shakespeare's aunt). Towards Michaelmas 1580 John Shakespeare sought to redeem the \Mlmcote estate from Edmund Lam- bert, but his proposal was rejected on the plea that there were other unsecured debts. On September 6, 1586, John Shakespeare was deprived of his position on the council, on the ground that he " doth not come to the halls when warned, nor hath not done of long time.'' About this time he lost an action brought against him by one John Brown, and it is re- ported that " predictiis Johannes Shackspeve nihil habet iinde distringi potest," i.e. *' the aforesaid John Shak- speare has no goods on which distraint can be levied." There were in all eight children born to John Shake- speare :— Two daughters who died in infancy ; William ; Gilbert, baptised October 13, 1566 (living at Stratford in 1609) ; Joan, baptised April 15, 1569, married William Hart of Stratford (died in 1646) ; Anne, baptised Sep- tember 28, 1571 (died in 1579) ; Richard, baptised March II, 1574 (died at Stratford in 161 3) ; Edmund, baptised May 3, 1580 (became an actor, and died in London in December 1607). Nothing is definitely known concerning William's oc- cupation on his withdrawal from school. The oldest local tradition seems to point to his being apprenticed to " a 5 1582 ANNALS OF THE butcher," — perhaps to his own father, who is variously described as " a dealer in wool," " a glover," ^' a husband- man," " a butcher," and the like. 1582. In November of this year William Shake- speare married Anne Hathaway, who it would seem was the daughter (otherwise called Agnes) of Richard Hath- away, husbandman of the little village to the west of Stratford called Shottery ; he had died during the year, his will, dated September i, 1581, being proved on July 9, i.e. some four months before the marriage. Anne Hathaway was twenty-seven years old, and Wil- liam Shakespeare nineteen, when they became man and wife. The marriage did not take place at Stratford, but Ann Hathaway's Cottage, 1827. possibly at Luddington (three miles from Stratford and one from Shottery), or at Temple Grafton (about four miles from Stratford), — the registers of the old churches have disappeared. It is curious to note that in the Epis- copal registers at Worcester there is a record of a Hcense for a marriage between " WiUielmum Shaxpere and An- 6 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1587 nam Whateley de Temple Grafton " dated 27th of No- vember, 1582, where "Whateley" may be an error for " Hathwey," due to some exceptional accident or in- tended disguise; possibly (but less likely) the entry re- fers to some other " William Shakespeare." There is, however, preserved in the Bishop's Registry at W^orcester, a bond dated November 28, 1582, " against impediments," in anticipation of the marriage of Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway — " William Shagspere one thone parte, and Anne Hathwey of Stratford in the dioces of Vv^orcester, maiden " ; by this deed Fulke Sandells and John Rich- ardson, husl)andmen of Stratford (but more specifically farmers of Shottery, the former being " supervisor " of Richard Hathaway's will) bound themselves in a surety of £40 to " defend and save harmless the right reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of W^orcester " against any complaint that might ensue from allowing the mar- riage between William and Anne with only once asking of the banns of matrimony. There is no reference to the bridegroom's parents ; and all considerations seem to point to the conclusion that the marriage was hastened on by the friends of the bride. 1583. ^lay 26 ; under this date we find the bap- tism of Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare ; on February 2nd, 1585, were baptised his twin children, Hamnet and Judith, namicd after his Stratford friends Hamnet and Judith Sadler. 1587. On April 23rd of this year was buried Ed- mund Lambert, the mortgagee of Ashbies ; in Septem- ber a formal proposal was made that his son and heir, John, should, on cancelling the mortgage and paying £40, receive from the Shakespeares an absolute title to the estate. '"Johannes Shackespere and Maria uxor ejus, simulcum W^illielmo Shackespere filio suo," vrere parties to this proposed arrangement, which, however, was not carried out, as we learn from a Bill of Complaint brought 7 1587 ANNALS OF THE by the poet's father against John Lambert in the Court of Queen's Bench, 1589. There is no evidence that WiUiam was at Stratford at the time of the negotiations. In this same year, 1587, no less than five companies of actors visited Stratford-on-Avon, including the Queen's Play- ers and those of Lord Essex, Leicester, and Stafford. Between the years 1576 and 1587, with the exception of the year 1578, the town was yearly visited by companies of players. It may be inferred that these visits of the actors to Stratford stimulated Shakespeare's latent genius for the drama, and so caused him, under stress of circumstances, to seek his fortunes with the London players. Accord- ing to a well-authenticated tradition, borne out by allu- sions in his own writings, the direct cause of his leaving Stratford was the well-known poaching incident — the deer-stealing from the park of Sir Thomas Lucy at Charle- cote, about four miles from Stratford. '' For this " (ac- cording to Rowe's account in 1709) " he was prose- cuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and in order to revenge that ill-usage be made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in Lon- don." It is just possible that the lampoon on Lucy may be more or less preserved in the following rather poor verses, recorded by Oldys, on the authority of a very aged gentleman living in the neighbourhood of Stratford, where he died in 1703 : — "A parliament member, a justice of peace. At home a poor scare-crow, at London an asse: If lousy is Lucy, as some volk miscall it. Then Lucy is lousy, whatever befall it : He thinks himself great, Yet an ass in his state LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1587 We allow by his ears but with asses to mate. If Lncy is lousy, as some volk miscall it, Sing lousy Lucy, whatever befall it." It is noteworthy that Sir Thomas Lucy was a bitter persecutor of those who secretly favoured the old Faith, and acted as Chief Commissioner for the County of War- wick, " touching all such persons as either have been pre- sented, or have been otherwise found out to be Jesuits, seminary priests, fugitives, or recusants ... or vehemently suspected of such." In the second return, dated 1592, John Shakespeare's name is included among nine who " it is said come not to church for fear of proc- A bird's-eye view of Charlecote in 172?. ess of debt," but he was possibly inider suspicion for some worse fault. We have no separate information concerning Shake- speare between 1587 and 1592, and we cannot fix with absolute certainty the date of his leaving Stratford; but in all probability it may safely be assigned to 1585-7. He may have been in London at the time of the national mourning for Sir Philip Sidney at the end of 1586, and may even have seen the famous funeral procession. It 9 1587 ANNALS OF THE should, however, be noted that, so far as the stage was concerned, there was no employment in tow^n for Shake- speare during 1586, when the theatres were closed owing to the prevalence of the plague. The traditional accounts of his first connection with the theatres are evidently fairly authentic : — In " Au- brey's Lives of Eminent Men " (c. 1680) it is stated that " this Wm. being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London I guesse about 18, and was an actor at one of the play-houses and did act exceedingly well." The old parish clerk of Stratford narrated in 1693, being about eighty years old at the time, that " this Shakespeare was formerly in this town apprentice to a butcher, but that he ran from his master to London, and there was re- ceived into the play-house as a serviture, and by this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." Rowe's account (1709) is even more likely: — '' He was received into the company then in being, at first, in a very mean rank ; but his admirable wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him, if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer." In 1753 the compiler of the " Lives of the Poets " states that Shakespeare's " first expedient was to wait at the door of the play-house, and hold the horses of those that had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance." Rowe does not mention this tradition, though he is said to have received it from Betterton, who heard it from D'Avenant. Dr. Johnson elaborated the story, adding, we know not on what authority, that *' he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will Shakespeare, and scarcely any other waiter was trusted with a horse while Will Shakespeare could be had. This was the first dawn of better fortune. Shakespeare, find- ing more horses put into his hand than he could hold, hired boys to wait under his inspection, who, when Will Shakespeare was summoned, were immediately to present 10 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1589 themselves : ' I am Shakespeare's boy, sir/ In time Shakespeare found higher employment ; but as long as the practice of riding to the play-house continued, the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's boys." According to another tradition, re- corded by ]\Ialone (1780), " his first office in the theatre was that of prompter's attendant." It is assumed that soon after his arrival in London Shakespeare became connected with one of the two Lon- don theatres, viz. '' The Theatre," in Shoreditch, built by James Burbage, father of the great actor Richard Bur- bage, in 1576; or *' The Curtain," in Moorfields — the second play-house, built about the same time (the name survives in Curtain Road, Shoreditch : both play-houses were built on sites outside the civic jurisdiction, the City Fathers having no sympathy wdth stage-plays. In all probability the former was the scene of Shakespeare's earliest activity, in whatever capacity it may have been. Shakespeare may have belonged, from the first, to Lord Leicester's Company, of which we know he soon became an important member, and with which, under various pa- trons, his dramatic career was to be associated. It is noteworthy that in 1587 the Earl of Leicester's men visited Stratford-on-Avon. In this same year, 1587, when the Admiral's men re-opened after the plague Marlowe's Tamherlaine was among the plays produced by them. 1588. In September of this year the Earl of Leicester died, and his company of actors found a new patron in Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby on September 25, 1592. 1589. On August 23, Greene's novel " Meita- phon " was entered on the Stationers' Registers, and was soon issued, with a preface by the satirist Tom Nash, containing a reference to " a sort of shifting companions that run through every art and thrive by none to leave the trade of Noverint (i.e, scrivener) whereto they were born, 1592 ANNALS OF THE and busy themselves with the endeavours of art that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse, if they should have need: yet English Seneca, read by candle light, yields many good sentences. Blood iii a Beggar, and so forth ; if you intreat him fair in a frostie morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical speeches, &c." This is the best evidence we have for the existence of a lost play on " Hamlet " at this early date: its author was almost certainly Thomas Kyd (born 1558, died 1594), famous as the author of " The Spanish Tragedy." In Menaphon Greene indulges in his sarcastic references to Marlowe, which are also found in his Pcrim- cdes the Blacksmith (1588). Peele, on the other hand, was held up, in Nash's Preface, as primus verborum arti- fex. It is clear that at this time Greene regarded Mar- lowe and Kyd as dangerous rivals : Shakespeare was not vet an object of fear. Greene was chief writer for the Queen's men, Marlowe and Kyd for Lord Pembroke's, Peele was joining Greene's company, leaving the Ad- miral's. 159L In this year Florio, subsequently the trans- lator of ]\[ontaigne's Essays, published Second F mites — a book of Italian-English dialogues. A sonnet entitled Phaeton to his friend Florio may possibly have been writ- ten by Shakespeare : but there is no direct evidence. In this year the Queen's players made their last ap- pearance at Court ; Lord Strange's men made the first of their many appearances at Court. " The Troublesome Raigne of King John:' the origi- nal of King John, was published this vear : it was re- issued in 161 1 as written by " W. Sh.," and in 1622 as by " W. Shakespeare." 1592. On February 19, Lord Strange's men opened the Rose Theatre on Bankside, erected by Philip Henslowe, theatrical speculator. It would appear that they had generally acted at the Cross Keys, an inn-yard 12 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1592 in Bishopsgate Street. They played at the Rose from February to June. At this time we find the great actor Edward Alleyn, Henslowe's son-in-law, at the head of Lord Strange's men, but he was really the Lord Admiral's man: there was evidently a short-lived combination of the two companies : but they soon dissolved partnership. On March 3, 1592, Henry VI. was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's men : it was in all probability I Henry VI., and was soon after referred to by Nash in his Pierce'^Penniless (licensed August 8) : — '' How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror K^f the French) to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and .have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spec- tators at least (at several times), who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding" {cp. iv. 6, 7). With a short break the theatres were closed on account of the plague until after Christmas 1593. The company meanwhile travelled, and we have notices of their visits to Bristol and Shrewsbury during that year : similar no- tices of travel are extant for subsequent years. In this same year, 1592, on September 4, died Robert Greene ; on the 20th of the month his Groatszvorfh of Wit was published, edited by Chettle. In this work there is an address to his " quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise and wisdome to prevent his extremities." Marlowe, Nash, and Peele, are probably the scholar-playwrights warned by Greene no longer to trust the players. " Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned : for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave — those puppets, I mean, that . speak from our mouth, those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not sti:ange that I, to whom they have all been beholding : is it not like that you, to whom they have all been beholding, shall (were ye in that case that I am now) be both at 13 1593 ANNALS OF THE once of them forsaken ? Yes, trust them not : for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart zvrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fae-totiim, is in his own conceit the only shake-scene irt a country. O that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses : and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your ad- mired inventions. . . . Yet, whilst yau may, seek you better masters ! for it is a pity men bi such rare wits should be subject to such rude grooms." The original of the travestied line is to be found in 3 Henry VI., " O tige/s heart i^rapt in a zi'oman's hide " (cp. Preface), and there can be no doubt that here we have the first direct evidence of Shakespeare's growing pre-eminence as an actor and as a playwright. In the month of .December, following the publication of Greene's Groatszvorth of Wit we have even more important evidence of Shakespeare's recognised pre- eminence as a man of character. In his " Kind Hartes Dreame " Chettle, the publisher of the attack, penned the following apology : — " I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself have seen his (i.e. Shakespeare's) demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art." Shakespeare probably referred to Greene's death soon afterwards : — " The thrice-three Muses, mourning for the death Of Learning, late deceased in beggary." ^ 1593. In this year was pubUshed '' Venus & Adonis," dedicated by the poet to Henry Wriothesley, ^Midsummer Night's Dream (cp. Preface). 14 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1594 third Earl of Southampton as " the first heir of my inven- tion " {cf. Preface). It is significant that the printer of the book was Richard Field, Shakespeare's fellow coun- tryman. The title-page bore a quotation in Latin from Ovid's '* Amoves " : — " Vilia miretur viilgits; miJii Uavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua." ^ (Seven editions from 1593-1602, cp. Preface.) Under date " i of June, 1593," the burial register of the parish church of St. Nicholas, Deptford, contains the following entry : — '' Christopher Marlow, slain by Fran- ci. Archer," whom we know from another source to have been '' a servingman, a rival of his in his lewd love." Shakespeare subsequently referred to Marlowe in the famous lines : — " Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might, * Who ever loved that loved not at first sight.' " ^ 1594. At the beginning of the year " Titus An- dronicus,'" described as a '' new play," was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men. Lord Derby died on April 16, and was succeeded as licenser and patron by Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (he died in 1596, and was succeeded by his son, who became Lord Chamberlain in 1597). Shakespeare's company performed for a short time at the new theatre at Newington Butts, and subsequently between 1598 and 1599 at "The Curtain" and "The Theatre." Roderigo Lopez, the Queen's Jewish physician, was hanged in June {cf. Preface, Merchant of Venice) : Hens- lowe produced at the Rose on August 25 " the Venesyon " *' Let base conceited, zvits admire vile things, Fair Phoebus lead me to the muses springs!" ' cp. As You Like It, III. v. 8i. IS 1594 ANNALS OF THE Comedy" (probably an early version of '' The Merchant of Venice ") In December of this year Shakespeare performed be- fore the Queen at Greenwich Palace ; he is named in the manuscript accounts of the Treasurer of the chamber : — " William Kempe, William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage " ; they acted two comedies or " interludes." On December 28, when he was thus engaged at Green- wich, " The Comedy of Errors " was played in the hall of Gray's Inn. There was considerable confusion brought about by the students of the Inner Temple : " and after such sports, a Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus his Menechmus, was played by the players ; so that night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but con- fusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards called the Night of Errors." In this year " The Taming of a Shrew'' — the original of Shakespeare's " The Taming of the Shrew " — was printed for the first time ; and " The first part of the Con- tention betwixt the tzvo famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster'' (cp. 2 Henry VI.), was surreptitiously pub- lished. Shakespeare's second volume of verse, " Lucrece," was published this year, printed by Richard Field, and dedi- cated to the Earl of Southampton. (Five editions, 1594- 161 6; cp. Preface.) Soon after the publication of " Lucrece," " Willohie his Avisa " appeared, with a laudatory address referring to Shakespeare by name: "And Shakespeare paints poor Lucrece' rape" (the poem, re-published in 1596, 1605, 1609, is Df interest in connection with the " Sonnets," cp. Preface). A similar reference is perhaps found in " Epicedium, a funeral song, upon the vertuous life and godly death of the right zvorshipful the lady Helen Branch " : — " You that have writ of chaste Lucretia Whose death was witness of her spotless life." 16 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1595 Alichael Drayton, in the same year, referred to the poem in his " Legend of Mathilda the Chaste " : — " Lucrece, of whom proud Rome hath boasted long, Lately reviv'd to live another age ; " etc. (found also in the 1596 edition, but expunged in later copies), while the pious poet Robert Southwell, executed Feb. 20, 1594-5, in his " St. Peters Complaint, zvith other poems/' alluded to " J^enus and Adonis'': — " Still finest wits are 'stilling Venus' rose, In paynim toys the sweetest veins are spent, To christian works few have their talents lent." In this year Spenser possibly referred to our poet in " Colin Clout's Come Home Again " as " Action," i.e. Eaglet : — " And there, though last, not least is Aetion ; A gentler shepherd may no where be found Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth like herself heroically sound." 1595. In a curious volume " Polimanfeia," pub- Hshed at Cambridge, there is a marginal reference to " All praise z^'orthy Lucretia \ Szveet Shakespeare \ Wanton Adonis:^ A more valuable contemporary allusion is John Wee- ver's sonnet " ad Gnlielmnm Shakespeare/' possibly be- longing to the year 1595-6, though first printed in 1599 in " Epigrams in the oldest cut, and nezvest fashion. A twice seven hours (in so many zueeks) study. No longer (like the fashion) not unlike to continue": — " Money-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue, I swore Apollo got them and none other. Their rosy-tainted features clothed in tissue, Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother : Rose-cheek'd Adonis with his amber tresses. Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her, Chaste Lucretia virgin like her dresses. Proud lust-stung Tarquin seeking still to prove her : 17 1596 ANNALS OF THE Romeo, Richard: more whose names I knozv not, Their sugred tongues, and power-attractive beauty. Say they are saints, akhough that saints they shew not, For thousands vow to them subjective duty : They burn in love : thy children, Shakespeare, het^ them : Go, woo thy muse : more nymphish brood beget them." Weever, like the author of the previous work, was " a Cambridge man " — " one weaver fellow ... els could he never have had such a quick sight into my vir- tues." Another reference belonging to 1595 is in Thomas Ed- wards' L'Enroy to " Ccphalus and Procris " : — " Adon deftly masking thro' Stately troops rich conceited, Shew'd he well deserved too Love's delight on him to gaze : And had not Love herself entreated. Other nymphs had sent him bays." About this time Richard Carew wrote : '' Will you read Virgin Take the Earl of Surrey. Catullus} Shake- speare, and Marlow's fragment." " The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of York, and the death of good King Henry the Sixth, as it ivas suii- dry times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants " {cp. 3 Henry VI.) issued from the press during the year. On Dec. i, '' Edzuard HI./' the pseudo-Shakespeare play (with its " lilies that fester smell far -d'orsc tJian weeds'' cp. Sonnets, xciv) was licensed and was published the following year. 1596. August II. Hamnet, the poet's only son, was buried in the parish church of Stratford. We may assume, but there is no evidence, that Shakespeare was present. In this year, John Shakespeare — probably in accord- ance with the washes of his son — made application to the ^ i.e. heated. 18 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1596 College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms, stating that he had already, in 1568, applied to the College, and obtained a pattern. Two copies of the draft of the grant proposed to be conferred on John Shakespeare, in reply to his ap- plication, in the year 1596, are preserved at the College of Arms. In the margin are the arms and crest, with the motto " Non san:^ droicf." After a preamble it is stated that being by " credible report informed that John Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwick, whose parents and late antecessors were for their valiant and faithful service advanced and rewarded by the most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of fa- mous memorie, sithence which time they have continued at those parts in good reputation and credit; and that the said John having married Mary, daughter and one of the heirs of Robert Arden of Wilmcote, in the said coun- ty, gent.^ In consideration whereof, and for the encour- agement of his posterity to wdiom these achievements might descend by the ancient custom and laws of arms, I have therefore assigned, granted, and by these presents confirmed this shield or coat of arms, z'h., gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the first, the point steeled, proper, and for his crest or cognisance a falcon, his wings dis- played argent, standing on a wreath of his colours, sup- porting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid, set upon a hel- met with mantles and tassles as hath been accustomed and more plainly appeareth depicted on this margent." The draft was not executed this year. At the end of the year James Burbage purchased from Sir William More a large portion of a house in the Black- friars, formerly belonging to Sir Thomas Cawarden, Master of the Revels, and afterwards converted it into a theatre : it was subsequently leased by his sons, Richard and Cuthbert, to Henrv Evans for the performances of the " Children of the Chapel " (cp. 1610). At this time Shakespeare was probably lodging near *" grandfather," in second draft. " " esquire " in second draft. 19 1598 ANNALS OF THE " The Bear-Garden in Southwark," and possibly soon after in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. The name is found in a list of residents there in 1598, but there is no definite evidence of identity. 1597. Henry Brooke succeeded to the title as eighth Lord Cobham ; the family claimed descent from Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard chief. Probably owing- to Lord Cobham's objections, the character '' Oldcastle " was at this time changed to '' Falstafif." On May 4, Shakespeare purchased (for sixty pounds) New Place, a mansion with about an acre of land in the centre of Stratford-on-Avon (the final legal transfer be- ing made five years later) ; many years passed before he himself settled there ; meanwhile he let the house or part of it, and generally improved the property. In this year another effort was made to get back the moT-tgaged estate of Ashbies, but without success. The first Quarto imperfect copy of " Romeo and Juliet " was surreptitiously published {cp. Preface). " Richard 11.'' and " Richard III.'' were published anonymously ; the Deposition Scene was omitted from the previous play (cp. Preface), and so, too, in the next edi- tion, published in the following year. The 3rd and 4th editions, 1608 and 1615, supply the omissions. ''Richard III." was re-published in 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612. 