CfortwU Hwitietaitg SItbrarH 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1691 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2S94.H43 1912 
 
 Shakespear, himself and his woric; a biogr 
 
 3 1924 013 148 162 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis bool< 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/cu31924013148162 
 
SHAKESPEAR : 
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
SHAKESPEAR 
 
 Himself and his Work 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDT 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Fourth Edition, entirely Recast with Important Additions, 
 
 Two Portraits of Shakespear, seventeen Facsimiles 
 
 and a Fuller Index 
 
 LONDON 
 BERNARD QUARITCH 
 
 19 1 2 
 
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &• Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press. Edinburgh 
 
PREFACE 
 
 When the present volume originally appeared in 1903, it 
 was not intended to form more than an Essay or a Sketch, 
 almost exclusively limited to new facts or new arguments. 
 The reduction of the matter to type shewed me what I had 
 been able to accomplish, and what I had left undone ; and 
 during the last nine years it has been one of my favourite 
 employments to develop the original effort into something 
 more nearly resembling a Biography. I had a most imper- 
 fect idea, when I started, of the state of information and 
 knowledge on the subject ; but, independently of a succes- 
 sion of new lights, for an ignorance of which earlier workers 
 were obviously not responsible, the long familiar incidents 
 of the life of the poet, sparing as they were, have more 
 frequently than not been misrepresented. In other words, 
 the personal history of Shakespear was rendered even less 
 clear than it might have been, and I now attempt to put 
 on a better footing the new treatment of the question, 
 which came from my pen in the first instance. 
 
 I have as far as possible refrained from noticing points 
 not immediately affecting Shakespear, which have been 
 already adduced by others. 
 
 Every strong mind more or less unconsciously and in- 
 voluntarily fulfils the mission of enlarging and raising the 
 standard of thought, of becoming the benefactor of the 
 age and community to which it immediately belongs, and 
 so of permanently and universally befriending humanity. 
 There have been those, whose gifts and whose achievements 
 have from century to century impressed and fascinated their 
 contemporaries, and have laid under obligations millions of 
 
VI 
 
 Preface 
 
 after-comers. But the genius of Shakespear was purely intel- 
 lectual, and it was hampered in his own day by professional 
 subservience to the demands of the stage; and we see, 
 how long it was, before it was fully and accurately recog- 
 nized. In the eyes of generations of Englishmen, comprising 
 such as stood at his side, he was the gentle Shakespear, the 
 comic writer, the uneducated aspirant to an equality with 
 Jonson, and Beaumont, and Fletcher, the playwright in 
 whose work the superior intellects of the Restoration and 
 of the Augustan epoch of Anne saw little more than the 
 occasional source of a plot or a situation for their own 
 dramatic compositions. 
 
 After all, the fittest and most eloquent homage of his 
 native country to Shakespear is one, which England is 
 capable of offering single-handed, namely, a text of his writ- 
 ings as pure as it is in our power to produce, accompanied 
 by such biographical and literary illustrations as may be col- 
 lected from them and from collateral sources. The latter 
 part of the task I have endeavoured to accomplish. The 
 former I think that I must leave to others ; it is almost a 
 labour commending itself to a limited company. The text 
 is at present in a more satisfactory state than it was half a 
 century ago ; but much has still to be elucidated and rectified. 
 
 W. C. H. 
 
 Ramsgate, 
 
 January, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Personal History ........ 1 
 
 PART II 
 
 The Lyrical Work I89 
 
 PART III 
 
 The Dramatic Work 269 
 
 PART IV 
 Chronological Table of the Plays . . . .411 
 
 PART V 
 Notes 417 
 
 Index 489 
 
 Tii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Portrait of Shakespear, attributed to Richard 
 
 BuRBAGE, 1611 . . . . . . Facing Title 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Signatures of Sir Thomas I.ucy and his Son, from a 
 
 contemporary Document .... .25 
 
 Signatures to the Will (3) . . . . . .82 
 
 Facsimile of Title Page of the Aldine Ovid, 1502, 
 
 with the Poet's Autograph . ... 105 
 
 Five Signatures of the Poet, 1603-16. . . .108 
 
 Signature of Henry, Earl of Southampton, 1592 . 1 14 
 Portrait of Shakespear, supposed to have been taken 
 just before his Death, by Richard Burbage on 
 Board (I616) ...... Facing 159 
 
 Signatures of the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery 
 
 ("The Two Incomparable Brothers") . . .173 
 Signatures (2) of Henry Oxinden of Barham . . 332 
 Facsimile of a Hamlet Entry, from a Book of 1639 . 460 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The illustration of the life and writings of William 
 Shakespear has constituted the earnest and affectionate 
 study of quite a long succession of eminent scholars 
 and antiquaries, who have exerted their best efforts in 
 supplying lacunae in the biography, and elucidating the 
 text of the Plays and Poems ; and it consequently becomes 
 a matter for surprize that so much remains to be done. 
 It is to the private and literary history of Shakespear, how- 
 ever, rather than to the settlement of debateable textual 
 points, that I propose immediately to address myself. 
 Shakespear stands alone in more than one sense — in his 
 unique literary power and in his singular pei'sonal character. 
 Charles Knight remarked of him that he is "a man who 
 stands above all other individual men, above all ranks of 
 men ; in comparison with whom, in his permanent influence 
 upon mankind, generations of nobles, fighting men, states- 
 men, princes, are but as dust ; " and Bulwer Lytton in 
 1836, more particularly referring to Hazlitt, declared that 
 it was the property of genius to invest with interest every- 
 thing associated with it, making it an honour even to have 
 been the contemporaries of such persons, and an hereditary 
 rank to be their descendants. 
 
 In the life-time of Shakespear Thomas Thorpe the 
 stationer quite prophetically acclaimed him "our ever- 
 living poet," and Aubrey, who died in 1697, at a period 
 when the fame and recollection of the older school of 
 dramatic writers were still under an eclipse, foresaw that 
 the durability of Shakespear would rest on his dramatic 
 works. "His comedies will remain wit," he says, "as long 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 as the English tongue is understood, for that he handles 
 mores hominum; now, our present writers reflect so much 
 upon particular persons and coxcombities, that twenty years 
 hence they will not be understood." ^ The Wiltshire anti- 
 quary did little more than echo the sentiments of Jonson, 
 Milton, Davenant, and Dryden. He flourished, however, 
 within measurable distance of Rowe, the poet's first critical 
 editor (1709) ; and thenceforward we tread on difl'erent and 
 on surer and surer ground. Yet even Pope — while, accord- 
 ing to Spence, he pronounced Bacon "the greatest genius 
 that England (or perhaps any country) ever produced " — 
 condemned the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras as "a bad 
 age," and thought that Rowe had done ill in writing a play 
 on the Shakespearean model. In other words, Pope shewed 
 far less discernment than Thorpe and Aubrey, yet he 
 merely followed the track of Ravenscroft and others who, 
 in their revivals of Shakespear, courageously pronounced 
 them to be improved texts; and similarly, in his Lettres 
 Philosophiques, 1734, Voltaire is found qualifying his admira- 
 tion for the dramatist by impugning his taste and art. 
 But Professor Ralegh has quite lately outshone all his 
 predecessors, without being aware of having done so, by 
 admitting the poet to the Gild of Men of Letters ! He 
 might perhaps class him, as a late J.P. for Surrey did, 
 as a clever man. 
 
 The latest editors and biographers of Shakespear have 
 not only dealt incompletely with some points, from an 
 imperfect acquaintance, I presume, with the data or an 
 inadequate valuation of their importance, but have left 
 numerous others absolutely untouched. We are quite 
 sufficiently ignorant of the career of the poet, and quite 
 
 ^ This remark might be stereotyped, so continued and successive is its 
 applicability. Within my own time how many once resonant names have 
 dropped out of notice ; and it would be by no means difficult to compile a 
 list — iit would be a long one — of thbse, which are bound to follow in a 
 few years. What does Montaigne say 1 — " De mon temps je suis tromp^, 
 si les pires escrits ne sont ceux qui ont gaign^ le dessus du vent 
 populaire." 
 
Introduction xiii 
 
 a sufficient proportion of our sources of knowledge has 
 utterly perished, not to be able to afford to lose any pro- 
 mising clue or miss any valid suggestion ; and it is impera- 
 tive that every circumstance entitled to rank even as a 
 highly probable fact should find a place, more especially as 
 it may prove hereafter to be a link in a chain or a point 
 in an argument. 
 
 There is the constant risk, while we are contemplating 
 such a man, of hesitating to look at him in his strictly 
 human aspect and day-by-day life, as one of ourselves, and, 
 again, of being discouraged from entertaining what might, 
 in an ordinary case, be accepted as reasonable propositions ; 
 and the extent, to which we are forced to avail ourselves 
 of collation, analogy, and suggestion, is responsible, on the 
 contrary, for some hardihood in guesswork. 
 
 Of the biography of Shakespear, pure and simple — the 
 domestic Fasti, the researches and speculations of successive 
 ages have gradually collected as much as we are, perhaps, 
 entitled to expect in the case of one who was, as we may 
 put it, almost wilfully and ostentatiously indifferent to his 
 own fame, of whom his contemporaries and immediate after- 
 comers have so little to say, and by possibility knew so 
 little, and who had the fortune to be connected in blood 
 with persons whose illiteracy and religious bigotry were 
 unfavourable to the preservation of records of any kind. 
 We have here, where such information and light might 
 have been superlatively important and welcome, to face the 
 disastrous consequences of the phenomenal apathy of the 
 individual himself, succeeded and complemented by the dis- 
 taste of certain members of his family for the pursuit and 
 the monuments of it, which they were incapable of regard- 
 ing with more than tolerance while the poet lived, and 
 which they almost undoubtedly did their part in com- 
 mitting to oblivion when he was no more. If the wife 
 and the daughters, and the Halls, and the Quineys, had 
 been told that in these works the world would learn to 
 recognize an ipso Judo title to the first place among play- 
 
xiv Introduction 
 
 Wrights, among literary men, among English-speaking folk 
 everywhere, and that from those pages the most religious 
 might come away uncontaminated, these excellent provincial 
 worthies would have been totally incredulous. 
 
 It is tantalizing and sad, when we look at the vestiges 
 and clues, which such a man as Drummond of Hawthomden 
 has left us — a man of such unspeakably slighter import- 
 ance — to think and find that, partly owing to the indi- 
 vidual himself, partly, if not more, to his family, we are 
 reduced in the present case to the construction of a house 
 of cards, to piecing together a miisaic of broken and scat- 
 tered fragments. For Shakespear had so much in common 
 with the Scotish writer that, if the latter had inherited 
 a fortune, the English one was at no time, subsequently 
 to his earliest manhood, a needy man, and throughout all 
 his later life in the enjoyment of comparative affluence and 
 in a position to have taken measures to preserve materials 
 for future biographers. Then, however, there is much in 
 the remark of Bloomfield in his Life of Thucydides, that 
 in accounts of their great men the ancients did not study 
 or value that personal detail, which came into vogue only 
 in comparatively modern times, and judged a bare outline 
 of a career sufficient for the purposes of after-comers as it 
 was for their own. The writers of Memoirs and Diaries, 
 even when they arose, were of continental origin, and in 
 the earliest examples of such literature of native extrac- 
 tion as we possess the entries calculated to be of service 
 in this sort of way are notoriously scanty and casual. Of 
 the long-surviving indifference or insensibility to authentic 
 biographical particulars of eminent foregoers we have an 
 illustration in Pepys, who might have told us so much about 
 the antecedent literary school, but who does not even inci- 
 dentally add a tittle to our knowledge of Shakespear and 
 his contemporaries. The same is to be said of Evelyn, 
 whose father was living side by side, so to speak, with 
 the poet. 
 
 Then, again, in a different way, there was Dugdale, 
 
Introduction xv 
 
 who in his History of the County might have earned our 
 gratitude by inserting some biographical facts about the 
 most illustrious of all Warwickshire's sons and a view of 
 the monument in its original purity, such as it was; and 
 we know what really happened. Some at least of the plates 
 to the work were probably, however, contributed by the 
 parties immediately interested. 
 
 The critical acumen of the best judges of poetry in the 
 course of a century and a half has exhausted itself in 
 illustrating and emphasizing the intrinsic value and beauty 
 of the plays and the unique genius of Shakespear; and, 
 since he laid down his pen, others without number have 
 busied themselves with the ambitious endeavour to merit 
 the praise of creating something even distantly and faintly 
 resembling these masterpieces. 
 
 Again, by a slow and tedious course of patient and 
 scholarly investigation, the texts of the dramatic series (for 
 the poems occupy different ground) have been raised to a 
 standard of comparative purity, and the outcome, consider- 
 ing the almost desperate condition of numerous passages, 
 is apt to strike us with astonishment, while it impresses 
 us with gratitude. Shakespear was unjust to himself in 
 leaving to posterity such an editorial trust, when it is 
 borne in mind that it was in his own power to rectify at 
 a glance typographical blunders or copyists' misreadings, 
 which, under the most auspicious circumstances, we can 
 only hope that we have set right.^ Yet his labours have 
 not descended to posterity in a much more corrupt state 
 than those of many inferior writers, who have demanded 
 and obtained at our hands a similar votive office; and in 
 
 ' The Folio of 1623 and a few of the contemporary quartos embody, 
 no doubt, alterations and corrections directly emanating from the hand 
 of the poet, but perhaps so written, if they were not copied under his 
 eye by a scrivener, as to be misunderstood, when the volume was sent 
 to press, and to such a circumstance is due the considerable crop of 
 Errata in the posthumous volumes ; and, again, not a few slips, where 
 the author himself in the separate plays chose to officiate as editor or 
 corrector, and did not see a revise. 
 
xvi Introduction 
 
 regard to his personal history his singular eminence deepens 
 one's sense of the obscurity enveloping so much of it. Our 
 exceptional admiration enhances our desire to learn more 
 than we care to learn, if we could, about others, who did 
 not deem him at all events more than such another as 
 themselves. 
 
 The school of critical investigation of the more modem 
 type may be said to have had as its pioneer the Rev. Joseph 
 Hunter, who brought out in 1839 his Disquisition on the 
 Tempest and in 1845 his New Illustrations of Shakespeare. 
 One may appreciate, as I cordially do, Mr. Hunter's work 
 without by any means concurring in all his views or 
 conclusions. 
 
 The world of letters and culture is, and will always 
 remain, under weighty obligations to Halliwell-Phillipps, 
 who spared neither labour nor expense in laying before us 
 all, for our use and enjoyment, the entire known corpus of 
 documentary matter illustrative of the great writer, whom 
 he made his life-study. Had it not been for him, in com- 
 bination with a few others, who limited themselves to the 
 authentic papers and particulars extant or discoverable, no 
 account of the life and works of Shakespear would at the 
 present moment be practicable. But Halliwell-Phillipps 
 was never quite true to himself, partly from the necessity 
 of printing his material as he accumulated it, and partly 
 from the absence of an aptitude or taste for methodical 
 arrangement ; and, regarded as a book, his volumes represent 
 little better than material. He may not be blameable for 
 letting us hear what Dr. Johnson thought about the poet's 
 origin and character ; but he seems to be so, where he fails 
 to estimate the relative weight of authorities, and, still 
 more, where on one page he tells us that the Works are 
 entirely impersonal, and elsewhere points out passages trans- 
 ferred to them from actual incidents in his career. In 
 short, the Outlines are little more than Collectanea, 
 
 Mr. Fleay, in his Chronicle History of the Life and Worh 
 of William Shakespeare, 1886, has performed a valuable 
 
Introduction xvii 
 
 service in analyzing and dissecting much of the dramatic 
 work of Shakespear and his fellow-playwrights, even if he 
 renders us rather nervous and uncomfortable by the dis- 
 closures, which he makes of matter transmitted to us in an 
 imperfect shape in addition to such as has been totally 
 lost. This view is supported by the existence of a few 
 MSS. copies, chiefly imperfect or even fragmentary, which 
 betray the process, by which texts were sacrificed to theatrical 
 «xigencies. I hope that I may not be charged with undue 
 presumption if I express the opinion, that Mr. Fleay, in 
 his attributions of authorship, is rather adventurous and 
 withal positive ; and some of his dicta I am unable to accept. 
 But I prefer not to encroach in these pages on his ground. 
 One excellent point is, that he explicitly owns his obliga- 
 tions to Halliwell-Phillipps, whom he does not spare, never- 
 theless, if he catches him tripping. So we may get nearer 
 the truth by a new species of reciprocity. 
 
 The conditions involved in the domestic arrangements 
 of the poet during the greater and better part of his life, 
 although they may be thought to possess no interest so long 
 after the event, can be shown to have exerted a large mea- 
 sure of influence on his literary progress and history, and 
 are, at any rate, nearly as unique as himself. We know 
 that Stratford friends and neighbours settled in London 
 both before and about the time, when Shakespear resided 
 there, and that some of them valuably contributed to his 
 success as a dramatist and actor, and that two of his own 
 brothers were of the number. There is positive testimony 
 that he was in Stratford at irregular intervals. But there is 
 absolutely no suggestion that his father or mother, wife or 
 daughters, ever quitted their native county, that they cast 
 eyes on any of the distinguished friends whom he had collected 
 round him, save perhaps Jonson and Drayton, and possibly 
 Richard Burbage the actor and artist; that they were 
 spectators at any performance where he was both author 
 and actor, or that they perused a single production of his 
 
 mighty pen. 
 
 b 
 
xviii Introduction 
 
 There are perhaps more volumes by Shakespear, cer- 
 tainly relating to him, at the present moment in one or two 
 public repositories in Stratford, than the town ever possessed 
 in the time of the poet and his immediate descendants. No 
 name of a book-collector belonging to the place or the 
 vicinity, except the Lucys and perhaps the Skipwiths of 
 Newbold Revel, who, however, were somewhat later settlers 
 hereabout,^ has come down to us. In a literary respect 
 it was with one signal exception an absolutely sterile soil, 
 unless we agree to couple with Shakespear such a man as 
 Burbage. William Lucy, Esq., of Charlecote possessed a 
 copy of the second folio of the Plays — this was about 1720, 
 and Sir Thomas Skipwith had also a copy, which is, or was 
 very lately, in the original binding. Sir Thomas caused an 
 engraved label to be executed for his books, so that he 
 probably owned some kind of library. When Sir Walter 
 Scott visited Charlecote in 1828, he saw "some fine old 
 books," and heard of others which were not in order.^ 
 
 The rather extensive series recognized as Shakespear 
 Allusion-Books must not be dismissed as without their 
 value, nor are they valueless. Yet the majority of them 
 are strangely uninforming and uncritical. Of compliment 
 they are lavish enough, but it is a sort of praise which fails 
 to discriminate ; and with the fewest possible exceptions we 
 find Shakespear grouped with other writers, between whom 
 and himself the distance has grown immeasurable. It is 
 mainly on the notices of him and his works during his life 
 that we should lay stress, and Meres in 1598, Jonson in 1602, 
 and Thorpe in 1609 (avowedly in the Sonnets and by impli- 
 cation in the Troilus and Cressida) are the only panegyrists 
 
 ^ My Roll of Honour, 1908, may be consulted under Warwickshire 
 in Topographical Index, for a register of all the collectors in the county ; 
 but the names are chiefly of personages of post-Shakespearean date. 
 
 ^ See Notes to the Merry Wives of Windsor, infra. The Skipwiths or 
 Soipwiths appear to have been interested in literature and persons of good 
 position, before they settled at Newbold, which they have long since 
 quitted. Fletcher dedicated his Faithful Shepherdess to the Inheritor of 
 all worthiness, Sir William Soipwith. 
 
Introduction xix 
 
 falling within that category; for Milton, Davenant, and 
 Dryden did not give expression to their sentiments till the 
 poet was no more, and Davenant and Dryden till the per- 
 spective began to lengthen, and his intellectual relation to 
 other authors could be more impartially discussed; The 
 two copies of posthumous lines by Jonson, which accompany 
 the folio of 1623, recognized the zdt of his old friend and 
 almost insinuated that in the Droeshout portrait it was not 
 adequately represented, even if he had seen that portrait, 
 when he set down the sentiment; and he placed Shake- 
 spear above Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe. Lyly and Kyd stood 
 at a lower level than Marlowe, and neither was well sus- 
 ceptible of being compared with the other, while the collo- 
 cation of Marlowe with Shakespear was by no means unfair 
 and improper, if we look at the work executed by him at 
 the time of his premature death and that ostensibly or 
 otherwise so far produced by the Stratford poet. Nor is it 
 in the least degree problematical, when we observe the 
 advance made by Marlowe between the composition of Dido 
 and that of Edward II., that, had he been spared, he would 
 of all the Elizabethan poets have most nearly approached 
 the author of Hamlet. He died, like Randolph at a later 
 date, in his twenty-ninth year ; he was Shakespear's junior 
 by a twelvemonth ; and these three, weighing all the cir- 
 cumstances, take the lead among the writers of the Eliza- 
 bethan and Stuart eras. The impression on the mind 
 of Jonson, when he signalized the genius of Marlowe, ap- 
 parently was, that it was powerful and undisciplined; in 
 other words, that he had great passages, but was unequal, 
 which is precisely what he might have affirmed of Shake- 
 spear. But the latter was spared to give us better work, and 
 Marlowe was not. 
 
 The Allusion-Books easily and obviously divide them- 
 selves into those which belong to the life-time of the poet 
 and those which cover the posthumous period down to the 
 close of the seventeenth century. Of the latter group, 
 exceedingly few are of any real pertinence or interest ; but 
 
XX Inteoduction 
 
 we have to accept more or less emphatically the notices by 
 Davenant in 1638, by Milton in 1645, and by Dryden in 
 1668. The rest are eulogistic enough, but trivial, some- 
 times to the point of neutrality. They have received far 
 more attention than they merit from the universal and 
 indiscreet ardour which seizes on every scrap of print or MS. 
 bearing the magical name. The most essential memorials 
 of this class are to be read in the Outlines ; and it is due to 
 Davenant ever to keep in mind that it is believed to have 
 been, partly at least, to his inspiration that Dryden owed 
 his views about Shakespear. Two other groups of Shake- 
 speareana are works of reference, to which the poet owed 
 certain phrases, and books of or about his own time, which 
 yielded him suggestions on points of custom or belief; and 
 both are alike prone to extravagant or rash acceptance, if 
 we reflect that Shakespear probably resorted to the volume 
 nearest at hand at the moment, and secondly that great 
 allowance has to be made, in estimating more weighty obli- 
 gations, for coincidences of thought, which occur in authors, 
 whose books he almost unquestionably never beheld. 
 
 A class of parallel, to the indication of which there can 
 be nothing to object, is, where in some obscure and ancient 
 foreign work, which was perhaps unknown even to English 
 scholars in the sixteenth century, passages are found, exactly 
 corresponding in substance with passages in Shakespear, and 
 the sole solution seems to be, that the sentiment involved is 
 one, which might occur to any one at any period. 
 
 Shakespear'' s Library, which was re-edited in 1875 by 
 the present writer, is usually treated as a sort of repertory, 
 whence the dramatist derived in large measure his plots and 
 incidents, if not his inspiration and cues. The volumes are 
 supposed to place the reader and student in the track of the 
 bulk of Shakespear's prototypes and prima stamina, and to 
 enable them to judge his varying degrees of obligation 
 and his unquestionable triumph over his originals ; and it 
 scarcely entered into the plan of the last Editor to chal- 
 lenge the validity of the notion from a critical standpoint. 
 
Introduction xxi 
 
 Placing oneself, however, between ShaJcespear's Library and 
 Shakespear's Plays, and exercising a not very arduous or 
 lengthened amount of comparative analysis, one arrives at 
 the fairly confident, and perhaps not unwelcome, conclusion, 
 that our national poet was to the book -case which we have 
 filled on his behalf, an insignificant debtor. Shakespear was 
 assuredly by no means unwilling to avail himself of sugges- 
 tions, as well as of all the advantage which an existing out- 
 line or skeleton confers ; but he met, so far as our present 
 knowledge enables us to form an opinion, with little enough 
 in print or in manuscript, when he started as a writer 
 for the stage, fit for use in his estimation, till it had 
 undergone not merely recension, but an almost thorough 
 metamorphosis. 
 
 Shakespear had before him, when he conceived the 
 design of adding himself to an already numerous circle of 
 caterers for the theatres, several productions, which had 
 been already dramatized, and had met with success and 
 applause. Of these, some have been handed down to us ; 
 others, such as the old Hamlet and the Jew of Venice, have 
 seemingly disappeared, while the original Lear, licensed in 
 1593-4, is possessed by us only in a reprint of 1605. But 
 the coming master had them all, and even more than we 
 know by report, under his eyes and at his disposal, and was 
 superior to the modern necessity of classifying this body of 
 matter into existing remains and lost evidences, of which 
 the latter have their provoking side, not to be altogether 
 dislodged by arguing from the known to the vmknown. 
 
 The estimation of the poet by those who lived in or 
 about his time was warped or straitened by the absence of 
 perspective and the deficiency of proper facilities for critical 
 comparison ; and it was necessarily disproportionate. There 
 are still among us such as regard and describe him as a clever 
 man — one of the most hateful and ridiculous of misnomers ; 
 and if the very term was not in use, the majority enter- 
 tained during his life-time an opinion not very dissimilar. 
 For if a person of the observant and experienced mind of 
 
xxii Introduction 
 
 Jonson — an intimate friend and a professed admirer — had 
 the power to see so little more, is it remarkable that readers 
 in general should have been qualified to measure him? 
 Whatever eulogy we find bestowed on Shakespear, we find 
 equally bestowed on others ; and how newly is it, that even 
 the more discerning have readjusted old systems of prece- 
 dence, and taught us to distinguish between schools of 
 writing and orders of intellect ! The homage to genius 
 of the most exalted type, the reparation of humanity for 
 well-nigh two centuries of neglect— how modern ! how 
 tardy ! The object of an almost idolatrous worship to all 
 cultivated men and women everywhere has long left behind 
 him that irrepassable bourn, which he descried, and has 
 found the undiscovered country to which he pointed. Nobis 
 noti nostra. Shakespear left certain drachmas and a certain 
 " space of dirt " to his own by blood ; the rest, the richest, 
 descended to unscheduled heirs, an unknown posterity, in- 
 separable contemporaries : — 
 
 " Thou hast into the dark still country cross'd. 
 And shaken off this life-long dream of pain : 
 And since thy most lov'd attributes remain. 
 Let us reflect how little we have lost." 
 
 There is the contemporary aspect of the question, the 
 views of the person most immediately and nearly concerned 
 included. I do not contemplate, at the moment, the per- 
 petuity of fame or the unapproached pre-eminence of intel- 
 lect which it has asked centuries to discover and concede ; 
 but, considering Shakespear in relation to his time, his self- 
 appraisement, and that practical success, to which there was 
 so evident a side-look through all the later life : considering 
 that, when the antecedent school of dramatic poetry had 
 disappeared, he was without a rival during so many years, 
 an object of marked attention to his sovereign, on terms of 
 personal acquaintance with members of her Court, in even 
 higher favour with her successor and the new Stuart regime, 
 and the winner of panegyrics from some of his fellows, who 
 
Introduction xxiii 
 
 would have challenged his supremacy, had it been m their 
 power: all this was realizable by the individual who fixed 
 himself in London in 1587, and found himself a man of 
 fortune ten years after, successful in all his enterprises 
 saving one — his marriage and its incidence down to the 
 last. 
 
I 
 
 PERSONAL HISTORY 
 
SHAKESPEAR: 
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The parentage and early life of Shakespear — His rural experiences and 
 opportunities — His visits to London as a youth^ — His marriage and 
 the circumstances connected with it — The Lucy legend — The 
 Hathaways. 
 
 1563-86 
 
 The present biographical thesis opens abruptly, and is not 
 capable of being carried back by existing evidences beyond 
 the sixteenth century. But the prevailing conditions of the 
 rural population of England at that time, and both before 
 and after, were so stationary, that there is the slightest pos- 
 sible risk of error in concluding that the ancestry of the 
 subject of this Memoir had continued during an almost in- 
 definite period to occupy the same social rank. 
 
 John Shakespear,' one of the two sons of Richard Shake- 
 
 ' We hear of other Shakespears, not only in Warwickshire, but in 
 London, Bedfordshire, Kent, Yorkshire, Cumberland, &o., mostly in a 
 humble station. In Warwickshire and Gloucestershire they appear as 
 early as the thirteenth century. Out of thousands of them how many do 
 we remember? The name is found in London in 1488, where Thomas 
 Shakespear apprentices himself to the Leathersellers' Gild (Black's 
 Bistory of the LeaiherseUers, 1871, p. 68). George Shakespear was 
 Master of the Compyan, 1743-4. But contemporary with the poet were 
 Edward Shakespear of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and Thomas Shakespear 
 of the same parish, whose name, however, does not occur till 1618 
 (Collier's Memoirs of Actors, 1846, pp. xv-xvi). For notices of Shake- 
 spears at Camptou in Bedfordshire, 1575-1654, in a humble sphere of 
 life, see Times newspaper, Aug. 7, 1903. There were persons of the 
 name of and about the poet's time even in high commercial standing ; 
 but they have no proved or probable aflSnity with him. 
 
4 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 spear, a working farmer on the estate of Robert Arden 
 or Ardern, a prosperous yeoman of Great Wilmecote, a 
 hamlet of Aston Cantlow, in Warwickshire, was probably 
 bom about 1530, and commenced life under his father. 
 Their common landlord, Robert Arden, was of the same 
 stock as those of Wye, subsequently of Faversham, in Kent ; 
 and the family is traced as settled at Hampton in Arden, in 
 Warwickshire, and as lords of the manor, at a very remote 
 date, but who subsequently declined in social and political im- 
 portance, though as far back as 1501 they retained a share of 
 local rank. We do not hear anything of the motive, which 
 induced John Shakespear to quit his father ''s roof; but he 
 removed about 1551 to Stratford-on-Avon, where he gradu- 
 ally emerges from the position of a small tradesman dealing 
 in saleable commodities into prominence as a burgess and 
 holder of the highest municipal offices. He had not dissolved 
 his connection with his original home, and when his affairs 
 began to succeed, he married Mary, one of the daughters of 
 Arden of Wilmecote. It was perhaps a preconcerted union, 
 on which the bride's father may have fairly looked with 
 disfavour and distrust, where the suitor was of unequal 
 standing and circumstances, and its occurrence at a very 
 short date after Arden's death in 1556 tends to confirm 
 such a view. It may be a serviceable suggestion that the 
 young man hoped in an urban centre to establish himself 
 in business, and render the alliance more acceptable. The 
 Ardens, however, although in point of pecuniary means they 
 were superior to the family, into which their daughter had 
 married, and although Mary herself was a woman of charac- 
 ter, were far from being people of social culture or even of 
 education; and altogether the husband and wife were not 
 ill-suited to each other. Of the latter the vestiges are 
 infinitesimally slight ; of the father of the poet we begin 
 to discover a few casual and isolated facts. As an officer 
 of the corporation he soon appreciated the expediency of 
 supplying his shortcoming in calligraphy by procuring a 
 seal with J.S. to accompany his mark. 
 
Personal History 5 
 
 He has been loosely described as a butcher ; but it was 
 a very early practice on the part of provincial dealers 
 to combine several branches of industry, especially where 
 they dovetailed into each other. Dr. Simon Forman in his 
 Autobiography apprises us that during his apprenticeship 
 to Matthew Comins of Salisbury, his master dealt in a 
 multifarious variety of goods. The case of the elder 
 Shakespear was so far different that, so far as we can make 
 out, he attempted nothing outside the direct or indirect 
 incidence of his vocation as a grazier and butcher. The 
 ignorance of all the editors is the more unpardonable, that 
 so far back as 1742 it was pointed out and proved that the 
 father of Cardinal Wolsey, Mr. Robert Wolsey, was a land- 
 owner, grazier, and butcher, residing in St. Nicholas Street, 
 Ipswich, with property at Stoke on the Stour and else- 
 where.'^ 
 
 There is no justification for supposing that the union 
 of John Shakespear with Mary Arden continued during a 
 protracted term to be otherwise than a happy one : they had 
 been man and wife two-and-twenty years, before troubles 
 began, and they were even then of a commercial, not domestic 
 character. It is difficult to conjecture what might have hap- 
 pened, had the father not transferred himself to Stratford, 
 had the couple remained on the old ground. We are left 
 to speculate, how far the alliance would have yielded in such 
 a case the unique germ, which has made all the world think 
 and talk of it ever since, and whether the pilgrim would now 
 be directing his steps, not to Stratford, but to Wilmecote. 
 
 Far less ample information is forthcoming in regard to 
 the functions and rank of the butcher of antecedent eras 
 
 ^ The author of the Life and Times of Cardinal WoUey, 1742-60, was 
 Joseph Grove, a solicitor at Richmond. Robert Wolsey and his wife 
 Joan were buried in St. Nicholas' Church, Ipswich, but the brasses 
 originally laid over their graves have long disappeared. We have here a 
 fair parallel with Shakespear's case, except that the cardinal's father was 
 the richer man, and could send his son to Oxford. If the poet's family 
 had been equally affluent, and done likewise, we can only speculate what 
 might have happened. Should we have had a cardinal instead of a poet 7 
 
6 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 than we possess concerning those of many other crafts and 
 craft-gilds, and such a deficiency of material largely pro- 
 ceeds from the loss of archives by fire and other causes. 
 The older muniments of the Butchers' Gild in London have 
 almost without exception perished ; one pertinent fact is, 
 that a freeman of it by patrimony, without being an opera- 
 tive member even so much as the father of the poet, was 
 Daniel, son of James Foe. Of an analogous one in many 
 of our provincial towns, even in places of importance, the 
 authorities have little or nothing to tell us ; and, to come 
 to the more immediate point, there seems to be no vestige 
 of any fraternity of the kind at Stratford-on-Avon or at 
 Warwick itself. The explanation may be sought in the 
 restricted call during the Elizabethan period for the com- 
 modities normally supplied by the butcher in such a place 
 as Stratford ; and the same reason is perhaps susceptible of 
 being given for the ostensible practice on the part of John 
 Shakespear of combining with his supposed business as a 
 butcher not only that of a grazier, but that of a glover or 
 even a shoemaker, since, so far as the two latter employ- 
 ments go, such articles were commonly manufactured of 
 neat's leather, often not too skilfully or carefully dressed, 
 judging from the great Bacon's reported dislike to the 
 smell, and prohibition of its use by his own body-servants. 
 
 Drayton was equally a Warwickshire man and a butcher's 
 son ; but he seems to have been lifted at a very early age 
 out of the immediate environment of his birthplace, and 
 whether his father was a man of the same type as the elder 
 Shakespear, we do not know. A parallel illustration of the 
 error apt to arise from failing to distinguish between ancient 
 and modern commercial life exists in the case of Jonson, 
 whose stepfather is described as a bricklayer, and who is 
 represented as seeking to induce his young relative to carry 
 a hod with as large an amount of truth or even probability 
 as the silly tale transmitted to us by Aubrey of Shakespear 
 and the calf. Mrs. Jonson's second husband was doubtless 
 of the Bricklayers' Gild, not an artizan ; and Dyce perpe- 
 
Personal History 7 
 
 trates, I conceive, a similar error in referring to Anthony 
 Munday as a draper.^ It was John Benson of Westminster, 
 described as a bricklayer, who drew the plan for AUeyn of 
 Dulwich College, and executed the brickwork, that is, super- 
 intended it,^as Mr. Burridge did at Goldsmiths' Hall after the 
 Fire of 1666,* and such examples might be readily multiplied, 
 
 A yet more striking disproof of the common notion 
 on this subject may be said to lie in the biography of 
 Christopher Marlowe, who has been almost contemptuously 
 described as the son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, yet 
 whose father was a member of the well-established Cord- 
 wainers' and Tanners' Gild there, and a man occupying 
 a good social position in the city, who enjoyed the means 
 of sending his son to as good a school as Shakespear 
 frequented at Stratford. 
 
 Sir John Mennis, the admiral and versifier (1598-1670), 
 makes^;he father of the poet not merely a glover, but the 
 keeper of a glove-shop, according to an entry in the MS. 
 commonplace-book of Archdeacon Plume, written between 
 1657 and 1663 in East Anglia. The shop is unlikely ; but 
 unluckily the Archdeacon makes Mennis speak of having 
 seen the father in it, which is impossible. He was not 
 more than three years of age, when John Shakespear died. 
 
 John Shakespear, in short, may have been concurrently 
 the follower of several allied callings, and whatever the 
 precise range of his occupations was, it was not unattended 
 by vicissitudes, which became acute, and toward the date, 
 when his son William was just completing his education at 
 the excellent local grammar-school,* on which there is a 
 
 * Reprint of Kempes Nine Daiea Wcynder, 1840, p. 32. The letter of 
 Henslowe to AUeyn, 26th September, 1598, referring to Jonson as a brick- 
 layer, is doubtless a forgery. 
 
 ^ Brayley and Britton's Surrey, iii. 220. 
 ' Hazlitt's Livery Compcmies, 1892, p. 650. 
 
 * Shakespear's master appears to have been a Mr. Acton, who received 
 £20 as his year's wages in 1570-1. In 1572-3 a Mr, Roche succeeded him. 
 The later names are of no immediate interest. But I just query the name 
 of Acton,, because a Mr. Aston was Sir Philip Sidney's master at Shrews- 
 bury School a few years prior to 1570. 
 
8 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 singular side-light in the Merry Wives,^ the parents were 
 under a dark cloud. In 1578-9 they had already borrowed 
 money of friends or connections, and they subsequently 
 mortgaged the maternal estate of Asbies for ^40, and sold 
 two houses in Snitterfield, to meet pressing claims or as a 
 means of raising ready money. The sum produced by the 
 mortgage was equal to £^50 of modern currency. John 
 Shakespear became more and more an absentee from the 
 councils; his name disappears from the records in August, 
 1580, when his fellow-townsmen, as a token of sympathy, 
 paid eightpence for a pall at the burial of one of his 
 daughters. He is once more mentioned in 1585, and was 
 superseded in 1586, the very year in which his son is thought 
 to have finally settled in London. 
 
 A certain Griffin ap-Roberts resided at Stratford in 
 those days, and belonged to the same trade, if not commer- 
 cial brotherhood, as the poet's father. Aubrey alleges that 
 Nicholas ap-Roberts, son of Griffin, was a youthful acquaint- 
 ance of Shakespear. The question has been mooted, whether 
 there was a scheme which failed, for bringing up the latter 
 to the paternal business by apprenticing him to Roberts ; 
 and while the statements of Aubrey are not unfrequently 
 loose and inexact, there is such a form of danger as 
 unreasoning and misplaced scepticism. For the years, 
 which would be represented and covered by a trial of this 
 sort, even by more than one, are enveloped in absolute 
 darkness. 
 
