BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg W. Sage 1891 Jj'^llUlh. %'^liM 9963 Cornell University Library PR 2894.L48 1907 Shakespeare's life and work; being an abr 3 1924 013 148 394 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013148394 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK tJi'aOler &rB BU/a£i^A Jf ^rom iAe U ' ro cj h cnif -/lalntin^ nam in t/u 'nia/lejjieare c tiemo-nal yalccrv at citratfaro-on -.'[iron.. iBiulon.l'ubliKhedbvSmith.Elder&Co.l^.WaiLrlooPlai SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK,.,,,,,, BEING AN ABRIDGMENT, CHIEFLY FOR THE ': 't USE OF STUDENTS, OF A LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE SIDNEY LEE EDITOR OF ' THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY ' HON, D.LITT,, oxford; HON. LL.D., GLASGOW; HON. LITT.D. VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHF..STER ^^'^ NEW AND REVISED EDITION LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. i <^\vHl .1 1907 I I ,: i; /' fAlI rights reserved] First Edition, 1900 New and Revised Edition, 1907 TO THE GREAT VARIETY OF READERS' Shakespeare's First Folio, Sig. A 3. This work is a reprint, with some omissions and abbrevia- tions, of the author's ' Life of William Shakespeare,' and is designed for the use of students and general readers who seek a complete and accurate account of the great dramatist's career and achievement in a small space at a moderate cost. The aim of the volume is to present, in language as terse and definite as possible, the net results of trustworthy research respecting Shakespeare's life and writings. In regard to topics of controversy the author confines himself to a statement of his final conclusions, and ventures to refer to the unabbreviated editions of the book all who desire to examine the grounds on which those conclusions are based. The footnotes in the larger editions give ample references to original authorities and discuss in detail points of doubt and difficulty; but although these footnotes are now omitted, the more pertinent pieces of illustrative informa- tion which they contain are incorporated in the present text. In accordance, too, with the distinctive scheme of this volume, the chapters which in former editions dealt at length with the character and significance of Shakespeare's sonnets have been greatly abridged, and those sections of the Appendix which were deemed essential to the exhaus- tive discussion of the subject have been excluded. But sufficient information has been retained to make the story of the sonnets perfectly coherent, and to indicate the precise lines of study that have led the author to the solutions, which he offers here, of the difficult problems which the poems present. At the end of the volume will be found, as in the former editions, a succinct bibliography of Shakespearean literature and a note on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. The pictorial illustrations include the ' Droeshout ' painting or ' Flower portrait ' of Shakespeare in photogravure, facsimiles of all surviving specimens of his handwriting, a repro- duction of the title-page of the First Folio edition of his works, and a facsimile of the contemporary inscription in Jaggard's presentation copy of the First Folio, now belong- ing to Mr. Coningsby Sibthorp. The full list of contents is intended to serve the purpose of a chronological table of the events and literature of which the book treats. Finally, it is hoped that the elaborate index will give the student ready control of the somewhat varied stores of information which the volume brings under his survey. PREFACE TO NEW EDITION. A CALL for a new edition of this work has enabled me to correct a few errors, which figured in the first issue, and to bring the information, as far as is possible, up to date. I have inserted in chapter xiv. (p. 141) brief accounts of two references to Shakespeare which have been recently dis- covered in contemporary documents. I have also made some additions of importance to my account of the First Folio in chapter xvii., and to the bibliographies which figure in the Appendix. Sidney Lee. June 20, 1907. CONTENTS PARENTAGE AND BIRTH Distribution of the name of Shakespeare . The poet's ancestry The poet's father His settlement at Stratford 1564. The poet's mother April. The j)oet's and baptism Alleged birthplace . birth II CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE The father in municipal office . . . . Brothers and sisters . The father's financial diffi- culties . . . ■ £571-7 Shakespeare's education His classical equipment . Shakespeare's knowledge of the Bible . 1575 Queen Elizabeth at Kenil- worth . . . 1577 Withdrawal from school . I 1582, Dec. The poet's marriage 10 6 Richard Hathaway of Shot- 7 tery . . . .10 Anne Hathaway . . . 11 7 Anne Hathaway's cottage 11 7 The bond against impedi- 8 i ments . . . . 11 1583, May. Birth of the poet's 9 daughter Susanna . 13 Formal betrothal probably 10 I dispensed with . . . 13 III THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD Early married life . . 15 Poaching at Charlecote . 16 Unwarranted doubts of the tradition . . . 16 Justice Shallow . . . 17 1585 The flight from Strat- ford . . . .17 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK IV ON THE LONDON STAGE 1586 PAGE P AGE The journey to London . 19 The London theatres 22 Richard Field, Shake- Place of residence in speare's townsman 19 London . . . . 23 Theatrical employment . 20 Actors' provincial tours . 24 A playhouse servitor 20 Shakespeare's alleged The acting companies . . 21 travels . . . . 25 The Lord Chamberlain's In Scotland 25 company 22 In Italy . ... 26 Shakesppare a member of Shakespeare's rdles . 26 the Lord Chamberlain's His alleged scorn of an company . . . . 22 actor's calling . . . 27 EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS ^ The period of Shake- Marlowe's influence in speare's dramatic work, tragedy .... 38 1591-1611 28 1593 Richard in . 38 His borrowed plots 28 1593 Richard 11 . . 39 The revision of plays 29 Shakespeare's acknow- Chronology of the plays . 29 ledgments to Marlowe . 39 Metrical tests . 29 1593 Titus Andronicus . . 40 1S91 Lme's Labour's Lost . . 30 1594. August. The Merchant of IS9I Two Gentlemen of Verona 31 Venice .... 41 1592 Comedy oj Errors . . 32 Shylock and Roderigo 1592 Someo and Juliet 33 Lopez . ' . 42 1592, March. Henry VI . . 34 1594 King John 43 1592, Sept. Greene's attack on 1594. Dec. 28. Comedy of Errors Shakespeare . 35 in Gray's Inn Hall . 44 Chettle's apology . . 35 Early plays doubtfully as- Divided authorship of signed to Shakespeare . 44 Henry VI . . . 36 Arden of Feversham (1592) 44 Shakespeare's coadjutors . 37 Edward III „ 44 Shakespeare's assimilative Mucedorus . . . . 45 power . . . . 37 Faire Em (1592) 45 Lyly's influence in comedy 37 CONTENTS VI THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC PAGE 1593. April. Publication of Venus and Adonis . 46 1594, May. Publication of Lucrece . . . 47 Enthusiastic reception of the poems . . .48 Shakespeare and Spenser . 49 Patrons at Court . , 50 VII THE SONNETS The vogue of the Eliza- bethan sonnet Shakespeare's first experi- ments 1594 Majority of Shakespeare'; sonnets composed . Their literary value The form of Shakespeaie's sonnets . Their want of continuity Lack of genuine sentiment in Elizabethan sonnets . Shakespeare's scornful al- lusions to sonnets in his 52 plays . . . . Slender autobiographical 55 52 element in Shakespeare's sonnets 56 S3 The imitative element . . 56 53 Shakespeare's claims of immortality for his son- 54 nets a borrowed conceit 57 54 Vituperative sonnets ad- dressed to a woman . . S8 5S The intrigue with the poet's mistress 59 Willobie his Avisa (1594) 59 VIII THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON Biographic fact in the ' de- dicatory ' sonnets . . 62 The Earl of Southampton the poet's sole patron . 62 Rivals in Southampton's favour ... 64 Barnabe Barnes probably the chief rival . . . 65 Sonnets of friendship . 66 Extravagances of literary compliment . . . 66 Direct references to South- ampton' in the sonnets of friendship . . 67 His youthfulness . . . 67 The evidence of portraits. 68 Sonnet cvii. the last of the series . . . . Allusions to Queen Eliza- beth's death . Allusions to Southamp- ton's release from prison Circulation of the sonnets in manuscript Their piratical publication in 1609 . . . . 70 A Lover's Complaint . 71 Thomas Thorpe and ' Mr. W. H.' . . . . 72 68 70 SHAKESPEARE S LIFE AND WORK IX THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER PAGE Summary of conclusions respecting the sonnets . 75 1594-5 Midsummer Night's Dream . . . -76 1595 All's Well that Ends Well 77 1595 TheTamingof The Shrew 78 Stratford allusions in the Induction 78 159S VVincot . • 79 IS97 Henry ly . . 80 Falstaff . . 82 '599 IS97 The Merry Windsor . Wives of . 84 i6oi 1598 Henry V . • 8s Essex and the rebellion of 1601 . . . . Shakespeare's popularity and influence Shakespeare's friendship with Ben Jonson . . The Mermaid meetings . Meres's eulogy . Value of his name to pub- lishers . The Passionate PilgrtTn . The Phcenix and the Turtle . 86 THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE Shakespeare's practical temperament . . 92 His father's difficulties . 92 His wife's debt . . -93 Shakespeare's return to Stratford . . . . 93 1596-9 The coat of arms . . 94 1597, May 4. The purchase of New Place . . . . 97 1598 Fellow-townsmen appeal to Shakespeare for aid . 98 Shakespeare's financial position before 1599 . . Shakespeare's financial position after 1599 His later income . . . Incomes of fellow-actors . 1601-1610 Shakespeare's forma- tion of his estate at Strat- ford 1605 The Stratford tithes . 1600-1609 Recovery of small debts . . . 100 102 102 103 104 104 XI MATURITY OF GENIUS Literary work in 1599 105 1599 Much Ado aiout Nothing . 105 1599 As You Like It . . ro6 1600 Twelfth Night . . . 107 1601 Julius Ccesar . . . 108 1601 The strife between adult actors and boy-actors 109 Shakespeare's references to the struggle . .110 Ben Jonson's Poetaster m CONTENTS 1602 PAGE 'AGE Shakespeare's alleged par- The Second Quarto, 1604 114 tisanship in the theatrical The Folio version, 1623 . "5 warfare 112 Popularity of Hamlet . . "5 Ben Jonson on Julius 1603 Troilus and Cressida 116 Ccesar . . . . "3 Treatment of the theme . 117 Hamlet . ' . "3 1603, March 24. Queen Eliza- The problem of its publi- beth's death . 118 cation 114 James I's patronage 118 The First Quarto, 1603 . 114 J XII THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 1604, Nov. Othello . . . 121 1604, Dec. Measure /or Measure 122 1606 Macbeth . . . 123 1607 King Lear . . . . 124 1610 161 1 1611 1608 Timon of Athens 1608 Pericles 1608 Antony and Cleopatra i6og Coriolanus . J XIII THE LATEST PLAYS The placid temper of the latest plays . . . 130 Cymleline . . . 131 A Winter's Tale . 131 The Tempest . . . 132 Fanciful interpretations of -The Tempest. . 134 126 126 128 Unfinished plays . . . 135 1613 The lost play of Cardenio. 136 The Two Noble Kinsmen . 136 1613 Henry VIII . . . 137 1613, June 29. The burning of the Globe Theatre . 137 1611 1613. 1614, XIV THE CLOSE OF LIFE Plays at Court in 1613 139 1616, April 23. Shakespeare's Actor-friends . . 139 death .... 144 Final settlement at Strat- 1616, April 25. Shakespeare's ford . . . .140 burial . . . . 144 March. Purchase of a The will . '. . . 145 house in Blackfriars . 141 Shakespeare's bequest to March. Preparation with his wife . . . . 14s Burbage of an 'im- Shakespeare's heiress Z46 presa' for the Earl of Legacies to friends . . 147 Rutland . .141 The tomb in Stratford Oct. Attempt to enclose Church 147 the Stratford common Shakespeare's personal fields . . . .143 character . 147 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK XV SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS PAGE Mrs. Judith Quiney (1585- 1662) .... 149 Mrs. Susanna Hall (1583- 1649) . 150 PAGE The last descendant . . 150 Shakespeare's brothers, Edmund, Richard, and Gilbert . . . 151 XVI AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS Extant specimens of Shake- speare's handwriting His mode of writing The poet's spelling of his surname . . . . ' Shakespeare ' the accepted form Shakespeare's portraits The Stratford bust . The ' Stratford portrait ' Droeshout's engraving The 'Droeshout' painting 156 152 Later portraits . 158 152 The ' Chandos ' portrait • 158 The ' Jansen ' portrait ■ IS9 153 The ' Felton ' portrait . IS9 The ' Soest ' portrait ■ IS9 154 Miniatures . 160 IS4 The Garrick Club bust 160 15s Alleged death-mask . 160 15s Memorials in sculpture 161 15s Memorials at Stratford 161 XVII BIBLIOGRAPHY 1623 Editions of the poems in The value of the text 169 the poet's lifetime . 163 The order of the plays l6g Posthumous editions of the The typography 169 poems . . . . 163 Unique copies . . . 170 The ' Poems ' of 1640 163 The Sheldon copy . 170 Quartos of the plays in the Vincent's copy . . . 171 poet's lifetime . . . 164 Bodleian copy . 172 Posthumous quartos of the Estimated number of ex- plays .... i6S tant copies . 172 The First Folio . . . 166 Reprints of the First Folio 173 The publishing syndicate . 166 1632 The Second Folio . . 173 The prefatory matter . . 167 1663- -4 The Third Folio . 174 CONTENTS PAGE i68s The Fourth Folio . . 174 Eighteenth-century editors 174 Nicholas Rowe(i674-i7i8) 174 Alexander Pope (1688- 1744) ... 17s Lewis Theobald (1688- 1744) ■ . . . I7S Sir Thomas Hanmer (1677- 1746) . • • .177 Bishop Warburton (169S- 1779) . . . . 177 Dr. Johnson (1709-1783) . 177 Edward Capell(i7i3-i78i) 178 George Steevens (1736- 1800) . . . .178 PAGE Edmund Malone (1741- 1812) . . . . 179 Variorum editions . . 179 Nineteenth-century editors 180 Alexander Dyce (1798- 1869) . . . .180 Howard Staunton (i8i<5- 1874) . . . . 181 Nikolaus Delius (1813- 1888) . . . 181 The Cambridge edition (1863-6) . . . . 181 The Bankside edition . i8i Other nineteenth-century editions . . . . 181 XVIII POSTHUMOCS REPUTATION Views of Shakespeare's contemporaries . .183 Ben Jonson's tribute . . 183 English opinion between 1660 and 1702 . .184 Dryden's view . . . 185 Restoration adaptations . 186 English opinion from 1702 onwards . . . . 186 Stratford festivals . . 187 Shakespeare on the English stage . . . . 187 The first appearance.of ac- tresses in Shakespearean parts . . . .188 David Garrick (1717-1779) 188 John Philip Kemble(i7S7- 1823) . . . 189 Mrs. Sarah Siddons (1755- 1831) . . . .190 Edmund Kean ( 1787-1833) 190 William Charles Macready (1793-1873) . . . 190 Recent revivals . . 191 Shakespeare in English music and art . . . 191 Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery . . . 192 Shakespeare in America . 192 Translations . . . 192 Shakespeare in Germany . 193 German translations . . 193 Modern German critics . 194 Shakespeare on the Ger- man stage . . . 195 Shakespeare in France . 196 Voltaire's strictures . . 196 French critics' gradual em- ancipation from Vol- tairean influence . 197 Shakespeare on the French stage . . . 198 Shakespeare in Italy . 198 In Holland . . . . 199 In Russia . . . 199 In Poland . 199 In Hungary . . . 199 In other countries . , 199 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK XIX GENERAL ESTIMATE PAGE General estimate . . zoi Shakespeare's defects . . 201 PAGE Character of Shakespeare's achievement . . 202 Its universal recognition . 202 APPENDIX THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Contemporaiy records abundant . . . . 203 First efforts in biography . 203 Biographers of the nine- teenth century . . 204 Stratford topography . 205 Specialised studies in bio- graphy . . . 205 Epitomes . . 205 Aids to study of plots and text .... 205 Modern editions of the sonnets and theories re- specting them . 2o5 Concordances . . 207 Bibliographies . . . 207 Critical studies . . 207 II THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY Its source . . . zo8 The argument from paral- lelisms . . . . 208 Toby Matthew's letter of 1621 . . . 209 Chief exponents of the theory . . . . 210 Its vogue in America . 210 Extent of the Uterature . 211 Absurdity of the theory . 211 INDEX 213 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Frontispiece From the ' Droeshout ' painting or ' Flower portrait ' nma in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on- Avon. SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACK- FRIARS ON MARCH lo, 1612-13 . . . to/ace p. 152 Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the Guildhall Library, London. SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACK- FRIARS ON MARCH II, 1612-I3 . . . . „ 154 Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the British Museum. THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES SEVERALLY WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THE THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILL ON MARCH 25, 1616 . . „ 156 Reproduced from the original document now at Somerset House, London. FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS . „ 1 68 From the copy in the Grenville Library at the British Museum. CONTEMPORARY INSCRIPTION IN JAGGARD'S PRE- SENTATION COPY OF THE FIRST FOLIO . . . p. 171 Now belon^ng to Mr. Coningsby Sibthorp. SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK PARENTAGE AND BIRTH Shakespeare came of a family whose surname was borne Distribu- through the middle ages by residents in very many parts of '^°" °^ '^e England — at Penrith in Cumberland, at Kirkland and "^""^• Doncaster in Yorkshire, as well as in nearly all the midland counties. The surname had originally a martial signifi- cance, implying capacity in the wielding of the spear. Its first recorded holder is William Shakespeare or ' Sakspere,' who was convicted of robbery and hanged in 1248; he belonged to Clapton, a hamlet (about seven miles south of Stratford-on-Avon) in the hundred: of Kiftergate, Glouces- tershire. The second recorded holder of the surname is John Shakespeare, who in 1279 was living at 'I'reyndon, perhaps Frittenden, Kent. The great mediaeval guild of St. Anne at Knowle, whose members included the leading inhabitants of Warwickshire, w^s joined by many Shake- speares in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the surname' is found far more frequently in Warwickshire than elsewhere. The archives of no less than twenty-four towns and villages there contain notices of Shakespeare families in the sixteenth century, and as many as thirty-four Warwickshire towns or villages were inhabited by Shakespeare families in the seventeenth century. Among them all William was a common Christian name. At Rowington, twelve riiiles to the north of Stratford, and in the same hundred of Barlichway, one of the most prolific Shakespeare families of Warwickshire resided in the sixteenth century, and no less than three Richard Shake- speares of Rowington, whose extant wills were proved respectively in 1560, 1591, and 1614, were fathers of sons called William. At least one other William Shakespeare B SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The poet's ancestry. The poet's father. was during the period a resident in Rowington. As a consequence, the poet has been more than once credited with achievements which rightly belong to one or other of his numerous contemporaries who were identically named. The poet's ancestry cannot be defined with absolute certainty. The poet's father, when applying for a grant of arms in 1596, claimed that his grandfather (the poet's great- grandfather) received for services rendered in war a grant of land in Warwickshire from Henry VII (see p. 94). No precise confirmation of this pretension has been discovered, and it may be, after the manner of heraldic genealogy, fictitious. But there is a probability that the poet came of good yeoman stock, and that his ancestors to the fourth or fifth generation were fairly substantial landowners. Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military service of land at Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems to have been great- grandfather of one Richard Shakespeare who held land at Wroxhall in Warwickshire during the first thirty-four years (at least) of the sixteenth century. Another Richard Shakespeare who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to the Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitterfield, a village four miles to the north of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1528. It is probable that he was the poet's grandfather. In 1550 he was renting a messuage and land at Snitter- field of Robert Arden ; he died at the close of 1560, and on February 10 of the next year letters of administration of his goods, chattels, and debts were issued to his son John by the Probate Court at Worcester. His goods were valued at 35/. 17^., which would-be equivalent to 286/. 16^. in modern Arrency, the purchasing power of money being then eight 'tj^s what it is now. Besides the son John, Richard of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry ; while a Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at Snitter- field between 1563 an^ 1583,, whose parentage is undeter- mined, may have been -a third son. The son Henry remained all his life at Snitterfield, engaged in farming with diminishing success, and died in ernbarrassed circumstances in December 1596. John, the son, who administered Richard's estate, was in all likelihood the poet's father. About 1551 John Shakespeare left SnitterfieW, which was his birthplace, to seek a career in the neighbouring borough of Stratford-on-Avon. There he soon set up as a trader in all manner of agricultural produce. Corn, wool, malt, meat, skins, and leather were among the commodities in PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 3 which he dealt. Documents of a somewhat later date often describe him as a glover. Aubrey, Shakespeare's first bio- grapher, reported the tradition that he was a butcher. But though both designations doubtless indicated important branches of his business, neither can be regarded as disclosing its full extent. The land which his family farmed at Snitter- field supplied him with his varied stock-in-trade. As long as hiS' father lived he seems to have been a frequent visitor to Snitterfield, and, like his father and brothers, he was until the date of his father's death occasionally designated a farmer or ' husbandman ' of that place. But it was with Stratford-on-Avon that his life was mainly identified. In April 1552 he was living there in Henley Street, a His settle- thoroughfare leading to the market town of Henley-in- mentat Arden, and he is first mentioned in the borough records as Stratford, paying in that month a fine of twelvepence for having a dirt-heap in front of his housel His frequent appearances in the years that folloW as either plaintiff or defendant in suits heard in the local court of record for the recovery of small debts suggest that he was a keen man of business. A contemporary describes him as ' merry-cheeked ' and quick at humorous repartee. In early life he prospered in crade, and in October 1556 purchased two freehold tene- ments at Stratford — one, with a garden, in Henley Street (it adjoins that now known as the poet's birthplace), and the other in Greenhill Street with a garden and croft. Thenceforth he played a prominent part in municipal affairs. In 1557 he was elected an ale-taster, whose duty it was to test the quality of malt liquors and bread. About ihe same time he was elected a burgess or town councillor, and in September 1558, and again on October 6, 1559, he was appointed one of the four petty constables by a vote of the jury of the court-leet. In 1561 he was elected one of the two chamberlains of the borough, an office of responsibility which he held for two years. He delivered his second statement of accounts 1 o the corporation in January 1564. When attesting documents he occasionally made his mark, but there is some evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write ; and he was credited with financial aptitude. The municipal accounts, which were checked by tallies and counters, were audited by him after he ceased to be chamberlain, and he more than once advanced small sums of money to the corporation. 4 SHAKESPEARE S LIFE AND WORK The poet's With characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of assured mother. fortune — Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote in the parish of Aston Cantlowe, near Stratford. The Arden family in its chief branch, which was settled at Parkhall, Warwickshire, ranked with the most influential of the county. Robert Arden, a progenitor of that branch, was sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1438 (16 Hen. VI), and this sheriffs direct descendant, Edward Arden, who was himself high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was executed in 1583 for alleged complicity in a Roman Catholic plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. John Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of the family, and there is no trustworthy evidence to determine the exact degree of kinship between the two branches. Her grandfather, Thomas Arden, purchased in 1501 an estate at Snitterfield, which passed, with other property, to her father Robert ; John Shakespeare's father, Richard, was one of this Robert Arden's Snitterfield tenants. By his first wife, whose name is not known, Robert Arden had seven daughters, of whom all but two married ; John Shakespeare's wife seems to have been the youngest. Robert Arden's second wife, Agnes or Anne, widow of John Hill (d. 1545), a substantial farmer of Bearley, survived him ; but by her he had no issue. When he died at the end of 1556, he owned a farmhouse at Wilmcote and many acres, besides some hundred acres at Snitterfield, with two farmhouses which he let out to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of his goods, which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that he had lived in comfort ; his house was adorned by as many as eleven ' painted cloths,' which then did duty for tapestries among the middle class. The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. ■ For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary he showed especial affection by nominating them his executors. Mary . received not only 61. 13^-. i^. in money, but the fee-simple of Asbies, his chief property at Wilmcote, consisting of a house with some fifty acres of land. She also acquired, under an earlier settlement, an interest in two messuages at Snitterfield. But, although she was well provided with worldly goods, she was apparently without education ; several extant documents bear her mark, and there is no proof that she could sign her n;ime. John Shakespeare's marriage with Mary Arden doubtless took place at Aston Cantlowe, the parish church of Wilmcote, in the autumn of 1557 (the church registers begin at a later date). On S^tember 15, 1558, his first child, a daughter, Joan, was bapti^d in 'the church of Stratford. A second child, another daughter, Margaret, was baptised on Decem- ber 2, 1562 ; but both these children died in infancy. The The poet's poet William, the first son and third child, was born on birth and April 22 or 23, 1564. The latter date is generally accepted baptism, as his birthday, mainly (it would appear) on the ground that it was the day of his death. There is no positive evidence on the subject, but the Stratford parish registers attest that he was baptised on April 26. Some doubt is justifiable as to the ordinarily accepted Alleged scene of his birth. Of two adjoining houses now forming birth- a detached building on the north side of Henley Street, that P **^^" to the east was purchased by John Shakespeare in 1556, but there is no evidence that he owned or occupied the house to the west before 15-75. Yet this western house has been known since 1759 as the poet's birthplace, and a room on the first floor is claimed as that in which he was born. The two houses subsequently came by bequest of the poet's granddaughter to the family of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, and while the eastern tenement was let out to strangers for more than two centuries, and by them converted into an inn, the ' birthplace' was until 1806 occupied by the Harts, who latterly carried on there the trade of butcher. The fact of its long occupancy by the poet's collateral descend- ants accounts for the identification of the western rather than the eastern tenement with his birthplace. Both houses were purchased in behalf of subscribers to a public fund on September 16, 1847, ^^nd, after extensive restoration, were converted into a single domicile for the purposes of a public museum. Much of the Elizabethan timber and stonework survives, but a cellar under the 'birthplace' is the only portion which remains as it was at the date of the poet's birth. The houses were presented under a deed of trust to the corporation of Stratford in 1866, and were in i8gi transferred by an Act of Parliament to an independent Trust, in which was vested at the same time the New Place estate in the town, a property which was also closely identified with Shakespeare's career (see page 97 below). SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK II CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE The father In July 1564, when William was three months old, the in muni- plague raged with unwonted ' vehemence at Stratford, and "^^' his father liberally contributed to the relief of its poverty- stricken victims. Fortune still favoured him. On July 4, 1565, he reached the dignity of an alderman. From 1567 onwards he was accorded in the corporation archives the honourable prefix of ' Mr.' At Michaelmas 1568 he attained the highest office in the corporation gift, that of bailiff, and during his year of office the corporation for the first time entertained actors at Stratford. The Queen's Company and the Earl of Worcester's Company each received from John Shakespeare an official welcome. The circumstance that he was the first bailiff to encourage actors to visit Stratford proves that his religion was not that of the contemporary puritan, whose hostility to all forms of dramatic representations was one of his most persistent characteristics. On September 5, 1571, John Shakespeare was chief alderman, a post which he retained till Septem- ber 30 the following year. In 1573 Alexander Webbe, the husband of his wife's sister Margaret, made him overseer of his will ; in 1575 he bought two houses in Stratford, one of them doubtless the alleged birthplace in Henley Street ; in 1576 he contributed twelvepence to the beadle's salary. But after Michaelmas 1572 he took a less active part in municipal affairs ; he grew irregular in his attendance at the council meetings, and signs were soon apparent that his luck had turned. In 1578 he was unable to pay, with his colleagues, either the sum of fourpence for the relief of the poor or his contribution ' towards the furniture of three pikemen, two bellmen, and one archer ' who were sent by the corporation to attend a muster of the trained bands of the county. CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 7 Meanwhile his family was increasing. Four children Brothers besides the poet — three sons, Gilbert (baptised October 13, and 1566), Richard (baptised March 11, 1574), and Edmund s's'^''s- (baptised May 3, 1580), with a daughter Joan (baptised April IS, 1569) — reached maturity. A daughter Ann was baptised September 28, 1571, and was buried on April 4, 1579. To meet his growing liabilities, the father borrowed, money from his wife's kinsfolk, and he and his wife mort- gaged, on November 14, 1578, Asbies, her valuable property at Wilmcote, for 40/. to Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, who had married her sister, Joan Arden. Lambert was to receive no interest on his loan, but was to take the ' rents and profits ' of the estate. Asbies was thereby alienated for ever. Next year, on October 15, 1579, John and his wife made over to Robert Webbe, doubtless a relative of Alexander Webbe, for the sum apparently of 40/., his wife's property at Snitterfield. John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the humilia- The tion of having parted, although as he hoped only tern- father's porarily, with his wife's property of Asbies, and in the ^y^ancial autumn of 1580 he offered to pay off the mortgage; but his (.iuies. brother-in-law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, and he would accept all or none. The negotiation, which was the beginning of much litigation, thus proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, after obtaining a writ of distraint, Brown informed the local court that the debtor had no goods on which distraint could be levied. On September6, 1586, John was deprived of his alderman's gown, on the ground of his long absence from the council meetings. Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for the Educa- education of his four sons. They were entitled to free tion. tuition at the grammar school of Stratford, which was re- constituted on a mediaeval foundation by Edward VI. The eldest son, William, probably entered the school in 1571, when Walter Roche was retiring from the mastership in favour of Simon Hunt, a bachelor of arts, who lived on till near the end of the century. As was customary in pro- vincial schools, he was taught to write the ' Old English ' character, which resembles that still in vogue in Germany. He was never taught the Italian script, which at the time was rapidly winning its way in fashionable cultured society, and is now universal among Englishmen. Until his death SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Shakespeare's 'Old English' handwriting testified to his provincial education. The general instruction that he received was mainly confined to the Latin language and literature. From the Latin accidence, boys of the period, at schools of the type of that at Stratford, were led, through conversation books like the ' Sententise Pueriles ' and Lily's .grammar, to the perusal of such authors as Seneca, Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and Horace. The eclogues of the popular renaissance poet, Mantuanus, were often pre- ferred to Virgil's for beginners. The rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught in Elizabethan grammar schools to very promising pupils ; but such coincidences as have been detected between expressions in Greek plays and in Shakespearean drama seem due to accident, and not to Shakespeare's study, either at school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama. Dr. Farmer enunciated in his ' Essay on Shakespeare's Learning' (1767) the theory that Shakespeare knew no language but his own, and owed whatever knowledge he displayed of the classics and of Italian and French litera- ture to English translations. But several of the books in French and Italian whence Shakespeare derived the plots of his dramas — Belleforest's 'Histoires Tragiques,' Ser Giovanni's ' II Pecorone,' and Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi,' for example — were not accessible to him in English transla- tions ; and on more general grounds the theory of his ignorance is adequately confuted. A boy with Shakespeare's exceptional alertness of intellect, during whose schooldays a training in Latin classics lay within reach, could hardly lack in future years all means of access to the literature of France and Italy. With the Latin and French languages, indeed, and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his schoolmasters, Holofernes in 'Love's Labour's Lost' and Sir Hugh Evans in 'Merry Wives of Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases drawn directly from Lily's grammar, from the ' Sententise Pueriles,' and from' 'the good old Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the ' Metamorphoses,' was apparent throughout his earliest literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and is CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 9 discernible in the ' Tempest,' his latest play (v. i. 33 seq.). In the Bodleian Library there is a copy of the Aldine edition of Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' (1502), and on the title is the signature ' W™. Sh^.,' which experts have declared — not quite conclusively — to be a genuine autograph of the poet. Ovid's Latin text was certainly familiar to hitn. His closest adaptations of Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' often reflect, however, the phraseology of the popular English version by Arthur Golding, of which some seven editions were issued between 1565 and 1597. FromPlautus Shakespeare drew the plot of the ' Comedy of Errors,' and it is just possible that Plautus's comedies, too, were accessible in English. Shakespeare had no title to rank as a classical scholar, and he did not disdain a liberal use of translations. His lack of exact scholarship fully accounts for the ' small Latin and less Greek ' with which he was credited by his scholarly friend, Ben Jonson. But Aubrey's report that ' he understood I.atin pretty well ' need not be contested, and his knowledge of French may be estimated to have equalled his knowledge of Latin, while he doubtless possessed just sufficient acquaintance with Italian to enable him to discern the drift of an Italian poem or novel. Of the few English books accessible to him in his Shake- schooldays, the chief was the EngUsh Bible, either in the speare popular Genevan version, first issued in a complete form in ^"" '™ 1560, or in the Bishops' revision of 1568, which the Authorised Version of 161 1 closely followed. References to scriptural characters and incidents are not conspicuous in Shakespeare's plays, but, such as they are, they are drawn from all parts of the Bible, and indicate that general acquaintance with the narrative of both Old and New Testaments which a clever boy would be certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at church on Sundays. Shake- speare quotes or adapts biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and others, which were more recondite, were borrowed from HoUnshed's ' Chronicles ' and secular works whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scriptural phraseo- logy, as of scriptural history, suggests youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency of the mind in a stage of early development rather than close and continuous study of the Bible in adult life. Bible. SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK The poet's marriage. Richard Hath- away of Shottery. Shakespeare was a schoolboy in July 1575, when Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Warwickshire on a visit to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, at his castle of Kenilworth. References have been detected in Oberon's vision in Shakespeare's ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' (11. i. 148-68) to the fantastic pageants and masques with which the Queen during her stay was entertained in Kenilworth Park. Leicester's residence was only fifteen miles from Stratford, and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither with his father to witness some of the open-air festivities ; but two full descriptions which were published in 1576, in pamphlet form, gave Shakespeare knowledge of all that took place. Shakespeare's opportunities of recreation outside Stratford were in any case restricted during his schooldays. His father's financial difficulties grew steadily, and they caused his removal from school at an unusually early age. Probably in 1577, when he was thirteen, he was enlisted by his father in an effort to restore his decaying fortunes. ' I have been told heretofore,' wrote Aubrey, ' by some of the neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade,' which, according to the writer, was that of a butcher. It is possible that John's ill-luck at the period compelled him to confine himself to this occupation, which in happier days formed only one branch of his business. His son may have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Stratford tradition describes him as ' a butcher's apprentice.' ' When he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convincingly, ' he would doe it in a high style and make a speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young.' At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more than eighteen and a half, took a step which was little calculated to lighten his father's anxieties. He married. His wife, ac- cording to the inscription on her tombstone, was his senior by eight years. Rowe, the poet's biographer of 1709, stated that she ' was the daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.' On September i, 1581, Richard Hathaway, 'husband- man ' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old Stratford, made his will, which was proved on July 9, 1582, and is now preserved at Somerset House. His house and land, ' two and a half virgates,' had been long held in copyhold CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE n by his family, and he died in fairly prosperous circumstances. His wife Joan, the chief legatee, was directed to carry on the farm with the aid of her eldest son, Bartholomew, to whom a share in its proceeds was assigned. Six other children — three sons and three daughters — received sums of money ; Agnes, the eldest daughter, and Catherine, the second daughter, were each allotted 6/. 13^. 4^., 'to be paid at the day of her marriage,' a phrase common in wills of the period. Anne and Agnes were in the sixteenth century alternative spellings of the same Christian name ; and there is httle doubt that the daughter ' Agnes ' of Richard Hathaway's will became, within a few months of Richard Hathaway's death, Shakespeare's wife. ~ The house at Shottery, now known as Anne Hathaway's cottage, and reached from Stratford by field-paths, un- doubtedly once formed part of Richard Hathaway's farmhouse, and, despite numerous alterations and renova- tions, still preserves many features of a thatched farmhouse of the Elizabethan period. The house remained in the Hathaway family till 1838, although the male line became extinct in 1 746. It was purchased in behalf of the public by the Birthplace trustees in 1892. No record of the solemnisation of Shakespeare's mar- riage survives. Although the parish of Stratford included Shottery, and thus both bride and bridegroom were parishioners, the Stratford parish register is silent on the subject. A local tradition, which seems to have come into being during the present century, assigns the ceremony to the neighbouring hamlet or chapelry of Luddington, of which neither the chapel nor parish registers now exist. But one important piece of documentary evidence directly bearing on the poet's matrimonial venture is accessible. In the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) a deed is extant wherein Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, ' husbandmen of Stratford,' bound themselves in the bishop's consistory court, on November 28, 1582, in a surety of 40/., to free the bishop of all liability should a lawful impediment — ' by reason of any precontract ' [i.e. with a third party] or consanguinity — be subsequently dis- closed to imperil the validity of the marriage, then in con- templation, of William Shakespeare with Anne Hathaway. On the assumption that no such impediment was known to exist, and provided that Anne obtained the consent of her Anne Hatha- way. Anne Hatha- way's cottage. The bond against impedi- ments. 12 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK 'friends,' the marriage might proceed 'with once asking of the bannes of matrimony betwene them.' Bonds of similar purport, although differing in signifi- cant details, are extant in all diocesan registries of the sixteenth century. They were obtainable on the payment of a fee to the bishop's commissary, and had the effect of expediting the marriage ceremony while protecting the clergy from the consequences of any possible breach of canonical law. But they were not common, and it was rare for persons in the comparatively humble position in life of Anne Hathaway and young Shakespeare to adopt such cumbrous formalities when there was always available the simpler, less expensive, and more leisurely method of marriage by ' thrice asking of the banns.' Moreover, the wording of the bond which was drawn before Shakespeare's marriage differs in important respects from that adopted in all other known examples. In the latter it is invariably provided that the marriage shall not take place without the consent of the parents or governors of both bride and bridegroom. In the case of the marriage of an ' infant ' bridegroom the formal consent of his parents was absolutely essential to strictly regular procedure, although clergymen might be found who were ready to shut their eyes to the facts of the situation and to run the risk of solemnising the marriage of an ' infant ' without inquiry as to the parents' consent. The clergyman who united Shakespeare in wed- lock to Anne Hathaway was obviously of this easy temper. Despite the circumstance that Shakespeare's bride was of full age and he himself was by nearly three years a minor, the Shakespeare bond stipulated merely for the consent of the bride's ' friends,' and ignored the bridegroom's parents altogether. Nor was this the only irregularity in the docu- ment. In other pre-matrimonial covenants of the kind the name either of the bridegroom himself or of the bridegroom's father figures as one of the two sureties, and is mentioned first of the two. Had the usual form been followed, Shakespeare's father would have been the chief party to the transaction in behalf of his ' infant ' son. But in the Shake- speare bond the sole sureties, Sandells and Richardson, were farmers of Shottery, the bride's native place. Sandells was a 'supervisor' of the will of the bride's father, who there describes him as ' my trustie friende and neighbour.' The prominence of the Shottery husbandmen in the negotiations CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 13 preceding Shakespeare's marriage suggests the true position of affairs. Sandells and Richardson, representing the lady's family, doubtless secured the deed on their own initiative, so that Shakespeare might have small opportunity of evad- ing a step'Which his intimacy with their friend's daughter had rendered essential to her reputation. The wedding probably took place, without the consent of the bridegroom's parents — it may be without their knowledge — soon after the signing of the deed. Within six months — in May 1583 Birth of a . — a daughter was born to the poet, and was baptised in the daughter, name of Susanna at Stratford parish church on the 26th. Shakespeare's apologists have endeavoured to show that Formal the public betrothal or formal ' troth-plight ' which was at ''^'"["'J,*' the time a common prelude to a wedding carried with it all di°™s^ the privileges of marriage. But neither Shakespeare's de- ^ith. tailed description of a betrothal nor of the solemn verbal contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the con- tention much support. A contract of eternal bond of love, Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands. Attested by the holy close of lips, Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings ; And all the ceremony of this compact Seal'd in my \i.e. the priest's] function by my testimony. Twelfth Night, v. i. 160-4. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case render it highly improbable that Shakespeare and his bride sub- mitted to the formal preliminaries of a betrothal. In that ceremony the parents of both contracting parties invariably played foremost parts, but the wording of the bond pre-, eludes the assumption that the bridegroom's parents; we^^^l actors in any scene of the hurriedly planned drama ofiisf^. marriage. _ "^'wT A difficulty has been imported into the narration of the " poet's matrimonial affairs by the assumption of his identity with one ' William Shakespeare,' to whom, according to an entry in the Bishop of Worcester's register, a license was issued on November 27, 1582 (the day before the signing of the Hathaway bond), authorising his marriage with Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton. The theory that the maiden name of Shakespeare's wife was Whateley is quite un- tenable, and it is unsafe to assume that the bishop's clerk, when making a note of the grant of the license in his 14 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK register, erred so extensively as to write ' Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton ' for ' Anne Hathaway of Shottery.' The husband of Anne Whateley cannot reasonably be identified with the poet. He was doubtless another of the numerous William Shakespeares who abounded in the diocese of Worcester. Had a license for the poet's marriage been secured on November 27, it is unlikely that the Shottery husbandmen would have entered next day into a bond ' against impediments,' the execution of which might well have been demanded as a preliminary to the grant of a license but was wholly supererogatory after the grant was made. '5 married life. Ill THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD Anne Hathaway's greater burden of years and the likeli- Early hood that the poet was forced into marrying her by her friends were not circumstances of happy augury. Although it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's dramatic utter- ances allusions to his personal experience, the emphasis with which he insists that a woman should take in marriage an ' elder than herself ('Twelfth Night,' ii. iv. 29), and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 'barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain, and discord,' suggests a personal interpre- tation ('Tempest,' iv. i. 15-22). To both these unpro- mising features was added, in the poet's case, the absence of a means of livelihood, and his course of life in the years that immediately followed implies that he bore his domestic ties with impatience. Early in 1585 twins were born to him, a son (Hamnet) and a daughter (Judith) ; both were baptised on February 2. All the evidence points to the conclusion, which the fact that he had no more children confirms, that in the later months of the year (1585) he left Stratford, and that, although he was never wholly estranged from his family, he saw little of wife or children for eleven years. Between the winter of 1585 and the autumn of 1596 — an interval which synchronises with his first literary triumphs — there is otily one shadowy mention of his name in Stratford records. In April 1587 there died Edmund Lambert, who held Asbies under the mortgage of 1578, and a few months later Shakespeare's name, as owner of a con- tingent interest, was joined to that of his father and mother in a fotmal assent given to an abortive proposal to confer on Edmund's son and heir, John Lambert, an absolute title to the estate on condition of his cancelling the mortgage and paying 20/. But the deed does not indicate that Shakespeare personally assisted at the transaction. l6 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Poaching at Charle- cote. Unwar- ranted doubts of the tra- dition. Shakespeare's early literary work proves that while in the country he eagerly studied birds, flowers, and trees, and gained a detailed knowledge of horses and dogs. All his kinsfolk were farmers, and with them he doubtless as a youth practised many field sports. Sympathetic references to hawking, hunting, coursing, and angling abound in his early plays and poems. And his sporting experiences passed at times beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, according to a credible tradition, was the immediate cause of his long severance from his native place. ' He had,' wrote Rowe in 1 709, ' by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, among them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged hirn with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to [a wealthy country gentleman] Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote [between four and five miles to the north- east ofj Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentle- man, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he 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 London.' The independent testi- mony of Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to the effect that Shakespeare ' was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county to his great advancement.' The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz. cap. 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' imprison- ment and the payment of thrice the amount of the damage done. The tradition has been challenged on the ground that the Charlecote deer-park was of later date than the sixteenth century. But Sir Thomas Lucy was an extensive game- preserver, and owned at Charlecote a warren in which a few harts or does doubtless found an occasional home. Samuel Ireland was informed in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer not from Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles off, and Ireland supplied in his 'Views on the Warwickshire Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old farm- THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 17 house in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he asserted that Shakespeare was temporarily imprisoned after his arrest. An adjoining hovel was locally known for some , years as Shakespeare's 'deer-barn,' but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the site of these buildings (now removed), was Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure invention. The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have fastened on the park gates of Charlecote does not, as Rowe acknowledged, survive. No authenticity can be allowed the worthless lines beginning ' A parliament member, a justice of peace,' which were represented to be Shakespeare's on the authority of an old man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703. But such an incident as the tradition reveals has left a distinct impress on Shakespearean drama. Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence of the justice owner of Charlecote. According to Archdeacon Davies of Shallow. Saperton, Shakespeare's 'revenge was so great that' he caricatured Lucy as ' Justice Clodpate,' who was (Davies adds) represented on the stage as ' a great man,' and as bearing, in allusion to Lucy's name, ' three louses rampant for his arms.' Justice Shallow, Davies's 'Justice Clodpate,' came to birth in the 'Second Part of Henry IV' (1598), and he is represented in the opening scene of the ' Merry Wives of Windsor ' as having come from Gloucestershire to Windsor to make a Star-Chamber matter of a poaching raid on his estate. The ' three luces hauriant argent ' were the arms borne by the Charlecote Lucys, and the dramatist's prolonged reference in this scene to the ' dozen white luces ' on Justice Shallow's ' old coat ' fully estabUshes Shallow's identity with Lucy. The poaching episode is best assigned to 1585, but it xhe flight may be questioned whether Shakespeare, on fleeing from from Lucy's persecution, at once sought an asylum in London. Stratford, William Beeston, a seventeenth-century actor, remembered hearing that he had been for a time a country schoolmaster ' in his younger years,' and it seems possible that on first leaving Stratford he found some such employment in a ' neighbouring village. The suggestion that he joined, at the end of 1585, a band of youths of the district in serving inithe Low Countries under the Earl of Leicester, whose i8 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK castle of Kenilworth was within easy reach of Stratford, is based on an obvious confusion between him and others of his name. The knowledge of a soldier's life which Shake- speare exhibited in his plays is no greater and no less than that which he displayed of almost all other spheres of human activity, and to assume that he wrote of all or of any from practical experience, unless the evidence be con- clusive, is to underrate his intuitive power of realising life under almost every aspect by force of his imagination. 1^ IV ON THE LONDON STAGE To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubtless trudging The jour, thither on foot during 1586, by way of Oxford and High ney to Wycombe. Tradition points to that as Shakespeare's London, favoured route, rather than to the road by Banbury and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon, near Oxford, 'he happened to take the humour of the constable in "Midsummer Night's Dream"' — by which he meant, we may suppose, ' Much Ado about Nothing ' — but there were watchmen of the Dogberry type all over England, and probably at Stratford itself. The Crown Inn (formerly 3 Cornmarket Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long pointed out as one of his resting-places. In London Shakespeare was among strangers. The common assumption that Richard Burbage, the great actor with whom he was subsequently associated, was a native of Stratford, is wholly erroneous. Richard was born in Shoreditch, and his father came from Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends who has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reasonable doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Similarly Thomas Greene, a popular comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth century, is conjectured to have belonged to Stratford- on no grounds that deserve attention ; and Shakespeare was never associated with him. To only one resident in London is Shakespeare likely to have been known previously to his arrival in 1586. Richard Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of Shake- speare's father, had left Stratford in 1579 to serve an apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier, the London printer. Field was made free of the Stationers' Company in 1587, and resided for more than a quarter of a century afterwards at his printing-office in Blackfriars near I^udgate. He and Richard Field, his towns- 2o StiAKESPEAkE'S LIFE AND WORK Theatrical employ- ment. A play- house servitor. Shakespeare were soon associated as author and publishef ; but the theory that Field found work in VautroUier's printing-office for Shakespeare on his arrival in London is fanciful. No more can be said for the attempt to prove that he obtained employment as a lawyer's clerk. In view of his general quickness of apprehension, Shakespeare's accurate use of legal terms, which deserves all the attention that has been paid it, may be attributable in part to his observation of the many legal processes in which his father was involved, and in part to early intercourse with members of the Inns of Court. Tradition and common-sense alike point to one of the only two theatres (The Theatre or The Curtain) that existed in London at the date of his arrival as an early scene of his regular occupation. The compiler of the ' Lives of the Poets, by Theophilus Cibber' (1753) was the first to relate the story that his original connection with the playhouse was as holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. Accord- ing to the same writer, the story was related by Sir William D'Avenant to the actor Betterton ; but Rowe, to whom Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The two regular theatres of the time were both reached on horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds apocryphal. There is every indication that Shakespeare was speedily offered employment inside the playhouse. In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, re- turned to London from a provincial tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subordinate companies, one of which claimed the patronage of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord Stafford, also performed in the town during the same year. Shakespeare's friends may have called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless youth, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. From such incidei;ts seems to have spmng the opportunity which offered Shakespeare fame and fortune. According to Rowe's vague statement, 'he was received into the ON THE LONDON STAGE 2i company then in being at first in a very mean rank.' William Castle, the parish clerk of Stratford at the end of the seventeenth century, was in the habit of telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a servitor. Malone recorded in 1 780 a stage tradition ' that his first office in the theatre was that of prompter's attendant ' or call-boy. His intellectual capacity and the amiability with which he turned to account his versatile powers were probably soon recognised, and thenceforth his promotion was assured. Shakespeare's earliest reputation was made as an actor, The acting and, although his work as a dramatist soon eclipsed his '^°'"." histrionic fame, he remained a prominent member of the P*"'^^- actor's profession till near the end of his life. By an Act of Parliament of 1571 (14 Eliz. cap. 2), which was re- enacted in 1596 (39 Eliz. cap. 4), players were under the necessity of procuring a license to pursue their calhng from a peer of the realm or ' personage of higher degree ' ; otherwise they were adjudged to be of the status of rogues and vagabonds. The Queen herself and many Elizabethan peers were liberal in the exercise of their licensing powers, and few actors failed to secure a statutory license, which gave them a rank of respectability, and relieved them of all risk of identification with vagrants or ' sturdy beggars.' From an early period in Elizabeth's reign licensed actors were organised into permanent companies. In 1587 and following years, besides three companies of duly licensed boy-actors that were formed from the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel Royal and from West- minster scholars, there were in London at least six com- panies of fully licensed adult actors ; five of these were called after the noblemen to whom their members respec- tively owed their licenses (viz. the Earls of Leicester, Oxford, Sussex, and Worcester, and the Lord Admiral, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham), and one of them whose actors derived their license from the Queen was called the Queen's Company. The patron's functions in relation to the companies seem to have been mainly confined to the grant or renewal of the actors', licenses. Constant alterations of name, owing to the death or change from other causes of the patrons, render it difficult to trace with certainty each company's history. But there seems no doubt that the most influential of the companies named — that under the 22 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The Lord Chamber- lain's Company. A member of the Lord Chamber- lain's, The London theatres. nominal patronage of the Earl of Leicester — passed on his death in September 1588 to the patronage of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby on September 25, 1592. When the Earl of Derby died on April 16, 1594, his place as patron and licenser was suc- cessively filled by Henry Carey, first lord Hu'nsdon, Lord Chamberlain (d. July 23, 1596), and by his son and heir, George Carey, second lord Hunsdon, who himself became Lord Chamberlain in March 1597. After King James's succession in May 1603 the company was promoted to be the King's players, and, thus advanced in dignity, it fully maintained the supremacy which, under its successive titles, it had already long enjoyed. It is fair to infer that this was the company that Shakespeare originally joined and adhered to through life. Documentary evidence proves that he was a member of it in December 1594 ; in May 1603 he was one of its leaders. Four of its chief members — Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic actor of the day, John Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips — were among Shakespeare's lifelong friends. Under this company's auspices, moreover, Shake- speare's plays first saw the light. Only two of the plays claimed for him — ' Titus Andronicus ' and ' 3 Henry VI ' — seem to have been performed by other companies (the Earl of Sussex's men in the one case, and the Earl of Pem- broke's in the other). When Shakespeare became a member of the company it was doubtless performing at The Theatre, the playhouse in Shoreditch which James Burbage, the father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, had constructed in 1576 ; it abutted on the Finsbury Fields, and stood outside the City's boundaries. The only other London playhouse then in existence — the Curtain in Moorfields — was near at hand ; its name survives in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. But at an early date in his acting career Shakespeare's company sought and found new quarters. While known as Lord Strange's men, they opened on February 19, 1592, a third London theatre called the Rose, which Philip Hens- lowe, the speculative theatrical manager, had erected on the Bankside, Southwark. At the date of the inauguration of the Rose Theatre Shakespeare's company was temporarily allied with another company, the Admiral's men, who numbered the great actor Edward Alleyn among them. ON THE LONDON STAGE 23 few months undertook the direction of the Amalgamated companies, but they quickly parted, and no further opportunity was offered Shakespeare of enjoying professional relations with AUeyn. The Rose Theatre was doubtless the earhest scene of Shakespeare's pronounced successes alike as actor and dramatist. Subsequently for a short time in 1594 he frequented the stage of another new theatre at Newington Butts, and between 1595 and 1599 the older stages of the Curtain and of The Theatre in Shoreditch. The Curtain remained open till the Civil Wars, although its vogue after 1600 was eclipsed by that of Tjyounger rivals. In 1599 Richard Burbage and his brother "iQuthbert demolished the old building of The Theatre and ibjiilt, mainly out of the materials of the dismantled fabric, I the famous theatre called the Globe on the Bankside. Il I was octagonal in shape, and built of wood, and doubtleM^ I Shakespeare described it (rather than the Curtain) as ' thi» wooden O' in the opening chorus of 'Henry V (1. 13). After 1599 the Globe was mainly occupied by Shake- speare's company, and in its profits he acquired an impor- tant share. From the date of its inauguration until the poet's retirement, the Globe — which quickly won the first place among London theatres — ^seems to have been the sole playhouse with which Shakespeare was professionally associated. The equally familiar Blackfriars Theatre, which was created out of a dwelling-house by James Bur- bage, the actor's father, at the end of 1596, was for many years afterwards leased out to the company of boy-actors k-nown as ' the Queen's children of the Chapel ; ' it was not occupied by Shakespeare's company until December 1609 or January i6io, when his acting days were ending. The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied by the offices of the • Times ' newspaper in Queen Victoria Street, E.G. In London Shakespeare resided near the theatres. Place of At first he was an inhabitant of St. Helen's parish, Bishops- residence gate, not far from The Theatre in Shoreditch. When a sub- i" London, sidy was levied on the parish in 1595, Shakespeare's pro- perty was rated at 5/. A sum of ^s. was paid by him on this assessment in 1597, and another of 13J. n^. in 1598. Meanwhile he had moved to Southwark, where according to a memorandum by AUeyn (which Malone quoted), he lodged in 1596 near ' the Bear Garden.' The chief differences between the methods of theatrical 24 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK • representation in Shakespeare's day and our own lay in the fact that neither scenery nor women-actors were known to the EUzabethan stage. Some mechanical properties were in use, and fashionable costume of the day was worn. But all female rdles were, until the Restoration in 1660, assumed in the public theatres by men or boys. Shake- speare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women's parts when he makes Rosalind, in the epilogue to ' As you like it,' say laughingly to the men of the audience, Jf T were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards.' Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' v. ii. 220 seq., laments : the quick comedians Extemporally will stage us , . . and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. In 'Midsummer Night's Dream' (i. ii. 53), Flute is bidden by Quince play Thisbe 'inamask.' Similarly in Shakespeare's day the public stages were bare of any scenic contrivance except a front curtain opening in the middle and a balcony or upper platform resting on pillars at the back of the stage ; from this balcony portions of the dialogue were sometimes spoken, but occasionally it seems to have been occupied by spectators. Sir Philip Sidney humorously described the spectator's difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse, where, owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a rocky coast, a cave, and a battlefield (' Apologie for Poetrie,' p. 52). The absence of scenery, coupled with the substitution of boys for women, implies that the skill needed, on the part of actors, to rouse in the audience the requisite illusions was far greater in Shakespeare's day than at later periods. Although the scenic principles of the theatre of the six- provincial teenth and seventeenth centuries widely differed from those tours. of the theatre of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the professional customs of Elizabethan actors approximated in many respects more closely to those of their modern suc- cessors than is usually recognised. The practice of touring in the provinces was followed with even greater regularity then than now. Few companies remained in London during the summer or early autumn, and every country town with two thousand or more inhabitants could reckon on at least Actors' ON THE LONDOA STAGE 25 one visit from travelling actors between May and October. A rapid examination of the extant archives of some seventy municipalities selected at random shows that Shakespeare's company between 1594 and 16 14 frequently performed in towns like Barnstaple, Bath, Bristol, Coventry, Shake- Dover, Faversham, Folkestone, Hythe, Ipswich, Leicester, speare's Maidstone, Marlborough, New Romney, Oxford, Rye in f^^f^^ Sussex, Saffron Walden, and Shrewsbury. Shakespeare may be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional functions, and some of the references to travel in his sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of early acting tours. It has been repeatedly urged, moreover, that Shakespeare's In Scot- company visited Scotland, and that he went with it. In '^""i- November 1599 English actors arrived in Scotland under the leadership of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the king. Fletcher was a colleague of Shakespeare in 1603, but is not known to have been one earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in October 1601. There is nothing to indicate that any of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's com- pany. In like manner, Shakespeare's accurate reference in ' Macbeth ' to the ' nimble ' but ' sweet ' climate of Inver- ness — ^, . , , , , , . This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses (Macbetk, i. vi. 1-6) — and the vivid impression the dramatist conveys of the aspects of wild Highland heaths, have been judged to be the certain fruits of a personal experience ; but the passages in question, into which a more definite significance has possibly been read than Shakespeare intended, can be satisfactorily accounted for by his inevitable intercourse with Scotsmen in London and the theatres after James I's accession. A few English actors in Shakespeare's day occasionally combined to make professional tours through foreign lands, where Court society invariably gave them a hospitable re- ception. In Denmark, Germany, Austria, Holland, and France, many dramatic performances were given before royal audiences by English actors between 1580 and 1630. That Shakespeare joined any of these expeditions is highly improbable. Actors of small account at home mainly took part, in them, and Shakespeare's name appears in no 26 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK extant list of those who paid professional visits abroad. It is, in fact, unlikely that Shakespeare ever set foot on the continent of Europe in either a private or professional capacity. He repeatedly ridicules the craze for foreign In Italy, travel. To Italy, it is true, and especially to cities of Northern Italy, like Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and he supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life and senti- ment. But the fact that he represents Valentine in the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (i. i. 71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, and Prospero in the ' Tempest ' as embarking on a ship at the gates of Milan (i. ii. 129-44), renders it almost impossible that he could have gathered his knowledge of Northern Italy from personal observation. He doubtless owed all to the verbal reports of travelled friends or to books, the contents of which he had a rare power of assimilating and vitalising. Shake- The publisher Chettle wrote in 1592 that Shakespeare speare's was ' exelent in the quaUtie \i.e. calling] he professes,' and rSks. j-jjg qJjJ actor William Beeston asserted in the next century that Shakespeare ' did act exceedingly well.' But the rSles in which he distinguished himself are imperfectly recorded. Few surviving documents refer directly to performances by him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the popular actors William Kemp, the chief comedian of the day, and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic actor, in ' two several comedies or interludes ' which were acted on St. Stephen's Day and on Innocents' Day (December 26 and 28) at Greenwich Palace before the Queen. The players received ' xiii/z. \']s. ■v'md. and by waye of her Majesties rewarde vili. xiiij. m]d., in all xxli.' Neither plays nor parts are named. Shakespeare's name stands first on the list of those who took part in the original performances of Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour' (1598). In the original edition of Jonson's 'Sejanus' (1605) the actors' names are arranged in two columns, and Shakespeare's name heads the second column, standing parallel wfth Burbage's, which heads the first.. But here again the character allotted to each actor is not stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's parts, 'the Ghost in his own "Hamlet,"' and Rowe asserted his assumption of that character to be 'the top of his performance.' John Davies of Hereford noted that he ' played some kingly parts in sport.' One of Shakespeare's ON THE LONDON STAGE 27 younger brothers, presumably Gilbert, often came, wrote Oldys, to London in his younger days to see his brother act in his own plays ; and in his old age, when his memory was failing, he recalled his brother's performance of Adam in 'As you like it' In the 1623 folio edition of Shakespeare's ' Works ' his name heads the prefatory list ' of the principall actors in all these playes.' That Shakespeare chafed under some of the conditions Alleged of the actor's calling is commonly inferred from the scorn of ' Sonnets.' There he reproaches himself with becoming ' a an actor's motley to the view ' (ex. 2), and chides fortune for having '^^ ^"^" provided for his livelihood nothirlg better than 'public means that public manners breed,' whence his name re- ceived a brand (cxi. 4-5). If such self-pity is to be literally interpreted, it only reflected an evanescent mood. His interest in all that touched the efficiency of his profession was permanently active. He was a keen critic of actors' elocution, and in ' Hamlet ' shrewdly denounced their common failings, but clearly and hopefully pointed out the road to improvement. His highest ambitions lay, it is true, elsewhere than in acting, and at an early period of his theatrical career he undertook, with triumphant success, the abours of a playwright. But he pursued the profession of an actor loyally and uninterruptedly until he resigned all connection with the theatre within a few years of his death. 28 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK V EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS Dramatic "pHE whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was probably ^°''^- begun and ended within two decades (1591-1611), between his twenty-seventh and forty-seventh year. If the works traditionally assigned to him include some contributions from other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally claimed for others. When the account is balanced, Shakespeare must be credited with the production, during these twenty years, of a yearly average of two plays, nearly all of which belonged to the supreme rank of literature. Three volumes of poems must be added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the players that ' whatsoever he penned he never blotted out [i.e. erased] a line.' The editors of the First Folio attested that ' what he thought he uttered with that easinesse that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers.' Signs of hasty workmanship are not lacking, but they are few when it is considered how rapidly his numerous compositions came from his pen, and they are in the aggregate unimportant. His bor- By borrowing his plots he to some extent economised rowed jjjg energy, but he transformed most of them, and it was not plots. probably with the object of conserving his strength that he systematically levied loans on popular current literature like Holinshed's ' Chronicles,' North's translation of ' Plutarch,' widely read romances, and successful plays. In this regard he betrayed something of the practical temperament which is traceable in the conduct of the affairs of his later life. It was doubtless with the calculated aim of ministering to the public taste that he unceasingly adapted, as his genius dictated, themes which had already, in the hands of inferior writers or dramatists, proved capable of arresting public attention. EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 29 The professional playwrights sold their plays outright to The one or other of the acting companies, and they retained no revision legal interest in them after the manuscript had passed into " plays- the hands of the theatrical manager. It was not unusual for the manager to invite extensive revision of a play at the hands of others than its author before it was produced on the stage, and again whenever it was revived. Shakespeare gained his earliest experience as a dramatist by revising or rewriting behind the scenes plays that had become the property of his manager. It is possible that some of his labours ir5 this direction remain unidentified. In a few cases his alterations were slight, but as a rule his fund of originality was too abundant to restrict him, when working as an adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank among original compositions. The determination of the exact order in which Chrono- Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on '°gy °^ conjecture. External evidence is accessible in only a few P ^^^' cases, and, although always worthy of the utmost con- sideration, is not invariably conclusive. The date of publication rarely indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shakespeare were published in his lifetime, and it is questionable whether any were published under his super- vision. But subject-matter and metre both afford rough clues to the period in his career to which each play may be referred. In his early plays the spirit of comedy or tragedy appears in its simplicity ; as his powers gradually matured he depicted life in its most complex involutions, and portrayed with masterly insight the subtle gradations of human sentiment and the mysterious workings of human passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended ; and his work finally developed a pathos such as could only come of ripe experience. Similarly the metre undergoes emancipation from the hampering restraints of fixed rule and becomes flexible enough to respond to every phase of human feeling. In the blank verse of the early plays a Metrical pause is strictly observed at the close of each line, and '^sts. rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually the poet over- rides such artificial restrictions ; rhyme largely disappears ; recourse is more frequently made to prose ; the pause is varied indefinitely ; extra syllables are, contrary to strict 30 SHAKUSPEARES LIFE AND WORH metrical law, introduced at the end of lines, and at times in the middle ; the last word of the line is often a weak and unemphatic conjunction or preposition. To the latest plays fantastic and punning conceits which abound in early work are rarely accorded admission. But, while Shake- speare's achievement from the beginning to the end of his career offers clearer evidence than that of any other writer of genius of the steady and orderly growth of his poetic faculty, some allowance must be made for ebb and flow in the current of his artistic progress. Early work occasionally anticipates features that become habitual to late work, and late work at times embodies traits that are mainly identified with early work. No exclusive reliance in determining the precise chronology can be placed on the merely mechanical tests afforded by tables of raetrical statistics. The chrono- logical order can only be deduced with any confidence from a consideration of all the internal characteristics as well as the known external history of each play. The pre- misses are often vague and conflicting, and no chronology hitherto suggested receives at all points universal assent. There is no external evidence to prove that any piece in which Shakespeare had a hand was produced before the spring of 1592. No play by him was pubhshed before 1597, and none bore his name on the title-page till 1598. But his first essays have been with confidence allotted to 1591. ' Love's To ' Love's Labour's Lost ' may reasonably be assigned Labour's priority in point of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic pro- Lost.' ductions. Internal evidence alone indicates the date of composition, and proves that it was an early effort ; but the subject-matter suggests that its author had already enjoyed extended opportunities of surveying London life and man- ners, such as were hardly open to him in the very first years of his settlement in the metropolis. 'Love's Labour's Ivost' embodies keen observation of contemporary life in many ranks of society, both in town and country, while the speeches of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy in masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone among Shakespeare's plots, in that it is not known to have been borrowed, and stands quite alone in openly travestying known traits and incidents of current social and political life. The names of the chief characters are drawn from the leaders in the civil war in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 1594, and was anxiously watched by the EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 31 English public. The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose dominions the scene is laid. The two chief lords in attendance on him in the play, Biron and Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most strenuous supporters of the real King of Navarre. The name of the Lord Dumain in ' Love's Labour's Lost ' is a common anglicised version of that Due da Maine or Mayenne whose name was so frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs in connection with Navarre's movements that Shakespeare was led into the error of . numbering him, although an enemy of Navarre, among his supporters. Mothe, or La Mothe, the name of the pretty, ingenious page, was that of a French ambassador who was long popular in London. Again, Arniado, 'the fantastical Spaniard' who haunts Navarre's Court in the play, and is dubbed by another courtier ' a phantasm, a Monarcho,' is a caricature of a half-crazed Spaniard known as ' fantastical Monarcho ' who for many years hung about Elizabeth's Court, and was under the delusion that he owned the ships arriving in the port of London. The name Armado was doubtless suggested by the Spanish ' Armada ' of 1588. The scene (' Love's Labour's Lost,' v. ii. 158 sqq.) in which the princess's lovers press their suit in the disguise of Russians follows a description of the reception in 1584, by ladies at Elizabeth's Court, of Russian ambassadors who came to London to seek a wife among the ladies of the English nobility for the Tsar. Elsewhere the piece satirises with good humour contemporary projects of academies for disciplining young men ; fashions of speech and dress current in fashionable circles ; the inefficiency of rural constables and the pedantry of village schoolmasters and curates. The play was revised in 1 5 9 7, probably for a perform- ance at Court. It was first pubhshed next year by Cufhbert Burbie, a liveryman of the Stationers' Company with a shop in Cornhill adjoining the Royal Exchange, and on the title- page, which described the piece as ' newly corrected and augmented,' Shakespeare's name first appeared in print as that of author of a play. Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the same ' Two date, ' The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which dramatises a Gentle romantic story of love and friendship. There is every likeli- hood that it was an adaptation — amounting to a re-forma- tion — of a lost ' History of Felix and Philomena,' which had been acted at Court in 1584. The story is the same as that men of Verona. ' 32 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK of ' The Shepardess Felismena ' in the Spanish pastoral romance of ' Diana ' by George de Montemayor, which long enjoyed popularity in England. No complete English trans- lation of ' Diana ' was published before that of Bartholomew Yonge in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas Wilson, which w^as dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in 1596, was possibly circulated far earlier. Some verses from ' Diana ' were translated by Sir Philip Sidney and were printed with his poems as early as 1591. Barnabe Rich's story of ' ApoUonius and Silla ' (from Cinthio's ' Hecatom- mithi'), which Shakespeare employed again in 'Twelfth Night,' also gave him some hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the ' Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, Launce and Speed — the precursors of a long line of whimsical serving-men — overflow with farcical drollery. The ' Two Gentlemen ' was not published in Shakespeare's life- time ; it first appeared in the folio of 1623, after having, in all probability, undergone some revision. ' Comedy Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the ' Comedy of of Errors. ' Errors ' (commonly known at the time as ' Errors '), at boisterous farce. It also was first published in 1623. Again, as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' allusion was made to the civil war in France. France was described as 'making war against her heir' (iii. ii. 125). Shakespeare's farcical comedy, which is by far the shortest of all his dramas, may have been founded on a play, no longer extant, called ' The Historic of Error,' which was acted in 1576 at Hampton Court. In subject-matter it resembles the ' MenEEchmi ' of Plautus, and treats of mistakes of identity arising from the likeness of twin-born children. The scene (act iii. sc. i.) in ivhich Antipholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, while his brother and wife are at dinner within, recalls one in the ' Amphitruo ' of Plautus. Shakespeare doubtless had direct recourse to Plautus as well as to the old play, and he may have read Plautus in English. The earliest translation of the ' MenKchmi ' was not licensed for publication before June 10, 1594, and was not published until the following year. No translation of any other play of Plautus appeared before. But it was stated in the preface to this first published translation of the ' Menaechmi ' that the translator, W. W., doubtless William Warner, a veteran of the Elizabethan world of letters, had some time previously ' Englished ' that EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 33 and 'divers ' others of Plautus's comedies, and had circulated them in manuscript ' for the use of and delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus's own words, are not able to under- stand them.' Such plays as these, although each gave promise of a ' Romeo dramatic capacity out of the common way, cannot be with ^^^, certainty pronounced to be beyond the ability of other men. J"''^'-' It was in ' Romeo and Juliet,' Shakespeare's first tragedy, that he proved himself the possessor of a poetic and dramatic instinct of unprecedented quality. In ' Romeo and Juliet ' he turned to account a tragic romance in great vogue in Italy, and popular throughout Europe. The story has been traced back to the Greek romance of ' Anthia and Abro- comas ' by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the second century, but it seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 1470 by the Italian novelist Masuccio in his 'Novellino' (No. xxxiii.). It was adapted from Masuccio by Bandello in his 'Novelle' (1554, pt. ii.. No. ix.) and Bandello's version became classical. It was through Bandello that the tale reached France, Spain, and England. His version was translated into French by Pierre Boaistuau de Launay, an occasional collaborator in the ' Histoires Tragiques ' of Frangois de Belleforest (Paris, 1559), and it was in process of dramatisation by both French and Spanish writers about the same time that Shakespeare was writing ' Romeo and Juliet.' Arthur Broke rendered into English verse the Italian version of Bandello in 1562, and William Painter published it in English prose in his 'Palace of Pleasure' in 1567. Shakespeare made acquaintance with the tale in Broke's verse. He intro- duced little change in the plot, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the humour of Mercutio, and by investing with an entirely new and comic significance the character of the Nurse. The ecstasy of youthful passion is portrayed by Shakespeare in language of the highest lyric beauty, and although a predilection for quibbles and conceits occasion- ally passes beyond the author's control, his 'Romeo and JuUet,' as a tragic poem on the theme of love, has no rival in any literature. If the Nurse's remark, ' 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years' (i. iii. 23), be taken literally, the composition of the play must be referred to 159 1, for no earthquake in the sixteenth century was experienced D 34 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK in England after 1580. There are a few parallelisms with Daniel's ' Complaint of Rosamond,' published in 1592, and it is probable that Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. The piece probably underwent revision after its first production. The tragedy was issued in quarto in 1597 anonymously and surreptitiously— ' as it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right honour- able the L[ord] of Hunsdon his servants.' The printer and publisher of the work was John Danter, a very notorious trader in books, with a shop in Hosier Lane, near Holborn Conduit ; as ' Danter the printer,' a trafficker in the licentious products of academic youth, he figured without disguise of name in the dramatis persona of the academic play of ' The Returne from Parnassus' (1600?). A second quarto of ' Romeo and Juliet ' — ' newly corrected, augmented, and amended as it hath bene sundry times publiquely acted by the right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants ' — was published, from an authentic version, in 1599, by a stationer of higher reputation, Cuthbert Burbie of Cornhill. Of the original representation on the stage of three other pieces of the period we have more explicit information. These reveal Shakespeare iindisguisedly as an adapter of plays by other hands. Though they lack the interest attaching to his unaided work, they throw invaluable light on some of his early methods of composition and his early relations with other dramatists. 'Henry On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called 'Henry VI,' VI-' was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's men. It was no doubt the play which was subsequently known as Shakespeare's ' The First Part of Henry VI.' On its first performance it won a popular triumph. 'How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French),' wrote Nash in his 'Pierce Pennilesse' (1592, licensed August 8), in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot's death (iv. vi. and vii.), 'to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should triumphe .againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding ! ' There is no categorical record of the production of a second piece in continuation of the theme, but such a play quickly followed ; for a third piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry VI's EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 35 reign, attracted much attention on the stage early in the following autumn. The applause attending the completion of this historical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that their popularity was endangered by the young stranger who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on Septem- ber 3, 1592, wrote on his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ' A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.' Addressing three brother dramatists — Greene's Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge— he bade them beware attack. of puppets 'that speak from our mouths,' and of 'antics garnished in our colours.' ' There is,' he continued, ' an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an ab%o\\i\.e Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie. . . . Never more acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.' The ' only Shake-scene ' is a punning denunciation of Shakespeare. The italicised quotation travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of Shakespeare's ' Henry VI : ' Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide. The tirade was probably inspired by an established author's resentment at the energy of a young actor — the theatre's factotum — in revising the dramatic work of his seniors with such masterly effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem of manager and playgoer. But Shakespeare's amiability of Chettle's character and versatile ability had already won him apology, admirers, and his successes excited the sympathetic regard of colleagues more kindly than Greene. In December 1592 Greene's publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for Greene's attack on the young actor to his ' Kind Hartes Dreame,' a tract reflecting on phases of contemporary social life. 'I am as sory,' Chettle wrote, ' as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his [i.e. Shakespeare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have 02 36 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.' The first of the three plays dealing with the reign of Henry VI was originally published in the collected edition Divided o^ Shakespeare's works ; the second and third plays were authorship previously printed in a form very different from that which of ' Henry they subsequently assumed when they followed the first part ^^•' in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond doubt that in these three plays Shakespeare did no more than add, revise, and correct other men's work. In ' The First Part of Henry VI ' the scene in the Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are plucked as emblems by the rival political parties (ii. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the impress of Shakespeare's style. The play dealing with the second part of Henry VI's reign was first published in 1594 anonymously from a rough stage copy by Thomas Millington, a stationer of Cornhill, to whom a license for the publication was granted on March 12, 1593-4. The volume, which was printed by Thomas Creede of Thames Street, bore the title ' The first part of the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster.' The play dealing with the third part of Henry VI's reign was first printed with greater care next year by Peter Short of Bread Street Hill, and was published, as in the case of its predecessor, by Millington. This quarto bore the title ' The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.' In both these plays, which Millington reissued in 1600, Shakespeare's revising hand can be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in ' The Contention ' can owe their savour to him alone. It is clear that after he had hastily revised with another's aid the original drafts of the three pieces, they were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts by his own company (Lord Strange's men), and the third, under some exceptional arrangement, by Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, possibly for a revival, he undertook a more thorough revision, still in conjunction with another writer. ' The First Part of The Contention ' was thoroughly overhauled, and was converted into what was entitled in the folio ' The Second Part of Henry VI ; ' there more than half the lines are new. ' The True Tragedie,' which EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 37 became in the folio ' The Third Part of Henry VI,' was less drastically handled ; two-thirds of it was left practically untouched ; only a third was thoroughly remodelled. Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two succes- sive revisions of the trilogy of ' Henry VI ' is matter for conjecture. The theory that Greene and Peele produced the original draft of the three parts of ' Henry VI ' which Shakespeare recast, may help to account for Greene's indig- nant denunciation of Shakespeare as 'an upstart crow, beau- tified with the feathers ' of himself and his fellow dramatists. Much can be said, too, in behalf of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, the greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision of which ' The Contention ' and ' The True Tragedie ' were the outcome. Most of the new pas- sages in the second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare alone, but a few suggest a partnership resembling that of the first revision. It is probable that Marlowe began the final revision, but his task was interrupted by his death, and the lion's share of the work fell to his younger coadjutor. Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that recep- tivity of mind which impels them to assimilate much of the intellectual effort of their contemporaries and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore into pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been professionally employed in recasting old plays by contemporaries, he would doubtless have shown in his writings traces of a study of their work. The verses of Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were certainly among the rills which fed the mighty river of his poetic and lyric invention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of tragedy, left more or less definite impression on all Shakespeare's early efforts in tragedy. It was, however, only to two of his fellow dramatists that his indebtedness as a writer of either comedy or tragedy was material or emphatically defined. Superior as Shakespeare's powers were to those of Marlowe, his coadjutor in ' Henry VI,' his early tragedies often reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple of that vehement delineator of tragic passion. Shakespeare's early comedies disclose a like relationship between him and Lyly. Lyly is best known as the author of the affected romance of ' Euphues,' whence in later life Shakespeare, in ' Hamlet,' borrowed Polonius's advice to Laertes. Be- tween 1580 and 1592 Lyly produced eight trivial and Shake- speare's coadjutors. Shake- speare's assimila- tive power. Lyly's influence in comedy. 38 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Marlowe's influence in tragedy. ' Richard III.' insubstantial comedies, of which seven were written in prose, and one was in rhyme. Much of the dialogue in Shakespeare's comedies, from ' Love's Labour's Lost ' to ' Much Ado about Nothing,' consists in thrusting and parrying fantastic conceits, puns, or antitheses. This is the style of intercourse in which most of Lyly's characters exclusively indulge. Three-fourths of Lyly's comedies lightly revolve about topics of classical or fairy mythology — in the very manner which Shakespeare first brought to a triumphant issue in his ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' Shakespeare's treatment of eccentric characters like Don Armado and his boy Moth in 'Love's Labour's Lost ' reads like a reminiscence of Lyly's portrayal of Sir Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy Epiton in the comedy of ' Endymion,' while Lyly's watchmen in the same play clearly adumbrate Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges. The device of masculine disguise for love-sick maidens was characteristic of Lyly's method before Shakespeare ventured on it for the first of many times in ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and the dispersal through Lyly's comedies of songs possessing every lyrical charm is not the least interesting of the many striking features which Shakespeare's achieve- ments in comedy seem to borrow from Lyly's comparatively insignificant experiments. Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare's contemporaries can be credited with exerting on his efforts in tragedy a really substantial influence, was in 1592 and 1593 at the zenith of his fame. Two of Shakespeare's earliest historical tragedies, ' Richard III ' and ' Richard II,' with the story of Shylock in his somewhat later comedy of the ' Merchant of Venice,' plainly disclose a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. In ' Richard III ' Shakespeare, working singlehanded, takes up the history of England near the point at which Marlowe and he, apparently working in partnership, left it in the third part of ' Henry VI.' The subject was already familiar to dramatists. A Latin piece about Richard III, by Dr. Thomas Legge, had been in favour with academic audiences since 1579, and in 1594 the 'True Tragedie of Richard III ' from some other pen was published anony- mously ; but Shakespeare's piece bears little resemblance to either. Shakespeare sought his materials in the encyclo- paedic ' Chronicle ' of Holinshed, the rich quarry to which EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 39 the whole series of his dramatic pictures of EngHsh history was to stand largely indebted. Throughout Shakespeare's ' Richard III ' the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable. The tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, ' as fiery in passion, as single in purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so inflated in expression, as Marlowe's " Tamburlaine " itself.' The turbulent piece was naturally popular. Burbage's imper- sonation of the hero was one of his most effective perform- ances, and his vigorous enunciation of ' A horse, a horse ! my kingdom for a horse 1 ' gave the line proverbial currency. 'Richard II' seems to have followed ,' Richard III' without delay. Prose is avoided throughout ' Richard II,' a certain sign of early work. The piece was probably com- posed very early in 1593. Marlowe's tempestuous vein is far less apparent in ' Richard II ' than in ' Richard III.' But although ' Richard II ' be in style and treatment less deeply indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly suggested by Marlowe's ' Edward II.' Throughout its expo- sition of the leading theme — the development and pathetic collapse of the weak king's character — Shakespeare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's. Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embellishments are numerous, and include the magnificently eloquent eulogy of England which is set in the mouth of John of Gaunt. ' Richard III ' and ' Richard II ' were each published anony- mously in one and the same year (1597) by Andrew Wise at the sign of the Angel in St. Paul's Churchyard ; they were printed as they had 'been publikely acted by the right Honorable the Lorde Chamberlaine his servants ; ' but the ' R'chard deposition scene in ' Richard II,' which dealt with a topic distasteful to the Queen, was omitted from the impressions of 1597 and 1598, and it was first supplied in the quarto of 1608. In 'As You Like It' (in. v. 80) Shakespeare parentheti- Acknow- cally commemorated his acquaintance with, and his general ^^ m^™ ^ indebtedness to, Marlowe by apostrophising him in the lines : lowe. Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might : ' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight 1 ' The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem ' Hero and Leander ' (line 76). In the ' Merry Wives of Windsor ' 4° SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK (hi. i. 17-21) Shakespeare places in the mouth of Sir Hugh Evans snatches of verse from Marlowe's charming lyric, ' Come live with me and be my love.' Between February 1593 and the end of the year the London theatres were closed, owing to the prevalence of the plague, and Shakespeare doubtless travelled with his company in the country. But his pen was busily employed, and before the close of 1594 he gave marvellous proofs of his rapid powers of production. ' Titus ' I'itus Andronicus ' was in his own lifetime claimed for Androni- Shakespeare, but Edward Ravenscroft, who prepared a new cus.' version in 1678, wrote of it : 'I have been told by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.' Ravenscroft's assertion deserves acceptance. The tragedy, a sanguinary picture of the decadence of Imperial Rome, contains powerful lines and situations, but is far too repulsive in plot and treatment, and too ostentatious in classical allusions, to take rank with Shakespeare's acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits ' Titus Andronicus ' with a popularity equalling Kyd's ' Spanish Tragedy,' and internal evidence shows that Kyd was capable of writing much of ' Titus.' It was suggested by a piece called 'Titus and Vespasian,' which Lord Strange's men played on April 11, 1592 ; this is only extant in a German version acted by English players in Germany, and published in 1620. ' Titus Andronicus ' was obviously taken in hand soon after the production of ' Titus and Vespasian ' in order to exploit popular interest in the topic. It was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 23, 1593-4, when it was described as a new piece ; but that it was also acted subsequently by Shakespeare's company is shown by the title-page of the first edition of 1594, which describes it as having been performed by the Earl of Derby's servants (one of the successive titles of Shakespeare's company), as well as by those of the Earls of Pembroke and Sussex. In the title-page of the second edition of 1600 addition was made to these three noble- men of the Lord Chamberlain (Lord Hunsdon), who was the Earl of Derby's successor in the patronage of Shake- speare's company. The piece was entered on the 'Sta- tioners' Register' on February 6, 1594, to John Danter, EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 41 the printer, of Hosier Lane, who produced the first (im- perfect) quarto of ' Romeo and Juliet' Banter's edition was published in 1594, without the playwright's supervision, jointly by Edward White, whose shop ' at the little North doore of Paules ' bore, as the title-page stated, ' the signe of the Gunne' and by Thomas Millington, whose shop, unmentioned on the title-page, was in Cornhill.' Only one copy of this quarto is known. It was discovered in Sweden in 1905, and purchased by an American col- lector. A second edition of the play was pubhshed solely by Edward White in 1600. The printer of this volume, James Roberts, who was in a large way of business in the Barbican, was printer and publisher of ' the players' bills ' or programmes of the theatre. This office Roberts had purchased in 1594 of its previous holder, John Charle- wood. He held it till 1613, when he sold it to William Jaggard. For part of the plot of ' The Merchant of Venice ' in ' Merchant which two romantic love stories are skilfully blended with °f Venice.' a theme of tragic import, Shakespeare had recourse to ' II Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni Florentine, which was not published till 1558. There a Jewish creditor demands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advocacy of ' the lady of Belmont,' who is wife of the debtor's friend. The management of the plot in the Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. A similar story is slenderly outlined in the popular mediaeval collec- tion of anecdotes called ' Gesta Romanorum,' while the tale of the caskets, which Shakespeare combined with it in the ' Merchant,' is told independently in another portion of the ' Gesta.' But Shakespeare's ' Merchant ' owes much to other sources, including more than one old play. Stephen Gosson describes in his ' Schoole of Abuse ' (1579) a lost play called ' the Jew . . . showne at the Bull [inn] . . . represent- ing the greedinesse of worldly chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.' This description suggests that the two stories of the pound of flesh and the caskets had been combined before for purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates with Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by dialogues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and a Christian debtor in the extant play of 'The Three Ladies of London,' by Rfobert] 42 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Wilson], 1584. There the Jew opens the attack on his Christian debtor with the lines : Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay rae ? Think you I will be mocked in this sort ? This three times you have flouted me — it seems you make thereat a sport. Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently, Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee. Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in favour of the debtor, the Jew interrupts : Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore, consider what you do. Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you. Shylock Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare in and Rode- < 'pjjg Merchant of Venice ' betrays the last definable traces Lopez °^ ^^^ discipleship to Marlowe. Although the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest of Shakespeare's play sets it in a wholly different category from that of Marlowe's ' Jew of Malta,' the humanised portrait of the Jew Shylock embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's caricature of the Jew Barabbas. But Shakespeare soon outpaced his master, and the inspiration that he drew from Marlowe in the 'Merchant' touches only the general conception of the central figure. Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial in February 1594 and the execution in June of the Queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez, incited Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of Jewish character. Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590, at the request of the Earl of Essex, as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip IPs persecution, popularly called Don Antonio, whom Essex and his associates had brought to England in order to stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. Spanish agents in London offered Lopez a bribe to poison Antonio and the Queen. The evidence that he assented to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was con- victed of treason, and was hanged at Tyburn on June 7, 1594. His trial and execution evoked a marked display of anti-Semitism on the part of the London populace at a time when very few Jews were domiciled in England. That a Christian named Antonio should be the cause of the ruin EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 43 alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious con- firmation of the theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shylock. It is to be borne in mind that Shylock (not the merchant Antonio) is the hero of Shakespeare's play, and the main interest culminates in the Jew's trial and discomfi- ture. The bold transition from that solemn scene which trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently poetic and humorous incidents of th,e concluding act attests a mastery of stagecraft ; but the interest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key. The 'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the manager, produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was probably the earliest version of ' The Merchant of Venice,' and it was revised later. On July 17, 1598, the notorious James Roberts, who printed 'Titus Andronicus' and others of Shakespeare's plays, secured a license from the Stationers' Company for the publication of ' The Merchaunt of Venyce, or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce,' on condition that the Lord Chamberlain gave his assent to the publication. It was not published till 1600, when two editions appeared, each printed from a different stage copy. Both editions came from Roberts's press, and Roberts published as well as printed the first quarto, which is more carefully printed than the second. Thomas Heyes (or Hayes) was the publisher of the second edition. Heyes's quarto was the text selected by the editors of the First Folio. To 1594 must also be assigned 'King John,' which, 'King like the 'Comedy of Errors' and 'Richard II,' alto- ]°^^' gether eschews prose. The piece, which was not printed till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless play called 'The Troublesome Raigne of King John ' (1591), which was fraudulently reissued in 161 1 as 'written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as by 'W. Shakespeare.' There is very small ground for associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. The three chief characters — the mean and cruel king, the grief-stricken and desperately wronged Constance, and the soldierly humourist Faulconbridge — are in all essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed with the same sureness of touch that marked in Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The scene, in which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert 44 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK ' Comedy of Errors ' in Gray's Inn Hall. Early plays doubtfully to Shake- speare. that the king has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as affecting as any passage in tragic literature. At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's early farce, ' The Comedy of Errors,' gave him a passing notoriety that he could well have spared. The piece was played on the evening of Innocents' Day (December 28), 1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience of benchers, students, and their friends. There was some disturbance during the evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, who, dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded them, retired in dudgeon. 'So that night,' the contemporary chronicler states, ' was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards called the "Night of Errors.'" Shakespeare was acting on the same day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful if he were present. On the morrow a commission of oyer and terminer inquired into the causes of the tumult, which was casuistically attributed to a sorcerer having ' foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.' Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public at- tention during the period under review (1591-4) — 'Arden of Feversham' (licensed for publication April 3, 1592, and published in 1592) and 'Edward III' (licensed for publication December i, 1595, and published in 1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be discerned in the work of any contemporary whose writings are extant. There is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship in either case. ' Arden of Fever- sham ' dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid murder of a husband by a wife which took place at Faver- sham in 1551, and was fully reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no relation either in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III ' is a play in Marlowe's vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy grounds. Capell reprinted it in his ' Prolusions ' in 1760, and described it as 'thought to be writ by Shakespeare.' EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 45 Many speeches scattered through the drama, and one whole scene — that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the advances of Edward III — show the hand of a master (11. ii.) But there is even in the style of these contributions much to dissociate them from Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of Marlowe. A line in act n. sc. i. (' Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds ') reappears in Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' (xciv. 1. 14). It was contrary to his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line in the play was doubtless borrowed from a manuscript copy of the 'Sonnets.' Two other popular plays of the period, ' Mucedorus ' ' ^fuce- and 'Faire Em,' have also been assigned to Shakespeare "°™^-' on slighter provocation. In Charles IPs library they were bound together in a volume labelled ' Shakespeare, Vol. I.,' and bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify the misnomer. ' Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic comedy, dates from the early years of Elizabeth's reign ; it was first published, doubtless after undergoing revision, in 1595, and was reissued, ' amplified with new additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who included it in his privately printed edition of Shakespeare in 1878, was confident that a scene interpolated in the 1610 version (in which the King of Valentia laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. However readily critics may admit the superiority in literary value of the interpolated scene to anything else in the piece, few will accept Mr. Collier's extravagant estimate. The scene was probably from the pen of an admiring but faltering imitato of Shakespeare. 'Faire Em,' although not published till 1631, was acted ' Faire by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange was its Em.' patron, and some lines from it are quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert Greene in his ' Farewell to Folly ' at so early a date as 1592. It is another rudimentary en- deavour in romantic comedy, and has not even the preten- sion of ' Mucedorus ' to one short scene of conspicuous literary merit. 46 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Publica- tion of ' Venus and Adonis.' VI THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC During the busy years (1591-4) that witnessed his first pronounced successes as a dramatist, Shakespeare came before the public in yet another Uterary capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a license for the publication of ' Venus and Adonis,' a metrical version of a classical tale of love. It was published a month or two later, without an author's name on the title-page, but Shakespeare appended his full name to the dedication, which he ad- dressed in conventional style of obsequiousness to Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The Earl, who was in his twentieth year, was reckoned the handsomest man at Court, with a pronounced disposition to gallantry. He had vast possessions, was well educated, loved literature, and through life extended to men of letters a generous patronage. ' I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me for choos- ing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather.' ' The first heir of my invention ' implies that the poem was written, or at least designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is affluent in beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, but imbued with a tone of license which may be held either to justify the theory that it was a precocious product of the author's youth, or to show that Shakespeare was not unready in mature years to write with a view to gratifying a patron's somewhat lascivious tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin motto from Ovid's ' Amores : ' Vilia miretur valgus ; mihi flavus Apollo Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. Marlowe in his translation of Ovid's ' Amores ' had FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 47 already rendered these lines into somewhat awkward EngUsh thus : Let base conceited wits admire vile things ; Fair Phcebus lead me to the Muses' springs ! The influence of Ovid, who told the story of Venus and Adonis in his ' Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details of Shakespeare's poem. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to him by a contemporary effort. Lodge's ' Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of his inspiration. A year after the issue of ' Venus and Adonis,' in 1594, Shakespeare published another poem in like vein, but far more mature in temper and execution. The digression (11. 939-59) on the destroying power of Time, especially, is in an exalted key of meditation which is not sounded in the earlier poem. The metre, too, is changed ; seven-line stanzas (Chaucer's rhyme royal, a b a b b c c) take the place of six-line stanzas. The second poem was entered in the 'Stationers' Registers' on May 9, 1594, under the title of 'A Booke intitled the Ravyshement of Lucrece,' 'Lucrece.' and was published in the same year under the title ' Lucrece.' Richard Field printed it, and John Harrison published and sold it at the sign of the White Greyhound in St. Paul's Churchyard. The classical story of Lucretia's ravishment and suicide is briefly recorded in Ovid's ' Fasti,' . but Chaucer had retold it in his 'Legend of Good Women,' and Shakespeare must have read it there. Again, in topic and metre the poem reflected a contemporary poet's work. Samuel Daniel's ' Complaint of Rosamond,' with its seven-line stanza (1592), stood to 'Lucrece' in even closer relation than Lodge's ' Scilla,' with its six-line stanza, to 'Venus and Adonis.' Rosamond, in Daniel's poem, muses thus when King Henry challenges her honour : But what ? he is my King and may constraine me ; Whether I yeeld or not, I live defamed ; The World will thinke Authoritie did gaine me ; I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed ; We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed ; And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame ; If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same. 48 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The pathetic accents of Shakespeare's heroine are those of Daniel's heroine purified and glorified. The passage on Time in ' Lucrece ' is elaborated from one in Watson's ' Passionate Centurie of Love ' (No. Ixxvii.), and Watson acknowledges that he adapted his lines from an Italian poem by Serafino. Shakespeare dedicated his second volume of poetry to the Earl of Southampton, the patron of his first, but the tone of the dedicatory epistle is changed. The poet now addressed the earl in terms of devoted friendship. Such expressions were not uncommon at the time in communica- tions between patrons and poets, but, in their present con- nection, they suggest that Shakespeare's relations with the brilliant young nobleman had grown closer since he dedi- cated ' Venus and Adonis ' to him in colder language a year before. 'The love I dedicate to your lordship,' Shakespeare wrote in the opening pages of ' Lucrece,' ' is without end, whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. . . . What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours.' Enthusias- In these poems Shakespeare made his earliest appeal to tic recep- (.j^g world of readers, and the reading public welcomed his e ^(j^jggggg yyifii unquaUfied enthusiasm. The London playgoer already knew Shakespeare's name as that of a promising actor and playwright, but his dramatic efforts had hitherto been consigned in manuscript, as soon as the theatrical representations ceased, to the coffers of their owner, the playhouse manager. His early plays brought him at the outset little reputation as a man of letters. It was not as the myriad-minded dramatist, but in the restricted role of adapter for English readers of familiar Ovidian fables, that he first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness of the verse and the poetical imagery in 'Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' practically silenced censure of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus. ' Lucrece,' wrote Michael Drayton in his 'Legend of Matilda' (1594), was 'revived to live another age.' In 1595 William Gierke in his ' Polimanteia ' gave ' all praise ' to ' sweet Shakespeare ' for his 'Lucrecia.' John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to poems. FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 49 ' honey-tongued Shakespeare' in his 'Epigrams' (1595), eulogised the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, although he mentioned the plays ' Romeo ' and ' Richard ' and ' more whose names I know not.' Richard Carew at the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserving the praises of an English Catullus. Printers and publishers of the poems strained their resources to satisfy the demands of eager purchasers. No fewer than seven editions of 'Venus' appeared between 1594 and 1602; an eighth followed in 161 7. ' Lucrece ' achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare's death. There is a likelihood, too, that Spenser, the greatest of Shake- Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries, was first drawn by the speare and poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's admirers. It is Spenser. hardly doubtful that Spenser described Shakespeare in 'Colin Clouts come home againe ' (completed in 1594), under the name of ' Aetion ' — a familiar Greek proper name derived from a.n6% an eagle : And there, though last not least is Aetion ; A gentler Shepheard may no where be found, Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound. The last line seems to allude to Shakespeare's surname. We may assume that the admiration was mutual. At any rate, Shakespeare acknowledged acquaintance with Spenser's work in a plain reference to his ' Teares of the Muses ' (1591) in ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' (v. i. 52-3). There we read how The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death Of learning, late deceased in beggary, was the theme of one of the dramatic entertainments wherewith it was proposed to celebrate Theseus's marriage. In Spenser's ' Teares of the Muses ' each of the Nine lamented in turn her declining influence on the literary and dramatic effort of the age. Theseus dismissed the suggestion with the not inappropriate comment : That is some satire keen and critical, Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in the same poem referred figuratively to Shakespeare when he so SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK made Thalia deplore the recent death of 'our pleasant Willy.' All these and all that els the Comick Stage With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, By which mans life in his likest image Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced , . . And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate, With kindly counter under mimick shade, Our pleasant Willy, ah ! is dead of late ; With whom all joy and jolly meriment Is also deaded and in dolour drent (11. 199-210). The name Willy was frequently used in contemporary literature as a term of familiarity without relation to the baptismal name of the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was addressed as 'Willy ' by some of his elegists. A comic actor, ' dead of late ' in a literal sense, was clearly intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English comedy had lately sustained by the death of the comedian, Richard Tarleton. Similarly the ' gentle spirit' who is described by Spenser in a later stanza as sitting ' in idle cell ' rather than turn his pen to base uses cannot be reasonably identified with Shakespeare. But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen ^Large streames of honnie and sweete nectar flowe. Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell (II. 217-22). Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal esteem Patrons at outside the circles of actors and men of letters. His genius Court. and ' civil demeanour ' of which Chettle wrote arrested the notice not only of Southampton but of other noble patrons of literature and the drama. His summons to act at Court with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of 1594 was possibly due in part to personal interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly showed him special favour. Until the end of her reign his plays were repeatedly acted , in her presence. The revised version of ' Love's Labour's Lost' was given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and tradition credits the Queen with unconcealed enthusiasm FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 51 for FalstafF, who came into being a little later. Under Elizabeth's successor Shakespeare greatly strengthened his hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that the Queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. When Jonson wrote in his elegy on Shakespeare of those flights upon the banks of Thames That so did take Eliza and our James, - he was mindful of many representations of Shakespeare's plays by the poet and his fellow-actors at the palaces of Whitehall, Richmond, and Greenwich during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign. fe i 52 SBAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK The vogue of the EUza- bethan sonnet. Shake- speare's first expe- riments. VII THE SONNETS It was doubtless to Shakespeare's personal relations with men and women of the Court that his sonnets owed their existence. In Italy and France the practice of writing and circulating series of sonnets inscribed to great men and women flourished continuously throughout the sixteenth century. In England, until the last decade of that century, the vogue was intermittent. Wyatt and Surrey inaugurated sonnetteering in the English language under Henry VIII, and Thomas Watson devoted much energy to the pursuit when Shakespeare was a boy. But it was not until 1 59 1, when Sir Philip Sidney's collection of sonnets entitled ' Astrophel and Stella ' was first published, that the sonnet enjoyed in England any conspicuous or continuous favour. For the half-dozen years following the appearance of Sir Philip Sidney's volume the writing of sonnets, both singly and in connected sequences, engaged more literary activity in this country than it engaged at any period here or elsewhere. Men and women of the cultivated Elizabethan nobility encouraged poets to celebrate in single sonnets their virtues and graces, and under the same patronage there were produced multitudes of sonnet-sequences which more or less fancifully narrated, after the manner of Petrarch and his successors, the pleasures and pains of love. Between 1591 and 1597 no aspirant to poetic fame in the country failed to seek a patron's ears by a trial of skill on the popular poetic instrument, and Shakespeare, who habitually kept abreast of the currents of contemporary literary taste, applied himself to sonnetteering with all the force of his poetic genius when the fashion was at its height. Shakespeare had lightly experimented with the sonnet from the outset of his literary career. Three well-turned examples figure in ' Love's Labour's Lost,' probably his THE SONNETS S3 earliest play ; two of the choruses in ' Romeo and Juliet ' are couched in the sonnet form ; and a letter of the heroine Helen in ' All's Well that Ends Well,' which bears traces of very early composition, takes the same shape. It has, too, been argued ingeniously, if not convincingly, that he was author of the somewhat clumsy sonnet, ' Phaeton to his friend Florio,' which prefaced in 1591 Florio's 'Second Frutes,' a series of Italian-English dialogues for students. But these were sporadic efforts. It was not till the spring of 1593, after Shakespeare had secured a nobleman's patronage for his earliest publication, ' Venus and Adonis,' that he became a sonnetteer on an extended scale. Of the hundred and fifty-four sonnets that survive outside his plays, the greater number were in all likelihood composed between that date and the autumn of 1594, during his thirtieth and thirty-first years. His occasional reference in the sonnets to his growing age was a conventional device — traceable to Petrarch — of all sonnetteers of the day, and admits of no literal interpretation. In matter and in manner the bulk of the poems suggest that they came from the pen of a man not much more than thirty. Doubtless he renewed his sonnetteering efforts occasionally and at irregular intervals during the nine years which elapsed between 1594 and the accession of James I in 1603. But to very few of the extant examples can a date later than 1594 be allotted with confidence. Sonnet cvii., in which plain reference is made to Queen Elizabeth's death, may be fairly regarded as a belated and a final act of homage on Shakespeare's part to the importunate vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet. AH the evidence, whether internal or external, points to the con- clusion that the sonnet exhausted such fascination as it exerted on Shakespeare before his dramatic genius attained its full height. In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and meditative energy that are hardly to be matched elsewhere in poetry. The best examples are charged with the mellowed sweetness of rhythm and metre, the depth of thought and feeling, the vividness of imagery and the stimulating fervour of expres- sion which are the finest fruits of poetic power. On the other hand, many sink almost into inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits. In both their excellences and their defects Shakespeare's sonnets betray near Majority of Shake- speare's sonnets composed in 1594. Their literary value. 54 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK The form of Shake- speare's Sonnets. Want of conti- nuity of subject- matter. kinship to his early dramatic work, in which passages of the highest poetic temper at times alternate with unimpres- sive displays of verbal jugglery. In phraseology the sonnets often closely resemble such early dramatic efforts as ' I^ove's Labour's Lost ' and ' Romeo and Juliet.' There is far more concentration in the sonnets than in 'Venus and Adonis' or in ' Lucrece,' although occasional utterances of Shake- speare's Roman heroine show traces of the intensity that characterises the best of them. The superior and more evenly sustained energy of the sonnets is to be attributed, not to the accession of power that comes with increase of years, but to the innate principles of the poetic form, to metrical exigencies, which impelled the sonnetteer to aim at a uniform condensation of thought and language. Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' ignore the somewhat complex scheme of rhyme adopted by Petrarch, whom the Elizabethan sonnetteers, like the French sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, recognised to be in most respects their master. Following the example originally set by Surrey and Wyatt, and generally pursued by Shakespeare's contemporaries, his sonnets aim at far greater metrical simplicity than the Italian or the French. They consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alter- nately. A single sonnet does not always form an indepen- dent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and Dray- ton, the same train of thought is at times pursued con- tinuously through two or more. The collection of Shake- speare's 154 sonnets thus presents the appearance of an extended series of independent poems, many in a varying number of fourteen-line stanzas. The longest sequence (i.-xvii.) numbers seventeen sonnets, and in the original edition opens the volume. It is unlikely that the order in which the poems were first printed follows the order in which they were written. Fantastic endeavours have been made to detect in the original arrangement of the poems a closely connected narrative, but the thread is on any showing constantly inter- rupted. The whole series is commonly separated by critics into two ' groups ' — the first consisting of sonnets i. to cxxvi., all of which are usually described as being addressed to a young man, and the second consisting of sonnets cxxvii. to cliv., all of which are usually described as addressed to a THE SONNETS 55 woman (a ' dark lady ' ). But both groups as a matter of fact include several meditative soliloquies in the form of sonnets that are addressed to no person at all, and a few of the sonnets in the first group might, as far as internal indications go, have been addressed to a woman. Readers and publishers of the seventeenth century acknowledged no sort of significance in the order in which the poems first saw the light. When the sonnets were printed for a second time in 1640 — thirty-one years after their first appearance — • they were presented in a completely different order. The short descriptive titles which were then supplied to single sonnets or to short sequences proved that the collection was regarded as a disconnected series of occasional poems in more or less amorous vein. In whatever order Shakespeare's sonnets be studied, the Lack of claim that has been advanced in their behalf to rank as genuine autobiographical documents can only be accepted with many sentiment qualifications. Elizabethan sonnets were commonly the ^^p^^' artificial products of the poet's fancy. A strain of personal sonnets, emotion is occasionally discernible in a detached effort, and is vaguely traceable in a few sequences ; but autobiogra- phical confessions were very rarely the stuff of which the Elizabethan sonnet was made. The typical collection of Elizabethan sonnets was a mosaic of plagiarisms, a medley of imitative studies. Echoes of the French or of the Italian sonnetteers, with their Platonic idealism, are usually the dominant notes. With good reason Sir Philip Sidney warned the public that ' no inward touch ' was to be expected from sonnetteers of his day, whom he describes as [Men] that do dictionary's method bring Into their rhymes running in rattling rows ; [Men] that poor Petrarch's long deceased woes With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing. The dissemination of false sentiment by the sonnetteers, Shake- and the mechanical monotony with which they treated ' the speare's pangs of despised love ' or the joys of requited affection, did scoriiful not escape the censure of contemporary criticism. The air ^''"^'°" }° soon rang with sarcastic protests from the most respected hjs piays. writers of the day. Echoes of the critical hostility are heard, it is curious to note, in nearly all the references that Shake- speare himself makes to sonnetteering in his plays. ' Tush, none but minstrels like of sonnetting,' exclaims Biron in ' Love's Labour's Lost ' (iv. iii. 158). In the ' Two Genriemen 56 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK of Verona ' (in. ii. 68 seq.) there is a satiric touch in the recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which Proteus offers the amorous Duke : You must lay lime to tangle her desires By wailful sonnets whose composed rime Should be foil fraught with serviceable vows . . . Say that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart. Slender autobio- graphical element in Shake- speare's sonnets. The imitative element. At a first glance a far larger proportion of Shakespeare's sonnets give the reader the illusion of personal confessions than those of any contemporary, but when allowance has been made for the current conventions of Elizabethan sonnetteering, as well as for Shakespeare's unapproached affluence in dramatic instinct and invention — an affluence which enabled him to identify himself with every phase of human emotion — the autobiographic element in his sonnets, although it may not be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to slender proportions. As soon as the collection is studied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that the printing presses of England, France, and Italy poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth century, a vast number of. Shakespeare's performances prove to be little more than professional trials of skill, often of superlative merit, to which he deemed himself challenged by the efforts of contemporary practitioners. The thoughts and words of the sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, Barnabe Barnes, Constable, Spenser, and Sidney were frequently assimilated by Shakespeare in his poems with as little compunction as were the plays and novels of his contemporaries in his dramatic work. The imitative element in his sonnets is large enough to refute the assertion that in them as a whole he 'sought to ' unlock his heart.' It is true that the sonnets in which the writer reproaches himself with sin, or gives expression to a sense of melancholy, offer at times a convincing illusion of autobiographic confessions ; and it is just possible that they stand apart from the rest, and reveal the writer's inner consciousness. But they may be, on the other hand, merely literary meditations, conceived by the greatest of dramatists, on infirmities incident to all human nature, and only attempted after the cue had been given by rival sonnetteers. At any rate, even their energetic lines are often adapted from the less forcible and less coherent utterances of contemporary poets, conceit. THE SONNETS 57 and the themes are common to almost all Elizabethan collections of sonnets. For example, in the numerous sonnets in which Shake- Shake- speare boasted that his verse was so certaiii of immortality that speare's it was capable of immortalising the person to whom it was p^^""^ °^ jj r. ., ° F . . ,. immor- addressed, he gave voice to no conviction that was peculiar faiity for to his mental constitution, to no involuntary exaltation of his son- spirit, or spontaneous ebullition of feeling. He was merely nets a proving that he could at will, and with superior effect, borrowed handle a theme that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating Pindar, Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe. Sir Phihp Sidney, in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' (1595), wrote that it was the common habit of poets ' to tell you that they will make you immortal by their verses.' ' Men of great calling,' Nash wrote in his ' Pierce Pennilesse,' 1593, ' take it of merit to have their names eternised by poets.' In the hands of Elizabethan sonnetteers the ' eternising ' faculty of their verse became a staple and indeed an inevitable topic. Spenser wrote in his ' Amoretti ' (1595, Sonnet Ixxv.) : My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Again, when commemorating the death of the Earl of Warwick in the 'Ruines of Time' {c. 1591), Spenser assured the Earl's widowed Countess, Thy Lord shall never die the whiles this verse Shall live, and surely it shall live for ever : For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse His worthie praise, and vertues dying never, Though death his soul doo from his body sever ; And thou thyself herein shalt also live : Such grace the heavens doo to my verses give. Drayton and Daniel developed the conceit with unblushing iteration. Shakespeare, in his references to his ' eternal lines ' (xviii. 12) and in the assurances that he gives the subject of his addresses that the sonnets are, in Daniel's exact phrase, his 'monument' (Ixxxi. 9, cvii. 13), was merely accommo- dating himself to the prevailing taste. Characteristically in S8 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK Sonnet Iv. he invested the topic with a splendour that was not approached by any other poet : Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgement that yourself arise. You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. Vitupera- "phe imitative element is no less conspicuous in most of ''^S^T' ^^ sonnets at the end of the volume which Shakespeare dressed' to addresses to a woman. In twelve of them Shakespeare a woman, abandons the sugared sentiment which characterises the greater number of his hundred and forty-two remaining sonnets. He grows vituperative and pours a volley of pas- sionate abuse upon a ' dark lady ' whom he represents as disdaining his advances. The declamatory parade of figurative extravagance which he betrays in his sonnets of vituperation at once suggests that the emotion is feigned and that the poet is striking an attitude. But external evidence is conclusive as to the artificial construction of the vituperative sonnets. Every sonnetteer of the sixteenth century, at some point in his career, devoted his energies to vituperation of a cruel siren, usually of dark complexion. The monotonous and artificial regularity with which the sonnetteers sounded the identical vituperative stop, alternately with their notes of adulation, excited ridicule in both England and France. It is quite possible that Shakespeare may have met in real life a dark-com- plexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have fared ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident is needed to account for the presence of the ' dark lady ' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal experiences or emotions, that impelled Shakespeare to celebrate the cruel disdain of a ' dark lady' in his 'Sonnets.' Shakespeare's ' dark lady' has been compared, not very justly, with his splendid creation of THE SONNETS 59 Cleopatra in his play of 'Antony and Cleopatra.' From one point of view the same criticism may be passed on both. There is no greater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's personal environment, rather than in the world of his imagination, the original of the ' dark lady ' of his sonnets than for seeking there the original of his Queen of Egypt. Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scattered through the collection, is there traceable a strand of wholly original sentiment, boldly projecting from the web into which it is wrought and not to be readily accounted for. I'his series of six sonnets deals with a love adventure of no normal type. Sonnet cxliv. opens with the lines : Two loves I have of comfort and despair Which Uke two angels do suggest {i.e. tempt) me still ; The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted the The man and has drawn him from his ' side.' Five other sonnets intrigue treat the same theme. In three addressed to the man (xl., xli., and xlii.) the poet mildly reproaches a youthful friend for having sought and won the favours of a woman whom he himself loved ' dearly,' but the trespass is forgiven on account of the friend's youth and beauty. In the two re- maining sonnets Shakespeare addresses the woman (cxxxiii. and cxxxiv.), and he rebukes her for having enslaved not only himself but ' his next self — his friend. The definite element of intrigue that is suggested here is not found anywhere else in the range of Elizabethan sonnet hterature, and may possibly reflect a personal experience. But it may be an error to treat the episode too seriously. A vague half- jesting reference, which was made to it by a contemporary poet, seems to deprive of serious import the amorous mis- adventure which is recorded in the six specified sonnets, and apparently gives the episode a place in the annals of gallantry. A literary comrade would seem to have lightly glanced at Shakespeare's amorous experience in a poem which was published in September 1594, under the title of ' Willobie his Avisa, or the True Picture of a Modest Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife.' In this volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two cantos in varying numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste heroine, with the poet's mistress. ' Willobie his Avisa. ' 6o SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Avisa, holds converse — in the opening section as a maid, and in the later section as a wife — with a series of passionate adorers. In every case she firmly repulses their advances. Midway through the book its alleged author — Henry Willobie — is in- troduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his woes and Avisa's ob- duracy. To this section there is prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv.). It is there stated that Willobie, 'being sud- denly affected with the contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto his familiar friend W. S., who not long before had tried the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly recovered of the like infection. Yet [W. S.], finding his friend let blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a time to see him bleed, and instead of stopping the issue, he enlargeth the wound with the sharp razor of willing conceit,' encouraging Willobie to believe that Avisa would ultimately yield ' with pains, diligence, and some cost in time.' ' The miserable comforter ' [W. S.], the passage continues, was moved to comfort his friend ' with an impossibility,' for one of two reasons. Either he ' now would secretly laugh at his friend's folly ' because he ' had given occasion not long before unto others to laugh at his own.' Or 'he would see whether another could play his part better than himself, and, in viewing after the course of this loving comedy,' would ' see whether it would sort to a happier end for this new actor than it did for the old player. But at length this comedy was like to have grown to a tragedy by the weak and feeble estate that H. W. was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching rec- titude. Happily, ' time and necessity ' effected a cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S. is introduced in dia- logue with Willobie, and he gives him, in oratio recta, light- hearted and mocking counsel which Willobie accepts with results disastrous to his mental health. Identity of initials, on which the theory of Shakespeare's identity with H. W.'s unfeeling adviser mainly rests, is not a strong foundation, and doubt is justifiable as to whether the story of ' Avisa ' and her lovers is not fictitious. But the mention of ' W. S.' as ' the old player,' and the employment of theatrical imagery in discussing his relations with Willo- bie, must be coupled with the fact that Shakespeare, at a THE SONNETS 6i date when mentions of him in print were rare, was eulogised by name as the author of ' Lucrece ' in some prefatory verses to Willobie's volume. From such considerations the theory of Shakespeare's identity with Willobie's acquaintance acquires substance. If we assume that it was Shakespeare who took a roguish delight in watching his friend Willobie suffer the disdain of ' chaste Avisa ' because he had 'newly recovered ' from the effects of such an experience as he pictured in the six sonnets in question, it is to be inferred that the alleged theft of his mistress by another friend caused him no deep or lasting distress. The allusions that were presumably made to the episode by the author of ' Avisa ' bring it, in fact, nearer the confines of comedy than of tragedy. At any rate they may be held to illustrate the slenderness of the relations that subsisted between the poetic sentiment which coloured even the most speciously intimate of Shakespeare's sonnets and the sentiment which actually governed him in life. 62 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Biogra- phic fact in the ' de- dicatory ' sonnets. The Earl of South- ampton the poet's sole patron. VIII THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON But if very few of Shakespeare's sonnets can be safely treated as genuinely autobiographic revelations of sentiment, there lurk amid those specifically addressed to a young man, more or less literal hints of the circumstances in Shakespeare's external life that attended the poems' com- position. Many offer direct evidence of the relations in which he stood to a patron, and to the position that he sought to fill in the circle of that patron's literary retainers. Twenty sonnets, which may for purposes of exposition be entitled ' dedicatory ' sonnets, are addressed to one who is declared without periphrasis and without disguise to be a patron of the poet's verse (Nos. xxiii., xxvi., xxxii., xxxvii., xxxviii., Ixix., Ixxvii.-lxxxvi., c, ci., ciii., cvi.). In one of these — Sonnet Ixxviii. — Shakespeare asserted : So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. Subsequently he regretfully pointed out how his patron's readiness to accept the homage of other poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable place of pre-eminence in his patron's esteem. Shakespeare states unequivocally that he has no patron but one. Sing \sc. O Muse !] to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, And gives thy pen both skill and argument (c. 7-8). For to no other pass my verses tend Than of your graces and your gifts to tell (ciii. 11-12). The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative poems, is the only patron of Shakespeare that is known to bio- graphical research . No contemporary document or tradition PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 63 gives the faintest suggestion that Shakespeare was the personal friend or dependent of any other man of rank. A trustworthy tradition corroborates the testimony respecting Shake- speare's close intimacy with the Earl that is given in the dedicatory epistles of his 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece,' penned respectively in 1593 and 1594. Accord- ing to Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first adequate biographer, 'there is one instance so singular in its magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not venture to have inserted ; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to. A bounty very great and very rare at any time.' There is no difficulty in detecting the lineaments of the Earl of Southampton in those of the man who is distinc- tively greeted in the sonnets as the poet's patron. Three of the twenty ' dedicatory ' sonnets merely translate into the language of poetry the expressions of devotion which had already done duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose that prefaces ' Lucrece.' That epistle to Southampton runs : The love \i.e. in the Elizabethan sense of friendship] I dedicate to your lordship is without end ; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable dis- position, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater ; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened.with all happiness. Your lordship's in all duty, William Shakespeare. Sonnet xxvi. is a gorgeous rendering of these sentences : Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written ambassage. To witness duty, not to show my wit : Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it. But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it ; Till whatsoever star that guides my moving. Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 64 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee ; Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me. Rivals in South- ampton's favour. The identification of the rival poets whose ' richly com- piled ' ' comments ' of his patron's ' praise ' excited Shake- speare's jealousy is a more difficult inquiry than the identification of the patron. The rival poets with their ' precious phrase by all the Muses filed ' (Ixxxv. 4) must be sought among the writers who eulogised Southampton and are known to have shared his patronage. The field of choice is not small. Southampton from boyhood cultivated literature and the society of literary men. In 1594 no nobleman received so abundant a measure of adulation from the contemporary world of letters. Thomas Nash justly described the Earl, when dedicating to him his 'Life of Jack Wilton' in 1594, as 'a dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets themselves.' Nash addressed to him many affectionately phrased sonnets. The prolific sonnetteer Barnabe Barnes and the miscellaneous literary practitioner Gervase Mark- ham confessed, respectively in r593 and 1595, yearnings for Southampton's countenance in sonnets which glow hardly less ardently than Shakespeare's with admiration for his personal charm. Similarly John Florio, the Earl's Italian tutor, who is traditionally reckoned among Shakespeare's literary acquaintances, wrote to Southampton in 1598, in his dedicatory epistle before his ' Worlde of Wordes ' (an Italian-English dictionary) : ' As to me and many more, the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour hath infused light and life.' Shakespeare magnanimously and modestly described that protege of Southampton, whom he deemed a specially dangerous rival, as an ' able ' and a ' better ' ' spirit,' ' a worthier pen,' a vessel 'of tall building and of goodly pride,' compared with whom he was himself ' a worthless boat.' He detected a touch of magic in the man's writing. His ' spirit,' Shakespeare hyperboUcally declared, had been ' by spirits taught to write above a mortal pitch,' and ' an affable familiar ghost ' nightly gulled him with intelligence. Shakespeare's dismay at the fascination exerted on his patron by ' the proud full sail of his [rival's] great verse ' PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 65 sealed for a time, he declared, the springs of his own inven- tion (Ixxxvi.). The conditions of the problem are satisfied by the rival's identification with the young writer Barnabe Barnes, a poetic panegyrist of Southampton and a prolific sonnet- teer, who was deemed by contemporary critics certain to prove a great poet and scholar. His first collection of sonnets, ' Parthenophil and Parthenophe,' with many odes and madrigals interspersed, was printed in 1593; and his second, 'A Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets,' in 1595. In a sonnet that Barnes addressed in his earlier volume to the Barnabe 'virtuous' Earl of Southampton he declared that his Barnes patron's eyes were ' the heavenly lamps that give the Muses gif'u' light,' and that his sole ambition was ' by flight to rise ' to speare's a height worthy of his patron's 'virtues.' Shakespeare chief sorrowfully pointed out in Sonnet Ixxviii. that his lord's rival, eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing, And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, Have added feathers to the learned's wing, And given grace a double majesty ; while in the following sonnet he asserted that the ' worthier pen ' of his dreaded rival when lending his patron ' virtue ' was guilty of plagiarism, for he ' stole that word ' from his patron's ' behaviour.' The emphasis laid by Barnes on the inspiration that he sought from Southampton's 'gracious eyes ' on the one hand, and his reiterated references to his patron's ' virtue ' on the other, suggest that Shakespeare in these sonnets directly alluded to Barnes as his chief com- petitor in the hotly contested race for Southampton's favour. When, too, Shakespeare in Sonnet Ixxx. employs nautical metaphors to indicate the relations of himself and his rival with his patron — My saucy bark inferior far to his . . . Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, — he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical choice of metaphor : My fancy's ship tossed here and there by these \sc. sorrow's floods] Still floats in danger ranging to and fro. How fears my thoughts' swift pinnace thine hard rock ! F 66 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Sonnets of friendship. Extrava- gances of literary compli- ment. Many critics argue that the numbing fear of his rival's genius and of its influence on his patron to which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was more likely to be evoked by the work of George Chapman than by that of any other contemporary poet. But Chapman had produced no con- spicuously 'great verse' till he began his translation of Homer in 1598 ; and although he appended in t6io to a complete edition of his translation a sonnet to Southampton, it was couched in Jthe coldest terms of formality, and it was one of a series of sixteen sonnefs each addressed to a dis- tinguished nobleman with whom the writer implies that he had no previous relations. Many besides the ' dedicatory ' sonnets are addressed to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for whom the poet avows ' love ' in the Elizabethan sense of friendship. Although no specific reference is made outside the twenty ' dedicatory ' sonnets to the youth as a literary patron, and the clues to his identity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of disinterested love or friendship also have Southampton for their sub- ject. The sincerity of the poet's sentiment is often open to doubt in these poems, but they seem to illustrate a real intimacy subsisting between Shakespeare and a young Maecenas. Sir Philip Sidney described with admirable point the adulatory excesses to which Elizabethan patrons of literature were habituated by literary dependents. He gave the warning that as soon as a man showed interest in poetry or its pro- ducers, poets straightway pronounced him ' to be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all.' ' You shall dwell upon super- latives. . . . Your soule shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice.' The warmth of colouring which distinguishes many of the sonnets that Shakespeare, under the guise of disinterested friendship, addressed to the youth can be matched at nearly all points | in the adulation ]in the style described by Sidneyi that patrons were habitually receiving throughout the reigns of Elizabeth and James I from literary dependents. It is likely enough that beneath all the conventional adulation bestowed by Shakespeare on his patron there lay a genuine affection, but it is improbable that his sonnets to the youth were involuntary ebullitions of a disinterested friendship ; they were celebrations of a patron's favour in PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTOA 67 the terminology — often raised by Shakespeare's genius to the loftiest heights of poetry — that was invariably conse- crated to such a purpose by a current literary convention. We know Shakespeare had only one literary patron, the Direct Earl of Southampton, and the view that that nobleman is the references hero of the sonnets of friendship is strongly corroborated '° South- by such definite details as can be deduced from the vague t^^s™.'" eulogies in those poems of the youth's gifts and graces, nets of Every compliment, in fact, paid by Shakespeare to the youth, friendship, whether it be vaguely or definitely phrased, applies to Southampton without the least straining of the words. In real life beauty, birth, wealth, and wit sat ' crowned ' in the Earl, whom poets acclaimed the handsomest of Elizabethan courtiers, as plainly as in the hero of the poet's verse. Southampton has left in his correspondence ample proofs of his literary learning and taste, and, like the hero of the sonnets, was ' as fair in knowledge as in hue.' The open- ing sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that ' his fair house ' may not fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer like Southampton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male representative of his family. The sonnetteer's exclamation, ' You had a father, let your son say so,' had pertinence to Southampton at any period between his father's death in his boyhood and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598. To no other peer of the day are the words exactly applicable. The ' lascivious comment ' on his ' wanton sport ' which pursues the young friend through the sonnets, and is so adroitly contrived as to add point to the picture of his fascinating youth and beauty, obviously associates itself with the reputation for sensual indulgence that Southampton acquired at Court and was, according to Nash, a theme of frequent comment among men of letters. There is no force in the objection that the young man His youth- of the sonnets of ' friendship ' must have been another than fulness. Southampton because the terms in which he is often addressed imply extreme youth. In 1594, a date to which I refer most of the sonnets, Southampton was barely twenty- one, and the young man had obviously reached manhood. In Sonnet civ. Shakespeare notes that the first meeting between him and his friend took place three years before that poem was written, so that, if the words are to be taken F 2 68 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The evi- dence of portraits. Sonnet cvii., the last of the series. literally, the poet may have at times embodied reminiscences of Southampton when he was only seventeen or eighteen. But Shakespeare, already worn in worldly experience, passed his thirtieth birthday in 1594, and he probably tended, when on the threshold of middle life, to exaggerate the youthfulness of his noble admirer almost ten years his junior, who even later impressed his acquaintances by his boyish appearance and disposition. But the most striking evidence of the identity of the youth of the sonnets of ' friendship ' with Southampton is found in the close resemblance between the youth's ' fair ' eyes and complexion and his 'golden tresses,' as described in the poet's verse, and the chief characteristics of the extant pictures of Southampton as a young man. Many times does Shakespeare tell us that the youth is fair in complexion, and that his eyes are fair. In Sonnet Ixviii. he points to his young friend's face as a map of what beauty was ' without all ornament, itself and true ' — before fashion sanctioned the use of artificial 'golden tresses' — and he obviously implies that an unusual wealth of locks fell about the young man's neck. Shakespeare's many references to his youth's 'painted counterfeit' (xvi., xxiv., xlvii., Ixvii.) suggest, too, that his hero often sat for his portrait. Southampton's countenance survives in probably more canvases than that of any of his contemporaries. At least fifteen extant portraits have been identified on good authority — ten paintings, three miniatures (two by Peter Oliver and one by Isaac Oliver), and two contemporary prints. Most of these, it is true, portray their subject in middle age, when the roses of youth had faded, and they contribute nothing to the present argument. But the two portraits that are now at Welbeck, the property of the Duke of Portland, give all the in- formation that can be desired of Southampton's aspect ' in his youthful morn.' One of these pictures represents the Earl at twenty-one, and the other at twenty- five or twenty-six. From either of the two Welbeck portraits which depict Southampton as a young man with fair eyes and complexion and with auburn hair falling below his shoulder, might Shakespeare have directly drawn his picture of the youth in the ' Sonnets.' A few only of the sonnets that Shakespeare addressed to the youth can be allotted to a date subsequent to 1594 ; only two bear on the surface signs of a later composition. PATRONAGE OF EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 69 In Sonnet Ixx. the poet no longer credits his hero with juvenile wantonness, but with a 'pure, unstained prime,' which has ' passed by the ambush of young days.' Sonnet cvii., apparently the last of the series, was penned almost a decade after the mass of its companions, for it makes references that cannot be mistaken to three events that took place in 1603 — to Queen Elizabeth's death, to the accession of James I, and to the release from prison of the Earl of Southampton, who had been convicted in 1601 of com- plicity in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. The first two events are thus described : The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured And the sad augurs mock their own presage ; Incertainties now crown themselves assured, And peace proclaims olives of endless age. It is in almost identical phrase that every pen in the Allusion to spring of 1603 was felicitating the nation on the unexpected Elizabeth's turn of events, by which Elizabeth's crown had passed, ^^' ' without civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus the revolu- tion that had been foretold as the inevitable consequence of Elizabeth's demise was happily averted. Cynthia (i.e. the moon) was the Queen's recognised poetic appellation. It is thus that she figures in the verse of Barnfield, Spenser, Fulke Greville, and Ralegh, and her elegists, following the same fashion, invariably likened her death to the ' eclipse ' of a heavenly body. At the same time James was constantly said to have entered on his inheritance ' not with an olive branch in his hand, but with a whole forest of olives round about him, for he brought not peace to this kingdom alone ' but to all Europe. ' The drops of this most balmy time,' in this same Allusions sonnet, cvii., is an echo of another current strain of fancy. '° South- James came to England in a springtide of rarely rivalled ^""P'"" ^ clemency, which was reckoned of the happiest augury. One frg^ source of grief alone was acknowledged : Southampton was prison. stJU a prisoner in the Tower, ' supposed ' (in Shakespeare's language) ' as forfeit to a confined doom.' The wish for his release was fulfilled quickly. On April 10, 1603, his prison gates were opened by ' a warrant from the king.'. So boun- tiful a beginning of the new era, wrote John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton two days later, ' raised all men's spirits . . . 10 SHAKESPEAR&S LIFE AND IVORH: and the very poets with their idle pamphlets promised them- selves ' great things. Samuel Daniel and John Davies celebrated Southampton's release in buoyant verse. It is im- probable that Shakespeare remained silent. ' My love looks fresh,' he wrote in the concluding lines of this Sonnet cvii., and he finally repeated the conventional promise that he had so often made before, that his friend should live in his ' poor rhyme,' ' when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.' It is impossible to resist the inference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron on the close of his days of tribulation. Shakespeare's genius had then won for him a public reputa- tion that rendered him independent of any private patron's favour, and he made no further reference in his writings to the patronage that Southampton had extended to him in earlier years. But the terms in which he greeted his former protector for the last time in verse justify the belief that, during his remaining thirteen years of life, the poet cultivated friendly relations with the Earl of Southampton, and was mindful to the last of the encouragement that the young peer offered him while he was still on the threshold of the temple of fame. Circula- tion of the ' Sonnets ' in manu- script. In accordance with a custom that was not uncommon, Shakespeare did not publish his sonnets ; he circulated them in manuscript. But their reputation grew, and public interest was aroused in them in spite of his unreadiness to give them publicity. A Une from one of them : Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds (xciv. 14), Their piratical publica- tion in 1609. was quoted in the play of ' Edward III,' which was probably written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, enthusiastically commends Shakespeare's ' sugred sonnets among his private friends,' and mentions them in close conjunction with his two narrative poems. William Jaggard piratically inserted in 1599 two of the most mature of the series (Nos. cxxxviii. and cxliv.) in his ' Passionate Pilgrim.' At length, in 1609, the sonnets were surreptitiously sent to press. Thomas Thorpe, the moving spirit in the design of their publication, was a camp-follower of the regular publishing army. He was professionally engaged in procuring for publication literary works which had been PUBLICATION OF THE SONNETS 71 widely disseminated in written copies, and had thus passed beyond their authors' control ; for the law then recognised no natural right in an author to the creations of his brain, and the full owner of a manuscript copy of any literary composition was "entitled to reproduce it, or to treat it as he pleased, without reference to the author's wishes. On May 20, 1609, Thorpe obtaiped a license for the publication of ' Shakespeares bonnets, ' and this tradesmanlike form of title figured not only on the 'Stationers' Company's Registers,' but on the title-page. 'Sonnets by William Shakespeare ' was the form of title natural to a book that was issued by a living author under strictly regular condi- tions. Thorpe employed George Eld to print the manu- script, and two booksellers, William Aspley and John Wright, to distribute the volume to the public. On half the edition Aspley's name figured as that of the seller, and on the other half that of Wright. The book was issued in June, and the owner of the ' copy ' left the public under no mis- apprehension as to his share in the production by printing above his initials a dedicatory preface from his own pen. The appearance in an Elizabethan or Jacobean book of a dedicatiQn from the publisher's (instead of from the author's) pen was, unless the substitution was specifically accounted for on other grounds, an accepted sign that the author had no hand in the pubUcation. Except in the case of his two narrative poems, which were published in 1593 and 1594 respectively, Shakespeare made no effort to publish any of his works, and uncomplainingly submitted to wholesale piracies of his plays and to the ascription to him of books by other hands. Such practices were encouraged by his passive indifference and the contemporary condition of the law of copyright. He cannot be credited with any respon- sibility for the publication of Thorpe's collection of his sonnets in 1609. With characteristic insolence Thorpe "A Lover's took the added liberty of appending a previously unprinted Com- ^ poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of ' Lu- P'*''^'- crece ' ) entitled ' A Lover's Complaint,' in which a girl laments her betrayal by a deceitful youth. The poem, in a gentle Spenserian vein, has no connection with the ' Sonnets.' If, as is possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must have been written in very early days. A misunderstanding respecting Thorpe's dedicatory pre- face and his part in the publication has led many critics 72 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK into a serious misinterpretation of Shakespeare's poems. Thorpe's dedication ran thus : TO . THE . ONUE . BEGETTER . OF . THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . Mr. W. H. ALL . HAPPINESSE . AND . THAT . ETERNITIE , PROMISED . BY . OUR . EVER-LIVING . POET . WISHETH . THE . WELL-WISHING . ADVENTURER . IN . SETTING . FORTH . T. T. The words are fantastically arranged. In ordinary gramma- tical order they would run : ' The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth [i.e. the publisher], T[homas] T[horpe] wisheth Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet.' Thomas Thorpe used throughout the bombastic language which '^'d"'^M ^^^ habitual to him. He advertised Shakespeare as ' our W. H.' ever-living poet.' As the chief promoter of the undertaking, he called himself ' the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' and in resonant phrase designated as the patron of the venture, ' Mr. W. H.,' who was in all probability only a partner in the speculation. In the conventional dedicatory formula of the day — the precise words may be read in scores of contemporary dedications — he ' wisheth ' ' Mr. W. H.' ' all happiness ' and ' eternity,' such eternity as Shakespeare in the text of the sonnets conventionally foretold for his own verse. When Thorpe was organising under similar circum- stances the issue of Marlowe's ' First Book of Lucan ' in 1600, he sought the patronage of Edward Blount, a friend in the trade. ' W. H.' was doubtless in a like position. He is best identified with a stationer's assistant, William Hall, who was professionally engaged, like Thorpe, in procuring 'copy.' In 1606 Hall, who commonly conducted his operations under cover of the familiar initials 'W. H.,' won a con- spicuous success of the predatory kind. In that year ' W. H.' announced that he had procured a neglected manuscript poem — ' A Foure-fould Meditation ' — by the Jesuit Robert Southwell who had been executed in 1595, and he published PUBLICATION OF THE SONNETS 73 it with a dedication (signed 'W. H.') vaunting his good fortune in meeting with such treasure- trove. When Thorpe dubbed ' Mr. W. H.,' with characteristic magniloquence, ' the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets,' he used ' be- getter ' in the sense of ' getter,' ' obtainer,' or 'procurer,' which was not uncommon in Elizabethan English, and he merely indicated in his Pistol-like dialect that ' Mr. W. H.' was a friendly member of the pirate-publisher fraternity who by getting into his hands, or procuring, a manuscript copy of Shakespeare's sonnets supplied the ' onlie ' opportunity for their surreptitious issue. In accordance with custom, Thorpe gave Hall's initials only, because he was an intimate associate who was known by those initials to their common circle of friends. Hall was not a man of sufficiently wide public reputation to render it probable that the printing of his full name would excite additional interest in the book or attract buyers. The common assumption that Thorpe in this boastful preface was covertly addressing, under the initials ' Mr. W. H.,' a young nobleman, to whom the sonnets were originally addressed by Shakespeare, ignores the elementary prin- ciples of publishing transactions of the day, and especially of those of the type to which Thorpe's efforts were confined. There was nothing mysterious or fantastic, although from a modern point of view there was much that lacked principle, in Thorpe's methods of business. His choice of patron for this, like all his volumes, was dictated solely by his mercantile interests. He was under no inducement and in no position to take into consideration the affairs of Shake- speare's private life. Shakespeare, through all but the earliest stages of his career, belonged socially to a world that was cut off by impassable barriers from that in which Thorpe pursued his undignified calling. It was wholly outside Thorpe's aims in life to seek to mystify his customers by investing a dedication with any cryptic significance. No peer of the day, moreover, bore a name which could be represented by the initials ' Mr. W. H.' Shakespeare was never on terms of intimacy (although the contrary has often been recklessly assumed) with William, third Earl of Pembroke, when a youth. Seven years after Shakespeare's death, the first collected edition of his plays was jointly dedicated, in accordance with a fashion very widely followed at the moment by authors and publishers, to the Earl of 74 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, and to his brother the Earl of Montgomery. The words of the dedication — which dubs Shakespeare the patrons' ' servant ' — confute the theory of the existence of close relations in early life between Shakespeare and Pembroke ; they merely affirm that the repeated performances of Shakespeare's plays at Court in James I's reign had drawn to him and to his work the favourable attention of Pembroke and his brother (see p. 1 68). But were complete proofs of Shakespeare's acquaintanceship with Pembroke forthcoming, they would throw no light on Thorpe's 'Mr. W. H.' The Earl of Pembroke was, from his birth to the date of his succession to the earldom in 1601, known by the courtesy title of Lord Herbert and by no other name, and he could not have been designated at any period of his life by the symbols ' Mr. W. H.' In 1609 Pembroke was a high officer of state, and numerous books were dedicated to him in all the splendour of his many titles. Star-Chamber penalties would have been exacted of any publisher or author who denied him in print his titular distinctions. Thorpe had occasion to dedicate two books to the earl in later years, and he there showed not merely that he was fully acquainted with the compulsory etiquette, but that his sycophantic temperament rendered him only eager to improve on the conventional formulas of servility. Laws of evidence compel the conclu- sion that no thought of the Earl of Pembroke presented itself either to Shakespeare when writing his sonnets, or to Thorpe when preparing them for publication. 5'S IX THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER The processes of construction which are discernible in General Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' are thus seen to be identical with conclu- those that are discernible in the rest of his literary work, sions re- They present one more proof of his punctilious regard for jhr'son- the demands of public taste, and of his marvellous genius ^gfj > and skill in adapting and transmuting for his own purposes the labours of other workers in the field that for the moment engaged his attention. Most of Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' were produced in 1594 under the incitement of that freakish rage for sonnetteering which, taking its rise in Italy and sweeping over France on its way to England, absorbed for some half-dozen years in this country a greater volume of literary energy than has been applied to sonnetteering within the same space of time here or elsewhere before or since. The thousands of sonnets that were circulated in England between 1591 and 1597 were of every literary quality, from sublimity to inanity, and they illustrated in form and topic every known phase of sonnetteering activity. Shakespeare's collection, which was put together at haphazard and published surreptitiously many years after the poems were written, was a medley, at times reaching heights of literary excellence that none other scaled, but as a whole reflecting the varied features of the sonnetteering vogue. Apostro- phes to metaphysical abstractions, vivid picturings of the beauties of nature, adulation of a patron, and vehement denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind — all appear as frequently in contemporary collections of sonnets as in Shakespeare's. He borrowed very many of his compe- titors' words and thoughts, but he so fused them with his fancy as often to transfigure them. Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experience very rarely inspired the Eliza- bethan sonnet, and Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' proved no ex- ception to the rule. A personal note may have escaped him 76 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK involuntarily in the sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense of melancholy and self-remorse, but his dramatic instinct never slept, and there is no positive proof that he is doing more even in those sonnets than produce dramatically the illusion of a personal confession. Only in one scattered series of six sonnets, where he introduced a topic, unknown to other sonnetteers, of a lover's supersession by his friend in a mistress's graces, does he seem to show independence of his comrades and draw directly on an incident in his own life, but even there the emotion may be wanting in seriousness. The sole biographical inference deducible from the ' Sonnets ' is that at one time in his career Shakespeare strained all his energies, after the fashion habitual to men of letters of the day, in an endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patron- age of a young man of rank. Exterpal evidence agrees with internal evidence in identifying the belauded patron with the Earl of Southampton. Thus the real value of Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' to the poet's biographer is the corroboration they offer of the ancient tradition that the Earl of Southampton, to whom his two narrative poems were openly dedicated, gave Shakespeare at an early period of his literary career help and encouragement, which entitles him to a place in the poet's biography resembling that filled by the Duke Alfonso d'Este in the biography of Ariosto, or like that filled by Margaret, duchess of Savoy, in the biography of Ronsard. But all the while that Shakespeare, in his ' Sonnets,' was fancifully assuring his patron [How] to no other pass my verses tend Than of your graces and your gifts to tell, his dramatic work was steadily advancing. His ' verses ' were in fact tending in many other and very different directions. ' Mid- To the winter season of 1595 probably belongs ' Midsummer summer Night's Dream,' although no edition appeared before 1600 ; Night's t]^gjj {^Q ^gfg published, the earlier by Thomas Fisher, the later by James Roberts. Roberts's quarto, which corrects some misprints in the first version, was reprinted in the First Folio. The comedy may well have been written to celebrate a marriage in court circles— perhaps the marriage of the universal patroness of poets, I.ucy Harington, to Edward Russell, third earl of Bedford, on December 12, 1594 ; or that of William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby, at Greenwich, THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 77 on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate compliment to the Queen, 'a fair vestal throned by the west' (n. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledgment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful description (11. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw the little western flower called 'Love-in- idleness ' that he bids Puck fetch for him, has been inter- preted as a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants with which the Earl of I^eicester entertained Queen Eliza- beth on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575. The whole play is in the airiest and most graceful vein of comedy. Hints for the story can be traced to a variety of sources — to Chaucer's 'Knight's Tale,' to Plutarch's 'Life of Theseus,' to Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' (bk. iv.), and to the story of Oberon, the fairy-king, in the French mediaeval romance of ' Huon of Bordeaux,' of which an English translation by Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influence of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in which both mortals and immortals indulge. In the humorous presenta- tion of the play of ' Pyramus and Thisbe ' by the ' rude mechanicals' of Athens, Shakespeare improved upon a theme which he had already employed in ' Love's Labour's Lost.' But the final scheme of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' is of the author's freshest invention, and by endow- ing — practically for the first time in literature — the phantoms of the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have conquered a new realm for art. More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy of ' All's ' All's Well that Ends Well,' which may be tentatively assigned Y*^^ to 1595. Meres, writing three years later, attributed to ^g'!^"*^^ Shakespeare a piece called ' Love's Labour's Won.' This title, which is not otherwise known, may well be applied to ' All's Well.' ' The Taming of The Shrew,' which has also been identified with ' Love's Labour's Won,' has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot of 'All's Well,' like that of ' Romeo and Juliet,' was accessible in Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure' (No. xxxviii.) The original .source is Boccaccio's ' Decamerone ' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shakespeare, after his wont, grafted on the touching story of Helena's love for the unworthy Bertram the comic characters of the braggart ParoUes, the pompous Lafeu, and a clown (Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another original creation. 78 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK ' Taming of The Shrew.' Stratford allusions in the Induction. Bertram's mother, Countess of Roussillon, is a charming portrait of old age. In frequency of rhyme and other metrical characteristics the piece closely resembles ' The Two Gentlemen,' but the characterisation betrays far greater power, and there are fewer conceits or crudities of style. The pathetic element predominates. The heroine Helena, whose ' pangs of despised love ' are expressed with touching tenderness, ranks, despite her defiance of the dictates of maidenly modesty, with the greatest of Shake- speare's female creations. ' The Taming of The Shrew '—which, like ' All's Well,' was first printed in the folio — was probably composed soon after the completion of that solemn comedy. It is a revision of an old play on lines somewhat differing from those which Shakespeare had followed previously. From ' The Taming of A Shrew,' a comedy first published in 1594, Shakespeare drew the Induction and the scenes in which the hero Petruchio conquers Catherine the Shrew. He first infused into them the genuine spirit of comedy. But while following the old play in its general outlines, Shakespeare's revised version added an entirely new underplot — the story of Bianca and her lovers, which owes something to the ' Supposes ' of George Gascoigne, an adaptation of Ariosto's comedy called ' I Suppositi.' Evidence of style — the liberal introduction of tags of Latin and the exceptional beat of the doggerel — makes it difficult to allot the Bianca scenes to Shakespeare ; those scenes were probably due to a coadjutor. The Induction to ' The Taming of The Shrew ' has a direct bearing on Shakespeare's biography, for the poet admits into it a number of literal references to Stratford and his native county which are of his own invention, and do not figure in the old play. Such personalities are rare in Shakespeare's plays, and can only be paralleled in two of slightly later date — the 'Second Part of Henry IV' and the ' Merry Wives of Windsor.' All these local allusions may well be attributed to such a renewal of Shakespeare's personal relations with the town as is indicated by external facts in hi3 history of the same period (see p. 93). In the Induction to 'The Taming of The Shrew,' the tinker, Christopher Sly, describes himself as 'Old Sly's son of Burton Heath.' Burton Heath is Barton-on-the-Heath, the home of Shakespeare's aunt, Edmund Lambert's wife, and of her sons. The tinker in like vein confesses THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 79 that he has run up a score with Marian Hacket, the fat ale- wife of Wincot. The references to Wincot and the Rackets are singularly precise. The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely Hacket, and the alehouse is described in the stage direction as ' on a heath.' Wincot was the familiar designation of three small Wincot. Warwickshire villages, and a good claim has been set up on behalf of each to be the scene of Sly's drunken exploits. There is a very small hamlet named Wincot within. four miles of Stratford now consisting of a -single farmhouse which was once an Elizabethan mansion ; it is situated on what was doubtless in Shakespeare's day, before the land there was enclosed, an open heath. This Wincot forms part of the parish of Quinton, where, according to the parochial registers, a Hacket family resided in Shakespeare's day. On November 21, 1591, 'Sara Hacket, the daughter of Robert Hacket,' was baptised in Quinton church. Yet by Warwickshire contemporaries the Wincot of the 'Taming of The Shrew' was unhesitatingly identified with Wilne- cote, near Tamworth, on the Staffordshire border of War- wickshire, at some distance from Stratford. That village, whose name was pronounced ' Wincot,' was celebrated for its ale in the seventeenth century, a distinction which is not shown by contemporary evidence to have belonged to any place of like name. The Warwickshire poet, Sir Aston Cokain, within Half a century of the production of Shake- speare's ' Taming of The Shrew,' addressed to ' Mr. Clement Fisher of Wincott ' (a well-known resident of Wilnecote) verses which begin : Shakspeare your Wincot ale hath much renowned, That fox'd a Beggar so (by chance was found Sleeping) that there needed not many a word To make him to believe he was a Lord. In the succeeding lines the writer promises to visit ' Wincot ' (i.e. Wilnecote) to drink Such ale as Shakspeare fancies Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances. It is therefore probable that Shakespeare consciously invested the home of Kit Sly and of Kit's hostess with characteristics of Wilnecote as well as of the hamlet near Stratford. 8o SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Wilmcote, the native place of Shakespeare's mother, is also said to have been popularly pronounced ' Wincot.' A tradition which was first recorded by Capell as late as 1780 in his notes to ' The Taming of The Shrew ' is to the effect that Shakespeare often visited an inn at ' Wincot ' to enjoy the society of a 'fool who belonged to a neighbouring mill,' and the Wincot of this story is, we are told, locally associated with the village of Wilmcote. But the links that connect Shakespeare's tinker with Wilmcote are far slighter than those which connect him with Wincot and Wilnecote. • The mention of Kit Sly's tavern comrades — Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece, And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernell — was in all likelihood a reminiscencse of contemporary War- wickshire life as literal as the name of the hamlet where the drunkard dwelt. There was a genuine Stephen Sly who was in the dramatist's day a self-assertive citizen of Stratford ; and ' Greece,' whence ' old John Naps ' derived his cogno- men, is an obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet by Winchcomb in Gloucestershire, not far removed from Shakespeare's native town. According to local tradition Shakespeare was acquainted with Greet, Winchcomb, and all the villages in the immediate neighbourhood, and he is still credited with the authorship of the local jingle which enumerates the chief hamlets and points of interest in the district. The lines run : Dirty Gretton, dingy Greet, Beggarly Winchcomb, Sudely sweet ; Hartshorn and Wittington Bell, Andoversford and Merry Frog Mill. 