1598. This year was published Francis Meres' " Palladis Tamia: Wit's Treasury, being the second part of Wit's Conimowivealth'' containing the most important reference to Shakespeare's achievements up to that date : — "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to five in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mel- lifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred sonnets among his private friends, &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Com- 20 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1598 edy and Tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the EngHsh is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Won, his Midsummer-Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for Tragedy, his Richard the IL, Richard the IIL, Henry the IV., King John, Titus An- dronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo said, that the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue, if they would speak Latin ; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine-filed phrase, if they would speak English. As Ovid saith of his work : — Jamqiic opus exegi quod nee Jovis ira, nee ignis, Nee poterit fcrriim, nee edax abolore vetustas. And as Horace saith of his: — Exegi inonumentum (£re perennius; Regalique, situ pyramidum altius; Quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotcns possit diruere ; ant in- nunierabilcs annorum series, &c., so say I severally of Sir Philip Sidney's, Spenser's, Daniel's, Drayton's, Shake- speare's and Warner's works." [It is significant that Meres omits Henry VL from his list of plays, but includes Titus Andronicus.] The following is the approximate chronological order of plays mentioned by Meres (cp. Prefaces to individual plays) : — Love's Labour's Lost [c. 1591), The Two Gen- tlemen of Verona (c. 1591), Comedy of Errors (1592), Romeo and Juliet (1592-6, subsequently revised), Richard J I, (1593), Richard HL (1593), Titus Andronicus (1594),' Merchant of Venice (1594, subsequently re- vised), I'Cing John (1594), Midsummer-Night's Dream (c. 1593-5, perhaps subsequently revised), the earlier ^ The close connexion between the date of Titus and Peele's Honour of the Garter, to which Mr. Charles Crawford has re- cently called attention, inclines me to place the play after June, 1593. I do not accept Mr. Crawford's general conclusions {cp. Jahrbuch der d. Shak. Gesell. xxxvi.). 21 1598 ANNALS OF THE draft of All's Well that Ends Well (i.e. Love's Labour Won) (before 1595), Henry IV. (i597)- In this same year we have ^^A Remembrance of some English Po^/^," probably by Richard Barnfield. Spenser is praised for his Fairy Queen, Daniel for his Rosamond and that '' rare work " The White Rose and the Red, Drayton for his well-written " Tragedies and szceet epis- ■tles'' :— " AndShakcspcarc thou, whose honey-flowing vein (Pleasing the world) thy praises doth obtain: Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste, Thy name in Fame's immortal Book hath placed. Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever. Well may the body die, but Fame dies never." According to a tradition preserved by Rowe " Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with the admirable char- acter of Falstaf¥ in the two parts of Henry IV. that she commanded Shakespeare to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love " ; and an- other tradition (cp. Dennis' dedication to The Comical Gallant, 1702) states that it was finished in fourteen days. (Cp. Epilogue, 2 Henry IV.) The play of The Merry Wives may therefore safely be dated 1597. Jus- tice Shallow with his " dozen white luces " was intended to suggest Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. The only other of Shakespeare's ^ ^ (^- rr\ T plays already written bv the date of Bust of Sir Thomas Lucy. K.^,-r>iij-^ • ' u t,i From the monument in Meres Polladis lamia was probably Charlecote Church. jj^^ Taming of the Shrczv, remarkable for the many allusions to Stratford and the neighbourhood in the Inductions ' (cp. Preface). ^e.g. "Old Sly of Burton Heath" (=Barton-on-the-Heath) ; Marian Racket of Wincot ; " Old John Naps of Greece " ( = Greet, in Gloucestershire) ; similarly in 2 Henry IV. " William 22 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1598 The following allusion to Shakespeare appeared in John ]\Iarston's ''Scourge of Villainie," published this year: — " Luscus, what's played to-day? Faith, now I know, I set thy lips abroad, from whence doth flow Nought but pure Juliet and Romeo. Say, who acts best? Drusus or Roscio? Now I have him, that ne'er of ought did speak But when of plays or players he did treat. 'Hath made a common-place book out of plays, And speaks in print : at least whate'er he says, Is warranted by Curtain^ plaudeties. If e'er you heard him courting Lesbia's eyes; Say, courteous sir, speaks he not movingly. From out some new pathetic tragedy? He writes, he rails, he jests, he courts what not. And all from out his huge long-scraped stock Of well-penned plays." Soon after the publication of ]\Iarston's •" 5'ro//ro^^ of Villainie," the author of '• The Return from Parnassus " (probably John Day)^ was at work on the second of his three plays, which was probably acted at St. John's Colleo^e, Cambridge, at Christ- mas, 1599. The fol- lowing extracts sug- gest the character of Luscus : — Bas-relief in plaster, tornierJy in Shakespeare's birth-place It represents David and Goli- ath, and formerly bore the date 1606. Visor of Woncot " ( = Woodmancote) and " Clement Perks of the Hill " ( = Stinchcombe Hill) are specific references to persons and places in Gloucestershire ; so, too, " Will Squele, a CoLswold man." ' Perhaps a quibbling allusion to the " Curtain " theatre. ^v. "Return from Parnassus," edited by the present writer. 1598 ANNALS OF THE " Giillio. Pardon, fair lady, though sick-thoughted GulHo makes amain unto thee, and Hke a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo thee.^ Ingenioso. (We shall have nothing but pure Shakespeare and shreds of poetry that he hath gathered at the theatres.) Giillio. Pardon me, moi mistressa, as I am a gentleman, the moon, in comparison of thy bright hue 's a mere slut, An- thonio's Cleopatra a black-brow'd milkmaid, Helen a dowdy. Ingenioso. (Mark, Romeo and Juliet!' O monstrous theft! I think he will run through a whole book of Samuel Daniels!)' Giillio. Thrice fairer than myself — thus I l)egan — " * ***** " O sweet Mr. Shakespeare ! I "11 have his picture in my study at the court." ***** " Let the duncified age esteem of Spenser and Chaucer, I '11 worship sweet Mr. Shakespeare, and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillow, as we read of one (I do not well remember his name, but I am sure he was a king) slept with Homer under his bed's head." The revised Love's Labour's Lost was published this year, with Shakespeare's name for the first time on the title-page of a play - ^ cp. " Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him, And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him." Venus and Adonis, si. i. ' cp. Romeo and Juliet, II. ir. ^Evidently Daniel's debt to Shakespeare was recognised {cp. Preface. Richard II.) *cp. Venus and Adonis, st. ii. 24 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1598 PLEASANT Conceited Comedie CALLED, Loues labors loft* Asitwasprcfentcd before her Highnes this lafl Chriibna^. Newly corrc£lcd and augmented BjW.ShakeJ^. Imprinted at London by Tf^« 1598 ANNALS OF THE Robert Tofte's '' The Month's Mind of a Melancholy Lover " appeared this year, with important allusions to this play : — " Love's Labour Lost. I once did see a play Y-cleped so, so called to my pain," etc. {cp. Preface to Love's Labour's Lost). The First Part of Henry IV. was issued this year (and a revised edition, " newly corrected," the following year, and again in 1604, 1608, 1615). Shakespeare acted in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, produced in September by the Lord Chamber- lain's Company. According to a tradition recorded by Rowe, Shakespeare was answerable for the acceptance of the piece. His name is placed first in the list of original performers of the play. Some interesting correspondence directly mentioning Shakespeare belongs to this year: — (i.) from Abraham Sturley, formerly bailiff, to his brother or brother-in-law in London, containing these words — '' This is one special remenibrance from our father's motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. Shakespeare, is willing to disburse some money upon some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near about us : he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the instruction you can give him thereof, and by the friends he can make therefore, we think it a fair mark for him to shoot at, and would do us much good " ; (ii.) from the same writer to Richard Ouiney (father of Thomas Quiney, afterwards Shakespeare's son-in-law), at the time (November 4) staying in London, negotiating local affairs, probably seeking to obtain relief for Strat- ford from some tax. Sturley writes that Quiney's letter of October 25 had stated " that our countryman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us money," " which I like," he con- tinues, " as I shall hear when, and where, and how ; and I pray let not go that occasion if it may sort to any indif- ferent conditions "; (iii.) on the very day when Quiney had written the letter which called forth this reply from 26 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1598 Sturley, he had also addressed a communication " to my loving good friend and countryman Mr. Wm. Shake- speare " — the only letter addressed to Shakespeare which is known to exist: — mVmh mmwc: 1 i i t; >)« He . :(; ^ I like your face, and the proportion of your body for King Richard II L I pray, Mr. Philomusus, let me see you act a little of it. Philomusus. ' Now is the winter of our discontent,' &c." 33 1603 ANNALS OF THE In the same play a character Judicio passed this judge- ment on ** William Shakespeare " : "Who loves not Adon's love, or Lucrece rape? His sweeter verse contains heart-throbbing line, Could but a graver subject him content, ^ Without love's foolish, lazy languishment." ^ The allusion in The Return from Parnassus to Ben Jonson's " purge " cannot be satisfactorily explained ; it can only be understood in its connexion with the Stage- Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the so-called Poetasters (cp. Preface to Troilus and Cressida). About this time, too, the boy-actors became exceedingly popular (cp. Hamlet ii. 2). They performed Cynthia's Revels, 1600, and The Poetaster, 1601. 1602. On May i Shakespeare purchased from William and John Combe one hundred and seven acres of arable land, which he added to New Place, also, on Sep- tember 28, a cottage and garden in Chapel Lane held from the manor of Rowington. Shakespeare was not in Strat- ford at the former date : the conveyance was made to his brother Gilbert. An imperfect version of The Merry Wives was pub- lished this year by Thomas Creede. Under the date July 26, 1602, was entered in the Sta- tioners' Registers, '' The Revenge of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, as yt zcas latelie acted by the Lord Chamber- leyne his serz'auntes." 1603. On Feb. 2 Shakespeare's company per- formed before the Queen at Richmond. On February 7 a license obtained by James Roberts for " the booke of Troilus and Cressida as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men " (probably Shakespeare's play, ^ Other editions, "Who loves Adonis' love, or Lucrece rape," " heart-robbing life," and omit " lazy." 34 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1603 perhaps before revision ; but the book was not published this year). March 26th. Death of Queen Ehzabeth. Henry Chettle in England's Mourning Garment (pubhshed after the burial, 28th of April) taxed the poets for not penning elegies : — " Nor doth the silver-tongued Melicert Drop from his honied muse one sable tear, To mourn her death that graced his desert, And to his lays opened her royal ear. Shepherd, remember our Elisabeth, And sing her rape, done by that Tavqiiin, death." On May 7 King James arrived in London ; on May 19th a license was granted to Shakespeare, Burbage and other members of the Lord Chamberlain's Company to perform stage plays " within their now usual house called the Globe " and anywhere else in the kingdom. They were henceforth to be '' The King's Servants." London was visited by the plague this year, the theatres were closed, and " the King's Players " went on tour, being forbidden '' to present any plays publicly in or near London by reason of great peril that might grow through the extraordinary concourse and assembly of people to a new increase of the plague." On December 2, the court being at that time at Wilton, the seat of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, the company by royal command, performed there, and re- ceived ^30 '' by way of his ^Majesty's reward." Subse- quently they were summoned to appear at Hampton Court and Whitehall. Nine plays in all were acted at the Christ- mas and New Year festivities. John Davies of Hereford in *' Microcosmos: the dis- covery of the Little World, zvith the government thereof ^ 1603, addressed the players, and more particularly " W. S. R. B." (i.e. William Shakespeare and Richard Bur- bage), in the following eulogistic lines: 35 1604 ANNALS OF THE " Players, I love ye and your Quality, As ye are men that pass time not abused : And ^ some I love for ^ painting, poesie. And say fell Fortune cann«t be excused That hath for better uses you refus'd : Wit, courage, good shape, good parts, and all good. As long as all these goods are no v^orse used. And though the stage doth stain pure gentle blood, Yet ^ generous ye are in mind and mood." This year were published the the first quarto of Hamlet, surreptitiously printed (cp. Preface) ; Ben Jonson's Se- janus, with Shakespeare's name in the list of actors ; and Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays (cp. Preface to Tempest). 1604. On February 8th, owing to the continuance of the plague, £30 was given to Burbage " for the main- tenance and relief of himself and company." On March 15th King James made his formal entry into London: nine actors belonging to the King's company walked in the procession, each being presented with four yards and a half of scarlet cloth. The nine actors named were *' William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillipps, Laurence Fletcher, John Hemmings, Richard Burbage, William Slye, Robert Armyn, Henry Condell, Richard Cowley." Dekker's description of " The Magnificent Entertain- ment^' with the speeches and songs ran through three or four issues during the year. On April 9th a letter was sent by the King to the Mayor and Justices ordering them to permit playing by the King's men at the Globe, and the Queen's and Prince's ^ " W. S. R. B." : in the margin. ^ " Simonides saith that painting is a dumb Poesy, and Poesy a speaking painting " : in the margin. '"Roscius v^as said for his excellency in his quality, to be only worthy to come on the stage, and for his honesty to be more worthy than to come thereon " : in the margin. LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1604 men at '' their usual houses," viz., the Fortune and the Curtain, respectively. In June Shakespeare must have been at Stratford : on the 25th of the month he lent the sum of two shillings to one Philip Rogers, who already owed him £1. 19s. lod. for malt supplied between March 27th and the end of May. He paid six shillings off the debt. In July Shake- speare sued him in the local court at Stratford for the balance of £1. 15s. lod. The following letter from Sir Walter Cope to " The Right Honourahle the Lord J'iscount Cranborne at the Court,'' belongs to this year : — " Sir, — I have sent and been all this morning hunting for play- ers, jugglers, and such kind of creatures, but find them hard to find, wherefore leaving notes for them to seek me. Burbage is come, and says there is no new play that the Queen hath not seen, but they have revived an old one. called Love's Labour Lost, which for wit and mirth he says will please her exceedingly. And this is appointed to be played to-morrow night at my lord of Southampton's, unless you send a writ to remove the Corpus cum causa to your house in Strand. Burbage is my messenger ready attending your pleasure, — Yours Most Humbly, Walter Cope." In August every member of the company was sum- moned to be in attendance at Somerset House, on the occasion of the visit of the Spanish Ambassador to Eng- land, but there is no evidence that their professional serv- ices were required. The King's Company acted at court on November i and 4, December 26 and 28. It is almost certain that Othello was acted on November i, and Measure for Measure on December 26. Other performances by the company were given on the following January 7 and 8, February 2 and 3, and on Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday. In January of this year *' The Children of the Chapel " became " The Children of Her Majesty's Revels." In this year the second Quarto of Hamlet was pub- Z7 1607 ANNALS OF THE lished — " Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the new and perfect copy." A tragedy of Gozi'ry twice acted by the King's Players, " with exceeding concourse of people '' gave offence, and is noticed towards the end of the year : — " Whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that princes should be played on the stage in their lifetime, I hear that some great councillors are much displeased with it, and so 'tis thought it shall be forbidden " (Chamberlain to Winwood). On December 26, Measure for Measure was produced for the first time at Whitehall. 1605. Augustine PhilHpps bequeathed "to my fel- low, William Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of On March 3, at Oxford, was baptised William D'Ave- nant (afterwards Sir W. D'Avenant), son of John D'Avenant, landlord of the Crozcii Inn, Shakespeare act- ing as godfather. According to Aubrey : — " "Sir. William Shakespeare was wont to go into Warwickshire once a year, and did commonly in his journey lie at this house in Oxon., where he was exceedingly respected." In this year Shakespeare bought the unexpired lease of a moiety of the Stratford tithes. 1606. Macbeth was probably completed this year {cp. Preface). On December 26 King Lear was produced, for the first time, before the Court at Whitehall. 1607. Shakespeare's daughter Susanna was mar- ried on June 5, of this year, to John Hall, who subse- quently became '* very famous " as a physician {cp. '' Se- lect Observations on English bodies, or cures both em- perical and historical, performed upon very eminent per- sons in desperate diseases, first written in Latin by Mr. 38 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1608 John Hall, physician, living at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, where he was very famous, as also in the counties adjacent, as appeares by these Observations," etc., London, 1657). In this year The Puritan ; or, the Widow of IVatliiig Street was published, containing a direct reference to Banquo's Ghost — " Instead of a jester we '11 have a ghost in a white sheet sit at the upper end of the table." Shakespeare was probably at work on Antony and Cleopatra. In this year was published Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis, or Liistes Prodegies, by William Barksted, con- taining the following concluding lines : — " But stay, my Muse, in thine own confines keep. And wage not war with so dear lov'd a neighbour ; But having sung thy day-song, rest and sleepe; Preserve thy small fame and his greater favour. His song was worthy merit ; — Shakespeare, he Sung the fair blossom, thou, the withered tree ; Laurel was due to him ; his art and wit Hath purchased it ; cypress thy brow will fit." On November 26 King Lear was entered on the " Sta- tioners' Registers." 1608. Two quartos of King Lear issued from the press {cp. Preface). On February 21 Elizabeth Hall, Shakespeare's only grand-daughter, was baptised in the church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon. On September 9, Shakespeare's mother was buried. On October 16, of this year, Shakespeare stood god- father to William, son of Henry Walker, mercer and alderman, Stratford-on-Avon. Timon of Athens was probably being prepared for the stage during this year. On May 20 Edward Blount entered in the ** Stationers' Registers " " a booke called Anthony and Cleopatra " (but no quarto edition was issued). 39 1610 ANNALS OF THE George Wilkins published in this year a novel, avow- edly based on the acted drama of Pericles, with the fol- lowing title-page : — " The Painful Adventures of Per- icles, Prince of Tyre. Being the true History of Pericle^^, as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient Poet, John Gower." 1609. Two editions of the play of Pericles were issued, " by William Shakespeare " [but evidently only in part by him, otherwise by George Wilkins : though re- issued in 1611, 1619, 1630, and 1635, the play was not included in either the first or second folios, cp Preface]. 1609. On January 28 Richard Bonian and Henry Walley obtained a license for " a booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida," i.e. Shakespeare's play, which soon after was published as a quarto, (i.) with a title- page stating that the play was printed " as acted by the King's Majesties servants at the Globe," and (ii.) with a title-page omitting this reference, and adding a preface to the effect that the play was " never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vul- gar," etc. {cp. Preface). On May 20 a license for the publication of '' Shake- speare's Sonnets'' was granted to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe ; the volume was shortly afterwards published {cp. Preface). Coriolanus probably belongs to this year (cp. Preface). At the end of the year, Shakespeare's Company took possession of the Blackfriars Theatre after the departure of the Children of the Chapel. 1610. [possibly an error for 161 1]. On April 20 of this year Dr. Simon Forman was present at a per- formance of Macbeth at the Globe, and recorded the fact, with observations, in his " Book of Plays." Dr. Simon Forman saw Cynibeline acted either this year or the next (the Diary contains reports of Shake- 40 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1610 spearian representations in 1610-1611, but no date is as- signed to the Cyjubcline entry, cp. Preface). An interesting pamphlet was pubHshed this year by Sylvester Jourdain, entitled A Discovery of the Ber- mudas, othenvise called the He of Devils; by Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George So miners, and Captayne Nezvport, and divers others. (William Strachey's fuller account of the matter was printed in 1612, Preface to Tempest). John Davies of Hereford's The Scourge of Folly, con- sisting of satirical Epigrams and others in honour of many noble and worthy persons of our land, contains the following verses addressed *' To our English Terence, Mr Will : Shake-speare " : — " Some say, good Will, which I, in sport, do sing, Had'st thou not played some kingly parts in sport, Thou hadst been a companion for a king. And been a King among the meaner sort. Some others rail, but rail as they think fit, Thou hast no railing, but a reigning wit ; And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reap, So to increase their stock which they do keep." New Place, Stratford, 1702. There is no authentic record of the appearance of the house as it was in Shakespeare's time. 41 1613 ANNALS or THE In April Shakespeare purchased from the Combes 20 acres of land {cp. 1602). 1611. On May 15 Dr. Forman witnessed the per- formance of A Winter's Talc at the Globe Theatre — evi- dently a new play at the time {cp. Preface). IMalone stated, on evidence no longer accessible, that The Ton pest was in existence in this year. Shakespeare's name is found on the margin of a sub- scription list started at Stratford-on-Avon on September II, " towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parlia- ment for the better repair of the highway." By this time he had probably settled at Xew Place. 1613. On February 4 Shakespeare's third brother, Richard, was buried in the parish church, Stratford-upon- Avon. Soon afterwards Shake- speare was in London, and pur- chased a house, as an investment, in Blackfriars. The purchase- deed, dated March 10, with the poet's signature, is preserved in the Guildhall Library, London. Next day a mortgage-deed rela- ting to the purchase was signed : this is also extant, and is now in the British ]\Iuseum. To this year, July 15, belongs an entry by the Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of Worcester, concerning an action for slander brought by Shakespeare's eldest daughter, Susanna Hall, against a person of the name of Lane. Signature of Shakespeare from Robert Whatcott, Shakespeare's the deed mortgaging- his . . , . i • r -^ house in Blackfriars, on friend, waS the Chiei WltUCSS OU BrifL^hM'ustuiS:''""'" '^' behalf of the plaintiflf, whose char- 42 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1613 acter was vindicated, and the defendant, who did not ap- pear in court, was excommunicated. The Tempest, one of a series of nineteen plays, was performed at the festivities in celebration of the marriage of Princess Elizabeth with the Elector Frederick. Besides The Tempest, six more of Shakespeare's plays were produced on this occasion: — Much Ado, Tempest, Winter's Tale, Sir John Falstaff (i.e. Merry Wives), Othello, Julius Ccosar, and Hotspur (probably i Henry IV.). In the same list occurs the lost play of cardenno or cardenna, which on September 9, 1653, was entered on the " Stationers' Registers " as " by Fletcher and Shake- speare," but was never published. On June 29th of this year the Globe Theatre was burned down during the performance of a play on the subject of Henry VIIJ. (cp. Preface). " A Sonnet upon the pitiful burning of the Globe play- house in London " was composed by one who was well acquainted with the details of the fire : — " Now sit ye down, Melpomene, Wrapt in a sea-cole robe, And tell the doleful tragedy, That late was played at Globe ; For no man that can sing and say Was scared on St. Peter's daye. Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true. Out run* the knights, out run the lords. And there was great ado ; Some lost their hats and some their swords. E'en out-run Burbidge too ; The reprobates though drunk on Monday, Prayed for the fool and Henry Condye. Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true. The perriwigs and drum-heads fry. Like to a butter firkin. A woful burning did betide To many a good buff jerkin. 43 1614 ANNALS OF THE Then will swoH'n eyes, like drunken Flemminges, Distressed stood old stuttering Hemminges. Oh sorrow, pitiful sorrow, and yet all this is true." 1614. Ben Jonson in the Introduction to his Bar- thoiojjiezc Fair, first acted in this year, alluded to TJie Tempest'. — "If there be never a Servant-monster \ the Fair, who can help it. he says? nor a nest of Antics. He is loth to make na- ture afraid in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like Drolleries.^' In July of this year John Combe died, leav- ing- Shakespeare a leg- acy of £5. In the autumn an attempt was made by William Combe, John Combe's heir to enclose A piece of glass, W.A.S. (William and Anne the COmmon fields Shakespeare?) supposed to have come from about his estate at Wel- combe. Shakespeare's interest as landowner and leaseholder of tithes would have suffered if the project had been carried out. On October 18, Replingham, Combe's agent, agreed to give him full compensation for injury by '' any inclosure or decay of tillage," and accordingly he did not oppose the inclosure. The Corporation, however, maintained its op- position. In November Shakespeare went to London, and his cousin, Thomas Greene, town clerk of Stratford, visited him there to discuss the matter on behalf of the Corpora- tion. On December 23, the Corporation addressed a formal letter to Shakespeare, supported by a private note to " my cousin " from T. Greene, asking him to support their opposition to the inclosure, which if carried out 44 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1616 would cause great inconveniences. The whole project was ultimately abandoned. 1615. In Thomas Greene's diary there is the fol- lowing entry :— " Sept. Mr Shakespeare telling J. Greene that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe." 1616. ' Early in this year Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warw^ick, prepared the draft of Shakespeare's will ; the engrossment was evidently to have been signed on January 25th, but after many interlineations and erasures, it was not finally signed until ]\Iarch. The signature was appended to each of the three sheets of the will ; these three signatures, together with the two referred to above, are the only undisputed autographs of the poet. Shakespeare's V/ill — signatures of the testator and witnesses. In the interval, Judith, the poet's younger daughter, was married on February loth, at Stratford Church, to 45 1616 ANNALS OF THE Thomas Quiney, vintner and wine-merchant, son of Rich- ard Quiney, whose letter to the poet is extant {cp, 1598). The marriage was somewhat irregular ; and the parties were summoned a few weeks afterwards to the Ecclesi- astical Court at Worcester, and fined for getting married without a license. It would seem that at the time of revising^ and signing the will, the poet was seriously ill. According to a local tradition, recorded in the Diary of the Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon (1662), " Shakespeare, Dray- ton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted." but it is quite clear that already, at the be- ginning of the year, the poet recognised his health was failing. On April 23 (Alay 3, new style) he died, having com- pleted his fifty-second year — the death-day in all prob- ability being on his birthday. Two days after his death, on the 25th of April, the re- mains of the poet were interred in the chancel of Strat- ford Church. On a flat stone over the grave the following words were subsequently inscribed : — Good FKEN.t)rORlESUS 5AKE FORBEARE, TO DIG} a TIE DVST ENCLOA3ED H]AKE: BlE^T BE Y MAN Y 5PARES TiE^ ^TONE^. AMD CVR; E^ MY BONE^ [A letter wTitten in the year 1694 by William Hall, an Oxford graduate, to his intimate friend, Edward Thwaites, the eminent Anglo-Saxon scholar, contains the following noteworthy passage : — " I very greedily embrace this occasion of acquainting 46 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1616 you with something which I found at Stratford-upon- Avon. That place I came unto on Thursday night, and the next day went to visit the ashes of the great Shake- spear, which be interr'd in that church. The verses w^hich in his Hfe-time he ordered to be cut upon his tombstone, for his monument have others, are these which follow, ' Reader, for Jesus's sake forbear, etc' The little learn- ing these verses contain would be a very strong argument of the want of it in the author, did not they carry some- thing in them which stands in need of a comment. There is in this church a place which they call the bone-house, a repository for all bones they dig up, which are so many that they would load a great number of waggons. The poet, being willing to preserve his bones unmoved, lays a curse upon him that moves them., and having to do with clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant sort of people, he descends to the meanest of their ca- pacities, and disrobes himself of that art which none of his co-temporaries wore in greater perfection. Nor has the design missed of its effect, for, lest they should not only draw this curse upon themselves, but also entail it upon their posterity, they have laid him full seventeen foot deep, deep enough to secure him."] On June 22 the will was proved in London by John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law and joint-executor (see Appendix). Some years after (before 1623) the monument, exe- cuted by Gerard Johnson, w^as erected against the north wall of the chancel : beneath the famous bust of Shake- speare is the following inscription : — Jndicio Pylinm. genio Socratem. arte Maronem, Terra tegit. populus maeret. Olympus habet. Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast ? Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast Within this monument ; Shakespeare with whome Quick nature dide : whose name doth deck y« tombe 47 1619 ANNALS OF THE Far more than cost ; sith all y* he hath writt Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. Obiit Ano Do^ 1616 Mtatis 53, die 23 Ap. Shakespeare's widow died on August 6, 1623, and was buried near the poet inside the chancel; Mrs. Susanna Hall, the elder daughter, died on July 11, 1649, ^^d was buried beside her husband, who pre-deceased her in 1635 ; the inscription on her tombstone {cp. accompanying illus- tration) is especially noteworthy; Judith, the younger daughter, died at Stratford on February 9, 1661-2; Eliza- beth, the poet's only grandchild, was married in 1626 to Thomas Nash, who died in 1647, ^'^'^^ after his death, to Sir John Barnard of Abingdon, near Northampton ; she died on the 17th of February, 1669-70, leaving no issue by either marriage. The three children of Judith Shake- speare died young: no one of them attained to man's estate. On the death of Lady Barnard the heir to the Henley Street property was Thomas Hart, the grandson of the poet's sister Joan — the last of the Hart family, in the male line, being John Hart, who died in 1800. 1619. In this year died Richard Burbage, the fa- mous actor, Shakespeare's life-long friend. An elegy " on Mr Richard Burbage an excellent both painter and player,'' composed soon after his death, recorded his chief Shakespearian roles : — " Some skilful limner aid me ; if not so, Some sad tragedian help to express my woe ; But, oh ! he 's gone, that could the best both limn And act my grief; and it is only him That I invoke this strange assistance to it. And on the point intreat himself to do it; For none but Tully Tully's praise can tell. And as he could no man could do so well This part of sorrow for him, nor here show- So truly to the life this map of woe, LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE Inscriptions II as .If. lllfll n I III! iHi Si > 11! rf I 4 iii i! I.l- i?i III 5 = a Iff III Ts I -f Lis I lilt fflfli .! : if liiill it h tjii 1*11 an jjlhi 49 1623 ANNALS OF THE That grief's true picture which his loss hath bred. He 's gone, and with him what a world is dead, Which he revived; to be revived so No more : young Hamlet, old Hieronimo, King Lear, the grieved Moor, and more beside That lived in him, have now for ever died. Oft have I seen him leap into the grave, Suiting the person (that he seemed to have) Of a sad lover with so true an eye. That then I would have sworn he meant to die. Oft have I seen him play this part in jest So lively, that spectators and the rest Of his sad crew, whilst he but seemed to bleed, Amazed thought even that he died indeed. And did not knowledge check me, I should swear Even yet it is a false report I hear. And think that he that did so truly feign Is still but dead in jest, to live again; But now he acts this part, not plays, 'tis known ; Others he played, but acted hath his own." In this year were published a second edition of Merry Wives and a fourth edition of Pericles. 1622. Othello first printed, as a quarto, and new editions (the sixth) of Richard III. and i Henry IJ\ 1623. In this year, under the editorship of Shake- speare's fellow-actors and friends, John Heming and Henry Condell, appeared The First Folio, containing twenty hitherto unprinted plays : — The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen, Measure for Measure, Taming of the Shrew, Comedy of Error's, As You Like It, All's Well, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, King John, i, 2, 3 Henry VI., Henry VII I., Coriolamis, Timon, Jul ins Ccesar, Mac- beth, Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline. The play of Troilns and Cressida, though included in the First Folio, was omitted in the table of contents (cp. Preface to Troilns and Cressida). The editors evidently purposely omitted Pericles (first LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1623 included, together with six pseudo-Shakespeare plays, in the Third Folio of 1663). [The Tzi'o Noble Kinsmen was first published in 1634, as being *' by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher and Mr William Shakespeare, gentle- .men."] The prefatory matter of the First Folio will be found in \'ol. I. of the present edition ; it should be noted that Ben Jonson in his lines '* I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or Lord Beaumont lie," etc., directly refers to William Basse's elegy on Shakespeare, then circulating in manuscript (first printed in the first edition of Donne's collected poems, 1633) • — On Mr \Vm. Shakespeare. He died in April 1616. " Renowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your three-fold, four-fold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift, Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain. For whom your curtains will be drawn again. If your precedency in death doth bar A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, Under this carved marble of thine own. Sleep, rare Tragedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone ; Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave, Possess as Lord, not Tenant, of thy grave, That unto us and others it may be Honour hereafter to be laid by thee." (From Lansdowne MS. temp. James I., modernised.) Among the commendatory verses prefixed to the First Folio are some lines by Leonard Digges : another poem by the same author is found prefixed to the edition of Shake- speare's poems published in 1640, but as the author died 51 1623 ANNALS OF THE in 1635, i^ ^^ quite possible that the poem then first printed was originally intended for the 1623 Folio, and this is borne out by the general tone of the lines : — " Poets are born not made, — when I would prove This truth, the glad remembrance I must love Of never-dying Shakespeare, who alone Is argument enough to make that one. First, that he was a poet none would doubt, That heard th' applause of what he sees set out Imprinted ; where thou hast — I will not say, Reader, his Works for to contrive a play To him 'twas none, — the pattern of all wit. Art without Art unparalleled as yet. Next Nature only helped him, for look thorough This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow One phrase from Greeks, nor Latins imitate, Nor once from vulgar languages translate. Nor plagiary-like from others glean ; Nor begs he from each witty friend a scene To piece«his Acts with ; all that he doth write, Is pure his own; plot, language exquisite. But oh ! what praise more powerful can we give The dead, than that by him the King's Men live. His players, which should they but have shared the fate, All else expired within the short term's date. How could the Globe have prospered, since, through want Of change, the plays and poems had grown scant ? But, happy verse thou shalt be sung and heard. When hungry quills shall be such honour barred. Then vanish, upstart writers to each stage, You needy poetasters of this age ; Where Shakespeare lived or spake, vermin, forbear, Lest with your froth you spot them, come not near ; But if you needs must write, if poverty So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die. On God's name may the Bull or Cockpit have Your lame blank verse, to keep you from the grave : Or let new Fortune's younger brethren see. What they can pick from your lean industry. I do not wonder when you offer at Blackfriars, that you suffer : 'tis the fate 52 LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE 1623 Of richer veins, prime judgments that have fared The worse, with this deceased man compared. So have I seen, when Caesar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were, Brutus and Cassius, oh how the audience Were ravished ! with what wonder they went thence, When some new day they would not brook a line Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline ; Sejanus too was irksome, they prized more Honest lago or the jealous Moor. And though the Fox and subtle Alchemist, Long intermitted, could not quite be missed. Though these have shamed all the ancients, and might raise Their author's merit with a crown of bays, Yet these sometimes, even at a friend's desire Acted, have scarce defrayed the seacoal fire And doorkeepers : when,' let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest, — you scarce shall have a room. All is so pestered : let but Beatrice And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice The cockpit, galleries, boxes, all are full To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull. Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book, Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look. Like old coined gold, whose lines in every page Shall pass true current to succeeding age. But why do I dead Shakespeare's praise recite. Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write; For me 'tis needless, since an host of men Will pay, to clap his praise, to free my pen." The Second Folio, reprinted from the First, was printed in 1632; it contained, by way of new prefatory matter, sundry verses by various writers, a fine eulogy, signed L M. S., and, as a golden link between the poets, John Milton's anonymous Epitaph on the Admirable Dra- matic ke Poet, W. Shakespeare, written in 1630, prac- tically the young poet's first appearance in print : — " What need my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones, The labour of an age in piled stones, 53 1623 ANNALS OF SHAKESPEARE Or that his hallow'd Reliques should be hid Under a stary-pointed Pyramid? Dear Son of Memory, great Heir of Fame, What needst thou such dull witness of thy Name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hath built thyself a lasting monument For whil'st. to the shame of slow-endeavouring Art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued Book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took Then thou, our fancy of herself bereaving. Dost make us marble with too much conceiving. And so, sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die." Shakespeare's Birth-place, iSgg. 54 APPENDIX, I. License to Fletcher, Shakespeare, and others to play comedies, &c., ly May, 1603. By the King. — Right trusty and wel beloved Coun- sellour, we greete you well, and will and commaund you that, under our Privie Seale in your custody for the time being, you cause our lettres to be directed to the Keeper of our Create Seale of England, comaunding him that under our said Create Seale he cause our lettres to be made patentes in forme following. — James, by the grace of Cod King of England, Scotland, Fraunce and Irland, De- fendor of the Faith, &c., to all justices, maiors, sheriff es, constables, hedboroughes, and other our officers and loving subjectes greeting. Know ye that we, of our speciall grace, certaine knowledge and meere motion, have licenced and authorized, and by these presentes doo licence and authorize, these our servantes, Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Au- gustine Phillippes, John Henninges^, Henry Condell, Wil- liam Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowlye and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, en- terludes, moralles, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other, like as they have already studied or heerafter shall use or studie, as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes as for our solace and pleasure when we shall thinke good to see them, during our pleasure. And the said comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralP, pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such like, to shew and exer- cise publiquely to their best commoditie. when the infec- SS Malone's Memoranda APPENDIX tion of the plague shall decrease, as well within their now usuall howse called the Globe within our countie of Sur- rey, as also within any towne-halles or mout-halles, or other convenient places within the liberties and freedome of any other cittie, universitie, towne or borough whatso- ever within our said realmes and dominions, willing and comaunding you and every of you, as you tender our pleasure, not only to permit and suffer them heerin with- out any your lettes, hinderances, or molestacions during our said pleasure, but also to be ayding and assisting to them, yf any wrong be to them offered, and to allowe them such former courtesies as hath bene given to men of their place and qualitie. And also, what further favour y(ju shall shew to these our servantes for our sake we shall take kindely at your handes. In witness whereof &c. And these our lettres shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge in this behalf. Given under our Signet at our Mannor of Greenwiche the seavententh day of May in the first yeere of our raigne of England, Fraunce and Irland, and of Scotland the six and thirtieth. — Ex : per Lake. — To our right trusty and wel beloved Counsellour, the Lord Cecill of Esingdon, Keeper of our Privie Seale for the time being. II. Malone's Memoranda (in the Bodleian Library) from the accounts at the Revels at Court for 1604 and 1605 ; the original source of the information {formerly at the Audit Oifice in Somerset House) cannot now he found. Cunninghanis list, printed in 1842, ivas probably based on Malone's document: — 1604 & 1605 — Ed^. Tylney — Sunday after Hallowmas — Merry Wyves of Windsor perf*^ by the K's players — Hallamas — in the Banquetting ho^. at Whitehall the Moor of Venis — perf^ by the K's players — on S^ Stephens Night — Mesure for Mesur by Shaxberd — perf*^. by the K's S6 APPENDIX Deed to Henry WalKer players — On Innocents night Errors by Shaxberd perf*^. by the K's players — On Sunday following '' How to Learn of a Woman to wooe by Hewood, perf^. by the Q's play- ers — On New Years Night — All fools by G. Chapman perf'^. by the Boyes of the Chapel — bet New y""^. day and twelfth day — Loves Labour lost perf*^. by the K's p : ™ — - On the 7th Jan. K. Hen. the fifth perf^. by the K.'s P^^ — On 8th Jan — Every one out of his humour — On Candle- mas night Every one in his humour — On Shrove Sunday the Marchant of Venis by Shaxberd — perf*^. by the K's P^^ — the same repeated on Shrove tuesd. by the K's Comm*^. in. The deed from Shakespeare and Trustees to Henry Walker, by which the Blackfriars Estate zvas mortgaged to the latter, nth March, 1612-13 {in the British Mu- seum), This Indenture made the eleaventh day of March, in the yeares of the reigne of our Sovereigne Lord James, by the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, Fraunce and Ireland, defender of the Faith, &c., that is to saie, of England, Fraunce and Ireland the tenth, and of Scotland the six and fortith ; betweene William Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon in the countie of Warwick, gentle- man, William Johnson, citizein and vintener of London, John Jackson and John Hemmyng, of London, gentle- men, of th'one partie, and Henry Walker, citizein and minstrell of London, of th'other partie: Witnesseth that the said William Shakespeare, William Johnson, John Jackson and John Hemmyng, have dimised, graunted and to ferme letten, and by theis presentes doe dimise, graunt and to ferme lett unto the said Henry Walker all that dwelling-house or tenement, with th'appurtenaunces, situ- ate and being within the precinct, circuit and compasse of the late Black Fryers, London, sometymes in the tenure of James Gardyner, esquiour, and since that in the tenure 57 Deed to Henry WalKer APPENDIX of John Fortescue, gent., and now or late being in the tenure or occupacion of one WilHam Ireland, or of his assignee or assignes, abutting upon a streete leading downe to Puddle Wharffe on the east part, right against the Kinges Majesties Wardrobe; part of which said tenement is erected over a greate gate leading to a pacitall mesuage which sometyme was in the tenure of William Blackwell, esquiour, deceased, and since that in the tenure or occupacion of the right- honourable Henry, now Earle of Northumberland ; and also all that plott of ground, on the west side of the same tenement, which was lately inclosed with boordes on two sides thereof by Anne Bacon, widow, soe farre and in such sorte as the same was inclosed by the said Anne Bacon, and not otherwise, and being on the third side inclosed with an olde brick wall ; which said plott of ground was sometyme parcell and taken out of a great voyde peece of ground lately used for a garden ; and also the soyle whereuppon the said tenement standeth, and also the said brick wall and boordes which doe inclose the said plott of ground, with free entrie, accesse, ingresse, egresse and regresse, in. by and through the said great gate and yarde there, unto the usuall dore of the said tenement ; and also all and singuler cellours, sellers, romes, lightes, easia- mentes, profittes, commodities and appurtenaunces what- soever to the said dwelling-house or tenement belong- ing, or in any wise apperteyning : to have and to holde the said dwelling-house or tenement, cellers, sollers, romes, plott of ground, and all and singuler other the premisses above by theis presentes mencioned to bee di- mised, and every part and parcell thereof, with th'appur- tenaunces, unto the said Henrye W^alker, his executours, administratours and assignes, from the feast of th'an- nunciacion of the blessed Virgin Marye next comming after the date hereof, unto th'ende and terme of one hun- dred yeares from thence next ensuing, and fullie to bee compleat and ended, without ympeachment of or for any manner of waste ; yeelding and paying therefore yearlie 58 APPENDIX Deed to Henry Walker during the said terme unto the said WilUam Shakespeare, Wllham Johnson, John Jackson and John Hemmyng, their heires and assignes, a peppercorne at the feast of Easter yearhe, yf the' same bee lawfulHe demaunded, and noe more; provided alwayes that if the said WiUiam Shakespeare, his heires, executours, administratours or as- signes, or any of them, doe well and truUe paie or cans? to'bee paid to the said Henry Walker, his executours, ad- ministratours or assignes, the some of threescore pounde.? of lawfull money of England in and upon the nyne and twentith day of September next comming after the date hereof, at or in the nowe dwelling-house of the said Henry Walker, situate and being in the parish of Saint Martyn neere Ludgate, of London, at one entier- payment with- out delaie, that then and from thensforth this presente lease, dimise and graunt, and all and every matter and thing herein conteyned, other then this provisoe, shall cease, determyne, and bee utterlie voyde, frustrate, and of none effect, as though the same had never beene had ne made, theis presentes, or any thing therein conteyned to the contrarv thereof, in anv wise notwithstanding. And the said William Shakespeare, for himselfe, his heires, executours and administratours, and for every of them, -doth covenaunt, promisse and graunt to and with the said Henrv AA^alker, his executours, administratours and assignes and everv of them, by theis presentes, that hee, the said William Shakespeare, his heires, exec- utours, administratours or assignes, shall and will cleer- lie acquite, exonerate and discharge, or from tyme to tvme, and at all tvmes hereafter, well and sufficientlie save and keep harm'les the said Henry Walker, his execu- tours, administratours and assignes, and every of them, and the said premises by theis presentes dimised, and every parcell thereof, with th'appurtenaunces, of and from all and al manner of former and other bargaynes, sales, guiftes, grauntes, leases, joyntures, dowers, intailes, statutes, recognizaunces, judgmentes, execucions, and of and from all and every other charges, titles, trobles and in- 59 The Will APPENDIX cumbraunces whatsoever by the said WiUiam Shake- speare, WilHam Johnson, John Jackson and John Hem- myng, or any of them, or by their or any of their meanes, had, made, committed or donne, before th'enseahng and delivery of theis presentes, or hereafter before the said nyne and twentith day of September next comming after the date hereof, to bee had, made, committed or donne, except the rentes and services to the cheefe lord or lordes of the fee or fees of the premisses, for or in respect of his or their seigniorie or seigniories onlie, to bee due and donne. In witnesse whereof the said parties to theis indentures interchaungablie have sett their scales. Yeoven the day and yeares first above written. 