 That he should have yielded to the wishes of his father in 
 the first instance, and have taken articles under Roberts, is 
 therefore plausible enough. It is abundantly probable that 
 the elder Shakespear entertained, as so many parents do, the 
 idea and the prospect that his eldest son would join him in his 
 business ; and had such been the case, the result might have 
 been more favourable. Nor was John Shakespear perhaps 
 more easily converted than other fathers to the belief that 
 his heir, in making a temporary motive for leaving Stratford 
 1 See p. 358-9 infra. 
 
Personal History 9 
 
 the turning-point of his life and of a different career, was 
 not guilty of a very rash and headstrong act. The Queen's 
 players, and those of Lord Worcester, Lord Warwick, Lord 
 Leicester, and others, who presumably visited the Warwick- 
 shire town in their provincial tours, had exercised, it is 
 extremely reasonable to infer, a strong fascination on the 
 mind of a youth so constituted, more particularly, where the 
 father had some bias in a similar direction ; and when, not 
 the deer-stealing trouble, but financial embarrassment at 
 home, came, to London Shakespear at once proceeded, as to 
 a centre, which he already knew, and where there was scope 
 for energy and talent. 
 
 Shakespear presumably passed the whole of his unmarried 
 career under the paternal roof, of which every pilgrim to 
 Stratford has the opportunity of realizing for himself, within 
 some points at least, the contemporary aspect and capacity ; ^ 
 it is apt to impress one with the notion of being humble and 
 contracted for such a family as that of the father, especially 
 where the owner or tenant was a person of some local 
 eminence. There, however, we are to conclude that nearly 
 twenty years of the poet's life were spent with his parents and 
 his brothers and sisters, with an amount of accommodation 
 and amenity not less scanty and cramped than is incidental 
 to many rural households of later days ; there is no precise 
 account, no domestic clues even of the slenderest kind to 
 assist us, save the warrantable inference that once, or 
 possibly more than once, as a lad he visited London, whei'e 
 he was able to rely on his fellow-townsmen, who had already 
 migrated to the metropolis, and where he became (probably 
 through them) acquainted with the Burbages and Tarlton 
 
 ^ An excellent engraving of it by B. Cole after R. Greene is to be found 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1769. As regards this particular point, see 
 my edition of Randolph, 1875, where a view will be found of that writer's 
 birthplace. His father was steward to Lord Zouch ; his brother and him- 
 self were members of an university, and his sister married a fellow of 
 Christ Church, Oxford, to which Robert Randolph belonged. Randolph 
 himself was born in 1605, so that the analogy has a nearly contemporary 
 significance. 
 
10 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the actor (a Shropshire man), and that such journeys by road 
 with their ever varying incidence could not do otherwise than 
 enlarge and enrich his experience. Those journeys, where 
 any appreciable distance was to be traversed, yielded far 
 more in the way of adventure and observation than the 
 hurried travelling of our time, for they were accomplished 
 only by stages. 
 
 A brief excursus may be of some value as contributing to 
 a knowledge of the ideas, which prevailed, when Shakespeai" 
 plighted his faith to Agnes or Anne Hathaway, supposed 
 to have belonged to Shottery. Whether the poet carried 
 into practice his own apparent views as a writer in his 
 private capacity and in his youth, it is hard to determine ; 
 but in the Winter's Tale through Leontes he likens (Act i. 
 Scene 2) a wife, who admits familiarity before her troth- 
 plight, to a flax-wench ; but then he allows the validity of 
 troth-plight without formal matrimony. A second curious 
 point is, that in the same play (Act ii. Scene 1) Antigonus 
 vows, that he will geld his three daughters before they 
 reach their fourteenth year, lest they should breed bastards. 
 
 A legal treatise, of which the contents are diy and 
 technical enough, was published in 1632 under the title of 
 "The Laws' Resolution of Women's Rights." The sole 
 interest of the book for my immediate purpose centres in 
 the sections on Sponsion or Hand-fastening, namely, 1. Of 
 Sponsion or first promising ; 2. Of publike Sponsion ; 3. Of 
 secret Sponsion ; and there are two other clauses bearing on 
 the subject, which is of some considerable moment in relation 
 to the pre-matrimonial contract in 1582 between the poet 
 and his future or destined wife. 
 
 The first section cited commences thus: "The first 
 promising and inception of Marriage is in two parts, either 
 it is plaine, simple and naked, or confirmed and borne bv 
 giving of something ; the first is, when a man and woman 
 binde themselves simply by their word only to Contract 
 Matrimonie hereafter: the second, when there is an oath 
 made, or somewhat taken as an earnest or pledge betwixt 
 
Peesonai. History 11 
 
 them on both parts, or on one part, to be married here- 
 after." The ^vriter proceeds to describe Public Sponsion : 
 " This Sponsion (in which as it stands, is no full Contract 
 of Matrimony, nor any more, saue only an obligation, or 
 being bound in a sort to marry hereafter) may be publique 
 or secret : publique, either by the parties themselves, present 
 together, or by message or Letters when they be distant 
 one from another: . . ." But perhaps the most pertinent 
 part is the definition of secret sponsion : — " Those Sponsals 
 which are made when a man is without witnesse, Solus cum 
 sola, are called secret promising or desponsation, which 
 though it be tolerable, when by liquid & plaine probation 
 it may appear to the Judge, and there is not any lawfull 
 impediment to hinder the Contract, yet it is so little 
 esteemed of, (vnlesse it be very manifest) that another 
 promise publique made after it, shall be preferred and 
 prevaile against it. . . ." It is added that the promise 
 must be unconditional, and two or three years' grace was 
 allowable, according to the place of residence of the pro- 
 posed husband, before the woman was at liberty to seek 
 another union. We find nothing here about rush rings and 
 such abuses of confidence, nor is the earnest indicated in the 
 text defined. Females might not betroth themselves under 
 seven years of age ; at fourteen a woman was hors du garde 
 for her body, not for her hand.^ 
 
 There is a tolerably circumstantial account of the journey 
 of the poet in 1582, accompanied by his two sureties, Fulk 
 Sandells and John Richardson of Shottery, in the parish of 
 
 ' In many parts of England, Wales, and Scotland, even to the Hebrides, 
 there was well within living memory, and is in fact still, a principle of 
 betrothal or nuptial pre-engagement, which suffers variant degrees of in- 
 timacy before actual marriage, according to the social rank of the parties, 
 but admits to much too large an extent a licence, which is apt to be pro- 
 ductive of disaster, through indiscretion on either side ; and something 
 of this sort, no doubt, occurred in the case before us. An unwritten 
 law preceded any on this subject committed to record, and the rule of 
 chastity seems to have been observed with tolerable strictness. It was a 
 method of obviating one of the drawbacks of a clothed state and a rather 
 dangerous and unwise one. 
 
12 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Stratford, who are described as husbandmen or farmers, friends 
 of the Hathaways, and evidently substantial persons and in 
 the fullest enjoyment of their confidence, and for what they 
 undertook here — sufficient, as Shylock said of Antonio — to 
 Worcester to arrange with the episcopal ordinary respecting 
 the ante-nuptial bond. The coming master and his fellow- 
 travellers walked or rode thither, all alike unconscious of 
 what was going to happen by-and-by, as Bourrienne and 
 Bonaparte were, when they threaded the streets, and haunted 
 the cafis, of Paris together. Unluckily Shakespear's friends 
 did not prove so communicative as the Frenchman. 
 
 Sunday was, as it yet remains, from economical or other 
 motives, a common day for the humbler sort of marriages, 
 and was so in the country.^ The line in Shakespear : — 
 
 ''And kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday," 
 
 is admissible as applied to a rural or even ordinary celebra- 
 tion of matrimony, and he followed the foundation-play 
 here. Master Roister Doister had fixed that time for his 
 nuptials long before, and there is the remark of Benedick 
 upon the proposed marriage of Claudio : " Go to, i' faith : 
 an' thou wilt needs thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the 
 print of it, and sigh away Sundays." Had the poet his own 
 mournful experience before his eyes ? But it is hardly so 
 appropriate, where, in the Famous Victories of Henry V., 
 1598 (but written earlier), the anonymous writer makes the 
 English prince fix his union with the French monarch's 
 daughter for the sabbath — a passage, which does not recur 
 in the Shakespear play, although the private union of 
 Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn took place on St. Giles's 
 day, a Sunday, 1533. Were the poet and Anne Hathaway 
 united on a Sunday ? The ceremony did not take place, of 
 course, at Stratford, nor were the Shakespears apparently 
 parties to the arrangement, and no entry of the event has 
 been discovered. We observe that in the closing scene of 
 the Tamimg of a Shrew, Petruchio says : " Come on, and 
 
 ' See Nursery Rhymes of England, 6th ed., p. 239. 
 
Personal History 13 
 
 kiss me, Kate" — as a prelude to the consummation of 
 marriage ; but the old ritual provided only for a ceremonial 
 kiss in the church.^ 
 
 There can be slight hesitation in concluding that the 
 daughter of Richard Hathaway was her lover's senior, that 
 some degree of undue forestalment occurred,^ owing at all 
 events in some measure to the mistress's sufferance, and 
 that, as years elapsed, the retrospect became to the poet, 
 in spite of legal euphemism, something of the judgment, 
 which he has depicted in the first scene of the fourth act of 
 the Tempest, when the end was not far distant, and the cup 
 of bitterness, which had become only too familiar to his lips, 
 when in As You Like It Jaques apostrophises " a miserable 
 world," and in Hamlet there is that despondent view of 
 posthumous fame, had been drunk almost to the dregs. But 
 in the latter drama, where Polonius says to Ophelia : 
 
 " When the hlood burns, how prodigal the soul 
 Gives the tongue vows ! — " 
 
 the writer of the passage perhaps recollected his own ardour 
 and its fruits. 
 
 Anne Hathaway's father died in 1581,* just prior to her 
 marriage, leaving to her upon that event £6, 13s. 4d. or 
 about £&0 of our present money. The supervisors of his 
 will, dated September 1, that year, were his trusty friends 
 Stephen Burman and Fowke or Fulke Sandels, the latter the 
 same who, in 1582, accompanied the poet to Worcester as 
 one of his pre-nuptial sureties.* There was another daughter 
 Catherine, a name which seems to have lingered unfavourably 
 
 1 Hazlitt's Faith$ and FolJdore, 1905, p. 356. 
 
 ' Much laxity, no doubt, prevailed, haa always done so, in this direc- 
 tion in rural districts, where greater facilities exist for irregular relations 
 between the sexes, and did so in Shakespear's day to a far larger extent. 
 
 ' Precisely in the same way the marriage of John Shakespear closely 
 succeeded the death of the father-in-law. 
 
 * Under his will in 1624 Bartholomew Hathaway, Shakespear's brother- 
 in-law, made John Hall of Stratford, gentleman, and Stephen Bnrman of 
 Shottery, yeoman, supervisors. R. H. Burman, The Wa/rimckshire Pwiaily 
 of Burman, 1905, pp. 9-10. 
 
14 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 in Shakespear's mind on some ground, which has ceased to 
 be traceable. But the cottage at Shottery is to be regarded 
 as the home of the family rather than of the poet's future 
 wife, and may or may not have been Anne's birthplace, as 
 she was probably born about 1560. If the latter retained 
 her father's legacy, it was a not unimportant aid to the 
 young couple, when they became man and wife in 1582, and 
 we seem to have a warrant for inferring that the engagement 
 was known to the bride's father, when he executed his will 
 more than a twelvemonth prior. 
 
 A reconstruction of the contemporary Hathaway residence 
 is impracticable save by guesswork. The Hathaways and 
 Shakespears may have been approximately of the same 
 social standing, and the Ardens of Great Wilmecote or 
 Wincote may be treated as occupying a co-ordinate posi- 
 tion to their Kentish namesakes and connections. The 
 rush-bed, of which one end was usually turned back to 
 serve as a pillow, is supposed to have been one article of 
 furniture in the cottage, and was common at that period, 
 as it had been long before, to dwellings and personages of 
 all ranks. 
 
 The biographers do not throw the least light on his 
 movements from 1582, when he was formally united to 
 Anne Hathaway, to 1586, when he proceeded to London 
 alone, to return only at intervals. Within those years, 
 while a family was growing up, the young couple must have 
 occupied their own premises in Stratford, where the muni- 
 cipal records amply shew that apartments were available 
 for such as were unable or unwilling to afford a separate 
 house; but their whereabouts and the entire domiciliary 
 question are irretrievable; and all that we distinguish of 
 the early married days is a speculative glimpse in the 
 143rd Sonnet and a reference by Ophelia in Hamlet to the 
 tune, which suited the spinning-wheel, unless the poet pre- 
 served the recollection in later days of a sheep's heart 
 washed for his dinner by his wife, and made Rosalind, a 
 duke's daughter, familiar with the process, when he was 
 
Personal History 15 
 
 writing Js You Like It, and the allusions in Henrt/ IV., 
 Part 2, V. 3, to a pippin of last year's grafting and a dish 
 of leather-coats. The pippins and cheese mentioned by 
 Sir Hugh Evans in the Merry Wives as a concluding course 
 in a midday dinner are quite possibly autobiographical 
 associations with early life. It may just as soon have all 
 happened in Henley Street days. Nor do we know whether 
 that odd feature in the Two Gentlemen of Verona — Launce 
 and his dog — has a retrospective personal significance. Of 
 the poet's resources in those four or five years we know 
 nothing beyond the Hathaway dowry of £Q, 13s. 4id. But 
 during a portion of that time John Shakespear still con- 
 tinued to maintain his position and his power of render- 
 ing help. At any rate the Shakespears, if their domestic 
 economy and environments were neither ample nor refined, 
 were probably not in such respects behind their neighbours 
 and contemporaries, nor has the Warwickshire folk to this 
 day approached much nearer to rural or pastoral ideals. 
 
 There was an ample interval between 1564,^ the date of 
 birth, and 1586-7, that of removal to London, for much in 
 the way of adventure and misadventure for a youth in the 
 fullest enjoyment of health and energy, discharging com- 
 missions for his father in different directions, or bent on 
 sport and pleasure. He was neither better nor worse than 
 his comrades at and round Stratford, and could have told us 
 not a little, that we are never to know. How far may we 
 follow home that sentence addressed by Hamlet to Ophelia : 
 " 1 am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me 
 of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne 
 me. . . ." It is thus with most of us ; but few live to store 
 up such incidents, and to render them part of the national 
 property by selection and refinement, as Shakespear did in 
 certain passages of his Sonnets and other Poems, and in the 
 
 • In a copy of Beza's New Testament, 1598, there is a coeval autograph 
 of John Smith, whom we find described as " an Author and Linguist," 
 and who was born in Warwickshire in 1563 and died there in 1616. He 
 was therefore in the absolntest sense Shakespear's contemporary. 
 
16 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 comic parts of A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The Taming of 
 a Shrew, and other pieces. He gave the audience all that 
 he deemed it likely that it would care to hear. He has 
 permitted us to witness bucolic scenes, which were familiar 
 to him, exceptis excipiendis. 
 
 The years immediately antecedent to the settlement in 
 London enabled one so keenly observant and so retentive of 
 what he saw and heard to accumulate countless points out- 
 side the immediate theatrical range at a time, when he had 
 yet to fix his choice of a calling, before he went up to the 
 metropolis, uncertain what might happen ; and two of the 
 most conspicuous illustrations of this instinctive and fruitful 
 drift manifest themselves in the exceptionally ample space 
 allotted in A Winter''s Tale to a sheep-shearing; doubt- 
 less, a transfer from real life, and in the Induction to the 
 Taming of a Shrew, which was proximately suggested by a 
 very slight hint in the foundation-play of 1594. By birth 
 and by instinct both on his father's and mother's side his 
 training was rural, and he enjoyed a conversance from 
 earliest adolescence with the costume of the countryside; 
 but, unlike a modern poet's Peter Bell, he soon learned to 
 see in everything about him beauty and wisdom hidden from 
 the less privileged eyes of the agriculturists and mechanics 
 around him. Nor is there any lack of testimony that he 
 occasionally, on business or otherwise, passed over into the 
 bordering counties of Oxford and Gloucester. "The Wilds 
 of Glostershire " form a scene in Richard II. — one of the 
 earlier dramas. In one of his historical plays he may have 
 remembered a visit to the Cotswolds and the view of Berkeley 
 Castle from Stinchcombe Hill; and indeed in the Merry 
 Wives Slender is made to ask Page, whether his fallow grey- 
 hound was not outrun on Cotsol ? and these local minutiw 
 abound in certain of the dramas. 
 
 Aubrey thought that the poet might have received a 
 suggestion of Dogberry from a constable at Crendon in 
 Buckinghamshire, who was still living in 1642, when Aubrey 
 first went to Oxford. 
 
Personal History 17 
 
 Whence he drew the inimitable Falstaff, it is not so easy 
 to decide. He impresses one as an ideal creation or some 
 model, encountered by the poet in his travels or rambles, 
 enlarged and enriched to produce the masterly and over- 
 coming presentment, which is before us, and which the actual 
 original might have barely recognized. For there was of 
 course a germ, on which this superstructure was erected, as 
 a tattooed skull is said to have been the basis of the Gothic 
 architecture. 
 
 The luxuriant comic scenes in some of the earlier plays, 
 and the presence of a vein, almost descending to farce, though 
 refinement itself in comparison with the source whence it 
 was borrowed, in the induction to the Taming of a Shrew, 
 and the interlude dropped into the Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream, where it divides with the fairies the attention of the 
 audience and the reader, are to be traced to the ill-dated 
 interval between 1574 and 1586. From independent sources 
 and quarters — Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, 
 Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk ^ — we gather that there was a 
 practice, as early as 1110, of performing stage plays in the 
 country, either in market-towns or elsewhere, sometimes by 
 subscription among all the adjacent villages, and that these 
 spectacles were of a varied character — allegorical, moral, and 
 humorous. Companies from the metropolis sometimes ex- 
 hibited them; sometimes they were arranged on the spot 
 with properties ^ borrowed from the nearest urban centre ; 
 
 ^ My Manual of Old English Plays, 1892, pp. 53, 161, 201 ; A O. Mery 
 Talys, 1526, repr. 1887, fol. 1 ; Hazlitt's Wwrtmi, ii. 233. The custom is 
 still obserred in some foreign localities. A quite recent English traveller 
 in the Basque provinces found, on crossing the frontier, a company of 
 peasants performing a religious drama in a booth. 
 
 ^ It is said that in the Augustinian priory of Dunstable a miracle play 
 was performed in 1110, and that this is the most ancient record of the 
 kind. But a moral-play called the Castle of Perseverance, ascribed to the 
 15th century, was the earliest piece, where theatrical properties are 
 mentioned. In 1507, at a feast given by Edward Stafford, Duke of 
 Buckingham, four players from Wressil, the seat of the Duke of Northum- 
 berland, and two minstrels and four waits from Bristol, were engaged. 
 But this was a private entertainment. Household Accounts of the Duke of 
 Buchmgham, edited by Gage. 
 
 B 
 
18 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 but at first, while they were limited to religious subjects — 
 and the poet may well have been an edified spectator, just 
 when such a type was growing out of fashion — they occupied 
 a considerable time in the representation, and already in 
 1511 we hear of minstrels, refreshment, and playbooks, and 
 of a handsome balance of profit on the expenses. Lyndsay's 
 Satire of the Three Estates is said to have been publicly 
 performed at Cupar in 1540,^ at Linlithgow in the same 
 year, and in 1544 near Edinburgh, where Henry Charteris, 
 the printer of the edition of 1568, tells us that he witnessed 
 the exhibition, sitting nine hours on the bank at Greenside.^ 
 In 1540 the so-called Comedy of Dionysius the Tyrant, by 
 James Wedderburn, was represented at Dundee.^ Curiously 
 enough, Witney itself was almost, if not quite down to the 
 age of Shakespear, the scene of an annual exhibition of a 
 play on the Resurrection, of which Lambarde has left his 
 youthful reminiscences. It was mainly a puppet-show, pre- 
 pared by the priests ; but a man, popularly known as Jack 
 Snacker of Witney, because, when he saw Christ rise, he made 
 a noise by striking two sticks together, took the part of the 
 watchman.* Considering that biographers have to account 
 for a full dozen years of Shakespear's youth, during which 
 his intervals of leisure were considerable, it is not too much 
 to suppose that he was an occasional spectator at these 
 entertainments, when they had begun to assume a secular 
 and even humorous character, and that, while they tended to 
 form his taste, they lingered in a tenacious memory, till the 
 unforeseen opportunity presented itself of turning such re- 
 collections to substantial and advantageous account. If a 
 boy like Willis of Gloucester could recall at seventy-five the 
 Cradle of Security, which he had seen so long before, and 
 which is quoted in the play of Sir Thomas More, 1560, and 
 
 ^ Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd Series, iii. 283. 
 
 2 Dickson and Edmond, AnnaXs of Scottish Printing, 1890, p. 348. 
 
 ' See my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, p. 64. 
 
 * See my Warton, vol. ii. p. 221. Lambarde remembered seeing a 
 somewhat similar spectacle, when he was a boy, at St. Paul's Churchyard 
 in London during Whitsuntide. 
 
Personal History 19 
 
 in Greene's Arhasto, 1584, as if it had been a perfectly recent 
 occurrence, Shakespear is far likelier to have treasured up 
 these juvenile experiences. He clang to them only too 
 fondly, and forsooth there ai'e cases, where even in his ripe 
 dramatic work his first schooling, as I take it to have been, 
 has exerted a pernicious influence. He carried throughout 
 his professional course too pronounced a leaning to farce 
 and fun — those of the rustics, whom he had had under his 
 eyes, whom he may have helped to learn their parts, of 
 whom he may have perchance now and again made one, as 
 ^Eschylus may have mixed in the coarse dramatic spectacles 
 of his boyhood, and have been thus inspired to attempt 
 higher things. There long survived the persuasion that the 
 leading characteristic and merit of the poet was low comedy. 
 For the unnamed author of Anghrivm Speculum, 1684, 
 observed that " although his genius was jocular, he could be 
 solemn and serious when occasion required, as appears in 
 his tragedies." The advance in almost three-quai'ters of a 
 century from 1616 toward a true gauge of the man was only 
 just so much as this. I must return to the point hereafter ; 
 but I will add that the sole audible remark of John Shake- 
 spear seems to have been much to the same effect — that his 
 son was prone to playing jokes. 
 
 The purely rural presentations were almost necessarily 
 selections or abridgments, which would demand a certain 
 amount of judgment. In the Oxfordshire example, some 
 countrymen from Stanton-Harcourt had rehearsed their 
 parts during some time, and travelled to Witney, where the 
 play (Mucedorus) was to be performed. There was an 
 accident, which the writer of the account evidently ascribed 
 to divine wrath.i Here was the case, however, where 
 
 a 
 
 lengthened coaching was undertaken, doubtless under the 
 eye of a comparative expert. The disposition to connect 
 this drama to a limited extent with Shakespear prompts the 
 
 ^ At Barnwell, near Cambridge, in 1727, a still more terrible accident 
 ■occurred during the performance of a puppet-show in a barn. See 
 England's Gazetteer, 1751, v. Bwrnwetl. 
 
20 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 suggestion, that at a place, only twelve miles from Oxford, 
 some adaptation of a piece thus associated with the poet 
 may have been exhibited on prior occasions under his eye 
 and with his assistance. There is a fortuitous indication 
 of the practice of calling on a playwright or even a per- 
 former of experience to write a prologue for rural theatricals. 
 There is among the Ashmole MSS. one composed for such 
 a purpose by William Barkstead — probably Barkstead the 
 actor and poet. 
 
 We gain only a casual idea of the class of piece presented 
 in rural districts in those days. The Life and Repentance of 
 Mary Magdalene, 1566, is said in the prologue to have been 
 exhibited on the boards at a charge of a halfpenny or 
 a penny, which reads like a provincial tariff. Multa rena- 
 scentv/r. In January, 1904, a play was rehearsed and per- 
 formed in a Kentish village near Tonbridge by the villagers 
 themselves. 
 
 Broad and coarse as the early English farce, no doubt, 
 was, it never reached the outrageous grossness of the popular 
 pieces composed for French audiences, which a recent editor of 
 these Sott'ies '^v&^^Xy stigmatizes as "ordurieres," nor did Shake- 
 spear judge desirable, when he set about such matters, even 
 the very modified licence of the native productions of this- 
 class, which had been in vogue just before his day. 
 
 This local preparation for what was to come, reasonably 
 as it may be allowed by analogy, assists in elucidating 
 that otherwise rather unintelligible and rather incongruous 
 element in some of the plays, to which I have called atten- 
 tion, and which has to be distinguished from the more 
 appreciable humour of FalstafF. In his latest pi'oductions, 
 the early influence of the country grows less perceptible, yet 
 it does not entirely disappear. 
 
 I ascribe with some warrant and confidence to the 
 period, antecedent to a final settlement in London in or 
 about 1586, that practical and exact knowledge of country 
 life and character, of which the fruit is alike visible in the 
 Poems and Plays. His attendance on his father in his- 
 
Personal Histoky 21 
 
 varied daily employments alone familiarized him with an 
 immense store and diversity of rural experience ; there was, 
 besides, the incidental intercourse with agricultural relatives 
 and neighbours; and the periodical journeys to and from 
 London must have been helpful. Aubrey is of opinion that 
 Shakespear and Jonson were equally indebted to this sort 
 of study from the life; and one acquires the notion, that 
 direct and ocular suggestion formed no insignificant part 
 of the Stratford writer's library — human documents more 
 veracious than books. Yet outside the route between his 
 home and the theatre of his labours, and the environs of 
 London, I fail to trace the poet, as regards his travelling 
 range, beyond Windsor, Kent,^ Sussex, and Somersetshire. 
 Within such limits, however, what an abundance of types 
 and models ! 
 
 That some potent motive actuated the poet in leaving 
 his native town, where he had serious personal responsi- 
 bilities and intimate ties, is undeniable ; and it is not less 
 likely that he may have at times been implicated singly 
 or with others in certain irregularities in the direction of 
 poaching. Nevertheless I apprehend that the traditional 
 account of his flight from Stratford to avoid the resent- 
 ment of Sir Thomas Lucy is very far from a statement of 
 the real circumstances, is in fact totally erroneous, and that, 
 if there was a juvenile indiscretion, it is more likely to have 
 been when he was sent up to London to be out of the way 
 for a season, several years prior to 1586. 
 
 I gather from unmistekable_aJlusiQns, that when he 
 made his way to London on this as well as on former 
 occasions, he rode on horseback, as Peele the dramatist 
 did, when he visited~TJxIord, Bristol, and other places, 
 breaking the journey at some intermediate stage; but he 
 
 1 Communication with Kent at last had been facilitated by the 
 establishment of a postal service under official auspices, yet in 1601 
 it occupied a messenger with despatches for Sir Robert Cecil twenty- 
 one hours to proceed from Dover to Dartford by road. In 1641 a 'de- 
 spatch from Sir Edward Nicholas at Westminster or Thorpe to Charles I. 
 at Edinburgh took six days in transit. 
 
22 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 may have also made use of the waggons or the carts, which 
 traversed the intermediate space, and carried both passengers 
 and goods. What a different spectacle Stratford presented 
 when he left or reached it ! Yet not more so than London. 
 We have in the Stratford records of the time even the cost 
 of horse-hire thence to London, namely, five shillings, of 
 course money of the time; but when Adrian Quiney pro- 
 ceeded thither on public business in 1577 he had an allow- 
 ance of thirty shillings. When Sadler of Stratford, a member 
 of a family very intimate with the Shakespears, instead of 
 riding on horseback to pay his addresses to a lady in the 
 country, as his father had desired and expected, resolved to 
 seek his fortune in London, as the Burbages and others 
 had done, he rode beside the carrier (as he did not know 
 the way). On his arrival at the metropolis he sold his 
 horse in Smithfield to furnish himself with means. Even 
 in 1769, when the Garricks went down for the Jubilee, 
 they left Hampton at 7 p.m. on June 18, and did not reach 
 Stratford till 5 p.m. on the following day, so that the 
 means of transit had not been much accelerated in all 
 those years.^ 
 
 That he employed a horse appears — if we are justified 
 in drawing any definite conclusion from that mysterious 
 work — from more than one passage in the Sonnets. Take 
 the 50th :— 
 
 " How heavy do I journey on the way. 
 When what I seek — my weary travel's end — 
 Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, 
 ' Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend.' 
 
 1 In the time of Charles II. Sir Andrew Balfour, a Scotish physician, 
 tells us that the Rye carrier was to be found at the King's Head, South- 
 wark, that he charged (this was about 1668) twelve shillings a head for 
 saddle-horses, and that It took two days to ride from London to Eye. 
 Letters to a Friend, 1700, p. 7. In a printed Table of Distances about 
 1610, Rye is made to be 48 miles from London and Dover 55. But they 
 recognized two scales of measurement, the measured and the computed 
 mile. 
 
Personal History 23 
 
 The beast that hears me, tired with my woe, 
 Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, 
 As if by some instinct the wretch did know, 
 His rider loifd not speed, being made from thee — " 
 
 In the next quatorzain we similarly have : — 
 
 " O, what excuse will my poor beast then find, 
 When swift extremity can seem but slow ? 
 Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind ; 
 In winged speed no motion shall I know — " 
 
 and, turning back to Sonnet 27, the writer says : — 
 
 " Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, 
 The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd — " 
 
 which seems to bespeak the result of a journey, not on foot, 
 but by the same medium, which is so distinctly indicated in 
 the preceding quotations. One of the numberless cobwebs 
 woven by the students of the Sonnets brings the poet 
 before us as afflicted with lameness. It may not be too 
 adventurous, considering the constant use of horses for 
 travelling purposes, to ascribe the allusion to a temporary 
 accident, of which the inconvenience was still sensible, when 
 the particular stanza was committed to writing. A man 
 is not usually viewed as lame, who is merely so during an 
 interval under special circumstances. But it is curious that 
 St. Giles has been similarly described as lame, while it is 
 admitted to be dubious, whether he was so born, or it was 
 an infirmity contracted by accident, as Marlowe's is said to 
 have been. 
 
 In As You Like It, the poet refers to the false gallop of 
 verses as a piece of actual experience collected and stored 
 up against use, and if we dared to go farther, we might 
 be so hardy as to imagine that the treacherous step of his 
 horse on some occasion led to a serious casualty. On the 
 contrary, had the lameness been a natural and chronic 
 feature, it was one which might have served the turn of 
 Robert Greene, when he launched his diatribe in 1592, and 
 could find nothing worse to say, than that Shakespear aspired 
 
24 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 to shew elder dramatists how their work should have been 
 done, and in future to do it himself. 
 
 Of the two classes of allusion in the Works, those of 
 a general and those of a particular tenor, I should be 
 disposed to place in the latter category the snatch in 
 A Winter's Tale:— 
 
 " Jog on, jog on, the footpath way — " 
 
 treating it as a reminiscence, chastened by time, of many 
 expeditions performed in earlier life, on foot or on horse- 
 back, not necessarily to London, but from one part of the 
 native county or region to another, 
 
 The Lucy of the Second Part of Henry IV. and of the 
 Merry Wives is evidently the same person, though drawn 
 in the two dramas under different impressions and aspects. 
 This gentleman, so fortuitously celebrated, was born in 
 1532, and was educated at home, it seems, by Fox the 
 martyrologist, from whom he imbibed certain puritanical 
 tendencies. It was a family which seems to have originated 
 in the North of England, and to have possessed in the 
 fourteenth century the same armorial cognizance as that 
 of Charlecote, so that it well answered to the poet's descrip- 
 tion of " an old coat." Sir Thomas spent part of the year 
 in Warwickshire at Charlecote and part in Gloucestershire ; 
 he was the first in the list of gentlemen of the former 
 county selected in 1586 to escort Mary Queen of Scots 
 through Warwickshire in her proposed removal from 
 Fotheringay to Hertford to be put on her trial. Sir Fulke 
 Grevile coming second in order.^ When we first encounter 
 him in the earlier drama, he is introduced as in Gloucester- 
 shire. He lost his second wife, sole daughter and heiress 
 of Sir Richard Kingsmill, of the Court of Wards and 
 Liveries, who is said to have had a fortune of nearly 
 =£■40,000, in 1595-6, and he himself died in 1600. Four- 
 teen years had elapsed between his death and the generally 
 received date of the removal of Shakespear to London to 
 * Ellis's Original Letters, iii. 4. 
 
Personal Histoby 25 
 
 evade the consequences of his reputed transgression. I 
 scarcely know what credence is due to the anecdote about 
 the pasquil, and the reference in one of the plays, alike 
 derogatory to the Lucys, but it carries on its face a strong 
 consanguinity with the Combe canard. The coat was not 
 peculiar to Lucy ; it was also borne by the Percys through 
 the marriage of the heiress of Lucy of Cockermouth to 
 Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland of that family. 
 The Shakespear Lucy appears to have been tolerably 
 regular in his attendance on the Bench, and to have been 
 hospitably entertained by the Corporation of Stratford 
 just about 1586. He interested himself in local aiFairs, 
 as a perusal of the Borough records suffices to establish. 
 Judging from an entry under 1580-1, the Corporation 
 occasionally received a buck as a compliment from Charle- 
 cote, and paid the keeper of the park a gratuity of five 
 shillings for bringing it. 
 
 /^j'^n'^n^ad /Wcy 
 
 Signatures from a contemporary document of Sir 
 Thomas Lucy and his son. 
 
 In Henry IV. the delineation of the character of Shallow 
 leaves on the mind the impression of a slightly eccentric, 
 yet genial country squire of at least average parts.i This 
 piece is supposed to have been exhibited in 1597-8, during 
 the life of Lucy ; and it is surely a transfer to the boards 
 
 1 A minor character in the First Part of Hem-y VI. is Sir William Lucy. 
 See Notes for farther particulars of the Lucys. 
 
26 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 and paper, which neither the Knight himself (for he had 
 worn spurs since 1565-6) nor his friends could have failed 
 to identify. But there is not the contemptuous reference to 
 the family coat of arms, which appears in the Merry Wives, 
 when Lucy was no more. At the same time, the personal 
 traits of Shallow are reproduced by the latter, where we 
 again meet with his trick of iteration, and in his pleasant 
 natural vein he says to Page : — 
 
 " For though we be justices and doctors, 
 And Churchmen, yet we are 
 The sons of women, Master Page." 
 
 For those who are inclined (as I am) to challenge the 
 theory that Shakespear was driven from his home by the 
 agency of Lucy, there are the considerations that John 
 Shakespear himself had a bent toward the stage, and in 
 his official capacity favoured the players, who visited the 
 Borough, that the young Stratfordian had then already 
 acquired some relish and capacity for theatrical exhibitions 
 on a humble scale among his fellows, as well as from the 
 companies which visited the neighbourhood, and that, as I 
 have tried for the first time to establish, he went up to the 
 Metropolis in or about 1586, not friendless, but on the con- 
 trary, with a reasonable expectation of sympathy and support. 
 I am simply dealing with the original motive for settlement 
 in London, which experienced farther developments — took 
 a turn and shape perhaps scarcely anticipated by the adven- 
 turer. There is also the collateral possibility, if it is nothing 
 more, that the abandonment of Stratford, and of the 
 prospect of continuing his father's employments, arose, not 
 from any transient motive, such as the Lucy tradition, but 
 from a crisis in the parental affairs, which rendered some 
 new departure urgent. 
 
 The deer-stealing business,^ whether it occurred or not, 
 
 ^ Poaching of various kinds was naturally a very ancient, favourite, 
 and widely diffused pursuit and offence. Dr. Simon Forman in his Auto- 
 biography speaks of it as one of the recreations of his youth, and couples 
 it with dancing-schools, wooing of wenches, and hunting the hare, almost 
 as if the last were in a different category from deer and rabbit stealing. 
 
Personal History 27 
 
 and whether, being a fact, it came under the magisterial 
 cognizance of Lucy, could not have exerted a paramount 
 influence over the career of Shakespear. The sitter for the 
 portrait of Shallow, at so considerable a distance of time 
 from the momentous crisis in the poet's life, is not depicted 
 with such marked severity as the puritan faction in Twelfth 
 Night, which is the more remarkable, looking at Sir Thomas 
 Lucy's religious views. Landowners and game-preservers, 
 and those who own no land and have no game to preserve, 
 have been immemorially on opposite sides. But at the 
 same time it is instructive and even amusing to note the 
 way in which the great mind became a storehouse for every 
 sort of serviceable material, even the most trivial, laid up 
 against the opportunity for use, as where, in the earlier part 
 of the Merry Wives, in the scene between Shallow and 
 FalstafF, the poet recollects something which, by more than 
 possibility, had occurred years before to himself down in 
 Warwickshire :— 
 
 "Shallow: Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and 
 broken open my lodge. 
 
 " Falstaff: But not hissed your keeper's daughter.'' 
 
 It is not, perhaps, quite irrelevant to the Lucy episode, 
 let the precise circumstances have been what they may, to 
 invite attention to the general aspect of the offence ascribed 
 to the poet in trespassing on preserves of any kind with a 
 felonious intent; more especially as modified legislation on 
 this subject does not seem to have commenced very long 
 before his time. The 17th chapter of the Act 3 and 4 
 Edward VL (1549) first expressly deals with unlawful hunt- 
 ing in any park, forest, chase, or other enclosed ground. 
 This statute was to a certain extent declaratory of earlier 
 ones, but with some relaxation. The consequences to 
 Shakespear, assuming the tradition to be well founded? 
 would have been far graver than may be generally supposed, 
 however, as many of the drastic provisions of the ancient 
 Charter of the Forest yet remained in full force. It does 
 
28 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 not appear to have been till 7 James I., 1610, that pecuniary 
 penalties were substituted. 
 
 An introduction to a more rational appreciation of 
 Shakespear's life in London, when he finally relinquished 
 Stratford as a home, and denied himself the sight of a 
 young wife and three children of tender age, to enter on a 
 meteoric course of thirty years unparalleled in human history, 
 is a study of the poet's London, a consideration of what 
 London was in 1587, of what its institutions were, and what 
 its topographical costume was. Much of this sort of learn- 
 ing is to be gathered from Stow, Harrison's Description of 
 England, and other works of reference. But the early 
 training of the young Warwickshire settler was primarily 
 rural. He was at home in all the amusements and pursuits 
 of the country, and his experience was not to be thrown 
 away. He utilised his familiarity with horses in his first 
 published literary essay — Veniis and Adonis, at the com- 
 mencement of the Second Part of Henry IV., and elsewhere ; 
 but it was a class of acquirement, which was mainly calculated 
 for subsidiary purposes or incidental illustration. Upon this 
 young man was laid the obligation of proving that he had 
 within him resources to which the hoai-ds of provincial lore 
 would stand in the relation of secondary accessories. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 The Burbages and Richard Tarlton — Shakespear the servant of James 
 Burbage — Shoreditoh, Smithfleld, and Rochester — Robin Ostler pre- 
 sumed to have been Shakespear's predecessor under Burbage — Richard 
 Tarlton the Yorick of ffwmlet— The poet's childish and later knowledge 
 of him — Other settlers from Stratford in London — His career as an 
 actor — Burbage the actor — His intimacy with the poet. 
 