'Henry In 1597 Shakespeare turned once more to English ^^■' history. He studied Holinshed's ' Chronicle ' anew, together with a valueless but very popular drama entitled 'The Famous Victories of Henry V,' which was repeatedly acted between 1588 and 1595, and being licensed for publication in 1594, was published in 1598, ' Out of such materials Shakespeare worked up with splendid energy two plays on the reign of Henry IV. They form one continuous whole, but are known respectively as parts i. and ii. of ' Henry IV.' The ' First Part of Henry IV ' was on February 25, 1598, licensed for publication to the publisher Andrew Wise, who TttM DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 8i had already fathered Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III. It was printed soon afterwards by Peter Short, with the title ' The History of Henrie the Fovrth ; With the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstalffe.' The popularity of the piece led to frequent reissues of this quarto edition — in 1599, 1604, 1608, and 1613. The 'Second Part of Henry IV,' which was licensed for publication much later — on August 23, 1600 — along with 'Much Ado about Nothing,' was printed by Valentine Sims for Andrew Wise, now in partnership with William Aspley ; it bore the title ' The Second part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henrie the fift. With the humours of Sir John Falstafife, and swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare.' Smaller success attended the venture than in the case of the First Part, and no reissue was called for in Shakespeare's lifetime. The ' Second Part of Henry IV ' is almost as rich as the Induction to ' The Taming of The Shrew ' in direct refer- ences to persons and districts familiar to Shakespeare. Two amusing scenes pass at the house of Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, a county which touched the boundaries of Stratford (iii. ii and v. i.) When, in the second of these scenes, the justice's factotum, Davy, asked his master ' to countenance William Visor of Woncot against Clement Perkes of the Hill,' the local references are unmistakable. Woodmancote, where the family of Visor or Vizard has flourished since the sixteenth century, is still pronounced Woncot. (The quarto of 1600 reads Woncote ; all the folios read Woncot. Yet Malone in the Variorum of 1803 introduced the new and unwarranted reading of Wincot, which has been unwisely adopted by succeeding editors.) Adjoining Woodmancote stands Stinchcombe Hill (still familiarly known to natives as ' The Hill '), which was in the sixteenth century the home of the family of Perkes. Very precise, too, are the allusions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, which were easily accessible from Stratford. 'Will Squele, a Cotswold man,' is noticed as one of Shallow's friends in youth (iii. ii. 23) ; and when Shallow's servant Davy receives his master's instructions to sow ' the headland G 82 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK ' with red wheat,' in the early autumn, there is an obvious reference to the custom almost peculiar to the Cotswolds of sowing ' red lammas ' wheat at an unusually early season of the agricultural year. The kingly hero of the two plays of ' Henry IV ' had figured as a spirited young man in ' Richard II ; ' he was now represented as weighed down by care and age. With him are contrasted (in part i.) his impetuous and ambitious Subject Hotspur and (in both parts) his son and heir Prince Hal, whose boisterous disposition drives him from Court to seek adventures among the haunters of taverns. Hotspur is a vivid and fascinating portrait of a hot-headed soldier, courageous to' the point of rashness, and sacrificing his life to his impetuous sense of honour. Prince Hal, despite his vagaries, is endowed by the dramatist with far more self-control and common sense. Falstaff. On the first, as on every subsequent, production of ' Henry IV ' the main public interest was concentrated neither on the King, nor on his son, nor on Hotspur, but on the chief of Prince Hal's riotous companions. At the outset the propriety of that great creation was questioned on a political or historical ground of doubtful relevance. Shakespeare in both parts of ' Henry IV ' originally named the chief of the prince's associates after Sir John Oldcastle, a character in the old play of 'The Famous Victories of Henry V.' But Henry Brooke, eighth lord Cobham, who succeeded to the title early in 1597, and claimed descent from the historical Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard leader, raised objection ; and when the first part of the play was published with the acting-company's authority in 1598, Shakespeare bestowed on Prince Hal's tun-bellied follower the new and deathless name of Falstaff. The trustworthy edition of the second part of ' Henry IV ' also appeared with FalstafPs name substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There the epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any characteristic in common with the martyr Oldcastle : ' Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' But the substitution of the name ' Falstaff' did not pass without protest. It hazily recalled Sir John Fastolf, an historical warrior of repute and wealth of the fifteenth century who had already figured in ' Henry VI,' and was owner at one time of the Boar's Head Tavern in Southwark. An Oxford scholar. Dr. Richard James, writing about 1625 protested that Shakespeare, after offending TttE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATiC POWER 83 Sir John Oldcastle's descendants by giving his ' buffoon ' the name of that resolute martyr, ' was put to make an ignorant shift of abusing Sir John Fastolf, a man not inferior in vertue, though not so famous in piety as the other.' George Daniel of Beswick, the Cavalier poet, similarly complained in 1647 of the ill use to which Shakespeare had put Fastolf's name in order to escape the imputation of vilifying the Lollard leader. Fuller in his ' Worthies,' first published in 1662, while expressing satis- faction that Shakespeare had ' put out ' of the play Sir John Oldcastle, was eloquent in his avowal of regret that ' Sir John Fastolf was 'put in,' on the ground that it was making overbold with a great warrior's memory to make him a ' Thrasonical puff and emblem of mock-valour.' The offending introduction and withdrawal of Oldcastle's name left a curious mark on literary history. Humbler dramatists (Munday, Wilson, Drayton, and Hathaway), seeking to profit by the attention drawn by Shakespeare to the historical Oldcastle, produced a poor dramatic version of Oldcastle's genuine history. They pretended to vindi- cate the Lollard's memory from the slur that Shakespeare's identification of him with his fat knight had cast upon it. In the prologue to the play of 'Sir John Oldcastle' (1600) appear the lines : It is no pampgred glutton we present, Nor aged councellor to youthful sinne ; But one whose vertue shone above the rest, A vahant martyr and a vertuous Peere. Nevertheless of two editions of ' Oldcastle ' published in 1600, one printed for T[homas] P[avier] was impudently described on the title-page as by Shakespeare. But it is not the historical traditions which are con- nected with Falstaff that give him his perennial attraction. It is the personality that owes nothing to history with which Shakespeare's imaginative power clothed him. The knight's unfettered indulgence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, and his love of his own ease are purged of offence by his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from the highest manifestations of humour. The Elizabethan public, despite the protests of historical critics, recognised the triumphant success of the effort, and many of FalstafFs §4 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WOkk telling phrases, with the names of his foils, Justice Shallow and Silence, at once took root in popular speech. Shake- speare's purely comic power culminated in Falstaff; he may be claimed as the most humorous figure in literature. ' Merry In all probability ' The Merry Wives of Windsor,' a Wives of comedy inclining to farce, and unqualified by any pathetic Windsor, interest, followed close upon ' Henry IV.' In the epilogue to the ' Second Part of Henry IV ' Shakespeare had written : ' If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it . . . where for anything I know Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions.' Rowe asserts that ' Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of " Henry IV " that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love.' Dennis, in the dedication of 'The Comical Gallant' (1702), noted that the ' Merry Wives ' was written at the Queen's ' command and by her direction ; and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased with the representation.' In his ' Letters' (i 721, p. 232) Dennis reduces the period of composition to ten days — ' a pro- digious thing,' added Gildon, ' where all is so well contrived and carried on without the least confusion.' The localisa- tion of the scene at Windsor, and the complimentary references to Windsor Castle, corroborate the tradition that the comedy was prepared to meet a royal command. A license for the publication of the play was granted by the Stationers' Company to John Busby of the Crane in St. Paul's Churchyard on January 18, 1601-2. An imperfect draft was printed in 1602 by Thomas Creede of Thames Street, and was published at the Fleur de Luce in St. Paul's Churchyard by Arthur Johnson, who took the venture over from Busby j but the foho of 1623 first supplied a complete version of the ' Merry Wives.' The plot was probably sug- gested by an Italian novel. A tale from Straparola's ' Notti ' (iv. 4), of which an adaptatioii figured in the miscellany of novels called Tarleton's ' Newes out of Purgatorie ' (1590) ; another Italian tale from the ' Pecorone ' of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino (i. 2) ; and a third romance, the Fishwife's tale of Brainford in the collection of stories called ' Westward for Smelts,' which is said by both Malone and Steevens to have THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 85 been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620 is now known, — these three tales supply incidents distantly resembling episodes in the play. Nowhere has Shakespeare so vividly reflected the bluff temper of contemporary middle-class society. The presentment of the buoyant domestic life of an Elizabethan country town bears distinct impress of Shakespeare's own experience. Again, there are literal references to the neighbourhood of Stratford. Justice Shallow, whose coat-of-arms is described as con- sisting of ' luces,' is thereby openly identified with Shake- speare's early foe, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. When Shakespeare makes Master Slender repeat the report that Master Page's fallow greyhound was 'outrun on Cotsall \i.e. Cotswold] ' (i. i. 93), he testifies to his interest in the coursing matches for which the Cotswold district was famed. The spirited character of Prince Hal was peculiarly ' Henry V.' congenial to its creator, and in ' Henry V ' Shakespeare, during 1598, brought his career to its zenith. The play was performed early in 1599, probably in the newly built Globe Theatre. A very imperfect draft was published in 1600 jointly by Thomas Millington of Cornhill and John Busby of St. Paul's Churchyard ; it was printed, as in the case of the imperfect draft of the ' Merry Wives,' by Thomas Creede of Thames Street. This inadequate edition of ' Henry V,' which was ordered by the Stationers' Company 'to be stayed' on August 4, 1600, was twice reissued — in 1602 and 1608 — before a complete version was supplied in the First Folio of 1623. The dramatic interest of ' Henry V ' is slender. There is abundance of comic element, but death has removed Falstaff, whose last moments are described with the simple pathos that comes of a matchless art, and, though FalstafFs companions survive, they are thin shadows of his substantial figure. New comic characters are introduced in the persons of three soldiers respectively of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish nationality, whose racial traits are contrasted with telling effect. The irascible Irishman, Captain MacMorris, is the only representative of his nation who figures in the long list of Shakespeare's dramatis personce. The scene in which the pedantic but patriotic Welshman, Fluellen, avenges the sneers of the braggart Pistol at his nation's emblem, by forcing him to eat the leek, overflows with vivacious humour. The piece in its main currerit is an heroic biography ; it presents a series 86 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK of loosely connected episodes in which the hero's manliness is displayed as soldier, ruler, and lover. The king's career reached its climax in the victory of the English at Agincourt, which powerfully appealed to patriotic sentiment. Besides the ' Famous Victories of Henry V,' there was another lost piece on that stirring subject, which Henslowe produced for the first time on November 28, 1595. ' Henry V may be regarded as Shakespeare's final experiment in the dramatisa- tion of EngUsh history, and it artistically rounds off the series of his ' histories ' which form collectively a kind of national epic. For ' Henry VIH,' which was produced very late in his career, he was only in part responsible, and that ' history ' consequently belongs to a different category. Essex A glimpse of autobiography may be discerned in the ^"k I'r ^ direct mention by Shakespeare in ' Henry V ' of an exciting S 1601" episode in current history. In the prologue to act v. Shakespeare foretold for Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, the close friend of his patron Southampton, an enthusiastic reception by the people of London when he should come home after ' broaching ' rebellion in Ireland. Were now the general of our gracious empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming. Bringing rebellion broached on his sword. How many would the peaceful city quit To welcome him ! (Act v. Chorus, 11. 30-4. ) Essex had set out on his disastrous mission as the would- be pacificator of Ireland on March 27, 1599. The fact that Southampton went with him probably accounts for Shake- speare's avowal of sympathy. But Essex's effort failed. He was charged, soon after ' Henry V ' was produced, with treasonable neglect of duty, and he sought in 1601, again with the support of Southampton, to recover his position by stirring up rebellion in London. Then Shakespeare's reference to Essex's popularity with Londoners bore perilous fruit. The friends of the rebel leaders sought the drama- tist's countenance. They paid 40^. to Augustine Phillips, a close friend of Shakespeare and a leading member of his company, to induce him to revive at the Globe Theatre ' Richard II ' (beyond doubt Shakespeare's play), in the hope that its scene of the killing of a king might encourage a popular outbreak. Phillips subsequently deposed that he prudently told the conspirators who bespoke the piece that ' that play of Kyng Richard ' was ' so old and so long out of use as that they THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 87 should have small or no company at it.' None the less the performance took place on Saturday (February 7, 1601), the day preceding that fixed by Essex for the rising. The Queen, in a later conversation with William Lambarde (on August 4, 1601), complained that 'this tragedie' of ' Richard II,' which she had always viewed with suspicion, was played at the period with seditious intent ' forty times in open streets and houses.' At the trial of Essex and his friends, Phillips gave evidence of the circumstances under which thC' tragedy was revived at the Globe Theatre. Essex was executed, and Southampton was imprisoned until the Queen's death. No proceedings were taken against the players, but Shakespeare wisely abstained, for the time, from any public reference to the fate either of Essex or of his patron Southampton. Such incidents served to accentuate Shakespeare's Shake- growing reputation. For several years his genius as drama- speare's tist and poet had been acknowledged by critics and play- P.°P"'*- goers alike, and his social and professional position had influence, become considerable. Inside the theatre his influence was supreme. When, in 1598, the manager of the company rejected Ben Jonson's first comedy — his ' Every ^Man in his Humour' — Shakespeare intervened, according to a credible tradition (reported by Rowe but denounced by Gifford), and procured a reversal of the decision in the interest of the unknown dramatist, who was his junior by nine years. He took a part when the piece was performed. Jonson was of a difficult and jealous temper, and subse- quently he gave vent to an occasional expression of scorn at Shakespeare's expense, but, despite passing manifestations of his unconquerable surliness, there can be no doubt that Jonson cherished genuine esteem and affection for Shake- speare till death. Within a very few years of Shakespeare's death Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, an industrious collector of anecdotes, put into writing an anecdote for which he made Dr. Donne responsible, attesting the amicable relations that habitually subsisted between Shakespeare and Jonson. ' Shakespeare,' ran the story, ' was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and asked him why he was so melancholy. " No, faith, Ben," says he, "not I, but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god- 88 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK child, and I have resolv'd at last." " I pr'ythee, what ? " sayes he. " I' faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them." ' [Latten is a mixed metal resembling brass.) The The creator of Falstaff could have been no stranger to Mermaid tavern life, and he doubtless took part with zest in the meetings, convivialities of men of letters. Tradition reports that Shakespeare joined, at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, those meetings of Jonson and his associates which Beau- mont described in his poetical ' Letter ' to Jonson : What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ? heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life. ' Many were the wit-combats,' wrote Fuller of Shake- speare in his 'Worthies' (1662), 'betwixt him and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war ; Master Jonson (Uke the former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances. Shakespear, with the English man-of- war, lesser in bulk, but hghter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention.' Of the many testimonies paid to Shakespeare's literary reputation at this period of his career, the most striking was Meres's that of Francis Meres. Meres was a learned graduate of s"l°gyi Cambridge University, a divine and schoolmaster, who iS9o- brought out in 1598 a collection of apophthegms on morals, religion, and literature which he entitled ' Palladis Tamia.' In the book he interpolated ' A comparative discourse of our Enghsh poets with the Greek, Laaracter. of dealing which argues his honesty.' In 1601 — when near the zenith of his fame — he was apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare ' in the play of ' The Return from Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called ' Daiphantus ' bestowed on him the epithet ' friendly.' After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him : ' I 148 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WOM loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free nature.' John Webster, the dramatist, made vague reference in the address before his ' White Divel ' in 1612 to ' the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake- speare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.' No other contem- porary left on record any definite impression of Shake- speare's personal character, and the ' Sonnets,' which alone of his literary work can be held to throw any illumination on a personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one who was willing to conform to all the conventional methods in vogue for strengthening the bonds between a poet and a great patron. His literary practices and aims were those of contemporary men of letters, and the difference in the quality of his work and theirs was due not to conscious endeavour on his part to act otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary working of his genius. He seemed unconscious of his marvellous superiority to his professional comrades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors, and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works after his death, corroborate the description of him as a sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. The later traditions brought together by Aubrey depict him as 'very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and there is much in other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his ' copious ' and continuous industry, and with his literary power and sociabiUty there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business. Pope Imd just warrant for the surmise that he For gain not glory winged his roving flight. And grew immortal in his own despite. His literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for him- self and his daughters. His highest ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which his father's misfortunes had imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents. 149 XV sua VIVORS AND DESCENDANTS Shakespeare's widow died on August 6, 1623, at the age The sur- of sixty-seven, and was buried near her husband inside the ■*'''^°'^5- chancel two days later. Some affectionately phrased Latin elegiacs — doubtless from Dr. Hall's pen — were inscribed on a brass plate fastened to the stone above her grave. The words run : ' Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife of Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August, 1623, being of the age of 67 yeares. Vbera, tu, mater, tii lac vitamq. dedisti, Vae mihi ; pro tanto munere saxa dabo ! Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore, Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua. Sed nil vota valent ; venias cito, Christe ; resuiget, Clausa licet tumulo, mater, etastra petet.' The younger daughter, Judith, resided with her husband, Thomas Quiney, at The Cage, a house at the Bridge Street corner of High Street, which he leased of the Corporation from 1616 till 1652. There he carried on the trade of a vintner, and took part in municipal affairs, acting as a councillor from 1617 and as chamberlain in 1621-2 and 1622-3 ; but after 1630 his affairs grew embarrassed, and he left Stratford late in 1652 for London, where he seems to have died a few months later. Of his three sons by Judith, the eldest, Shakespeare (baptised on November 23, 1 6 16), was buried in Stratford Churchyard on May 8, 161 7 ; the second son, Richard (baptised on February 9, 1617-18), was buried on January 28, 1638-9; and the third son, Thomas (baptised on January 23, 1619-20), was buried on February 26, 1638-9. Judith survived her husband, sons, and sister, dying at Stratford on February 9, 166 1-2, in her seventy-seventh year. The poet's elder daughter, Mrs. Susarina Hall, resided at Mistress Judith Quiney. ISO SHAKESPEARE S LIFE AND WORK Mistress New Place till her death. Her sister Judith alienated to her ^sanna the Chapel Place tenement before 1633, but that, with the ^ interest in the Stratford tithes, she soon disposed of. Her husband, Dr. John Hall, died on November 25, 1635. In 1642 James Cooke, a surgeon in attendance on some royalist troops stationed at Stratford, visited Mrs. Hall and examined manuscripts in her possession, but they were apparently of her husband's, not of her father's, composition. From July 11 to 13, 1643, Queen Henrietta Maria, while journeying from Newark to Oxford, was billeted on Mrs. Hall at New Place for three days, and was visited there by Prince Rupert. Mrs. Hall was buried beside her husband in Stratford Churchyard on July 11, 1649, and a rhyming inscription, describing her as ' witty above her sex,' was engraved on her tombstone. The whole inscription ran : ' Heere lyeth ye body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, Gent., ye davghter of William Shakespeare, Gent. She deceased ye nth of Jvly, a.d. 1649, aged 66. Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall ! Something of Shakespere was in that, but this Wholy of him with whom she's now in blisse. Then, passenger, ha'st ne're a teare. To weepe with her that wept with all ? That wept, yet set herselfe to chere Them up with comforts cordiall. Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, When thou hast ne're a teare to shed. dant. The last Mrs. Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last surviving descen- descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she married her first husband, Thomas Nash of Stratford (p. 1593), who studied at Lincoln's Inn, was a man of property, and, dying childless at New Place on April 4, 1647, '^'^^ buried in Stratford Church next day. At Billesley, a village four miles from Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash married, as a second husband, a widower, John Bernard or Barnard of Abington Manor, near Northampton, who was knighted by Charles II in 1 66 1. About the same date she seems to have aban- doned New Place for her husband's residence at Abington, which has lately been acquired by the Corporation of Northampton, and has been converted into a public museum and park. Dying without issue. Lady Barnard was buried at Abington on February 17, 1669-70. Her SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 151 husband survived her four years, and was buried beside her. On her mother's death in 1649 Lady Barnard inherited under the poet's will the land near Stratford, New Place, the house at Blackfriars, and (on the death of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, in 1646) the houses in Henley Street, while her father. Dr. Hall, left her in 1635 a house at Acton with a meadow. She sold the Blackfriars house, and apparently the Stratford land, before 1667. By her will, dated January 1669-70, and proved in the following March, she left small bequests to the daughters of Thomas Hathaway, of the family of her grandmother, the poet's wife. The houses in Henley Street passed to her cousin, Thomas Hart, the grandson of the poet's sister Joan, and they remained in the possession of Thomas's direct descendants till 1806 (the male line expired on the death of John Hart in 1800). By her will Lady Barnard also ordered New Place to be sold, and it was purchased on May 18, 1675, by Sir Edward Walker, Garter King-of-arms, through whose daughter Barbara, wife of Sir John Clopton, it reverted to the Clopton family. Sir John restored it in 1702. On the death of his son Hugh in 1752, it was bought by the Rev. Francis Gastrell {d. 1768), who demolished the renovated building in 1759. The site was left vacant and, with the garden attached, was annexed to the garden of the adjoin- ing house. In 1864 the ground was purchased by public subscription and was converted into a public recreation ground. Of Shakespeare's three brothers, only one, Gilbert, seems Shake- to have survived him. Edmund, the youngest brother, 'a ^f^fUg^ player,' was buried at St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, ' with a fore noone knell of the great bell,' on December 31, 1607 ; he was in his twenty-eighth year. Richard, John Shakespeare's third son, died at Stratford in February 1613, aged 39. ' Gilbert Shakespeare adolescens,' who was buried at Stratford on February 3, 1611-12, was doubtless son of the poet's next brother, Gilbert ; the latter, having nearly completed his forty-sixth year, could scarcely be described as ' adolescens ; ' his death is not recorded, but according to Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age. 152 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK XVI AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS The only extant specimens of Shakespeare's handwriting that are of undisputed authenticity consist of the five autograph signatures which are reproduced in this volume, hand-"^ " -^^ i*^ ^^ ^^^^ °f Edmund Spenser and of almost all the writing. great authors who were contemporary with Shakespeare, no fragment of Shakespeare's handwriting outside his signa- tures — no letter nor any scrap of his literary work — is known to be in existence. These five signatures were appended by the poet to the following documents : — The Purchase-deed (on parchment), dated March lo, 1612-13, of a house in Blackfriars, which the poet then acquired (since 1841 in the Guildhall Library, London). A Mortgage-deed (on parchment), dated March 11, 1613, relating to the house in Blackfriars, purchased by the poet the day before (since 1858 in the British Museum). The Poet's Will, finally executed in March 1616, within a month of his death. This document, which is now at Somerset House, London, consists of three sheets of paper, at the foot of each of which Shakespeare signed his name. His mode In 3.11 the signatures Shakespeare used the old of writing. ' English ' mode of writing, which resembles that still in vogue in Germany. During the seventeenth century the old ' English ' character was finally displaced in England by the ' Italian ' character, which is now universal in England and in all English-speaking countries. In Shakespeare's day highly educated men, who were graduates of the Universities and had travelled abroad in youth, were capable of writing both the old ' English ' and the ' Italian ' character with equal facility. As a rule they employed the f^ J-, -i-i'- /ac> Ut\ Shakespeare's autograph signature appended to the purchase-deed of a house in blackfriars ON MARCH lO, 1612-I3 Reproduced frojn the oi-iginal document now preserved in the Guildhall LibraTy, London A UTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 153 ' English ' character in their ordinary correspondence, but signed their names in the 'ItaUan' hand. Shakespeare's use of the ' English ' script exclusively was doubtless a result of his provincial education. He learnt only the ' English ' character at school at Stratford-on-Avon, and he never troubled to exchange it for the more fashionable ' Italian ' character in later life. Men did not always spell their surnames in the same Spelling way in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The poet's of the surname has been proved capable of as many as four V°^'^'^ thousand variations. The name of the poet's father is "^'"^■ entered sixty-six times in the Council books of Stratford- on-Avon, and is spelt in sixteen ways. There the com- monest form is ' Shaxpeare.' The poet cannot be proved to have acknowledged any finality as to the spelling of his surname. It is certain that he wrote it indifferently Shakespere or Shakspearg, while he and his friends at times adopted the third form — Shak«sp«ar«. In these circum- stances it is impossible to acknowledge in any one form of spelling a supreme claim to correctness. The signature to Auto- the purchase-deed of March 10, 161 2-13, is commonly graphs read as ' William Shakspere,' though in all other portions of ™ '^e the deed the surname is spelt 'Shakespeare.' The signa- Y^^"^- ture to the mortgage-deed of the following day, March 11, jeeds. 161 2-13, has been interpreted both as 'Shakspere' and ' Shakspeare.' In neither of these signatures are the letters following the first ' e ' in the second syllable fully written out. They are indicated by a flourish above the ' e.' Shakespeare apparently deemed it needful to confine his signature to the narrow strip of parchment that was inserted in the fabric of the deed to bear the seal, and he conse quently lacked adequate space wherein to complete his autograph. The flourish above the ' e ' has been held to represent the cursive mark of abbreviation for ' re ' which was in use among mediaeval scribes. It is doubtful, how- ever, whether mediaeval methods of handwriting were familiar to Shakespeare or his contemporaries. In the second of the two signatures, the flourish has also been read as ' a.' But in both cases the flourish has possibly a less determinate significance than any which has hitherto been assigned to it. It may be in both autographs no more than a hasty dash of the pen — a rough and ready indication that the writer was hindered from completing the word that 154 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Auto- graphs in the will. ' Shake- speare ' the ac- cepted form. Shake- speare's portraits. he had begun by the narrowness of the strip of parchment to which he was seeking to restrict his handwriting. Whether, therefore, the surname in the two documents should be interpreted as ' Shakspe^e ' or ' Shakspeaj^i? ' can- not be stated positively. The ink of the first signature which Shakespeare appended to his will has now faded almost beyond recogni- tion, but that it was ' Shakspe^K ' may be inferred from the facsimile made by George Steevens in 1776. The second and third signatures to the will, which are easier to decipher, have been variously read as ' Shakspe?-^,' ' Shak- spear«,' and ' Shakespeare ; ' but a close examination suggests that, whatever the second signature may be, the third, which is preceded by the two words ' By me ' (also in the poet's handwriting), is ' Shakspeare.' ' Shakspere ' is the spelling of the alleged autograph in the British Museum copy of Florio's ' Montaigne,' but the genuineness of that signature is disputable. But it is to be borne in mind that ' Shakespeare ' was the form of the poet's surname that was adopted in the text of all the legal documents relating to the poet's property, and in the royal license to him in the capacity of a player in 1603. That form is to be seen in the inscription on his wife's tomb in the church of Strat- ford-on-Avon, although in the rudely cut inscription on his own monument his name appears as 'Shakfpeare.' Shake- jpeare ' figures in the poet's printed signatures affixed by his authority to the dedicatory epistles in the original editions of his two narrative poems ' Venus and Adonis ' (1593) and 'Lucrece' (1594); it is prominent on the title-pages of almost all contemporary editions of his plays, and was employed in almost all the published references to him in the seventeenth century. Consequently, of the form ' Shakespeare ' alone can it be definitely said that it has the sanction of legal and literary usage. Aubrey reported that Shakespeare was ' a handsome well-shap't man,' but no portrait exists which can be said with absolute certainty to have been executed during his lifetime, although one has recently been discovered with a good claim to that distinction. Only two of the extant portraits are positively known to have been produced with- in a short period after his death. These are the bust in Stratford Church and the frontispiece to the folio of 1623. SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS ON MARCH II, 1612-I3 Reprod-uced front ike original document now preserved in the British Museum AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 155 Each is an inartistic attempt at a posthumous likeness. There is considerable discrepancy between the two ; their main points of resemblance are the baldness on the top of the head and the fulness of the hair about the ears. The bust was by Gerard Johnson or Janssen, who was a Dutch stonemason or tomb-maker settled in Southwark. It was set up in the church before 1623, and is a rudely carved specimen of mortuary sculpture. There are marks about the forehead and ears which suggest that the face was fashioned from a death mask, but the workmanship is at all points clumsy. The round face and eyes present a heavy, unintellectual expression. The bust was originally coloured, but in 1793 Malone caused it to be whitewashed. In 1 86 1 the whitewash was removed, and the colours, as far as traceable, restored. The eyes are light hazel, the hair and beard auburn. There have been numberless reproductions, both engraved and photographic. It was first engraved — very imperfectly — for Rowe's edition in 1709 ; then by Vertue for Pope's edition of 1725 ; and by Gravelot for Hanmer's edition in 1744. A good engraving by William Ward appeared in 1816. A phototype and a chromo-phototype, issued by the New Shakspere Society, are the best reproductions for the purposes of study. The pretentious painting known as the ' Stratford ' portrait, and presented in 1867 by W. O. Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, to the Birthplace Museum, where it is very prominently displayed,, was probably painted from the bust late in the eighteenth century ; it lacks either historic or artistic interest. The engraved portrait — nearly a half-length — which was printed on the title-page of the folio of 1623, was by Martin Droeshout. On the opposite page lines by Ben Jonson congratulate ' the graver ' on having satisfactorily ' hit ' the poet's ' face.' Jonson's testimony does no credit to his artistic discernment ; the expression of countenance, which is very crudely rendered, is neither distinctive nor lifelike. The face is long and the forehead high ; the top of the head is bald, but the hair falls in abundance over the ears. There is a scanty moustache, and a thin tuft is under the lower lip. A stiff and wide collar, projecting horizontally, conceals the neck. The coat is closely buttoned and elaborately bordered, especially at the shoulders. The dimensions of the head and face are disproportionately large as compared The Strat- ford bust. The ' Strat- ford' portrait. Droes- hout's en- graving. 156 SHAKESPEARE S LIFE AND WORK with those of the body. In the unique proof copy which belonged to HalHwell-Phillipps (now with his collection in America) the tone is clearer than in the ordinary copies, and the shadows are less darkened by cross-hatching and coarse dotting. The engraver, Martin Droeshout, belonged to a Flemish family of painters and engravers long settled in London, where he was born in 1601. He was thus fifteen years old at the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616, and it is consequently improbable that he had any personal know- ledge of the dramatist. The engraving was doubtless pro - duced by Droeshout very shortly before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, when he had completed his twenty- second year. It thus belongs to the outset of the engraver's professional career, in which he never achieved extended practice or reputation. A copy of the Droeshout engraving, by Wilham Marshall, was prefixed to Shakespeare's ' Poems ' in 1640, and William Faithorne made another copy for the frontispiece of the edition of ' The Rape of Lucrece ' pub- lished in 1655. The There is little doubt that young Droeshout in fashioning ' Droes- j^jg engraving worked from a painting, and there is a likeli- painting. hood that the original picture from which the youthful engraver worked has lately come to light. As recently as 1892 Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, a private gentle- man with artistic tastes residing at Peckham Rye, a portrait alleged to represent Shakespeare. The picture, which was faded and somewhat worm-eaten, dated beyond all doubt from the early years of the seventeenth century. It was painted on a panel formed of two planks of old elm, and in the upper left-hand corner was the inscription ' Will™ Shake- speare, 1609.' Mr. Clements purchased the portrait of an obscure dealer about 1840, and knew nothing of its history, beyond what he set down on a slip of paper when he acquired it. The note that he then wrote and pasted on the box in which he preserved the picture, ran as follows :. ' The original portrait of Shakespeare, from which the now famous Droeshout engraving was taken and inserted in the first collected edition of his works, pubUshedin 1623, being seven years after his death. The picture was painted nine \verl seven] years before his death, and consequently sixteen \verh fourteenj years before it was published. . . . The pic- ture was publicly exhibited in London seventy years ago, and A UTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 157 many thousands went to see it.' In all its details and in its comparative dimensions, especially in the disproportion between the size of the head and that of the body, this pic- ture is identical with the Droeshout engraving. Though coarsely and stiffly drawn, the face is far more skilfully pre- sented than in the engraving, and the expression of counte- nance betrays some artistic sentiment which is absent from the print. Connoisseurs, including Mr. Sidney Colvin of the British Museum, and Mr. Lionel Cust, have almost un- reservedly pronounced the picture to be anterior in date to the engraving, and they have reached the conclusion that in all probability Martin Droeshout directly based his work upon the painting. Influences of an early seventeenth-cen- tury Flemish school are plainly discernible in the picture, and it is just possible that it is the production of an uncle of the young engraver Martin Droeshout, who bore the same name as his nephew, and was naturalised in this country on January 25, 1608, when he was described as a 'painter of Brabant.' Although the history of the portrait rests on critical conjecture and on no external contemporary evidence, there seems good ground for regarding it as a portrait of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime — in the forty-fifth year of his age. No other pictorial representation of the poet has equally serious claims to be treated as contemporary with himself, and it therefore presents features of unique interest. On the death of its owner, Mr. Clements, in 1895, the painting was purchased by Mrs. Charles Flower, and was presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at Stratford, where it now hangs. No attempt at restoration has been made. It is sometimes referred to as the ' Flower portrait.' Of the same type as the Droeshout engraving, although less closely resemWing it than the picture just described, is the 'Ely House' portrait (now the property of the Birth- < Ely place Trustees at Stratford), which formerly belonged to House' Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely, and it is inscribed ' M. 39 portrait. X. 1603.' This painting is of high artistic value. The features are of a far more attractive and intellectual cast than in either the Droeshout painting or engraving, and the many differences in detail raise doubts as to whether the person represented can have been intended for Shakespeare. Experts are of opinion that the picture was painted early in the seventeenth century. Early in Charles II's reign Lord-chancellor Clarendon ts8 shakespMare's liEM And Wokk Later portraits. The ' Chan- dos' portrait. added a portrait of Shakespeare to his great gallery in his house in St. James's. Mention is made of it in a letter from the diarist John Evelyn to his friend Samuel Pepys in 1689, but Clarendon's collection was dispersed at the end of the seventeenth century, and the picture has not been traced. Of the numerous extant paintings which have been described as portraits of Shakespeare, only the ' Droeshout ' portrait and the Ely House portrait, both of which are at Stratford, bear any deiinable resemblance to the Folio engraving or the bust in the church. In spite of their admitted imperfections, the engraving and the bust can alone be held indisputably to have been honestly designed to depict the poet's features. They must be treated as the standards of authenticity in judging of the genuineness of other portraits claiming to be of an early date. Of other alleged portraits which are extant, the most famous and interesting is the ' Chandos ' portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery. Its pedigree suggests that it was intended to represent the poet, but numerous and conspicu- ous divergences from the authenticated likenesses show that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of him some years after his death. The face is bearded, and rings adorn" the ears. Oldys reported that it was from the brush of Burbage, Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who had some reputa- tion as a limner, and that it had belonged to Joseph Taylor, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare. These rumours are not corroborated ; but there is no doubt that it was at one time the property of D'Avenant, and that it subsequently belonged successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs. Barry the actress. In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller made a copy as a gift for Dryden. After Mrs. Parry's death in 1713 it was purchased for forty guineas by Robert Keck, a barrister of the Inner Temple. At length it reached the hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter married James Brydges, third Duke of Chandos. In due time the Duke became the owner of the picture, and it subsequently passed, through Chandos's daughter, to her husband, the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, whose son, the second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his effects at Stowe in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere. The latter presented it to the nation. Edward Capell many years before presented a copy by A UTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 159 Ranelagh Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and other copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias Humphrey (1783). It was engraved by George Vertue in 1719 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one of the best engravings being by Vandergucht. A good lithograph from a tracing by Sir George Scharf was published by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1864. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts purchased in 1875 a portrait of similar type, which is said, somewhat doubtfully, to have belonged to John, lord Lumley, who died in 1609, and to have formed part of a collection of portraits of the great men of his day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham. Its early history is not positively authenticated, and it may well be an early copy of the Chandos portrait. The ' Lumley ' painting was finely chromolithographed in 1863 by Vincent Brooks. The so-called ' Jansen ' or Janssens portrait, which The belongs to Lady Guendolen Ramsden, daughter of the Duke ' Jansen ' of Somerset, and is now at her residence at Bulstrode, was pof'^it. first doubtfully identified about 1770, when in the possession of Charles Jennens. Janssens did not come to England before Shakespeare's death. It is a fine portrait, but is unlike any other that has been associated with the dramatist. An admirable mezzotint by Richard Earlom was issued in 1811. The ' Felton ' portrait, a small head on a panel, with a The high and very bald forehead (belonging since 1873 to the 'Felton' Baroness Burdett-Coutts), was purchased by S. Felton of port^it. Drayton, Shropshire, in 1792 of J. Wilson, the owner of the Shakespeare Museum in Pall Mall ; it bears a late inscrip- tion, 'Gul. Shakespear 1597, R. B.' [i.e. Richard BurbageJ. It was engraved by Josiah Boydell for George Steevens in 1797, and by James Neagle for Isaac Reed's edition in 1803. Fuseli declared it to be the work of a Dutch artist, but the painters Romney and Lawrence regarded it as of English workmanship of the sixteenth century. Steevens held that it was the original picture whence both Droeshout and Marshall made their engravings, but there are practically no points of resemblance between it and the prints. The 'Soest' or 'Zoust' portrait— in the possession of The Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield— was in the ' Soest ' collection of Thomas Wright, painter, of Covent Garden, in P°rt''="'- 1725, when John Simon engraved it. Soest was born twenty-one years after Shakespeare's death, and the portrait i6o SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK is only on fanciful grounds identified with the poet. A chalk drawing by John Michael Wright, obviously inspired by the Soest portrait, is the property of Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton House, and is on loan at the Memorial Gallery, Stratford. A well-executed miniature by Hilliard, at one time in the possession of William Somerville the poet, and now the property of Lord Northcote, was engraved by Agar for vol. ii. of the 'Variorum Shakespeare' of 1821, and in Wivell's 'Inquiry,' 1827. It has little claim to attention as a por- trait of the dramatist. Another miniature (called the ' Auriol ' portrait), of doubtful authenticity, formerly be- longed to Mr. Lumsden Propert, and a third is at Warwick Castle. A bust, said to be of Shakespeare, was discovered in 1845 bricked up in a wall in Spode & Copeland's china warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The warehouse had been erected on the site of the Duke's Theatre, which was built by D'Avenant in 1660. The bust, which is of black terra cotta, and bears traces of Italian workmanship, is believed to have adorned the proscenium of the Duke's Theatre. It was acquired by the surgeon William Clift, from whom it passed to Clift's son-in-law, Richard (after- wards Sir Richard) Owen the naturalist. The latter sold it to the Duke of Devonshire, who presented it in 1851 to the Garrick Club, after having two copies made in plaster. One of these copies is now in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford. The Kesselstadt death-mask was discovered by Dr. Ludwig Becker, librarian at the ducal palace at Darmstadt, in a rag-shop at Mayence in 1849. The features resemble those of an alleged portrait of Shakespeare (dated 1637) which Dr. Becker purchased in 1847. This picture had long been in the possession of the family of Count Francis v.on Kesselstadt of Mayence, who died in 1843. I^r- Becker brought the mask and the picture to England in 1849, and Richard Owen supported the theory that the mask was taken from Shakespeare's face after death, and was the foundation of the bust in Stratford Church. The mask was for a long time in Dr. Becker's private apartments at the ducal palace, Darmstadt. It is now the property of Frau Oberst Becker, the discoverer's daughter-in-law, and is in her residence at Darmstadt (Heidelbergerstrasse iir). A UTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS i6i The features are singularly attractive ; but the chain of evidence which would identify them with Shakespeare is incomplete. A monument, the expenses of which were defrayed by Memo- public subscription, was set up in the Poets' Corner fials in in Westminster Abbey in T741. Pope and the Earl of sculpture. Burlington were among the promoters. The design was by William Kent, and the statue of Shakespeare was executed by Peter Scheemakers. Another statue was executed by Roubiliac for Garrick, who bequeathed it to the British Museum in 1779. A third statue, freely adapted from the works of Scheemakers and Roubiliac, was executed for Baron Albert Grant, and was set up by him as a gift to the metro- polis in Leicester Square, London, in 1879. A fourth statue (by Mr. J. A. Q. Waid) was placed in 1882 in the Central Park, New York. A fifth in bronze, by M. Paul Fournier, which was erected in Paris in 1888 at the expense of an English resident, Mr. W. Knighton, stands at the point where the Avenue de Messine meets the Boulevard Haussmann. A sixth memorial in sculpture, by Lord Ronald Gower, the most elaborate and ambitious of all, stands in the garden of the Shakespeare Memorial buildings at Stratford-on-Avon, and was unveiled in 1888 : Shake- speare is seated on a high pedestal ; below, at each side of the pedestal, stand figures of four of Shakespeare's principal characters : Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Prince Hal, and Sir John Falstaff. In the public park at Weimar a statue was unveiled on April 23, 1904. At Stratford, the Birthplace, which was acquired by the public in 1846 and converted into a museum, is, with Anne Hathaway's cottage (which was acquired by the Birthplace Trustees in 1892), a place of pilgrimage for visitors from all parts of the globe. The 40,283 persons who visited it in X906 represented more than forty nationalities. The site of the demolished New Place, with the garden, was also purchased by public subscription in 1861, and now forms a public garden. Of a new memorial building on the river- bank at Stratford, consisting of a theatre, picture-gallery, and library, the foundation-stone was laid on April 23, 1877. The theatre was opened exactly two years later, when ' Much Ado about Nothing' was performed, with Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) as Beatrice and Barry Sullivan as Benedick. Performances of Shakespeare's plays have since been given M i62 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK annually during April. The library and picture-gallery were opened in 1881. A memorial Shakespeare library was opened at Birmingham on April 23, 1868, to commemorate the ter- centenary of 1864, and, although destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored in 1882 ; it now possesses nearly ten thousand volumes relating to Shakespeare. 