1612 — Will. Shakspere, — Wm. Johnson. — Jo: Jackson. — Sealed and delivered by the said William Shakespeare, William Johnson, and John Jackson, in the presence of Will : At- kinson ; Ed. Query ; Robert Andrewes, scr. ; Henry Law- rence, servant to the same scr. IV. Shakespeare's Will {preserved at Somerset House). {The Italics represent interlineations.) Vicesimo quinto die Januarii Martii, anno regni domini nostri Jacobi, nunc regis Anglie, &c. decimo quarto, et Scotie xlix° annoque Domini 1616. T. Wmi. Shackspeare. — In the name of God, amen ! I William Shackspeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon in the countie of Warr. gent., in perfect health and memorie, God be praysed, doe make and ordayne this my last will and testament in manner and forme foUoweing, that ys to saye, First, I comend my soule into the handes of God my Creator, hoping and assuredlie beleeving, through thonelie merittes of Jesus Christe, my Saviour, to me made par- taker of lyfe everlastinge, and my bodye to the earth whereof yt ys made. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto 60 APPENDIX The Will my Sonne in L daughter Judyth one hundred and fyftie poundes of lawfull Enghsli money, to be paied unto her in manner and forme followeing, that ys to saye, one hun- dred poundes in discharge of her marriage porcion within one yeare after my deceas, with consideracion after the rate of twoe shilhnges in the pound for soe long tyme as the same shal be unpaied unto her after my deceas, and the fyftie poundes residewe thereof upon her surrendring of, or gyving of such sufficient securitie as the overseers of this my will shall like of to surrender or graunte, all her estate and right that shall discend or come unto her after my deceas, or tJiat shee nowe hath, of, in of to, one copiehold tenemente with thappurtenaunces lyeing and being in Stratford-upon-Avon aforesaied in the saied countie of Warr., being parcell or holden of the mannour of Rowington, unto my daughter Susanna Hall and her heires for ever. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto my saied daughter Judith one hundred and fyftie poundes more, if shee or anie issue of her bodie be lyvinge att thend of three yeares next ensueing the dale of the date of this my will, during which tyme my executours to^ paie her con- sideracion from my deceas according to the rate afore- saied ; and if she dye within the saied terme without issue of her bodye, then my will ys, and I doe gyve and be- queath one hundred poundes thereof to my neece Eliza- beth Hall, and the fiftie poundes to be sett fourth by my executours during the lief of my sister Johane Harte, and the use and proffitt thereof cominge shal be payed to my saied sister Jone, and after her deceas the saied 1.^'- shall remaine amongst the children of my saied sister cquallie to be devided amongst them ; but if my saied daughter Judith be lyving att the end of the saied three yeares, or anie yssue of her bodye, then my will ys and soe I devise and bequeath the saied hundred and fyftie poundes to be sett out by my executours and orerseers for the best benefitt of her and her issue, and the stock not to be paied unto her soe long as she shalbe marryed and covert baron by my executours and overseers ; but my will ys that she 6i The Will APPENDIX shall have the conslderacion yearelie paied unto her during her lief, and, after her deceas, the saied stock and consld- eracion to bee paied to her children, if she have anie, and if npt, to her executours or assignes, she lyving the saied terme after my deceas, Provided that if such husbond as she shall att thend of the saied three yeares be marryed unto, or att anie after s, doe sufficientle^ assure unto her and thissue of her bodie landes awnswereable to the por- cion by this my will gyven unto her, and to be adjudeged so by my executours and overseers, then my will ys that the saied cl.^^- shalbe paied to such husbond as shall make such assurance, to his owne use. Item, I gyve and be- queath unto my saied sister Jone xx.^^- and all my wearing apparrell, to be paied and delivered within one yeare after my deceas ; and I doe will and devise unto her the Jiotise with thappurtenaunces in Stratford, wherein she dwell- eth, for her naturall lief, under the yearelie rent of xijA Item, I gyve and bequeath unto her three sonns, William Harte, Hart, and Michaell Harte, fyve poundes a peece, to be payed within one yeare after my deceas to be sett out for her within one yeare after my deceas by my executours, with thadvise and direccions of my overseers, for her best proffitt untill her marriage, and then the same with the increase thereof to be paied unto her. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto her the saied Eliz- abctJi Hall all my plate except my brod silver and gilt bole, that I now have att the date of this my will. Item, I gyve and bequeath unto the poore of Stratford afore- saied tenn poundes ; to Mr. Thomas Combe my sword ; to Thomas Russell esquier fyve poundes, and to Frauncis Collins of the borough of Warr. in the countie of Warr., gent., thirteene poundes, sixe shillinges, and eight pence, to be paied within one yeare after mv deceas. Item, I gyve and bequeath to Mr. Richard Tyler thelder Hamlet Sadler xxvj.^- viij.*^- to buy him a ringe ; to IVilliam Ray- noldes, gent., xxvj.^- viij.^- to buy him a ring ; to my god- son William Walker xx.^- in gold ; to Anthonye Nashe gent, xxvj.^- viij.*^-, and to Mr. John Nashe xxvj.^- viij^- in 62 APPENDIX The Will gold, and to my fcUozvcs, John Hcmynges, Richard Bur- hagc and Henry Cundell, xxvj.^- I'iij.^- a peece buy them ringes. Item, 1 gyve, will, bequeath and devise, unto my daughter Susanna Hall, for better enabling of her to per- forin e this niyzi'ill,and toward cs the performans thereof ,sM that capitall messuage or tenemente,with thappurtenaunces, in Stratford aforesaicd, called the Newe Place, wherein I nowe dwell, and twoe messuages or tenementes with thappurtenaunces, scituat lyeing and being in Henley streete within the borough of Stratford aforesaied ; and all my barnes, stables, orchardes, gardens, landes, tene- mentes and hereditamentes whatsoever, scituat, lieing and being, or to be had, receyved, perceyved, or taken, within the townes, hamlettes, villages, fieldes and groundes of Stratford-upon-Avon, Oldstratford, Bushopton, and Wel- combe, or in anie of them in the saied countie of Warr. And alsoe all that messuage or tenemente with thappur- tenaunces wherein one John Robinson dwelleth, scituat lyeing and being in the Blackfriers in London nere the Wardrobe ; and all other my landes, tenementes, and here- ditamentes whatsoever. To have and to hold all and sin- guler the saied premisses with their appurtenaunces unto the saied Susanna Hall for and during the terme of her naturall lief, and after her deceas, to the first sonne of her bodie lav/fuUie yssueing, and to the heires males of the bodie of the saied first sonne lawfullie yssueinge, and for defalt of such issue, to the second sonne of her bodie law- fullie issueinge, and of to the heires males of the bodie of the saied second sonne lawfullie yssueinge, and for defaK of such heires, to the third sonne of the bodie of the saied Susanna lawfullie yssueing, and of the heires males of the bodie of the saied third sonne lawfullie yssueing, and for defalt of such issue, the same soe to be and re- maine to the fourth sonne, fyfth, sixte, and seaventh sonnes of her bodie lawfullie issueing one after another, and to the heires males of the bodies of the saied fourth, fifth, sixte, and seaventh sonnes lawfullie yssueino^, in such manner as yt ys before lymitted to be and remaine 63 The Will APPENDIX | to the first, second and third sonns of her bodie, and to their heires males, and for defalt of such issue, the saied premisses to be and remaine to miv sayed neece Hall, and the heires males of her bodie lawfuUie yssueing, and for defalt of such issue, to my daughter Judith, and the heires males of her bodie lawfullie issueinge, and for defalt of such issue, to the right heires of me the saied William Shackspeare for ever. Item, I gyi'C unto my zincfe my second best bed ivith the furniture. Item, I gyve and bequeath to my saied daughter Judith my broad silver gilt bole. All the rest of my goodes, chattels, leases, plate, jewels, and household stufTe whatsoever, after my dettes and legasies paied, and my funerall expences discharged, I gyve, devise, and bequeath to my sonne-in-lawe, John Hall, gent., and my daughter Susanna, his wief, whom I ordaine and make executours of this my last will and testament. And I doe intreat and appoint the saied Thomas Russell, esquier, and Frauncis Collins, gent., to be overseers hereof, and doe revoke all former wills, and publishe this to be my last will and testament. In wit- nes whereof I have hereunto put my scale hand the daie and yeare first above written. — By me William Shak- speare. Witnes to the publishing hereof, — Fra : CoUyns : Julius Shawe ; John Robinson ; Hamnet Sadler ; Robert Whatt- cott. APPENDIX V. " De Shakespeare nostrati " (Of Shakespeare, our fellow-countryman), from Ben Jonson's " Timber, or Dis- coveries, being Observations on Men and Manners,'' printed 1641 ; but the entry zvas probably zvritten about 1620 {cp. Ben Jonson's " Timber" in the " Temple Clas- sics''; and Azotes to "Julius Ccusar"). I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, " Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance w^ho chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted ; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He w^as, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle ex- pressions, wdierein he flowed with that facility that some- times it was necessary he should be stopped. " SufHami- iiandus erat," ' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wdt was in his own power ; w^ould the rule of it had been so, too ! Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, " Caesar, thou dost me wrong." He re- plied, " Csesar did never wTong but with just cause " ; and such like, which were ridiculous." But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned. ^ " He ought to have been clogged " ; cp. Seneca, Exc. Controv. iv. Pyoa:m. 7. '-' C/'. Julius Cccsar, iii. i. 47, where the First Folio reads: Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied. (Caesar is the speaker.) 65 ShaKespeare — the Man. ShaKespeare — the Man. BY WALTER BAGEHOT. THE greatest of English poets, it is often said, is but a name. " No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation, no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary," have been extracted by antiquaries from the piles of rubbish which they have sifted. Yet of no person is there a clearer picture in the popular fancy. You seem to have known Shakespeare — to have seen Shakespeare — to have been friends with Shakespeare. We would attempt a slight delineation of the popular idea which has been formed, not from loose tradition or remote research, not from what some one says some one else said that the poet said, but from data which are at least un- doubted, from the sure testimony of his certain works. Some extreme sceptics, we know, doubt whether it is possible to deduce anything as to an author's character from his works. Yet surely people do not keep a tame steam-engine to write their books ; and if those books were really written by a man, he must have been a man who could' write them ; he must have had the thoughts which they express, have acquired the knowledge they contain, have possessed the style in which we read them. The difficulty is a defect of the critics. A person who knows nothing of an author he has read, will not know much of an author whom he has seen. First of all, it may be said that Shakespeare's works could only be produced by a first-rate imagination work- ing on a first-rate experience. It is often difficult to make out whether the author of a poetic creation is draw- ing from fancy, or drawing from experience ; but for art SHAKESPEARE. on a certain scale, the two must concur. Out of nothing, nothing can be created. Some plastic power is required, however great may be the material. And when such works as Hamlet and Othello, still more, when both they and others not unequal, have been created by a single mind, it may be fairly said, that not only a great imagina- tion but a full conversancy with the world was necessary to their production. The whole powers of man under the most favourable circumstances, are not too great for such an effort. We may assume that Shakespeare had a great experience. To a great experience one thing is essential, an expe- riencing nature. It is not enough to have opportunity, it is essential to feel it. Some occasions come to all men ; but to many they are of little use, and to some they are none. \Miat, for example, has experience done for the distinguished Frenchman"^', the name of whose essay is pre- fixed to this paper? M. Guizot is the same man that he was in 1820, or, we believe, as he was in 18 14. Take up one of his lectures, published before he was a practical statesman ; you will be struck with the width of view, the amplitude and the solidity of the reflections ; you will be amazed that a mere literary teacher could produce any- thing so wise ; but take up afterwards an essay published since his fall — and you will be amazed to find no more. Napoleon the First is come and gone — the Bourbons of the old rcs:ime have come and gone — the Bourbons of the new regime have had their turn. M. Guizot has been first minister of a citizen king ; he has led a great party ; he has pronounced many a great discoiirs that was well re- ceived by the second elective assembly in the world. But there is no trace of this in his writings. No one would guess from them that their author had ever left the pro- fessor's chair. It is the same, we are told, with small matters : when M. Guizot walks the street, he seems to see nothing ; the head is thrown back, the eye fixed, and the mouth working. His mind is no doubt at work, but * M. Guizot. THE MAN it is not stirred by what is external. Perhaps it is the internal activity of mind that overmasters the perceptive power. Anyhow there might have been an emeute in the street and he would not have known it ; there have been revolutions in his life, and he is scarcely the wiser. Among the most frivolous and fickle of civilised nations he is alone. They pass from the game of war to the game of peace, from the game of science to the game of art, from the game of liberty to the game of slavery, from the game of slavery to the game of license ; he stands like a schoolmaster in the playground, without sport and with- out pleasure, firm and sullen, slow and awful. A man of this sort is a curious mental phenomenon. He appears to get early — perhaps to be born with — a kind of dry schedule or catalogue of the universe ; he has a ledger in his head, and has a title to which he can refer any transaction ; nothing puzzles him, nothing comes amiss to him, but he is not in the 'least the wiser for anything. Like the book-keeper, he has his heads of ac- count, and he knows them, but he is no wiser for the particular items. After a busy day, and after a slow day, after a few entries, and after many, his knowledge is exactly the same : take his opinion of Baron Rothschild, he will say : " Yes, he keeps an account with us " ; of Humphrey Brown : " Yes, we have that account, too." Just so with the class of minds which we are speaking of, and in greater matters. Very early in life they come to a certain and considerable acquaintance with the world : they learn very quickly all they can learn, and naturallv they never, in any way, learn any more. Mr. Pitt is, in this country, the type of the character. Mr. Alison, in a well- known passage, makes it a matter of wonder that he was fit to be a Chancellor of the Exchequer at twenty-three, and it is a great w^onder. But it is to be remembered that he was no more fit at forty-three. As somebody said, he did not erow, he was cast. Exnerience tauo-ht him noth- ing, and he did not believe that he had anything to learn. The habit of mind in smaller de"-rees is not very rare, and SHAKESPEARE, might be illustrated without end. Hazlitt tells a story of West, the painter, that is in point : When some one asked him if he had ever been to Greece, he answered : " No ; I have read a descriptive catalogue of the principal objects in that country, and I believe I am as well conversant with them as if I had visited it." No doubt he was just as well conversant, and so would be any doctrinaire. But Shakespeare was not a man of this sort. If he walked down a street, he knew what was in that street. His mind did not form in early life a classified list of all the objects in the universe, and learn no more about the universe ever after. From a certain fine sensibility of nature, it is plain that he took a keen interest not only in the general and coarse outlines of objects, but in their minutest particulars and gentlest gradations. You may open Shakespeare and find the clearest proofs of this; take the following : — " When last the young Orlando parted from you He left a promise to return again Within an hour, and pacing through the forest, Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy, Lo, what befel ! he threw his eye aside, And mark what object did present itself: Under an oak, whose boughs were moss'd with age, And high top bald with dry antiquity, A wretched ragged man, o'ergrown with hair, Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck A green and gilded snake had wreathed itself, Who with her head nimble in threats approach'd The opening of his mouth ; but suddenly, Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself. And with indented glides did slip away Into a bush : under which bush's shade A lioness, with udders all drawn dry, Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch. When that the sleeping man should stir ; for 'tis The royal disposition of that beast To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead : This seen," etc., etc.* *As You Like It, IV. Hi. THE MAN Or the more celebrated description of the hunt : — " And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare, * Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles, How he outruns the wind, and wath what care He cranks and crosses, with a thousand doubles : The many musits through the which he goes Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes. " Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep. To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell, And sometime where earth-delving conies keep. To stop the loud pursuers in their yell ; And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer; Danger deviseth shifts ; wat waits on fear : " For there his smell with others being mingled. The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt, Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled With much ado the cold fault cleanly out ; Then do they spend their mouths : Echo replies, As if another chase were in the skies. " By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill. Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear. To hearken if his foes pursue him still : Anon their loud alarums he doth hear ; And now his grief may be compared w^ell To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell. " Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled w^retch Turn, and return, indenting with the way ; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch. Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay For misery is trodden on by many, And being low never relieved by any." * It is absurd, by the way, to say we know nothing about the man who wrote that ;' we know that he had been after a hare. It is idle to allege that mere imagination would tell him that a hare is apt to run among aflock of sheep, • * Venus and Adonis. 5 SHAKESPEARE. or that its so doing disconcerts the scent of hounds. But no single citation really represents the power of the argu- ment. %et descriptions may be manufactured to order, and it does not follow that even the most accurate or suc- cessful of them was really the result of a thorough and habitual knowledge of the object. A man who knows little of Nature may write one excellent delineation, as a poor man may have one bright guinea. Real opulence consists in having many. What truly indicates excellent knowledge, is the habit of constant, sudden, and almost unconscious allusion, which implies familiarity, for it can arise from that alone, — and this very species of incidental, casual, and perpetual reference to " the mighty world of eye and ear,"'^ is the particular characteristic of Shake- speare. In this respect Shakespeare had the advantage of one whom, in many points, he much resembled — Sir Walter Scott. For a great poet, the organization of the latter was very blunt ; he had no sense of smell, little sense of taste, almost no ear for music (he knew a few, perhaps three, Scotch tunes, which he avowed that he had learnt in sixty years, by hard labour and mental association), and not much turn for the minutiae of Nature in any way. The effect of this may be seen in some of the best descrip- tive passages of his poetry, and we will not deny that it does (although proceeding from a sensuous defect), in a certain degree, add to their popularity. He deals with the main outlines and great points of Nature, never at- tends to any others, and in this respect he suits the com- prehension and knowledge of many who know only those essential and considerable outlines. Young people, espe- cially, who like big things, are taken with Scott, and bored by Wordsworth, who knew too much. And after all, the two poets are in proper harmony, each with his own scenery. Of all beautiful scenery the Scotch is the roughest and barest, as the English is the most complex and cultivated. What a difference is there between the * Wordsworth : Tintern Abbey. 6 THE MAN minute and finished delicacy of Rydal Water and the rouo^h simpHcity of Loch Katrine! It is the beauty of civihsation beside the beauty of barbarism. Scott has himself pointed out the effect of this on arts and artists. " Or see yon weather-beaten hind, Whose sluggish herds before him wind, Whose tatter'd plaid and rugged cheek His northern clime and kindred speak ; Through England's laughing meads he goes, And England's wealth around him flows; Ask, if it would content him well, At ease in those gay plains to dwell, Where hedge-rows spread a verdant screen, And spires and forests intervene, And the neat cottage peeps between? No ! not for these would he exchange His dark Lochaber's boundless range : Not for fair Devon's meads forsake Bennevis grey, and Garry's lake. " Thus while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charm'd me yet a child, Rude though they be, still with the chime. Return the thoughts of early time ; And feelings, roused in life's first day, Glow in the line, and prompt the lay. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, Which charm'd my fancy's wakening hour. Though no broad river swept along, To claim, perchance, heroic song ; Though sigh'd no groves in summer gale. To prompt of love a softer tale ; Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed Claim'd homage from a shepherd's reed; Yet was poetic impulse given. By the green hill and clear blue heaven. It was a barren scene, and wild. Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; But ever and anon between. Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; And well the lonely infant knew SHAKESPEARE, Recesses where the wall-flower grew And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. " For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask The classic poet's well-conned task? Nay, Erskine, nay — On the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still ; Cherish the tulip, prune the vine, But freely let the woodbine twine, And leave untrimm'd the eglantine : Nay, my friend, nay — Since oft thy praise Hath given fresh vigour to my lays ; Since oft thy judgement could refine My flattened thought, or cumbrous line; Still kind, as is thy wont, attend. And in the minstrel spare the friend. Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale. Flow forth, flow unrestrain'd, my Tale."* And this is wise, for there is beauty in the North as well as in the South. Only it is to be remembered that the beauty of the Trossachs is the result of but a few elements — say birch and brushwood, rough hills and narrow dells, mucli heather and many stones — while the beauty of Eng- land is one thing in one district and one in another ; is here the combination of one set of qualities, and there the harmony of opposite ones, and is everywhere made up of many details and delicate refinements ; all which require an exquisite delicacy of perceptive organisation, a seeing eye, a minutely hearing ear. Scott's is the strong admiration of a rough mind ; Shakespeare's, the nice minuteness of a susceptible one. A perfectly poetic appreciation of nature contains two elements, a knowledge of facts, and a sensibility to charms. Everybody who may have to speak to some naturalists will be well aware how widely the two may be separated. He will have seen that a man may study butterflies and forget that they are beautiful, or be perfect * Marmion : Introduction to Canto iii. 8 THE MAN in the " Lunar theory " without knowing what most peo- ple mean by the moon. Generally such people prefer the stupid parts of nature — worms and Cochin-China fowls. But Shakespeare was not obtuse. The lines — " Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath."* seem to show that he knew those feelings of youth, to which beauty is more than a religion. In his mode of delineating natural objects Shakespeare is curiously opposed to Milton. The latter, who was still by temperament, and a schoolmaster by trade, selects a beautiful object, puts it straight out before him and his readers, and accumulates upon it all the learned imagery of a thousand years ; Shakespeare glances at it and says something of his own. It is not our intention to say that, as a describer of the external world, Milton is inferior ; in set description we rather think that he is the better. We only wish to contrast the mode in which the deline- ation is effected. The one is like an artist who dashes off any number of picturesque sketches at any moment; the other like a man who has lived at Rome, has under- gone a thorough training, and by deliberate and conscious effort, after a long study of the best masters, can produce a few great pictures. Milton, accordingly, as has been often remarked, is careful in the choice of his subjects ; he knows too well the value of his labour to be very ready to squander it ; Shakespeare, on the contrary, describes anything that comes to hand, for he is prepared for it whatever it may be, and what he paints he paints without effort. Compare any passage from Shakespeare — for example, those quoted before — and the following passage from Milton: — * The Winter's Tale, IV. iv.- 9 SHAKESPEARE. " Southward through Eden went a river large^ Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill Pass'd underneath ingulf'd, for God had thrown That mountain as His garden mound high raised Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill Water'd the garden ; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears, And now divided into four main streams, Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm And country, whereof here needs no account ; But rather to tell how, if Art could tell. How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendant shades Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierced shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers. Thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view ; Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm. Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind, Hung amiable (Hesperian fables true. If true, here only), and of delicious taste ; Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed. Or palmy hillock ; or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose."* Why, you could draw a map of it. It is not " Nature boon," but ''nice art in beds and curious knots"; it is exactly the old (and excellent) style of artificial garden- ing, by which any place can be turned into trim hedge- rows, and stiff borders, and comfortable shades ; but there * Paradise Lost. Book IV 10 THE MAN are no straight lines in Nature or Shakespeare. Perhaps the contrast may be accounted for by the way in which the two poets acquired their knowledge of scenes and scenery. We think we demonstrated before that Shake- speare was a sportsman, but if there be still a sceptic or a dissentient, let him read the following remarks on dogs : — " 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 mornhig 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 holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly."* " Judge when you hear."f It is evident that the man who wrote this was a judge of dogs, was an out-of-door sporting man, full of natural sensibility, not defective in " daintiness of ear," and above all things, apt to cast on Nature random, sportive, half-boyish glances, which re- veal so much, and bequeath such abiding knowledge. Milton, on the contrary, went out to see Nature. He left a narrow cell, and the intense study which was his " por- tion in this life," to take a slow, careful, and reflective walk. In his treatise on education he has given us his notion of the way in which young people should be fa- miliarised with natural objects. " But," he remarks, " to return to our institute ; besides these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining pleasure from pleasure itself abroad ; in those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and suUenness against Nature, not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing in heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a persuader to them of studying much in these, after two or three years, that they have well laid their grounds, but to ride out in compan- ies, with prudent and staid guides, to all quarters of the * A Mid summer- Night's Dream, IV. i. 124. Ibid., next line. II SHAKESPEARE, land ; learning and observing all places of strength, all commodities of building and of soil, for towns and tillage, harbours and ports of trade. Sometimes taking sea as far as our navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge of sailing and of sea-fight." Fancy " the prudent and staid guides." What a machinery for making pedants. Perhaps Shakespeare would have known that the conversation would be in this sort : " I say, Shallow, that mare is going in the knees. She has never been the same since you larked her over the fivebar, while Moleyes was talking clay and agriculture. I do not hate Latin so much, but I hate ' argillaceous earth ' ; and what use is that to a fellow in the Guards, / should like to know ? " Shakespeare had himself this sort of boyish buoyancy. He was not " one of the staid guides." \\'e might further illustrate it. Yet this would be tedious enough, and we prefer to go on and show what we mean by an experiencing nature in relation to men and women, just as we have striven to indicate what it is in relation f:o horses and hares. The reason why so few good books are written, is that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and senti- ments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey, which about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public journals, are the type of literary existence, just as the praise bestowed on them shows the admiration excited by them among lit- erary people. He wrote poetry (as if anybody could) before breakfast ; he read during breakfast. He wrote history until dinner; he corrected proof-sheets between dinner and tea ; he wrote an essay for the Quarterly after- wards ; and after supper, by way of relaxation, composed the " Doctor " — a lengthy and elaborate jest. Now, what can any one think of such a life — except how clearly it 12 THE MAN shows that the habits best fitted for communicating infor- mation, formed with the best care, and daily regulated by the best motives, are exactly the habits which are likely to afford a man the least information to communicate. Southey had no events, no experiences. His wife kept house and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been a German professor devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of Horace's amours. And it is pitiable to think that so meritorious a life was only made endurable by a painful delusion. He thought that day by day, and hour by hour, he was accumulating stores for the instruction and entertainment of a long posterity. His epics were to be in the hands of all men, and his history of Brazil, the " Herodotus of the South American Republics." As if his epics were not already dead, and as if the people who now cheat at Valparaiso care a real who it was that cheated those before them. Yet it was only by a con- viction like this that an industrious and '-.aligraphic man (for such was Robert Southey), who might have earned money as a clerk, worked all his days for half a clerk's wages, at occupation much duller and more laborious. The critic in The Vicar of Wakefield lays down that you should ahcays say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains ; but in the case of the practised literary man, you should often enough say that the writings would have been much better if the writer had taken less pains. He says he has devoted' his life to the subject — the reply is : " Then you have taken the best way to prevent your making anything of it." Instead of reading studiously what Burgersdicius and ^noesidemus said men were, you should "have gone out yourself, and seen (if you can see) what they are. After all, the original way of writing boolcs may turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from ; he looked at things for him- self. Anyhow, the modern system fails, for where are the amusing books from voracious students and habitual 13 SHAKESPEARE. writers? Not that we mean exactly to say that an au- thor's hard reading is the cause of his writing that which is hard to read. This would be near the truth, but not quite the truth. The two are concomitant effects of a certain defective nature. Slow men read well, but write ill. The abstracted habit, the want of keen exterior in- terests, the aloofness of mind from what is next it, all tend to make a man feel an exciting curiosity and interest about remote literary events, the toil of scholastic logi- cians, and the petty feuds of Argos and Lacedsemon ; but they also tend to make a man very unable to explain and elucidate those exploits for the benefit of his fellows. What separates the author from his readers, will make it proportionably difficult for him to explain himself to them. Secluded habits do not tend to eloquence ; and the indif- ferent apathy which is so common in studious persons is exceedingly unfavourable to the liveliness of narration and illustration which is needed for excellence in even the simpler sorts of writing. Moreover, in general it will perhaps be found that persons devoted to mere literature commonly become devoted to mere idleness. They wish to produce a great work, but they find they cannot. Hav- ing relinquished everything to devote themselves to this, they conclude on trial that this is impossible. They wish to write, but nothing occurs to them. Therefore they write nothing, and they do nothing. As has been said, they have nothing to do. Their life has no events, unless they are very poor. With any decent means of subsist- ence, they have nothing to rouse them from an indolent and musing dream. A merchant must meet his bills, or he is civilly dead and uncivilly remembered. But a student may know nothing of time and be too lazy to wind up his watch. In the retired citizen's journal in Addison's Spec- tator, we have the type of this way of spending the time : Mem. Morning 8 to 9, " Went into the parlour and tied on my shoe-buckles." This is the sort of life for which studious men commonly relinquish the pursuits of busi- ness and the society of their fellows. 14 k THE MAN Yet all literary men are not tedious, neither are they all slow. One great example even these most tedious times have luckily given us, to show us what may be done by a really great man even now, the same who before served as an illustration — Sir Walter Scott. In his lifetime peo- ple denied he was a poet, but nobody said that he was not " the best fellow " in Scotland — perhaps that was not much — or that he had not more wise joviality, more liv- ing talk, more graphic humour, than any man in Great Britain. " Wherever we went," said Mr. Wordsworth, " we found his name acted as an open sesame, and I be- lieve that in the character of the sheriff's friends, we might have counted on a hearty welcome under any roof in the border country." Never neglect to talk to people with whom you are casually thrown, was his precept, and he exemplified the maxim himself. " I believe," observes his biographer, " that Scott has somewhere expressed in print his satisfaction, that amid all the changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal intercourse may still be indulged between a master and an out-of-door servant ; but in truth he kept by the old fashion, even with domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly ever seen practised by any other gentleman. He con- versed with his coachman if he sat by him, as he often did, on the box — with his footman, if he chanced to be in the rumble. Indeed, he did not confine his humanity to his own people ; any steady-going servant of a friend of his was soon considered as a sort of friend too, and was sure to have a kind little colloquy to himself at coming or going." '' Sir \\'alter speaks to every man as if he was his blood relation," was the expressive comment of one of these dependants. It was in this way that he acquired the great knowledge of various kinds of men, which is so clear and conspicuous in his writings ; nor could that knowledge have been acquired on easier terms, or in any other way. No man could describe the character of Dan- die Dinmont, without having been in Lidderdale. What- ever has been once in a book may be put into a book 15 SHAKESPEARE. again ; but an original character, taken at first hand from the sheepwalks and from Nature, must be seen in order to be known. A man, to be able to describe — indeed, to be able to know — various people in life, must be able at sight to comprehend their essential features, to know how they shade one into another, to see how they diversify the common uniformity of civiHsed life. Nor does this involve simply intellectual or even imaginative prerequi- sites, still less will it be facilitated by exquisite senses or subtle fancy. What is wanted is, to be able to appreciate mere clay — which mere mind never will. If you will de- scribe the people, — nay, if you will write for the people, you must be one of the people. You must have led their life, and must wish to lead their life. However strong in any poet may be the higher qualities of abstract thought or conceiving fancy, unless he can actually sympathise with those around him, he can never describe those around him. Any attempt to produce a likeness of what is not really liked by the person who is describing it, will end in the creation of what may be correct, but is not living — of what may be artistic, but is likewise artificial. Perhaps this is the defect of the works of the greatest dramatic genius of recent times— ^Goethe. His works are too much in the nature of literai'y studies ; the mind is often deeply impressed by them, but one doubts if the author was. He saw them as he saw the houses of Wei- mar and the plants in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception of their fixed condition and their suc- cessive transitions, but he did not really (if we may so speak) comprehend their motive power. So to say, he appreciated their life, but not their liveliness. Niebuhr, as is well known, comipared the most elaborate of Goethe's works — the novel VVUhehn Meister — to a menagerie of tame animals, meaning thereby, as we believe, to express much the same distinction. He felt that there was a deficiency in mere vigour and rude energv. We have a long train and no engine — a great accumulation of excel- lent matter, arranged and ordered with masterly skill, i6 THE MAN but not animated with over-buoyant and unbounded play. And we trace this not to a defect in imaginative power, a defect which it would be a simple absurdity to impute to Goethe, but to the tone of his character and the habits oi his mind. He moved hither and thither through life, but he was always a man apart. He mixed with unnumbered kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women, camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them, yet not of them. In every scene he was there, and he made it clear that he was there with a reserve and as a stranger. He went there to experience. As a man of universal culture and well skilled in the order and classi- fication of human life, the fact of any one class or order being beyond his reach or comprehension seemed an ab- surdity, and it was an absurdity. He thought that he was equal to moving in any description of society, and he was equal to it ; but then on that exact account he was ab- sorbed in none. There were none of surpassing and im- measurably preponderating captivation. No scene and no subject were to him what Scotland and Scotch nature were to Sir Walter Scott. " If I did not see the heather once a year, I should die," said the latter ; but Goethe would have lived without it, and it would not have cost him much trouble. In every one of Scott's novels there is always the spirit of the old moss trooper — the flavour of the ancient border ; there is the intense sympathy which enters into the most living moments of the most living characters — the lively energy which he conies the energy of the most vigorous persons delineated. Marmion was " written " while he was galloping on horseback. It reads as if it were so. Now it appears that Shakespeare not only had that various commerce with, and experience of men, which was common both to Goethe and to Scott, but also that he agrees with the latter rather than with the former in the kind and species of that experience. He was not merely with men, but of men ; he was not a ''thing apart,'"* * Byron : Don Juan, I. cxciv. 17 SHAKESPEARE. with a clear intuition of what was in those around him ; he had in his own nature the germs and tendencies of the very elements that he described. He knew what was in man, for he felt it in himself. Throughout all his wri- tings yooi see an amazing sympathy with common people, rather an excessive tendency to dwell on the common fea- tures of ordinary lives. You feel that common people could have been cut out of him, but not without his feeling it ; for it would have deprived him of a very favourite subject — of a portion of his ideas to which he habitually recurred. Leon. What would you with me. honest neighbour? Dog. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you, that decerns you nearly. Leon. Brief, I pray you ; for you see it is a busy time with me. Dog. Marry, this it is. sir. I'^erg. Yes, in truth it is, sir. Leon. What is it, my good friends? Dog. Goodman Verges, sir. speaks a little off the matter : an old man. sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God help. I would desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his brows. Verg. Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man kving that is an old man and no honester than I. Dog. Comparisons are odorous: palahras, neighbour Verges. Leon. Neighbours, you are tedious. Dog. It pleases j'our worship to say so. but we are the poor duke's officers ; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship. Leon. I would fain know what you have to say. Verg. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your wor- ship's presence, ha' ta'en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in Messina. Dog. A good old man. sir : he will be talking : as they say, When the age is in. the wit is out : God help us ! it is a world to see. Well said, i' faith, neighbour Verges : well. God 's a good man ; an two men ride of a horse, one must i8 THE MAN ride behind. An honest soul, i' faith, sir ; by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but God is to be worshipped; all men are not alike ; alas, good neighbour ! Leon. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you. Dog. Gifts that God gives. — etc., etc.* Stafford. Ay, sir. • Cade. By her he had two children at one birth. Bro. That 's false. Cade. Ay, there's the question; but I say, 'tis true: ' The elder of them, being put to nurse, Was by a beggar-woman stolen away ; And, ignorant of his birth and parentage, Became a bricklayer when he came to age : His son am I; deny it, if you can. Dick. Nay, 'tis too true ; therefore he shall be king. Smith. Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it ; therefore deny it ; not.f Shakespeare was too wise not to know that for most of the purposes of human life stupidity is a most valuable element. lie had nothing of the impatience which sharp logical narrow minds habitually feel when they come across those who do not apprehend their quick and precise deductions. Xo doubt he talked to the stupid players, to the stupid door-keeper, to the property man, who con- siders paste jewels " very preferable, besides the ex- pense " — talked with the stupid apprentices of stupid Fleet Street, and had much pleasure in ascertaining what was their notion of King Lear. In his comprehensive mind it was enough if every man hitched well into his own place in human life. If every one were logical and liter- ary, how would there be scavengers, or watchmen, or caulkers, or coopers ? Narrow minds will be '' subdued to what " they " work in." The " dyer's hand "J will not more clearly carry oiT its tint, nor will what is moulded more precisely indicate the confines of tlie mould. A patient sympathy, a kindly fellow-feeling for the narrow * Much Ado About Nothing, III. v. t2 King- Henry VI., IV. ii. \ Shakespeare : Sonnets, CXI. 19 SHAKESPEARE, intelligence necessarily induced by narrow circumstances — a narrowness which, in some degrees, seems to be in- evitable, and is perhaps more serviceable than most things to the wise conduct of life — this, though quick and half- bred minds may despise it, seems to be a necessarv con- stituent in the composition of manifold genius. '' How shall the world be served ? " asks the host in Chaucer. We must have cart-horses as well as race-horses, dray- men as well as poets. It is no bad thing, after all, to be a slow man and to have one idea a year. You don't make a figure, perhaps, in argumentative society, which requires a quicker species of thought, but is that the worse-? Hoi. J^ia, goodman Dull ! thou hast spoken no word all this while. Dull. Nor understood none neither, sir. Hoi. Allans! we will employ thee. Dull. I '11 make one in a dance, or so ; or I will play on the On the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay. Hoi. Most dull, honest Dull ! To our sport, away ! * And such, we believe, was the notion of Shakespeare. S. T. Coleridge has a nice criticism which bears on this point. He observes that in the narrations of uneducated people in Shakespeare, just as in real life, there is a want of prospectiveness and a superfluous amount of regress- iveness. People of this sort are unable to look a long way in front of them, and they wander from the right path. They get on too fast with one half, and then the other hopelessly lags. They can tell a story exactly as it is told to them (as an animal can go step by step where it has been before), but they can't calculate its bearings beforehand, or see how it is to be adapted to those to whom they are speaking, nor do they know how much they have thoroughly told and how much they have not. '* I went up the street, then I went down the street ; no, first went down and then — but you do not follow me ; I * Lovers Labour s Lost, V. i. 20 I THE MAN go before you, sir." Thence arises the complex style usually adopted by persons not used to narration. They tumble into a story and get on as they can. This is scarcely the sort of thing which a man could foresee. Of course a metaphysician can account for it, and, like Cole- ridge, assure you that if he had not observed it, he could have predicted it in a moment ; but, nevertheless, it is too refined a conclusion to be made out from known prem- ises by common reasoning. Doubtless there is some rea- son why negroes have woolly hair (and if you look into a philosophical treatise, you will find that the author could have made out that it would be so, if he had not, by a mysterious misfortune, known from infancy that it was the fact ) , — still one could never have supposed it one- self. And in the same manner, though the profounder critics may explain in a satisfactory and refined manner, how the confused and undulating style of narration is peculiarly incident to the mere multitude, yet it is most likely that Shakespeare derived his acquaintance with it from the fact, from actual hearing, and not from what may be the surer, but is the slower, process of meta- physical deduction. The best passage to illustrate this is that in which the nurse gives a statement of Juliet's age ; but it will not exactly suit our pages. The following of Airs. Quickly will suffice : — Host. Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne'er tell me : your ancient swag- gerer comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tisick, the debnty, t' other day ; and, as he said to me, 'twas no longer ago than Wednesday last, ' I' good faith, neighbour Quickly,' says he; Master Dumbe, our minister, was by then ; ' neighbour Quickly,' says he, ' receive those that are civil ; for,' said he, ' you are in an ill name ' : now a' said so, I can tell whereupon ; ' for,' says he, ' you are an honest woman, and well thought on ; therefore take heed what guests you receive : receive,' says he, ' no swaggering companions.' There comes none here : you would bless you to hear what he said : no, I '11 no swaggerers.