 1 
 
 1586-92 
 
 The period between 1574 and 1586 had been one of fertile 
 intellectual incubation, when cognizance was consciously 
 or otherwise in steady course of being taken of whatever 
 and whomever fell in his way, just as the interval from 
 1586 to 1596 was one, when his experience was prepar- 
 ing to mature and bear fruit in an opulence of ideas and 
 a happiness of diction, which we have still some difficulty 
 in surpassing ! 
 
 I urge the premises that he already in 1587 knew not 
 only the Stratford Burbages — a matter almost of course — but 
 Richard Tarlton. James Burbage, who was of a Stratford 
 stock, and therefore the more likely to feel an interest in 
 Shakespear as a beginner, had presumably quitted his native 
 town, where we find John Burbage a burgess as early as 1555, 
 and a contemporary of the poet's father, to try his fortune in 
 the metropolis ; James, who was destined, unconsciously, as it 
 were, to exercise a most potential influence on the fortunes 
 of his young countryman, had originally been a joiner, as 
 then understood ; but he became a tavern-keeper as well as 
 a theatrical proprietor. In other words he was, in fact, 
 what was recognized as a hosteler or hostilarius. Anyone 
 wishful to learn the precise rank and functions of this large 
 body of traders can do so by reference to the account in 
 
 •' 29 
 
30 Shakespeae,: The Man and his Work 
 
 print of the Gilds of London.^ The hosteler of the Eliza- 
 bethan era was the landlord, possibly the owner, of a place 
 of public entertainment, and pai-allel to the modern hotel- 
 keeper; and it was his practice to delegate to an assistant 
 the superintendence of the stables and hayloft, which formed, 
 as they often at present do, an independent department. In 
 days when posting was the sole and universal method of 
 locomotion by land, the hosteler was therefore a far from 
 unimportant personage, and the elder Burbage added to his 
 income not inconsiderably from this collateral source. Few 
 things could be more natural than the resort of Shakespear 
 on his arrival in London to Burbage, or than the willingness 
 of the latter to avail himself of the services of the son of a 
 Stratford neighbour who was able to prove his practical 
 efficiency for taking over duties scarcely less onerous and 
 responsible than those of the master. On this ground, and 
 in such an employment — a highly respectable one, demand- 
 ing very special knowledge — the process of serious pro- 
 fessional study commenced, and a thoroughly new class of 
 experiences was thrown open to Shakespear, comprising the 
 run of his employer's theatre at vacant intervals. The pur- 
 chase and sale of horses were among his occupations, and 
 Smithfield was not very distant from Shoreditch. He must 
 have frequently trodden or ridden the intermediate distance, 
 and made himself conversant with Smithfield bargains and 
 Smithfield sharpers. 
 
 There is more than offers itself on the surface in the 
 transfer of himself to the metropolis. About this time 
 there appears to have arisen not merely at Stratford, but 
 throughout the provinces, among a few more energetic and 
 ambitious spirits a yearning for a wider scope and enlarged 
 opportunities, and we accordingly find, if we turn over the 
 leaves of a biographical dictionary, that a notable propor- 
 tion of distinguished names are the names, not of Londoners, 
 but of men from almost every rural district in England. 
 The countryside was already beginning to overflow ; the 
 ^ Hazlitt's Livery Companies of London, 1892, pp. 117-20. 
 
Personal History 31 
 
 establishment of schools, the freer diffusion of literature, 
 and the greater facilities for intercourse at a distance, were 
 assisting to make a new era in the relations between London 
 and the provinces. 
 
 It is more than slightly important to recollect that in 
 coming up to London Shakespear is not ascertained to 
 have had any plan before him, or to have formed a definite 
 conception of after-realised contingencies. There were ex- 
 ceedingly few passages in his life from first adolescence, 
 which did not fructify in his plays and sonnets in some 
 way or degree ; and the experiences in Shoreditch seem to 
 have been recollected, when he held his pen in his hand, 
 writing the First Part of Henry IV., where, in the first 
 scene of the sfecond act, there is that dialogue in the inn- 
 yard at Rochester between the carriers, the ostler, Gadshill, 
 and others. It is precisely on the lines of what must have 
 been matter of daily discourse within the hearing of the 
 young Warwickshire beginner, while he had to be content 
 with secondary employment ; and the feature of making such 
 a house the haunt of footpads, who thus gained intelligence, 
 as we perceive in the text, of travellers on the road with 
 money or valuables, was not only true enough at that date, 
 but continued to be so down to our own time. The in- 
 cidence rendered all the environs of London itself unsafe 
 after dark ; and probably what was true of Rochester was 
 once and long just as much so of Shoreditch. In this par- 
 ticular instance, however, the dramatist might have had 
 in his recent recollection the aspect of an inn at Rochester 
 itself, since he in 1697, not so long before the play was 
 written, accompanied his fellows in a professional tour in 
 Kent and Sussex, subsequently crossing the intervening 
 country, where perhaps no business had been arranged, and 
 passing into Somersetshire, the next place of call being 
 Bristol, where the travelling companies were generally abJe 
 to rely on drawing good houses. Seaport towns were much 
 favoured on such an account, while the inland villages were 
 less likely to be attracted by performances of a high stamp. 
 
32 Shakespeae.: The Man and his Work 
 
 We find Tarlton at an anterior date taking in his tours at 
 different times Bristol, Southampton, and Sandwich, and on 
 this occasion Shakespear's troop gave a performance at 
 Dover, when he may well have seen Gad's Hill, Rochester, 
 and the Cliffs of Dover, which have one and all contributed 
 to illustrate his dramas ; and in the neighbourhood of Dover 
 he, perhaps, watched a samphire-gatherer, half-way down the 
 steep cliff, pursuing his "dreadful trade" {Lear, Act iv. 
 Scene 6). It is quite pertinent to the scene to bear in mind 
 that, three hundred years ago, that which we have christened 
 Shakespears Cliff -was much more perfect and much more 
 precipitous than at present. It has since enormously 
 suffered from erosion. Kent, apart from its seaboard, at 
 this time contained an unusually large circle of cultivated 
 families likely to evince an interest in dramatic spectacles 
 of a higher and more refined type. 
 
 A glance at the place in Shakespear will satisfy any 
 one that he uses the term ostler incidentally in a vague 
 sort of way, and makes Prince Hal ask Falstafif if he 
 takes him for one, when he proposes that he should assist 
 the Knight to mount. But there can be no question as 
 to the difference in rank between the Shakespearean hosteler 
 or ostler and the more modern ostler or stable-man ; and 
 a confirmation of such a view lies in the remark of one 
 of the carriers : " This house is turned upside down, since 
 Robin Ostler died." Still more curiously, Robin, on whom 
 the separate management of the baiting is here described 
 as having depended, and on whom the poet jocularly makes 
 the rise in oats exercise a fatal influence, was the servant of 
 James Burbage, whose place I apprehend that the poet was 
 appointed to supply. So we have in the scene before us an 
 actual leaf of Shakespearean biography. The ostler of the 
 play was a responsible officer, whose death had occasioned a 
 disturbance of the arrangements connected with the stables- 
 and the poet stood on the ground, which it had once been, 
 his own fortune to occupy. 
 
 Ostler was recognized as a proper name — one derived 
 
Personal History 33 
 
 from the office in the Elizabethan times, and there was 
 a distinguished actor in Shakespear's day, William Osteler 
 or Ostler, who sustained important parts in contemporary 
 plays, and who is characterized in Davies's Scourge of Folly 
 as the Roscius of his time. Is it possible that he was related 
 to Robin Ostler, for he survived till 1614 ? i A John Ostler 
 was buried at St. Botolph"'s, Bishopsgate, in 1574. It is 
 yet the practice in some parts of the country to refer to 
 persons in trade in this way, and so the vocation in course 
 of time became the patronymic. 
 
 Shakespear, again, recollected the sharpers of Smith- 
 field, when he penned the well-known dialogue between 
 Fal staff and Page in the Second Part of Henry IV. as to 
 the whereabouts of Bardolph; and I have surmised his 
 acquaintance with Mile-end Green and some doings there 
 in 1587-8. Robson, in his Choice of Chcmge, 1585, before 
 the poet set foot in London as a permanence, had already 
 warned his readers against Smithfield as a mart for horse- 
 flesh; but perhaps the country-bred representative of Bur- 
 bage was equal to most occasions. In A Decree of Star 
 Chamber touching various matters of municipal government 
 in 1633, the Innkeeper and Ostler are more than once cited 
 as co-ordinate functionaries or as identical. 
 
 The dual calling of James Burbage serves us rather 
 materially in two ways, for while it discloses the facilities 
 which his auxiliary enjoyed for seeing the theatre, observing 
 the machinery and costume of the stage, and forming the 
 
 * He married Thomasina, daughter of John Hemyug or Hemmings, 
 a girl of sixteen, in 1611, and left her a widow between three and four 
 years later and a troublesome and costly lawsuit in connection with her 
 husband's interest as a sharer in the Globe and Blackfriars. He 
 christened their only sou Beaumont from his admiration for that 
 dramatist, whom he may have personally known. He was the original 
 Antonio in the Duchess of Malfy by Webster, and he took a. part in 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Sonduca. Osteler died intestate, Deo. 16, 1614, 
 in the parish of St. Mary le Bow. The young widow had a sort of flirta- 
 tion with Carew Raleigh, Sir Walter's son ; but the aifeotion, if it was on 
 her side, turned to deadly hatred under circumstances, with which we do 
 not seem to be acquainted. 
 
 c 
 
34 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 acquaintance of the actors, playwrights, and more or less 
 habitual visitors, it equally disposes of the fable about 
 Shakespear having acted in the capacity of a linkman ; for 
 not only did the frequenters of the Shoreditch theatre, who 
 resided at any distance, necessarily come on horseback, but, 
 owing to the dark state of the thoroughfares, links and 
 lanterns were indispensable to enable the spectators to reach 
 their homes even on foot, especially in the winter ; and the 
 boys who discharged this duty probably belonged to Shake- 
 spear's department at the Burbage hostelry. But that the 
 poet himself carried a link is as seriously unlikely as that 
 he held gentlemen's horses. The entire error arises from a 
 fundamental misconception of the former station of the 
 hosteler, and of the relationship to him of the controller of 
 the stables and their appurtenances. The theory as to the 
 arrangement between Burbage and Shakespear rests on 
 the already existing acquaintance of the two Warwickshire 
 neighbours, on the clear tradition that the latter dischai'ged 
 certain functions belonging to an inn in the first instance, 
 and on the peculiar circumstance that Burbage united in his 
 own person the hosteler and the theatrical proprietor. The 
 very wide distance between the ancient hosteler and the 
 modern ostler seems to have demanded an extraordinarily 
 long time for its appreciation and (in this case) its moral. 
 
 The identity of Tarlton the actor with the Yorick of 
 Hamlet was surmised by the present writer more than forty 
 years since, and more than once mentioned by him incident- 
 ally in print. Let me first transcribe the passage from the 
 play, premising that, where it refers to the comedian " set- 
 ting the table on a roar," we get exactly what in TarltarCs 
 Jests is said of his electrical influence on the spectators, if 
 merely his face appeared at the wings, like Edward Wright 
 in modern days at the old Adelphi : — 
 
 " 1 Oh. : Here's a skull now ; this skull has lain in the earth 
 three-and-twenty years. 
 " Ham. : Whose was it ? 
 
 "1 Clo. : A whoreson mad fellow's it was; whose do you think it was? 
 " Ham. : Nay, I know not. 
 
Pehsonal History 35 
 
 " 1 Glo. : A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! a'poured a flagon 
 of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir — this same skull, 
 sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's jester. 
 
 "Ham.: This? 
 
 " Glo. : E'en that. 
 
 " Ham. : Let me see [it.] Alas ! poor Yorick ! I knew him, Horatio 
 — a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy ; he hath home me on 
 Ms back a thousand times; and now how abhorred my imagination is ! 
 my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know 
 not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your 
 Hashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? — " 
 
 Now, it is not only the perfect conformity of the charac- 
 teristics of Yorick with those of Tarlton, which merits 
 attention, the single word table being read theatre; this 
 valuable passage sheds, unless I err, a most important light 
 on the biography of Shakespear. Let us consider. Tarlton 
 died in 1588 ; in that year the dramatist was a man of 
 four-and-twenty. Does it seem reasonable to suppose that 
 either Yorick or anyone else would carry such an one on 
 his back, or continually kiss him ? What is the deduction ? 
 Surely there can be only one — namely, that, when Shake- 
 spear came up to London about 1587 to seek his fortune, 
 he did not come for the first time, and he came to a place, 
 where he was known, and had friends, and where a man 
 like Tarlton might have played the prank described in the 
 play with one so much his junior — Tarlton, who did not 
 spare far older and greater folks. If this piece of testi- 
 mony be worth anything, he had no occasion to hold horses 
 and links, or run errands. An ordinary lad, in one of the 
 old jest books, is made to reply to a person begging him 
 to hold his horse, that, if it needs only one to do so, he 
 can attend to the matter himself, as if this sort of employ- 
 ment was not much relished. Once more, in the same 
 play, the dramatist makes the death of Yorick take place 
 three-and-twenty years before; Tarlton had been thirteen 
 in the grave, when Hamlet was in course of composition ; 
 but was this discrepancy more than poetical licence.? In 
 1587, then, Shakespear was already three-and-twenty, and 
 
36 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Marlowe died at twenty-nine. I conceive myself perfectly 
 justified in inferring that the original introduction of the 
 poet to London took place about 1574, when he was a boy 
 of ten, but between that date and 1586-7 there is the 
 fullest likelihood that he repeated his visit, as I have 
 suggested, under temporary stress arising out of some 
 possible frolic at Charlecote. 
 
 It would be exceedingly interesting and important to 
 ascertain, if in the Hamlet, which is construably indicated 
 by Nash in the Preface to Greene's Menaphon, 1589, the 
 passage about Yorick already occurred. In 1602-3, when 
 the earliest text known to us of the Shakespear play was 
 committed to type, the death of Tarlton had happened 
 fourteen or fifteen years. But in 1589 it was a quite recent 
 occurrence. Yet 1589 is our earliest point of time fixable 
 for the existence of a drama on the subject of Hamlet — 
 a drama, which had ostensibly attracted a good deal of 
 notice. Tarlton having died in the autumn of 1588, such 
 an allusion to him as presents itself in the play would be 
 graceful, timely, and clear; and the terms, as they have 
 come down to us, strike us as being perfectly Shakespearean. 
 Is it permissible to conclude, in the absence of fuller proot, 
 that the first Hamlet belongs to the interval between Sep- 
 tember, 1588, and the publication of Menaphon P In the 
 first cast of the drama, which he was not too young to 
 have composed, he might have recalled an incident of his 
 boyhood — of earlier visits to London. 
 
 Having, as is generally believed and admitted, then, 
 taken employment of a provisional, yet by no means 
 derogatory, class in 1587, and in 1592 having attained 
 sufficient note to awaken the hostile animadversions of a 
 dramatist of such standing and repute as Robert Greene, 
 it is an almost peremptory inference that Shakespear did 
 not long continue in the exercise of such mechanical duties 
 as were involved in the superintendence of the Burbage 
 mews. Anyhow, in less than five years from his arrival 
 on horseback in Shoreditch, Shakespear had manifestly 
 
Personal History 37 
 
 risen to an enviable rank as a playwright, or at least as 
 a corrector of other men's MSS. It was wonderfully rapid 
 progress, and denotes a faculty which bore down all opposi- 
 tion and detraction. 
 
 Edward Alleyn is our authority for believing that in 
 1596 Shakespear had quarters near the Hope Theatre or 
 Bear Garden on Bankside, Southwark. It was in this year 
 that his old friend Burbage converted an old house, within 
 the precinct of the Blackfriars, into a theatre, and involved 
 himself in financial embarrassments of long duration, and 
 the vicinity of the Bear Garden on the opposite side of 
 the river might have proved fairly convenient. All this 
 neighbourhood was then pleasantly open, with rural sur- 
 roundings reminiscent of home. A person of the poet's 
 names, but not the poet, was assessed in 1598 in the 
 parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. 
 
 The antecedent vocation of Burbage as a master-joiner 
 qualified him to undertake, according to the practice of 
 those days,^ an appreciable portion of the skilled labour 
 connected with the structure of a building; he did not 
 personally execute the joiner's work; but he was in a 
 position to direct it, not improbably retaining his member- 
 ship of the Joiners' Gild, and was perhaps induced by his ex- 
 perience to embark in the new enterprise. He even appears 
 to have built certain houses adjacent to the playhouse ; and 
 these and the hostelry and stables, also contiguous, were pre- 
 sumably planned under his eye. In such matters we have 
 always to allow for the difiFerence between the Elizabethan 
 craftsman and his modern namesake. 
 
 The Theatre in Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, where 
 Shakespear undoubtedly started on his great career, dated 
 from 1576 ; that is to say, it had been ten years or there- 
 about in existence when the Stratford adventurer arrived in 
 London to seek a livelihood. It was specifically known as 
 
 '■ Hazlitt's Livery Companies, 1892, p. 545. Stephen Harrison, designer 
 of the Arches of Triv/mph erected to celebrate the passage of James I. 
 through London in 1604, is described as a Joiner and Architect. 
 
38 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the Theatre, being the earliest regular edifice of the kind 
 seen in London. But, according to contemporary authorities,, 
 a second house known as the Curtain was erected about the 
 same time near the site of Holywell Priory or, as Stow 
 writes in 1598, " on the south-west side towards the field." ^ 
 During his entire professional life he remained steadfast to 
 the Burbages, and when James Burbage died in 1597, he 
 associated himself with the sons, particularly Richard, the 
 foremost actor of his day, and the poet's life-long friend ; and 
 in 1598-9, as a climax to a dispute respecting the lease of 
 the Shoreditch property, part of the materials was trans- 
 ported to the Bankside by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage 
 for utilization in their new venture, which became known 
 as the Globe, and was the scene of most of Shakespear's 
 later achievements as a maker of plays and an actor in 
 them. The transfer of portions of the actual Shoreditch 
 house elsewhere again points to the technical training of 
 the Burbages. 
 
 The precise site of this house, in which Shakespear held 
 a fourteenth share, has been in recent times a subject ot 
 discussion and controversy without yielding any result 
 beyond the long existing state of knowledge, that it was- 
 erected near Maid Lane, in the Liberty of the Clink, on an 
 old foundation, that on the ground which it occupied pre- 
 viously stood a windmill, and that in 1891 excavations on 
 the spot brought to light a wooden structui'e, which might 
 have underlain both the mill and the playhouse. The spot 
 has long been absorbed in Barclay & Perkins's Brewery. 
 
 The reputation of this house for excellence of " pro- 
 
 * It seems to have been thought that two places of public entertain- 
 ment in the same immediate neighbourhood were in excess of requirements, 
 and in 1600 the Lords of the Council directed the demolition of the Curtain 
 — ^perhaps- the later building. But the order was disregarded in the 
 presence of a protest from the management, perhaps, and the civic 
 authorities and the Middlesex justices, to whom an appeal for support of 
 the mandate was addressed in the same year, do not seem to have moved 
 effectually in the matter. At all events the Curtain remained long after 
 the removal of Burbage's theatre to the Bankside. 
 
Personai- History 39 
 
 perties" was still fresh in 164<1, according to a letter 
 purporting to be written by General Leslie to Sir John 
 Suckling, the poet, printed in that year. 
 
 Alone in London, a husband and a father, without the 
 consolation and stimulus, which the sympathy of the home 
 yields: among those who were inadequately sensible or 
 immoderately jealous of his rising fame and earnings : 
 Shakespear, beyond a question, must have experienced fits 
 of despondency, which he suffered to find reflection in those 
 Sonnets, with which he began to beguile his leisure moments 
 about the same period, which witnessed the issue of the two 
 volumes of verse in 1593 and 1594. It lends something 
 to his ancestral pretensions, that, whatever success might 
 attend his career as a professional performer in any piece 
 accepted by his theatre, he had at first, at any rate, an 
 instinctive repugnance to the call ; and such a prejudice was 
 more likely to exist, so long as his practical experience dis- 
 qualified him from filling prominent parts. The distaste 
 lessened, perhaps, in the exact ratio of the decreasing need 
 for any work of the kind ; and when the sonnets, bewailing 
 his lot, appeared in 1609, they had survived their original 
 significance as a more or less sincere profession at least 
 fifteen years. 
 
 How long it was, before Shakespear attained any sort of 
 competence and self-possession as a performer, and the exact 
 estimation of him in that capacity, our knowledge is limited 
 to two or three casual anecdotes, which do not point to the 
 display of first-rate powers in this direction. Nor do we 
 learn, when the commencement of the attempt to fill parts 
 in his own and other men's plays occurred, although he once 
 belonged to the Lord Chamberlain's company at Henslowe's 
 theatre in Newington-Butts, and was apparently a leading 
 member of the King's Company iu 1604, when James I. 
 entered London. The twenty-third sonnet opens with a 
 simile borrowed, perhaps, from painful recollection : — 
 
 " As an im])erfect actor on the stage, 
 "Who with his fear is put beside his part — '' 
 
40 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 And the 110th is redolent of discontent at having dero- 
 gated from his social position by adopting the vocation of a 
 player : — 
 
 " Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
 And made myself a motley to the view — " 
 
 Which argues a regular, if not a prolonged, practical ex- 
 perience of the stage, which qualified success might render 
 additionally unwelcome, when there was perhaps no one, who 
 would become so acutely sensible of any grave disparity 
 between himself and other members of the profession. 
 
 We have the contemporary and respectable authority 
 of Henry Chettle for the yiew, that the dramatist was 
 "excellent in the quality he professed." In 1603, however, 
 Davies of Hereford, in his Microcosmus, and in 1605 in his 
 Humour's Heaven on Earth, brackets hira with the younger 
 Burbage as one of the best at that time ; the same fluent 
 scribbler speaks of him about 1611 in his Scourge of Folly 
 as having played kingly parts ; he addresses him as " good 
 Will," as if they were tolerably intimate ; and Davies does 
 not name or indicate Alleyn, although the latter had sup- 
 ported the principal part in Marlowe's Faustus on the 
 stage; and it is a certainty that Shakespear took the part 
 of Knowell in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour, his name 
 occupying the first place in the list of Dramatis Personce, 
 and of Sejanus in Jonson's drama of that name, produced 
 in 1603.^ In 1605 he may be fairly presumed to have been 
 cast for one of the parts at least in the special performance 
 of Love's Labor'' s Lost at Southampton House. Aubrey 
 informs us that Gilbert Shakespear referred in later life 
 to having seen the dramatist play the part of Adam in 
 As You Like It, and he states that the poet's last sur- 
 viving brother often visited London, and that the anec- 
 dote was repeated by him, when he was an old man. But 
 
 * It is thought, that the performance, as we possess it, omits certain 
 political allusions, although others still remain. Jonson was summoned 
 before the Council for the matter at the instance of Lord Northampton. 
 It seems to have been a case similar to that of Eastward Hoe. 
 
Personal History 41 
 
 Gilbert could scarcely have been fifty, when he died prior 
 to 1616. 
 
 In Hamlet, iii. 2, the Prince refers to Polonius as 
 having played once in the University, to which the latter 
 replies in the afBrmative, and adds that he was accounted 
 a good actor. The title-page of the Hamlet of 1603 
 informs us that the play had then been exhibited at both 
 the Universities, which may serve to indicate that the 
 author was at Oxford and Cambridge anterior to that year,' 
 and very probably puts Polonius in his own room in speak- 
 ing of having appeared at Oxford, at all events, even prior 
 to the presentation of Hamlet on any stage. This, if the 
 dramatist has made Polonius his mouthpiece, is new ground, 
 as we are not otherwise aware that he filled parts at either 
 of the Universities at so early a date. But the surviving or 
 available evidence tends to the impression, that Shakespear 
 seldom aspired to a leading rank in the cast. 
 
 The cardinal point, however, on which Shakespear in- 
 sisted, and in respect to which, outside his private concerns, 
 he has shown himself willing to depart from that strange 
 neutral or passive attitude toward his undoubted rights and 
 interests, centred in his position as a part-proprietor ; and 
 here accordingly we find his name more than once in a list 
 of memorialists to the authorities for indulgence or redress. 
 
 ITie theory that 1586-7 mark the final, not first, visit, 
 and any deductions formed from it, do not rest exclusively 
 on the assumed identity of Tarlton with Yorick, but derive 
 a considerable accession of support from the suspicious 
 brevity of the interval left under the usually credited cir- 
 cumstances to enable a financially resourceless settler in 
 London, however capable and fortunate, to lift himself in 
 less than five years to an eminence, rendering him an object 
 of envy and animosity to playwrights of long and high 
 ' The poet's aoquaintauoe, Bobert Armin, in reprinting his Foole upon 
 FooU, 1600, under a different title in 1608, prefixed to it a new dedication 
 to "the generous Gentlemen of Oxenford, Cambridge, and the Innes of 
 Court," as if they were associated with the patronage of such literature — 
 perhaps including the drama. 
 
42 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 standing. For 1592 must be regarded, not as the date 
 when Shakespear had established a reputation, but that 
 when the resentment of Greene at length vented itself in 
 print; and the plea for 1574 would be yet stronger if the 
 hand of the poet in the Hamlet of 1588-9 were by any 
 means traceable. But Mr. Fleay gives the play noticed by 
 Nash in 1589, without doubt or reserve, to Kyd. No eye, 
 I think, has so far beheld it in more than two or three 
 accidental fragments. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Conjugal relations — Shakespear alone in London — Profound attach- 
 ment to his birthplace — Other emigrants from Stratford to London 
 — New Place — Spenser's estimate of Shakespear in his Colin. Clout, 
 written in 1591. 
 
 1592-97 
 
 It strikes us all as a most signally remarkable circumstance, 
 that a young couple with a family beginning to grow up 
 round them, within three or four years of their union, should 
 agree to part, not while the husband and father left his 
 home for some special reason in search of employment else- 
 where, but virtually for ever; for it is in the last degree 
 questionable, whether Shakespear, in his visits to Warwick- 
 shire at intervals between 1587 and 1611 or thereabout, saw 
 his wife or at all events slept under the same roof subse- 
 quently to 1596; and we find the poet, even where important 
 matters of business might have seemed to call for his presence 
 on the spot, delegating to others the management of the 
 details on his behalf. 
 
 There was no second example of an Elizabethan author, 
 both during and at the close of a highly successful career, 
 returning to his own county and natal place — in fact divid- 
 ing his time after a certain period of life between London 
 and the country. The case of Samuel Daniel was essentially 
 different. 
 
 But there was an infinitely earlier instance of a man, 
 who eventually won a high rank as a playwright, and who, 
 after certain youthful vicissitudes, hired himself to a theatre, 
 where he assisted in the mechanical department-7-worked in 
 fact as an artizan ; and it was that of Plautus, who unques- 
 tionably thus acquired, as Shakespear did, a knowledge of 
 
 43 
 
44 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the wants of the stage and the taste of audiences. The 
 English master unconsciously trod in the footsteps of his 
 Roman prototype, some of whose works were accessible to 
 him in our vernacular, but of whose personal career he was 
 more than possibly ignorant. A second respect, in which 
 the two writers approached each other, was the attribution 
 to both of works, for which they were not responsible, either 
 from error or from a less pardonable motive. 
 
 It is greatly regrettable that there are no surer aids 
 to following the footprints of Shakespear in his journeys 
 on horseback or by waggon to and from the Metropolis, 
 while he divided his time between his home at Stratford 
 and his professional engagements in London, and more 
 particularly in his periodical sojourns at Oxford, where 
 he is supposed to have given a preference to the Crown 
 Inn, near Carfax, as a stopping point. 
 
 There is, however, the rather weighty caveat to be entered 
 in respect to these obscure movements, that some of the 
 excursions on horseback were either not to Stratford at all, 
 or embraced a point where a collateral attraction had arisen ; 
 and this feature in the matter is the more worthy of admit- 
 tance, in illustration and proof, that it may have contributed 
 to the matrimonial trouble which wrought such miserable 
 consequences about 1596 to the Shakespears, and was pos- 
 sibly not even ex parte. Anyhow the wife was to be excused, 
 if, looking at the protracted and systematic absences from 
 home, she obeyed her womanly instinct in drawing con- 
 clusions. 
 
 In considering a man of the intellectual calibre and 
 temperament of Shakespear, and in treating the subject as 
 a matter of calm and dispassionate biographical record, the 
 insignificant tales of gallantries and intrigues, which have 
 descended to us under various auspices, hardly merit serious 
 discussion, even if the pieces of gossip and scandal are very 
 probably founded on fact. The poet passed the greater 
 part of his middle life in London amid the gaieties and 
 temptations, from which neither he nor his fellows were 
 
Personal History 45 
 
 humanly likely to escape without contact and notice. It 
 was antecedent to the green-room and the women-actors, 
 and Shakespear, Burbage, and the rest were spared the 
 fascinations of the ballet-dancer ; but there was never any 
 deficiency of bonny damsels and complaisant hostesses in 
 town and country. The author of Venus and Adonis, who, 
 we should not forget, lived so long and so constantly, as we 
 should now colloquially say, en gargon, was what the goddess 
 of Love would, according to him, have desired the object of 
 her passion to be. Who shall say that he never proved a 
 Tarquin to some unchronicled Lucrece.'' There is even a 
 good deal of verisimilitude in the story of his forestalment 
 of his early friend Burbage the actor in some assignation, 
 preserved by Manningham the Diarist. It was the opulent 
 and voluptuous property of his blood — a perpetual spring 
 of warm and deep emotions — which accomplished for us 
 all the nobler and purer things that we so cherish, yet 
 that was chargeable, too, as in the case of even a greater 
 master, Sophocles, with certain infirmities of our strange 
 composite nature. Greatness and its foil spring from one 
 germ. 
 
 It has been thought possible that Shakespear, in picturing 
 the remarkable change (according to the received idea) in 
 Henry V. on his accession to the crown, had a side-look to 
 his own emergence from an adventurous and obscure career 
 into all that was noble and glorious : into something which 
 partook indeed of the nature of its sources and surroundings, 
 while it so strangely, so vastly, and so enduringly eclipsed 
 them all. But the reformation of the prince is more or less 
 doubtful, nor do I know that the poet on his side had greater 
 cause for self-reproach than most of his set. The analogy, 
 if there be any, was limited to the almost electrifying advent 
 from an unlooked-for quarter, from a pen first of all specu- 
 latively employed in verbal revision, of a literary power 
 superior (as it would then be judged) even to that of Greene 
 or Marlowe. 
 
 The construction of an autobiography from detached 
 
46 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 passages of the Works becomes from the straitened amount 
 of more direct and legitimate material a venture the more 
 pardonable. Some of the most interesting and persuasive 
 clues are the expressions of feeling put into the mouths 
 of such interchangeable characters as Hamlet and Jaques; 
 for, regarding the former as historically and biographically 
 fabulous, there is much of his philosophy, which might 
 as fitly have been given to the other persona, and vice 
 versa; and all these utterances are more or less cynical and 
 atrabilious. Scores of them might be lifted out of their 
 places in the text, and printed in sequence ; and they would 
 tell one story — that of a magnificent career smitten by 
 a blight. 
 
 We can scarcely wonder, that Shakespear escaped from 
 his incompatible domestic circumstances, even prior to a 
 practical severance of the nuptial tie, and sought relief 
 and distraction among associates, whose company was not 
 very beneficial. The precise chronological place of the mad 
 frolic, where the poet passed the night under a hedge, 
 probably on his way home from a merry meeting, is un- 
 settled; it recalls the very similar story of Cowley and 
 Dean Sprat, which was attended by more serious conse- 
 quences ; and when we hear that Dryden latterly gave way, 
 under the encouragement of Addison, to intemperate habits, 
 it is not unreasonable to trace them to a private source — 
 to connubial discord. Such episodes are of all time. We 
 can all recall the complaints of the wife of the author of 
 Vaiix de Vire, and of Tennyson's Northern Farmer's discon- 
 solate bedfellow left " ligging aloan." 
 
 It may be true that the other dramatic writers of the 
 age, save here and there in a prefatory way, have not con- 
 verted their productions in a similar manner into vehicles 
 for covert or indirect notices of themselves. But the obvious 
 reply is, that none of these was situated, from a worldly 
 point of view, as Shakespear was. They were not persons 
 of substance and social status ; there was not the singularity 
 of a divided household, with its incidence of romance, mys- 
 
Personal History 47 
 
 tery, and sorrow ; and private references would have lacked 
 the interest which they possess in an enhanced manner here, 
 from the terms in which they are couched, and the adroit 
 mode of introducing them. 
 
 The allodial affection, so to speak, must have heen 
 inextinguishably strong to preserve that loyalty to the 
 Warwickshire home in the face of such meagre induce- 
 ments and such niggard sympathy, for assuredly no man 
 even of more moderate gifts was less regarded by those 
 about him and belonging to him than this one of whom 
 I write.^ Not a traditional syllable from the lips of the 
 father or the mother (save the paternal definition of his 
 son as a good sort of fellow), the wife or the children, 
 significant of honour or pride; not a hint on the part of 
 the Halls, the Quineys, or the Barnards, that their kins- 
 man was more than such another as themselves. No audible 
 notes of praise, nor ocular signs of admiration or gratitude 
 in the place of birth, in stolid, drowsy Stratford, muter 
 than sphinx, through the centuries, save when (just after 
 the New Place purchase) it was thought that he might 
 help his neighbours in the country at a pinch, and the 
 indirect and inaccurate notice, through one of the two 
 brothers, who knew London, of his performance in one of 
 his own plays ; once, only once, waking from an eternal 
 lethargy, and lifting its voice by one of its own offspring, 
 to utter winged words bearable by all men for time ever- 
 lasting. 
 
 Where the scene of his triumphs lay, in even then 
 cosmopolitan London, it was that he mingled with those, 
 who were capable of appreciating his power and of realizing 
 the advent of a new master and of a new epoch in dramatic 
 
 1 " Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
 Thou dost not bite so nigh 
 
 As benefits forgot ; 
 Though thou the waters warp. 
 Thy sting is not so sharp 
 As friend remembered not." 
 
 — As You Like It. 
 
48 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 literature. Greene and Marlowe were no more; he was 
 facile princeps ; for whatever we may think of the two 
 dramatists just named, all in all, both had during a few 
 years, and down to 1593, not only occupied in the public 
 view a rank scarcely inferior, if at all so, to Shakespear's, 
 but gave a promise, had they lived, of becoming and re- 
 maining far more formidable rivals than they were and 
 are. Shakespear, on the contrary, manifestly husbanded 
 his resources, and nursed his fortune, from the outset; 
 and hence he was spared at any rate long enough to place 
 at a distance all those, among and even with whom he had 
 once worked, and to reach, as it might seem, the plenitude 
 of his aims and intellect as a man of business — if not 
 as a husband and a father; and here we approach within 
 sight of the unconquerable bent of his mind — one, which 
 recalls the fond contemplation by Warren Hastings of the 
 English country home, which he had left behind, and 
 to which his ultimate return after a grand Indian career 
 was probably the happiest and proudest moment of his 
 life. 
 
 Not his unprecedented popularity as a writer and even 
 as an actor, not the companionship of his fellows, not the 
 caresses of the great, not the immeasurably greater con- 
 venience and amenity of the Metropolis, sulBced to overcome 
 the inborn provincial instinct and bias, or to wean him from 
 that soil and atmosphere, where he first drew breath, which 
 was everything to him, to which he was unconsciously to 
 become everything. For him London was ever mainly the 
 means to an end — the source of the purchase-money of a 
 status and of independence. That he originally counted 
 on such an almost life-long stay on the theatre of his 
 exertions and successes is doubtful, inasmuch as it is 
 doubtful, whether he could have had a full and distinct 
 foreknowledge of the domestic complications, which went 
 so far to neutralize and frustrate his efforts. Yet like 
 other builders of their own fortunes, he was continually 
 setting back the limits of his wants and his aspirations. In 
 
Personal History 49 
 
 the person of Osric ^ in Hamlet he ridicules a man " spacious 
 in the possession of dirt,"* and what became his own 
 aims ? 
 
 An individual of universal intellect, of universal accept- 
 ance, kept in his mind's eye year after year, as an abode in 
 an old age, which he was never to attain, and a resting place 
 for his bones, a rural village far away from the life to which 
 in his professional character he had become seemingly wedded 
 or at least reconciled. In Stratford he was among his own 
 people, and had no patrons, himself a patron of others. 
 But, looking at the other side of the question, difficulties are 
 perceivable. The household at home was not to be trans- 
 planted to the capital with ease or with advantage ; the wife 
 and daughters had never beheld London ; and down to 1601 
 John Shakespear, and down to 1608 his widow, were living. 
 They were, one and all, rather impracticable. If the mem- 
 ber of the family whom the world best knows had ever 
 dreamed of removing permanently, like so many other 
 adventurers, to the Metropolis, his domestic ties must have 
 helped to dissuade him from the step, and have eventually 
 brought about that anomalous distribution of his time and 
 presence. Neither the rural nor the personal attractions of 
 Stratford were calculated to be of sufficient potency to turn 
 the scale, had there not existed collateral motives : an innate 
 affection for the locality, with all its drawbacks, and a certain 
 lukewarmth toward London and its literary set. 
 
 The quest of a career in London was an aim peculiar 
 neither to Shakespear nor to Stratford, and the latter 
 
 ^ The name may have been, probably was, borrowed from Heywood's 
 Boydl King and Loyal Subject, written and acted before 1600. See my 
 Manual of Old Plays, 1892, in v. 
 
 * In a ballad by John Heywood (Songs from the Dramatists, 1854, p. 29) 
 this expression already occurs : — 
 
 •' The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, 
 As sages in all times assert ; 
 The happy man's without a shirt, 
 And never comes to maim or hurt. 
 Be merry, friends." 
 
 D 
 
50 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 yielded to the Metropolis within a few years (besides the 
 Burbages) an eminent printer in the person of Richard 
 Field and a successful druggist in that of John Sadler, a 
 kinsman of the Quineys, whose granddaughter, the wife of 
 Dr. Anthony Walker, Rector of Fyfield in Essex, left an 
 account of her early fortunes and trials.^ Perhaps the elder 
 Burbage gave the initiative in this migratory movement. 
 