1 63 XVII BIBLIOGRAPHY Only two of Shakespeare's works — his narrative poems ' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' — were published with his sanction and co-operation. These poems were the first specimens of his work to appear in print, and they passed in his lifetime through a greater number of editions than any of his plays. At the time of his deatlr in 1616 there had been printed seven editions of his ' Venus and Adonis' (1593 and 1594 in quarto, 1596, 1599, 1600, and two in 1602, all in small octavo), and five editions of his 'Lucrece' (1594 in quarto, 1598, 1600, 1607, 1616, all in small octavo). There was only one lifetime edition of the ' Sonnets,' Thorpe's surreptitious venture of 1609 in quarto ; but three editions were issued of the piratical ' Passionate Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently assigned to Shakespeare by the publisher, William Jaggard, although it contained only a few occasional poems by him (1599, 1600 no copy known, and 1612). Ofposthumous editions ofthe two narrative poems in the seventeenth century, there were two of ' Lucrece ' (both in octavo) — viz. in 1624 ('the sixth edition') and in 1655, the seventh edition, (with John Quarles's ' Banishment of Tarquin ' ) — and there were as many as seven editions of ' Venus' (1617, 1620, 1627, two in 1630, 1636, and 1675, all in 8vo or i2mo), making a total of fourteen editions of this poem in" eighty-two years. They were next reprinted in 'Poems on Affairs of State' in 1707, and in collected editions of Shakespeare's 'Poems,' 1709, 1710, and 1725. Malone in 1790 first admitted them to a critical edition of Shakespeare's works, and his example has since been generally followed. A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 'Poems' in 1640 (London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) was mainly a reissue of the 'Sonnets,' but it omitted Editions ofthe poems in the poet's lifetime. Posthu- mous editions ofthe poems. The ' Poems ' of 1640, 1 64 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK. Quartos of the plays in the poet's lifetime. eight (Nos. xviii., xix., xliii., Ivi., Ixxv., Ixxvi., xcvi., and cxxvi.), and it included the twenty poems of 'The Pas- sionate Pilgrim,' with some other pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy of the Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the frontispiece. There were prefatory poems by Leonard Digges and John Warren, as well as an address ' to the reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' were described as 'seraie, clear, and elegantly plain ; such gentle strains as shall recreate and not perplex your bfain. No intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of interest in the volume of ' Poems ' of 1 640 is the fact that the ' Sonnets ' were printed there in a different order from that which was followed in the volume of 1609. Thus the poem num- bered Ixvii. in the original edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded as the crucial poem, beginning Two loves I have of comfort and despair, which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty-second place in 1640. In most cases a more or less fanciful general title is placed in the second edition at the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a single title serves for short sequences of two or three sonnets which are printed as independent poems continuously without spacing. All the poems in ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' are inter- mingled with the 'Sonnets,' together with extracts from Thomas Heywood's ' General History of Women,' although no hint is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. The edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shakespeare and a short section entitled ' an addition of some excellent poems to those precedent by other Gentlemen.' The volume is of great rarity. An exact reprint was published in 1885. Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 1616 only sixteen (all in quarto), or eighteen if we include the 'Contention,' the first draft of '2 Henry VI' (1594 and 1600), and ' The True Tragedy,' the first draft of ' 3 Henry VI' (1595 and 1600). These sixteen quartos were publishers' ventures, and were undertaken without the co- operation of the author. Two of the plays, published thus, reached five editions before 1616, viz. 'Richard III' (1597, 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612) and 'I Henry IV' (1598, 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613). BIBLIOGRAPHY 165 Three reached four editions, viz. 'Richard II' (1597, 1598, 1608 supplying the deposition scene for the first time, 1615); 'Hamlet' (1603 imperfect, 1604, 1605, 1611V and ' Romeo and Juliet ' (1597 imperfect, 1599, two in 1609). Three reached three editions, viz. 'Titus' (1594, 1600, and 1611), 'Henry V (1600 imperfect, 1602, and i£o8), and 'Pericles' (two in 1609, 16 11). Four reached two editions, viz. ' Midsummer Night's Dream' (both in 1600); 'Merchant of Venice' (both in 1600) ; 'Lear' (both'in 1608) ; and 'Troilus and Cressida' (both in 1609). Four achieved only one edition, viz. ' Love's Labour's Lost' (1598), '2 Henry IV' (1600), 'Much Ado ' (1600), ' Merry Wives ' (1602 imperfect). Three years after Shakespeare's death — in 16 19 — there Posthu- appeared a second edition of ' Merry Wives ' (again im- mous perfect) and a fourth of 'Pericles.' 'Othello' was first quartos of printed posthumously in 1622 (4to), and in the same year ' ^P^y=- sixth editions of ' Richard III ' and ' i Henry IV ' appeared. The largest collections of the original quartos^several of which survive in only four, five, or six copies — are in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in the Bodleian Library. Lithographed facsimiles of most of these volumes, with some of the quarto editions of the poems (forty-eight volumes in all), were prepared by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, and issued to subscribers by Halliwell-Phillipps between 1862 and 187 1. A cheaper set of quarto facsimiles, undertaken by Mr. W. Griggs, under the supervision of Dr. F. J. Furnivall, appeared in forty-three volumes between 1880 and 1889. All the quartos were issued in Shakespeare's day at six- pence each. Perfect copies now range in price, according to their rarity, from 200/. to 2,000/. In 1864, at the sale of George Daniel's library, quarto copies of ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and of ' Merry Wives ' (first edition) each fetched 346/. \os. On July 12, 1905, a quarto of 'Richard III '(1605, fourth edition) was sold for 1,750/., and on December 9 of the same year, a quarto of 'Much Ado ' (1600) for 1,570/ The unique quarto of 'Titus' (1594) was privately sold by its Swedish owner to an American collector for 2,000/. early in 1905. On June i, 1907, a quarto of 'The First 1 66 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The First Folio. The pub- lishing syndicate. Part of the Contention betwixt . . . Yorke and Lancaster ' —the piece on which Shakespeare's 'Henry VI,' part 2, was founded— fetched 1,910/. In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the world a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. Two of the dramatist's intimate friends and fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry Condell, were nominally responsible for the venture, but it seems to have been suggested by a small syndicate of printers and publishers, who undertook all pecuniary responsibility. Chief of the syndicate was William Jaggard, printer since 161 1 to the City of London, who was established in business in Fleet Street at the east end of St. Dunstan's Church. As the piratical publisher of ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' he had long known the commercial value of Shakespeare's work. In 161 3 he had extended his business by purchasing the stock and rights of a rival pirate, James Roberts, who had printed the quarto editions of ' The Merchant of Venice ' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' in 1600, and the complete quarto of ' Hamlet ' in 1604. Roberts had enjoyed for nearly twenty years the right to print 'the players' bills,' or programmes, and he made over that privilege to Jaggard with his other literary property. It is to the close personal relations with the playhouse managers into which the acquisition of the right of printing 'the players' bill' brought Jaggard after 1613 that the inception of the scheme of the ' First Folio ' may safely be attributed. Jaggard associated his son Isaac with the enterprise. They alone of the members of the syndicate were printers. Their three partners were publishers or booksellers only. Two of these, William Aspley and John Smethwick, had already speculated in plays of Shakespeare. Aspley had published with another in 1 600 the ' Second Part of Henry IV ' and ' Much Ado about Nothing,' and in 1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shakespeare's ' Sonnets.' Smethwick, whose shop was in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet Street, near Jaggard's, had published in 161 1 two late editions of ' Romeo and Juliet ' and one of ' Hamlet.' Edward Blount, the fifth partner, was an interesting figure in the trade, and, unlike his cotnpanions, had a true taste in literature. He had been a friend and admirer of Christopher Marlowe, and had actively engaged in the posthumous publication of two of Marlowe's poems. He had published that curious collection of mystical verse entitled ' Love's BIBLIOGRAPHY 167 Martyr,' one poem in which, ' a poetical essay of the Phoenix and the Turtle,' was signed 'William Shakespeare.' The First Folio was doubtless printed in Jaggard's printmg office near St. Dunstan's Church. Upon Blount probably fell the chief labour of seeing the work through the press. It was in progress throughout 1623, and had so far advanced by November 8, 1623, that on that day Edward Blount and Isaac (son of William) Jaggard obtained formal license from the Stationers' Company to publish sixteen of the twenty hitherto unprinted plays that it was intended to include. The pieces, whose approaching publication for the first time was thus announced, were of .supreme literary interest. The titles ran: 'The Tempest,' 'The Two Gentlemen,' ' Measure for Measure,' ' Comedy of Errors,' 'As You Like It,' 'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's Tale,' '3 Henry VI,' 'Henry VIII,' ' Coriolanus,' 'Timon,' ' Julius Csesar,' ' Macbeth,' ' Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Cymbeline.' Four other hitherto unprinted dramas for which no license was sought figured in the volume, viz. ' King John,' ' i and 2 Henry VI,' and ' The Taming of The Shrew ; ' but each of these plays was based by Shakespeare on a play of like title which had been published at an earlier date, and the absence of a license was doubtless due to an ignorant misconception on the part either of the Stationers' Company's officers or of the editors of the volume as to the true relations subsisting between the old pieces and the new. The only play by Shakespeare that had been pre- viously published and was not included in the First Folio was 'Pericles.' Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. The volume consisted of nearly one thousand double-column pages and was sold at a pound a copy. From the number of copies that survive it may be estimated that the edition numbered 500. The book was described on the title-page as published by Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and in the colophon as printed at the charges of 'W. Jaggard, I. Smithweeke, and W. Aspley,' as well as of Blount. On The pre- the title-page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Com- fatory mendatory verses were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh matter. Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M., perhaps Jasper Maine. The dedication was addressed to the brothers William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and was signed by Shake- 1 68 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK speare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and Condell. The choice of such patrons was in strict accordance with custom. To the two earls in partnership nearly every work of any literary pretension was dedicated at the period. More- over, the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in 1623, and exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs. That his patronage should be sought for a collective edition of the works of the acknowledged master of the contemporary stage was a matter of course. The editors yielded to a passing vogue in soliciting the patronage of the Lord Cham- berlain's brother in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain. 'But since (the dedicators write) your lordships have beene pleas'd to thinke these trifles something, heretofore ; and have prosequuted both them, and their Authour living, with so much favour : we hope that (they outliving him, and he not having the fate, common with some, to be exe- quutor to his owne writings) you will use the like indulgence toward them you have done unto their parent. There is a great difference, whether any Booke choose his Patrones, or find them : This hath done both. For, so much were your lordships' likings of the severall parts, when they were acted, as, before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be yours.' The dedicators imply that the brother earls fully shared the enthusiastic esteem which James I and all the noblemen of his Court extended to Shakespeare and his plays in the dramatist's lifetime. At the conclusion of their address to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, the dedicators, in describing the dramatist's works as ' these remaines of your Servant Shakespeare,' remind their noble patrons anew that the dramatist had been a conspicuous object of their favour in his capacity of ' King's servant ' or player. The signatures of Hemingand Condell were also appended to a succeeding address ' to the great variety of readers.' In both addresses the two actors probably made pretension to a larger responsibility for the enterprise than they really in- curred, but their motives in identifying themselves with the venture were doubtless irreproachable. They disclaimed (they wrote in their second address) ' ambition either of selfe-profit or fame in undertaking the design,' being solely moved by anxiety to 'keepe the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.' ' It had bene a thing weconfesse worthie to haue bene wished,' they inform the reader, ' that the author himselfe had liued to s Mr. WILLIAM HAKESPEARES COMEDIES, HISTORIES, & TRAGEDIES. Publidied according to the True Originall Copies. LO ^T) :^C Pnntedby Ifaac Iaggard,and Ed.BIount. i (JiJ- FAC-Sr.VllLE OF THE TITLE-PAGE OK THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS FrojH the copy in the Grenville Library at ike British Muscuvi BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 haue set forth and ouerseen his owne writings. ... A Hst of contents follows the address to the readers. The title-page states that all the plays were printed ' according to the true originall copies.' The dedicators wrote to the same effect. ' As where (before) you were abus'd with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors that expos'd them : even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.' There is no doubt that the whole volume was printed from the acting versions in the possession of the manager of the company with which Shakespeare had been associated. But it is doubtful if any play were printed exactly as it came from his pen. The player- editors' boastful advertisement that they had access to his papers in which there was ' scarce a blot ' admits of no jj^g literal interpretation. The First Folio text is often markedly value of inferior to that of the sixteen pre-existent quartos, which, the text, although surreptitiously and imperfectly printed, followed playhouse copies of far earlier date. From the text of the quartos the text of the First Folio differs invariably, although in varying degrees. The quarto texts of ' Love's Labour's Lost,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' and ' Richard II,' for example, differ very largely, and always for the better, from the folio texts. On the other hand, the folio repairs the glaring defects of the quarto versions of ' The Merry Wives of Windsor ' and of ' Henry V.' In the case of twenty of the plays in the F'irst Folio no quartos exist for comparison, and of these twenty plays, ' Coriolanus,' ' All's Well,' and ' Macbeth ' present a text abounding in corrupt passages. The plays are arranged under three headings — The order ' Comedies,' ' Histories,' and 'Tragedies ' — and each division of 'he is separately paged. The arrangement of the plays in each P'^y^- division follows no principle. The comedy section begins with the 'Tempest' and ends with the 'Winter's Tale.' The histories more justifiably begin with ' King John ' and end with ' Henry VIIL' The tragedies begin with ' Troilus and Cressida ' and end with ' Cymbeline.' This order has been usually followed in subsequent collective editions. As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not to be The typo- commended. There are a great many contemporary folios graphy. of larger bulk far more neatly and correctly printed. It looks as though Jaggard's printing office were undermanned. I70 SHAKESPEARE'S UFE AND WORK The misprints are numerous and are especially conspicuous in the pagination. The sheets seem to have been worked off very slowly, and corrections were made while the press was working, so that the copies struck off later differ occa- sionally from the earlier copies. One mark of carelessness on the part of the compositor or corrector of the press, which is common to all copies, is that ' Troilus and Cressida,' though in the body of the book it opens the section of tragedies, is not mentioned at all in the table of contents, and the play is unpaged except on its second and third pages, which bear the numbers 79 and 80. Unique Three copies are known which are distinguished by more copies. interesting irregularities, in each case unique. The copy in the Lenox Library in New York includes a cancel duplicate of a leaf of ' As You Like It ' (sheet R of the comedies), and the title-page bears the date 1622 instead of 1623 ; but there is little doubt that the last figure has been tampered with by a modern owner. Samuel Butler, successively head- master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, possessed a copy of the First Folio in which a proof leaf of ' Hamlet ' was bound up with the corrected leaf. The The most interesting irregularity yet noticed appears Sheldon jn one of the two copies of the book in the library of the copy. late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy is known as the Sheldon Folio, having formed in the seventeenth century part of the library of Ralph Sheldon of Weston Manor in the parish of Long Compton, Warwickshire. In the Sheldon Folio, the opening page of ' Troilus and Cressida,' of which the recto or front is occupied by the prologue and the verso or back by the opening lines of the text of the play, is followed by a superfluous leaf. On the recto or front of the unnecessary leaf are printed the concluding lines of ' Romeo and Juliet ' in place of the prologue to ' Troilus and Cressida.' At the back or verso are the opening lines of ' Troilus and Cressida ' repeated from the preceding page. The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on each page proves that the two are not taken from the same set- ting of the type. At a later page in the Sheldon copy the concluding Unes of ' Romeo and Juliet ' are duly re- printed at the close of the play, and on the verso or back of the leaf, which supplies them in their right place, is the opening passage, as in other copies, of ' Timon of Athens.' These curious confusions attest that while the work was in BIBLIOGRAPHY 171 course of composition the printers or editors of the volume at one time intended to place 'Troilus and Cressida,' with the prologue omitted, after ' Romeo and Juliet.' The last page of ' Romeo and Juliet ' is in all copies numbered 79, an obvious misprint for 77 ; the first leaf of ' Troilus ' is paged 78 ; the second and third pages of ' Troilus ' are numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless suddenly deter- mined while the volume was in the press to transfer ' Troilus and Cressida ' to the head of the tragedies from a place near the end, but the numbers on the opening pages which indicated its first position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the extensive typographical corrections that were required by the play's change of position, its remaining pages were allowed to go forth unnumbered. A fourth copy of the First Folio presents unique features Jaggard's of a different kind of interest. Mr. Coningsby Sibthorp of presenta- Sudbrooke Holme, Lincoln, possesses a copy which has " «" /=opy been in the library of his family for more than a century, pi^st^ and is beyond doubt one of the very earliest that came from foUo. the press of the printer William Jaggard. The title-page, which bears Shakespeare's portrait, is in a condition of un- paralleled freshness, and the engraving is printed with unusual firmness and clearness. Although the copy is not at all points perfect and several leaves have been supplied in facsimile, it is a taller copy than any other, being thirteen and a half inches high, and at least a quarter of an inch superior in stature to that of any other known copy. The binding, rough calf, is partly original ; and on the title-page is a manuscript inscription, in contemporary handwriting of indisputable authenticity, attesting that the copy was a gift to an intimate friend by the printer Jaggard. The inscrip- tion reads thus : The fragment of the original binding is stamped with an heraldic device, which identifies the first owner with Augustine Vincent, a highly respected oflScial of the College of Arms, who is known from independent sources to have been, at the date of the publication, in intimate relations with the printer of the First Folio. It was to Augustine 172 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Estimated number of extant copies. Vincent that Jaggard presented the copy. The inscription on the title-page is in Vincent's handwriting. A copy of the Folio, which was delivered in sheets by the Stationers' Company late in 1623 to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, was chained to the shelves after being bound. Sold by the library in 1664 on the acquisition of a Third Folio, it remained in private hands until March 31, 1906, when it was repurchased by the Bodleian. It is difficult to estimate how many copies survive of the First Folio, which is intrinsically the most valuable volume in the whole range of English literature, and extrinsically is only exceeded in value by some half-dozen volumes of far earlier date and of exceptional typographical interest. Nearly two hundred copies, in various conditions, have been traced within the past hundred years ; fully a third of this number are now in America. Of the extant First Folios, only fourteen are in a perfect state, that is, with the portrait printed {not inlaid) on the title-page, and the fly- leaf facing it, with all the pages succeeding it, intact and uninjured. (The flyleaf contains Ben Jonson's verses attesting the truthfulness of the portrait.) Excellent copies in this enviable state are in the Grenville Library at the British Museum, and in the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Crawford, the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Mr. A. H. Huth, and of several American collectors. Of these the finest is the perfect ' Daniel ' copy, which belonged to the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. It measures 13 inches by 8|, and was purchased by the Baroness for 716/. 2^-. at the sale of George Daniel's library in 1864. This sum was long the highest price paid for the book, but the amount has during the last sixteen years been greatly exceeded many times. A perfect copy, measuring i.2'n inches by ']\%, fetched 840/. (4,200 dollars) at the sale of Mr. Brayton Ives's library in New York in March 1891. Another copy, measuring i2§ inches by 8|, which had been for a century and more in Belgium, and is perfect save for slight marginal injuries, was purchased by Mr. Bernard Buchanan MacGeorge of Glasgow for 1,700/. at a sale by Messrs. Christie, Manson, & Woods on July II, 1899; in June 1905 Mr. MacGeorge privately sold this copy, together with copies of the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, to Mr. Marsden J. Perry, of Providence, U.S.A., for an aggregate sum of 10,000/. A third copy of BIBLIOGRAPHY 173 the First Folio, formerly in the library of Frederick Locker- Lampson, of Rowfant, Sussex, fetched at Sotheby's on March 23, 1907, the sum of 3,600/. ; this is the largest figure yet reached at public auction. A reprint of the First Folio unwarrantably purporting to be exact was published in 1807-8. The best type-reprint was issued in three parts by Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, and 1864. A photo-zincographic reproduction undertaken by Sir Henry James, with the aid of Howard Staunton, was issued in sixteen folio parts between February 1864 and October 1865. A reduced photographic facsimile, too small to be legible, appeared in 1876, with a preface by Halliwell-Phillipps. In 1902 the Clarendon Press issued at Oxford a Vimr facsimile in collotype from the Duke of Devonshire's copy at Chatsworth, with a bibliographical introduction and a ' Census ' of copies by the present writer ; ' Notes and Additions ' to the ' Census ' followed in 1906. The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by The Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot, William Aspley, John Second . Smethwick, Richard Hawkins, and Richard Meighen, one Folio, or more of whose names figures as publisher on the title- pages of different copies of the edition. To Allot, whose name is most often met with on the title-page, Blount had transferred, on November 16, 1630, his right^in the sixteen plays which were first licensed for publication in 1623. The Second Folio was reprinted from the First ; a few corrections were made in the text, but most of the changes were arbitrary and needless. Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and Charles II's at the British Museum. The 'Perkins Folio,' now in the Duke of Devonshire's possession, in which John Payne Collier introduced forged emendations, was a copy of that of 1632. The highest price paid for a copy at public auction is 690}^, for which Mr. Perry, of Providence, acquired at London, March 21, 1902, an exemplar, with the rare ' John Smethwick ' imprint. Mr. Perry also possesses a Second Folio, which he privately purchased in 1905, along with First, Third, and Fourth Folios, for an aggregate sum of 10,000/., of Mr. B. B. MacGeorge, of Glasgow ; for this copy, which had formerly been in the library of George Daniel, Mr. MacGeorge paid 540/. at the Earl of Orford's sale rp. in 1895. The Third Folio — for the most part a faithful xhird reprint of the Second — was first published in 1663 by Folio. 174 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK The Fourth Folio.. Eight- eenth- century editors. Nicholas Rowe, 1674- 1718. Peter Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with the addition of seven plays, six of which have no claim to admission among Shakespeare's works. ' Unto this impression,' runs the title-page of 1664, 'is added seven Playes never before printed in folio, viz. : Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The London Prodigall. The History of Thomas Ld. Cromwell. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tragedy of Locrine.' The six spurious pieces were attributed by un- principled publishers to Shakespeare in his lifetime. Fewer copies of the Third Folio are reputed to be extant than of the Second or Fourth, owing to the alleged destruction of many unsold impressions in the Fire of London in 1666. On June i, 1907, a copy of the 1663 impression of the Third Folio fetched at Sotheby's the record price of 1,550/. The Fourth Foho, printed in 1685 'for H. Herririgman, E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,' reprints the folio of 1664 without change except in the way of modernising the spelling ; it repeats the spurious pieces. The sum of 215/., which was reached on December 8, 1903, is the highest yet paid for the Fourth Folio at public auction. Since 1685 some two hundred independent editions ot the collected works have been published in Great Britain and Ireland, and many thousand editions of separate plays. The eighteenth-century editors of the collected works endeavoured with varying degrees of success to purge the text of the numerous incoherences of the folios, and to restore, where good taste or good sense required it, the lost text of the contemporary quartos. It is largely owing to a due co-ordination of the results of the efforts of the eighteenth-century editors by their successors in the present century that Shakespeare's work has become intelligible to general readers unversed in textual criticism, and has won from them the veneration that it merits. Nicholas Rowe, a popular dramatist of Queen Anne's reign, and poet laureate to George I, was the first critical editor of Shakespeare. He produced an edition of his plays in six octavo volumes in 1709, and another hand added a seventh volume which included the poems (1710). A new edition in eight volumes followed in 1714 with a supplementary ninth volume containing the poems. Rowe prefixed a valuable life of the poet embodying tradi- tions which were in danger of perishing without a record. BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 His text followed that of the Fourth Folio. The plays were printed in the same order ; the spurious pieces were appended. Rovve did not compare his text with that of the First Folio or of the quartos, but in the case of ' Romeo and Juliet ' he met with an early quarto while his edition was passing through the press, and inserted at the end of the play the prologue which is met with only in the quartos. He made a few happy emendations, some of which coincide accidentally with the readings of the First Folio ; but his text is defaced by many palpable errors. His practical experience as a playwright induced him, how- ever, to prefix for the first time a list oi dramatis persona \o each play, to divide and number acts and scenes on rational principles, and to mark the entrances and exits of the characters. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar he corrected and modernised. The poet Pope was Shakespeare's second editor. His Alex- edition in six spacious quarto volumes was completed in ander 1725. The poems, edited by Dr. George Se well, with an ^?P|^ essay on the rise and progress of the stage, and a glossary, „.._ appeared in a seventh volume. Pope had few qualifications for the task, and the venture was a commercial failure. In his preface Pope, while he fully recognised Shakespeare's native genius, deemed his achievement deficient in artistic quality. Pope claimed to have collated the text of the Fourth Folio with that of all preceding editions, and although his work indicates that he had access to the First Folio and some of the quartos, it is clear that his text was based on that of Rowe. His innovations are numerous, and are derived from ' his private sense and conjecture,' but they are often plausible and ingenious. He was the first to indicate the place of each new scene, and he improved on Rowe's subdivision of the scenes. A second edition of Pope's version in ten duodecimo volumes appeared in 1728 with Sewell's name on the title-page as ^vell as Pope's. There were few alterations in the text, though a preliminary table supplied a list of twenty-eight quartos. Other editions followed in 1735 and 1768. The last was printed at Garrick's suggestion at Birmingham from Baskerville's types. Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who, Lewis although contemptible as a writer of original verse and Theo. prose, proved himself the most inspired of all the textual jglg critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely avenged himself on j^^' 176 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK his censor 'by holding him up to ridicule as the hero of the ' Dunciad.' Theobald first displayed his critical skill in 1726 in a volume which deserves to rank as a classic in English literature. The title runs ' Shakespeare Restored, or a specimen of the many errors as well committed as unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this poet, designed not only to correct the said edition but to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the editions ever yet publish'd.' There at page 137 appears Theobald's great emendation in Shakespeare's account of FalstafiPs death (Henry V, 11, iii. 17) : ' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a' babbled of green fields,' in place of the reading in the old copies, ' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields.' In 1733 Theobald brought out his edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes. In 1 740 it reached a second issue. A third edition was published in 1752. Others are dated 1772 and 1773. It is stated that 12,860 copies in all were sold. Theobald made the First Folio the basis of his text, although he failed to adopt all the correct readings of that version. Over 300 original corrections or emendations which he made in his edition have become part and parcel of the authorised canon. Theobald's principles of textual criticism were as enlightened as his practice was triumphant. ' I ever labour,' he wrote to Warburton, ' to make the smallest deviation that I possibly can from the text ; never to alter at all where I can by any means explain a passage with sense ; nor ever by any emendation to make the author better when it is probable the text came from his own hands.' Theobald has every right to the title of the Porson of Shakespearean criticism. The following are favourable specimens of his insight. In ' Macbeth ' (i. vii. 6) for ' this bank and school of time,' he substituted the familiar ' bank and shoal of time.' In ' Antony and Cleopatra ' the old copies (v. ii. 87) made Cleopatra say of Antony : For his bounty, There was no winter in't ; an Anthony it was That grew the more by reaping. For the gibberish ' an Anthony it was,' Theobald read ' an autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines triie point and poetry. A third notable instance, somewhat more recondite, is found in ' Coriolanus ' (11. i. 59-60) where Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio version ' what harm can your BIBLIOGRAPHY 177 besom conspectuities [i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this character?' Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet ' besom ' by ' bisson ' (i.e. purblind), a recognised Elizabethan word which Shakespeare had already employed in ' Hamlet ' (II. ii. 529). The fourth editor was Sir Thomas Hanmer, a country Sir gentleman without much literary culture, but possessing a Thomas large measure of mother wit. He was speaker in the ^^™^^^^ House of Commons for a few months in 17 14, and retiring \^a^. soon afterwards from public life devoted his leisure to a thoroughgoing scrutiny of Shakespeare's plays. His edition, which was the earliest to pretend to typographical beauty, was printed at the Oxford University Press in 1744 in six quarto volumes. It contained a number of good engravings by Gravelot after designs by Francis Hayman, and was long highly valued by book collectors. No editor's name was given. In forming his text, Hanmer depended exclusively on his own ingenuity. He made no recourse to the old copies. The result was a mass of common-sense emenda- tions, some of which have been permanently accepted. A happy example of his shrewdness may be quoted from ' King Lear,' in. vi. 72, where in all previous editions Edgar's enumeration of various kinds of dogs included the line ' Hound or spaniel, brach or hym [or him].' For the last word Hanmer substituted 'lyra,' which was the Elizabethan synonym for bloodhound. Hanmer's edition was reprinted in 1770-1. In 1747 Bishop Warburton produced a revised version of Bishop Pope's edition in eight volumes. Warburton was hardly Warbur- better qualified for the task than Pope, and such improve- '™' 1698- ments as he introduced are mainly borrowed from Theobald '^^5" and Hanmer. On both these critics he arrogantly and unjustly heaped abuse in his preface. The Bishop was consequently criticised with appropriate severity for his pretentious incompetence by many writers ; among them, by Thomas Edwards, whose ' Supplement to Warburton's Edition of Shakespeare ' first appeared in 1 747, and, having been renamed ' The Canons of Criticism ' next year in the third edition, passed through as many as seven editions by 1765- Dr. Johnson, the sixth editor, completed his edition in Dr. John- eight volumes in 1765, and a second issue followed three years son, 1709- later. Although he made some independent collation of '^^3- N 178 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Edward Capell, 1713- 1781. George Steevens, 1736- 1800. the quartos, his textual labours were slight, and his verbal notes show little close knowledge of sixteenth and seven- teenth century literature. But in his preface and elsewhere he displays a genuine, if occasionally sluggish, sense of Shakespeare's greatness, and his massive sagacity enabled him to indicate convincingly Shakespeare's triumphs of characterisation. The seventh editor, Edward Capell, advanced on his predecessors in many respects. He was a clumsy writer, and Johnson declared, with some justice, that he 'gabbled monstrously,' but his collation of the quartos and the First and Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and scholarly methods than those of any of his predecessors, not excepting Theobald. His industry was untiring, arid he is said to have transcribed the whole of Shakespeare ten times. Capell's edition appeared in ten small octavo volumes in 1768. He showed himself well versed in Elizabethan literature in a volume of notes which appeared in 1774, and in three further volumes, entitled 'Notes, Various Readings, and the School of Shakespeare,' which were not published till 1783, two years after his death. The last volume, 'The School of Shakespeare,' consisted of ' authentic extracts from divers English books that were in print in that author's time,' to which was appended ' Notitia Dramatica ; or. Tables of Ancient Plays (from their begin- ning to the Restoration of Charles II).' George Steevens, whose saturnine humour involved him in a lifelong series of literary quarrels with rival students of Shakespeare, made invaluable contributions to Shake- spearean study. In 1766 he reprinted twenty of the plays from the quartos. Soon afterwards he revised Johnson's edition without much assistance from the Doctor, and his revision, which embodied numerous improvements, appeared in ten volumes in 1773. It was long regarded as the standard version. Steevens's antiquarian knowledge alike of Elizabethan history and literature was greater than that of any previous editor ; his citations of parallel passages from the writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries, in elucidation, of obscure words and phrases, have not been exceeded in number or excelled in aptness by any of his successors. All commentators of recent times are more deeply indebted in this department of their labours to Steevens than to any other critic. But he lacked taste as well as temper, and BIBLIOGRAPHY 179 excluded from his edition Shakespeare's sonnets and poems, because, he wrote, ' the strongest Act of Parhament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service.' The second edition of Johnson and Steevens's version appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third edition, published in ten volumes in 1785, was revised by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed (1742-1807), a scholar of his own type. The fourth and last edition, published in Steevens's lifetime, was prepared by himself in fifteen volumes in 1793. As he grew older he made some reckless changes in the text, chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying those engaged in the same field. With a malignity that was not without humour, he supplied, too, many obscene notes to coarse expressions, and he pretended that he owed his indecencies to one or other of two highly respectable clergymen, Richard Amner and John Collins, whose sur- names were in each instance appended. He had known and quarrelled with both. Such proofs of his perversity justified the title which Gifford applied to him of ' the Puck of Commentators.' Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit and incisive style, was a laborious and amiable archseologist, without much ear for poetry or delicate literary taste. He threw abundance of new light on Shakespeare's biography and on the chronology and sources of his works, while his researches into the beginnings of the English stage added a new chapter of first-rate importance to English literary history. To Malone is due the first rational 'attempt to ascertain the order in which the plays attributed to Shake- speare were written.' His earliest results on the topic were contributed to Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years later he published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two volumes containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, with reprints of Arthur Brooke's ' Romeus and Juliet,' Shake- speare's Poems, and the plays falsely ascribed to him in the Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel with Steevens followed, and was never closed. In 1787 Malone issued 'A Disserta- tion on the Three Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to show that those plays were not originally written by Shake- speare. In 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare in ten volumes, the first in two parts. What is known among booksellers as the ' First Variorum* edition of Shakespeare was prepared by Edmund Malone, 1741- 1812. Variorum editions. iSo SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Nine- teenth- century editors. Alexan- der Dyce, 1798- 1869. Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed, after Steevens's death. It was based on a copy of Steevens's work of 1793, which had been enriched with numerous manuscript additions, and it embodied the published notes and prefaces of preceding editors. It was published in twenty-one volumes in 1803. The ' Second Variorum ' edition, which was mainly a reprint of the first, was published in twenty-one volumes in 1813. The ' Third Variorum ' was prepared for the press by James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's biographer. It was based on Malone's edition of 1790, but included massive accumulations of notes left in manuscript by Malone at his death. Malone had been long engaged on a revision of his edition, but died in 18 12, before it was completed. Boswell's ' Malone,' as the new work is often called, appeared in twenty-one volumes in 1821. It is the most valuable of all collective editions of Shakespeare's works, but the three volumes of preliminary essays on Shakespeare's biography and writings, and the illustrative notes brought together in the final volume, are confusedly arranged and are unindexed ; many of the essays and notes break off abruptly at the point at which they were left at Malone's death. A new ' Variorum ' edition, on an ex- haustive scale, was undertaken by Mr. H. Howard Furness of Philadelphia, and fourteen volumes have appeared since 1871 ('Romeo and Juliet,' ' Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 2 vols., ' King Lear,' ' Othello,' ' Merchant of Venice,' ' As You Like It,' 'Tempest,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'Winter's Tale,' ' Much Ado,' ' Twelfth Night,' and 'Love's Labour's Lost '). Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared collec- tive editions of Shakespeare's works with original annota- tions those who have most successfully pursued the great traditions of the eighteenth century are Alexander Dyce, Howard Staunton, Nikolaus Delius, the Cambridge editors William George Clark (182 1-1878) and Dr. Aldis Wright, and the editors of the ' Bankside' edition of New York. Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as Steevens in Elizabethan literature, and especially in the drama of the period, and his edition of Shakespeare in nine volumes, which was first published in 1857, has many new and valuable illustrative notes and a few good textual emenda- tions, as well as a useful glossary ; but Dyce's annotations are not always adequate, and often tantalise the reader by BIBLIOGRAPHY i8i their brevity. Howard Staunton's edition first appeared in three volumes between 1868 and 1870. He also was well read in contemporary literature and was an acute textual critic. His introductions bring together much interesting stage history. Nikolaus Delius's edition was issued at Elberfeld in seven volumes between 1854 and 1861. . Delius's text is formed on sound critical principles and is to be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two volumes appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which first appeared in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866, exhaustively notes the textual variations of all preceding editions, and supplies the best and fullest apparatus criticus. (Of new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine volumes, and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.) In America the most valuable of recent contributions to the textual study of Shakespeare is the ' Bankside ' edition, the first volume of which was published by the Shakespeare Society of New York in 1888. Twenty-one plays have already appeared, each in a separate volume, under the general editorship of Mr. Appleton Morgan, prefaced by a critical essay from the pen of a Shakespearean scholar of repute. Of the twenty-one selected plays, sixteen were printed in quarto before the publication of the First Folio, and five were based on older plays by other hands, which were also published in quarto before the First Folio. In the ' Bank- side ' edition the First Folio versions and the earlier quarto versions are printed in full, face to face, on parallel pages. A 'Sequel' to the 'Bankside' edition, pubhshed in 1894, treats in similar fashion the First F"olio text of the ' Comedy of Errors ' and the text of the Globe edition. Other editors of the complete works of Shakespeare of the nineteenth century whose labours, although of some value, present fewer distinctive characteristics, are : William Harness (1825, 8 vols.) ; Samuel Weller Singer (1826, 10 vols., printed at the Chiswick Press for William Pickering, illustrated by Stothard and others ; reissued in 1856 with essays by William Watkiss Lloyd) ; Charles Knight, with discursive notes and pictorial illustrations by William Harvey, F. W. Fairholt, and others (' Pictorial edition,' 8 vols., including biography and the doubtful plays, 1838-43, often reissued under different designations) ; Bryan Waller Procter, i.e. Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.), illustrated by Kenny Meadows ; John Payne Collier (1841-4, 8 vols. ; Howard Staunton, i8io- 1874. Nikolaus Delius, 1813- 1888. The Cambridge edition, 1863-6. The Bankside edition. Other nine- teenth- century editions. i82 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK another edition, 8 vols., privately printed, 1878, 4to) ; Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (i 786-1 870), Vice-Chancellor of the University of New York (New York, in serial parts, 1844-6, and in 3 vols. 8vo, r847, with woodcuts after previously published designs of Kenny Meadows, William Harvey, and others); Samuel Phelps, the actor (1852-4, 2 vols. ; another edition, 1882-4) ; J- O- Halliwell (1853-61, 15 vols, folio, with an encyclopaedic collection of annota- tions of earlier editors and pictorial illustrations) ; Richard Grant White (Boston, U.S.A., 1857-65, 12 vols.) ; W. J. Rolfe (New York, 1871-96, 40 vols.); the Rev. H.N. Hudson (the Harvard edition, Boston, 1881, 20 vols.) The latest complete annotated editions are ' The Henry Irving Shakespeare,' edited by F. A. Marshall and others — especially useful for notes on stage history (8 vols. 1888- 1890); 'The Temple Shakespeare,' concisely edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz (40 vols. i2mo, 1894-6) ; and ' The Eversley Shakespeare,' edited by Professor C. H. Herford (10 vols. 8vo, 1899). Of one-volume editions of the unannotated text, the best are the Globe, edited by W. G. Glark and Dr. Aldis Wright (1864, and constantly reprinted — since 1891 with a new and useful glossary) ; the Leopold (1876), from the text of Delius, with preface by Dr. Furnivall ; and the Oxford, edited by Mr. W. J. Craig (1894). 183 XVIII POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION Shakespeare defied at every stage in his career the laws of, the classical drama. He rode roughshod over the unities of time, place, and action. There were critics in his day who zealously championed the ancient rules, and viewed with distrust any infringement of them. But the force of Shakespeare's genius — its revelation of new methods of dramatic art — was not lost on the lovers of the ancient ways ; and even those who, to assuage their consciences, entered a formal protest against his innovations, soon swelled the chorus of praise with which his work was welcomed by contemporary playgoers, cultured and uncultured alike. The unauthorised publishers of ' Troilus and Cressida ' in 1608 faithfully echoed public opinion when they prefaced the work with the note : 'This author's comedies are so framed to the life that they serve for the most common commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing such a dexterity and power of wit that the most displeased with plays are pleased with his comedies. ... So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his comedies that they seem for their height of pleasure to be born in the sea that brought forth Venus.' Anticipating the final verdict, the editors of the First Folio wrote, seven years after Shakespeare's death : ' These plays have had their trial already and stood out all appeals.' Ben Jonson, the staunchest champion of classical canons, Ben noted that Shakespeare ' wanted art,' but he allowed him in Jonson's verses, prefixed to the First Folio, the first place among all tribute, dramatists, including those of Greece and Rome, and claimed that all Europe owed him homage : Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, To whom all scenes, [i. e. stages] of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time. i84 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE ANI) WORK In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 'the great heir of fame : ' What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in piled stones ? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a lifelong monument. A writer of fine insight who veiled himself under the initials I. M. S. contributed to the Second Folio of 1632 a splendid eulogy. The opening lines declare ' Shakespeare's freehold ' to have been A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear And equal surface can make things appear Distant a thousand years, and represent Them in their lively colours' just extent. It was his faculty To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie Great heaps of ruinous mortality. Milton and I. M. S. were followed within ten years by critics of tastes so varied as the dramatist of domesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philo- sophic and ' ever-memorable ' John Hales of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant. Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms at Eton, the proposition that ' there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it m!ich better done in Shakespeare.' Leonard Digges (in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that every revival of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, Shakespeare's plays were the ' closet companions ' of Charles I's ' sohtudes.' 1660- After the Restoration public taste in England veered i7°2- towards the French and classical dramatic models. Shake- speare's work was subjected to some unfavourable criticism as the product of nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse proved more partial and temporary than is commonly POSTHUMO US"^REPUTA TION 185 admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in England no substantial echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy' (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on" ' Othello,' and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was ' a bloody farce without salt or savour.' In Pepys's eyes ' The Tempest ' had ' no great wit,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' was ' the most insipid and ridiculous play ; ' yet this exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing ' Hamlet ' four times, and ' Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 'a most excellent play for variety,' nine times. Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, repeatedly Dryden's complained of Shakespeare's inequalities — ' he is the very view. Janus of poets.' But in almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shakespeare was hefd in as much veneration among Englishmen as ^Eschylus among the Athenians, and that ' he was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . When he describes anything, you more than see it — you feel it too.' In 1693, when Sir Godfrey Kneller presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus : TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER. Shakspear, thy Gift, I place before my sight ; With awe, I ask his Blessing ere I write ; With Reverence look on his Majestick Face ; Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race. His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write, And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight. Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite temperaments as Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued for Shakespeare's supremacy. As a girl the sober duchess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare. In her 'Sociable Letters,' which were published in 1664, she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shakespeare creates the illusion that he had been ' transformed into every one of those persons he hath described,' and suffered all their emotions. When she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded that she was witnessing an episode in real life. ' Indeed,' she concludes, ' Shakespeare had a clear judgment, a quick wit, 1 86 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK a subtle observation, a deep apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution.' The profligate Sedley, in a prologue to the ' Wary Widdow,' a comedy by one Higden, produced in 1693, apostrophised Shakespeare thus : Shackspear whose friiitfull Genius, happy wit Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools, Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules. Restora- tion adap- tations. From 1702 onwards. Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were contrived to meet current sentiment of a less admirable type. But they failed efficiently to supersede the originals. Dryden and D'Avenant converted ' The Tempest ' into an opera (1670). D'Avenant sing|e-handed adapted 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' (i668) and 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden dealt similarly with 'Troilus ' (1679) ; Thomas Duffett with 'The Tempest' (1675);' Shadwell with 'Timon' (1678); Nahum Tate with ' Richard II ' (1681) , ' Lear ' (1681), and 'Coriolanus' (1682); John Crowne with 'Henry VI' (1681) ; D'Urfey with 'CymbeHne' (1682); Ravenscroft with 'Titus Andronicus' (1687) j Otway with ' Romeo and Juliet' (1692) ; and John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, with 'Julius Caesar' (1692). But during the same period the chief actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often in unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that actor's masterpiece. ' No succeeding tragedy for several years,' wrote Downes, the prompter at Betterton's theatre, ' got more reputation or money to the company than this.' From the accession of Queen Anne to the present day the tide of Shakespeare's reputation, both on the stage and among critics, has flowed onward almost uninterruptedly. The censorious critic, John Dennis, in his 'Letters' on Shakespeare's ' genius,' gave his work in 1711 whole-hearted commendation, and two of the greatest men of letters of the eighteenth century. Pope and Johnson, although they did not withhold all censure, paid him, as we have seen, the homage of becoming his editors. The school of textual criticism which Theobald and Capell founded in the middle years of the century has never ceased its activity since their day. Edmund Malone's devotion at the end of the eighteenth century to the biography of the poet and the contemporary history of the stage secvired for him a vast POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 187 band of disciples, of whom Joseph Hunter and John Payne CoUier well deserve mention. But of all Malone's suc- cessors, James Orchard Halliwell, afterwards Halliwell- Phillipps (i 820-1 889), has made the most important additions to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, there arose a third school to expound exclusively the aesthetic excellence of the plays. In its inception the Eesthetic school owed much to the methods of Schlegel and other admiring critics of Shakespeare in Germany. But Coleridge in his ' Notes and Lectures ' and Hazlitt in his 'Characters of Shakespeare's plays' (181 7) are the best representatives of the sesthetic school in this or any other country. Although Professor Dowden, in his ' Shakespeare, his Mind and Art' (1874), and Mr. Swinburne in his 'Study of Shakespeare ' (1880), are worthy followers, Coleridge and Hazlitt remain as sesthetic critics unsurpassed. In the effort to supply a fuller interpretation of Shakespeare's works — textual, historical, and sesthetic — two publishing societies have done much valuable work. ' The Shakespeare Society ' was founded in 1841 by Collier, Halliwell, and their friends, and published some forty-eight volumes before its dissolu- tion in 1853. The New Shakspere Society, which was founded by Dr. Furnivall in 1874, issued during the ensuing twenty years twenty-seven publications, illustrative mainly of the text and of contemporary life and literature. In 1769 Shakespeare's 'jubilee' was celebrated for three Stratford days (September 6-8) at Stratford, under the direction of festivals. Garrick, Dr. Arne, and Boswell. The festivities were repeated on a small scale in April 1827 and April 1830. ' The Shakespeare tercentenary festival,' which was held at Stratford from April 23 to May 4, 1864, claimed to be a national celebration. On the English stage the name of every eminent actor On the since Betterton, the great actor of the period of the English Restoration, has been identified with Shakespearean parts, stage. Steele, writing in the 'Tatler' (No. 167) in reference to Betterton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey on May 2, 1 7 10, instanced his rendering of Othello as proof qf an unsurpassable talent in realising Shakfespeare's subtlest conceptions on the stage. One great and welcome innova- tion in Shakespearean acting is closely associated with :petterton's n^mf. He encourage^ th§ substitution, which SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The first appear- ance of actresses in Shake- spearean parts. David Garrick, 1717- 1779. KilHgrew inaugurated, of women for boys in female parts. The first role that was professionally rendered by a woman in a public theatre was that of Desdemona in 'Othello,' apparently on December 8, 1660. Thomas Jordan, a very humble poet, wrote a prologue to notify the new procedure, and referred to the absurdity of the old custom : For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen. With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter Giant. The actress on the occasion is said to have been Mrs. Margaret Hughes, Prince Rupert's mistress ; but Betterton's wife, who was at first known on the stage as Mrs. Saunderson, was the first actress to present a series of Shakespeare's great female characters. Mrs. Betterton gave her husband powerful support, from 1663 onwards, in such rdles as Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Katharine, and Lady Macbeth. Betterton formed a school of actors who carried on his traditions for many years after his death. Robert Wilks (1670-1732) as Hamlet, and Barton Booth (1681-1733) as Henry VIII and Hotspur, were popularly accounted no unworthy successors. Colley Gibber (1671-1757) as actor, theatrical manager, and dramatic critic, was both a loyal disciple of Betterton and a lover of Shakespeare, though his vanity and his faith in the ideals of the Restoration incited him to perpetrate many outrages on Shakespeare's text when preparing it for theatrical representation. His notorious adaptation of ' Richard III,' which was first produced in 1700, long held the stage to the exclusion of the original version. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century all earlier efforts to interpret Shakespeare in the playhouse were eclipsed in public esteem by the concentrated energy and intelligence of David Garrick. Garrick's enthusiasm for the poet and his histrionic genius riveted Shakespeare's hold on public taste. His claim to have restored to the stage the text of Shakespeare — purified of Restoration defilements — cannot be allowed without serious qualifica- tions. Garrick had no scruple in presenting plays of Shakespeare in versions that he or his friends had recklessly garbled. He supplied ' Romeo and Juliet ' with a happy ending ; he converted the ' Taming of The Shrew ' into the POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 189 farce of ' Katharine and Petruchio,' 1754 ; he introduced radical changes in ' Antony and Cleopatra,' ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ' Cymbeline,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' Nevertheless, no actor has won an equally exalted reputation in so vast and varied a repertory of Shakespearean rdles. His triumphant debut as Richard III in 1741 was followed by equally successful performances of Hamlet, ILear, Macbeth, King John, Romeo, Henry IV, lago, Leontes, Benedick, and Antony in 'Antony and Cleopatra.' Garrick was not quite undeservedly buried in Westminster Abbey on February i, 1779, at the foot of Shakespeare's statue. Garrick was ably seconded by Mrs. Clive (1711-1785), Mrs. Cibber (1714-1766), and Mrs. Pritchard (1711-1768). Mrs. Cibber as Constance in ' King John,' and Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, excited something of the same enthusiasm as Garrick in Richard III and Lear. There were, too, contemporary critics who judged rival actors to show in certain parts powers equal, if not superior, to those 01 Garrick. Charles Macklin (i697?-i797) for nearly half a century, from 1 735 to 1 785, gave many hundred performances of a masterly rendering of Shylock. The character had, for many years previous to Ma'cklin's assumption of it, been allotted to comic actors, but Macklin effectively concentrated his energy on the tragic significance of the part with an effect that Garrick could not surpass. Macklin was also reckoned successful in Polonius and lago. John Hender- son, the Bath Roscius (1747-1785), who, like Garrick, was buried in Westminster Abbey, derived immense popularity from his representation of Falstaff ; while in subordinate characters like Mercutio, Slender, Jaques, Touchstone, and Sir Toby Belch, John Palmer (i742?-i798) was held to approach perfection. But Garrick was the accredited chief of the theatrical profession until his death. He was then succeeded in his place of predominance by John Philip Kemble, who derived invaluable support frqm his association with one abler than himself, his sister, Mrs. Siddons. Somewhat stilted and declamatory in speech, Kemble John enacted a wide range of characters of Shakespearean tragedy Philip with a dignity that won the admiration of Pitt, Sir Walter ^2^}^' Scott, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. Coriolanus was ig2^7 regarded as his masterpiece, but his renderings of Hamlet, King John, Wolsey, the Duke in ' Measure for Measure,' Leontes, and Brutus satisfied the most exacting canons of igo SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Mrs. Sarah Siddons, >75S- 1831. Edmund Kean, 1787- 1833- William Charles Mac- ready, 1793- 1873- contemporary theatrical criticism. Kemble's sister, Mrs. Siddons, was the greatest actress that Shakespeare's country- men have known. Her noble and awe-inspiring presentation of Lady Macbeth, her Constance, her Queen Katharine, have, according to the best testimony, not been equalled even by the achievements of the eminent actresses of France. During the present century the most conspicuous histrionic successes in Shakespearean drama have been won by Edmund Kean, whose triumphant rendering of Shylock on his first appearance at Drury Lane Theatre on January 26, 1814, is one of the most stirring incidents in the history of the English stage. Kean defied the rigid convention of the ' Kemble School,' and gave free rein to his impetuous passions. Besides Shylock, he excelled in Richard III, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. No less a critic than Coleridge declared that to see him act was like ' reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.' Among other Shakespearean actors of Kean's period a high place was allotted by public esteem to George Frederick Cooke (1756-1811), whose Richard III, first given in London at Covent Garden Theatre, October 31, 1801, was accounted his masterpiece. Charles Lamb, writing' in 1822, declared that of all the actors who flourished in his time, Robert Bensley ' had most of the swell of soul,' and Lamb gave with a fine enthusiasm in his ' Essays of Elia ' an analysis (which has become classical) of Bensley's performance of Malvolio. But Bensley's powers were rated more moderately by more experienced playgoers. Lamb's praises of Mrs. Jordan(i762- 1816) in Ophelia, Helena, and Viola in 'Twelfth Night,' are corroborated by the eulogies of Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. In the part of Rosalind Mrs. Jordan is reported on all sides to have beaten Mrs. Siddons out of the field. The torch thus lit by Garrick, by the Kembles, by Kean and his contemporaries was worthily kept alive by William Charles Macready, a cultivated and conscientious actor, who, during a professional career of more than forty years (1810-1851), assumed every great part in Shakespearean tragedy. Although Macready lacked the classical bearing of Kemble or the intense passion of Kean, he won as the interpreter of Shakespeare the whole-hearted suffrages of the educated public. Macready's chief associate in women characters was Helen Faucit (1820-1898, afterwards Lady Martin), whose refined impersonations of Imogen, Beatrice, POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 191 Juliet, and Rosalind form an attractive chapter in the history of the stage. The most notable tribute paid to Shakespeare by any Recent actor-manager of recent times was paid by Samuel Phelps revivals. (1804-1878), who gave during his tenure of Sadler's Wells Theatre between 1844 and 1862 competent representations of all the plays save six; only ' Richard II,' the three parts of 'Henry VI,' ' Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Titus Andronicus' were omitted. The ablest actress who appeared with Phelps at Sadler's Wells was Mrs. Warner 1(1804-1854), who had previously supported Macready in many Shakespearean dramas, and was a partner in Phelps's Shakespearean speculation in the early days of the venture. Sir Henry Irving, who since 1878 has been ably seconded by Miss Ellen Terry, has revived at the Lyceum Theatre between 1874 and the present time eleven plays (' Hamlet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Othello,' 'Richard III,' 'The Merchant of Venice,' ' Much Ado about Nothing,' ' Twelfth Night,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' ' King Lear,' ' Henry VIII,' and ' Cymbeline '), and has given all of them every advantage that they can derive from thoughtful acting as well as from lavish scenic elaboration. 'Hamlet' in 1874-5 ^"^^ 'Macbeth 'in 1888-9 were ^^^h performed by Sir Henry Irving for 200 nights in uninterrupted succession ; these are the longest continuous runs that any of Shakespeare's plays are known to have enjoyed. But theatrical revivals of plays of Shakespeare are in England intermittent, and no theatrical manager since Phelps's retirement has sought systematically to illustrate on the stage the full range of Shakespearean drama. Far more in this direction has been attempted in Germany. In one respect the history of recent Shakespearean representations can be viewed by the literary student with unqualified satisfaction. Although some changes of text or some rearrangement of the scenes are found imperative in all theatrical representations of Shakespeare, a growing public sentiment in England and elsewhere has for many years favoured as loyal an adherence to the authorised version of the plays as ispracticable on the part of theatrical managers ; and the evil traditions of the stage which sanctioned the perversions of the eighteenth century are happily wellnigh extinct. Music and art in England owe much to Shakespeare's jnmusic influence. From Thomas Morley, Purcell, Matthew Locke, and art. 192 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK In America, Trans- lations. and Arne to William Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, and Sir Arthur Sullivan, every distinguished musician has sought to improve on his predecessor's setting of one or more of Shakespeare's songs, or has composed concerted music in illustration of some of his dramatic themes. In art, the publisher John Boydell organised in 1787 a scheme for illustrating scenes in Shakespeare's work by the greatest living English artists. Some fine pictures were the result. A hundred and sixty-eight were painted in all, and the artists, whom Boydell employed, included Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Thomas Stothard, John Opie, Benjamin West, James Barry, and Henry P'useli. All the pictures were exhibited from time to time between 1789 and 1804 at a gallery specially built for the purpose in Pall Mall, and in 1802 Boydell published a collection of engravings of the chief pictures. The great series of paintings was dis- persed by auction in 1805. Few eminent artists of later date, from Daniel Maclise to Sir John Millais, have lacked the ambition to interpret some scene or character of Shake- spearean drama. In America no less enthusiasm for Shakespeare has been manifested than in England. Editors and critics are hardly less numerous there, and some criticism from American pens, like that of James Russell Lowell, has reached the highest literary level. Nowhere, perhaps, has more labour been devoted to the study of his works than that given by Mr. H. H. Furness of Philadelphia to the preparation of his ' New Variorum ' edition. The Barton collection of Shakespeareana in the Boston Public Library is one of the most valuable extant, and the elaborate cata- logue (1878-80) contains some 2,500 entries. First of Shakespeare's plays to be represented in America, ' Richard III ' was performed in New York in March 1750. More recently Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), Edwin Forrest (1806-1892), John Edward McCuUough, Forrest's disciple (1837-1885), Edwin Booth, Junius Brutus Booth's son (1833-1893), Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876), and Miss Ada Rehan {b. 1859) have maintained on the American stage the great traditions of Shakespearean acting ; while Mr. E. A. Abbey has devoted high artistic gifts to pictorial representation of scenes from the plays. The Bible, alone of literary compositions, has been translated more frequently or into a greater number of POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 193 languages than the works of Shakespeare. The progress of his reputation in Germany, France, Italy, and Russia was somewhat slow at the outset. But in Germany the poet has received for nearly a century and a halfa recognition scarcely less pronounced than that accorded him in America and in his own country. Three of Shakespeare's plays, now in the Zurich Library, were brought thither by J. R. Hess from England in 1614. As early as 1626 'Hamlet,' 'King Lear,' and ' Romeo and Juliet ' were acted at Dresden, and a version of ' The Taming of The Shrew ' was played there and elsewhere at the end of the seventeenth century. But such mention of Shakespeare as is found in German literature between 1640 and 1740 only indicates a knowledge on the part of German readers either of Dryden's criticisms or of the accounts of him printed in English encyclopEcdias. The earliest sign of a direct acquaintance with the plays is a poor translation of ' Julius Caesar ' into German by Baron C. W. von Borck, formerly Prussian minister in London, which was published at Berlin in 1741. A worse rendering of ' Romeo and Juliet ' followed in 1758. Meanwhile J. C. Gottsched (1700-66), an influential man of letters, warmly denounced Shakespeare in a review of von Borck's effort in ' Beitrage zur deutschen Sprache ' and elsewhere. Lessing came without delay to Shakespeare's rescue, and set his re- putation, in the estimation of the German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal entitled ' Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he developed in his ' Hamburgische Dramaturgie ' (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo) was at once accepted by the poet Johann Gottfried Herder in the 'Blatter von deutschen Art und Kunst,' 1771. Christopher Martin Wieland (i 733-1813) in 1762 began a prose translation which Johann Joachim Eschenburg(i743- 1820) completed (Zurich, 13 vols., 1775-84). Between 1797 and 1833 there appeared at intervals the classical German rendering by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, leaders of the romantic school of German literature, whose creed embodied, as one of its first articles, an unwavering veneration for Shakespeare. Schlegel trans- lated only seventeen plays, and his workmanship excels that o In Germany. German trans- lations. 194 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK German criticism. Modern German writers on Shake- speare, of the rest of the translation. Tieck's part in the under- taking was mainly confined to editing translations by various hands. Many other German translations in verse were undertaken during the same period— by J. H. Voss and his sons (Leipzig, 1818-29), by J. W. O. Benda (Leipzig, 1825-6), by J. Korner (Vienna, 1836), by A. Bottger (Leipzig, 1836-7), by E. Ortlepp (Stuttgart, 1838-9), and by A. Keller and M. Rapp (Stuttgart, 1843-6). The best of more recent German translations is that by a band of poets and eminent men of letters including Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Ferdinand von Freiligrathf and Paul Heyse (Leipzig, 1867-71, 38 vols.) Most of these versions have been many times reissued, but, despite the high merits of von Bodenstedt and his companions' performance, Schlegel and Tieck's achievement still holds the field. Schlegel was a critic as well as a translator. His lectures on ' Shakespeare and the Drama,' which were delivered at Vienna in 1808, and were translated into Enghsh in 1815, are worthy of comparison with those of Coleridge, who owed much to their influence. Wordsworth in 1815 declared that Schlegel and his disciples first marked out the right road in aesthetic criticism, and enjoyed at the moment superiority over all English aesthetic critics of Shakespeare. Subsequently Goethe poured forth, in his voluminous writings, a mass of criticism even more illuminating and appreciative than Schlegel's. Although Goethe deemed Shakespeare's works unsuited to the stage, he adapted ' Romeo and Juliet ' for the Weimar Theatre, while Schiller prepared 'Macbeth' (Stuttgart, 1801). Heine published in 1838 charming studies of Shakespeare's heroines (English translation 1895), and acknowledged only one defect in Shakespeare — that he was an Englishman. During the last half-century textual, aesthetic, and bio- graphical criticism has been pursued in Germany with un- flagging industry and energy ; and although laboured and supersubtle theorising characterises much German aesthetic criticism, its mass and variety testify to the impressiveness of the appeal that Shakespeare's work has made to the German intellect. The efforts to stem the current of Shakespearean worship made by the realistic critic, Gustav Riimelin, in his ' Shakespearestudien ' (Stuttgart, 1866), and subsequently by the dramatist, J. R. Benedix, m 'Die Shakespearomanie ' (Stuttgart, 1873 8vo), proved of no POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 195 effect. In studies of the text and metre Nikolaus Delius (1813-88) should, among recent German writers, be accorded the first place ; and in studies of the biography and stage history Friedrich Karl Elze (1821-89). Of recent aesthetic critics in Germany, those best deserving recognition probably are Friedrich Alexander Theodor Kreyssi^ (1818-79), author of 'Vorlesungen iiber Shake- speare' (Berlin, 1858 and 1874) and ' Shakespeare-Fragen ' (Leipzig, 187 1); Otto Ludwig the poet (1813-65), author of ' Shakespeare-Studien,' and Eduard Wilhelm Sievers (1820-95), author of many valuable essays as well as of an uncompleted biography. Ulrici's 'Shakespeare's Dra- matic Art ' (first published at Halle in 1839) and Gervinus's Comfnentaries -(first published at Leipzig in 1848-9), both of which are familiar in English translations, are sug- gestive but unconvincing aesthetic interpretations. The German Shakespeare Society, which was founded at Weimar in 1865, has published forty-two year-books (edited suc- cessively by von Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, F. A. Leo, and Prof. Brandl with Wolfgang Keller) ; each contains useful contributions to Shakespearean study. Shakespeare has been no less effectually nationalised on On the the German stage. The four great actors — Friedrich Ulrich German Ludwig Schroeder (i 744-1816) of Hambtirg, Ludwig Dev- stage. rient (1784-1832), his nephew Gustav Emil Devrient (1803- 1872), and Ludwig Barnay {b. 1842) — largely derived their fame from their successful assumptions of Shakespearean characters. Another of Ludwig Devrient's nephews, Eduard (1801-77), also an actor, prepared, with his son Otto, an acting German edition (Leipzig, 1873 and following years). An acting edition by Wilhelm Oechelhaeuser appeared pre- viously at Berlin in 187 1. Twenty-eight of the thirty-seven plays assigned to Shakespeare are now on recognised lists of German acting plays, including all the histories. In i8q6 as many as 910 performances of twenty-three of Shakespeare's plays were given in German theatres. In 1903 no fewe? than 977 performances were given of twenty-five plays. In 1 905 performances of twenty-three plays reached a total of 1,258— an average of nearly four Shakespearean representa- tions a day in the German-speaking districts of Europe. It is not only in capitals hke Berlin and Vienna that the representations are frequent and popular. In towns like Altona, Breslau, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Hamburg, Magde- 03 196 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK burg, and Rostock, Shakespeare is acted constantly, and the greater number of his dramas is regularly kept in rehearsal. ' Othello,' ' Hamlet,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' and ' The Taming of The Shrew ' usually prove most attractive. Of the many German musical composers who have worked on Shakespearean themes, Mendelssohn (in 'Midsummer Night's Dream '), Schumann, and Franz Schubert (in setting separate songs) have achieved the greatest success. In In France Shakespeare won recognition after a longer France. struggle than in Germany. Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-55), in his tragedy of ' Agrippine,' seemed to echo passages in ' Cymbeline,' ' Hamlet,' and 'The Merchant of Venice,' but the resemblances prove to be accidental. It was Nicolas Cldment, Louis XIVs librarian, who, first of Frenchmen, put on record an appreciation of Shakespeaie. When, about 1680, he entered in the catalogue of the royal library the title of the Second Folio of 1632, he added a note in which he allowed Shakespeare imagination, natural thoughts, and ingenious expression, but deplored his obscenity. Half a century elapsed before public attention in France was again directed to Shakespeare. The Abb^ Provost, in his periodical ' Le Pour et Contre ' (1733 etseq.), acknowledged his power. The Abbe Leblanc, in his 'Lettres d'un Fran9ois ' (1745), while crediting him with many grotesque extravagances, recognised ungrudgingly the sublimity of his style. But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he himself boasted, their first effective introduction to Shake- Voltaire's speare. Voltaire studied Shakespeare thoroughly on his strictures, visit to England between 1726 and 1729, and his influence is visible in his own dramas. In his ' Lettres Philosophiques ' (1731), afterwards reissued as ' Lettres surles Anglais,' 1734 (Nos. xviii. and xix.), and in his ' Lettre sur la Trag^die ' (1731), he expressed admiration for Shakespeare's genius, but attacked his want of taste and art. He described him as ' le Corneille de Londres, grand fou d'ailleurs, mais il a des morceaux admirables.' Writing to the Abb^ des Fontaines in November 1735, Voltaire admitted many merits in ' Julius Cfesar,' on which he published ' Observations ' in 1 764. Johnson replied to Voltaire's general criticism in the preface to his edition (1765), and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 in a separate volume,- which was translated into French in 1777. Diderot made, in his ' Encyclopedic,' the first stand in France against the Voltairean position, and increased POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 197 opportunities of studying Shakespeare's works increased the poet's vogue. Twelve plays were translated in De la Place's 'Theitre Anglais' (1745-8). Jean-Frangois Ducis (1733- 1816) adapted without much insight six plays for the French stage, beginning in 1769 with ' Hamlet,' his version of which was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur began a bad prose translation (completed in 1782) of all Shakespeare's plays, and declared him to be ' the god of the theatre.' Voltaire protested against this estimate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, of which the first was read before the French Academy on August 25, 1776. Here Shakespeare was described as a barbarian, whose works — 'a huge dunghill' — concealed some pearls. Although Voltaire's censure was rejected by the majority French of later French critics, it expressed a sentiment born of the critics' genius of the nation, and made an impression that was only ^^°^ gradually effaced. Marmontel, La Harpe, Marie-Joseph nation Chdnier, and Chateaubriand in his ' Essai sur Shakespeare, from Vol- 1801, inclined to Voltaire's view ; but Madame de Stael tairean wrote effectively on the other side in her ' De la Litterature,' influence. 1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii. 5). 'At this day,' wrote Words- worth in 1815, 'the French critics have abated nothing of their aversion to "this darling of our nation." "The English with their bouffon de Shakespeare " is as familiar an expression among them as in the time of Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the French theatre ; an advantage which the Parisian critic owed to his German blood and German education.' The revision of Le Tourneur's translation by Frangois Guizot and A. Pichot in 1821 gave Shakespeare a fresh advantage. Paul Duport, in ' Essais Littdraires sur Shakespeare ' (Paris, 1828, 2 vols.), was the last French critic of repute to repeat Voltaire's censure unreservedly. Guizot, in his discourse ' Sur la Vie et les CEuvres de Shakespeare ' (reprinted separately from the translation of 1821), as well as in his ' Shakespeare et son Temps ' (1852) ; Villemain in a general essay, and Barante in a study of ' Hamlet,' acknowledge the mightiness of Shakespeare's genius with comparatively few qualifications. Other complete translations followed — by Francisque Michel (1839), by Benjamin Laroche (1851), and by Emil Montdgut (1867), but the best is that in prose by Frangois Victor Hugo (1859-66), whose father, Victor 198 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Hugo the poet, published a rhapsodical eulogy in 1864. Alfred Mdzieres's ' Shakespeare, ses OEuvres et ses Critiques ' (Paris, i860), is a saner appreciation. Meanwhile ' Hamlet ' and ' Macbeth,' ' Othello,' and a few other Shakespearean plays, became stock pieces on the On the French stage. A powerful impetus to theatrical representa- French tion of Shakespeare in PYance was given by the performance stage. in Paris of the chief plays by a strong company of English actors in the autumn of 1827. ' Hamlet ' and ' Othello ' were acted successively by Charles Kemble and Macready ; Edmund Kean appeared as Richard III, Othello, and Shylock ; Miss Smithson, who became the wife of Hector Berlioz the musician, filled the roles of Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, Cordelia, and Portia. French critics were divided as to the merits of the performers, but most of them were enthusiastic in their commendations of the plays. Alfred de Vigny prepared a version of ' Othello ' for the Thdatre-Fran9ais in 1829 with eminent success. An adaptation of ' Hamlet ' by Alexandre Dumas was first performed in 1847, and a rendering by the Chevalier de Chitelain (1864) was often repeated. George Sand trans- lated 'As You Like It' (Paris, 1856) for representation by the Comddie Frangaise on April 12, 1856. 'Lady Macbeth ' has been represented in recent years by Madame Sarah Bernhardt, and 'Hamlet' by M. Mounet Sully of the Thdatre-Frangais. Four French musicians — Berlioz in his symphony of ' Romeo and Juliet,' Gounod in his opera of 'Romeo and Juliet,' Ambroise Thomas in his opera of 'Hamlet,' and Saint-Saens in his opera of ' Henry VIII ' — have sought with public approval to interpret musically portions of Shakespeare's work. In Italy. In Italy Shakespeare was little known before the present century. Such references as eighteenth-century Italian writers made to him were based on remarks by Voltaire. The French adaptation of ' Hamlet ' by Ducis was issued in Italian blank verse (Venice, 1774, 8vo). Complete transla- tions of all the plays made direct from the English were issued by Michele Leoni inverse at Verona in 1819-22, and by Carlo Rusconi in prose at Padua in 1831 (new edit. Turin, 1858-9). 'Othello' and 'Romeo and Juliet' have been very often translated into Italian separately. The Italian actors, Madame Ristori (as Lady Macbeth), Salvini (as Othello), and Rossi rank among Shakespeare's most POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 199 effective interpreters. Verdi's operas on Macbeth, Othello, and Falstaff (the last two with libretti by Boito), manifest close and appreciative study of Shakespeare. Two complete translations have been published in in Dutch; one in prose by A. S. Kok (Amsterdam, 1873- Holland. 1880), the other in verse by Dr. L. A. J. Burgersdijk (Leyden, 1884-8, 12 vols.) In Eastern Europe, Shakespeare first became known In through French and German translations. Into Russian riussia. ' Romeo and Juliet ' was translated in 1772, 'Richard III' in 1783, and ' Julius Caesar ' in 1786. Sumarakovv translated Ducis' version of 'Hamlet' in 1784 for stage purposes, while the Empress Catherine II adapted the ' Merry Wives ' and ' King John.' Numerous versions of all the chief plays followed ; and in 1865 there appeared at St. Petersburg the best translation in verse (direct from the English), by Nekrasow and Gerbel. A prose translation, by N. Ketzcher, begun in i86z, was completed in 1879. Gerbel issued a Russian translation of the 'Sonnets' in 1880, and many critical essays in the language, original or translated, have been published. Almost every play has been represented in Russian on the Russian stage. A Polish version of ' Hamlet ' was acted at Lemberg in In 1797 ; and as many as sixteen plays now hold a recognised Poland, place among Polish acting plays. The standard Polish translation of Shakespeare's collected works appeared at Warsaw in 1875 (edited by the Polish poet Kraszewski), and is reckoned among the most successful renderings in a foreign tongue. In Hungary, Shakespeare s greatest works have since the In beginning of the century been highly appreciated by students Hungary, and by playgoers. A complete translation into Hungarian appeared at Kaschau in 1824. At the National I'heatre at Budapest no fewer than twenty-two plays have been of late years included in the actors' repertory. Other complete translations have been published in In other Bohemian (Prague, 1874), in Swedish (Lund, 1847-51), in countries. Danish (1845-50), and Finnish (Helsingfors, 1892-5). In Spanish a complete translation is in course of publica- tion (Madrid, 1885 et seq.), and the eminent Spanish critic Men^ndez y Pelayo has set Shakespeare above Calderon. In Armenian, although only three plays (' Hamlet,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' and ' As You Like It ') have been issued, the 200 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK translation of the whole is ready for the press. Separate plays have appeared in Welsh, Portuguese, Friesic, Flemish, Servian, Roumanian, Maltese, Ukrainian, Wallachian, Croatian, modern Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Japanese ; while a few have been rendered into Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, Gujarati, Urdu, Kanarese, and other languages of India, and have been acted in native theatres. XIX GENERAL ESTIMATE No estimate of Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In General knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in estimate, depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no other writer, that his language and versification adapt them- selves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the whole of Shakespeare's vast work is scrutinised with due attention, the glow-of his imagination is seen to leave few passages wholly unillumined. Some of his plots are hastily constructed and inconsistently developed, but the intensity of the interest with which he contrives to invest the per- sonality of his heroes and heroines triumphs over halting or digressive treatment of the story in which they have their * being. Although he was versed in the technicalities of stagecraft, he occasionally disregarded its elementary con- ditions. But the success of his presentments of human life and character depended little on his manipulation of theatrical machinery. His unassailable supremacy springs from the versatile working of his insight and intellect, by virtue of which his pen limned with unerring precision almost every gradation of thought and emotion that animates the living stage of the world. Shakespeare's mind, as Hazlitt suggested, contained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling would develop in 202 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK any conceivable change of fortune. Men and women — good or bad, old or young, wise or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor — yielded their secrets to him, and his genius enabled him to give being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that present themselves on the highway of life. Each of his characters gives voice to thought or passion with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse in the intelligent playgoer and reader the illusion that they are overhearing men and women speak unpremeditatingly among themselves, rather than that they are reading written speeches or hearing written speeches recited. The more closely the words are studied, the completer the illusion grows. Creatures of the imagination — fairies, ghosts, witches — are delineated with "a lilce potency, and the reader or spectator feels instinctively that these supernatural entities could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shakespeare repre- sents them. The creative power of poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the spirits of the air. So mighty a faculty sets at nought the common limita- tions of nationality, and in every quarter of the globe to which civilised life has penetrated Shakespeare's power is recognised. All the world over, language is applied to his creations that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, FalstafF and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and Caliban are studied in almost every civilised tongue as if they were historic personalities, and the chief of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speak- ing in divers accents, applies with one accord his own words : ' How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in apprehension how like a god ! ' APPENDIX I THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over two centuries has brought together a mass of detail which far exceeds that accessible in the case of any other contem- porary professional writer. Nevertheless, some important links are missing, and at some critical points appeal to con- jecture is inevitalDle. But the fully ascertained facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general direction that Shakespeare's career followed. Although the clues are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the patient investigator. Fuller, in his ' Worthies ' (1662), attempted the first bio- graphical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, in his gossiping ' Lives of Eminent Men,' based his ampler information on reports communicated to him by William Beeston {d. 1682), an aged actor, whom Dryden called 'the chronicle of the stage,' and who was doubtless in the main a trustworthy witness. A few additional details were recorded in the seventeenth century by the Rev. John Ward (1629-81), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written between 1661 and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839); by the Rev. William Fulman, whose manu- scripts are at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (with valuable interpolations made before 1708 by the Rev. Richard Davies, vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire) ; by John Dowdall, who recorded his experiences of travel through Warwickshire in 1693 (London, 1838) ; and by William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, from Hall's letter among the Bodleian MSS.) Phillips in his ' Theatrum Poetarum' (1675), and Langbaine in his 'English Dramatick Poets' (1691), confined themselves to elementary criticism. In 1709 Nicholas Rowe prefixed to his edition of the plays a more ambitious memoir than had yet been attempted and embodied some hitherto unrecorded Stratford and London traditions with which the actor Thomas Betterton supplied Contem- porary records abundant. First efforts in bio- graphy. 