* * 2 King Henry IV., II. iv. 21 SHAKESPEARE, Now, it is quite impossible that this, any more than the poHtical reasoning on the parentage of Cade, which was cited before, should have been written by one not habitually and sympathisingly conversant with the talk of the illogical classes. Shakespeare felt, if we may say so, the force of the bad reasoning. He did not, like a sharp logician, angrily detect a flaw, and set it down as a fallacy of reference or a fallacy of amphibology. This is not the English way, though Dr. Whately's logic has been published so long (and, as he says himself, must now be deemed to be irrefutable, since no one has ever offered any refutation of it). Yet still people in this country do not like to be committed to distinct premises. They like a Chancellor of the Exchequer to say : ''It has du- ring very many years been maintained by the honourable member for Montrose that two and two make four, and I am free to say, that I think there is a great deal to be said in favour of that opinion ; but, without committing her ^lajesty's Government to that proposition as an al)- stract sentiment, I will go so far as to assume two and two are not sufficient to make five, which with the per- mission of the House, will be a sufficient basis for all the operations which I propose to enter upon during the pres- ent year.'' We have no doubt Shakespeare reasoned in that w^ay himself. Like any other Englishman, when he had a clear course before him, he rather liked to shuffle over little hitches in the argument, and on that account he had a great sympathy with those who did so too. He would never have interrupted Mrs. Quickly ; he saw that her mind was going to and fro over the subject ; he saw that it was coming right, and this was enough for him, and will be also enough of this topic for our readers. We think we have proved that Shakespeare had an enormous specific acquaintance with the common people ; that this can only be obtained by sympathy. It likewise has a further condition. In spiritedness, the style of Shakespeare is very like to that of Scott. The description of a charge of cavalry in 22 THE MAN Scott reads, as was said before, as if it was written on horseback. A play by Shakespeare reads as if it were written in a playhouse. The great critics assure you that a theatrical audience must be kept awake, but Shakespeare knew this of his own knowledge. When you read him, you feel a sensation of motions, a conviction that there is something " up," a notion that not only is something being talked about, but also that something is being done. We do not imagine that Shakespeare owed this quality to his being a player, but rather that he beca.ne a player because he ppssessed this quality of mind. For after, and not- withstanding, everything which has been, or may be, said against the theatrical profession, it certainly does require from those who pursue it a certain quickness and liveliness of mind. Mimics are commonly an elas- tic sort of persons, and it takes a little levity of dis- position to enact even the " heavy fathers." If a boy joins a company of strolling players, you may be sure that he is not a " good boy " ; he may be a trifle foolish, or a thought romantic, but certainly he is not slow. And this was in truth the case with Shakespeare. They say, too, that in the beginning he was a first-rate link-boy ; and the tradition is affecting, though we fear it is not quite certain. Anyhow, you feel about Shakespeare that he could have been a link-boy. In the same way you feel he may have been a player. You are sure at once that he could not have followed any sedentary kind of life. But wheresoever there was anything acted in earnest or in jest, by way of mock representation or by way of seri- ous reality, there he found matter for his mind. If any- body could have any doubt about the liveliness of Shake- speare, let them consider the character of Falstaff. When a man has created that without a capacity for laughter, then a blind man may succeed in describing colours. In- tense animal spirits are the single sentiment (if they be a sentiment) of the entire character. If most men were to save up all the gaiety of their whole lives, it would come about to the gaiety of one speech in Falstaff. A 2.3 SHAKESPEARE, morose man might have amassed many jokes, might have observed many details of jovial society, might have con- ceived a Sir John, marked by rotundity of body, but could hardly have imagined what we call his rotundity of mind. We mean that the animal spirits of Falstaff give him an easy, vague, diffusive sagacity which is peculiar to him. A morose man, lago, for example, may know anything, and is apt to know a good deal; but what he knows i,s generally all in corners. He knows number i, number 2, number 3, and so on, but there is not anything continuous, or smooth, or fluent in his knowledge. Persons conver- sant with the works of Hazlitt will know in a minute what w^e mean. Everything which he observed he seemed to observe from a certain soreness of mind ; he looked at people because they offended him ; he had the same vivid notion of them that a man has of objects which grate on a wound in his body. But there is nothing at all of this in Falstaff; on the contrary, everything pleases him, and everything is food for a joke. Cheerfulness and pros- perity give an easy abounding sagacity of mind which nothing else does give. Prosperous people bound easily over all the surface of things which their lives present to them; very likely they keep to the surface; there arc things beneath or above to which they may not penetrate or attain, but what is on any part of the surface, that they know well. "Lift not the painted veil which those who live call life,"* and they do not lift it. What is sub- lime or awful above, what is " sightless and drear "f be- neath, — these they may not dream of. Nor is any one piece or corner of life so well impressed on them as on minds less happily constituted. It is only people who have had a tooth out, that really know the dentist's wait- ing-room. Yet such people, for the time at least, know nothing but that and their tooth. The easy and sym- pathising friend who accompanies them knows everv- thing; hints gently at the contents of the Times, and would cheer you with Lord Palmerston's replies. So, on * Shelley : Sonnet (1818). f ^^f^- 24 THE MAN a greater scale, the man of painful experience knows but too well what has hurt him, and where and why ; but the happy have a vague and rounded view of the round world, and such was the knowledge of Falstaff. It is to be observed that these high spirits are not a mere excrescence or superficial point in an experiencing nature ; on the contrary, they seem to be essential, if not to its idea or existence, at least to its exercise and employ- ment. How are you to know people without talking to them, but how are you to talk to them without tiring yourself? A common man is exhausted in half an hour; Scott or Shakespeare could have gone on for a whole day. This is, perhaps, peculiarly necessary for a painter of English life. The basis of our national character seems to be a certain energetic humour, which may be found in full vigour in old Chaucer's time, and in great perfection in at least one of the popular writers of this age, and which is, perhaps, most easily described by the name of our greatest painter — Hogarth. It is amusing to see how entirely the efforts of critics and artists fail to naturalise in England any other sort of painting. Their efforts are fruitless ; for the people painted are not English people : they may be Italians, or Greeks, or Jews, but it is quite certain that they are foreigners. We should not fancy that modern art ought to resemble the mediaeval. So long as artists attempt the same class of paintings as Raphael, they will not only be inferior to Raphael, but they will never please, as they might please, the English people. What we want is what Hogarth gave us — a rep- resentation of ourselves. It may be that we are wrong, that we ought to prefer something of the old world, some scene in Rome or Athens, some tale from Carmel or Jeru- salem; but, after all, we do not. These places are, we think, abroad, and had their greatness in former times; we wish a copy of what now exists, and of what we have seen. London we know, and Manchester we know, but where are all these? It is the same with literature, Mil- ton excepted, and even Milton can hardly be called a pop- 25 SHAKESPEARE. ular writer; all great English writers describe English people, and in describing them, they give, as they must give, a large comic element ; and, speaking generally, this is scarcely possible, except in the case of cheerful and easy-living men. There is, no doubt, a biting satire, like that of Swift, which has for its essence misanthropy. There ts the mockery of Voltaire, which is based on intel- lectual contempt ; but this is not our English humour — it is not that of Shakespeare and Falstafif; ours is the hu- mour of a man who laughs when he speaks, of flowing enjoyment, of an experiencing nature. Yet it would be a great error if we gave anything like an exclusive prominence to this aspect of Shakespeare. Thus he appeared to those around him — in some degree they knew that he was a cheerful, and humorous, and happy man ; but of his higher gift they knew less than we. A great painter of men must (as has been said) have a faculty of conversing, but he must also have a capacity for solitude. There is much of mankind that a man can only learn for himself. Behind every man's ex- ternal life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbour, as we see but one side of the moon ; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself. And if we would study the internal lives of others, it seems essential that we should begin with our own. If we study this our datum, if we attain to see and feel how this influences and evolves itself in our social and (so to say) public life, then it is possible that we may find in the lives of others the same or analogous features ; and if we do not, then at least we may suspect that those who want them are deficient like- wise in the secret agencies which we feel produce them in ourselves. The metaphysicians assert that people origi- nally picked up the idea of the existence of other people in this way. It is orthodox doctrine that a babv says : *' I have a mouth, mamma has a mouth : therefore I'm the 26 THE MAN same species as mamma. I have a nose, papa has a nose : therefore papa is the same genus as me." But whether or not this ingenious idea reahy does or does not represent the actual process by which we originally obtain an ac- quaintance with the existence of minds analogous to our own, it gives unquestionably the process by which we obtain our notion of that part of those minds which they never exhibit consciously to others, and which only be- comes predominant in secrecy and solitude and to them- selves. Now, that Shakespeare has this insight into the musing life of man, as well as into his social life, is easy to prove ; take, for instance, the following passages :^- " This battle fares like to the morning's war, When dying clouds contend with growing light, What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails, Can neither call it perfect day nor night. Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea Forced by the tide to combat with the wind ; Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea Forced to retire by fury of the wind : Sometime the flood prevails ; and then the winu , Now one the better, then another best ; Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast. Yet neither conqueror nor conquered : So is the equal poise of this fell war. Here on this molehill will I sit me down. To whom God will, there be the victory ! For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too, Have chid me from the battle ; swearing both They prosper best of all when I am thence. Would I were dead ! if God's good will were so ; For what is in this world but grief and woe? O God ! methinks it were a happy life. To be no better than a homely swain ; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how the}^ run. How many make the hour full complete ; How many hours bring about the day ; How many days will finish up the year ; 27 SHAKESPEARE, How many years a mortal man may live. When this is known, then to divide the times : So many hours must I tend my flock; So many hours must I take my rest; So many hours must I contemplate; So many hours must I sport myself; So many days my ewes have been with young; So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean ; So many years ere I shall shear the fleece : So minutes, hours, days, months, and years, Pass'd over to the end they were created, Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! bives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? O, yes, it doth ; a thousand- fold it doth. And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, All which secure and sweetly he enjoys. Is far beyond a prince's delicates, His viands sparkling in a golden cup, His body couched in a curious bed, When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him."* " A fool, a fool ! I met a fool i' the forest, A motley fool ; a miserable world! As I do live by food, I met a fool; Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms, and yet a motley fool. ' Good-morrow, fool,' quoth I. ' No, sir,' quoth he, * Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune ' : And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye. Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock: Thus we may see,' quoth he, ' how the world wags : 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine ; And after one hour more, 'twill be eleven ; * 3 Kmg- Henry VI., II. v. 28 THE MAN And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot ; And thereb}^ hangs a tale.' When I did hear The motley fool thus moral on the time, My lungs began to crow like chanticleer, That fools should be so deep-contemplative; And I did laugh sans intermission An hour by his dial."* No slight versatility of mind and pliancy of fancy could pass at will from scenes such as these to the ward of East- cheap and the society which heard the chimes at midnight. One of the reasons of the rarity of great imaginative works is that in very few cases is this capacity for musing solitude combined with that of observing mankind. A certain constitutional though latent melancholy is essential to such a nature. This is the exceptional characteristic in Shakespeare. All through his works you feel you are reading the popular author, the successful man; but through them all there is a certain tinge of musing sad- ness pervading, and, as it were, softening their gaiety. Not a trace can be found of " eating cares " or narrow and mind-contracting toil, but everywhere there is, in addition to shrewd sagacity and buoyant w^isdom, a re- fining element of chastening sensibilitv, which prevents sagacitv from being rough, and shrewdness from becom- ing cold. He had an eye for either sort of life : — *' Why, let the stricken deer go weep. The hart ungalled play ; For some must watch, and some must sleep: Thus runs the world away."t In another point also Shakespeare, as he was, must be carefully contrasted with the estimate that would be formed of him from stich delineations as that of Falstaff, and that was doubtless frequently made by casual, though onlv by casual, frequenters of the Mermaid. It has been said that the mind of Shakespeare contained within it the * As You Like It, II. vii. t Hamlet, III. ii. 29 SHAKESPEARE, mind of Scott ; it remains to be observed that it contained also the mind of Keats. For, beside the delineation of human life, and beside also the delineation of Nature, there remains also for the poet a third subject — the de- lineation of fancies. Of course these, be they what they may, are like to, and were originally borrowed from, either man or Nature — from one or from both together. We know but two things in the simple way of direct ex- perience, and whatever else we know must be in some mode or manner compacted out of them. Yet " books are a substantial world, both pure and good," and so are fancies too. In all countries, men have devised to them- selves a whole series of half-divine creations — mythologies Greek and Roman, fairies, angels, beings who may be, for aught we know, but with whom, in the meantime, we can attain to no conversation. The most known of theso mythologies are the Greek, and what is, we suppose, t'^e second epoch of the Gothic, the fairies ; and it so happens that Shakespeare has dealt with them both, and in a re- markable manner. We are not, indeed, of those critic; who profess simple and unqualified admiration for the poem of Venus and Adonis. It seems intrinsically, as we know it from external testimony to have been, a juve- nile production, written when Shakespeare's nature might be well expected to be crude and unripened. Power is shown, and power of a remarkable kind ; but it is not dis- played in a manner that will please or does please the mass of men. In spite of the name of its author, the poem has never been popular — and surely this is sufficient. Never- theless, it is remarkable as a literary exercise, and as a treatment of a singular, though unpleasant subject. The fanciful class of poems differ from others in being laid, so far as their scene goes, in a perfectly unseen world. The type of such productions is Keats's Endymion. We mean that it is the type, not as giving the abstract per- fection of this sort of art, but because it shows and em- bodies both its excellences and defects in a very marked and prominent manner. In that poem there are no pas- 30 THE MAN sions and no actions, there is no art and no life ; but there is beauty, and that is meant to be enough, and to a reader of one and twenty it is enough and more. What are exploits or speeches? what is Caesar or Coriolanus? what is a tragedy like Lear, or a real view of human life in any kind whatever, to people who do not know and do not care wdiat human life is? In early youth it is, perhaps, not true that the passions, taken generally, are particularly violent, or that the imagination is in any re- markable degree powerful : but it is certain that the fancy (which though it be, in the last resort, but a weak stroke of that same faculty, wdiich, when it strikes hard, we call imagination, may yet for this purpose be looked on as distinct) is particularly wakeful, and that the gentler species of passions are more absurd than they are after- wards. And the literature of this period of human life i uns naturally away from the real world ; away from the less ideal portion of it, from stocks and stones, and aunts and uncles, and rests on mere half-embodied sentiments, which in the hands of great poets assume a kind of semi- personality, and are, to the distinction between things and persons, " as moonlight unto sunlight, and as w^ater unto wine."* The Sonnets of Shakespeare belong exactly to the same school of poetry. They are not the sort of verses to lake any particular hold upon the mind per- manently and for ever, but at a certain period they take too much. For a young man to read in the spring of the yean among green fields and in gentle air, they are the ideal. As First of April poetry they are perfect. The Midsununer-Nighfs Dream is of another order. If the question were to be decided by Venus and Adonis, in spite of the unmeasured panegvrics of many writers, we should be obliged in equity to hold, that as a poet of mere fancy Shakespeare was much inferior to the late Mr. Keats and even to meaner men. Moreover, we should have been prepared 7 THE ENGLISH is certain that comedy entered upon the EngHsh stage much in advance of her elder sister. It is barely possible that a play upon the story of Romeo and Juliet was per- formed in London before the year 1562; but the earliest tragedy extant in our language is F err ex and Porrex, or Gorboduc, all of which was probably written by Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, but to the first three acts of which Thomas Norton has a disputed claim. This play is founded on events in the fabulous chronicles of Britain. The principal personages are Gorboduc, King of Britain, about B. C. 600, Videna, his wife, and Ferrex and Porrex, his sons. But nobles, councillors, parasites, a lady, and messengers make the personages number thirteen. The first Act is occupied with the division of the kingdom by Gorboduc to his sons, and the talk thereupon. The sec- ond, with the fomenting of a quarrel between the brothers for complete sovereignty. The third, with the events of a civil war, in which Porrex kills Ferrex. In the fourth, the queen, who most loved Ferrex, kills Porrex while he is asleep at night in his chamber ; the people rise in wrath and avenge this murder by the death of both Videna and Gorboduc. The fifth Act is occupied by a bloody sup- pression of this rebellion by the nobles, who, in their turn, fall into dissension ; and the land, without a rightful king, and rent by civil strife, becomes desolate. This tragedy was written for one of the Christmas festivals of the Inner Temple, to be played by the gentlemen of that society ; and by desire of Queen Elizabeth it was per- formed by them at White-hall on the i8th of January, 1 561. It is plain that the author of this play meant to be very elegant, decorous, and classical ; and he succeeded. Of all the stirring events upon which the tragedy is built, not one is represented ; all are told. Even Ferrex and Porrex are not brought together on the stage, and Videna does not meet either of them before the audience after the first act. Each act is introduced by a dumb show, in- tended to be symbolical of what will follow — a common device on our early stage which was ridiculed by Shake- 38 DRAMA speare in the third Act of Hamlet ]^ and each act, except the last, is fohowed by a moraUzing and explanatory chorus recited by " four ancient and sage men of Britain." F err ex and Porrex is remarkable as being the first Eng- lish play extant in blank verse, and probably it was the first so written. It is to be wondered that even in this respect it was ever taken as a model. For although Sir Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poesy, finding fault with Ferrex and Porrex for its violation of the unities of time and place, admits that it is so " full of stately speeches and well sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his stile, and full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach," yet it may be safely said that another play so lifeless in movement, so commonplace in thought, so utterly undramatic in motive, so oppressively didactic in language, so absolutely without distinction of charac- ter among its personages, cannot be found in our dramatic literature. From Ferrex and Porrex we turn even to the miracle-plays and moral-plays with relief, if not with pleasure. Some notion of its tediousness may be gath- ered from the fact that it closes with a speech one hun- dred lines in length, and that the first act is chiefly occu- pied with three speeches by three councillors, which to- * " The Order and Signiiication of the Domnie Shew before the fourth Act. " First the musick of howeboies began to playe, during which came from under the stage, as though out of hell, three furies, Alecto, Megera, and Ctisiphone clad in blacke garmentes sprinkled with bloud and flames, their bodies girt with snakes, their beds spred with serpentes in stead of heire, the one bearing in hand a snake, the other a whip, and the third a burning fire- brand ; ech driving before them a king and a queene, which moved by the furies unnaturally had slaine their owne children. The names of the kings and queenes were these, Tantalus, Medea, Athamas, Ino, Cambises, Althea ; after that the furies and these had passed about the stage thrise, they departed, and than the musick ceased: hereby was signified the unnatural murders to follow, that is to say, Porrex, slaine by his owne mother ; and of king Gorboduc and queene Videna, killed by their owne subjects." 39 THE ENGLISH gether make two hundred and sixty verses."^ This play demands notice because it is our first tragedy, our first * The following passage, in which the death of Porrex is an- nounced, is a favourable example of the style of this play : — Marcella. Oh where is ruth or where is pitie now? Whether is gentle hart and mercy fled? Are they exiled out of our stony brestes, Never to make returne? is all the world Drowned in blood and sonke in crueltie? If not in woman mercy may be found If not (alas) within the mother's brest To her owne childe to her owne flesh and blood; If ruthe be banished thence, if pitie there May have no place, if there no gentle hart Do live and dwell, where should we seek it then? Gorhoduc. Madame (alas) what means your wofull tale? Marcella. O silly woman I ! why to this houre Have kinde and fortune thus deferred my breath, That I should live to see this dolefull day? Will ever wight beleve that such hard hart Could rest within the cruell mother's brest, With her owne hande to slaye her only sonne? But out (alas) these eyes behelde the same, They saw the driery sight, and are become Most ruthfull recordes of the bloody fact. Porrex (alas) is by his mother slaine. And with her hand and wofull thing to tell ; While slumbering on his carefull bed he restes. His hart stabde in with knife is reft of life. Gorhoduc. O Eubulus, oh draw this sword of ours. And pearce this hart with sp^ed ! O hateful light, O lothsome life, O sweete and welcome death, Deare Eubulus, worke this we thee besech ! Eubulus. Pacient your grace, perhappes he liveth yet, With wound receaved, but not of certain death. Gorhoduc. O let us then repayre unto the place, And see if Porrex live, or thus be slaine. Marcella. Alas he liveth not, it is to true. That with these eyes of him a perelesse prince^ Sonne to a king and in the flower of youth. Even with a twinkle a senselesse stock I saw. 40 DRAMA play written in blank verse, but for no other reason. It had no perceptible effect upon the English drama, and marks no stage in its progress. In that regard it might as well have been written in Greece and in Greek, or in ancient British by Gorboduc himself ; for in either case its motive and plan could not then have been more foreign to the genius of English dramatic literature. And it is now proper to say that translated plays adapted from Greek and Latin authors, of which there were many per- formed in the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, are here passed by without notice, not merely because they were translations and adaptations, but because, not being an outgrowth of the English character, they were entirely without influence upon the development of the English drama, in an account of which they have no proper place. The Supposes translated from Ariosto by George Gas- coigne, and acted at Gray's Inn in 1566, must be men- tioned as the earliest extant play in English prose. The fact is significant indeed, that none of the many plays written especially for the court and for the learned soci- eties and the elegant people of that day have left any traces even of a temporary influence upon our stage. The English drama, unlike that of France, had its germ in the instincts, and its growth with the growth, of the whole English people. Up to, and even past, the Elizabethan era, the English drama was rude in style and in construction, gross in sentiment and in language. Its personages had little character or keeping, its incidents little probability or connection. A true dramatic style, by which character is evolved and emotion revealed, was yet unformed. The cultivated people of that time saw these defects, except the last, but devised for them the wrong remedy. With their heads full of the ancient classics, they judged their own theatre by a foreign standard, to which they would have forced it to conform.