 1586-7 has been perhaps rightly given as the date of 
 the final arrival of Shakespear in the Metropolis, not as a 
 visitor, but with a view to entrance on the serious business 
 of life. It m^y be a question, whether a warrantable cer- 
 tainty that some already there, already known to him, 
 would be in a position to lend him a helping hand at the 
 outset was not directly instrumental in influencing the poet 
 to sacrifice local prospects and local ties — at first perhaps 
 as no more than a provisional arrangement. In 1597 New 
 Place became his property. It was the most important 
 residential site in the town, and although his father had 
 long enjoyed a certain share of consideration as a man of 
 business and a municipal officer, the fluctuating state of his 
 affairs from various causes had never enabled him to assume 
 a distinguished and substantial position among those of his 
 own class at Stratford. The successful career of his son 
 could not be a secret, as inhabitants of the town periodi- 
 cally visited London, while theatrical companies and other 
 Londoners took Stratford at intervals in their professional 
 or business tours. Yet from a local and domestic point of 
 view the change in the fortunes of the Shakespears must 
 have seemed surprisingly rapid, and must have awakened a 
 mixed feeling cognate in some respects to that excited in the 
 English capital by the rise of a dramatic and theatrical con- 
 stellation, which threatened to eclipse all others, and to 
 
 • Hunter's New Illustrations of Shakespear, 1845, i. 69. Anthony 
 Walker was probably akin to Sir Edward Walker, Garter King of Arms, 
 whose Historical Discourses were published in 1705 under the auspices of 
 Hugh Clopton, Esq., High Steward of Stratford-on-Avon, occupier of 
 New Place, and afterward knighted. 
 
Personal History 51 
 
 transform an obscure Warwickshire village into the most 
 famous literary suburb of London. 
 
 In 1596 Shakespear was thirty-three. In a decade he had 
 more than laid the foundations of his fortune. He had yet 
 to crown the edifice of his literary fame by the successive 
 production of his masterpieces. But it was marvellously 
 swift, progress, an unique record. Was it not the happy 
 union of genius and professional aptitude, which accounted 
 for such a result ? Peculiar circumstances conferred on him 
 as a writer the immense advantage of completing and ex- 
 tending in London the practical education of which the 
 groundwork and rural side had been gained at home. It 
 was no small matter, after mastering the whole costume of 
 English provincial life, for such an one to have had the 
 opportunity, so to speak, forced upon him of spending the 
 best part of his career within reach of all that the metro- 
 polis of England possessed of knowledge, learning, and 
 culture. But in any case, had family considerations not 
 interposed, the transfer to London as a virtually permanent 
 headquarters was of course not only an imperative step as 
 an introduction to any kind of theatrical and dramatic posi- 
 tion, but an absolute necessity, which afforded no alterna- 
 tive. The exceptional feature was the divided household, 
 which was traceable to a connubial incompatibility. 
 
 Unquestioned facts, not only in regard to the significant 
 jealousy of fellow-playwrights, but to the possession in 1597 
 of the means of acquiring New Place for .£"60,^ and having 
 the credit of being able to find ^30 more for another pur- 
 pose almost concurrently (a total in modern money of about 
 ^700), oblige us to accept for granted that between, let us 
 say, 1590 and the later date Shakespear was incessantly at 
 work on dramatic composition and recension of a more or less 
 highly remunerative character; for the Sonnets and other 
 lyrics can be scarcely supposed to have brought much more 
 than literary celebrity. It was in these years that he laid 
 the foundation of fame and fortune, and there is, subject to 
 1 The deeds, however, were not transferred till 1602. 
 
52 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the proviso that he is Action, a rather weighty testimony 
 to his approach to eminence and fame in the reference 
 of Spenser to him in 1595 in his Colin Clout after that 
 protracted visit to England and ample opportunities of 
 acquainting himself with the literary life of London. 
 Spenser introduces Aetion almost as an afterthought in his 
 recital of some of the writers of his time, although Alabaster 
 he mentions by name, and although Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece were both before the world. The already cele- 
 brated author of the Shepherd's Calendar, Faery Queen and 
 other works, probably judged that he was awarding an 
 adequate meed to the young man, who had begun to make 
 a stir by altering and, as some thought, improving other 
 folks'", his seniors', performances. Whatever he might have 
 achieved, he had yet a name to make. Spenser did not 
 guess how great an one it would be, how far greater an one, 
 as time advanced, it would grow — how far greater even than 
 his own. He thought more highly of Daniel, Yet Shake- 
 spear had given nothing thus far to the theatres beyond 
 the amended and developed work of others; some of the 
 historical series in their second state, previously to their 
 final completion, as we read them in the first folio, and 
 certain other pieces of editorship, including Titus Andronicus, 
 which was a most popular performance, and continued to 
 hold the stage down to the time of James I. Chris- 
 topher Marlowe had died in the summer of 1593; it is 
 more likely to have been an unfinished production of his 
 unequal pen than of Kyd. Mr. Fleay seems to think 
 that it is Kyd's, except the second scene of the third act, 
 which Shakespear possibly added. It was sent to the 
 press in 1594. But I crave leave, in the face of elaborate 
 efforts to claim the authorship of certain anonymous plays 
 for a given individual, to suggest that among a pre- 
 Shakespearean circle there prevailed a rough similarity of 
 style and treatment, which renders confident attribution 
 dangerous and futile. 
 
 The pen and mind of Shakespear must have been intent 
 
Personal History 53 
 
 on an unbroken succession of kindred ventures, all con- 
 verging to a single issue — the attainment of worldly in- 
 dependence, while each approached a step nearer to those 
 masterpieces, which have so dwarfed their predecessors, and 
 reduced them in our appreciation to material for filling up 
 a biographical void, which, when Shakespear had left behind 
 him his initial functions at the Burbage hostelry, whatever 
 they may have precisely been, is not susceptible of explana- 
 tion in any manner conducive to the accumulation of estate, 
 not even by presuming his engagement in the Sonnets, which 
 did not probably commence till 1594, or in the Venits and 
 Adonis and Lucrece, which, as we know, were not undertaken 
 much before that date. 
 
 In the Rehirn from Parnassus, a drama, of which the 
 composition is referred to the winter of 1601, when our poet 
 had almost reached the height of his professional and financial 
 eminence, there is a reference by Studioso, one of the char- 
 acters, to adventurers, 
 
 "that carried erst their fardles on their hacks, — " 
 
 who ride on horseback through the streets with pages to 
 attend their masterships, and the speaker is made to add : 
 
 " They purchase lands, and now esquires are made — " 
 
 Some have thought that Shakespear was here indicated. 
 It seems to me, I confess, more likely that the author had 
 Edward Alleyn in view, although Alleyn, the son of a 
 London innholder, was probably never a needy man.^ In 
 1601 he had probably acquired property ; in 1604 he was in 
 a position to give =£1065 for the manor of Kennington, 
 which he sold in 1609 for dPSOOO; and in Marston's 
 Jajck DrvmCs Emtertavnment, published in 1601, one of the 
 characters, Sir Edward Fortune, has been taken to point to 
 him. Mr. Fleay even thinks that Alleyn was then building 
 the Fortune theatre. The description in the Retvm from 
 
 * Alleyn's crest on the corporate seal of his College is borne on an 
 esquire's helmet. 
 
54 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Parnassus would certainly not suit Shakespear. He is no- 
 where described as an esquire. He never proceeds beyond 
 Master and Generosus, and the latter was broadly distin- 
 guished from Armiger. We see that on the forefront of the 
 folio of 1623 care is taken to place Master before the name. 
 But the same thing had already been done in the entry at 
 Stationers' Hall of the Second Part of Henry the Fourth in 
 1600, and elsewhere. 
 
 A second illustration, which strikes one as less fanciful 
 and exaggerated, presents itself, however, in a nearly con- 
 temporary publication, where the writer chafes at the pur- 
 chase of lands by "adulterous plays," and this allusion 
 might well apply to Shakespear, since in the May of 1602, 
 just before the appearance of the volume in question,^ he had 
 bought from William and John Combe 107 acres of arable 
 land in the parish of Old Stratford for £S%0, his largest 
 acquisition in real property. The estimate of the dramas 
 by the author may not be very weighty, for he announces 
 himself to be a beginner. It was a piece of novel intelligence, 
 which he had picked up, which was a matter of current 
 gossip. 
 
 1 Yertues Commonwealth, by Henry Crosse, 1603. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Eeoovery of the Shakespears' fortunes — The poet as a profit-sharer — 
 Application of John Shakespear for a grant of arms — J'allure to 
 regain the maternal estate of Asbies— Death of Hamnet Shakespear — 
 Presumed separation of Shakespear and his wife — The Blackfriars' 
 property — The poet and the Earl of Rutland — His declining health — 
 Occupancy of New Place — Litigation and other troubles — Visit of 
 Jonson and Drayton to Stratford — Last days and death of the poet. 
 
 1597-1616 
 
 The worldly prosperity of Shakespear, when it gave the 
 earliest promise of fulfilment, became attributable to his 
 dual position as a playwright and a profit-sharer in the house 
 or houses, where his works were presented. In 1592 he had 
 become an object of envy and satire, which told their own 
 tale, and at which he could aSbrd to smile ; in 1597 he was 
 the owner of New Place and a man of recognized substance. 
 The gardens, orchards, and stables, recited in a document of 
 later date can surely refer only to this part of the Shakespear 
 estate. When it was noised abroad, that Master William 
 Shakespear, poet and' playwright, had become the successor 
 of the Cloptons and others in the Great House, what a sen- 
 sation there must have been in Stratford, where the family, 
 not so long since, when the father failed, and some of the 
 Arden inheritance was alienated, seemed as if it was likely to 
 suffer a decline, if not an eclipse, and now, in Master Shake- 
 spear Senior's own lifetime, this wondrous change! And 
 rumours may have reached the Avon of some, who had been 
 Warwickshire associates in former days, having fun slyly 
 poked at them on the London stage, where Master William 
 of that ilk had proved so moving a spirit. Setting on one 
 side the published poems and the unpublished sonnets, which 
 
 85 
 
56 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 did not perhaps altogether yield much, his editorial and 
 professional labours during ten years (1587-97) were not 
 only lucrative, though involving considerable attention to 
 technical and mechanical details, but prepared the way for 
 the success of those more important and original efforts, 
 which were to mark and cover the remainder of his active 
 career, and which render his personality what we see it to- 
 day. Under the auspices of the elder Burbage his practical 
 training in Shoreditch yielded a man of his observant temper 
 an invaluable insight into the requirements and humours of 
 audiences, and enabled him, to a far larger extent than 
 other contemporary dramatic authors, to accommodate his 
 treatment of themes, as far as possible, to his clients ; there 
 were cases, no doubt, where he hesitated to raise the standard 
 of his work too abruptly, and had to consider the prejudices 
 of the playgoer in favour of the older school. In estimating 
 his conduct, it is always to be recollected, that he was 
 primarily a maker of plays, secondly an actor in them, 
 thirdly (and concurrently) a part-proprietor, and, last of all, 
 a poet in the sense that Daniel, Drayton, and others were 
 poets, or, in other words, the author of Venus and Adonis, 
 Lucrece, the Sonnets, and a few other miscellaneous lyrics 
 of medium quality. We collect from a passage in Bishop 
 Earle's Microcosmography, probably written about 1626, that 
 it was by no means an uncommon practice for performers 
 to take their earnings according to the receipts ; but the 
 proportion necessarily depended on personal eminence or 
 popularity. 
 
 The years 1596-9 were more than usually eventful. They 
 witnessed the appearance on the stage of his earliest origi- 
 nal or independent work : a two years' suit against the 
 Lamberts for the recovery of the maternal estate of Asbies : 
 a project for obtaining from Heralds' College a grant of arms: 
 the death, not only of his son and the loss of all immediate 
 prospect of a direct succession to any property, but of that 
 valuable old friend James Burbage : the purchase of New 
 Place : the acquisition of a site in Maiden Lane, on Bank- 
 
Personal History 57 
 
 side, on a thirty-one years' lease, and the erection on it, with 
 building materials largely obtained from the demolition of 
 the old theatre in Shoreditch, of a new house, called the 
 Globe from its nearly circular form, in which venture Shake- 
 spear became a part-owner : i and the theatrical tour in 
 some of the southern counties of England, and in Somerset- 
 shire, which supplied perhaps a welcome distraction from 
 domestic mishaps. 
 
 The Warwickshire Shakespears appear to have been 
 almost without an exception agriculturists. They were 
 somewhat prone to litigation ; and one of them, a Thomas 
 of 1575, is represented as "a common forestaller and en- 
 grosser of barley, wheat and rye contrary to the statute, and 
 an evil example of other subjects." This is a sort of side- 
 light for our use and consideration, when we look at the 
 practical aspect of the character of the poefs father, a 
 Snitterfield man, transmitted to that son, in whose absence 
 such anecdotes would have had no permanent significance. 
 There are those other bearings on the individual here most 
 immediately concerned, that his traditional Snitterfield 
 associations visibly influenced him in two different ways : 
 when he became an investor, in putting his money into land 
 and tithes, and in modelling certain features in his hand- 
 writing, so far as we can test it from his signature. Extant 
 specimens shew the family likeness in the form of some of 
 the letters of the name, and I elsewhere point out that the 
 type of handwriting was common to persons of education at 
 a much later date. We hear adverse criticism on the calli- 
 graphy of the poet ; but his style strikes one as an advance 
 on that of his predecessors. It was, however, a clear evolu- 
 
 ' It is probable that the Globe stood on a site opposite that occupied 
 by Thrale's, afterward Barclay & Perkins's, Brewery, but that there was 
 originally nothing between the theatre and the river. We have to con- 
 sider the arguable character of the lane, the slight commercial value of 
 the space, which it covered, either as a building site or as a thoroughfare, 
 before we can realize the exact neighbourhood to the Thames, or relation 
 to buildings subsequently erected in Maiden or Maid Lane, and we must 
 not be too apt to confound ancient and modern conditions 
 
58 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 tion from it; and in his last efforts to transfer his name 
 to paper we detect a relapse from physical weakness to the 
 paternal model. The Shakespears sprang on the maternal 
 side from the yeomanry, and had had originally among them 
 at Snitterfield and the vicinity a good estate in land. 
 
 John Shakespear not improbably imbibed through his 
 wife certain gentilitious instincts, which, had his personal 
 fortunes continued to be prosperous, might have prompted 
 him, independently of his son, to solicit coat-armour. But 
 the signal success of his son and the contemplated treaty for 
 an important residential property in their native place and 
 neighbourhood, coupled with reputed facilities for obtaining 
 the distinction, encouraged the Shakespears, even before New 
 Place had become theirs, yet when its acquisition was in view, 
 to apply for an official cognizance. Characteristically the 
 poet himself nowhere appears in the matter; the negocia- 
 tion was in his father's name; he was arguably neutral 
 on such a subject; but in 1596 and 1599 the heralds 
 (Dethick and Camden) drafted grants to John Shakespear, 
 and based their action on the alleged services of ancestors to 
 Henry VII. Nothing definite was ever accomplished, and it 
 was then, as it yet is, the prevailing view, that these historical 
 pretensions, which could hardly have been otherwise derived, 
 if they existed at all, than from the earlier Ardens, were 
 unfounded. I acquit Shakespear of having advanced them, 
 and of greatly caring which way the case ended; but the 
 authorities, who lent their countenance to this and quite a 
 number of similar applications, did not escape censure from 
 one of their own body (York Herald), who in no measured 
 terms condemned the growing tendency to find heraldic 
 honours for a crowd of aspirants, especially where a mere 
 dramatic writer and performer on the stage (as these gentle- 
 men might have put it) was in question. My own feeling is 
 that the mother — a woman of a certain personality and of 
 separate estate — took the initiative, and prevailed on their 
 son to defray the preliminary charges. The sole claim to 
 consideration in an ancestral way was the reputed rank of an 
 
Personal History 59 
 
 Arden as a groom of the chamber to the first of the Tudors; 
 but of this there is no ostensible proof, and if it were other- 
 wise the position was not one on which such a plea could 
 have been properly advanced. 
 
 There is more than one copy of Brooke's List of Arms 
 granted by Dethick and others, as York Herald judged 
 improperly, and the coat proposed for the Shakespears has 
 beneath it, in a transcript, probably by Peter le Neve: 
 Arms of Shakespear the Player, Brooke ignoring not only 
 the dramatist, but the landed proprietor and master of New 
 Place, and a poet, whom noble personages had recognized and 
 befriended. The motto was to be Non sans Droid. There 
 was a surprizing degree of unprofessional levity, combined 
 with ignorance or greed, on the part of some of the staff at 
 Heralds' College. As late as 1617 York Herald forwarded 
 to Garter King of Arms a coat for Gregory Brandon (the 
 hangman), whom he described as a merchant of London of 
 good family, and both Brooke and Dethick were committed 
 to the Marshalsea for the misdemeanour and contempt. 
 
 A question, which more nearly touched him, and which 
 illustrated the less commercial — almost sentimental — side of 
 his nature was one, which was equally productive of trouble 
 and outlay, and equally destitute of result. In 1597 
 two successive bills were filed in Chancery by John and 
 Mary Shakespear, and by John Shakespear individually, for 
 the purpose of recovering the estate of Asbies, which had 
 passed to their relations the Lamberts by foreclosure of 
 mortgage ; but the suit lasted two years, and seems to have 
 been eventually abandoned by the plaintiffs, who described 
 themselves in the pleas as persons of slender means and 
 Lambert as a gentleman of wealth and ability. But it is 
 more than likely that all the charges were borne, as in the 
 other case, by the dramatist, and his action cannot be 
 viewed as otherwise than dutiful and chivalrous. The loss 
 of the Asbies estate evidently hurt him. Randolph the 
 poet, who was born in 1605, and within whose circle there 
 were many personal acquaintances of Shakespear, in his 
 
60 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 paraphrase of the Plutus of Aristophanes, was inclined to 
 deny him credit for such Quixotic enthusiasm.^ But he 
 had a very imperfect knowledge of the circumstances and 
 appreciation of the difficulties with which Shakespear was 
 confronted almost throughout his life. 
 
 In 1596 the first blow to his hopes arrived in the death 
 of his only son Hamnet, so named after one of the Sadlers 
 of Stratford,^ even before his first acquisition was more 
 than contemplated ; and it must have been about the same 
 time, that there was an informal separation, by which the wife 
 became dependent on some personal interest in her paternal 
 estate. There is the choice of probabilities of mere in- 
 compatibility, of an intrigue during his frequent and long 
 absences on the wife''s side — a woman still not beyond the 
 prime of life, of one or more on her husband's. In his 
 152nd Sonnet he had before him the idea of a woman's 
 " bed-vow broke," which bespeaks the nuptial state and a 
 husband's, rather than a lover's, reproach; and his wife 
 was evidently in touch with a man — formerly her father's 
 shepherd, who had advanced her 4iOs., the equivalent of 
 £1Q or £\^ of our money, as a loan, which the poet for 
 some time at least repudiated. In fact, the Shakespears 
 might in 1596 have probably renewed the male inherit- 
 ance, had not cohabitation previously determined through 
 a motive or agency, which one can only surmise. This 
 uncomfortable view is not disproved by the later visits to 
 Stratford and ultimate settlement of Shakespear there. 
 
 We gain a casual insight into the private life of the 
 poet, at a time when active professional work had become 
 less necessary and less constant, and when he had leisure to 
 attend to incidental affairs outside the theatre. I elsewhere 
 (hazard a conjecture that in 1611 he sat to Richard Burbage 
 
 1 Apostrophizing the god of wealth, Randolph rather foolishly says : — 
 
 " Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee, 
 And Shakespeare therefore write his comedy ? " 
 
 ^ The name is found among the Harlngtons in the early part of the 
 century. — Plumpton Correspondence, p. 207. 
 
Personal History 61 
 
 for the portrait executed in that year, while he remained 
 convalescent, and it appears that among the Belvoir Castle 
 records there is an entry of a payment to the poet of 44s. 
 by or on behalf of the young Earl of Rutland for arranging 
 the details of a historic device for his house after the manner 
 of the Italian Imprese, and an equal sum to Burbage for 
 painting and making the same. The Earl had at this time 
 a mansion at the upper end of Aldersgate Street ; he was a 
 very young man, who had just succeeded his brother in the 
 title, and who at once emulated the prevailing taste for 
 splendour. It happened not long after his more or less 
 unexpected inheritance of the family honours, that London 
 was thrown into a state of joyous and giddy ferment by the 
 marriage of the King's only daughter Elizabeth to the 
 Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the thought and the talk 
 might have naturally run among the folks connected with 
 the Court — guests at the ceremony and festivities — on such 
 a topic as these devices. , The Earl was extremely apt to 
 feel a warm interest in the proceedings, and was, no doubt, 
 in London, when the magnificent celebration of the union 
 took place, and when not only Othello but A Winter's Tale 
 were commanded as special performances. 
 
 Still of the exact circumstances, which brought the Earl 
 of Rutland and Shakespear together, although we may 
 surmise, we positively know nothing. But as there were 
 numerous persons always available for the performance of 
 such functions, it becomes a permissible supposition, that 
 an interview had occurred or been arranged, and that the 
 poet recommended Burbage as an individual qualified to 
 attend to a part of the commission, he undertaking to 
 be answerable for the rest. He perfectly well knew what 
 Imprese were, and he had had an earlier experience of going 
 in quest of these specialists, when his father or mother, or 
 both, were urging him to procure coat-armour. The con- 
 clusion of the business in London explains the ostensible 
 absence of letters on the subject at Belvoir Castle. 
 
 The identity of the amounts received by the two friends 
 
62 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 — the Earl's secretary discriminates in his accounts between 
 Richard Burbage and Master Shakespear, however — may be 
 explainable by the generous employer having taken four 
 gold jacobuses from his pocket, and presented two to each, 
 to cover all expenses, and well they might, for they repre- 
 sented about £9,0 of our money. These statistics less 
 resemble the Arabian Nights than the childish tale of 
 Southampton having in or about 1597 given the poet 
 <f 1000 toward a purchase, which cost £&), and of which 
 the completion spread over five years. 
 
 We seem to have no precise note of time, as regards 
 the earliest symptoms of declining health. The general 
 strength was impaired in 1614, as we collect from cousin 
 Greene, and whatever convivial indiscretion there actually 
 was in 1615—16, when Jonson and Drayton were at Strat- 
 ford, operated on an already debilitated constitution. But 
 it is scarcely safe to presume, that four years before, when 
 the premises in St. Anne's, Blackfriars, became his, he had 
 any presentiment that the end was so near, since he would, 
 one imagines, have hesitated to put a substantial sum of 
 money into a venture, where no male heir — no one at all on 
 the spot — existed to attend to it at his death — merely female 
 beneficiaries in a remote country town. Probably there- 
 fore even in 1612-13 his physical state afforded no ground 
 for anxiety, and the mischief, which was to have so grave 
 a development, had not yet betrayed itself. What it was 
 neither Dr. Hall nor any one else has apprised us; but 
 it was constructively some malady — possibly a combina- 
 tion of maladies — which had spread over at least a couple 
 of years. 
 
 It is evident that New Place, or the Great House,i was at 
 the time of acquisition in a very bad state of repair ; and 
 we shall not be far from the truth, perhaps, in surmising 
 
 1 This expression for a capital messuage was not peculiar to Stratford, 
 or even to Shakespear's time, for in or about 1820 the more modern struc- 
 ture erected by the Coxwell-Rogers family at Dowdeswell, near Chelten- 
 ham, in place of the old Dowdeswell House, was similarly named. 
 
Personal History 63 
 
 that no complete restoration took place in the lifetime of 
 the poet, even if the Halls and others, who resided there 
 after his death, accomplished much in such a direction, or 
 did more than use the habitable rooms. A man, whose 
 whole career had been devoted to the accumulation of 
 property by the exercise of the superlative faculties unex- 
 pectedly revealed in him, and who had hardened himself to 
 rough and casual modes of subsistence in London, may have 
 well failed to appreciate or study the elegant or even genteel 
 refinements of domestic life, and he would have eyed it as a 
 very doubtful investment, particularly under the circum- 
 stances which we seem to be obliged to admit, to have 
 converted a dilapidated residence into an abode suitable for 
 a gentleman of substance and position, nay, of some sort of 
 literary repute among those of the Court and the great 
 city. The wonder, perhaps, should be, why he originally 
 made the acquisition. 
 
 A perusal of the official correspondence of the precise 
 period tends to exculpate the new owner of the Great House 
 from exceptional neglect or disregard even from other causes 
 than indifference of the state of his property, and it is 
 possible to select as a sample the case of the young Earl 
 of Southampton, who, in a letter from his lodging in the 
 Strand, 26 June, 1592,^ is found appealing to Mr. Hicks 
 to intercede with his guardian Lord Burleigh to have his 
 decayed manor-house of Beaulieu in Hampshire put in 
 repair. His lordship was then in his twentieth year, and 
 perhaps contemplated going into residence at Beaulieu on 
 the attainment of his majority. Burleigh was Master of 
 the Court of Wards and Liveries. 
 
 While, however, the poet might not have aspired, under 
 changed domestic conditions, to make the mansion an abode 
 such as it had been, and such as it subsequently became in 
 
 ' Lansdowne MS. 71, fol. 180. The Earl had a town residence in 
 Southampton itself. Bugle Hall, near the West Gate. It, in common with 
 Beaulieu, had previously belonged to the Abbot of Beaulieu. Bugle or 
 Bull HaU was destroyed by fire in 1791. 
 
64 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 other hands, he may be presumed to have lost no time in 
 executing repairs absolutely essential to the maintenance of 
 the premises, since he is reported as obtaining stone for the 
 purpose in 1598, while, in consequence of some flaw in the 
 conveyance, he was not yet in legal possession ; and in 1602, 
 when the title-deeds were at last delivered, he planted two 
 apple orchards — whether on any portion of the existing 
 garden or not, is uncertain, and subsequently — it is thought 
 in 1609 — the historical mulberry. 
 
 There is reason to believe that he went down to Stratford 
 in 1608 to see his mother in her last moments, or at least 
 to attend the funeral, and he was there down to the 16th 
 October, when he stood sponsor to the child of William 
 Walker of the Stratford family of that name, or possibly 
 later. But whether he stayed at New Place or elsewhere, is 
 not ascertained. Could he have put up at the house in 
 Henley Street, which he subsequently left to his sister Joan 
 Hart for life, and where she might have been then residing 
 with her family, or did he become the guest of Greene, with 
 whom there were legal points to discuss .? For the Adden- 
 broke suit was opened in the August of this year, and 
 necessitated a visit by the cousin to London, arguably while 
 Shakespear remained in Warwickshire. 
 
 New Place must be taken to have been more or less in 
 the tenancy of the owner's family from 1597-8 to 1607, the 
 date of the marriage of Susanna Shakespear. From 1608 
 to 1610 or 1611, Thomas Greene was the lessee. At 
 Michaelmas, 1610, he was preparing to quit, and at Mid- 
 summer, 1611, he was domesticated elsewhere; but in 1614 
 a preacher, who was the guest of the corporation, was 
 apparently lodged here, and received at the pubhc ex- 
 pense a quart of sack and one of claret, which argues a 
 two or three days' stay and the absence of the owner. 
 The stranger is concluded to have been a puritan, of 
 whom the Halls were apter to be tolerant than the 
 master of the house; but he was at any rate no enemy 
 to good liquor. Stratford merely followed the customary 
 
Personal History 65 
 
 practice in those days of bringing out the sack and sugar, 
 or something of that kind, at the coming of every dis- 
 tinguished visitor. At Bristol there was a similar usage; 
 they produced what was called Bristol milk, that is, sherry 
 sack. 
 
 Greene had paid another professional visit to London on 
 business probably connected with the Welcombe difficulty, 
 if not with a second question at issue, to which the poet was 
 equally unable to attend in person, in respect to his property 
 in Blackfriars, and he was still there on November 15, 1614 ; 
 but he returned to Warwickshire on the evening of that 
 day or next morning, and on the 17th he and Shakespear 
 met in Stratford. There is the entry in the Diary of 
 Greene under date of November 17, where he mentions that 
 " my cousin Shakespear, coming yesterday to town, I went 
 to see him, how he did." Greene plainly intended to convey 
 that the poet was staying somewhere in the vicinity of 
 Stratford, and that in one of his visits to the town his 
 relative called on him to inquire after his health, which was 
 already indifferent, and to report what had taken place in 
 London. It may have been an appointment, as the circum- 
 stances were growing more acute. It is sufficiently well 
 known that it is the customary parlance to this day in 
 relation to the outskirts or suburbs of any place, to refer 
 to the latter as " town." In the correspondence of the first 
 Earl of Bristol the term is applied to Bury St. Edmunds — 
 his lordship's town.^ Where Greene refers to London in 
 one place, he specifically names it. He speaks of passing 
 Whitehall, and of being in Westminster. His visit was 
 almost certainly due, first of all, to the wish of the Stratford 
 corporation to obtain judicial advice and assistance in bring- 
 ing to a climax the business, in which Shakespear had so 
 important a stake, and which threatened, as we hear, to 
 involve serious local commotions. 
 
 ' In a letter from a correspondent, residing about eight miles from 
 Penzance in Cornwall, received Deo. 7, 1909, he speaks of going to town 
 shortly, i.e. to Penzance. 
 
 E 
 
66 Shakespeab,: The Man and his Wokk 
 
 I am more than afraid, that the last days were darkened 
 and saddened by domestic estrangement. In what I believe 
 to have been almost his latest dramatic eiFort, as it was 
 the most finished one, the Tempest, he has bequeathed 
 to us something like authority for the view that marital 
 disunion and unhappiness still haunted him in 1611 
 or thereabout, while the Welcombe enclosure episode of 
 1614-15 reveals to us a state of mental susceptibility and 
 harass for which such a circumstance does not seem per se 
 answerable. 
 
 As the exact date of the ultimate withdrawal to Strat- 
 ford — it was between February and June of the twelvemonth, 
 when it occurred (most probably 1612—13) — is not ascertain- 
 able, we cannot be sure whether that event preceded or 
 followed the destruction of the theatre, where so many of 
 his plays had been presented, and where some of his papers 
 may have perished ; but in any case the catastrophe must 
 have come as a heavy blow to long and intimate associations, 
 and operated as a factor in unhinging his mind, and shaking 
 his health of body.i That disaster must have also involved 
 in financial loss his friends Burbage, Condell, and Hemings, 
 even if the first named had a far smaller stake as an actor 
 and proprietor than he had in the Blackfriars theatre, 
 where he was a seventh sharer. But, so far as Shakespear's 
 personal interest in the Globe goes, as the matter stood after 
 the erection of the new house in 1613, and in the Blackfriars, 
 there really appears to be no precise information beyond the 
 two facts, that he was a joint tenant, and that his income 
 was far more moderate than used to be conjectured and 
 stated.^ 
 
 1 What appears to be a view of the New Globe occurs as part of the 
 engraved title to Jonson's Works, 1616. The buUding is supposed to have 
 cost about £400 of contemporary currency, and to have been of octangular, 
 not circular, form. Nor are we entitled to take for granted that the new 
 house occupied precisely the same ground as the former one. 
 
 * Professor Wallace has gone into this side and aspect of the subject 
 at considerable length in the Centv/ry Magazine for August, 1910 and has 
 followed it up in the September number. A good deal of new information 
 has quite recently accrued. 
 
Personal History 67 
 
 An infinitely worse and nearer shock, however, was an 
 action for slander in the Consistory Court at Worcester 
 brought by John Hall on his wife's behalf, perhaps at her 
 instigation, against John Lane, more than possibly related 
 to Nicholas Lane, with whom John Shakespear had had a 
 lawsuit in 1587, for defamatory words spoken by Lane con- 
 cerning the alleged misconduct of Mrs. Hall with a third 
 party, with the result, that Lane was excommunicated ; 
 and looking at Shakespear's sensitive and precarious 
 condition the favourable judgment scarcely lessened the 
 mortification. 
 
 The visit of Jonson and Drayton to Stratford in 1615-16 
 is a well -aired tale ; but its latent significance and speciality 
 of interest seem to have been overlooked ; in common with 
 the extreme probability, that the latter merely made the 
 call in connection with his periodical excursion to Gloucester- 
 shire and to Hartshill, his natal place on the Coventry side 
 of Wp,rwickshire, and perhaps prevailed on Jonson to ac- 
 company him on this occasion. I augur that the tidings of 
 the serious condition of their lifelong friend had reached 
 the ears of his two eminent contemporaries and fellow-poets, 
 not improbably through a common friend at least of Dray- 
 ton,i Thomas Greene, Shakespear's relative, and had inspired 
 them with an anxiety to meet him once more. It was 
 precisely about the time, when domestic circumstances, not 
 immediately touching the wife, were tending to aggravate 
 mental and physical disorders, and to qualify the gratifica- 
 tion at an interview, for which he could scarcely have hoped. 
 Jonson and his fellow-traveller were not improbably left in 
 ignorance of the scandal, nor did they see the main incident 
 with our eyes, or we should have possessed particulars of 
 a pilgrimage so famous and so sad. Where in Stratford 
 the momentary reunion took place, we are left uninformed. 
 The Falcon facing the site of New Place was not then an 
 
 * Drayton, Greene, and Shakespear were all of Warwickshire. Hall 
 tells us that he cured Drayton of tertian ague by the administration of a 
 Spoonful of syrup of violets, &o. — Select Observations, 16S7, p. 26. 
 
68 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 inn, although the cellarage, which I have personally ex- 
 amined, is quite of that time. The two principal houses 
 were the Bear and the Swan. 
 
 There must have been more or less frequent meetings in 
 later days both in London and Stratford, apart from occa- 
 sional entertainments at the Mermaid and other London 
 inns, where there were agreeable retrospections of early 
 scenes and experiences, of pleasures and triumphs, sometimes 
 not uncheckered by disappointments. Nevertheless, it is 
 impossible to be unaware, as soon as we have studied the 
 personal bent and temper of the author with any consider- 
 able amount of attention, that he was, of all those connected 
 with the Elizabethan theatre, when he gained eminence, 
 almost the leasb likely to bestow much time in common 
 festive enjoyment, and was, moreover, when he stayed in 
 London, too busily engrossed by his professional and private 
 concerns to have leisure for the attractions of the tavern 
 and the social club. Edward Alleyn, Philip Henslowe, 
 and himself resembled each other in looking at the prac- 
 tical side. That there were moments alike in town and 
 country, when even he relaxed, is less than doubtful; but 
 the legend of the farewell carouse is a legend and nothing 
 more. 
 
 The former place of the inn or hostelry in relation to 
 the private house, when gatherings or interviews were to 
 be arranged for purposes of business or pleasure, forms a 
 rather important element in considering and comprehending 
 the movements of Shakespear, more especially as it seems 
 to be admitted that, even when a man possessed such an 
 unusual facility for receiving guests at his own house, he 
 was accustomed to repair with them to a tavern. The 
 meetings of the poet and his literary friends in the Metro- 
 polis at such establishments are intelligible enough; there, 
 down to 1613, he had no independent residence, nor is it 
 probable that he ever inhabited the house in Blackfriars ; 
 but at Stratford there was New Place, and still he appears 
 to have resorted elsewhere to sit with friends from London 
 
Personal History 69 
 
 or with neighbours. It was a widely diffused practice which 
 he pursued, and one which has not become obsolete, especi- 
 ally abroad, where at one time political and municipal con- 
 ferences were held at restaurants, each person bringing or 
 paying for his own wine. The solution of this strange habit 
 is to be sought in the insufficiency of domestic resources for 
 entertaining strangers; and the Shakespears were perhaps 
 no exceptions to the prevailing rule, if we keep out of view 
 any peculiar repugnance in that case on the part of the 
 women of the family to theatrical society, and what it has 
 become the fashion to term Bohemianism. The relations 
 under such circumstances were apt to be between man and 
 man ; and the professional acquaintances of the poet did not 
 necessarily know the other inmates of his household. We 
 collect that he saw comparatively little of them himself. 
 In fact, one of the mysteries connected with the present 
 subject is the occupancy of New Place by strangers, more 
 particularly after the marriage of Susanna Shakespear in 
 1607. The practice of entertaining acquaintances at taverns 
 long survived in England, and under Anne and the Georges 
 men met each other in this fashion by necessity or from 
 preference. In 1704 a Bishop of Down and Connor writes 
 to his brother in London to invite Consul Ray, just re- 
 tiu:ned from Smyrna, to share a bottle of wine with him 
 at a tavern. 
 
 Although he had barely passed middle life, there appears 
 to be too strong a ground for the view that Shakespear 
 deferred his retirement too long, and that when he ulti- 
 mately arranged to spend at all events the bulk of his 
 time at home, his strength was seriously affected, not so 
 much by his former professional work in London, as by 
 trouble at home, even of a nature to be peculiarly try- 
 ing to one, who had so strenuously laboured to elevate 
 his social standing. In addition to the mental strain in- 
 volved in the provision of a constant series of novelties 
 for the stage during several years, and the unavoidable 
 worry and labour attendant on his duties as a manager 
 
70 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 and actor, he had suffered much annoyance from local 
 disputes, complications, and disasters, which in more than 
 one case threatened to touch him nearly as a land and tithe 
 owner ; and he returned home to find his birthplace a hot- 
 bed of disease, as it had been in his father's day, from 
 the total absence of due measures of prevention on the part 
 of the authorities, notwithstanding the most stringent 
 orders by the Council so far back as 1563. Nor is it to 
 be supposed that, as he was situated in London, at a dis- 
 tance from his household, the tenor of his life was conducive 
 to physical welfare, far less longevity. The true history of 
 his personal association with Stratford amounts to little 
 more than occasional visits during the busier years, and 
 a nearly uninterrupted residence there from 1614 to 
 1616, in a state of declining strength of body, if not of 
 mind. 
 
 The years, in which there is clear evidence, or a substantial 
 indication, that he revisited Warwickshire after 1586-7 and 
 prior to his final retirement, were 1596, when he lost his 
 son : 1601, when his father died : 1603, 1605, when he may 
 have extended his journey to Oxford as far as Stratford : 
 
 1607, when his elder daughter was married on June 5 : 
 
 1608, when he was deprived of his remaining parent. Be- 
 tween 1586-7 and 1596 it is scarcely too hazardous to con- 
 clude that he went down at shorter intervals, as Drayton, 
 whose native place in the county was even farther from 
 London, made it an annual event. Of his quarters in 
 London in 1604 we have some freshly gained knowledge; 
 but we remain unable to account with certainty for the 
 lapse of time from 1587 — a much longer period and one 
 even fuller of arduous engagements — and between 1604 
 and 1612, although, when circumstances find him in the 
 City in the former year, he may have been staying there 
 some time previous, and have remained some time longer. 
 The earliest settlement was almost unquestionably in the 
 Borough, and thither he almost unquestionably returned, 
 and was resident in 1607, when his brother Edmund died 
 
Personal History 71 
 
 there, it is fairly presumable under the same roof. Where 
 he had fixed himself in 1612, just prior to his acquisition 
 of the Blackfriars property and actual fi^irewell to London, 
 we have yet to learn. 
 