204 SHAKESPEARES LIFE AND WORK him. A little fresh gossip was collected by William Oldys, and was printed from his manuscript 'Adversaria' (now in the British Museum) as an appendix to Yeowell's ' Memoir of Oldys,' 1862. Pope, Johnson, and Steevens, in the biographical prefaces to their editions, mainly repeated the narratives of their predecessor, Rowe. Bio- In the Prolegomena to the Variorum editions of 1803, 1813, graphers and especially in that of 1821, there was embodied a mass of of the fresh information derived by Edmund Malone from systematic nine- researches among the parochial records of Stratford, the teenth- manuscripts accumulated by the actor Alleyn at Dulwich, and century. official papers of state preserved in the public offices in London (now collected in the Public Record Office). The available knowledge of Elizabethan stage history, as well as of Shake- speare's biography, was thus greatly extended. John Payne Collier, in his 'History of English Dramatic Poetry' (1831), in nis ' New Facts ' about Shakespeare ( 1 835), his ' New Particulars ' (1836), and his ' Further Particulars ' (1839), ^'^^ '" h>s editions of Henslowe's ' Diary ' and the ' Alleyn Papers ' for the Shake- speare Society, while occasionally throwing some further light on obscure places, foisted on Shakespeare's biography a series of ingeniously forged documents, against which the student is warned. Joseph Hunter in ' New Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1845) and George Russell French's ' Shak- speareana Genealogica' (1869) occasionally supplemented Malone's researches. James Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell-Phillipps) printed. separately, between 1850 and 1884, in various privately issued publications, all the Stratford archives and extant legal documents bearing on Shakespeare's career, many of them for the first time. In 1881 Halliwell- Phillipps began the collective publication of materials for a full biography in his ' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare ; ' this work was generously enlarged in successive editions until it acquired massive proportions ; in the seventh edition of 1887, which embodied the author's final corrections and additions, it reached near 1,000 pages. (There have been three subsequent editions — the tenth and last being dated 1898— which reprint the seventh edition without change.) Mr. Frederick Card Fleay, in his 'Shakespeare Manual' (1876),- in his 'Life of Shakespeare' (1886), in his 'History of the Stage' (1890), and his 'Biographical Chi'onicle of the English Drama' (1891), adds much useful information respecting stage history and Shakespeare's relations with his fellow-dramatists, mainly derived from a study of the original editions of the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries ; but unfortunately many of Mr. Fleay's statements and conjectures are un- authenticated. For notices of Stratford, R. B. Wheler's ' History and Antiquities' (1806), John R. Wise's 'Shakespere, THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE 205 his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood' (1861), the present Stratford writer's' Stratford-on-Avon to the Death of Shakespeare' (new topo- edit. 1907), Mrs. C. C. Stopes's ' Shakespeare's Warwickshire graphy. Contemporaries' (1897), and Mr. J. W. Gray's 'Shakespeare's Marriage' (1905), may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume a tentative ' glossary of words still used in Warwick- shire to be found in Shakspere.' The parish registers of Strat- ford have been edited by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers Society (1898-9). Nathan Drake's ' Shakespeare and his Times' (1817) and G. W. Thornbury's 'Shakespeare's England' (1856) collect much material respecting Shakespeare's social environment. The chief monographs on special points in Shakespeare's Special- biography are Dr. Richard Farmer's 'Essay on the Learning ised of Shakespeare' (1767), reprinted in the Variorum editions; studies Bishop Wordsworth's ' Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of ™ ti°- the Bible '(4th ed. 1892); Octavius Gilchrist's 'Examination S^phy. of the Charges .... of Ben Jonson's Enmity towards Shake- speare' (1808); W. J. Thoms's 'Was Shakespeare ever a Soldier?' (1849), a study based oi^ ^" erroneous identification of the poet with another William Shakespeare ; Lord Campbell's ' Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements considered ' (1859); John Charles Bucknill's ' Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare ' (i860); C. F. Green's ' Shakespeare's Crab-tree, with its Legend ' (1862); C.H. Bracebridge's 'Shakespeare no Deer-stealer ' (1862); EUacombe's 'Shakespeare as an Angler' (1883); J. E. Harting's 'Ornithology of Shakespeare' (1872); William Blades's 'Shakspere and Typography' (1872); and D. H. Madden's ' Diary of Master William Silence (Shakespeare and Sport),' 1897. A full epitome of the biographical information accessible at the date of publication is supplied in Karl Elze's Useful ' Life of Shakespeare ' (Halle, 1876 ; English translation, 1888), epitomes. with which Elze's ' Essays ' from the publications of the German Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth studying. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil ( 1 861) is seriously injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's forgeries. Professor Dowden's ' Shakspere Primer ' (1877) and his ' Introduction to Shakspere ' (1893), and Dr. Furnivall's ' Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,' are all useful summaries of leading facts. Francis Douce's ' Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1807, new Aids to edit. 1839), 'Shakespeare's Library' (ed. J. P. Collier aiid study of W. C. Hazlitt, 1875), 'Shakespeare's Plutarch' (ed. Skeat, plots and 187s), and 'Shakespeare's Holinshed' (ed. W. G. Boswell. text. Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the sources of Shake- speare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's 'Shakespeare Lexicon' (1874) and Dr. E. A. Abbott's ' Shakespearian Grammar' (1869, new edit. 1893) are valuable aids to a study of the text. 2o6 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK W. Sidney Walker (1795-1846), sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, deserves special mention among textual critics of the present century. He was author of two valuable works : ' Shakespeare's Versification and its apparent Irregu- larities explained by Examples from Early and Late English Writers' (1854), and 'A Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare, with Remarks on his Language and that of his Contemporaries, together with Notes on his Plays and Poems ' (i860, 3 vols.) Walker's books were published from his notes after his death, and are ill arranged and unindexed, but they constitute a rich quarry, which no succeeding editor has neglected without injury to his work. Modern The chief editions of the Sonnets that have appeared of late editions years with critical apparatus ai'e those of Professor Dowden of the (1875, reissued 1896), Mr. Thomas Tyler (1890), Mr. George Sonnets, Wyndham, M.P. (1898) and Canon Beeching (1904). A fac- and the simile of the first edition was issued by the Oxford University theories Press, with an introduction by the present writer, in 1905. respecting Professor Dowden and Mr. Wyndham treat the identification of them. the young patron of the Sonnets with the Earl of Pembroke as Siprima facie possibility. Mr. Thomas Tyler, in his edition of the ' Sonnets,' not only advocated that theory with much earnestness, but ingeniously if unconvincingly advanced a claim to identify the ' dark lady ' of the ' Sonnets ' with Mary Fitton, a lady of the Court and the Earl of Pembroke's mistress. The history of the Pembroke theory is curious. It owes its origin to an erroneous and hasty guess that the Earl of Pem- broke was known in youth as ' Mr. William Herbert,' and might therefore be the ' Mr. W. H-.' of the publisher Thorpe's dedica- tory preface. The Earl of Pembroke was solely known as ' Lord Herbert ' until he succeeded to the title, and there is no evidence of Shakespeare's intimacy with him (cf p. 73). James Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, was the first to hazard publicly the guess identifying Thorpe's ' Mr. W. H.' with the Earl of Pembroke in a letter to the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' in 1832. A few months later Mr. James Heywood Bright wrote to the magazine claiming to have reached the same conclusion thirteen years earlier, although he had not published it. Boaden re-stated the theory in a volume on 'Shakespeare's Sonnets' which he published in 1837. C. Armitage Brown adopted it in 1838 in his ' Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems.' The Rev. Joseph Hunter accepted it in his 'New Illustrations of Shakespeare,' in 1845, but significantly pointed out (ii. 346) that it had not occurred to any of the writers in the great Variorum editions of Shakespeare, who included critics so acute in matters of literary history as Malone and George Steevens. The Pembroke theory during the half-century that followed enjoyed a curiously wide vogue, but during the past five years it has undergone new, minute and THE STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE 207 impartial examination, and has been generally acknowledged to rest on foundations of sand. The opposing theory that most of the Sonnets were ad- dressed to the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's undoubted patron, was first fully stated by Nathan Drake in 1 817 in ' Shakespeare and His Times,', ii. 1-73. It was revived with somewhat fantastic amplifications in 1866 in Mr. Gerald Massey's ' Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets,' which ap- peared in a second revised edition in 1888 (the text of the poems with a diffuse discussion). The Southampton theory strictly accords with the known facts of Shakespeare's life and work. Useful concordances to the Plays have been prepared by Mrs. Cowden- Clarke (1845), to the poems by Mrs. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume, with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London and New York, 1895). Extensive bibliographies are given in Lowndes's ' Library Manual ' (ed. Bohn) ; in Franz Thimni's ' Shakespeariana ' (1864 and 1871) ; in the 'Encyclo- paedia Britannica,' 9th edit, (skilfully classified by Mr. H. R. Tedder) ; and in the ' British Museum Catalogue ' (the Shake- spearean entries in which, comprising 3,680 titles, were separ- ately published in 1897). The Oxford University Press's fac- simile reproductions of the First Folio (1902), and of Shake- speare's 'Poems' and 'Pericles' (1905), include introductions by the present writer, with bibliographies of early issues. The valuable publications of the Shakespeare Society, the New Shakspere Society, and of the Deutsche Shakespeare- Gesellschaft, comprising contributions alike to the aesthetic, textual, historical, and biographical study of Shakespeare, are noticed above (see pp. 187, 195). To the critical studies, on which comment has already been made (see p. 187) — viz. Coleridge's ' Notes and Lectures' (1883), Hazlitt's ' Characters of Shakespeare's Plays ' (1817), Professor Dowden's ' Shakspere : his Mind and Art' (1875), ^Pd Mr. A. C. Swinburnejs 'A Study of Shakespeare' (1879) — there may be added the essays on Shakespeare's heroines respectively by Mrs. Jameson in 1S33 and Lady Martin in 1885 ; Dr. Ward's 'English Dramatic Literature' (1875, new edit. 1898); Richard G. Moulton's 'Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist' (1885); 'Shakespeare Studies' by Thomas Spencer Baynes (7893); F. S. Boas's 'Shakspere and his Predecessors' (1895); Georg Brandes's ' William Shakespeare '^an elaborately critical but somewhat fanciful study — in Danish (Copenhagen, 1895, ^vo), and in Enghsh (London, 1898, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Prof. A. C. Bradley's ' Shakespearean Tragedy ' (1904) ; the present writer's ' Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century' (1904), pp. 256-320, and his 'Shakespeare and the Modern Stage, with other Essays' (1906); Prof. Raleigh's 'Shakespeare' in 'English Men of Letters' series, 1907. Concor- dances. Biblio- graphies. Critical studies. 208 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK II THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY The apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge displayed in his literary work has evoked the fentastic theory that Shakespeare was not the author of the literature that passes under his name, and perverse attempts have been made to assign his works to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer, philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays embody a general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) which was possessed by no contemporary except Bacon ; that there are many close parallelisms between passages in Shakespeare's and passages in Bacon's works, and that Bacon makes enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret ' recreations ' and 'alphabets' and concealed poems for which his alleged employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. The only point of any genuine interest raised in the argu- ment from parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation from Aristotle which Bacon and Shakespeare not merely both make, but make in what looks at a first glance to be the same erroneous form. Aristotle wrote in his ' Nicomachean Ethics,' i. 8, that young men were unfitted for the study of political. philosophy. Bacon, in the iAdvaijcement of Learning' (1605), wrote : Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about 1603, in 'Troilus and Cressida,' 11. ii. 166, wrote of young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear ?«o^a/ philosophy.' But the alleged error of substituting moral for political philosophy in , Aristotle's text is more apparent than real ; it was not peculiar to Shakespeare and Bacon, but was in almost universal vogue • at the time they wrote. By ' political ' philosophy Aristotle, as his context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called 'morals.' In the summary paraphrase of Aristotle's 'Ethics' which was translated into English from the Italian, and published in 1 547, the passage to wl. rh both Shakespeare and THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 209 Bacon refer is not rendered literally, but its general drift is given as a warning that tnoral philosophy is not a fit subject for study by youths who are naturally passionate and head- strong. Such is the interpretation of Aristotle's language that was adopted by sixteenth and seventeenth century writers of all countries. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his popular 'CoUoquia' (Florence, 1531, sig. Q q), wrote of his endeavour to insinuate serious precepts ' into the minds of young men whom Aristotle rightly described as unfit auditors of moral philosophy ' (' in animos adolescentium, quos recte scripsit Aristoteles inidoneos auditores ethicse philosophise'). In a French translation of the ' Ethics ' by the Comte de Plessis, published at Paris in 1553, the section is headed 'parquoy le ieune enfant n'est suffisant auditeur de la- science civile;^ but an English commentator (in a manuscript note written about 1605 in a copy of the book in the British Museum) turned the sentence into English thus : ' Whether a young man may be a fitte schoUer oimorall philosophic.' In 1622 an Italian essayist, Virgilio Malvezzi, in his preface to his ' Discorsi Bopra Cornelio Tacito,' has the remark, ' E non k discordante da questa mia opinione Aristotele, il qual dice, che i giovani non sono buoni ascultatori delle morali' No genuine theory of a mysterious literary relationship between Shakespeare and Bacon can be based on the barren fact that each writer quoted" a trite Aristotelian apophthegm in the precise form in which it' enjoyed in their day a proverbial currency throughout Europe. The Baconian method of argument may also be judged by the following example. Toby Matthew, at a,n uncertain date Toby after January 1621, wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. Albans) Mat- these words : ' The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of thew's my nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's letter. name, though he be known by another.' This unpretending sentence is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works of commanding excellence under another's name, and among them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his ' most pro- digious wit' was some Englishman called Bacon whom he met abroad, bearing an assumed name. The reference is clearly to one of the pseudonymous Jesuits who were numerous among Matthew's friends. There is little doubt, in fact, that Matthew referred to Father Thomas Southwell, a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, whose real surname was Bacon. (He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near Walsingham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that place, and he died at Watten in 1637.) It was with reference to a book published by this man that Sir Henry Wotton wrote a few years later — on December 5, 1638— to Sir Edmund Bacon, half-brother to the great Francis Bacon, in language somewhat P 2IO SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK resembling Toby Matthew's : ' The Book of Controversies issued under the name of F. Baconus hath this addition to the said name, alias So'itkwell, as those of that Society shift their names as often as their shirts' (' ReUquiae Wottonians, 1672, p. 475)- Chief ex- Joseph C. Hart (U.S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in ponents. his 'Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shakespeare's authorship of the plays and poems associated with his name. There followed in a like temper 'Who wrote Shakespeare ? ' in ' Chambers's Journal,' August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon in 'Putnam's Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based 'The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne (London and Boston, 1857). Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first to spread far abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859. Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in ' Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays ? — a letter to Lord Ellesmere ' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, who published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the Plays attributed to Shakespeare,' a monument of misapplied ingenuity (4th edit. 1886, 2 vols.) Bacon's 'Promus of Formularies and Elegancies,' a comnibnplace book in Bacon's handwriting in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian theory ; it contained many words and phrases common to the works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremesl limits. Its vogue The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance in in America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the America. book called ' The Great Cryptogram ; Francis Bacon's Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays' (Chicago and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. The author professed to apply to the First Folio text a numerical cipher which enabled him to pick out letters at certain intervals forming words and sentences which stated that Bacon was author not merely of Shake- speare's plays, but also of Marlowe's work, Montaigne's ' Essays,' and Burton's ' Anatomy of Melancholy.' Many refutations have been published of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless contention. Another bold effort to discover in the First Folio a cipher-message in the Baconian interest was made by Mrs. Gallup, of Detroit, in 'The Bi-Literal Cypher of Francis Bacon' (1900). The absurdity of this endeavour was THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 21 1 demonstrated in numerous letters and articles published i n The Times newspaper (December 1 901 -January 1902). The attitude of scepticism in regard to the ' Shakespearean tradition ' has found more moderate expression of late in Judge Webb's 'The Mystery of William Shakespeare' (1902) and Mr. G. C. Bompas's 'The Problem of the Shakespeare Plays' (1902). A wholesome corrective to the whole argument of doubt may be found in Mr. Charles Allen's ' Notes on the Bacon-Shake- speare Question' (Boston, 1900). A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop Extent of and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a the litera- magazine (named since May 1893 ' Baconiana'). A quarterly ture. periodical also called ' Baconiana,' and issued in the same interest, was established at Chicago in 1892. 'The Biblio- graphy of the Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both sides of the subject which were published since 1848 ; the list was continued during 1886 in ' Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published at Phila- delphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its original number. The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing ; while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose wxiter and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shake- speare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argu- ment alone render any other conclusion possible. f 2 INDEX Abbey, Mr. E. A., 192 Abbott, Dr. E. A., 206 Actor, Shakespeare as an, 26-7, Actors : entertained for the first time at Stratford-on-Avon, 6 ; return of the two chief companies to London in 1587, 20 ; the players' licensing Act of Queen Elizabeth, 21 ; com- panies of boy-actors, 21, 24, log- iio; companies of adult actors in 1587, 21 ; the patronage of the company which was joined by Shakespeare, 21, 22 ; women's parts played by men or boys, 23- 24 ; tours in the provinces, 24-5 ; foreign tours, 25-6 ; Shakespeare's alleged scorn of their calling, 27 ; ' advice ' to actors in Hamlet, 27 ; their incomes, 99-102 ; the strife between adult actors and boy- actors, 9-13; patronage of actors by King James, 118-20; substitu- tion of women for boys in female parts, 187-8 Adam, in As You Like It, played by Shakespeare, 26 Adaptations by Shakespeare of old plays, 32-3 Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays at the Restoration, 186 Adulation, extravagance of, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, 66 .(Esthetic school of Shakespearean criticism, 187 AUeyn, Edward, manages the amal- gamated companies of the Admiral and Lord Strange, 22-3 ; his large savings, 103 Allot, Robert, 173 Alls Well that Ends Well: the sonnet form of a letter of Helen, * 53; date of production, etc., 77- 78. For editions see Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82 America, enthusiasm for Shakespeare in, 192 ; copies of the First Folio in, 170 Amner, Rev. Richard, 179 'Amoretti,' Spenser's, 57 Amphitruo of Plautus, the, and a scene in The Comedy of Errors, 32 ' Anthia and Abrocomas,' by Xeno- phon Pphesius, and the story of Romeo and Juliet, 33 Antony and Cleopatra: allusion to the part of Cleopatra being played by a boy, 24 ; date of entry in the ' Stationers' Registers,' 128 ; date of publication, 128 ; the story derived from Plutarch, 128 ; the ' happy valiancy' of the style, 128. i^Dr editions Je'c Section xvii. (Biblio- graphy), 163-82 Apolloni-us and Silla, Historie of, 107 'Apologie for Poetrie,' Sidney's, aUusion to the conceit of the im- mortalising power of verse in, 57 ; on the adulation of patrons, 66, 'Apology for Actors,' Hey wood's, 90 'Arcadia,' Sidney's, 125 Arden family, of Warwickshire, 4, 94-S Arden family, of Alvanley, 96 Arden, Alice, 4 Arden, Edward, executed for com- plicity in a Popish plot, 4 Arden, Joan, 7 Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare, Mary 214 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Arden, Robert (i), sheriff of Warwick- shire and Leicestershire in 1438, 4 Arden, Robert (2), landlord at Snit- terfield of Richard Shakespeare, 2, 4 ; marriage of his daughter Mary to John Shakespeare, 4, 5; his family and second marriage, 4 ; his property and will, 4-5 Arden, Thomas, grandfather of Shakespeare's mother, 4 A rden of Feversham, a play of un- certain authorship, 44 Ariel, character of, 135 Ariodante and Ginevra, Historic of, 106 Ariosto, / Supfositi of, 78 ; Orlando Purioso of, and Much Ado about Nothing, 106 Aristotle, quotation from, raadq by both Shakespeare and Bacon, 208 Armado, in Love's Labours Lost' 31.38 Armenian language, translation of Shakespeare in the, 199 Arms, coat of, Shakespeare's, 93-97 Arms, College of, applications of the poet's father to, i, 93-97 Arne, Dr., 187 Art in England, its indebtedness to Shakespeare, 191-2 As You Like It: allusion to the part of Rosalind being played by a boy, 24; acknowledgments to Marlowe (ill. v. 80), 39 ; adapted from Lodge's ' Rosalynde,' 106 ; hints taken from ' Saviolo's Prac- tise,' i;o6 ; its pastoral character, 106. For ed tions see Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82 Asbies, the chief property of Robert Arden at Wilmcote, bequeathed to Shakespeare s mother, 4 ; mort- gaged to Edmund Lambert, 7 ; proposal to confer on John Lam- bert an absolute title to the property, 15 ; Shake-speare's endeavour to re- cover, 97-8 Ashbee, Mr. E. W. , 165 Aspley, William, bookseller, 71, 105, 166, 173 Assimilation, literary, Shakespeare's power of, 37, 56 seq. Aston Cantlowe, 4 ; place of the marriage of Shakespeare's parents, 5 ' Astrophel and Stella,' 52 ; the praise of 'blackness' in, 58-9 Aubrey, John, the poet's early bio- grapher, on John Shakespeare's trade, 3 ; on the poet's knowledge of Latin, 9 ; on John Shakespeare's relations with the trade of butcher, 10 ; on the poet at Grendon, 19 ; lines quoted by him on John Combe, 142 ; on Shakespeare's genial disposition, 148 ; value of his biography of the poet, 203 Autobiographical features of Shake- speare's plays, 78-80, 2C2 ; of Shakespeare's sonnets, the question of, 55. 56. 59. 60, 62 Autographs of the poet, 231-4 ' Avisa,' heroine of Willobie's poem, 59 ^^i- Ayrer, Jacob, his Die schone Sidea, 133 Bacon, Miss Delia, 210 Bacon Society, 210 Bacon-Shakespeare controversy (Ap- pendix II.), 208-11 Baddesley Clinton, the Shakespeares of, 2 Bandello, the story of Romeo and Juliet by, 33 ; the story of Hero and Claudio by, 106 ; tlie stoiy of Twelfth Night by, 107 ' Bankside ' edition of Shakespeare, 181 Barante, recognition of the greatness of Shaliespeare by, 197 Barnard, Sir John, second husband of the poet's granddaughter Eliza- beth, 150 Barnay, Ludwig, 195 Barnes, Bamabe, the probable rival of Shakespeare for Southampton's favour, 65 ; his sonnets, 65 Barnfield, Richard, his adulation of Queen Elizabeth in 'Cynthia,' 69 ; chief author of the ' Passionate Pilgrim,' 90 Bartholomew Fair, 34 Bartlett, John, 207 Barton collection of Shakespeareana at Boston, Mass., 192 Barton-on-the-Heath, 7 ; identical with the ' Burton ' in the Taming of The Shrew, 78 Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 207 ' Bear Garden in Southwark, The,' the poet's lodgings near, 23 Bearley, 4 Beaumont, Francis, on ' things done at the Mermaid,' 87 INDEX :i5 Bedford, Edward Russell, third Earl of: his marriage, 76 Bedford, Lucy, Countess of, 76 Beeching, Canon, 206 Beeston, William (a seventeenth- century actor), on the report that Shakespeare was a schoolmaster, 17 ; on the poet's acting, 26 Belleforest (Franfois de), Shake- speare's indebtedness to the ' His- toires Tragiques' of, 8, 33, 106, 114 Benda, J. W. O., German transla- tion of Shakespeare by, 194 Benedix, J. R. , opposition to Shake- spearean worship by, 194 Bensley, Robert, actor, 190 Bentley, R. , 174 Berlioz, Hector, 198 Bermudas, the, and The Tempest, 132 Berners, Lord, translation of ' Huon of Bordeaux ' by, 77 Bernhardt, Madame Sarah, 198 Betterton, Mrs., 188 Betterton, Thomas, 20, 186, 188, 204 Biancaand her lovers, story of, partly drawn from the ' Supposes ' of George Gascoigne, 78 Bible, the, Shakespeare and, 9 Bibliography of Shakespeare, 163- 182 Bidford, near Stratford, legend of a drinking bout at, 144 Biography of the poet, sources of (Appendix I.), 203-207 Birmingham, memorial Shakespeare libniry at, 162 Biron, in Love's Lahoui's Lost, 30, 31 Birth of Merlin, 90 Birthplace, Shakespeare's, 5 ' Bisson,' use of the word, 176 Blackfriars, Shakespeare's purchase of property in, 141 Blackfriars Theatre, built by James Burbage (1596), 23, loi ; leased to ' the Queen's Children of the Chapel,' 23, loi, 109; occupied by Shakespeare's company, 23 ; litiga- tion of Burbage's heirs, 100 ; Shake- speare's interest in, loi, 102 ; shareholders in, 102 ; Shakespeare's disposal of his shares in, 139 ' Blackness,' Shakespeare's praise of, 58. 59 Blades, William, 205 Blount, Edward, publisherj 72, 91, J28, 166, 167, 173 Boaden, James, 206 Boaistuau de Launay (Pierre) trans- lates Bandello' story of Romeo and Juliet, 33 Boar's Head Tavern, 82 Boas, Mr. F. S. , 207 Boccaccio, Shakespeare's indebted- ness to, 77, 131, 132 Bodenstedt, Friedrich von, German translator of Shakespeare, 194 Bodleian copy of the First Folio, 172 Bohemia, allotted a seashore in Winter's Tale, 132 ; translations of Shakespeare in, 199 Boiai'do, 126 Bonian, Richard, printer, 116 Booth, Barton, actor, 188 Booth, Edwin, 192 Booth, Junius Brutus, 192 Booth, Lionel, 173 Borck, Baron C. W. von, transla- tion of Julius Ccesar into German by. 193 Boswell, James, 187 Boswell, James (the younger), 179 Boswell-Stone, Mr. W. G., 205 Bbttger, A., German translation of Shakespeare by, 194 Boy-actors, 21, 24, 109-10 ; the strife between adult actors and, 109-12, "3 Boydell, John, his scheme for illus- trating the work of the poet, 192 Bracebridge, C. H. , 205 Bradley, Prof. A. C. , 207 Brandes, Mr. Georg, 207 Brathwaite, Richard, 142 Brewster, E., 174 Bright, James Heywood, 206 Brooke or Broke, Arthur, his trans- lation of the story of Romeo and Juliet, 33, 179 Brooke, Ralph, complains about Shakespeare's coat-of-arms, 96 Brown, C. Armitage, 206 Brown, John, obtains a writ of distraint against Shakespeare's father, 7 Buc, Sir George, 128 Buckingham, John Sheffield, first Duke of, 119 Bucknill, Dr. John Charles, on the poet's medical knowledge, 205 Burbage, Cuthbert, 23, loi Burbage, James, owner of The Theatre and keeper, of a livery 2l6 SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK stable, 20, 22 ; erects the Blackfriars Theatre, 23 Burbage, Richard, erroneously as- sumed to have been a native of Stratford, 19 ; demolishes The Theatre and builds the Globe Theatre, 23, 98, 101 ; performs, with Shakespeare and Kemp, before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace, 26 ; his impersonation of the King in Richard III, 39 ; his income, loi, 112 ; creates the title- i part in Hamlet, 114, 118 ; hisrepu- j tation made by creating the leading i parts in the poet's tragedies, 139 ; | anecdote of, 139 ; ' impresa ' of, 141 ; the poet's bequest to, 146 ; as a painter, 141, 158 Burble, Cuthbert, 31 Burgersdijk, Dr. L. A. J., transla- tion in Dutch by, 199 Busby, John, 84 Butter, Nathaniel, 89, 124 Caliban, the character of, 133, 135 Cambridge, ^«»2/«^ acted at, 115 Cambridge edition of Shakespeare, 180 Camden, William, 95 Campbell, Lord, on the poet's legal acquirements, 205 Capell, Edward, reprint of Edward III in his 'Prolusions.' 44, 115; his edition of Shakespeare, 177 ; his works on the poet, 178 Cardenio, the lost play of, 90, 136 Castille, Constable of, entertainments in his honour at Whitehall, 120 Castle, William, parish clerk of Stratford, 20 Catherine II of Russia, adaptations of the Merry Wives and King John by, 199 ' Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets, A,' Barnes's, 65 Cervantes, his 'Don Quixote,' foun- dation of lost play of Cardenio, 136 ; death of, 144 Chamberlain, the Lord, his company of players. See Hunsdon, first Lord and second Lord Chamberlain, John, 69 Chapman, George, his alleged rivalry with Shakespeare for Southampton's favour, 66 ; his translation of the 'Iliad,' 117. Charlecote Park, probably the scene of the poaching episode, 16 Charles I and the poet's plays, 184 his copy of the Second Folio, 173 Charles II, his copy of the Second Folio, 173 Chateaubriand, 197 Chatelain, Chevaher de, rendering of Hamlet by, 198 Chaucer, the story of ' Lucrece ' in his ' Legend of Good Women,' 47 ; hints in his ' Knight's Tale ' for Midsummer Nights Dream, 77 ; the plot of Troilus and Cressida taken from his ' Troilus and Cres- seid,' 117 ; plot of The Two Nohle Kinsmen drawn from his ' Knight's Tale,' 137 Chenier, IVlarie-Joseph, sides with Voltaire in the Shakespearean con- troversy in France, 197 Chester, Robert, his' Love's Martyr,' 91 Chettle, Henr)', 'the .publisher, his description of Shakespeare as an actor, 26 ; his apology for Greene's attack on Shakespeare, 35, 116 ; 147 ; appeals to Shakespeare to write an elegy on Queen Elizabeth, 118 Chetwynde, Peter, publisher, 173 Chiswell, R., 174 Chronology of Shakespeare's plays, 29-34. 37-44. ^(>seq., 10s seg., 121 seq, , 130 seg. Cibber, CoUey, 188 Cibber, Mrs., 189 Cibber, Theophilus, the reputed compiler of ' Lives of the Poets,' 20 Cinthio, the ' Hecatommithi ' of, Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 8, 32, 121 Clark, Mr. W. G., 180 Clement, Nicolas, criticism of the poet by, 196 Cleopatra : the poet's allusion to her part being played by a boy, 24 ; compared with the ' dark lady ' of the 'Sonnets,' 59; her character, 128 Clive, Mrs., 189 Clopton, Sir Hugh, 97 Clopton, Sir John, 151 Cobham, Henry Brooke, eighth Lord, 81 Cokain, Sir Aston, lines on Shake speare and Wincot ale by, 79 INDEX 217 Coleridge, S. T., on the style of Antony and Cleopatra, 128 ; on The Two Noble Kinsmen, 136; repre- sentative of the aesthetic school, 187 ; on Edmund Kean, 190 ; 207 Collier, John Payne, includes Muce- dorus in his edition of Shakespeare, 4S; his forgeries in the ' Perkins Folio,' 173 ; 187, 204 ; other forgeries (Appendix i. ), 203-7 Collins, Francis Shakespeare's so- licitor, 143, 145 Collins, Rev. John, 179 Combe, John, bequest left to the poet by, 142 ; lines written upon his money-lending, 142 Combe, Thomas, legacy of the poet to, 146 Combe, William, his attempt to enclose common land at Stratford, 143 Comedy of Errors : 9, 3s ; performed in the hall of Gray's Inn 1594, 43. For editions see Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163-82 ' Complainte of Rosamond,' Daniel's, parallelisms in Romeo and Juliet with, 33 ; its topic and metre re- flected in ' Lucrece,' 47 Concordances to Shakespeare, 207 Condell, Henry, actor, 22, loi, 103, 130 ; the poet's bequest to him, 146 ; signs dedication of First Folio, 166, 167-B Confessio Amantis, Gower's, 127 Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster , first fart of the, 36 Cooke, George Frederick, actor, 190 Coriolanus : 128-9. ^^^^ editions see Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163- 182 Cotes, Thomas, printer, 173 Cotswolds, the, Shakespeare's allu- sion to, 81 Court, the, Shakespeare's relations with, 50, 52, 118-20, cf. 131-2, 138 Cowden-Clarke, Mrs., 207 Cowley, actor, 106 Craig, Mr. W. J., 182 Creede, Thomas, 36, draft of the Merry Wives of Windsor printed by, 84 ; draft of Henry V printed by, 84 ; fraudulently assigns plays to Shakespeare, 88 Cromwell, History of Thomas, Lord, '74. ' Cryptogram, The Great,' 210 Curtain Theatre, Moorfields, 20, 22-23 Cushman, Charlotte, 192 Cymbeline : 130-1. For editions see Section xvii. (Bibliography), 163- 182 Cynthia's Revels, performed at Blackfriars Theatre, 109 Cyrano de Bergerac, plagiarisms of Shakespeare by, 196 'Daiphantus,' allusion to the poet in Scoloker's, 147 Daniel, Samuel, parallelisms in Romeo and Juliet with his ' Com- plainte of Rosamond,' 33 ; the topic and metre of the 'Complainte of Rosamond' reflected in ' Lucrece,' 47 ; claims immortality for his sonnets, 57; celebrates in verse Southampton's release from prison, 69 Danish, translations of Shakespeare in, 199 Danter, John, prints surreptitiously Romeo and Juliet, 34 ; Titus Andronicus entered at Stationers' Hall by, 40 D'Avenant, John, keeps the Crown Inn, Oxford, 140 D'Avenant, Sir William, relates the story of Shakespeare holding horses outside playhouses, 20 ; on the story of Southampton's gift to Shaiespeare, 63 ; a letter cf King James to the poet once in his possession, 119 ; Shakespeare's alleged paternity of, 139-40 ; 184 Davies, Archdeacon, vicar of Saperton, Shakespeare's poaching, 16 ; on * Justice Clodpate ' (Justice Shal- low), 17 ; 203 Davies, John, of Hereford, his allu- sion to the parts played by Shake- speare, 26 ; celebrates in verse Southampton's release from prison, 69 ; his ' Wittes Pilgrimage ' Davies, Sir John, 145 Death-mask, the Kesselstadt, 160 ' Decameron,' the, indebtedness of Shakespeare to, 77, i3r, 132 ' Dedicatory ' sonnets of Shake- speare, 62 seq. Dekker, Thomas, the quarrel with Ben Jonson, 109-12 ; 116 ; on King James's entry into London, 119 2l8 SHAKESPEARE S LIFE AND WORK Delias, Nikolaus, edition of Shake- speare by, i8o ; studies of the text and metre of the poet by, 195 Dermis, John, on the Merry Wives of Windsor, 83 ; his tribute to the poet, 186 Derby, Ferdinando Stanley (Lord Strange), Earl of, his patronage of actors, 21-2 ; performances by his company, 34, 36, 40, 45 Derby, William Stanley, Earl of, 76 Desportes, Philippe, his claim for the immortality of verse, 57 Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 207 Devrient family, the, stage represen- tation of Shakespeare by, 195 Diana, George de Montemayor's, and Two Gentlemen of Verona, 32 ; translations of, 32 Diderot, opposition to Voltaire's strictures by, 196 Digges, Leonard, on the superior popularity of Julius Cart jn the performance of, 26 Selita^us, 88 Sewell, Dr. George, 175 Shakespeare, the surname of, 1, a Shakespeare, Adam, 2 Shakespeare, Ann, a sister of the PPet, 7 Shakespeare, Anne (or Agjies) : her parentage, II ; her piarriage to thg poet, xj.-/^ ; assumed ideritificatiqn pf her with Anne Whateley , 13-14 ; her debt, 93 ; her husband'sbequest to her, 145-6 ; her death, 149 Shakespeare, Edmund, a. brother of the poet, 7; 'a player,' 151; death, ,151 Shakespeare, Gilbert, a brother of the poet, 7 ; witne?seshis brother's .perfpripance pf Adam in As You Like it, 26 ; apparently had a son named Gilbert, 151 ; his death not recorded, 151 Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of the poet, IS, 93 Sb^espeare,, Henry, one of the poet's uncles, 2, 92 Shakespeare, Joan (i), S Shakespeare, Joan (2), see Hart, Joan Slaakespeare, John (i), of the thirteenth century, i Shakespeare, John (2), the poet's father, administrator of Richard Shakespeare's estate, 2 ; claims that his grandfather received a grant pf land from Henry VH, 2, 149 ; leaves Snitteriield for Stratfordron- Avon, 2; his business, 3; his pro- perty in Stratford and his municipal offices, 3 ; marries Mary Ardeni 4 ; his children, 5 ; his hpuse in Henley Street, Stratfprd, s i apppinted alderman and bailiff, 6 ; welcomes actprs at Stratfprd, *; his alleged sympathies with piu-itanism, 6 ; his applicatiPn fpr a grant of arms, 2, 93-7 ; his financial difficulties, 7, 92 ; his younger children, 7 ; his trade of .butcher, 10; relieved by the poet, 92-3 ; his death, 103 Q2 228- SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Shakespeare, Judith, the poet's second daughter, 15, 103 ; her marriage to Thomas Quiney, 142; her father's bequest to her, 146 ; her children, 149 ; her death, 149 Shakespeare, Margaret, 5 Shakespeare, Mary, the poet's mother, 4 ; her title to bear the arms of the Arden family, 94 ; her death, 140 Shakespeare, Richard, a brother of the poet, 7, 140 ; his death, 151 Shakespeare, R.chard, of Rowington, i Shakespeare, Richard, of Snitterfield, probably the poet's grandfather, 2 ; his family, 2 ; letters of administra- tion of his estate, 2 Shakespeare, Richard, of Wroxhall, 2 Shakespeare, Susanna, a daughter of the poet, 13. See also Hall, Mrs. Susanna Shakespeare, Thomas, probably one of the poet's uncles, 2 Shakespeare or 'Sakspere,' William, the first recorded holder of this sur- name (thirteenth century), i Shakespeare, William : parentage and birthplace, 1-5 ; childhood, education, and marriage, 6-14 {see also Education of Shakespeare ; Poaching ; Shakespeare, Anne), departure from Stratford, 15-8 ; theatrical employment, 20-1 ; joins the Lord Chamberlain's company, 22 ; his roles, 26 ; his first plays, 28-45 ; publication of his ' Poems,' 46 seq. ; his ' Sonnets,' 52-61, 70-4 ; patronage of the Earl of Southamp- ton, 62-70 ; plays composed be- tween 1595 and 1598, 76-84 ; his popidarity and inrtuence, 86-91 ; returns to Stratford, 93 ; buys New Place, 97 ; financial position before iS99i 98 seq. ; financial position after 1599, 100 seq. ; formation of • his estate at Stratford, 103 seq. ; plays written between 1599 and 1609, 105-29 ; the latest plays, 130 ' seq. ; performance of his plays at Court,. 139 (see also Court ; White- hall ; Elizabeth, Queen ; James I) ; final settlement in Stratford (1611), 140 i«^. ; death (i5i6), 144; his will, 145 seq. ; monument at Strat- ford, 146 ; personal character, 147-8 his survivors and descend- ants, 149 seq. ■ autograplis, por- traits, and memoriEiTs, 152-62 ; bibliography, 163-82 ; and the Earl of Pembroke, 168 ; his posthu- mous reputation in England and abroad, 183-200 ; general estimate of his work, 201-2; biographical sources, 203-7 Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, 192 ' Shakespeare Society,' the, 187, 207 Shallow, Justice, Sir Thomas Lucy caricatured as, 17 ; his house in Gloucestershire, 80-1; 84 Sheldon copy of the First Folio, the, 170, 171 Shelton, Thomas, translator of ' Don Quixote,' 136 Shottery, Anne Hathaway's cottage at, II Shylock, sources of the portrait of, 42 Sibthorp, Mr. Coningsby, his copy of the First Folio, 171, 172 Siddons, Mrs. Sarali, 189, 190 Sidney, Sir Philip, on the absence of scenery in a theatre, 24 ; translation of verses from ' Diana,' 32 ; Shake- speare's indebtedness to him, 37 ; addressed as ' Willy ' by some of his eulogists, 49-50 ; his ' Astrophel and Stella,' brings the sonnet into ■vogue, 52 ; warns the public against the insincerity of sonnetteers, 55 ; on the conceit of the immortalising power of verse, 57 Sievers, Eduard Wilhelm, 195 Singer, Samuel Weller, i8i Sly; Christopher, 78-80 Smethwick, John, bookseller, 166 Smith, Mr. W. H., and the Baconian hypothesis, 210 Smithson, Miss, actress, 198 Snitterfield, Richard Shakespeare rents land of Robert Arden at, 2, 4 ; departure of John Shakespeare, the poet's father, from, 2; the Arden property at, 4-5 ; sale of Mary Shakespeaie's property at, 7 Snodham, Thomas, printer, 89 Soest portrait, 159 Somers, Sir George, wrecked off the Bermudas, 132 Somerset House, Shakespeare and his company at, 119-20 Sonnets, Shakespeare's : the poet's first attempts, 52 ; the majority -probably composed in 1594, 53; a few written between 1594 and 1603, 53 ; their literary value, 53 ; circu- lation in manuscript, 70 ; com- INDEX 329 mended by Meres, 70; their piratical publication in 1609, 70; their form, S4 ; want of continuity, S4, S^ ; autobiographical only m a limited sense, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60 ; their borrowed conceits, 56-9; indebtedness to Drayton, Petrarch, Ronsard, Desportcs, and others, 56. S7 \ *6 poet's claim of immort^ity for his sonnets, 57, 96 ; vituperation, 58; 'dedicatory' son- nets, 63 seq.\ the 'rival poet,' 64-6 ; sonnets of friendship, 66-8 ; the supposed story of intrigue, 59 ; summary of conclusions respecting the ' Sonnets,' 75-6 ; edition of 1640, 163 Sonnets, quoted with explanatory comments : xxvi. , 63 ; Iv. , 58 ; Ixxviii., 6a, 65 ; Ixxx, , 65; Ixxxvi., 6s ; xciv. (line 14) 44, 70 ; c. , 62 ; ciii. , 6a ; cvii. , 53. 68, 69 ; ex. , a7 ; cxi., 27; cxxxviii., 70; cxliv., 59, 70, 164 — the vogue of the Elizabethan : 52-3 : conventional device of son- netteers of feigning old age, S3 ; lack of genuine sentiment, 55 ; French and Italian models, |s ; censure of false sentiment in son- nets, SS ; Shakespeare's scornful allusions to sonnets in his plays, 55 ; vituperative sonnets, s8 Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of, 32 ; the dedications to him of ' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece,' 46, 48 ; his patron- age of Shakespeare, 62-70 ; his gift to the poet, 63, 100; his youthful appearance, 67 ; his identity with the youth of Shakespeare's sonnets of ' friendship ' evidenced by his portraits, 68 ; imprisonment, 69 ; as a literary patrcn, 168 Southwell, Robert, jmblication of 'A Foure-fould Meditation ' by, 72 Southwell, Father Thomas, 209 Spanish, translation of Shakespeare's plays into, 199 Spanish Tragedy, Kyd's, popularity of, 40, 114 Spelling of the poet's name, 153-4 Spenser, Edmund : and Shakespeare, 49-50 ; on the immortalising power of verse, 57 ; his ' Amoretti,' 57 Sport, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 16, 84 Stael, Madame de, 197 Stafford, Lord, his company of actors, 20 Stage, conditions of, in Shakespeare's day, 24 ' .Staple of News, The,' Jonson's quo- tations from Julius Ccesar in, 113 Staunton, Howard, 173 ; his edition of the poet, 180 Steele, Richard, on Betterton's rendering of Othello, 187 Steevens, George : his edition oi Shakespeare, 178 ; his revision of Johnson's edition, 178 ; his criti- cisms, 178, 179 Stinchcombe Hill referred to as ' thp Hill ' in Henry IV, Bi Stopes, Mrs. C. C, 205 Strange, Lord. See Derby, Earl of Straparola, ' Notti ' of, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, 84 Stratford-on-Avon, settlement of John Shakespeare, the poet's father, at, a ; property owned by John Shakespeare in, 3, 5 ; the poet's birthplace at, 5 ; the Shakespeare Museum at, 5, 161; the plague in 1564 at, 6 ; actors for the first time at, 6 ; the grammar school, 7.; Shakespeare's departure from, 16, 17, 19 ; native place of Richard Field, 19 ; allusions in the Taming of The Shrew to, 79 ; the poet's return in 1596 to, 93 ; the poet's purchase of New Place, 97 ; appeals from townsmen to the poet for aid, 98; the poet's purchase of land at, 103, 104 ; the poet's Isist years at, 140-2 ; attempt to en- close common lands and Shake- speare's interest in it, 143 ; the poet's death and burial at, 144 ; portrait at, 155 ; Shakespeare me- morial building at, 161 ; the ' Jubilee ' and the tercentenary, 187 Sturley, Abraham, 98 Suckling, Sir John, 184 Sullivan, Barry, 161 Sully, M. Mounet, 198 Sumarakow, translation into Russian by, 199 Supposes, the, of George Gascoigne, 78 Surrey, Earl of, sonnets of, 52, 54 Sussex, Earl of, his company of actors, 21 ; Titus Andronicus per- formed by, 22, 40 23° SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORK Swedish, translations of Shakespeare in, 19^ ' Sweet,' epithet applied to Shake- speare, 224 Swinbvirne, Mr. A. C, 38, 44, T87, 207 TamBurlaine, Marlowe's, 38 Taming, of A Shrew, 78 Taming of The Shrew, 78-g. For editions see Section xvii. CBibho- graphy), 163-82 "farleton, Richard, 50; his 'Newes out of Purgatorie ' and the Merry Wives of Windsor, 84 ' Teares of the Muses,' Spenser's, referred to in Midsummer Ifights Dream, 49 Tempest, The : traces of the influence of Ovid, 8-9 ; 15 ; 26 ; the ship- wreck akin to a similar scene in Pericles, 127 ; date of composi- tion, &c. , 132-4; Ben Jortson's scornful allusion to, 134; fanciful interpretations of, 134-5. ■'''"' editions see Secfion xvii. CBiftlio- grapfiy), iSa-Sa "Temple Grafton, 13 ' Temple Shakespeare, The,' 1-82 Tercentenary festival, the Shake- speare, 187 "ferry. Miss Ellen, 191 Theatre, The, at SKoreditch, 20, 22 ; Shakespeare af, between IS9S and 1599, 23; denioltshed, and the Globe Theatre built With the materials, 23 i'heatres in London : Blackfriars {g.v.) ; Curtain (q'.v.) ; Fortune, 108; Globe (q.v.); NeWiiigton Butts, 23; Red Bull, 19 ; Rose (q.t>.\; "fhe "Kieaifre, Shoreditch ..(?■"■) "Theobald, Lewis, his emendations of Hamlet, 115 ; publishes a play alleged to be by Shakespeare, 136 ; his criticism of Pope, 175 ; his edition of the poet's works, 175, 176 Thomas, Ambroise, opera of Hamlet by, 198 Thoms, W. J., 205 Thornbury , G. W. , 205 Thorpe, Thomas, the piratical pub- lisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 70-4 ; a;dds ' A Lover's Complaint ' to the collection of Sonnets, -ji ; his bombastic dedication to ' Mr. W. H.,'74-6 Three Ladies of London, The, some of the scenes in the Merehant of Venice anticipated in, 41 Tieck, Ludwfg, theory respecting The TeMpest'oi, 153, r9'3 Titnon ietionary of National Biography j* ivitli VIMLL Specimen Fages, may he had upon application. London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W. •ti «.