* In this English drama, rude, * George Whetstone, in the dedication of his " Promos and Cas- sandra," the incidents of which Shakespeare used in his Measure 41 THE ENGLISH coarse and confused, there was yet an inherent vitaHty. It was native to the English mind, and it sought to pre- sent even in tragedy an ideahzed picture of real life which had never yet been attempted. for Measure, and which was published in 1578, gives us the fol- lowing criticism upon the English drama of that day : " The Englishman in this qualitie is most vaine, indiscreete, and out of order : he first groundes his worke on impossibilities : then, in three howers, ronnes he throwe the worlde : marryes, gets chil- dren, makes children men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder monsters, and bringeth Gods from Heaven, and fetcheth divils from Hel. And (that which is worst) their ground is not so imperfect as their workinge indiscreete ; not waying, so the peo- ple laugh, though they laugh them (for their follies) to scorn. Manye tymes. to make myrthe, they make a clowne companion with a Kinge : in theyr grave Councils they allow the advice of fools ; yea, they use one order of speach for all persons, a grose Indecorum^ etc. Sir Philip Sidney, in a passage of his Defence of Poesy (writ- ten about 1583) which has been often quoted, but which is too important to be omitted here, says : " Our Tragedies and Come- dies are not without cause cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civilitie nor skilfuU Poetrie. Excepting Gor- boduck (againe I say of those that I have scene) which notwith- standing, as it is full of statelie speeches, and well sounding phrases, climing to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and' so obtaine the verie end of Poesie, yet in truth it is very defections in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might not re- maine as an exact modell of all Tragedies. For it is faulty in place and time, the two necessarie companions of all corporall nctions. For where the Stage should alway represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be both by Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day, there is both many dayes and manie places artificially imagined. But if it bee so in Gorboduck, how much more in all the rest, where you shall have Asia of the one side, and A f rick of the other, and so many other under kingdoms, that the Player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walke to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By 42 i DRAMA Our drama, advancing through centuries, had slowly reached this stage of growth, where if its development had been stayed, its history would have been almost with- out interest, except to the literary antiquary, when sud- denly its homely, uncouth bud burst into flower so sweet, of beauty so glorious, so perennial, as ever after to glad- den, to perfume, and to adorn the ages. The rapidity of this transition is astonishing. It is almost like magical transformation. In less than twenty years from the time when the best plays yet produced by English authors were intrinsically unworthy of a place in literature, the English stage had become illustrious. This change was brought about by the great and in- creasing taste of the day for dramatic performances, which called into the service of the theatre every needy hand that held a ready pen. A crowd of young men left the learned professions in London, or abandoning rustic homes, flocked thither to make money by writing plays. Among these men seven attained distinction ; and yet not and by we hear newes of a shipwrack in the same place ; then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rocke. Upon the backe of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime, two armies flie in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard hart will not receive it for a pitched field? Now, of time they are much more liberal; for ordinarie it is that two young Princes fall in love : after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy ; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child, and all this in two houres' space ; which how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified, and at this daye the ordinarie players in Italie wil not erre in . . . But besides these grosse absurdi- ties how all their Playes be neither right Tragedies nor right Comedies, mingling Kings and Clownes not because the matter so carieth it, but thrust in the Clowne by head and shoulders, to play a part in Majestical matters with neither decencie nor dis- cretion ; so as neither the admiration and commis'!"-ntion. nor right sportfulness is by their mongrel Tragi-comedy obtained." 43 • " THE ENGLISH only so inferior, but of so little intrinsic enduring interest, was the work of six of them, that, with one and hardly one exception, their names would not have been know^n outside of purely literary circles, but for the seventh. They were Thomas Kyd,John Lilly, George Peele, George Chapman, Robert Greene, Christopher jMarlowe, and Wil- liam Shakespeare. Of the six, the oldest whose age is known to us was only ten years the senior of the seventh, and the most eminent, ^Marlowe, was born but two years before him/'' Shakespeare got to work in London very early in life. He was using his pen as a dramatic writer there before he was twenty-four years old. These men were therefore in both the strictest and in the broadest sense his contemporaries — his contemporaries as men and as authors. The mere fact that he found four of them, Kyd, Peele, Green, and ]\Iarlow^e, in the front rank of dramatic writers on his arrival in London, does not prop- erly entitle them to consideration as his predecessors in English drama. Being so absolutely contemporaneous with him in age, they could be justly regarded as his pred- ecessors only as having been the founders of a school of which he was an eminent disciple, or to which he had established a rival or a successor. But he stood to them in neither of these relations. He and they were all, with a single exception, of one school, of which neither one of them was the founder. \Mth this one exception these men were all striving to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way. The time had come when it was to be done, and the time brought the men who were to do it, each according to his ability. And not only were their aims identical, but there is the best reason, short of competent contemporary testimony, for believing that four of them, including Shakespeare, were colaborers upon still existing works. *. Lilly was born about 1553, Peele about the same year, Chap- man in 1559. Greene about 1560, Marlowe about 1562. Shakespeare in 1564. The date of Kyd's birth can only be conjectured. 44 DRAMA The exception to this unity of purpose was Joh^n Lilly, the author of Euphiies. Lilly is known in dramatic litera- ture as the author of eight comedies written to be per- formed at the court of Elizabeth.''' They are in all re- spects opposed to the genius of the Enghsh drama. They do not even pretend to be representations of human life and human character, but are pure fantasy pieces, in which the personages are a heterogeneous medley of Gre- cian gods and goddesses, and impossible, colourless crea- tures with sublunary names, all thinking with one brain, and speaking with one tongue — the conceitful, crotchety brain and the dainty, well-trained tongue of clever, witty John Lilly. They are all in prose, but contain some pretty, fanciful verses called songs, which are as unlyrical in spirit as the plays in which they appear are undramatic. From these plays Shakespeare borrowed a few thoughts ; but they exercised no modifying influence upon his genius, nor did they at all conform to that of the English drama, upon which they are a mere grotesque excrescence. Chapman, one of the elder and the stronger of the six above named, is not known as the author, even in part, of any play older than Shakespeare's earliest perform- ances He probably entered upon dramatic composition at a somewhat later period in life than either of the others ; and as a dramatist he is properly to be passed over in this place, as not even having been Shakespeare's prede- cessor, in the mere order of time, by even that very brief period which may be admitted in the cases of Peele, Greene, and Marlowe. The styles of these three dram- atists are commented upon, and extracts from their plays are given, in an Essay upon the Authorship of * Lilly's Plays are Endimion, Campaspe, Saplw and Phaon, Gallathea, Mydas, Mother Bombie, The Woman in the Moone, and Love's Metamorphosis. The Maid's Metamorphosis, which was published anonymously in 1600, has been attributed' to him, as also was A Warning for Fair Women, which was published anonymously in 1599; but neither of them bears traces of his style. _ 45 THE ENGLISH King Henry the Sixth, where they are particularly considered in their relation to Shakespeare. I will, however, notice here the opinion generally received, that Marlowe's talents were very far superior to those of either Greene or Peele — a judgement to which I cannot entirely assent, as far as Peele is concerned. Peele's plays, it is true, lack some of Marlowe's fire and fury ; but they are also without much of his fustian. Peek's characters are less strongly marked that j\Iar- lowe's ; but they are also less absurd and extravagant, and, in my opinion, they are equally well discriminated, though that is little praise. Peele's David and Bathsheha is a play which for the genuineness of its feeling, if not for the harmony of its verse, Marlowe might have been glad to own; and The Battle of Alcanzar is in the same furious, bloody vein with his Tainburlaine, and equal, if not superior, to it in sense and keeping. It is also note- worthy that the Prologue to Peele's Arraignment of Paris, which was published in 1584, when Marlowe was but twenty years old, and before he had taken his Bachelor's degree at Cambridge, is, for its union of completeness of measure with variety of pause, unsurpassed by any dra- matic blank verse, that of one play excepted, which was written before the time of Shakespeare. The critical reader who is familiar with INIarlowe's works must con- stantly remember that there is every reason for believing that Edzuard II. — his best play in versification no less than in style, sentiment, and character — was written after 1590, and after the production of The First Part of the Contention and The True Tragedy. With regard to these dramatists there only remains to be noticed the claim which has been set up for one of them, Marlowe, that he was the first who used blank verse upon our public stage, and " the first who harmonized it with variety of pause." As to which I will only say, briefly, that although it is probably true that he in his Tamhurlaine made one of the earliest eflforts to bring blank verse into vogue in plays written for the general 46 DRAMA public, and to substitute the roll and flow of measured rhythm for the feebler and more monotonous music of rhyme in dramatic poetry intended for uncultured as well as cultured ears, I cannot find in this endeavor reason for giving him the credit due to an innovator, much less that which belongs to an inventor. Blank verse, as we have seen, was used in plays produced for special occasions and audiences many years before i\Iarlowe wrote ; and he, writing only for the general theatre-going public, seems merely to have used, and somewhat improved, an instru- ment which he found made to his hand. Among the dram- atists who preceded Marlowe in the use of blank verse on the public stage is one who, in my judgement, wrote it with a spirit and a freedom which Marlowe himself hardly excelled. This dramatist is the author of Jeronimo. A continuation of this play, called The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is mad again, which we know, upon Thomas Heywood's testimony, was written by Thomas Kyd, was one of the most popular plays of the Elizabethan era. Hitherto it has been assumed that Kyd was also the au- thor of Jeronimo. But a comparison of the two plays shows them to be so unlike in all respects — in versification, in language, in dramatic characterization, and in all dis- tinctive poetic traits — that it seems very clear that the fact that Kyd did write The Spanish Tragedy is conclusive evidence against his authorship of the elder play. It would be difficult for two contemporary dramatic poets, in their treatment of the same or a very similar subject, to produce two works more unlike in all particulars. The Spanish Tragedy had been written, as we know upon Ben Jonson's testimony, long enough before 1587 to be then an old story. We may be equally sure that the play of which it is a continuation had preceded it some years. In structure Jeronimo bears strong traces of the pre- Elizabethan era. It opens with a dumb show explana- tory of the situation of the characters before the action commences ; the action does not " grow to a point," and the play consequently reads less like a tragedy than an 47 THE ENGLISH episode of history dramatized with little art ; quite one half of the play is in rhyme ; and among its dramatis pcr- sonce one is allegorical — Revenge. This personage and the Ghost of Andrea, the slain lover who appears witli him in the last scene of Jeronimo, are also used by K} d in The Spanish Tragedy ; but in that they merely form a chorus, and neither mingle in nor influence the action. The traits of Jeronimo just mentioned, and particularly the first and last, are indicative of a period earlier than that known as the Elizabethan era ; while the versification and characterization belong to that era, and indeed would disgrace none of its dramatists except Shakespeare him- self, and are hardly unworthy of his prentice hand. Dumb shows went out as Elizabethan dramatists began to occupy the stage ; and allegory is the distinctive trait of the period of the moral-plays, although, as we have seen, it yielded place gradually to real life. The use of dumb show, and especially the introduction of an allegorical character among the dramatis pcrsoncc of a tragedy of real life written in blank verse, of which no other example is known to me, distinctly mark the transitional type of Jeronimo, which may be regarded as a fine and character- istic example of English tragedy in the stage of its devel- opment immediately preceding that which produced Shakespeare. And indeed this play and its continuation, in spite of the crudeness of both and the childishness of the latter, seem to have left stronger traces of influence upon Shakespeare's works than any other, or than all others, written by his predecessors or his contemporaries. The English drama, and not the stage and the theatres, before the time of Shakespeare, is the subject of this account ; but it may be fitly closed with a very brief de- scription of the playhouses and the theatrical management of his early years. The general use of inn-yards as places of dramatic amusement has been already mentioned in the course of remarks upon the moral-play ; and when Shakespeare arrived in London, at least three inns there — the Bull, the Cross Keys, and the Bell Savage — were 48 DRAMA thus regularly occupied. But, by a striking coincidence, with the Elizabethan era of our drama came theatres proper, buildings specially adapted to the needs of actors and audiences. Shakespeare found three such in the me- tropolis — four, if to The Theatre, The Curtain, and Black- friars, we are to add Paris Garden, where bear-baiting shared the boards with comedy. All the theatres of Shakespeare's time were probably built of wood and plaster. Of the three above mentioned, the Blackfriars belonged to the class called private theatres — we know not why, unless because the private theatres were entirely roofed in, while in the others the pit was uncovered, and of course the stage and the gallery exposed to the external air. A flag was kept flying from a staff on the roof dur- ing the performance. Inside there were the stage, the pit, the boxes and galleries, much as we have them now- adays. In the public theatres, the pit, separated from the stage by paling, was called the yard, and was without seats. The price of admission to the pit or yard varied, according to the pretensions of the theatre, from two- pence, and even a penny, to sixpence ; that to the boxes or rooms from a shilling to two shillings, and even, on extraordinary occasions, half a crown. The performances usually commenced at three o'clock in the afternoon ; but the theatre appears to have been always artificially lighted, in the body of the house by cressets and upon the stage by large rude chandeliers. The small band of musicians sat, not in an orchestra in front of the stage, but, it would seem, in a balcony pro- jecting from the proscenium. People went early to the theatre for the purpose of securing good places, and while waiting for the play to begin, they read, gamed, smoked, drank, and cracked nuts and jokes together. Those who set up for wits, gallants, or critics, liked to appear upon the stage itself, which they were allowed to do all through the performance, lying upon the rushes with which the stage was strewn, or sitting upon stools, for which they paid an extra price. 49 THE ENGLISH Pickpockets, when detected at the theatre, seem to have been put in an extempore pillory on the stage, among the wits and gallants, at whose tongues, if not whose hands, they doubtless suffered. Kempe, the actor, in his Nine Daies Wonder, A. D. 1600, compares a man to " such a one as we tye to a poast on our stage for all the people to wonder at when they are taken pilfering," Certain very peculiar dramatic companies should not be passed by entirely without notice. They were com- posed altogether of children. The boys of St. Paul's choir, those of Westminster school, and a special com- pany called the Children of the Revels, were the most important. The first two acted under the direction of the Master of St. Paul's choir and of the school, the last under that of the Master of the Revels. Their per- formances were much admired, and the companies of adult actors at the theatres were piqued, and perhaps touched in pocket, by the public favour of these youn- kers. Shakespeare shows this by a speech which he puts into Rosencranz's mouth (Hamlet, II. ii.). Their audi- ences were generally composed of the higher classes, and they acted plays of established reputation only. This ap- pears from the following passage in Jack Drum's Enter- tainment, published in 1601, which was itself played by the children of Paul's, as appears by its title-page : — • Sir Edzi'ard. I sawe the Children of Pawles last night. And troth they pleas'd me prettie, prettie well. The Apes in time will do it handsomely. Planet. V faith I like the Audience that frequenteth there, With much applause. A man shall not be choakte With the stench of Garlicke, nor be pasted To the barny lackett of a Beer-brewer. Brabant, Jn. 'Tis a good gentle audience, and I hope the Boyes Will come one day into the Courte of Requests. Brabant, Sig. I, and they had good playes, but they produce Such mustie fopperies of antiquitie As do not sute the humorous ages backs With cloathes in fashion. 50 DRAMA The performance was announced by three flourishes of trumpets. At the third sounding, t]:e curtain, which was divided in the middle from top to bottom, and ran upon rods, was drawn, and after the prologue the actors en- tered. The prologue was spoken by a person who wore a long black cloak and a wreath of bays upon his head. The reason of which costume \vas, that prologues were first spoken by the authors of plays themselves, who wore the poetical costume of the middle ages, such as we see it in the old portraits of Ariosto, Tasso, and others. When the authors themselves no longer appeared as pro- logue, the actors who were their proxies assumed their professional habit. Poor Robert Greene, the debauched lilaywright and poet, begged upon his miserable death- bed that his coffin might be strewed with bays ; and the cr)bbler's wife, at whose house he died, respected this clinging of the wretched author to his right to Parnassian b.onors, and fulfilled his last request. In the earlier part of the Elizabethan era it was common for all the actors who were to take parts in the play to appear in character and pass over the stage before the performance began. This w^as a relic of the days of the miracle-plays and moral-plays. In the course of the play he who played the clown would favor the audience with outbreaks of extemporaneous wit and practical joking, in virtue of a time-honoured privilege claimed by the clowns to " speak more than was set down for them." Indeed, extempore dialogue seems to have been permitted to, if not expected from, the representatives of comic characters. Such stage directions as the following from Greene's Tn quoque (A. D. 1614) are not uncommon : " Here they tzvo talke and rayle zi'hat they list; then Rash speakes to Staynes." " All speake. Ud's foot dost thou stand by and do nothing? come talke and drown her clamors. Here they all talke and Joyce gives over weeping and Exit." Between the acts there was dancing and singing ; and after the play, a jig, which was a kind of comic solo sung, said, acted, and danced by the clown to the accom- 51 THE ENGLISH paniment of his own pipe and tabor. Each day's exhi- bition was closed by a prayer for the Queen, offered by all the actors kneeling. The stage exhibited no movable scenery. It was hung with painted cloths and arras ; when tragedy was played, the hangings were sometimes, at least, sable : over the stage was a blue canopy, called " the heavens.'' Although there was no proper scenery, there was ample provision of rude properties, such as towers, tombs, dragons, painted pasteboard banquets, and the like. Furniture was used, of course, and was, in many cases, the only means of in- dicating a change of scene, which, indeed, in most cases was left to the imagination of the audience, helped, it might be, as Sir Philip Sidney says, if the supposed scene were Thebes, by *' seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door." * Machinery and trap-doors wxre freely used, and gods and goddesses were let down from and hoisted up to the heavens in chairs moved by pulleys and * Such stage directions as the following show how very rude were the devices for indicating a change of scene in the latter part of the i6th and the early part of the i/th centuries: — "Enter Syhilla lying in child bed zcith her child lying by her." Heywood's Golden Age, 1611. "Enter a shoemaker sitting on the stage at work. Jenkins to him." Greene's George-a-Greene, 1599. In the following passage the audience were evidently expected to " make believe " that a few steps across the stage was a going 10 the town's end : — Shoemaker. Come. sir. will you go to the town's end now. sir? Jenkins. Ay sir, come. — Now we are at the town's end; what say you now? Idem, ut supra. In the plays of that period, after a murder or killing in com- bat, the direction is generally to the survivor. " Exit with the body." There was no device by which the dead body could be shut out from the audience, that the next scene might go on without its presence. DRAMA tackle that creaked and groaned in the most sublunary and mechanical manner. At the back of the stage was a bal- cony, which, like the furniture in the Duke Aranza's co.- tage served '* a hundred uses." It was inner room, upper room, window, balcony, battlements, hill side, ■Mount Olympus, any place, in fact, which was supposed to be separated from and above the scene of the main action, it was in this balcony, for instance, that Sly and his attend- ants sat while they witnessed the performance of The Taming of the Shrezc. The wardrobes of the principal theatres were rich, varied, and costly. It was customary to buy for stage use slightly worn court dresses and the gorgeous robes used at coronations. Near the end of the last century, Steevens tells us, there was " yet in the ward- robe of Covent Garden Theatre a rich suit of clothes that once belonged to James I." Steevens saw it worn by the performer of Justice Greely in Massinger's New Way to pay Old Debts. The Allen papers and Henslowe's Diary inform us fully upon this point. In the latter there is a memorandum of the payment of £4. 14s., equal to $120, for a single pair of hose ; and by the former we see that £16, equal to $400, was the price of one embroidered vel- vet cloak, and £20 los., equal t^ $512, that of another. Costume of conventional significance was also worn ; for Henslowe records the purchase at the large price of £3 los. of " a robe for to goo invisibell.'' A comparison of the prices paid for dresses, with those paid for the plays in which they were worn, shows us that the absence of scenery and of stage decoration, to which it has been supposed we owe much of the rich imagery in the Elizabethan drama, was due only to poverty of resource, and not to the higher value set by the public, and consequently by the theatrical proprietors, upon the intellectual part of their entertainment. The highest sum which Henslowe records as having been paid by him be- fore 1600, as the full price of a play, is £8 — not half what vras given for a cloak that might have been worn in it ; the lowest sum is £4 — not as much as the hero's hose 53 THE ENGLISH DRAMA might have cost. By 1613, theatrical competition had raised the price of a play by a dramatist of repute to £20, which, being equal to $500 of the present day, was per- haps quite as much as the proprietors could aflford, and was not an inadequate payment for such plays as went to make up the bulk of the dramatic productions of the day. Happily, nearly all of these have perished ; and of those which have survived, the best claim the attention of posterity only because Shakespeare lived when they were written. 