 The postponement of the definite departure from London, 
 which I confidently place not earlier than 1613, and concur- 
 rent severance of his ties with the theatre and the literary 
 world, were not unnaturally influenced by the contemplation 
 of the ungenial home and the poorer companionship in store 
 for him, with the absolute improbability of return. But 
 there was the reassurance of the medical care of his son-in- 
 law, the presence of his favourite daughter, and the prospect, 
 which was realized to our knowledge in one instance, of a 
 visit from old London intimates. There was repose ; there 
 was more than competence ; there was the respect, perhaps 
 the homage, of his townsmen ; but it was not the consumma- 
 tion which so great a man might have expected, and have 
 been entitled to expect. Even while some of the finest 
 dramas of the later period, such as Macbeth and Antony 
 and Cleopatra, were in course of composition, he is found 
 in Cymbeline expressing a preference for retirement and 
 freedom over the attractions of court and society. 
 
 It was an incident, which occurred in 1612, as the result 
 of the acquaintance of the poet, not at all improbably 
 through George Wilkins the dramatist who, like Tarlton 
 before him, was also a tavern-keeper or victualler, with a 
 circle composed of two or three families in London, not 
 very far from Blackfriars, of which one at least followed 
 the trade of a tire and wig maker, which here comes to 
 our assistance in more than a single direction or way. The 
 name of the principal actor in the scene was Christopher 
 Mountjoy or Monjoie, a Frenchman, perhaps a Huguenot, 
 and a second member of the set was the widow of a 
 person named Bellot, whom I am inclined to identify 
 with a contemporary teacher of the French language 
 and compiler of three or four well-known manuals on the 
 same. 
 
72 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 This lady had by her first husband a son, Etienne or 
 Stephen, who became an apprentice to Mountjoy, and who 
 in course of time fell in love with his master's only daughter 
 and child, to some extent, no doubt, through the girl taking 
 an active share in the business. The couple ultimately 
 married in 1604. 
 
 Shakespear had been a party to certain conversations 
 and discussions prior to this event in consequence of his 
 domiciliation as a tenant under Mountjoy of a portion 
 of the tiremaker's premises, and in reference to a sum of 
 money by way of dower to be settled on Mary Mountjoy 
 and to other ulterior contingencies ; and owing to sundry 
 domestic differences the case was brought before the Court 
 of Requests eight years after the union, the poet subscribing 
 depositions of all the facts within his knowledge and memory, 
 and being summoned as a witness. 
 
 He describes himself in his written and signed deposi- 
 tions as of Stratford - on - Avon, Gentleman, and he, in 
 common with one or two of the other parties, evidently 
 had a rather imperfect grasp of dates and other details, 
 in spite of his intimacy with the Mountjoys.^ That, how- 
 ever, is of secondary moment. The central and capital 
 point is that we are here admitted to new means of be- 
 holding the poet in our mind's eye in touch, during his 
 lengthened sojourn in the Metropolis, with some of the 
 average folks around him, of whom a Daniel Nicholas, 
 son of an ex-Lord Mayor, alludes to him as one William 
 Shakespear, while his plays were in course of regular per- 
 formance, and must have been the talk of the town, and 
 that in or about the period, when the parties were married 
 — in 1604 — ^he occupied a tenement in the house of Mount- 
 joy at the corner of Mugwell or Monk well and Silver Streets, 
 in the vicinity of Barber-Surgeons' Hall ; yet how long or 
 how continuously he dwelled there, does not apparently 
 transpire beyond a statement made by one of the de- 
 
 ^ The Court finally decided to leave the matter in the hands of the 
 French Church in London. 
 
Personal History 73 
 
 ponents in 1612, speaking from recollection, that he was 
 under the same roof in or about eight years previous.* 
 But in 1612, when they desire speech of him, they are 
 explicitly said "to go to him." 
 
 We are, moreover, confirmed in the view, that Shakespear 
 quitted London in 1612-13 — possibly in the spring of that 
 year. In the signature accompanying the depositions there 
 is the significant dot in the fold of the W.^ 
 
 The evidence that the poet expired at New Place appears 
 to be only presumptive. He had been quartered somewhere 
 in the outskirts of Stratford not long, at all events, prior to 
 his last sickness, and was, judging from information, which 
 we derive from his cousin, in the habit of occasionally coming 
 into town (that is, into Stratford), when something required 
 his presence. 
 
 Of the complaint which proved fatal on the 23rd April, 
 1616 (O.S.), there are conflicting opinions. It is most 
 likely that it was a putrid fever, arising from the sur- 
 rounding insanitary conditions, which we actually know to 
 have prevailed from the earliest settlement of the Shake- 
 spears in the town, and not impossibly aggravated by 
 secondary causes ; and such a view is supported by the hasty 
 interment on the third day. Yet the occasion cannot pos- 
 sibly have been unattended by some homage, some tribute — 
 even in Stratford, where, not very long after the loss of its 
 sole source of distinction, the local sages, looking round them 
 for the means of obviating a temporary financial embarrass- 
 ment, could not hit on a happier idea than the sale for 
 timber of the old trees in Stratford churchyard, and that in 
 the winter of 1617 the authorities were cited before the 
 
 ' The site of the Mugwell Street premises is now occupied by the 
 Coopers' Arms. 
 
 * See New Shakespeare Diacovenes, by Professor Wallace, in Sao'per's 
 Magazine, March, 1910. The paper is chiefly derived from documents in 
 the London Record Office ; but in several places it is gravely inaccurate, 
 and it virtually amounts, so far as Shakespear is concerned, to a single 
 point — the fixture and circumstances of his residence in the City at a 
 certain date. 
 
74 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Consistory Court at Worcester for permitting the fabric and 
 bells of the Church of the Holy Trinity to fall out of repair. 
 There is, as usual, no record in the Stratford register of the 
 death, merely an entry in the briefest terms of the funeral, 
 which might have been under the suspected circumstances 
 still more expeditious, had not the claim to a place in the 
 chancel for the remains by virtue of the part-leasehold of the 
 great tithes occasioned some delay .^ 
 
 It is more than doubtful whether the wife was present to 
 witness the last moments, and hear the last accents, of the 
 poet, after so brief a career, embittered by so inordinate a 
 share of private unhappiness. But the daughters were perhaps 
 there, perhaps Dr, Hall. In his will, as it was originally 
 written, no mention of the wife occurred, and the concession 
 of a bed and its furniture arose perhaps from the circum- 
 stance, that it was an article of use removed to the place 
 where she was separately domiciled ; but Halliwell-Phillipps 
 has amply shown that the bequest of a second-best bed in 
 such a case was habitual, the best piece of furniture of this 
 description being reserved for special guests, and passing 
 as an heirloom. The gift was an interlineation and an 
 after-thought. I have suggested that if the rest of the 
 family was at the Great House or elsewhere at the time 
 of executing the will, the wife was almost certainly not 
 so, and the piece of furniture may have accompanied 
 Mrs. Shakespear to the residence where she was living 
 apart perhaps with friends. In the infirm state of the 
 testator's health it is as likely as not that he overlooked 
 the circumstance of the bed being elsewhere. At any rate 
 we cannot avoid seeing that the wife was not foremost in 
 the dying man's thoughts. 
 
 Not only did the Halls receive the bulk of the estate, 
 but the entire executorship was vested in them jointly; the 
 second daughter Judith, who was not married till February, 
 
 1 It may be worth noting that Philip Henslowe, the theatrical pro- 
 prietor, was buried in the chancel of St. Saviour's, Sonthwark, the same 
 year (Jan. 1615-16). 
 
Personal History 75 
 
 1616, is an actual beneficiary to some extent, and a dis- 
 tantly contingent one to a much larger ; but the dominant 
 object of the testator was most manifestly to preserve the 
 hardly won property in his posterity; and he not only 
 followed a very usual course, where there was no male issue, 
 of letting the eldest female succeed, but evinced, on the 
 whole, a preference for the Halls, in spite of the Doctor's 
 distasteful religious views, over Judith and the Quineys, 
 into whose family he just lived to see her married, under 
 circumstances which added a final sorrow to her father's 
 heart, as the ceremony was performed without licence, 
 and the parties were not only fined by the Consistory 
 Court at Worcester, but threatened with excommunica- 
 tion. Susanna more closely resembled her father, and 
 might be expected to nurse the estate, while, whatever 
 Judith might be or do, her intended husband's people 
 were not thought to be financially sound; and at all 
 events Shakespear virtually let the main property devolve 
 on the Halls. 
 
 The explicit declaration in the will, that in January, 
 1616, he was dwelling at New Place, is capable of more than 
 one construction. The theory, that he had become pro- 
 visionally or temporarily domiciled elsewhere, by no means 
 supersedes the house at Stratford as his legal headquarters ; 
 it amounts to no more than the possibility that for some un- 
 known reason he may have been in the last year of his life 
 and at the time of his more or less sudden death, as he 
 evidently was in 1614<-15, in residence at a point near enough 
 to Stratford " to come to town " at intervals. The state of 
 the draft will, which unexpectedly became the ultimate and 
 sole one, is so unsatisfactory, that it is hard to say whether 
 what was true as to New Place ii) January of the year con- 
 tinued to be so in the last week of March. One of the 
 testamentary forms in West's Symbokography, 1590, where 
 there is the expression and passage : " . . . the occupation of 
 this house and fermeholdes wherein I now dwell at H. with 
 thappurtenances " — leads me to suggest that a person might 
 
76 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 be understood to dwell at an address, yet not be uninter- 
 ruptedly resident there. In fact, in an official document of 
 1612 the poet himself, although, so far as is apparent, 
 staying in London, not as a passing visitor, but as a business 
 headquarters, describes himself as of Stratford -on- Avon. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Testamentary arrangements — Remarks on the poet's will — His recollec- 
 tions of his " fellows " — Somewhat parallel case of Eiohard Bamfield 
 (1627) — New Place — Personal character of the poet — His political 
 opinions — Antipathy to Puritanism — Welcombe enclosure question — 
 Survival of conversational fragments — Shakespear's peculiar reticence 
 — Later relations with the Lucys. 
 
 The history of the will and the true facts as to its first 
 appearance in any shape are, and are likely to remain, 
 mysteries and problems; there is a vague tradition that 
 the step had been projected as early as 1605, when a new 
 and enlarged edition of West's book for the use of layfolk 
 had just appeared. 
 
 The poet, just about the time — in 1614-15 — when he 
 was permanently settled, if not at Stratford, at all events 
 in the vicinity, was clearly in habitual communication with 
 his kinsman Greene, and he had /availed himself of his 
 services as a person of practical experience in 1608-9 in 
 the Addenbroke business, for which Greene then paid a 
 visit to London. The aspect of the document, which has 
 alone descended to us, might tempt us to conclude, that, 
 although it may not represent all that was ever drawn up 
 of such a nature, it is the sole effort of the testator to secure 
 his property posterior to the loss of his son in 1596, and the 
 shortly subsequent presumed withdrawal from coverture ; we 
 observe that he declares toward the end of the testament, 
 that he revokes all former wills ; this is a common covering 
 phrase; but the existence and even survival of one prior 
 one, at all events, executed during the life-time of Hamnet 
 Shakespear, are not merely likely, but the adoption of 
 such a precautionary measure is as almost beyond a doubt, 
 
 77 
 
78 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 as it is eminently characteristic. The disappointment at 
 the frustration of his prospect of a direct heir not un- 
 naturally relaxed his interest in the succession, where the 
 choice lay between the Halls and the Quineys, both of whom 
 presented objections and drawbacks — the former in their 
 Puritanism and the latter in their thriftlessness. It is 
 extremely noteworthy that in an early passage Shakespear 
 had evidently intended to leave a sum of .£150 to Thomas 
 Quiney himself, but on reflection caused his partly written 
 description to be struck out and that of Judith to be 
 substituted. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Secret Sponsion was dis- 
 countenanced by the law and by the Church, and so far 
 from being final, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps infers, was 
 liable on any reasonable ground to be set aside and super- 
 seded. The more than equivocal circumstances of Susanna's 
 birth, about six months after the marriage,^ tended to make 
 the execution of a will by her father all the more peremptory, 
 as, had there been any legal bar, the Halls might have been 
 disinherited in favour of Judith and the Quineys. What- 
 ever prejudice and distaste, however, may have arisen toward 
 the wife, the affection for the elder daughter, and the 
 confidence in her, remained, it is well to be concluded, 
 unimpaired ; her character in some ways so nearly resembled 
 that of her father. 
 
 The author of the Outlines did his best to vindicate the 
 poet from anything in the shape of a dishonourable act, by 
 citing parallel examples belonging to the same, or nearly 
 the same, period, where a precontract appears to have been 
 viewed by the parties concerned and their friends as morally 
 tantamount to a solemn process of matrimony, and where 
 the actual nuptials were not celebrated till three months 
 subsequently. The bond lodged in the Consistory Court of 
 Worcester is dated November 28, 1582, and the first fruit of 
 the union, Susanna Shakespear, was baptized May 26, 1583. 
 
 1 Somewhat more than seven months' gestation is considered the 
 minimum. 
 
Personal History , 79 
 
 The haste, with which the testamentary dispositions were 
 eventually completed, is familiar enough. What, if any, 
 share Greene had in the matter, we do not know ; but he 
 was on the spot, if alterations were needed at short notice, 
 whereas Francis Collins the attorney, usually credited with 
 the manipulation of the business, lived at Warwick — a 
 serious distance in those days on an emergency .'^ I should 
 augur that the apparent addition of the first and second 
 subscriptions to the will bespeak the absence of Collins, 
 when the signature at the end was appended, and his arrival 
 at Stratford only in time to indicate the legal essentiality of 
 the others ; the witnesses, Collins and three others, are said 
 to attest the publication or probate, not the signature. But 
 it appears rather difficult to decide the exact sense then 
 attachable to the word publish. A will is at present 
 understood to be published only, when it has been proved. 
 The question lies, so far as one can see, between Greene 
 and Collins. But a point which merits attention is that 
 the first notion was to employ the seal of the testator in 
 lieu of his signature, as if his ability to execute the 
 instrument was open to doubt, and when Shakespear was 
 found just capable of subscribing with his own hand, seal 
 was erased and hand interlined. A second detail turns on 
 the name of Hamlet Sadler, to whom (another name being 
 probably at the last moment struck out) a legacy is pay- 
 able. It is fairly evident that the testator dictated the 
 change, and that his legal adviser misunderstood him, 
 and supposed him to mean the hero of the play, whereas 
 he construably intended Hamnet, that of his own son, 
 who was christened in 1585 after Hamnet Sadler, a baker 
 of Stratford (as his sister had been after Judith Sadler, 
 the baker's wife), although it is not impossible that 
 the form Hamnet was originally a provincial corruption. 
 
 ^ He ultimately succeeded Greene as Town Clerk, and removed to 
 Stratford. Greene, who retired in 1617, had as Town Clerk lived in a 
 house on the Avon on a site, which still preserves the name of Avonbank, 
 and has long been a ladies' school. 
 
80 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 The orthography of names was formerly, of course, very 
 careless. We find Hamlet indifferently spelled Amleth and 
 Hamlikt. 
 
 West furnishes a model for this, among other similar 
 purposes, so that Shakespear and his relative might have 
 easily contrived to draw up what we see mutatis mutandis, the 
 exordium in the volume being the identical one used in the 
 document, and all the requisite technicalities being ready 
 to hand, even if Greene, as a notary, had not been familiar 
 with them. For the volume in question, which passed 
 through successive editions between 1590 and 1632, was 
 equally designed for the use of notaries and scriveners, 
 and Greene can scarcely have been without a copy in his 
 office. 
 
 The form of will in West most nearly approaching the 
 terms found in Shakespear's commences : " In the name 
 of God Amen, the second day of January, 1590. . . . Sicke 
 in body, but of good and perfect memorie (God be praised) 
 do make and ordain this my last wil & testamet. . . . First 
 I commend my soule into the handes of God my maker, 
 hoping assuredly through the onely merites of lesus Christ 
 my Sauiour to bee made partaker . . ." and so forth — 
 almost the very words of the document which I am con- 
 sidering. The object of directing attention to these 
 minutice is partly to demonstrate that the testator suffered 
 Greene or Collins to obey the set phraseology in vogue, and 
 that the language is by no means construable into an 
 intimation of personal sentiment, and partly to support 
 the view, that the document before us was more probably 
 drawn up by Greene, then laid aside, and ultimately 
 employed on the feared approach of a crisis, the finishing 
 touches in the way of signature being put when the poet 
 was very near his end. 
 
 The two leading authorities on testamentary matters 
 in Shakespear's day were the work by West and a second 
 by Henry Swinburne, and both first saw the light in 1590. 
 It is not a very extravagant hypothesis that the poet had 
 
Personal History 81 
 
 the opportunity of turning over the leaves of both in his 
 cousin's office; but there was the difference that West 
 yielded only practical directions, while in Swinburne such 
 a rapid student gathered a few points, which served him 
 in his plays. The alleged legal culture of Shakespear may 
 be taken to have amounted to a dexterous assimilation of 
 the legal culture of others. 
 
 Of the three autograph attestations accompanying the 
 will, the last, which I am surely correct in apprehending 
 to have been the first one executed, offers these three 
 cardinal points of interest: 1. It gives the name in full; 
 2. It has the preliminary words By me, which truly seem 
 to be regardable as the only written characters outside 
 the mere signature anywhere extant; 3. It presents a 
 strong affinity with the Bodleian example in one way and 
 with the Montaigne one in another. I at first speculated, 
 whether the testator, having signed his name in an un- 
 usually elaborate manner, became fatigued, and could only 
 perform the remainder of the operation in the lamentably 
 imperfect fashion which we see. But I afterward came 
 to a different conclusion, which was that a short interval 
 elapsed between the attachment of the third, and the first 
 and second, inscriptions. We cannot avoid being struck 
 by the much firmer grasp of the pen in the words first 
 traced — By me William Shakspere, as if he had exerted 
 all his strength in tracing them; and I submit, following 
 here the apparent opinion of Halliwell-Phillipps, that the 
 two scrawls at the foot of folio 2 and in the margin of 
 folio 1 were added when the poet had become bed-ridden, 
 and was barely equal to the formation of the letters of his 
 name, when he was apprised — probably on the arrival of 
 Collins from Warwick — that each folio required the same 
 process. The foregoing observations may be illustrated by 
 facsimiles of the three entries in what I take to be their true 
 sequence ; the first and second follow the third method of 
 spelling the name consistently adopted by the poet himself 
 since 1603 or thereabout ; the remaining one, forming two 
 
82 Shakespear: The Man ajstd his Work 
 
 lines, and the last characters traced by that hand, when 
 perhaps the sight was failing, is barely determinable : — 
 
 ^,iV :■; "^f, 
 
 Beyond the enumeration of a few items of inconsiderable 
 importance there is no clue to the nature and extent of the 
 household effects at New Place in 1616. But this historical 
 archive is of strong and vivid interest in our eyes as a proof, 
 how affectionately reminiscent the departed man was, not 
 only of all those, by whom he had been locally surrounded, 
 but of his "fellows," John Hemings, Richard Burbage, 
 and Henry Condell, to each and all of whom he left a 
 memorial, nor did he overlook his godson William Walker. 
 There is no mention of the Davenants on the one hand, 
 or of any literary friends on the other. A payment of 
 £1S, 6s. 8d. to Francis Collins his attorney has the air of 
 an outstanding professional account, which had run down to 
 the last. John Hall was residuary legatee ; but the wearing 
 apparel of the testator, with a legacy of £2,0 to herself, ^15 
 to her three children (with other contingencies), and the 
 house in Henley Street at a nominal rent, were left to his 
 sister Joan, for whom he seems to have entertained a special 
 liking and respect. It is noticeable that New Place and the 
 remainder of the property are explicitly devised to Susanna 
 Hall for better enabling her to carry out her father's 
 testamentary instructions ; and it was in agreement with 
 
Personal History 83 
 
 the usual course that no reference is made to the largest 
 purchase ever eifected by the poet, that in 1605 of a moiety 
 of the lease of the great tithes of Stratford and adjoining 
 places (Shottery included) for ^ei^O.^ The titheable land 
 at Shottery itself included the site of the modern Shottery 
 Hall.^ The Shakespear estate, then, mainly consisted of 
 New Place and other houses with their appurtenances,^ the 
 interest in the great tithes, and the property in Blackfriars.* 
 The whole bespeaks a respectable rental, regarding con- 
 temporary prices; but we have yet to ascertain, how the 
 means of acquiring this property were found, as there are so 
 far only the theatrical records of his part-ownership or co- 
 parcenary interest in the Globe and Blackfriars houses in or 
 about 1610, when his career as an author and performer had 
 almost come to an end, and this was slender enough, as 
 extant documents establish. A fifteen years' remainder of a 
 lease in either of the houses seems to have been estimated by 
 a person apt to quote a maximum at d£'300 or ^6*600 the two, 
 which represents an aggregate annual value, not allowing for 
 contingencies or outgoings, losses by the fire at the Globe 
 inclusive, of ^6*4)0 ( = perhaps ^300 to ^400 of modern 
 currency); but this was subject, again, to conversion or 
 realization, which might well involve a farther discount. 
 
 We have an inventory of the goods of Richard Barnfield 
 the poet, taken after his death at Stone in Staffordshire, 
 where he seems to have spent the latter part of a not 
 very prolonged life, in 1627, and amounting altogether to 
 0&66, 5s. lid., of which wearing apparel is answerable for 
 =£"10, a gilt salt and spoon for £5, and books for ten 
 gs. The normal middle-class or bourgeois library in 
 
 ^ John Hall parted with this interest in August, 1624, to the Corpora- 
 tion of Stratford for £400. The original purchase had involved a suit at 
 law and the preparation of a bill in Chancery, in which the particulars 
 of the assessment were set forth. 
 
 ' Burman, Monograph, 1905, p. 6. 
 
 ' In the will we have a recital of " bames, stables, orchardes, gardens, 
 landes, tenemeutes and hereditamentes whatsoeuer." 
 
 * Still mortgaged in 1616. 
 
84 Shakespear: The Man and his Wouk 
 
 these days appears, with the fewest exceptions, to have been 
 limited to the capacity of a shelf or two, or a cupboard ; 
 and in fact of many of our higher families much the same is 
 to be said, till the seventeenth century was well advanced. 
 A catalogue might be readily drawn up of names, which 
 should be those of owners of libraries of some sort in former 
 times, yet cannot be affirmed to have any such proved 
 association. There is no trace, for instance, of any im- 
 portant or permanent assemblage of books at Gorhambury 
 in the time of Sir Nicholas Bacon or his son. The latter 
 had collected a certain number for a special purpose, but 
 destroyed them on finding them useless. His father caused 
 a bookplate to be engraved in 1574, but apparently for 
 insertion in volumes presented by him to institutions. 
 Shakespear is reputed to have left, in strict personality, 
 about £400, which, as it could not assuredly be in mere 
 cash, was probably the assessed marketable estimation of his 
 interest as a shareholder after his withdrawal from active 
 work, in the Blackfriars and Globe, a seventh in the first and 
 a fourteenth in the second, presuming that the coparceners in 
 the old Globe became such by arrangement in the new one. 
 He was consequently a richer man than the author of the 
 Affectionate Shepherd on that score alone, apart from his 
 real estate, in spite of inevitable yearly charges in support 
 or in aid of his relatives at home during his long residence 
 in London ; and New Place was a residence of exceptional 
 requirements, even if it was not at all sumptuously furnished. 
 It is true that so far back as 1598, when he had completed 
 the purchase of New Place, he was judged by the Quineys, 
 already involved in pecuniary straits, likely to have £30 
 ( = £300 or thereabout of our currency) available by way of 
 loan, if no one else could be found, and Richard Quiney, 
 dating from a London address his application to the poet, 
 may have approached him only, when others had failed to 
 respond ; but between 1598 and 1616, or rather 1613, much 
 of the ready cash or savings, partly swollen perhaps by some 
 gift from Southampton in 1597, had been invested in different 
 
Personal History 85 
 
 kinds of property. In any case it is plain enough that the 
 Shakespear estate fell far short of that of Alleyn, who 
 appears to have had a half-share with Henslowe in the 
 Fortune theatre, erected in 1601, and an eminently success- 
 ful speculation. Of all our early actor-managers Alleyn was 
 beyond question the financial leader. The point which 
 renders the Barnfield inventory most serviceable, however, is 
 the entry under Books ; ten shillings of 1627 were equivalent 
 to sixty or so of our money ; the number of volumes purchase- 
 able for such a sum was excessively small at a groat each ; 
 and if Barnfield contented himself at a greater distance from 
 London with such a handful, probably Shakespear, consider- 
 ing his temperament and surroundings, had no more. The 
 particulars of sale relative to an auction at the birthplace in 
 the first half of the last century have no actual Shakespearean 
 bearing; but a few lots were subsequently recovered, and 
 are visible in situ. Our whole clue to a Shakespear Library 
 is limited, apart from the Ovid and Montaigne, to the 
 circumstance that Hall left his own books to his son-in-law 
 Nash, and among these there were more than possibly some 
 once belonging to the poet, accruing to Hall as residuary 
 legatee. So far as our actual knowledge extends, however, 
 here, again, Alleyn owned a far larger assemblage of books 
 than his more illustrious contemporary, if we add those 
 which were stolen from Dulwich by Garrick to those stolen 
 by Malone. 
 
 It becomes almost imperative to bring into one focus in 
 succinct terms the facts connected with the disappearance of 
 New Place, so far as they are within knowledge. Every 
 pilgrim to Stratford beholds on the site of the dwelling- 
 house of the poet certain vestiges or remains of early 
 foundations, and discovers that these are all that survive 
 of the Shakespear residence. He is correctly informed; 
 but many are apt to conclude that the rest was as wantonly 
 destroyed as the mulberry-tree itself in the eighteenth 
 century by an individual insensible to their common 
 historical and personal interest, or in spite of it. This 
 
86 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 was not so. The house of the poet had long been super- 
 seded by the Clopton building, which did not even occupy 
 the same area as its predecessor, while the link between the 
 mulberry and the poet was not invested with publicity, till 
 portions of the felled tree were modelled into objects of 
 remembrance.^ In 1705 Hugh Clopton, Esq., of Sti'at- 
 ford, published and dedicated to Queen Anne Sir Edward 
 Walker's Historical Discourses — Walker, of course, of New 
 Place. 
 
 It is in such a philosophical poem as Hamlet that Shake- 
 spear discovers and uses opportunities for shadowing, in the 
 person of a character regai-ded as eccentric and peculiar, his 
 own feelings, whether as a thinker or as a politician. The 
 dramatist was naturally cautious how he committed himself 
 by any criticism susceptible of being interpreted as a reflec- 
 tion or satire on the Government, and when he penned the 
 subjoined passage, he merely recorded a fact within the 
 observation of the Prince of Denmark : — 
 
 " Ham. : By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note 
 of it ; the age is grown so picked,^ that the toe of the peasant comes so 
 near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe — " 
 
 The writer already discerned the approach of a demo- 
 cratic wave, which was in not so many years to sweep away 
 both courtier and court ; and on which side his sympathy 
 lay it was not for him to disclose — it is for us only to guess. 
 He would have scarcely deemed it safe to pronounce in so 
 many words in conversation the sentiment, which he ascribes 
 to Richard II., where the King says : — 
 
 "... For within the hollow crown, 
 That rounds the hollow temples of a king, 
 Keeps death his court, and there the antic sits. 
 Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp " : 
 
 ^ A copy of Liber Preoum Puhlicarum, printed a year or two prior, bears 
 the signature of Robert Cloptoun, 1562. 
 
 ^ That is picked, in allusion to the pointed shoes in use. I suppose 
 that the word bears the same import on the title of St. Augustine's Piked 
 Meditations. Perhaps they were select, perhaps pointed. 
 
Personal Histoky 87 
 
 a notion derived from the Dance of Death. In the 107th 
 Sonnet we read : — 
 
 " And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent." 
 
 Five years only after his death the Parliament of 1621 
 met, and sounded the first official note of the coming storm, 
 which gathered in that of 1628, and burst in that of 1640, 
 Even James I., according to a traditional anecdote, spoke 
 of the five hundred kings in the House of Commons. 
 Shakespear was his own Hamlet. If he truly acted the 
 Ghost on the boards, he acted the philosophizing and specu- 
 lative Prince himself in the book and in the closet. There 
 was more than a hint for some of the salient points in the 
 antecedent play and in the prose narratives. The dramatic 
 creation is a lay figure. 
 
 The poet sinned, in the opinion of his friend Chettle, in 
 not having added himself to the phalanx of loyal bards, who 
 broke into elegiac verse on the death of the queen. But he 
 neither mourned the parting ruler, nor acclaimed her suc- 
 cessor. Do we blame him ? He had his own views of the 
 Great in name, and contented himself perforce with giving 
 to them a guarded expression. 
 
 But I look upon him as broadly, except where as in the 
 case of Puritanism his particular calling was affected, a man 
 of republican sentiment, as a member of that political party, 
 which in his time was an insignificant and almost inaudible 
 minority, and had to wait many years, before its turn 
 arrived. In the Second Part of Henry IV., where the new 
 king enters, he is made to say : — 
 
 " This new and gorgeous garment majesty 
 Sits not so easy on me as you think. 
 Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear ; 
 This is the English, not the Turkish court ; 
 Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds. 
 But Harry, Harry ; . . ." 
 
 In the Merchant of Venice, Shakespear puts into the mouth 
 of Shylock a strong plea for human equality and general 
 
88 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 religious tolerance, just as in the same drama he makes the 
 dusky suitor of Portia, the Prince of Morocco, vindicate 
 himself from the common prejudice against his colour. The 
 words of Shy lock seem to justify us in hesitating to think 
 that, even if freer institutions had been granted, while 
 Shakespear lived, he would have gone so far as those men, 
 who overthrew monarchy in England, and established a 
 despotism of another kind in America. He was simply, I 
 apprehend, an advocate for individual freedom ; and at the 
 same time, perhaps, in as large a measure as Montaigne, the 
 holder of unusually liberal notions on the subject of human 
 equality. The Jew argues that the Christian and himself 
 are endowed with similar faculties and prone to similar 
 infirmities. Those of his race, he puts it, have eyes, hands, 
 organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions. They are 
 fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject 
 to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed 
 and cooled by the same winter and summer, as the rest of 
 humanity. This was tolerably plain speech for the sixteenth 
 century, as it was not till Cromwell came into absolute 
 power for a season (too brief an one), that the Jews obtained 
 in England any indulgence, while there had been no country, 
 where they were in former times more mercilessly persecuted, 
 and they had to wait, till the nineteenth century was far 
 advanced, before they acquired here as full political rights 
 as they had long enjoyed at Venice, where the local costume 
 is so sadly travestied in the Shakespearean and every other 
 play which lays the scene there. 
 
 The poet was in fact a subtle exponent m the third person 
 of abuse and injustice, and played, yet in a different way, 
 agreeably to the difference of circumstances, the same part, 
 which his contemporary Montaigne played in France. Both 
 were political champions and liberators without being con- 
 scious, perhaps, of this part of their missions, as much as 
 Voltaire in France and Cobbett in England at a much later 
 period became, when indirectness of allusion had grown less 
 imperative. Yet Shakespear observed exemplary caution in 
 
Personal History 89 
 
 introducing references, which might be construed into a 
 personal bearing on those in power, and he never committed 
 himself, as Jonson, Marston, and Chapman did in the case of 
 Eastward Hoe, and Middleton, at a later date, in the case 
 of A Ga/me at Chess. We perceive how thrifty he was even of 
 the casual compliment, which could not wound, and might 
 beneficially operate, and in immediate connection with this 
 point there is the doubtful passage — to say no more — in 
 Henry VIII., where Cranmer, at the baptism of Elizabeth, 
 is made to prognosticate her future glory as queen, and 
 Henry intimates that the primate had now made him a man. 
 A historical play is not necessarily true to history, and there 
 can be no objection to the dramatist selecting the moment, 
 when it seemed that Elizabeth might, from the ascendency 
 of the Boleyn party, succeed her father ; but Cranmer's fore- 
 knowledge of the length and character of her reign is suffi- 
 ciently exact to be open to the suspicion of having been 
 interpolated by another writer, whose comic vein is of an 
 equally thin quality with his serious and heroic one. At 
 the same time, if we are to go with Mr. Fleay and others 
 anything like the whole way, the Shakespearean series of 
 plays in its different stages of evolution contains countless 
 hits at the men and literature of the day, yet stopping 
 short of any political animadversion or innuendo. Well, 
 those, who were prompt enough at the time to detect such 
 matters, failed to discern so much as some later gentlemen 
 with inferior facilities for assurance. 
 
 The revolt against Episcopacy, which had commenced 
 during the youth of Shakespear, and which developed, about 
 the middle of the sixteenth century, into what was known 
 as Puritanism, constituted an influential secession from the 
 established Protestant communion, which was perhaps of no 
 strong personal significance to the poet, but which happened 
 to affect or impress him indirectly in a two-fold way. 
 While dramas of a certain class had long been, and were 
 still, performed at Court and in private houses, on the 
 eve of the funeral of Henry VIH. the Earl of Oxford's 
 
90 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Players were arranging a dramatic entertainment, and were 
 admonished to postpone it. The tenets, language, and dress 
 of the new party suggested material for ridicule or censure ; 
 and the spirit of nonconformity spread over the whole 
 country, more or less, in the course of a few years, and took 
 possession of the household at Stratford, rendering the 
 atmosphere of the residence less cheerful, and the sympathy 
 with the theatrical associations and bias of the master less 
 cordial even than before. I insist on this view the more 
 strongly and trustingly, inasmuch as the distaste of Shake- 
 spear for Puritanism was deep and uncontrollable enough 
 to lead him in one of his plays to emphasize the sentiment 
 more pungently than we can find him doing in respect of 
 any other matter of real life or history incidentally inter- 
 polated. The passage is in Twelfth Night: — 
 
 " Maria : Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan. 
 
 "Sir Andrew: O, if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog. 
 
 "Sir Toby: What, for being a Puritan? Thy exquisite reason, 
 dear Knight. 
 
 "Sir Andrew: I have no exquisite reason for't, but I have reason 
 good enough." 
 
 This, with the remark of the clown in the Wi7iter''s Tale, 
 that the only Puritan in a company sings psalms to horn- 
 pipes, and other analogous utterances, must be taken to re- 
 flect the personal sentiments of the author, naturally adverse 
 to the movement, and intensified by its already commencing 
 interference with his literary and commercial interests. 
 
 He would have witnessed the production of the play of 
 the Puritan in 1607 with satisfaction, and (although he had 
 then quitted London) he was doubtless on similar grounds 
 not displeased by the successful reception in 1614 of Jonson's 
 Bartholomew Fair. 
 
 Any approach to religious bigotry was wholly repug- 
 nant to him. In Hamlet, v. 1, he makes Laertes say, when 
 the officiating priest objects to pay Ophelia full funeral 
 honours : " I tell thee, churlish priest, a ministering angel 
 shall my sister be, when thou liest howling." 
 
Personal History 91 
 
 The poet was averse from the new sectarianism as a 
 spirit and a movement hostile to him as a dramatist and 
 theatrical proprietor, and he must have been aware that, in 
 levelling ridicule or satire at it, he trod on tolerably safe 
 ground, since the new Stuart dynasty, glad to shake off 
 the old gloomy traditions of their birthland, manifested an 
 equal dislike to the Puritans, with an even stronger bias 
 than could have been anticipated toward the stage and its 
 environments; and we know that Anne of Denmark dis- 
 played a warm interest in all the entertainments at Court 
 and in the principal playhouses. But in Stratford, in 
 common with other provincial centres, the prejudice against 
 the stage, so far from being corrected and modified by the 
 attitude and temper of the Court, seems, just at the moment, 
 when Shakespear had come down into Warwickshire to 
 spend his remaining years among those, on whom his 
 successes had shed an indirect lustre, to have grown more 
 virulent, and the penal fine of 10s. for breaking the muni- 
 cipal order in respect to theatrical performances was raised 
 to ^10, and such things pronounced " inconvenient and 
 unlawful." It is more surprising to find such a man as 
 Sir Edward Coke on the side of the opponents to theatrical 
 exhibitions in spite of their popularity and sanction at 
 Court. In his Speech and Charge at Norwich Assizes, 1607, 
 he explicitly says : " The abuse of Stage players, wherewith 
 I find the Countrey much troubled, may easily be reformed. 
 They having no Commission to play in any place without 
 leave ; and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not 
 entertained you may soone be rid of them." 
 
 The sole descents to us of any conversational fragments, 
 where Shakespear occurs as a party, are the record left by 
 Thomas Heywood the poet of Shakespear's dissatisfaction 
 with Jaggard the publisher for having in a reprint of the 
 Passionate Pilgrim, 1612, improperly inserted two transla- 
 tions from Ovid by Heywood as his work, and certain not 
 very lucid entries in the Diary of Thomas Greene relative 
 to a proposed enclosure of some of the common fields within 
 
92 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 the manor of Welcombe, the property of the Combes, in 
 1614-15, as to which matter opinion in the borough was 
 divided. It has been deemed that the poet felt a profound, 
 if mainly a sentimental, objection to the step contemplated 
 by the municipal authorities ; on the 17th November, 1614, 
 Greene informs us that his cousin told him what was 
 thought to be the extent of the scheme, but that both Mr. 
 Hall and himself doubted if anything would be actually 
 done; the Corporation was opposed to the measure, and 
 had through Greene and otherwise tried to win over Shake- 
 spear to the same view, while, on the other side, the Combes 
 instructed their agent to offer the poet a guarantee against 
 any personal loss as tithe owner since 1605 and also as a 
 freeholder of long standing. '^ The matter was still in abey- 
 ance in March, 1615, when at the Warwick Assizes Lord 
 Chief Justice Coke stayed farther proceedings, and affairs 
 were statu quo in 1616. In September, 1615, Shakespear 
 was still haunted by the idea, and according to Greene 
 declared "that he could not bear the enclosing of Wel- 
 combe." This was about six months before his death, and 
 long prior to that his health in every sense had begun to 
 give way. There was the normal symptom of mental over- 
 taxation — the nervous irritability. There had been during a 
 long succession of years acute and incessant intellectual tension 
 and a store of private sorrow,^ and it is perfectly intelligible, 
 that his feeling on the subject was prone to fluctuation. 
 
 ' "Shakespear and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe. 
 Being a Fragment of the Private Diary of Thomas Greene, Town Clerk 
 of Stratford on Avon, 1614-17." Edited by C. M. Ingleby. 4°, 1885. 
 The entries referring to the poet are between November, 1614, and 
 September, 1615. 
 
 ^ There had been fires at Stratford In 1594 and 1595, and one stillmore 
 serious in the autumn of 1614, when 54 houses were destroyed. A fourth 
 occurred in 1616, which it is possible that the poet lived to witness, as a 
 public proclamation respecting it, dated May 11, was probably some time 
 posterior to the event. While the Welcombe difficulty was yet unsettled, 
 and certain of the inhabitants feared a loss of their common rights, the 
 town itself is described as "lying in the ashes of desolation" from the 
 catastrophe of 1614. 
 
Personal History 93 
 
 The intimation to Greene has been variously interpreted, 
 and it has been judged more probable, on the whole, that 
 Shakespear at least acquiesced in the measure. After all, we 
 have less to regard the words spoken than the rescue of a 
 few syllables out of all those, which those lips pronounced. 
 I personally collect, however, from the tenor of Greene's 
 account that he was equally averse from the enclosure, and 
 was also materially concerned as an owner, but that Shake- 
 spear, owing to his bad state of health, took no active part 
 in the controversy and negociation. His own immediate 
 interests were secured, whichever way the matter went. The 
 municipal authorities were perhaps guided by their legal 
 adviser Greene. 
 
 The enclosure of common fields was a source of trouble 
 and dissension all over England ; it was by no means speci- 
 ally a local grievance. We find it arousing indignation and 
 resistance in the fifteenth century.^ The proceedings at 
 Warwick in 1615-16 have the air of having been the issue 
 of that visit of Greene to London in the winter of the 
 previous year. 
 
 The pair of utterances, transmitted at second-hand, 
 unless the familiar tradition of Jonson and the latten spoons 
 may be accepted,^ is all that the world possesses of the kind 
 outside the allusions, more or less direct and more or less 
 trustworthy, in the Works, to assist it in realizing the 
 speaker in his tangible personality. The singular exalta- 
 tion of Shakespear within the last century helps to shut 
 
 1 Curiously enough in a fragment of a commonplace-book of Gabriel 
 Harvey, 1584, there is matter on this topic. See a note in my Shake- 
 spewr's Lihrary, 1875, part 2, ii. 390. In the Second Pourt of Henry VI., i. 
 3, the poet makes a character present a petition against the duke of 
 Suffolk for enclosing the commons of Melford. But the passage was 
 written in or about 1594;. 
 
 '^ It is said that he agreed to be godfather to one of Jonson's children, 
 and proposed a set of apostle spoons in latten (or mixed metal), adding, 
 that Jonson might translate them. Thoms' Anecdotes and Traditions, 
 1839, p. 2. The story appears to have been repeated to Sir Nicholas 
 Lestrange of Hunstanton (1603-54) by "Mr. Dun," presumably Dr. 
 Donne. 
 
94 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 out from our view and recollection the fact, that the same 
 conditions apply to the majority of his contemporaries and 
 even of writers of more recent date, whose productions offer 
 no autobiographical clues, and whose families have preserved 
 no documentary elucidations. 
 
 Hey wood was unfortunate just about the same time in 
 having some of his work appropriated, not by a publisher, 
 but by a private individual otherwise unknown as a writer, 
 Henry Austin, a schoolmaster at Ham, Surrey, who brought 
 out as his own a metrical O vidian narrative, called the 
 Scourge of Venus, in 1613, for which the true author severely 
 (and appropriately) took him to task in the preface to his 
 Brazen Age. Those were days when literary brigandage 
 was in a fairly flourishing condition. Bacon, Drayton, 
 Daniel, Barnfield, and many more, suffered the same wrong 
 and annoyance from the lax enforcement and observance of 
 copyright. 
 
 The three Jaggards, William, John,^ and Isaac, produced 
 altogether a fair store of good work, and were in com- 
 munication with many of the authors of the day. Shake- 
 spear was true to his habitual reserve, when he limited his 
 action to a remark to a third party, at least so far as we 
 can hear, since the actual offender was equally within reach, 
 if he had chosen to address him directly. Where the echoes 
 of the vocal accents are so wonderfully few and faint, it 
 seems natural to linger, as it were, on the ground, and 
 try to make the most of what we have. Jonson, Marston, 
 and one or two others have been brought home to us 
 — perhaps a little too much — by Drummond. In the 
 long course of years spent in London among theatrical 
 and literary people Shakespear must have uttered much 
 eminently deserving of record ; but he had no Drummond 
 at his side, no seer into the future — save Thorpe, the 
 
 ^ John Jaggard issued in 1597 a volume entitled Tlie Shepherds Qwrlmid, 
 not improbably that it might be mistaken for a new edition of Drayton's 
 Idcea, The Shepheards Oakland, 1593, with which it has nothing to do. 
 All the Jaggards were unscrupulous pirates. 
 
Personal History 95 
 
 publisher of the Sonnets. The wonder is, that we have 
 those two likenesses. 
 
 The poet lived through the whole of that striking period, 
 which witnessed the acrimonious, foolish, and rather vulgar 
 literary controversies of Greene, Harvey, and Nash, and of 
 Jonson, Marston, and Dekker, as well as the attacks of 
 Greene on other writers for the stage, notably Shakespear 
 himself, and preserved an immovable silence and neutrality 
 — an advised one, I apprehend, since in matters where his 
 substantial interests were involved he was never remiss in 
 vindicating himself. But he there employed the pen of his 
 lawyer; and this attitude proceeded in some degree from 
 temper ; for at the outset of his career, when he was lam- 
 pooned by Greene, he refrained even from any expression of 
 feeling audible to us. Where, again, his name had been 
 improperly used by Jaggard, he broke silence only when 
 Heywood approached him, and then went no farther than 
 to intimate his displeasure at an injustice, in which another 
 was involved. 
 
 As regards the remark to Heywood, the very words are 
 stated by him to have been, that " he [Shakespear] was much 
 ofiFended with Master Jaggard, that (altogether unknown to 
 him) presumed to make so bold with his name." We are not 
 told that he resented Jaggard's equally dishonest attributions 
 to him in the first edition of that small miscellany of poems 
 by Barnfield and others. It is fairly certain that no copy 
 of the volume had reached him. Probably Heywood brought 
 one with him, when he saw the poet at his lodging. The 
 misappropriation casts a side-light on Shakespear's want of 
 touch with current books, even with his own. Heywood 
 took the matter more seriously than his friend, and fiercely 
 assailed Jaggard in a postscript to the Apology for Actors, 
 published the same year. It is thoroughly characteristic 
 that Shakespear was more deeply affected by the local 
 enclosures than by the literary piracy. It is true that the 
 end was then nearer. 
 
 As a matter of fact the title-page to the volume does not 
 
96 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 explicitly state that the supplementary matter is by Shake- 
 spear ; the sagacious Jaggard left it to be inferred. But in 
 the Malone copy a cancel title occurs, as if in response to a 
 complaint by Heywood, omitting Shakespear's name alto- 
 gether. Heywood does not apprise us that his friend signi- 
 fied any personal intention of moving in the matter. 
 
 He did not even signify his philosophical indifference to 
 detraction, as Marston does, with dubious sincerity, in the 
 preface to Parisitaster, or the Fawn, 1606. He observed an 
 inflexible silence, to which the world was at liberty to give its 
 own interpretation. How often was his ear importuned by 
 paeans pronounced on themselves and on each other by excel- 
 lent gentlemen his friends, and was he not entitled now and 
 again to remember, if not to retort, that he, too, was a poet, 
 and to entertain a sort of hope, in spite of his hypochondriacal 
 apprehension of speedy oblivion, that generations unborn 
 would set a truer value upon him. Even Montaigne gave 
 himself fifty years of survival after death. The lapse of 
 three centuries has stimulated the vitality of both, while 
 millions, who stood at their side, and perhaps adjudicated 
 upon them, are Dumb Deadnesses. 
 
 What man, before or since, accomplished a great mission 
 with such vast gain to others, with so little in certain ways 
 to himself.? Yet he had compressed into that narrow span 
 of five-and- twenty or thirty years of luxuriant activity all 
 perhaps that he had to say to us and of us, and had amply 
 realized the desire expressed in the 29th Sonnet. 
 
 If he had been a less egregious personage, if he had ap- 
 proached his dramatic contemporaries at a more equal level, 
 we might have listened to louder encomiums on his genius, 
 less qualified criticisms on his culture and art. His exceeding 
 greatness hindered his free association with others. The 
 commendation of a mediocre author is a less hazardous 
 enterprize, and costs less self-sacrifice to his friends, than that 
 of a Shakespear. The poet, apart from the play-going public, 
 stood uncomfortably enough between such as imperfectly 
 understood him and such as, Jonson for example, understood 
 
Peksonal History 97 
 
 him perfectly well. Knowing, as we do, the constitutional 
 reticence of Shakespear, and his studied abstention from 
 criticism on his contemporaries, it is amazing that a modern 
 biographer should have discredited himself by offering, even 
 as a suggestion, that the " envious windsucker," exposed by 
 Chapman in the preface to his complete Homer, was Shake- 
 spear. Of all unlikely things and unhappy guesses this is 
 the unlikeliest and the unhappiest. 
 
 Shakespe'ar, by virtue of his profession, spoke, as it were, 
 with many tongues, almost with a greater number than have 
 been assigned to Rumour, and to each of his personce it was 
 his function to allot his part. But even the greatest artists 
 have their preferences, and throw into certain characters a 
 preponderant measure of private sentiment and bias ; and I 
 think it was so here. Shakespear was most himself either in 
 those lofty flights where, in the conscious pride of intellect, 
 he has made Hamlet or Jaques reflect his own deep and 
 exalted philosophy, or in the humbler scenes, where he has 
 shown his kindly and humorous eye for those aspects of life, 
 which were familiar to him in his youth and early manhood, 
 and which he happily did not suffer to pass away with him. 
 Perhaps in those passages and directions, where he was led to 
 follow certain fugitive conceits, the poet presents himself to 
 least advantage, and we are apt to regret that he surrendered 
 himself to such models or patterns ; here and there, too, a 
 bit from a First Sketch was suffered to creep in unrevised ; 
 and these very occasional lapses are as readily distinguished 
 from the prevailing naturalness and modernness as if they had 
 been printed in ink of a different colour. 
 
 A regrettable lacuna in the biographical sequence is the 
 by no means improbable relations in later life between 
 Shakespear and the family at Charlecote. That any youth- 
 ful prank of the poet should have rankled in the mind, or 
 lingered in the remembrance, of the Lucys, when the offender, 
 to whatever his misdemeanour might have actually amounted, 
 had become so conspicuous as a writer and so aflluent in 
 his circumstances, is singularly unlikely, more particularly 
 
98 Shakespeab, : The Man and his Work 
 
 looking at the bookish and artistic tendencies of Sir Thomas 
 himself. But there is nothing, it appears, but conjecture to 
 assist us, unless we estimate at a higher rate the symptoms 
 of kindliness on the part of the justice introduced into the 
 scene between Shallow and Page, which I have cited. 
 
 It is perhaps to be remembered, that Lucy, dying in 
 1600, did not witness the more liberal feeling toward the 
 stage and the player which set in with the Stuarts. Yet the 
 friendly attitude of Southampton and the favourable senti- 
 ments of Southampton's sovereign must have reached his 
 ears ; and we are not too lightly to abandon or dismiss the 
 idea, that he and Shakespear met in London or elsewhere 
 under more agreeable conditions. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Personal chaiaoter of Shakespear — Sources of his success as a dramatist — 
 The man of genius and of business — Traces of self -appraisement in 
 early writings — Indirect autobiographical allusions in the Plays — His 
 private sorrows reflected in some of them— Autographic remains — 
 Forgeries — New key to the signatures — Lost letter from James I. 
 to the poet — Explanation of the loss of Shakespear MSS. — The 
 Scriveners' Gild. 
 
 I RECOGNIZE in Shakespear the painter of all men in all 
 their fortunes and all their moods, the writer who could 
 sympathize with our frail and composite nature in every 
 aspect, him, whose mighty and plastic intellect had the power 
 beyond all others of coining into language each varying, 
 fluctuating, and graduated feeling or passion of our race, 
 and of finding an appropriate vehicle for the expression of 
 every imaginable phase of sentiment and line of conduct — a 
 mouthpiece for all throughout the whole range of nature, 
 art, and thought in the individual, whom the part or speech 
 best fitted. This great gift was due to his concurrent 
 training and experience as an actor and a writer for the 
 stage; and it is apparent that in his dramatic works, on 
 which his fame rests, he presents and marshals before us in 
 turn an infinite diversity of characters with masterly dis- 
 crimination. He was emphatically the actor turned author ; 
 a,nd there is a passage in a book, apparently written by an 
 Oxonian long after the poet's decease,^ in which, after 
 speaking of the story of Lucrece as one, which had been 
 treated, the writer proceeds to refer to Actorides as dead, 
 as if he had in his mind a person, who combined, like Shake- 
 spear, the literary with the practical or professional side. 
 
 1 Ovid's Ghost, by Edwardus Fuscus, 1657. 
 
100 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Above all, perhaps, there is that subtlety and fecundity of 
 imagination, that soaring flight of thought, manifested in 
 some of the later series of dramas, commencing with 
 Hamlet, where he has presented ideas entertained and 
 expressed by others a thousand times, yet never before 
 or since with such startling novelty or force, evolving 
 from familiar incidents strange problems and weird possi- 
 bilities. 
 
 We have in him a man of pre-eminent genius, who added 
 to his natural faculty as a writer a complete grasp of the 
 technical business and wants of a theatre ; and before him, as 
 the prompter-in-chief, the whole world passed in course of 
 time. He made it his function to embody deep and fine 
 thoughts in simple language ; not to clothe commonplaces in 
 academical phraseology. But that, as a general proposition, 
 we are to interpret the text of the plays in a personal sense, 
 I am as far indeed from believing or granting, as I am, on 
 the contrary, from refusing to admit that certain passages 
 play a double part. 
 
 Nor am I a convert to the theory that Shakespear was a 
 philanthropist or a humanitarian. Nothing can well be more 
 delusive and improper. Shakespear was in himself the most 
 extraordinary union of the man of genius with the man of 
 business ; the records of his friendly intercourse are of the 
 scantiest nature ; his relations during his many years'' 
 residence in London with his wife on the one hand and his 
 parents and other kinsfolk on the other, all more or less de- 
 pendent on his support or assistance, have to be divined from 
 indirect glimpses ; nearly all the few casual notices of him 
 present him in the light of a peremptory stickler for his legal 
 dues ; and there is not a single example of a book from his 
 pen having been offered as a gift to a relative, an acquaint- 
 ance, or a patron. A copy of the Sonnets, which once 
 belonged to Dr. Farmer, bears an early inscription elsewhere 
 given; and the Huth copy of Hamlet, 1611, has on the 
 title : " For Mark Stapfer " ; but neither of these memoranda 
 is of direct significance. 
 
Personal History 101 
 
 Such an absence of direct self-assertion, accompanied by 
 such a mysterious apathy in the fate alike of his printed and 
 manuscript work, renders it the less surprizing that there 
 should be a coterie prepared to dispute the existence of 
 Shakespear as an author, and it is difficult to say how far 
 this cult might have gone, had not, in addition to the 
 documentary proof of his social and professional rank, the 
 authorship of the plays and poems by him alone been so 
 incontrovertibly established and, as it were, bound up 
 together. 
 
 Many Englishmen of former, and indeed of all, times 
 might be named, whose personality as individuals strikes us 
 more impressively than in their literary or other professional 
 capacity. On the contrary, we seem to feel that, in the case 
 of Shakespear, his peculiarly lofty rank as an author con- 
 sidered, the personal distinction is infinitely less conspicuous 
 than it should by right be — less so, in fact, than that of 
 several of his contemporaries, who, measured by their in- 
 tellectual products, were, and are, not for a moment compar- 
 able with him ; and this injustice must be said to have 
 largely arisen from his own self-centred indifference and his 
 ostensible incompatibility, alike social and domestic. Who 
 else would have left us in absolute ignorance of his contact 
 with Elizabeth, with James I., with Southampbon, with the 
 Herberts of Wilton and the Earl of Rutland, insomuch that 
 we have to depend almost exclusively on tradition and hear- 
 say ; and he was not only silent himself; he was surrounded 
 by unappreciative relatives and apathetic, perhaps jealous, 
 literary acquaintances, conspiring to let all such precious 
 memorials perish. 
 
 There is, however, in some of the Sonnets a vein of self- 
 glorification, which is not perceptible in the riper work of 
 the author, and which seems to betray or confirm their early 
 origin. The poet tells the object addressed that he will live 
 in his " powerful rhyme," which is to survive monuments of 
 princes and other imposing mundane things — is, in fact, to 
 be cere peremnius. In the 17th of the series there is in the 
 
102 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 opening line a suggestion of a privately harboured prospect 
 of posthumous fame : — 
 
 " Who will believe my verse in time to come, 
 If it were fiU'd with your most high deserts—" 
 
 In the 23rd the writer says : — 
 
 " O, let my hooks be then the eloquence 
 And dumb presages of my speaking breast — " 
 
 as if at that point of time his works were to a sensible extent 
 before the world, and at any rate familiar to playgoers and 
 readers. But unfortunately the hoolcs in the writer's mind 
 were almost beyond doubt the two lyrical productions of 
 1593-4. This perilous form of conceit Shakespear outgrew, 
 and it is scarcely discernible even by inference in the plays, 
 where there could not be, of course, the same licence for 
 that sort of direct personal allusion. Yet in Hamlet, iii. 2, 
 in reference to the king having died a short time before, the 
 Prince exclaims : " O heavens ! die two months ago, and not 
 forgotten yet ! Then there's hope a great man's memory 
 may outlive his life half a year. But, by our Lady, he must 
 build churches, then — " It was just about the same time, 
 that, in professing reference to Hamlet's father, where he 
 apostrophizes him as one " who, take him for all in all, we 
 shall never look on his like again," there may be a suspicion, 
 that he had a side view to himself, to the undervalued writer, 
 whom at the most those about him ranked with many a 
 clever fellow at his elbow. 
 
 Beyond those scattered passages in the Plays, where he 
 appears to me to refer more or less indirectly to his domestic 
 concerns, to the loss of his father and mother, of his son, 
 to the survival of the memory of a great man, and more 
 clearly, yet outside his own circle, to the death of Marlowe, 
 the poet propria motu, so far as one can see, published no- 
 thing either of a biographical or of a self-appreciative nature, 
 and the Sonnets, on their appearance under other auspices, 
 afforded, not so much to such as bought or read them in 
 
Personal History 103 
 
 1609, as to generations to come, indications of a sense on 
 the writer's part of a reputation likely to increase and to 
 endure. At the same time, there must have been assuredly 
 many, who scanned these strange productions with a wistful 
 eye, who discerned in them far less than we do, and who cast 
 them aside after a cursory perusal as of dubious merit, if not 
 of dubious authenticity, since they bore very slender resem- 
 blance to the other lyrics on the one hand or to the plays 
 on the other. We may not doubt that a few of his trusted 
 London intimates, and perhaps his legal kinsman, Greene of 
 Stratford, could have made some startling additions to our 
 biographical stores. He must have imparted his confidences 
 here and there ; but the guardians of any secrets kept their 
 counsel — perhaps, on the whole, it was as well. 
 
 Amid his astonishing worldly successes he lost in turn his 
 only son Hamnet (1596), his father (1601) and his mother 
 (1608), of whom he had had it in his power to see so little in 
 later years, his two brothers, Edmund (1607) and Richard 
 (1613), both under thirty, and the former the sole relative, 
 who displayed any congenial talent ; and beyond this series 
 of bereavements there was the unsympathetic attitude — or 
 more — of those, who remained. We are not to hasten to 
 the conclusion, that the poet looked on such private inci- 
 dents without emotion ; yet his mind was of a cast, which 
 was eminently capable of fortifying itself against personal 
 sorrow by immersion in professional engagements at a 
 distance. It might be unwise to pronounce his life an 
 unhappy one without pausing to consider his moral and 
 intellectual temperament and his autonomous faculty. 
 
 Even seated in his chair in London, with his manuscript 
 before him, he could not refrain now and then from interpo- 
 lating sentences of autobiographical import, from making 
 his sentiments audible and visible on the boards and on 
 paper, if only to himself alone, and why should he ? I have 
 elsewhere called attention to the presumptive record of his 
 father's latest moments in Henry V. and to the curious and 
 hitherto unsurmised obligation of the poet to a book of the 
 
104 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 day for the notion of the sharp nose and the fumbling 
 with the sheets. There are, however, two other analogous 
 testimonies in respect to the loss of his son in 1596 and that 
 of his mother in 1608, which, if they are really what they 
 seem to be, reflections of personal feeling, must be pro- 
 nounced extremely pathetic and equally interesting. The 
 first is from King John, iii. 4, where Constance is made 
 to say : — 
 
 " Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ; 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. 
 Remembers me in all his gracious parts, 
 Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form — " 
 
 The place in Coriola/nus, v. 3, is less directly significant, yet 
 it breathes the air of having been committed to writing at 
 a juncture, when the loss of his parent was passionately 
 present to Shakespear, and the exemplification of maternal 
 influence and filial duty acquired a special opportuneness and 
 charm. These references, and perhaps that to Marlowe, co- 
 operate in each other's support, and in favour of the writer 
 permitting himself on occasion an outlet for his private 
 impressions in the actual scene and in the printed page, and 
 they co-operate with the slowly accumulating lights on his 
 personal career to bring him nearer to us and more endear 
 him. 
 
 The autographic remains are scanty and unsatisfying 
 enough, and are familiar as they are scanty. They are 
 limited to the three signatures to the will, the two to the 
 Blackfriars deed and counterpart, the inscriptions in the 
 Aldine Ovid''s Metamorphoses of 1502 and in the English 
 Montaigne of 1603, an eighth inserted in a copy of the 
 second folio of the Plays, and a ninth subscribed to the 
 Blackfriars depositions of 1612. Of the official examples, 
 six in number, the genuineness is unimpeachable. Of the 
 remaining three the history is more or less known. The 
 Ovid was acquired for the Bodleian about forty years since 
 
OVtCII V&ETAMORPHOJ£aN 
 
 '■M\&- 
 
 
106 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 at a London auction ; and it carries absolutely all its known 
 antecedents and credentials on its face. Its value is peculiar, 
 for it is a copy of a classic, of which Shakespear was evidently 
 fond, and with which he was as evidently acquainted in 
 comparatively early days, since a quotation from the Amores 
 is on the title of the Venus and Adonis, 1593; and the 
 writing is, I judge, earlier than that in the Montaigne, and 
 consequently firmer — in fact, the firmest of all that we have. 
 Its identification is scarcely in want of support from the 
 memorandum at the foot of the title-page, of which I 
 annex a facsimile, since in 1682 no one would have taken 
 the pains to fabricate an actual signature — much less an 
 abridged one.^ A William Hall was residing in Henley 
 Street in 1684. Ovid is quoted both in As You Like It and 
 in Hamlet, in the latter at considerable length, yet in neither 
 case from the Metamorphoses. 
 
 The autograph on the flyleaf of a copy of Florio's Mon- 
 taigne, 1603, assuming it to be made at the time of publica- 
 tion, is nine years prior to the Blackfriars conveyance and 
 thirteen prior to the testamentary subscriptions; and the 
 faintness of the final letter of the surname, as if the ink had 
 failed, or the writer had hesitated, whether he should add 
 the terminal, is a circumstance to be noted. The characters 
 are traced with greater decision than those of 1613 and 
 1616, but are more tremulous than the lines of the Ovid. 
 But it is by no means destitute of a pedigree, even of a 
 fairly respectable one. It seems to be certain that before 
 1780 the volume came into the hands of the Rev. Edward 
 Patteson of Smethwick, near Birmingham, a book-collector ; 
 the representatives of the poet may have lost interest in 
 such matters, even before they became extinct about 1806 ; 
 and there is a probability that any would drift to the 
 nearest large centre, if it should be the case, that the original 
 
 ^ Professor Wallace assumes, no doubt correctly, that he was the 
 person, who in 1694 wrote that letter to Edward Thwaits of Queen's 
 College, Oxford, concerning a visit paid by him to the poet's resting-place 
 at Stratford. 
 
Personal History 107 
 
 owner brought it down to Stratford, or that the Halls 
 obtained it and other books from his quarters in London 
 after his death. Although Mr. Patteson was accustomed 
 to shew his prize to his private circle as a curiosity, it 
 awakened no public attention, till it passed into the hands 
 of a son, who resided at Sheen, near London, and fell under 
 the notice of experts. The place of original recovery — so 
 near to Stratford — the existence of the signature from the 
 outset, and the insufficiency of motive, when the unique 
 value was still to be appreciated, are points not readily 
 combated; but beyond that a peculiar and unmistakable 
 indication, which I first detected some years ago, and to 
 which I shall presently revert, seems to set the matter 
 at rest. 
 
 The relic first brought to light by Ward the actor,i 
 father-in-law of Roger Kemble,^ in the eighteenth century, 
 when there was no keen feeling on such a subject distantly 
 approaching that at present entertained, and when, as in 
 the case of the Montaigne, no one surmised the immense 
 rarity of such an autograph, may be taken by a comparison 
 with the second signature to the will as belonging to the 
 same date and physical conditions, and my faith in it is 
 farther fortified by the circumstance that it has been traced 
 back to the time of George I. 
 
 The written characters accompanying the Museum copy of 
 Florio's Montaigne stand on different ground from the Ward 
 example, while neither, as it seems to me, belongs to any 
 known school or style of counterfeit. I give (on p. 108) fac- 
 similes of the two in immediate juxtaposition for comparison. 
 
 A certain correlation is traceable between the extant sig- 
 natures in documents and books, tending to some extent to 
 establish their common authenticity, and, which is not less 
 important, to identify them all with one and the same indi- 
 vidual. I am looking at the forms of a few of the letters, 
 
 1 Ward died in 1773. 
 
 " Father of the three eminent performers. An account of him and his 
 company of strolling players may be found in Holcroft's Memoirs. 
 
108 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 and I remark more especially the downstroke in the W of 
 the Bodleian Ovid and in the W and m of the subscription 
 on the third folio of the will ( William and me), no less than 
 
 Signature belonging to Plorio's Montaigne, 1603. 
 
 Signature attached to the Ward second folio, 1632. 
 
 the full point equally present in the W of the christian 
 name in the Ovid, in the Montaigne, both written in pre- 
 sumed good health in or before 1603, in the official deposi- 
 
 \/U^- 
 
 '^£jii<y 
 
 Shakespear's signature to official depositions in 1612. 
 
 MTiSf^^/Zi 
 
 c^ 
 
 f' 
 
 ^fi^i^U<uD 
 
 Signatures on official papers of 1613. 
 
 tions of 1612 and the two Blackfriars deeds of 1613, which 
 already betray a weaker grasp of the pen, in the Ward 
 specimen, and in the signature at the end of the will. 
 
Personal History 109 
 
 written in sickness in 1616. The scrawl on the first folio 
 of the will is almost destitute of significance for the reasons 
 already assigned; and the 1613 signatures are also some- 
 what cramped and defective, in large measure perhaps from 
 the limited space reserved for the purpose on the folds of 
 the documents, somewhat for the same reason that in the 
 case of the will two of the subscriptions were by no means 
 improbably added in bed." The written characters of 1612 
 almost suggest haste or impatience. The distance and dis- 
 parity in the writing in the Ovid and Montaigne, in the 
 Blackfriars deeds, and in the will, constitute a history in 
 little of the writer. The whole body of remains, however, 
 is classifiable into two sections : those executed — the Ovid 
 and Montaigne — in earlier life, and those belonging to the 
 period of declining health — the seven others ; and I submit 
 that they are all authenticated by the peculiar full point 
 within the W.^ There is a certain heredity in handwriting ; 
 and I would call attention to the subscription of Mrs. Hall 
 (Susanna Shakespear) to a deed, which occurs in the Outlines 
 (i. 254), as if the witness had studied examples of her father's 
 hand to serve the very limited and occasional purposes, to 
 which she probably applied the art. 
 
 While we may agree in characterizing the scanty calli- 
 graphic footprints of Shakespear and his father as uncouth 
 and illiterate, a collation of them with the signature of the 
 
 1 In the Rylands library at Manchester there is a copy of Foulke 
 Robartes on Tithes, 1616, with a iictitious signature of Shakespear on 
 title. In 1852 an imperfect copy of the Statutes, 1598, came into the 
 possession of a Thomas Bragge, who is supposed to have been a member of 
 a family settled at Stratford in the sixteenth century ; and on the fifth 
 leaf of the Table occurred, written lengthwise in the outer margin, a signa- 
 ture of IF™. Shakespere. The inscription was a clumsy counterfeit of that 
 in the Montaigne. The forgery was probably executed about 1840, or at 
 any rate between 1838, when the Montaigne was bought for the Museum, 
 and 1852. The author of the deception, no doubt, sought to extend the 
 locaX provenance. Another attempt consisted in endeavouring to provide 
 the poet with a Bible ; and some years since a copy of the authorized 
 version with his name, similarly modelled on the 1603 volume, was offered 
 for sale. 
 
110 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 poet's uncle, Henry Shakespear of Snitterfield (Halliwell- 
 Phillipps, ii. 211) on the one hand, and that of the poet on 
 the other, establishes to my satisfaction more than a pedi- 
 gree and kindred, namely, an advance. On the flyleaf of a 
 copy of Ferdinando Pulton's Abstract of the Penal Statutes, 
 1581, are some MSS. memoranda of the time, presenting the 
 peculiar .S", which might otherwise seem a special mark of the 
 poet's imperfect formation of letters, and I have repeatedly 
 observed in examples of Elizabethan writing similar analo- 
 gies with Shakespear's h and p, as well as his s} We have 
 been accustomed to see a charge preferred against the poet 
 of spelling his name in an arbitrary manner or with an 
 indifference to the true orthography. But the fact seems 
 to be quite different. He personally adopted at three 
 successive dates or stages three varying forms : SJiahespeare 
 (1593), Shahespere (1598), and Shakspere (about 1603); and 
 to the last he adhered. The first departure from the name, 
 as it occurs in the Epistle before Venus and Adonis, was when 
 he inserted a modified type on the title of Love's Labor's 
 Lost, when he prepared it for the press, as I believe, in 1598, 
 and Jaggard, in the Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, followed this 
 spelling by design or accident, as in the third edition, 1612, 
 we have Shakespeare — the reading of most of the quartos. 
 But in the local register, and in documents, the form 
 Shakspere prevails, while in the Bodleian contemporary 
 shelf-lists of about 1623 the spelling varies, where the 
 First Folio was taken out by those entitled to read in the 
 library. There was an ostensible forward movement even 
 at Stratford, among men of business and more or less cul- 
 ture, in the direction of handwriting toward the latter part 
 of the sixteenth century ; but the other sex did not partici- 
 pate in the advantage, if we may judge from the ladies at 
 New Place. Such persons as the Quineys and Greene, the 
 notary and town clerk, rose above the normal bucolic 
 standard, and Greene, as we perceive, went so far as to 
 
 ^ The S in the surname is not dissimilar from that on the archaic 
 coinage of Syracuse (6th century B.C.). 
 
Personal History 111 
 
 launch a volume of verse. We are enabled to judge to some 
 extent by what method boys were initiated at schools, such 
 as that at Stratford, into the art of calligraphy ; for copy- 
 books exist of the poet's time, containing examples for the 
 use of pupils. The earliest which has fallen under my per- 
 sonal notice is dated 1591; and some of its illustrations 
 tempt us to suspect where a certain Stratford scholar learned 
 to form his hand. 
 
 Of letters written by the poet there is not a vestige. 
 Those addressed to him are represented by an unit — the 
 note from Richard Quiney. But of course he sent or re- 
 ceived hundreds in the course of his busy and many-sided 
 life, and there is even a disposition to credit the tradition 
 that James I. expressed in writing certain gracious senti- 
 ments towards one, whose creations must have so often de- 
 lighted him and his consort. Lintot, who republished the 
 Poems in 1710 as an appendix to Rowe's edition of the Plays, 
 describes it, however, as then lost, although from a com- 
 munication from Oldys to Lintot, noticed by Mr. Fleay, it 
 appears that the letter, subsequently to Davenanfs time, came 
 into the hands of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, 
 who survived till 1720. O, to have seen James committing 
 the lines to paper, and the recipient scanning them, when he 
 had broken the seal ! " I cannot," Lintot says, " omit insert- 
 ing a passage of Mr. Shakespeare's Life, very much to his 
 Honour, and very remarkable, which was either unknown or 
 forgotten by the Writer of it [prefixed to Rowe's edition]. 
 That most learn'd Prince and great Patron of Learning, 
 King James the First, was pleas'd with his own Hand^ to 
 write an amicable Letter to Mr. Shakespeare ; which Letter, 
 tho' now lost, remain'd long in the hands of Sir William 
 Davenant, as a credible Person now living can testify." The 
 
 1 There is that other highly curious case, where in 1603 the King 
 similarly sent from Wilton an autograph warrant to the High Sheriff of 
 Hampshire to suspend, till his farther pleasure was known, the execution 
 of three political offenders on the ground, that it was the first year of his 
 reign. This document is of unique character and interest. 
 
112 Shakespeak : The Man and his Work 
 
 loss of such a letter seems not only to bespeak an absence of 
 appreciation and sensibility on the part of the family in the 
 first instance, yet in complete unison with what we otherwise 
 know, but a still more culpable and amazing stupidity and 
 negligence in those, into whose hands it is described as having 
 subsequently fallen. There was the double and common 
 interest of the writer and the recipient. Of the date and 
 precise tenor we learn nothing. I place it between 1605 and 
 1612. On the other hand, since we hold the flimsy morsel 
 of paper, on which the Quiney note of 1598 was written, and 
 the royal communication long survived the man, to whom 
 it had been addressed, are we to conclude that both were 
 sent to Shakespear at his London residence, and were never 
 seen by the folks at home ? During more than a century 
 after the poet's death they were lying somewhere in the 
 metropolis, and the letter of James at one time became the 
 property of Davenant. 
 
 When James Cook the surgeon, who is described in 1679 
 as in his sixty-fourth year, was at Stratford in 1643, in 
 medical attendance on the troops temporarily quartered 
 there, he saw Mrs. Hall,i who shewed him MSS., not of her 
 father, but of her husband, Master Doctor Hall, " medicus 
 peritissimus." Whether there were any papers of Shakespear 
 at New Place then, no one can say ; the books had passed to 
 the Nashes. The original copies of the plays may not have 
 survived their writer for a reason elsewhere offered ; the folio 
 of 1623 was not published till after the widow's death ; nor 
 is it easy to tell, whether such printed books as the poet 
 possessed were kept in London or in the country. Betterton 
 the actor (1635-1710), who paid a visit to Stratford not long 
 after Cook, in search of information, appears to have come 
 away equally empty-handed. The advanced Shakespearean 
 student of the twentieth century is far better versed in these 
 
 ■^ I have seen a statement that the poet's widow entertained Queen 
 Henrietta Maria at New Place, but this can at the utmost amount to her 
 Majesty having on some occasion been lodged there, as other persons were 
 even during Shakespear's life. 
 
Personal History 113 
 
 matters than the majority of those, who had stood, as it 
 were, at Shakespear's side. 
 
 The more than presumable ignorance of his literary pro- 
 ductions — more especially his early lyrics, so redolent of 
 passion and so suggestive of disloyalty — on the part of his 
 wife, if not of his private circle generally, raises the larger 
 question whether the immediate connections of distinguished 
 writers have not, as a rule, failed to sympathize with works, 
 which to the rest of the world have been an object of the 
 deepest, even of idolatrous, admiration. It is likely to have 
 been the case with such authors as Petrarch, Boccaccio, 
 Rabelais, Montaigne, no less than with our poet. There was 
 of necessity the vague knowledge that they had done certain 
 things, and there was the clearer feeling that those things 
 had rendered them famous; but as the wife of Shakespear 
 probably never read a line of any poem or play penned by 
 her husband, it is almost more certain that the contents of 
 the Essays were a sealed book to Mademoiselle de Montaigne. 
 Both alike took for granted the world's verdict ; and in the 
 latter instance, certainly, it was as well that it was so, looking 
 at some of the confidential allusions which meet the eye 
 here and there. Yet had Mistress Shakespear been ques- 
 tioned as to the Sonnets and their story, it is more than 
 doubtful if ih&t lady would have had any information 
 to offer. Did Chaucer shew the Canterbury Tales to his 
 wife? Did the eyes of Laura fall on any of the Sonnets 
 of Petrarch ? 
 
 In strict truth the parallel with Montaigne is an im- 
 perfect and unjust one ; for although his wife and daughter 
 might have been unaware of the exact value and interest of 
 his writings, they were conscious of his distinguished rank 
 as a scholar, and cordially seconded the editorial labours of 
 Mademoiselle de Gournay. More even than that, for the 
 widow deposited one of the annotated copies of the edition 
 of 1588 in the public library at Bordeaux, to be a lasting 
 memorial of the departed. 
 
 So far as Shakespear is concerned, we have ever to keep 
 
 H 
 
114 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 before us his constitutional indifference to his work and his 
 fame, and, so far as gift-copies of his Poems or Plays go, a 
 diffidence of the appreciation of his genius by his contempo- 
 raries, or an unconsciousness by them of the supreme value 
 to be set hereafter on such memorials. Whether the poet 
 ever presented any of his books to those about him, or the 
 latter theirs to him, we know not. It might at least have 
 been expected that the copies of Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece dedicated to Lord Southampton ^ would have been 
 preserved in the hands of descendants. 
 
 The almost total disappearance of Shakespear MSS, of 
 any kind is traceable to several agencies, of which the fore- 
 most were fires, accident, neglect. The Globe was consumed 
 
 * Thomas Wriothesley, last Earl of Southampton, who died in 1667 
 without male issue, is described by Andrew Pennicuicke the actor in a 
 dedication to him of the Sim's Darling, 1656, as a personage who appre- 
 ciated literature. It is to be feared that after his death, or at any rate 
 after that of his third wife, apparently in 1681, the family effects were 
 scattered, and any books and papers (including perhaps letters of the 
 poet and the copies of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece dedicated to his 
 father) lost, unless they were somehow preserved and perished in the de- 
 struction of their town-house. Bugle Hall, Southampton, in 1791. The 
 Earl's daughter, Lady Elizabeth Wriothesley, brought Beaulieu to the 
 Duke of Montagu by her marriage in 1709. There are not at Beaulieu 
 (the residence of the present Lord Montagu) any papers throwing light 
 on Shakespear and the Wriothesleys — nothing beyond a portrait of the 
 first Earl of Southampton, engraved in the Hampshire Field Club Trans- 
 actions. I am consequently led to annex the signature of the Earl, whom 
 Shakespear knew and addressed, to the letter from him to Hicks of June, 
 1592, already cited, as the handwriting probably resembled that which we 
 might expect to find attached to one thanking the poet for a copy of the 
 Venus and Adonis in the succeeding year. 
 
 The extant letters of Southampton bear his mere signature with the 
 fewest exceptions. From a holograph to Lord Spencer the Earl does not 
 seem to have been proficient in orthography ; but that was a common 
 failing. 
 