54 Culmination of the Drama in ShaKespeare. Culmination of the Drama in Shakespeare. BY THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES. The dramatic conditions of a national theatre were, at the outset of Shakespeare's career, more complete, or rather in a more advanced state of development, than the play- houses themselves or their stage accessories. If Shake- speare was fortunate in entering on his London work amidst the full tide of awakened patriotism and public spirit, he was equally fortunate in finding ready to his hand the forms of art in which the rich and complex life of the time could be adequately expressed. During the decade in which Shakespeare left Stratford the play- wright's art had undergone changes so important as to constitute a revolution in the form and spirit of the na- tional drama. For twenty years after the accession of Elizabeth the two roots whence the English drama sprang — the academic or classical, and the popular, developed spontaneously in the line of mysteries, moralities and in- terludes — continued to exist apart, and to produce their accustomed fruit independently of each other. The popular drama, it is true, becoming more secular and realistic, enlarged its area by collecting its materials from all sources — from novels, tales, ballads, and histories, as well as from fairy mythology, local superstitions, and folk-lore. But the incongruous materials were, for the most part, liandled in a crude and semi-barbarous way, with just sufficient art to satisfy the cravings and clamours of unlettered audiences. The academic plays, on the CULMINATION OF other hand, were written by scholars for courtly and cul- tivated circles, were acted at the universities, the inns of court, and at special public ceremonials, and followed for the most part the recognised and restricted rules of the classic drama. But in the third decade of Elizabeth's reign another dramatic school arose intermediate between the two elder ones, which sought to combine in a newer and higher form the best elements of both. The main impulse guiding the efforts of the new school may be traced indirectly to a classical source. It was due, not immediately to the masterpieces of Greece and Rome, but to the form which classical art had assumed in the con- temporary drama of Italy, France, and Spain, especially of Italy, which was that earliest developed and best known to the new school of poets and dramatists. This southern drama, while academic in its leading features, had never- theless modern elements blended with the ancient form. As the Italian epics, following in the main the older ex- amples, were still charged with romantic and realistic ele- ments unknown to the classical epic, so the Italian drama, constructed on the lines of Seneca and Plautus, blended with the severer form, essentially romantic features. With the choice of heroic subjects, the orderly develop- ment of the plot, the free use of the chorus, the observ- ance of the unities, and constant substitution of narrative for action were united the vivid colouring of poetic fancy and diction, and the use of materials and incidents de- rived from recent history and contemporary life. The influence of the Italian drama on the new school of English playwrights was, however, very much re- stricted to points of style and diction of rhetorical and poetical effect. It helped to produce among them the sense of artistic treatment, the conscious effort after higher and more elaborate forms and vehicles of imagina- tive and passionate expression. For the rest, the rising- English drama, in spite of the efforts made by academic critics to narrow its range and limit its interests, retained and thoroughly vindicated its freedom and independence THE DRAMA The central characteristics ot the new school are suffi- ciently explained by the fact that its leading representa- tives were all of them scholars and poets, Hving by their wits and gaining a somewhat precarious livelihood amidst the stir and bustle, the 'temptations and excitement, of concentrated London life. The distinctive note of their work is the reflex of their position as academic scholars working under poetic and popular impulses for the public theatres. The new and striking combination in their dramas of elements hitherto wholly separated is but the natural result of their attainments and literary activities. From their university training and knowledge of the an- cients they would be familiar with the technical require- ments of dramatic art, the deliberate handling of plot, incident, and character, and the due subordination of parts essential for producing the effect of an artistic whole. Their imaginative and emotional sensibility, stimulated by their studies in southern literature, would naturally prompt them to combine features of poetic beauty and rhetorical finish with the evolution of character and ac- tion ; while from the popular native drama they derived the breadth of sympathy, sense of humour, and vivid con- tact with actual life which gave reality and power to their representations. The leading members of this group or school were Kyd, Greene, Lodge, Nash, Peele, and Marlowe, of whom, in relation to the future developi-aent of the drama, Greene, Peele, and Marlowe are the most important and influential. They were almost the first poets and men of genius who devoted themselves to the production of dramatic pieces for the public theatres. But they all helped to redeem the common stasfes from the reproach their rude and bois- terous pieces had brought upon them, and make the plays represented poetical and artistic as well as lively, bustling and popular. Some did this rather from a necessity of nature and stress of circumstance than from any higher aim or deliberately formed resolve. But Marlowe, the greatest of them, avowed the redemption of the com- CULMINATION OF mon stage as the settled purpose of his labours at the out- set of his dramatic career. And during his brief and stormy life he nobly discharged the self-imposed task. His first play, Tamhiirlaine the Great, struck the authentic note of artistic and romantic tragedy. With all its ex- travagance, and overstraining after vocal and rhetorical effects, the play throbs with true passion and true poetry, and has throughout the stamp of emotional intensity and intellectual power. His later tragedies, while marked by the same features, bring into fuller relief the higher char- acteristics of his passionate and poetical genius. Alike in the choice of subject and method of treatment Marlowe is thoroughly independent, deriving little, ex- cept in the way of general stimulus, either from the classi- cal or popular drama of his day. The signal and far- reaching reforms he effected in dramatic metre by the introduction of modulated blank verse illustrates the stri- king originality of his genius. Gifted wath a fine ear for the music of English numbers, and impatient of " the gigging veins of rhyming mother wits," he introduced the noble metre which was at once adopted by his con- temporaries and became the vehicle of the great Eliza- bethan drama. The new metre quickly abolished the rhyming couplets and stanzas that had hitherto prevailed on the popular stage. The rapidity and completeness of this metrical revolution is in itself a powerful tribute to Marlowe's rare insight and feeling as a master of musical expression. The originality and importance of Marlowe's innovation are not materially affected by the fact that one or two classical plays, such as Gorboduc and Jocasta, had been already written in unrhymed verse. In any case these were private plays, and the monotony of cadence and structure in the verse excludes them from anything like serious comparison with the richness and variety of vocal effect produced by the skilful pauses and musical inter- linking of Marlowe's heroic metre. Greene and Peele did almost as much for romantic comedy as Marlowe had done for romantic tragedy. THE DRAMA Greene's ease and lightness of touch, his freshness of feel- ing and play of fancy, his vivid sense of the pathos and beauty of homely scenes and thorough enjoyment of Eng- lish rural life, give to his dramatic sketches the blended charm of romance and reality hardly to be found else- where except in Shakespeare's early comedies. In special points of lyrical beauty and dramatic portraiture, such as his sketches of pure and devoted women and of witty and amusing clowns, Greene anticipated some of the more delightful and characteristic features of Shakespearian comedy. Peele's lighter pieces and Lyly's prose comedies helped in the same direction. Although not written for the public stage, Lyly's court comedies were very popular, and Shakespeare evidently gained from their light and easy if somewhat artificial tone, their constant play of witty banter and sparkling repartee, valuable hints for the prose of his own comedies. Marlowe again prepared the way for another character- istic development of Shakespeare's dramatic art. His Edward II. marks the rise of the historical drama, as dis- tinguished from the older chronicle play, in which the an- nals of a reign or period were thrown into a series of loose and irregular metrical scenes. Peele's Edward I., Marlowe's Edward 11. , and the fine ananymous play of Edzvard III., in which many critics think Shakespeare's hand may be traced, show how thoroughly the new school had felt the rising national pulse, and how promptly it responded to the popular demand for the dramatic treat- ment of history. The greatness of contemporary events had created a new sense of the grandeur and continuity of the nation's life, and excited amongst all classes a vivid interest in the leading personalities and critical struggles that had marked its progress. There was a strong and general feeling in favour of historical subjects, and espe- cially historical subjects having in them elements of tragi- cal depth and intensity. Shakespeare's own early plays — dealing with the distracted reign of King John, the Wars of the Roses, and the tragical lives of Richard II. and CULMINATION OF Richard III. — illustrate this bent of popular feeling. The demand being met by men of poetical and dramatic genius reacted powerfully on the spirit of the age, helping in turn to illuminate and strengthen its loyal and patriotic sym- pathies. This is in fact the keynote of the English stage in the great period of its development. It was its breadth of national interest and intensity of tragic power that made the English drama so immeasurably superior to every other contemporary drama in Europe. The Italian drama languished because, though carefully elaborated in point of form, it had no fulness of national life, no common elements of ethical conviction or aspiration, to vitalise and ennoble it. Even tragedy, in the hands of Italian dramatists, had no depth of human passion, no energy of heroic purpose, to give higher meaning and power to its evolution. In Spain the dominant courtly and ecclesiastical influences limited the development of the national drama, while in France it remained from the outset under the artificial restrictions of classical and pseudo-classical traditions. Shake- speare's predecessors and contemporaries, in elevating the common stages, and filling them with poetry, music, and passion, had attracted to the theatre all classes, including the more cultivated and refined : and the intelligent inter- est, energetic patriotism, and robust life of so representa- tive an English audience supplied the strongest stimulus to the more perfect development of the great organ of national expression. The forms of dramatic art, in the three main departments of comedy, tragedy, and historical drama, had been, as we have seen, clearly discriminated and evolved in their earlier stages. It was a moment of supreme promise and expectation, and in the accidents of earth, or, as we may more appropriately and gratefully say, in the ordinances of heaven, the supreme poet and dramatist appeared to more than fulfil the utmost promise of the time. By right of imperial command over all the resources of 6 THE DRAMA imaginative insight and expression Shakespeare combined the rich dramatic materials already prepared into more perfect forms, and carried them to the highest point of ideal development. He quickly surpassed Marlowe in passion, music, and intellectual power; Greene in lyrical beauty, elegiac grace, and narrative interest ; Peele in picturesque touch and pastoral sweetness ; and Lyly in bright and sparkling dialogue. And having distanced the utmost efforts of his predecessors and contemporaries he took his own higher way, and reigned to the end with- out a rival in the new world of supreme dramatic art he had created. It is a new world, because Shakespeare's work alone can be said to possess the organic strength and infinite variety, the throbbing fulness, vital complexity, and breathing truth of Nature herself. In points of artis- tic resource and technical ability — such as copious and expressive diction, freshness and pregnancy of verbal combination, richly modulated verse, and structural skill in the handling of incident and action — Shakespeare's su- premacy is indeed sufficiently assured. But, after all, it is of course in the spirit and substance of his work, his power of piercing to the hidden centres of character, of touching the deepest springs of impulse and passion, out of which are the issues of life, and of evolving those issues dramatically with a flawless strength, subtlety, and truth, which raises him so immensely above and beyond not only the best of the playwrights who went before him, but the whole line of illustrious dramatists that came after him. It is Shakespeare's unique distinction that he has an abso- lute command over all the complexities of thought and feeling that prompt to action and bring out the dividing lines of character. He sweeps with the hand of a master the whole gamut of human experience, from the lowest note to the very top of its compass, from the sportive childish treble of Mamillius and the pleading boyish tones of Prince Arthur, up to the spectre-haunted terrors of Macbeth, the tropical passion of Othello, the agonised sense and tortured spirit of Hamlet, the sustained ele- CULMINATION OF mental grandeur, the Titanic force, and utterly tragical pathos of Lear. Shakespeare's active dramatic career in London lasted about twenty years, and may be divided into three toler- ably symmetrical periods. The first extends from the year 1587 to about 1593-94; the second, from this date to the end of the century; and the third, from 1600 to about 1608, soon after which time Shakespeare ceased to write regularly for the stage, was less in London and more and more at Stratford. Some modern critics add to these a fourth period, including the few plays which from inter- nal as well as external evidence must have been amongst the poet's latest productions. As the exact date of these plays are unknown, this period may be taken to extend from 1608 to about 161 2. The three dramas produced during these years are, however, hardly entitled to be ranked as a separate period. They may rather be re- garded as supplementary to the grand series of dramas belonging to the third and greatest epoch of Shakespeare's productive power. To the first period belong Shake- speare's early tentative efforts in revising and partially rewriting plays produced by others that already had pos- session of the stage. These eiTorts are illustrated in the three parts of Henry VI., especially the second and third parts, which bear decisive marks of Shakespeare's hand, and were to a great extent recast and rewritten by him. It is clear from the internal evidence thus supplied that Shakespeare was at first powerfully affected by " Alar- lowe's mighty line." This influence is so marked in the revised second and third parts of Henry [7. as to induce some critics to believe Marlowe must have had a hand in the revision. These passages are, however, sufficiently explained by the fact of Marlowe's influence during the first period of Shakespeare's career. To the same period also belong the earliest tragedy, that of Titus Andronicus, and the three comedies — Love's Labour 's Lost, The Com- edy of Errors, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona. These dramas are all marked by the dominant literary influences 8 THE DRAMA of the time. They present features obviously due to the revived and widespread knowledge of classical literature, as well as to the active interest in the literature of Italy and the South. Titus Andronicus, in many of its char- acteristic features, reflects the form of Roman traged;. almost universally accepted and followed in the earlier period of the drama. This form was supplied by the Latin plays of Seneca, their darker colours being deepened by the moral effect of the judicial tragedies and military conflicts of the time. The execution of the Scottish queen and the Catholic conspirators who had acted in her name, and the destruction of the Spanish Armada, had given an impulse to tragic representations of an extreme type. This was undoubtedly rather fostered than otherwise by the favourite exemplars of Roman tragedy. The Medea and Thyestes of Seneca are crowded with pagan horrors of the most revolting kind. It is true these horrors are usually related, not represented, although in the Medea the maddened heroine kills her children on the stage. But from these tragedies the conception of the physically horrible as an element of tragedy was imported into the early English drama, and intensified by the realistic ten- dency which the events of the time and the taste of their ruder audiences had impressed upon the common stages. This tendency is exemplified in Titus Andronicus, obvi- ously a very early work, the signs of youthful effort being apparent not only in the acceptance of so coarse a type of tragedy but in the crude handling of character and mo- tive, and the want of harmony in working out the details of the dramatic conception. Kyd was the most popular contemporary representative of the bloody school, and in the leading motives of treachery, concealment, and re- venge there are points of likeness between Titus Androni- cus and The Spanish Tragedy. But how promptly and completely Shakespeare's nobler nature turned from this lower type is apparent from the fact that he not only never reverted to it but indirectly ridicules the piled-up horrors and extravagant language of Kyd's plays. 9 CULMINATION OF The early comedies in the same way are marked bv the dorrynant Hterary influences of the time, partly classic, partly Italian. In The Comedy of Errors, for example, Shakespeare attempted a humorous play of the old classi- cal type, the general plan and many details being derived directly from Plautus. In Love's Labour's Lost many characteristic features of Italian comedy are freely intro- duced : the pedant Holofernes, the curate Sir Nathaniel, the fantastic braggadocio soldier Armado, are all well- known characters of the contemporary Italian drama. Of this comedy, indeed, Gervinus says : *' The tone of the Italian school prevails here more than in any other play. The redundance of wit is only to be compared with a simi- lar redundance of conceit inShakespeare'snarrative poems, and with the Italian style which he had early adopted." These comedies display another sign of early work in the mechanical exactness of the plan and a studied symmetry in the grouping of the chief personages of the drama. In the Tivo Gentlemen of Verona, as Prof. Dowden points out, " Proteus the fickle is set against Valentine the faith- ful, Silvia the light and intellectual against Julia the ar- dent and tender, Launce the humourist against Speed the wit." So in Love's Labour 's Lost the king and his three fellow students balance the princess and her three ladies, and there is a symmetrical play of incident between the two groups. The arrangement is obviously more artificial than spontaneous, more mechanical than vital and organic. But towards the close of the first period Shakespeare had fully realised his own power and was able to dispense with these artificial supports. Indeed, having rapidly gained laiowledge and experience, he had before the close written ':>lays of a far higher character than anv which even the ablest of his contemporaries had produced. He had firmly laid the foundation of his future fame in the direc- tion both of comedy and tragedy, for, besides the comedies already referred to, the first sketches of Hamlet and Ro- meo and Juliet and the tragedy of Richard IIL may prob- ably be referred to this period. 10 THE DRAMA Another mark of early work belonging to these dramas is the lyrical and elegiac tone and treatment associated with the use of rhyme, of rhyming couplets and stanzas. Spenser's musical verse had for the time elevated the character of rhyming metres by identifying them with the highest kinds of poetry, and Shakespeare was evidently at first affected by this powerful impulse. He rhymed with great facility, and delighted in the gratification of his lyrical fancy and feeling which the more musical rhyming metres afforded. Rhyme accordingly has a considerable and not inappropriate place in the earlier romantic come- dies. The Comedy of Errors has indeed been described as a kind of lyrical farce in which the opposite qualities of elegiac beauty and comic effect are happily blended. Rhyme, however, at this period of the poet's work is not restricted to the comedies. It is largely used in the trage- dies and histories as well, and plan's even an important part in historical drama so late as Richard II. Whatever question may be raised with regard to the superiority of some of the plays belonging to the first period of Shakespeare's dramatic career, there can be no question at all as to any of the pieces belonging to the second period, which extends to the end of the century. During these years Shakespeare works as a master, hav- ing complete command over the materials and resources of the most mature and flexible dramatic art: " To this stage," says Mr. Swinburne, '' belongs the special faculty of faultless, joyous, facile command upon each faculty required of the presiding genius for service or for sport. It is in the middle period of his work that the language of Shakespeare is most limpid in its fulness, the style most pure, the thought most transparent through the close and luminous raiment of perfect expression." This period in- cludes the magnificent series of historical plays — Richard II., the two parts of Henry IV., and Henry V. — and a double series of brilliant comedies. The Midsummer- Night's Dream, All's Well that Ends Well, and The Mer- chant of Venice were produced before 1598, and during II CULMINATION Or the next three years there appeared a still more com- plete and characteristic group, including Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Tz^elfth Night. These comedies and historical plays are all marked by a rare harmony of reflective and imaginative insight, perfection of creative art, and completeness of dramatic eifect. Be- fore the close of this period, in 1598, Francis Meres paid his celebrated tribute to Shakespeare's superiority in lyri- cal, descriptive, and dramatic poetry, emphasising his un- rivalled distinction in the three main departments of the drama — comedy, tragedy, and historical play. And from this time onwards the contemporary recognitions of Shakespeare's eminence as a poet and dramatist rapidly multiply, the critics and eulogists being in most cases well entitled to speak with authority on the subject. In the third period of Shakespeare's dramatic career years had evidently brought enlarged vision, wider thoughts, and deeper experiences. While the old mastery of art remains, the works belonging to this period seem to bear traces of more intense moral struggles, larger and less joyous views of human life, more troubled, complex, and profound conceptions and emotions. Comparatively few marks of the lightness and animation of the earlier works remain, but at the same time the dramas of this period display an unrivalled power of piercing the deepest mysteries and sounding the most tremendous and perplex- ing problems of human life and human destiny. To this period belong the four great tragedies — Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear ; the three Roman plays — Coriolanus, Julius Cccsar, Antony and Cleopatra ; the two singular plays whose scene and personages are Greek but whose action and meaning are wider and deeper than either Greek or Roman life — Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens; and one comedy — Measure for Measure, which is almost tragic in the depth and intensity of its characters and inci- dents. The four great tragedies represent the highest reach of Shakespeare's dramatic power, and they suffi- ciently illustrate the range and complexity of the deeper J THE DRAMA problems that now occupied his mind. Timon and Meas- ure for Measure, however, exempHfy the same tendency to brood with meditative intensity over the wrongs and miseries that afflict humanity. These works sufficiently prove that during this period Shakespeare gained a dis- turbing insight into the deeper evils of the world, arising from the darker passions, such as treachery and revenge. But it is also clear that, with the larger vision of a noble, well-poised nature, he at the same time gained a fuller perception of the deeper springs of goodness in human nature, of the great virtues of invincible fidelity and un- wearied love, and he evidently received not only consola- tion and calm but new stimulus and power from the fuller realisation of these virtues. The typical plays of this period thus embody Shakespeare's ripest experience of the great issues of life. In the four grand tragedies the central problem is a profoundly moral one. It is the supreme internal conflict of good and evil amongst the central forces and higher elements of human nature, as appealed to and developed by sudden and powerful temp- tation, smitten by accumulated wrongs, or plunged in over- whelming calamities. As the result, we learn that there is something infinitely more precious in life than social ease or worldly success — nobleness of soul, fidelity to truth and honour, human love and loyalty, strength and londerness, and trust to the very end. In the most tragic experiences this fidelity to all that is best in life is only possible through the loss of life itself. But when Desde- mona expires with a sigh and Cordelia's loving eyes are closed, when Hamlet no more draws his breath in pain and the tempest-tossed Lear is at last liberated from the rack of this tough world, we feel that, Death having set his sacred seal on their great sorrows and greater love, they remain with us as possessions for ever. In the three dramas belonging to Shakespeare's last period, or rather which may be said to close his dramatic career, the same feeling of severe but consolatory calm is still more appar- ent. If the deeper discords of life are not finally resolved, 13 CULMINATION OF THE DRAMA the virtues which soothe their perplexities and give us courage and endurance to wait, as well as confidence to trust the final issues — the virtues of forgiveness and gen- erosity, of forbearance and self-control — are largely illus- trated. This is a characteristic feature in each of these closing dramas, in The Winter's Tale, Cymheline, and The Tempest. The Tempest is supposed, on tolerably good grounds, to be Shakespeare's last work, and in it we see the great magician, having gained by the wonderful ex- perience of life, and the no less wonderful practice of his art, serene wisdom, clear and enlarged vision, and bene- ficent self-control, break his magical wand and retire from the scene of his triumphs to the home he had chosen amidst the woods and meadows of the Avon, and sur rounded by the family and friends he loved. 14 J UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES L 009 853 488 6