Personal History 115 
 
 in 1613, when a large accumulation of documents, corre- 
 spondence, plays, and other archives had had ample time to 
 form. There were periodical conflagrations at Stratford — of 
 some of which we do not hear, others sufficiently destructive 
 and ruinous to attract official notice. Accident and neglect 
 are capable, where no importance is attached to property, 
 of accomplishing any prodigies. The poet himself is figured 
 by me as a man, who discerned in a book nothing beyond 
 literary material, thrown aside, if it was barren of fruit, or 
 when it had yielded such fruit as it might have ; and so it 
 fared a fortiori with letters, when the subject-matter had 
 been dismissed, and with plays, which proved impracticable, 
 and for which the writers failed to apply. A solution of the 
 evanescence of all the dramatic work of Shakespear himself 
 in an autograph shape seems to lie in the simple fact, that 
 it was delivered to scriveners for transcription, and then 
 deliberately destroyed. 
 
 The failure to recover such now priceless treasures as 
 MSS., letters, and presentation-copies, is so far from being 
 restricted to Shakespear, that it is a general incidence, and 
 the occasional exceptions really prove the rule. Of how few 
 of our literary glories have we heirlooms in the shape of 
 papers on which their very eye and hand have once rested ! 
 There is the possibility, that the poet entertained a dislike 
 to epistolary correspondence. When he made a complaint to 
 a friend about a liberty taken with his name, it was a verbal 
 one, and Greene, who transacted a good deal of business 
 on his behalf, seems always to have received his oral 
 instructions. 
 
 Yet, so long as we at present have under our eyes a 
 miraculous, albeit distorted, glimpse of John Shakespear in 
 a MS. commonplace-book, the copy of Gascoigne, which 
 belonged to Gabriel Harvey, and those of Spenser which 
 belonged to Drayton and Dryden, with their MSS. notes, 
 need we despair ? — more especially regarding such unhoped- 
 for recoveries as the Letters of Harvey, Jonson, and Chap- 
 man, however in themselves insignificant, the revolutionary 
 
116 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 biographical particulars, throwing an entirely fresh light on 
 Spenser's early life,^ and the Poems of James I., which lay 
 two or three centuries at Oxford unrecognized. It may be 
 the lot of literary mineralogists to achieve yet greater things^ 
 and how often the ore has been found to lie only a spade 
 deep, awaiting the supreme moment, when it is to be 
 transformed by alchemical eyes from inarticulate lumber 
 in loft or charter-chest into solid and proud documentary 
 vouchers ! 
 
 Of other William Shakespears of or about the time of 
 the poet no calligraphic monuments appear to have been 
 produced.^ They might have been esteemed of slight worth ; 
 their absence renders that of efforts in penmanship by their 
 greater namesake less unintelligible, while the omission to 
 preserve even such correspondence as may or must have 
 passed between Shakespear and some of his more distant 
 connections and friends is easily imputable to an un- 
 consciousness of its ulterior estimation. 
 
 The corruptions in the early impressions of the plays 
 may on the present supposition be carried farther back than 
 the original typographer. The fault lay with the unintelli- 
 gible MSS. and the failure even of an experienced copyist 
 to decipher certain words or sentences. Let us reflect on 
 the uncertainty as to mere signatures of the poet and on 
 the different conclusions upon the exact letters traced by 
 his hand, and then let us imagine a quire or two of paper 
 occupied by writing of the same type, with the added 
 features of correction and interlineation. The inference 
 can only be, that no holograph MSS. survived Shakespear, 
 or even survived the date of their conversion by a member 
 
 ' This precious information was first derived by me from a volume of 
 tracts, formerly the property of Gabriel Harvey, of which one was a gift- 
 from Spenser, at that time (1578), as Harvey tells us on the title, secretary 
 to Dr. Young, Bishop of Rochester, his old principal at Pembroke Hall. 
 A portion of the MS. commonplace-book of Harvey has also passed 
 through my hands, and from it I printed a poem called A View or /Spectacle 
 of Vanity, 1584, in my Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1870. 
 
 2 Comp. pp. 11 and 110. 
 
Personal History 117 
 
 of the Scriveners'" Gild into legible characters, of which the 
 actors could make use. It is extremely probable that the 
 Poems and Sonnets, produced in the decade 1593-1603, were 
 derived, on the contrary, from the autographs ; but it is 
 equally so that they were not preserved; and the fire at 
 the Globe in 1613, after the retirement to Stratford, or 
 the indifference of the family, when he died, to personal 
 memorials, may be accountable for the absence of letters, in 
 the present case, as one may fancy, more likely to have 
 accumulated from the long and systematic abode of the 
 poet at a distance from relations and neighbours. 
 
 Shakespear used the Court, not the Italian, style, and 
 his manuscript copy must have so much the more demanded 
 the assistance of the scrivener, whose special aptitude was 
 the conversion of papers in the former character into fair 
 copy for official or other practical purposes. An experienced 
 member of the Scriveners' Gild would have succeeded, as a 
 rule, in deciphering the holograph of the poet, which more 
 or less resembled the characters habitually committed to 
 him for transliteration, and would have carried it from the 
 theatre or lodging to his office for treatment; and it is 
 tolerably easy to see, on the one hand, how useless to the 
 actors and prompter the original was likely to be, and how its 
 destruction, if not instantaneous, was merely a question of time. 
 
 The dramatist was thoroughly acquainted with the pro- 
 vince and place of the scrivener,^ his wide range of duties, 
 and his corporate responsibility. In Richard III., iii. 6, he 
 makes one enter with a fair copy of the indictment of Lord 
 Hastings : — 
 
 " Here is the indictment of the good lord Hastings, 
 Which in a set hand fairly is engross'd, 
 That it may be to-day read o'er in Paul's ; 
 And mark how well the sequel hangs together : 
 
 ^ Before the introduction of typography the business was even more 
 extensive and profitable, but even in 1519, according to Whittinton in his 
 Tiilgama, printing had " almooste vndone scryueners crafte." Here the 
 Iiatin equivalent is given as Liirarii. 
 
118 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 Eleven hours I have spent to write it over, 
 For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me ; 
 The precedent was full as long a doing ; 
 And yet within these five hours Hastings liv'd — " 
 
 Such a character as is here portrayed, who had his proto- 
 type in Adam the scrivener of Chaucerian fame, may have 
 had hundreds of folios of Shakespear's own writing to copy 
 " in a set hand fairly engross'd " ; and when the original was 
 thus superseded, it was, it may be more than feared, cast 
 away as useless. Edward Alleyn is shown to have employed 
 in this capacity Henry Underwood, whom Collier plausibly 
 suggests to have been related to John Underwood the actor. 
 There was also Robert Underwood, a contemporary verse- 
 writer, and possibly a kinsman. The scarcity of Bacon 
 holograph matter admits a similar solution. He had a 
 staff of copyists. In his case rough drafts were possibly 
 used in dictating to a proficient amanuensis the fair 
 copy. 
 
 At the end of the Three Ladies of London, by R. W., 
 1584, occurs the name of an actor, Paul Buck, as if he 
 had undertaken the transcription of the original MS. for 
 the purpose of performance, as a voucher of accuracy to the 
 printer. This is a solitary record, but it may have been 
 the course pursued in other cases. The foot of Hercules has 
 so often to answer for himself in obscure researches. 
 
 In a note in an early MS. copy of Fletcher's Bonduca, to 
 account for an imperfection in the text, it is said that " the 
 occasion why these [scenes] are wanting here, the booke 
 whereby it was first Acted from is lost : and this hath been 
 transcribed from the fowle papers of the Authors wh. were 
 found." The sole regret may be deemed to be, that we 
 have not hitherto met with any such of Shakespear. In my 
 Manual of Old Plays, 1892, a piece called the Four Sons 
 of Aymon is cited under 1624 as not being in a legible 
 hand, llie author had not taken the useful precaution to 
 have it engrossed. As late as 1688 at all events the prac- 
 tice of sending MSS. to the scrivener for transcription con- 
 
Personal History 119 
 
 tinued, as we see from the Advertisement to the second 
 edition of the Lady's New Year's Gift; and we also find 
 that even the scrivener, as well as the shorthand writer (in 
 a larger degree), was liable to error. This last point carries 
 its Shakespearean moral. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Shakespear's relatives, friends and professional acquaintances —^ The 
 circle at Stratford, in Shoreditch, the Borough, and Blackfriars— 
 Suburban associations — Peculiar interest of the outskirts of London 
 in those days — The Family — John Shakespear — Some particulars of 
 Anne Shakespear, the poet's wife — Unhappy connubial relations — 
 A lost likeness of her — Lineal descendants of the poet — John Hall — 
 Joan Shakespear — Thomas Greene — The Friends — The Burbages — 
 Richard Burbage the original Hamlet — Richard Tarlton, the Yorick 
 of Hamlet — ^The Combes — Henry Field the tanner — Julius Shaw — 
 Robert Harvard— Henry Chettle — Davenants of Oxford — Interesting 
 circumstances connected with them — Likenesses of the poet — His 
 personal effects — Considerations on the state of the biography. 
 
 When we proceed to rehabilitate Shakespear's London and 
 almost his England, and to reassemble the men and women, 
 who were akin to him in various degrees and ways, or 
 whom he more or less intimately knew, it is no inconsider- 
 able circle, which we have the need and the power of sum- 
 moning. Apart from the parents, the brothers and sisters 
 and other immediate relatives, and the wife and children, 
 there were the Hathaways, the Ardens, the Burbages of 
 Shoreditch, Blackfriars and Fulham, the Halls, the Quineys 
 who intermarried with the Shakespears, the Sadlers, who 
 intermarried with the Quineys, the Lamberts, the Walkers, 
 who had connections at Fyfield in Essex, and to whose 
 son ^ Shakespear was godfather, the Harts who, again, inter- 
 married with the Shakespears, the Nashes, the Combes, 
 the Fields, the Shaws, and the Greenes, as well as the 
 Sandels, the Richardsons, and the Burmans of Shottery, to 
 whom we have to add the Davenants of Oxford. There 
 was also Robert Webb of Snitterfield, a cousin, and several 
 1 He survived at Stratford till 1680. 
 
 120 
 
Personal History 121 
 
 members of the family of Perkes, which resided near Strat- 
 ford, and was in more than one way associated with the 
 Shakespears. These folks offered a powerful contrast, on the 
 whole, to the friends and acquaintances, whom the poet had 
 gathered round him in London, and of whom some were 
 associated with him in a purely professional capacity, while 
 there were, occupying special ground, the Warwickshire 
 fellow-settlers, who had made the metropolis their perma- 
 nent and exclusive home : the two Burbages, Richard Field 
 the printer, and John Sadler the druggist, of whose family 
 one had stood sponsor to the poet's son. Outside all these 
 were the early Shoreditch and Borough, and even Black- 
 friars, comrades and fellows, among whom for a brief term 
 was Richard Tarlton, who (as well as Richard Burbage) 
 resided and died in Shoreditch, as did George Wilkins, 
 author of many dramatic and other writings of merit and 
 interest ; Peele the dramatist, whom we find in earlier life a 
 lodger on Bankside,^ the elder Harvard, Augustine Phillips 
 the playwright, William Sly the actor, who as early as 
 1588 seems to have been a resident in Norman's Rents, 
 St. Saviour's, nay, down to 1607, the poet's own younger 
 brother Edmund. 
 
 Shoreditch,Blackfriars,Wapping, and the Borough consti- 
 tuted the theatrical headquarters in Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 times. In those districts, which at present exhibit few and 
 faint traces of their former condition and importance, many 
 of the most distinguished and popular members of the pro- 
 fession lived and died. Shoreditch^ and Southwark alike 
 were in those days by no means unpleasant places of abode ; 
 they were still fairly open, and beyond lay an unbroken view 
 of the country ; and it was here and hereabout that Shake- 
 spear spent much of his time in labour so fruitful for him 
 
 1 Old English Jest BooTcs, 1864, ii. 286. 
 
 " The 34-5 Henry VIII. c. 12, conclusively establishes that in 1543 even 
 many of the streets and lanes between Shoreditch on the East and the 
 Strand were almost impassable. Macaulay, in his Sistory of England, draws 
 a picture of the state of the thoroughfare even between London and 
 Kensington in the days of William and Mary. 
 
122 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 and more so perchance for us, or among the friends, the 
 Burbages, Tarlton, and others, whom he met on his first 
 visit to the great city. But the Borough was in those days 
 a favourite resort of other than theatrical residents in the 
 metropolis. It was a haunt in general vogue, perhaps for 
 quiet, perhaps for cheapness. John Florio spent much of 
 his life in Shoe Lane, and Joshua Sylvester, the merchant- 
 adventurer, poet, and translator, in St. Bartholomew the 
 Less. William Osteler the eminent actor died, at all events, 
 in the parish of St. Mary le Bow in 1614. 
 
 In order to form for ourselves a more accurate idea and 
 picture of the Blackfriars, which daily during several years 
 passed under Shakespear's observation, and which he trod, 
 we have to restore that ancient and historical area, with the 
 result that we find the poet moving in a rich residential 
 locality, where personages of rank and fortune had their 
 houses and grounds. There were the Hunsdons, the Russells, 
 at whose house Queen Elizabeth attended a marriage in 1600, 
 Sir Robert Cotton, Lord Cobham, the Earl and Countess of 
 Somerset, Lord Aubigny, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and 
 Edward Banister of Idworth in Hampshire (the great 
 collector of antiquities), member of a family connected with 
 the town of Southampton, where the name still survives in 
 more than one locality. From 1607 to 1615, Benjamin 
 Jonson had quarters somewhere hereabout, and at a rather 
 earlier date Geffrey Fenton, translator of Guicciardini, had 
 his chamber here ; he had removed a little later to a lodging 
 near the Tower. It was, in short, alike anterior to the time 
 of the poet, and subsequently, the resort and home of a 
 succession of distinguished names in literature and art, and 
 Shakespear was therefore in excellent company. Then in 
 the Inner Temple, close by, there was Selden, who counted 
 among his intimates Jonson, who was living here in 1607, 
 Drayton and Browne, and Heywood, of whose relations with 
 him we should have had no knowledge in the absence of a 
 fortuitous incident, so that, had he elected to settle here, he 
 would have found himself in fairly appreciative society, while 
 
Personal History 123 
 
 in the City proper noblemen had their mansion-houses and 
 men of letters their apartments, and, as we now know, the 
 poet himself, during at least a portion of his term of residence 
 in the metropolis, rented what was known as a tenement 
 there. 
 
 Even without retaining the Walker premises in their 
 entirety it would have been in perfect accord with contem- 
 porary usage alike in town and country, had Shakespear 
 arranged to reserve an apartment for his occasional occupa- 
 tion, when he visited London, nor do we actually know that 
 toward the end of his professional life, after his acquisition 
 of the Blackfriars property, if he did not lodge there, he did 
 not pay one or two temporary visits to the metropolis after 
 his removal to Stratford. He was possibly in London under 
 such circumstances, when the Rutland episode and the royal 
 marriage occurred in 1613. 
 
 The property is described in the extant conveyance as 
 abutting on a street (Puddle Dock Hill) leading to Puddle 
 Dock or Wharf, and does not appear to have occupied a 
 large area. A part of the more or less shallow tenement was 
 over a gateway opening into premises belonging to others. 
 
 It is shown by three official documents, dated between 
 April 26 and May 2,2, 1615, that proceedings in Chancery 
 were taken to compel William Blackwell and others to 
 surrender to Sir Thomas Bendish, Baronet, and others 
 certain papers or documents relevant to premises, messu- 
 ages, &c., which had remained at her death in the hands of 
 the late Ann Bacon previous to her marriage into the family 
 of Blackwell, and which it was alleged by the plaintiffs that 
 she had only held in trust, the defendants contending that 
 she held them in fee. The Court disposed of the case in a 
 little over a fortnight from the delivery of the defendants'" 
 answer on May 5, and gave judgment for the plaintiffs, and 
 ordered the papers to be brought into Chancery. 
 
 When the Bill of Complaint had been prepared, it was 
 found that two parties' names had been overlooked, those 
 of Mary Dormer and William Shakespear, and they were 
 
124 Shakespeab: The Man and his Work 
 
 accordingly interlined. The bearing of these fresh evi- 
 dences upon the last days of the poet is extremely slight ; 
 he was evidently a subordinate factor in the suit; and all 
 that can be said is, that in his broken state of health any 
 additional complication was calculated to prove injurious. 
 The whole point involved here seems to have been that the 
 house and appurtenances bought by Shakespear in 1613 from 
 Henry Walker abutted on the premises owned by the other 
 plaintiffs, and that there were some peculiar easements and 
 privileges set forth in the records detained. 
 
 Mention is elsewhere made of the old Blackfriars theatre, 
 built in 1596 ; but prior to that date plays had been per- 
 formed in this neighbourhood under special auspices.^ 
 
 A practice had arisen in the Elizabethan time of re- 
 sorting temporarily or otherwise to certain outskirts beyond 
 the urban precincts and the bills of mortality ; and one 
 of the motives for this new departure was the periodical 
 recurrence of the plague, as the population increased, and 
 no adequate sanitary precautions existed. An usage, at 
 first provisional, gradually developed into the hire of country 
 lodgings, or even houses, and the villages round London 
 furnished occasional, nay, even sometimes permanent, resi- 
 dences for a large number of literary and theatrical celebrities 
 belonging to the set which Shakespear actually knew, or to 
 their immediate successors under the earlier Stuarts. There 
 certainly appears to have been a predilection for the western 
 side of the metropolis in former times, as there has been in 
 our own, even where original residents in the city itself 
 might have been supposed to find places of agreeable retire- 
 ment in other directions. 
 
 We are able to trace literary men, actors, managers, 
 and unprofessional persons, at Dulwich, Fulham, North-End, 
 Walham Green, Parson's Green, and Mortlake, and we are at 
 liberty to surmise that the poet was in the habit of finding 
 his way hither at intervals of leisure or on emergencies ; but 
 we have, with contemporary records at our elbow, to remem- 
 ^ Comp. Blades, Biography of Caxton, 1877, pp. 78-9. 
 
Personal History 125 
 
 ber that the opposite extremities of London were practically 
 far more remote from each other than they became in course 
 of time by favour of good roads and better means of transit. 
 As we con over the list of names, which occur as those of 
 residents or lodgers in these delightful retreats in the old 
 days, we are almost precluded from refusing to believe, that 
 the ground within these limits was often pressed by the 
 feet of Shakespear — pressed too, when he was at the height 
 of his reputation as a man of genius and substance. Some 
 of his acquaintances settled in those parts at a later date ; 
 others remained only for a season, having quitted the town 
 to avoid the ravages of the plague at successive intervals ; 
 and the latter contingency brings to the front in a rather 
 new light an episode connected with the earlier career of the 
 poet to be hereafter noticed. There was Robert Burbage ^ 
 at North-End, where, moreover, master William Plumbe^ 
 Esquire, must have received his nephew Joshua Sylvester in 
 or about 1592, when he dedicated to him one of his transla- 
 tions from Du Bartas ;^ John Florio and Henry Condell at 
 Fulham : Sir Thomas Bodley at Parson's Green (from 1605 
 to 1613, when he died there) : John Norden the topographer, 
 at Walham Green (in 1596), and at Mortlake, Augustine 
 Phillips, Shakespear's fellow-actor.* Fulham from 1594 to 
 
 ^ Vide supra. 
 
 * A house once belonging to the Plumbes formerly existed in Fulham 
 Fields. Croker, Walk from London to FulJiam, 1860, p. 197. 
 
 ' Letter to the writer from Mr. Eustace Anderson, Clerk to the Barnes 
 and Mortlake District Council, 27 Nov. 1899. The house of Phillips, 
 with six acres of land, was on the north side of Mortlake Green on the site 
 of Lancing Terrace and the buildings in the rear, as well as the house 
 lately occupied by Charles Phillips the brewer. The ground had once 
 been partly or wholly occupied by the moated palace of the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury, of which the only recollection is Moat Lane on the western 
 side, and by the old church or chapel, which was removed when the new 
 church was erected in 1543. The property at a later date (1688-1830) was 
 occupied by the Penleys as a market-garden, and the residence of the 
 actor is supposed to have stood at the south-east corner of it. In 1609' 
 Robert Armin the actor printed his play, the Two Maids of More-Olacke, a. 
 localization which his knowledge of the suburb through Augustine Phillips, 
 may have prompted. 
 
126 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 1596 offered the additional interest of having at the Palace 
 Dr. Richard Fletcher, father of the better-recollected play- 
 wright and member of a family remarkable for culture. 
 Certain among these arrived at a point of time too ad- 
 vanced to allow us to associate them with any circle, in 
 which Shakespear might have mixed as an occasional visitor ; 
 but the particulars vouchsafed to us by accident are neces- 
 sarily imperfect, and here we are clearly at any rate on 
 classic ground. I am personally disposed, so far as Phillips 
 the actor is concerned, to think that the intercourse between 
 the poet and him was principally in Southwark, where Phillips 
 was living in 1602, and was thus Shakespear's neighbour. 
 For when he settled at Mortlake, his health appears to have 
 declined, and if his friend visited him there, it was a con- 
 siderable distance in those days, and must have been, when 
 the actor could not move far from home. 
 
 Besides its cottages and lodgings adapted to the wants of 
 residents, Fulham had its inns, of which the Golden Lion 
 was the most famous and splendid ; but in the days of the 
 poet this was probably a private mansion, which was sub- 
 sequently converted to another purpose, as Holcrofts, within 
 living memory a private house, had been, on the contrary, 
 a place of public entertainment— not impossibly the leading 
 one in the village, and the most probable resort of Shake- 
 spear in 1593, when the Borough may have become unsafe 
 during the prevailing plague, unless he availed himself of 
 the friendly roof of the Burbages at North-End. Of those 
 persons of note, who once inhabited the place, both Florio 
 and Condell were later comers, neither seeming to have 
 retired hither before 1619, when Shakespear had been long 
 dead, and indeed Condell almost inferribly did not reside 
 there till 1625,^ and perhaps took refuge in the place from the 
 ravages of the plague, which had then broken out in London, 
 as Shakespear, I apprehend, had done years before. Yet 
 
 ^ A tract entitled : The Rwn-awayes Answer to a BooTce called A Rodde 
 for Eumne-awayes, 1625, is dedicated " To oiu- Much Eespeoted and very 
 Worthy friend Mr. H. Condell at his Countrey-house in FuUham." 
 
Personal History 127 
 
 the great dramatist undoubtedly knew both at an ante- 
 rior period — Florio, when he lived in Shoe Lane or in St. 
 Clement Danes. We are not entitled to suppose that we 
 enjoy much conversance with the personal relations between 
 Shakespear and Florio ; but the latter was a man likely to 
 have been drawn into service by the poet, where Italian 
 customs and phraseology entered into the business of a 
 piece before him. He is thought to have caricatured the 
 lexicographer and teacher in Holofernes ; ^ the lexicographer 
 and teacher certainly included some of Shakespear's perform- 
 ances in his general censure of English plays as " perverted 
 histories without decorum ; " if Florio sat for Holofernes, 
 we can be at no loss to guess which, the Italian or the 
 Englishman, dealt the more telling stroke. So far as 
 the name goes, it is found as a dramatis persona and the 
 title of a play, before Shakespear was born,^ and it had 
 been familiarized by its use in Rabelais, who so denominates 
 the pedantic tutor of Gargantua. Probably the illustrious 
 cure of Meudon was unaware that it had been borne 
 long before by the legendary spouse of St. Ursula of 
 Britain. 
 
 John Shakespear, of whom we hear nothing farther in a 
 strictly municipal sense after his apparent withdrawal from 
 public life in 1586, but who, down to the very end, was en- 
 gaged in commercial pursuits as a wool-stapler and glover and 
 in local transactions, including personal litigation, and in the 
 last year of his life member of a committee for advising the 
 Corporation on certain points, died prior to September 8, 
 1601, on which day his interment at Stratford is registered. 
 How long he had been ill, the immediate cause of death, 
 and the place of burial, appear to be alike undiscoverable, 
 nor do we hear, whether his son was a witness to his last 
 moments. The poet is not traced to Stratford at this point 
 
 ^ Nothing can be more unlikely or absurd than the old hypothesis, that 
 Shakespear meant to personate Ascham in this character. As to Florio 
 and his last days in Bear Street, Fulham, see Fferet, i. 119. 
 
 " ManuaZ of Old English Plays, 1892, v. Holofernes. 
 
128 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 of time, nor was he there in the following autumn, when he 
 should have performed personal suit and service in the 
 manorial court at Rowington for the small copyhold in 
 Chapel Lane, Stratford, acquired in September, 1602 ; and 
 we find his brother Gilbert representing him in a matter of 
 local business — either commissioned to go down from London, 
 where his occupation was, for the express purpose, or, which 
 is likelier, to do what was required during a call at Stratford 
 as a traveller for his employer in London, as the dramatist 
 must have been just then engaged in the preparation of 
 Hamlet. Nevertheless I am altogether of opinion, that 
 Shakespear did personally attend the death-bed and inter- 
 ment in the autumn of 1601, travelling nearly a hundred 
 miles to pay that final homage. In the third scene of the 
 second act of Henry V. there is the passage, where Mrs. 
 Quickly narrates the end of Falstaff"; this, it is quite true, 
 occurs in the 4° of 1600, licensed on the 14th August in that 
 year; but there is a singular omission, not supplied till 
 1623. I refer to the line or sentence most corruptly printed, 
 till Theobald set it right in 1726, as it appears, with the 
 assistance of a marginal note, in a copy of the quarto 
 belonging to a " Gentleman sometime deceasM," who pro- 
 posed " tattled of green fields." I prefer tattled to babbled, 
 the generally accepted modern reading, because it is more 
 likely to have been misread in MS., the original text being 
 " a table of green frieze." ^ By whom the idea of the Knight's 
 death-bed was suggested, it is impossible to say ; and it is 
 equally uncertain to what extent the quartos were revised 
 and completed by the poet himself, or whether some more 
 authentic transcript was in existence, when the folio was in 
 preparation. But the added words, so weightily improving 
 the passage and picture, have inspired me with the suspicion, 
 that, if the poet introduced them as an afterthought in some 
 MS. copy unseen by us, he may have had an eye to his 
 father, whose associations had been so peculiarly rural — 
 more so than those of the Knight of the play, and who had 
 1 Thiselton {Notidoe OrUicos, 1904, p. 14). See Notes to Henry V. 
 
Personal History 129 
 
 died not long subsequently to the issue of the printed book. 
 The most recent information supports the idea, that the 
 author applied himself to the task of revision in some 
 cases. 
 
 There is a second matter, which strikes me as having a 
 bearing on the then quite recent loss of one of his parents, 
 and it is the Gravedigger's Scene in Hamlet. The poet 
 unquestionably had numerous opportunities of receiving 
 impressions of such a class, yet his mind must have been 
 deeply moved by the successive deaths within five years of 
 his own son and the author of his being, and the second 
 bereavement preceded, let us recollect, by a very brief term 
 the point of time, when the composition of Hamlet was im- 
 minent, if the great task had not already taken some shape. 
 A visit to the churchyard so close at hand, to view before- 
 hand the spot, where his father was to lie, might have very 
 well produced an interlocution of which we hold the dramatic 
 essence. 
 
 The common voice of literary opinion has hitherto dis- 
 missed the claim of the father of Shakespear to any share in 
 the credit for his intellectual development, and we know too 
 little of the prior paternal ancestors to be able to judge, 
 whether the antecedent generation betrayed any germ of the 
 rich fruit to come to subsequent maturity in an individual 
 of the stock, and then disappear for ever. 
 
 A recent recovery of an unexpected character, but which 
 tantalizes and vexes us by its evident deficiency of precision, 
 is a passage in some commonplace-book or books written 
 between 1657 and 1663 by Dr. Plume, Archdeacon of 
 Rochester, where he informs us that Sir John Mennis 
 (" Little Admiral John "), the seaman and poet, once met 
 John Shakespear in his shop, where he sold gloves, and that 
 he (John Shakespear) was "a merry-cheek't old man," and 
 said to him, " Will was a good honest fellow, but he 
 daren't have crackt a jest with him att any time." We 
 have here sometbing like a broken statue of priceless worth ; 
 it is the sole vestige and survival of any articulate utterance 
 
 I 
 
130 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 on the part of the poet's parent, an unique realization of 
 his personality. Let us see to what it probably amounts. 
 Mennis, when the elder Shakespear died in 1601, was an 
 infant, having been born in April 1598 ; John Shakespear had 
 a wool-shop, where he doubtless may have sold gloves ; and 
 his remark about his son must have been offered about 1588, 
 when the son had quitted home, and the father had con- 
 tracted his local business, to some one, who repeated it to 
 Mennis, from whom Plume perhaps derived the anecdote. 
 Nor do I believe that the father described his son as " a good 
 honest fellow," but rather as a fellow gifted with humour, 
 more especially as the rest of the sentence, itself a piece of 
 unconscious humour, points to Shakespear's addiction to 
 making fun of people — but " not of Trae," Shakespear Senior is 
 made to say. A diarist is apt to misstate facts either from 
 carelessness of expression or delay in committal to writing 
 circumstances from his own observation; but where, as in 
 the present instance, he takes down particulars at third- 
 hand, the liability to error gravely increases, especially since 
 the anecdote was then regarded as of trivial consequence. 
 This windfall is one more fold of the veil drawn back, and 
 the sole case, where we seem to be admitted to the presence, 
 as it were, of the man — within earshot of his voice. How 
 the MS. reached Essex, where it was found, is uncertain ; 
 but through the Walkers of Fyfield and Stratford there was 
 an early link between East Anglia and Warwickshire, as 
 there was through the Ardens, and possibly through the 
 Halls, between Warwickshire and Kent. 
 
 The entry in the Plume volume not only elucidates a little 
 the early life of the poet, but tends, with other documentary 
 evidence of a more absolute kind, to establish the view, 
 that the father was a man of parts who, whatever may 
 have been his illiteracy and his failure in business, cul- 
 minating in his relinquishment of his seat on the Borough 
 Council, retained during his whole life the confidence of his 
 fellow-townsmen. 
 
 There would have been nothing strange in the mani- 
 
Personal History 131 
 
 festation of abnormal qualities by the Shakespears, if 
 Thomas Becon be correct in describing the Warwickshire 
 folk in the Epistle before his Jewel of Joy to the then Princess 
 Elizabeth, as distinguished by their intellectual superiority ; 
 and all the other Stratford men, of whom we hear as early 
 settlers in London, were remarkably successful. Then, in 
 the mother, Mary Arden or Ardern, connected with the 
 Kentish Arderns of Wye and Faversham, we indistinctly 
 recognize a woman of character, whose family occupied a 
 position superior to that of the Shakespears, and who was 
 left at an early age to manage her own affairs. Her in- 
 fluence was discernibly one of blood and bent alone, and it was, 
 as everybody is aware, far from being of an unusual nature. 
 Mrs. Bond told Aubrey that Suckling the poet derived his 
 vivacity and wit similarly from his mother, and that " his 
 father was but a dull fellow." Not so, however, altogether, 
 for he was a man of business and a statesman, nor was it true 
 of the father of Shakespear. The peep, which we have so 
 newly gained behind the curtain, suggests that on both sides 
 the dramatist enjoyed intellectual potentiality, even granting 
 that on both sides his immediate foregoers were illiterate. 
 For character and even genius may exist in the absence of 
 culture and scholarship, and the poet's elder daughter, who 
 perhaps possessed neither, is said on her monument to have 
 had in her something of her father. We seem to have data 
 of a kind for tracing back to the father the initiative of that 
 humorous vein, which permeates the dramas, and is not 
 absent, by way of interlude, even from the Tragedies. 
 
 It is certainly deserving of a passing notice that Shake- 
 spear, in As You Like It, where he is reported to have been 
 one of the contemporary cast, has followed Lodge in christen- 
 ing the woodland scene the Forest of Arden, very slight actual 
 traces of which can have existed in that part of Warwick- 
 shire in his day, although Henley-in-Arden was not more 
 than eight miles from Stratford, but which was a woodland 
 tract of considerable area in the time of the Britons. At 
 least the tradition, however, remained ; and the name was. 
 
132 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 per se, apt to be tempting, while the topographical question 
 was quite a secondary one, since the excellent poet has placed 
 a lioness in it. The guides to continental tourists must rely 
 on a tolerable measure of credulous ignorance, when they 
 place Shakespear 's forest in Luxemburg ; but they have the 
 authority of the Rev. Joseph Hunter for it, and they are not 
 much farther from the truth than Lodge, who placed it in 
 the vicinity of Bordeaux ! Although Lodge had visited the 
 Continent at least twice, there is no evidence that he was 
 personally acquainted with the Bordelais. 
 
 John Shakespear imparted to his son one characteristic 
 feature — his ostensible and perhaps (as I have pointed out) 
 inherited partiality for litigation, and that practical strict- 
 ness and even hardness in money matters, which fructified 
 in the case of the poet better than in that of his predecessor, 
 and which was instrumental in earning for him, at the 
 hands of Robert Greene, the trenchant sarcasm resident in 
 the travestied sentence : " O tiger's heart wrapped in a 
 player's hide ! " 
 
 This sort of general factor and municipal notability was 
 the true father of his son in one or two other less question- 
 able respects. The latter may be taken to have derived 
 from that source his practical temperament as an economist 
 and a speculator in remunerative property, as well as his 
 aptitude for accounts, nay, possibly, if the Mennis anecdote 
 is construable in such a sense, in a sort of shrewd bonhomie 
 and a bias, not widely shared at Stratford, toward the 
 stage. 
 
 Our seeing faculty in regard to the elder Shakespear is 
 exclusively local, and in his capacity as an officer of the 
 borough he performed certain duties, and superintended at 
 one period — in his son's infancy and even down to his arrival 
 at puberty — the public accounts. Entries in the Stratford 
 books during his discharge of this trust are in the ordinary 
 court hand of the period, and evidently the work of a 
 scrivener; signatures of the poefs father read Signu Johis 
 Shdkespere, and are attestations of the accompanying marks ; 
 
Personal History 133 
 
 and the same is to be said of an inscription by Judith. But 
 the rudimentary characters Jhon Shaksper in one document 
 may be autographic ; and a similar remark applies to the 
 signatures of Gilbert Shakespear (who wrote quite a good 
 hand) and Susanna Hall, afterward Lady Barnard; and I 
 take the occasion to observe, that the writing in the case of 
 Mrs. Hall bears a by no means distant resemblance in its 
 type to that of Susanna Evelyn, the Diarist's daughter, who 
 as a girl inserted her name thrice in a small volume of 
 Prayers printed in 1659. On the calligraphy of the poet 
 himself I have already offered my opinion. 
 
 The educational standing of the family, so far as their 
 handwritings go, was not inferior to that of their neigh- 
 bours — we may surmise, in advance of it. Xhe diffusion of 
 the power of tracing the name on paper was stimulated by 
 the growing necessity, where property existed, of executing 
 or attesting deeds ; and before people aspired to engage in 
 correspondence, they gained sufficient dexterity with their 
 pens to render a document valid in the eye of the law. So 
 far as John Shakespear was concerned, he did not abandon 
 the use of a mark to the last, nor did his wife. An immense 
 volume of business even of a momentous class has in course 
 of ages been transacted by persons of both sexes who were 
 no better clerks. 
 
 The poet, then, according to our most recent lights, was, 
 apart from ulterior influences and agencies, the physiological 
 product in the person of his father of a man of an unusually 
 practical bent of mind and of observant character, with a 
 certain touch of humour, and in that of the remaining parent 
 of a woman of fairly good social position and responsibility; 
 and each new discovery of a biographical tenor realizes him 
 to us more and more as an individual in sympathy and 
 touch, not exactly with members of his own profession, but 
 with those who approached him on independent grounds. 
 From the known, which far exceeds the harvest, and even 
 the expectations, of earlier workers, it is simple justice to 
 argue the unknown possibly awaiting disclosure. 
 
134 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 It is parcel of the anomalous relations, which subsisted 
 during so many years between the poet and his native place, 
 and the almost undoubted rupture with his wife, that there 
 is no hint of Shakespear having at any point of time been 
 even invited to fill the position in the borough, to which his 
 social, literary, and financial pretensions so well entitled him. 
 The extreme probability is, that, unlike his father, he enter- 
 tained no taste for municipal honours, and that, when he 
 had about 1613 permanently settled in the country, his 
 health soon became precarious and his movements uncertain. 
 Under any circumstances, he was a man unapt to relish 
 parochial business, unless it directly concerned him ; and 
 then there was his cousin Greene to act for him. I else- 
 where notice the probability or chance, that somewhere about 
 1608, when legal points were under discussion, he accom- 
 panied Greene on a visit to the muniments, and that his 
 eye met a phrase there, which struck him, and which he 
 utilized. Yet even there I enter a caveat. 
 
 It was, after all, the home life in and after 1613 down 
 to the close of the scene, which, with its inherent want of 
 broader sympathy, was bound to prove irksome and in- 
 jurious in practical experience, whatever might have been 
 hoped from it ; and the withdrawal from the arena of his 
 labours and his noble achievements, and the loss of nearly 
 all congenial spirits, had a strong subsidiary share in 
 shortening that incomparable career. 
 
 It would not have been difficult to trace the origin of 
 the imperfect tie between Shakespear and connections by 
 marriage of an almost puritanical turn of thought, even in 
 the absence of other contributory agencies, when we con- 
 template the Poems and Sonnets, so luxurious and fervid in 
 their language and sentiment, apart from their mere literary 
 merit and occasional obscurity — at least to us. The sanc- 
 timonious disposition of his wife, on whom antenuptial 
 recollections had operated, perhaps, differently from their 
 influence on her husband, may be answerable for the 
 baptismal appellations of their two daughters. The theo- 
 
Personal History 135 
 
 logical warp at New Place had set in, long before Dr. 
 Hall appears on the scene. Evelyn the Diarist gave hjs 
 daughter the baptismal name of the scriptural lady, whom 
 the Elders admired under the same circumstances as David 
 admired Bathsheba. Then as they grew up, our Susanna 
 and Judith reading about naughty Venus and wicked King 
 Tarquin! Such books could not be allowed to enter the 
 house ! — not even when one of them had been licensed by 
 his Grace the Primate. 
 
 Listen to Hamlet as he addresses Ophelia (Act iii. 
 Scene 1): — 
 
 "... What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven 
 and earth? . . . Get thee to a nunnery, go; farewell. Or, if thou 
 wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for wise men know well enough what 
 monsters you make of them." 
 
 This is the sarcastic, self-disparaging vein, not deficient 
 in the Sonnets and elsewhere. There are other very similar 
 allusions scattered about, and the insistence is too frequent, 
 too explicit, and even too inconsequent, where it immediately 
 offers itself, to permit more than a single conclusion. In 
 A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, in the dialogue between 
 Lysander and Hermia we get a reference to the ills arising 
 out of disparity of years, where occurs that almost proverbial 
 sentence : " The course of true love never did run smooth." 
 
 The wife had been barely recollected in the last disposi- 
 tions of the poet, and then merely in a manner, which tends 
 to corroborate, not the affection of her husband, but their 
 long separation, and I take her rupture with him to have 
 been, as I state above, of many years' duration, probably 
 since 1596, and to have been forcibly present to the poet, 
 when he effected the Blackfriars purchase in 1613, and 
 barred her title to dower under that head. The lady was 
 in fact left entirely dependent on freebench in the Rowing- 
 ton copyhold and the dower on a part of the other property ; 
 but her financial position had, even prior to her widowhood, 
 been evidently straitened; and it seems to belong to the 
 painful story, that a sum of 40*. advanced to her by Thomas 
 
136 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Whittington of Shottery, who had been shepherd to her 
 father, was never repaid, and was left by Whittington at 
 his death in 1601 to the poor of Stratford. The sequel 
 appears to be unknown, nor have we the poet's version of 
 the particulars. 
 
 We are assured by tradition, that before her death in 
 1623 she expressed a desire to lie in the same grave with 
 her husband ; but the plan was not carried out beyond the 
 allotment to her remains of a spot in the chancel near those 
 of the poet ; and her son-in-law Hall, who might more 
 profitably have occupied himself in leaving us some par- 
 ticulars of Shakespear, composed in her honour a conven- 
 tional and dull Latin epitaph, which amounts exactly to 
 nothing. It is notable that in the entry of her burial she 
 is signalized as Mistress Shakespear, in contradistinction to 
 a second person interred on the same day, who is described 
 as " Anna uxor Richardi James." This description was the 
 exact counterpart of the Master of her husband, who per- 
 fectly understood the true sense of the term, as we see in a 
 scene in the Merchant of Venice between Lancelot Gobbo and 
 his father. 
 
 There is not the remotest existing clue to her personal 
 appearance. But in an old house in Warwickshire, long 
 since demolished, the staircase is said to have possessed 
 terminals in the singular shape of small full-length figures 
 of the poet and his wife. That of the latter has not come 
 down to us ; but the carved standing resemblance of Shake- 
 spear, 2 feet 3 inches high, his legs crossed and his right 
 hand resting on a pile of books, is still preserved.^ It is 
 indifferently executed, and is in a sense and a way less 
 interesting than the companion would have been. The 
 idea of introducing such unusual embellishments may have 
 occurred to the builder of the mansion or his architect, 
 when the name of Shakespear began to revive; but the 
 farther question arises — Whence did the sculptor obtain 
 
 ^ On the removal of the premises in question it was acquired by a late 
 vioar of Willoughby Waterless in Leicestershire. 
 
Personal History 137 
 
 even an approximate notion of the lady's appearance ? 
 Possibly there was once a portrait of her, too. 
 
 Judging from an account given by the parish clerk of 
 Stratford, in or about 169S, when all the immediate descend- 
 ants of the poet were dead, the family was not liked, and 
 Shakespear was regarded as the best — not precisely in the 
 sense in which we should use the phrase, but as the most 
 popular and neighbourly. Did the others stand oflF on the 
 strength of the reputation and rank of the dramatist and 
 poet, whom they did so little to encourage — much less to 
 flatter ? There seems at that time, when a renown so great 
 and so widely diffused should have yet survived in un- 
 diminished strength, to have been a comparative forgetful- 
 ness of the only personage of note ever yielded or to be 
 yielded by the town, if the reference to the wife as " one 
 Mrs. Shakespear" be a fair sample of the local indifference 
 and crassitude. Perhaps it is not; for by an odd solecism 
 the memorandum, where the expression is used, purports to 
 be one " of Persons Remarkable " mentioned in the Register. 
 
 It is deserving of hope that she had her share of pleasure 
 and enjoyment within the narrow lines by which she was 
 bounded. This shadowy character, more enigmatical than 
 her husband, offers us barely any assistance toward an 
 elucidation of her monotonous provincial career. She is all 
 but inarticulate. No echoes of her voice, beyond the reputed 
 intimation of her wish to lie beside the poet in Holy Trinity 
 Church, have reached our ears. Nothing is known with 
 certainty of her origin or place of birth, although her so- 
 called cottage has been acquired at an extravagant price by 
 public subscription. The poet has in no measured strains 
 lamented his lot. He had inverted the course taken by his 
 father. He had married a woman, not above, but below, 
 him in station and character, although in common with his 
 father he received with her a respectable portion; and he 
 and his family were the sufferers. Of the lady there is a 
 smaller salvage even than of the daughters, who advance into 
 the foreground and light a little here and there, if it is only 
 
138 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 to make a mark or affix a rudimentary signature on some 
 parchment. She, who could have told us so much in the 
 way of fact or report, descended to the grave without 
 shedding a ray of light on her own history or on that 
 of the man, who alone has made us remember her or care 
 for her. 
 
 Nevertheless, by virtue of that principle of indemnity in 
 all human affairs, what more influential factor than the wife 
 in making the poet what he became, in developing a genius 
 which might have lain dormant, can be imagined? If he 
 had not been sensible of a potent motive for making London, 
 not Stratford, his virtually permanent centre : if there had 
 not arisen some grave domestic friction by reason of the 
 discovery of an intrigue between Shakespear and another 
 •woman— forscm the dark figure of the Sonnets, whom Mr. 
 Fleay, I am afraid, rashly and wrongly identifies with the 
 Avisa of Willobie, or alternatively between the wife and 
 another man — a career more satisfactory in one sense, and 
 far less so in another, might have been that of the drama- 
 tist. He might have returned to his native town, and have 
 succeeded his father as a provincial trader and an alderman, 
 and that sacred spot on the Avon would have long since 
 been buried in silence and in oblivion. 
 
 Shakespear had originally had three brothers and four 
 sisters, of the latter of whom three died in infancy or early 
 life. The poet was the third child, but the eldest son. 
 There were two daughters successively christened Joan, born 
 in 1558 and 1569. The survivor, to whom the poet was 
 evidently much attached, married a Hart. Of the brothers, 
 Edmund died in 1607, in the December of the year, in 
 which Susanna Shakespear had been married in the June, 
 Richard in 1613. Of the career of Gilbert, born in 1566, 
 we hold the information, that he carried on during the 
 better portion of his life the business of a haberdasher in 
 London, that he enjoyed the confidence of his brother, and 
 that a namesake, described as adolescens, died at Stratford 
 in 1612. The individual so specified has been taken to have 
 
Personal History 139 
 
 been a natural son. Malone was of opinion, that the father 
 had predeceased him ; at all events in the will, where the 
 surviving sister Joan is a considerable beneficiary, Gilbert 
 the Elder is not mentioned. Whether or not the burial 
 entry of 1612 pointed to some local scandal, he not impro- 
 bably passed his last days in London among his associates 
 there. It has been mentioned that, in the choice of a 
 calling, he had partly followed in his father's steps, and was 
 possibly assistant to him at Stratford, when the crisis arrived 
 in 1586, being then a youth of twenty, and that he natur- 
 ally sought in London a similar class of duties. It is 
 thought that he did not open business on his own account, 
 but acted as assistant in one of the flourishing establishments 
 of the kind at that time in Cheapside and the Poultry, and 
 from the fact, that he is occasionally found at the native 
 place in subsequent years, I should be disposed to infer, that 
 he, as we now have it, travelled for his firm, and may have 
 supplied the shops in Stratford — even his father's during 
 some years — with all sorts of haberdashery. 
 
 Edmund Shakespear had probably followed his brother 
 William to London, and adopted the stage as his profession. 
 His name will occur again ; but our knowledge of his career 
 is fractional. 
 
 The lineal descendants of the poet embraced the families 
 of Hal], Quiney, Nash, Barnard, and Hart, of whom the 
 last still remained on the spot till 1806. Judith, wife of 
 Thomas Quiney the vintner, survived her elder sister, her 
 own husband, and her own children, and died in 1662. 
 Quiney, who died in London in 1652, not long after quitting 
 Stratford in embarrassed circumstances, had carried on 
 business in his native town, where his predecessors had long 
 enjoyed a character for respectability, from the date of his 
 marriage in 1616 at a house called the Cage in Stratford 
 High Street, and had not quite justified the distrust of his 
 father-in-law evinced in the poet's last dispositions. The 
 unsettled state of public affairs under the Commonwealth 
 naturally affected such a trade as his; but in his brother 
 
140 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 Richard, a successful London grocer, he found a friend, and 
 presumably resided with him to the end. 
 
 Susanna had died in 1649, leaving her rather extensive 
 possessions to her only child Elizabeth, who married twice : 
 first, Thomas Nash of the Inner Temple, a gentleman of 
 some literary acquirements and a native of Stratford, whom 
 she lost in April, 1647-8, and secondly John Barnard of 
 Abington, Northamptonshire, who was knighted in 1661. 
 Lady Barnard was buried at Abington in 1670. In her will 
 she slightly remembered the Hathaways ; but the Shakespear 
 estate ultimately devolved on the representatives of John 
 Hart. The testatrix ordered the Stratford i-eal estate and 
 New Place to be sold ; the house in Blackfriars, which was 
 more than ever in her hands at a distance likely to prove 
 inconvenient, she had either given or sold to a relative in 
 her life-time ; and the premises perished before her death in 
 the Fire of 1666. She left no direct issue by either hus- 
 band. In her will, 1669-70, she omits to name the man, to 
 whom she owed all that she was, or had to leave. 
 
 Of John Hall some particulars have already occurred. 
 He is traced to Acton in Middlesex, where he retained a 
 small property after his removal elsewhere ; but he must 
 have settled at Stratford very early in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. Acton was, at all events, somewhat later a stronghold 
 of puritanism ; and Hall carried with him to his Warwick- 
 shire home a powerful bias in that direction. There was in 
 the time of Elizabeth a surgeon of the same name, a member 
 of the Barber-Surgeons' Gild, and in 1565 a resident in 
 Coleman Street, in the City of London. He was also a man 
 of religious character, and wrote several small books of a 
 devout complexion, besides one of a professional class. It is 
 little more than a suggestion, in the absence of any sort of 
 more distinct clue, that the earlier Hall may have been the 
 father of Shakespear's son-in-law. He has been described 
 as of Maidstone ; but the local histories omit to mention his 
 name. He was a medical man ; but in the Stratford register, 
 where his marriage to Shakespear's daughter is entered, he 
 
Personal History 141 
 
 is termed John Hall gentleman. The resemblance in two 
 or three points might render farther inquiry desirable, since 
 the interest of Hall of Stratford in the New Place estate 
 became so prominent, and it was probably from him that 
 Susanna Shakespear imbibed her reputed piety, if he did not 
 go so far in his acquaintance with the female members both 
 before and after his marriage as to communicate to them his 
 own religious tenets and prejudices. At the same time, he 
 may be another of the rather numerous instances of families 
 migrating from one part of England to another, or of 
 branches establishing themselves in different and remote 
 counties. 
 
 This man, who saw and knew so much, this dull profes- 
 sional expert and bigoted nonconformist, who is explicitly 
 stated to have been most famous at Stratford, kept a note- 
 book of cases in Latin, even including that of Drayton, and 
 stopped short at entering his relative's, reducing his work 
 thereby to the vicinity of waste paper. 
 
 There can have been no sympathy between the two men ; 
 there is no indication that the physician entertained even an 
 approximate idea of the genius of his father-in-law. Men,, 
 who were infinitely better qualified to form an opinion on 
 the subject, even such an one as Dugdale the historian of the 
 county, formed a very imperfect one ; and where this famous 
 gentleman — Hall, not Shakespear — has occasion to refer to 
 the poet's daughter, she is only " Mrs. Hall of Stratford my 
 WIFE." There is not a hint of her relationship to somebody 
 else. To think, when we contemplate the professional gib- 
 berish and jargon, with which he fills his volume — and 
 Cook his translator did not give us the whole — that he 
 did not set down a few lines, which would have been worth 
 all the rest a million-fold ! There is the faintest possibility 
 that of Hall's MSS. memoranda, or of Cook's, other por- 
 tions may yet come to light. There is this to be pleaded 
 for the Halls, that, if Shakespear proximately succumbed as 
 the result of some hospitable excess, they may have judged it 
 best to hush up the matter. Of course they could not foresee 
 
142 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 that posterity would take a different view, and not thank 
 them. 
 
 The marriage of Joan Shakespear, the poet's sister, to a 
 Hart of Stratford, and the failure of the biographers to 
 trace the Harts, leads me to mention that a small liturgical 
 MS. of the fifteenth century, sold by auction in 1903, pre- 
 sented marks of its ownership by William, son of Thomas 
 Hart, of Gloucester, at a more or less posterior date. Did 
 one of the family migrate thence.'' There were Harts at 
 Tewkesbury down to the twentieth century, but some time 
 in the eighteenth we find them at High Wycombe in Buck- 
 inghamshire, although the old Gloucestershire tie was not 
 broken, for George Shakespear Hart, who died at High 
 Wycombe in 1907, was born at Tewkesbury, and, which is 
 more noteworthy, educated at the same grammar school as 
 the poet — a tribute to the one and a testimony to the other. 
 
 This family seems to have been alike during its residence 
 at Stratford and on its removal, or at all events that of 
 some of the members, to Tewkesbury and High Wycombe, 
 engaged in comparatively humble callings, as hatters, tailors, 
 and chairmakers — the last a trade, which remains a speciality 
 at Wycombe. 
 
 Coming in contact with the poet in a difierent manner, was 
 that Thomas Greene, who claimed the poet as a connection, 
 while he refers to one or two other persons at Stratford in 
 a similar way. The term was loosely applied, and amounted 
 to no more than a kinsman. In 1571 we find a nephew 
 calling his uncle his cousin.^ At the same time there was 
 not improbably some consanguinity, for in the Stratford 
 register, under March 6, 1589-90, the interment is entered 
 of " Thomas Green alias Shakspere," perhaps his father. 
 
 ' Had Shakespear been consulted, he might perhaps have referred to 
 him, as Addison did to Eustace Budgell, as " the man who calls himself 
 my cousin." The fragmentary surrival of information may be exemplified 
 by the accidental occurrence of the name of Greene in 1603 as aforesaid, 
 his reappearance in 1608-9, by the complete loss of trace of him till 
 1610-11, and our inability to determine what his precise consanguinity 
 with the poet was. 
 
Personal History 143 
 
 Philip Greene was one of the chamberlains in 1582, and was 
 living in 1594). Greene, who was a brother of John Greene 
 the popular actor, was a councillor of the Middle Temple, 
 a notary public, and when he first occurs to notice in con- 
 nection with Shakespear, held the appointment of town- 
 clerk of Stratford. In 1614 he was Steward of the borough. 
 The poet, as we perceive, generally secured his services, when 
 anything had to be done in his frequent and long absences 
 from Stratford; but his cousinhood does not appear to 
 have extended to intellectual resemblance. We have all 
 heard of the insuperable repugnance of Shakespear himself 
 to the composition of occasional or panegyrical tributes 
 arising out of temporary and special circumstances, and of 
 this being imputed to him almost as a trait of disloyalty. 
 But as if it were in the fitness of things that some voice out 
 of Stratford should be lifted up to hail the new Caesar, when 
 James I. succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, cousin Greene stepped 
 forward, and framed a paean, which he not too unassumingly 
 christened A Poefs Vision and a Prince's Glory. The ad- 
 venturous author was naturally led to place his MS. in the 
 hands of William Leake the printer, who had ushered into the 
 world ten years before the Venus and Adonis ; he signalizes 
 himself on the title as Thomas Greene Gentleman, a preten- 
 sion neglected by his relative; but the publisher gives no 
 address, and the excessive rarity of the volume favours the 
 surmise, that it was printed at Greene's expense. It is not 
 more foolish than other contemporary trifles of the kind, 
 and is in rhyming hexameters. As very few eyes have 
 beheld a copy, it may be worth while to transcribe the 
 opening lines : — 
 
 " When Hesperus, the Harbinger of night, 
 Had iustly ordred eu'rie burning light, 
 My solitary chamber I forsooke, 
 And musing went vnto a pleasant brooke ; 
 Where, sitting down vpon a hillocke by, 
 To steale delight with a more quiet eye. 
 Soft drizling droppes vpon my face did fall, 
 Which sweeter were then that wee Nectar call — " 
 
144 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 What did cousin Shakespear think of this glorious effusion ? 
 One would have liked to have his private valuation. Did 
 it stir his risible muscles? Or did he commend cousin 
 Greene as a bard of promise, who might at last shed a lustre 
 on the family ? Of one point one may be sure : the title was 
 the author's own inspiration. Anyhow cousin Greene was 
 not discouraged from sacrificing a second time to the Muses ; 
 for, two years later, we see him sit down to indite a copy of 
 verses to accompany their common friend Drayton's Poems 
 on their first appearance in a collective shape. 
 
 Greene, however, independently of his poetical leaning, 
 imbibed from intercourse with Shakespear, Drayton, and 
 others, may be fairly presumed to have been of essential 
 service to the poet in a practical way, and their friendship 
 was, no doubt, of life-long duration. He is the sole indi- 
 vidual, resident at Stratford itself, of whom we hear as 
 possessing qualifications for representing anyone in the 
 nature of a client. In 1602, in the absence of Shakespear, 
 the conveyance of the purchase from the Combes was de- 
 livered to his brother Gilbert to his use, almost as if Greene 
 had not yet appeared on the scene. 
 
 Almost in the first rank of those outside the actual family 
 circle, whom the dramatist had reason to regard with affec- 
 tion and respect, were the Burbages,^ similarly emigrants from 
 Stratford to the metropolis in the person of James Burbage, 
 
 ' In a Bible (Barker, 4°, 1588), now sadly mutilated, there are a few 
 MSS. memoranda referring to Burbages of the sixteenth century, but 
 apparently not of the Stratford branch. There are on the title of the New- 
 Testament and on the back of the leaf : " Agnes Burbage the wyfe of 
 Thomas Burbage was buried the vi day of february 1 592. Thomas Burbage 
 the soonn of William Burbage was baptised the ti^xxvii daye of November 
 in the yeare of onr lord god 1594. Agues Burbage the daughter of William 
 Burbage was Baptised the 'i^xxv day of Aprill 1598. Darathie was Bap- 
 tised the thxxix daye of August 1602. John Burbage the sonu of WiUiam 
 Burbage was Baptised the 'i^xvi daye of June in the yeare of our lord god 
 1605." 
 
 Shakespear's Burbages remained in the neighbourhood of Fulham till 
 the eighteenth century. In 1727 Millicent Burbage was married to John, 
 Dwight, son of the vicar of that village. F^ret, Fvlliwm,, 1900, ii. 36. 
 
Personal History 145 
 
 of whose local or provincial antecedents we know next to 
 nothing, and who first presents himself to our notice in 
 1576 as a man in prosperous circumstances, who had more 
 than reached middle life. One hesitates to associate with 
 this Warwickshire branch any provincial records of the same 
 period, since there appear to have been Burbages in several 
 parts of England about this time, except that the identity 
 of the armorial bearings of those, whom the poet so well 
 knew, and those of North-End, near Fulham, seems to 
 establish a kindred. It is just worth mentioning that a very 
 fine copy of the Spider and the Fly, by John Hey wood, 1556, 
 is before me, bearing on the title, in a firm and well-formed 
 hand, the coeval autograph of an otherwise unrecorded 
 Ninian Burhage ; and the ostensible residence of the family 
 of the hosteler in London, taken with his leaning to 
 theatrical, if not literary matters, makes it at least more 
 probable that this book belonged to the same stock than to 
 any settled in the provinces. 
 
 Richard Burbage, who died (of paralysis, as it is fairly 
 supposed) on Saturday, March 13, 1618-19, in Lent, pro- 
 bably in easy circumstances, unless he had been a serious loser 
 from the Globe fire in 161 S,-*- was, no doubt, a greater actor 
 than the man whose work he so importantly contributed to 
 illustrate by his histrionic gifts ; and his co-operation, as 
 Collier long since suggested, may have beneficially operated 
 on the dramatist. Collier farther believed, that the actor's 
 son William, born about six months after Shakespear's death, 
 was not improbably named after his father's life-long friend. 
 Burbage took the leadership in Richard III., Hamlet, 
 Lear, and Othello, and played Hieronimo in Kyd's piece of 
 that name. He was the original Hamlet, while his great 
 friend the author, according to tradition, contented himself 
 by playing the Ghost. But there is some ground for the 
 belief, that the dramatist, though, maybe, less capable of 
 the actual impersonation, directly instructed Burbage in the 
 
 1 AUeyn's square wooden theatre, tlie Fortune in Golding Lane, was 
 burned down in 1621, and at once rebuilt of brick and tile. 
 
 K 
 
146 Shakespear: The Man and his Wobk 
 
 way in which he desired the leading part to be interpreted. 
 As a bare possibility he may at first have made an essay 
 toward taking it himself. From the pen of a contemporary 
 play-goer we obtain an almost unique glimpse of Burbage, 
 as he trod the boards at the Globe. After reciting some 
 of the characters which he portrayed, the writer proceeds to 
 say, allusively to the passage in Hamlet: — 
 
 " Oft have I seen him leap into the grave, 
 Suiting the person which he seem'd to have 
 Of a sad lover, with so true an eye, 
 That there I would have sworn he meant to die ; 
 Oft have I seen him play this part in jest 
 So lively, that spectators and the rest 
 Of his sad crew, whilst he hut seemed to hleed, 
 Amaz'd, thought even then he died indeed — " 
 
 A very peculiar interest is attached to the Burbage family, 
 and to this member of it in particular, inasmuch as he was 
 during so long a course of years face to face with Shakespear, 
 and was his first great interpreter. His father, his brother 
 Cuthbert and himself, laid the dramatist under weightier 
 obligations than we are ever perhaps to realize in lending 
 him aid and encouragement on his first experience of metro- 
 politan and theatrical life. There is no evidence that between 
 him and AUeyn or Henslowe the relations were ever close 
 or considerable. The author of the above-quoted lines had 
 possibly not seen him in Richard III., which is so far re- 
 markable, that it was one of his most striking studies — one, 
 with which he, according to the story, thoroughly imbued 
 himself. He was collaterally a painter — probably as an 
 occasional recreation. He executed a bold and fine head of 
 himself and one (as I surmise) of his fellow-actor William 
 Sly, both at present in the Dulwich Gallery; and I shall 
 have farther occasion to introduce him in this capacity. 
 
 At the period of the decease of the younger Burbage, 
 Richard Corbet, afterward a bishop, but better and more 
 deservedly known as a writer of some creditable verse and 
 as a man of amiable character, was thirty-seven years of age, 
 
Personal History 147 
 
 having been born near London in 1582 ; and it is a valuable 
 corroboration of the testimony to the excellence of the actor, 
 especially in Richard III., which Corbet may very well have 
 had an opportunity of personally testing, that in one of his 
 poems he tells us that an innkeeper, referring to Richard in 
 the play, spoke of him as Burbage. So thorough were the 
 identification and illusion. 
 
 There is far more than a possibility, as will be hereafter 
 mentioned, that Burbage and Shakespear met at Stratford 
 in 1616 just prior to the death of the poet. 
 
 Side by side with the Burbages, and influencing Shake- 
 spear in a different manner and direction, was a man, of 
 whose brief association with the dramatist some account has 
 already been afforded. Richard Tarlton, whose name we 
 find indifferently spelled Tarrelton and Toi-relton, and of 
 whose impressive personal character and unexampled popu- 
 larity the most abundant and varied evidence from indi- 
 viduals in manifold lines of experience and taste remains 
 to us,'^ is held by Fuller to have been born at Condover in 
 Shropshire, and to have been originally a swineherd. He 
 was brought under the notice of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
 by one of the Earl's dependents, who was struck by his 
 idiosyncrasy, and Leicester was immediately instrumental in 
 his introduction to London life. His earliest occupation is 
 stated to have been as a water-bearer; but his comic faculty 
 drew him toward the theatre, and he took the part of the 
 clown in the Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, a drama, 
 which may be suspected of having been placed on the stage 
 prior to the usually assigned date — about 1585, since in 
 1583 Tarlton was sworn one of the Queen's players, and a 
 groom of the Chamber at the first formal institution of the 
 practice or principle. The precise date of his first arrival in 
 London is wholly uncertain ; but it cannot well have been 
 later than 1565, because in 1570 his name appears as the 
 author of one or two ballads on temporary topics, and in 
 
 ' See my Notices of Tarlton from different sources in Old English 
 Jest Books, ii. 254-60. 
 
148 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 1576 and 1578 he produced his Toys and his Tragical 
 Treatises. But much of his fugitive literary work has 
 perished, while much, which bears his name, was from con- 
 cealed pens. His Jests were not published in his lifetime,, 
 nor did they contain all the matter, which might have been 
 collected from living witnesses. Yet they supply us with 
 interesting indications of his career and surroundings, of his 
 experiences as a tavern-keeper at Colchester and in London,^ 
 of his election to a municipal ofBce in his ward, and of his 
 extensive provincial tours. He was a person in universal 
 acceptance among all grades from the Queen and her Court 
 down to the lowest and least reputable members of the 
 community, and toleration of his " happy-unhappy sayings " 
 seems to have been an understood matter, till at last, as it is 
 said, Elizabeth forbad his farther presence before her at 
 supper. 
 
 The life of this most eminent and remarkable man was 
 probably a brief and checkered one, and he died on the 
 5th September, 1588, of the plague at his lodgings in 
 Shoreditch, and was interred at St. Leonard's Church the 
 same day. He had led a dissipated and thriftless course, 
 and died poor. There has been a disposition to regard him 
 as uneducated ; but natural talent or genius must have gone 
 far to make up for shortcomings in learning and culture; 
 he was manifestly a man of versatile acquirements and an 
 expert fencer ; nor is there any valid reason to deny him the 
 authorship of several of the publications, to which his name 
 was attached in his lifetime, including the two-part play of 
 the Seven Deadly Sins, attributed to 1585-6,^ in connection 
 with which there is that highly significant account of the 
 meeting between the author and Gabriel Harvey at Oxford, 
 when Tarlton invited him to come and see his performance 
 on his return to London, and the distinguished comedian,, 
 challenged by Harvey on an inconsistency between his 
 personal and theatrical identity, replied that he was "of 
 
 * In Queen's Head Alley, Paternoster Row, where he had an ordinary. 
 " Thomas Pope the actor took the part of Arbactus in the Second Part. 
 
Personal History 149 
 
 Dr. Perne's religion." ^ The portraits, which have descended 
 to us, strike one as mere caricatures, as snap-shots caught in 
 the act of grimace. 
 
 Of his literary legacy to us his Tragical Treatises, 1578, 
 of which only one part has so far been regained, seems the 
 most important; and it is a volume of a slender Shakespearean 
 relevance, where we find a precedent for the use of the 
 unusual phrase " Thrasonical " which occurs in Love's Labor's 
 Lost, 1598. Shakespear had cast his eye over the pamphlet 
 of the acquaintance of his youth, and had not hesitated to 
 borrow what he found suitable for one of his first independent 
 dramatic essays — in this particular instance a mere striking 
 expression. But he had had, too, under his eye, when he 
 penned that passage in Twelfth Night, iii. 4, the ballad by 
 Tarlton, 
 
 " The crow sits upon the wall. 
 Please one, and please all." 
 
 And there is in the same play a farther trace of the 
 influence of the famous comedian, where Longueville and 
 Katharine hold the dialogue on veal and calf — not a very 
 witty or a very delicate one to our apprehension — if the 
 anecdote, reported of Tarlton in one of the Ashmole MSS., 
 be genuine ; and there is the slightest possible reason to 
 doubt it in the face of others even of a more unrestrained 
 vein. These equivoques pervade not only the dramatic series, 
 but the entire range of our older literature.^ 
 
 When Shakespear undertook to treat the reign of 
 Henry V. as a part of his historical series, he found a kind 
 of groundwork in the Famous Victories, in which his old 
 friend had taken the part of the clown before 1585 at the 
 
 1 Mamaal of Old Plays, 1892, p. 206 ; Old English Jest Books, ii. 250 ; and 
 my Proverbs, 1907, p. 441, where will be found some account of Dr. 
 Andrew Perne, Master of Pefcerhouse, Cambridge (1554-80). The anecdote 
 given above makes something for Tarlton's interest in matters outside the 
 stage. There used to be a narrow thoroughfare near New Inn at Oxford 
 known as Seven Deadly Sins Lane. Has this anything to do with Tarlton's 
 piece 1 Was it ever performed there ? 
 
 ' Comp. p. 34 swpra. 
 
150 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 Bull in Bishopsgate Street ; and the drama, as it was played 
 by the Queen's Majesty's Players, came from the press in 
 1598, so as to be before the poet, when he was compos- 
 ing his own piece. It is not perhaps material that the 
 Victories^ was licensed in 1594, and possibly then published. 
 Shakespear doubtless adopted the first copy, which came 
 to hand. 
 
 It may be that Tarlton was, as an early MS. note in a 
 copy of Spenser, 1611, seems to suggest, rather than to state, 
 the " pleasant Willy " of the author of the Faery Queen ; but 
 I feel that those who have urged such a proposition might 
 have considerably fortified their argument or theory, if they 
 had mentioned the circumstance that in 1578 .Spenser gave 
 or lent to Gabriel Harvey, his intimate friend, ScoggirCs Jests, 
 Lazarillo de Tormes, Skelton's Merry Tales, and Howleglas, 
 on condition that he would read them ; for this is almost 
 tantamount to a knowledge that such humorous ephemerides 
 were appreciable by the donor, and that he was the sort of 
 man to relish Tarlton. This was an early period in Spenser's 
 literary career, before even the Shepherd's Calendar had 
 appeared. It is a contributory witness to the survival of 
 Tarlton's name, that in 1605 Cyril Tourneur cites among 
 other popular ballads the current one entitled : " The Fine 
 Foole, to the tune of Tarlton," and a second point seems 
 to illustrate that comedian's method, as we are told : " Here 
 the singer pulled a paper out of his pocket, wherein was 
 written both the dittye and the note [tune]." Such was 
 perhaps Tarlton's own way. In a still later publication, 
 entitled Pigges Coranto, 1642, the rhyme : 
 
 " The King of France with twenty thousand men 
 
 Marched up the hill, and then marched down again — " 
 
 ' As a play on this subject — probably the Victories — was, it appears, 
 in course of performance at Henslowe's theatre as late as Nov. 28, 1595, 
 the publication may have been stayed. See Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 
 6th ed., ii. 430, and Old English Jest Books, ii. 218-19, where a curious 
 account occurs of Tarlton playing a double part through the temporary 
 absence of the actor, who should have represented the chief justice. 
 
Personal History 151 
 
 is called " Old Tarlton's Song." ^ In the Stationers' Register 
 under Sept. 23, 1588, occurs a ballad called "Tarlton's 
 Farewell " ; but his authorship is more than uncertain. 
 
 It is held to be doubtful whether in Hamlet, iii. 2, where 
 the poet says : " And let those that play your clowns, speak 
 no more than is set down for them : for there be of them, 
 that wiU themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren 
 spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some 
 necessary question be then to be considered ; that's villainous, 
 and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it " — 
 points to Kempe or to Tarlton, much more probably to the 
 former, as Tarlton had long been dead, and been on friendly 
 terms with Shakespear, whereas the latter in his Troilus mid 
 Cressida, written almost immediately after Hamlet, satirises 
 Kempe foir his rapacity as a theatrical sharer. Yet the habit 
 was common to all that school of low comedian, and spread 
 indeed in the succeeding reign even higher, involving the 
 parties in grave trouble. 
 
 The Combe or Gombes (as the name is spelled in the 
 Temple Records) family was connected with the two Temples 
 and with New Inn from the time of Henry VII. William 
 Combes, late of New Inn, Gentleman, second son of John 
 Combes, late of Stratford-on-Avon, Esquire, deceased, was 
 admitted to the Middle Temple, 19 Oct. 1571. Thomas 
 Combes was admitted in Oct. 1602, 44 Eliz., and entered the 
 chambers of Messrs. Henry Williams and William Combes, 
 Esq., as a Master of the Bar in expectancy, paying a fine 
 of 40*. From the contact of the family with London and 
 its lengthened professional career, there is the possibility 
 of Shakespear material of some kind occurring hereafter 
 indirectly through this channel. 
 
 There were three Combes at Stratford in Shakespear's 
 time : John and his nephews Thomas and William ; and, the 
 uncle having predeceased the poet, the latter left his sword, 
 which he had intended for his old friend, to Thomas as a 
 kindly memento. The Combe epitaph, whatever its true 
 
 ^ See Halliwell (Popular Rhymes omcL Nursery Tales, 1849, p. 10). 
 
152 Shakespear: The Ma^ and his Work 
 
 history may be, can have no Shakespearean relevance beyond 
 the possibility that the composition was mentioned or even 
 shown to him. John Combe died in 1614, recollecting 
 Shakespear in his will in the shape of a legacy of £5, a sum 
 equal to ^£"30 at least of our currency; their acquaintance 
 had been of some duration; and there is no proof either 
 that he was an usurer, or that the slightest difference had ever 
 existed between the two men. That the rhyme was com- 
 posed at or near the time is proved by its insertion in 
 Richard Brathwaite's Remains After Death, printed in 1618 ; 
 and there is an indication that a copy of it on a slip of 
 paper was once attached to the Combe monument in the 
 church by the rhymester himself or someone else. Who less 
 than Shakespear would have taken up his pen for such a 
 purpose at any period, more particularly under the known 
 circumstances and at such a date ? 
 
 All the anecdotes, which we have inherited, are traceable 
 to posthumous recollection, which is notoriously fallible, 
 especially where a story has descended through more than 
 one link or line of succession ; and they are all provokingly 
 trivial. Heywood was a man, who might in his lost Account 
 of the English Poets have very well preserved some really 
 pertinent and illuminating facts about his personal friend ; 
 but, if the MS. should ever be recovered, we might perhaps 
 find that he stopped short of Shakespear, as Hall did in his 
 Observations. 
 
 A farther point of interest attaches itself to Thomas 
 Combe, inasmuch as in the same year, in which Shakespear 
 published his Venus and Adonis with his countryman Richard 
 Field, a person of the same name brought out, or at least 
 Field entered at Stationers' Hall, a little volume called 
 The Theatre of Fine Devices,^ a translation, with the engrav- 
 ings reproduced, of Le Theatre des bans Engins. There is 
 
 1 The oldest and only known impression in a perfect state is dated 
 1614, and was found by me in a volume with other pieces among the 
 Tixall or Burton-Constable books. There is a fragment of an earlier, 
 perhaps the original, one. 
 
Personal History 153 
 
 slight doubt that Combe of Stratford was answerable for 
 the book, and he may have been a second resource to the 
 poet in the mastery of any French passage or phrase. The 
 mere sight of the volume would have sufficed to bring before 
 the mind of Shakespear the general principle followed in 
 such literature, if he had not previously enjoyed an oppor- 
 tunity of examining a specimen, and to lead him to carry 
 the moral farther at his pleasure. Here was a book of 
 Emblems brought to his very door, as it were, by a young 
 Stratford friend. 
 
 The father of Field the printer, Henry Field the farmer 
 and tanner, had had commercial relations with John Shake- 
 spear as far back as 1556, and must have been well known to 
 the poet ; and we think of his tan-yard, when we read what 
 the gravedigger says in Hamlet on the relative durability 
 of bodies. Henry died in 1592, and John Shakespear (he 
 is termed in one passage among the papers John Shaksper 
 Senior) was one of the assessors of his property. With the 
 printer Shakespear does not seem to have been so intimate 
 after 1596. Then there was Julius Shaw, a prosperous man 
 of business as a maltster and wool-striker, and one of the 
 witnesses to the poefs will. His house stood two doors away 
 from Shakespear 's, and is still substantially extant; some 
 portions may date back to the time of Henry VII. It is 
 identified with the personality and footprints of the drama- 
 tist, when he crossed the threshold to see Shaw during his 
 later days, when Stratford had become his home. Another 
 classical house in the town, and one also still preserved in 
 comparative integrity, is that, which was occupied by the 
 parents of John Harvard, Robert and Katherine Harvard, 
 the latter a daughter of Thomas Rogers, Alderman of 
 Stratford, and probably related to Philip Rogers, with 
 whom Shakespear had a suit about a purchase of malt. 
 The building was erected in 1596, and Robert Harvard 
 was married in Holy Trinity Church in 1605. But a more 
 pertinent circumstance is, that his son John, subsequently 
 a settler in New England, was christened, not at Stratford, 
 
154. Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 but at South wark, a vicinity, with which Shakespear and 
 his theatrical and dramatic friends were so closely asso- 
 ciated; and the poet was not improbably domiciled there 
 about that particular juncture, when he lost his brother 
 Edmund. 
 
 Another name and personality, claimable as more than a 
 casual acquaintance, is Henry Chettle, son of Robert Chettle, 
 of the London Dyers' Gild, an eminent and successful 
 dramatist and poet, and at one period of his life — about 1590 
 — a printer. In 1592 he had published Greene's posthumous 
 Groatsworth of Wit, containing the attack on Shakespear ; 
 but almost immediately afterward he took the opportunity 
 in a tract entitled Kindharts Dream of intimating his regret, 
 more especially as he might have used his discretion in 
 regard to the text, and testifying to the "civil demeanour" 
 of Shakespear, his " excellence in the quality he professes, 
 his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his 
 facetious grace in writing, which approves his art." This 
 was high and cordial testimony from a presumed friend of 
 Greene, and we are scarcely entitled to question its substan- 
 tial sincerity. It formed a sort of keynote to the virtual 
 eclipse of the former dramatic school by the new author. 
 It may be a perfectly fanciful notion ; but I am inclined to 
 associate with a highly probable intimacy, perhaps improved 
 by the just-quoted apology, between Shakespear and Chettle, 
 the following passage in the 111th Sonnet : — 
 
 " Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it worlcs in, like the dyer's hand — " 
 
 Henslowe the manager was also collaterally or originally a 
 follower of the same calling. If Chettle in later years ever 
 resorted to the language of reproof, it was in a gentle way, 
 when he blamed his contemporary in 1603 in not writing an 
 elegy on Elizabeth in requital of the good offices of the 
 queen toward him — good offices, of which one would be glad 
 to hear more. 
 
Personal History 155 
 
 Between London and Stratford the poet most unques- 
 tionably had numerous acquaintances, of whom we have no 
 trace beyond those very dear friends the Davenants of 
 Oxford. The Crown Inn, reputed to have occupied a site 
 at Carfax where the Bank now stands,^ and to have preceded 
 one of similar name now visible just opposite, and itself of 
 considerable age, was taken in 1604 by John Davenant, who 
 was the father of the dramatist of that name in more than 
 one sense, inasmuch as he possessed a taste for the theatre, 
 and admired the plays of his occasional guest. The acquaint- 
 ance of these two personages, Shakespear and the elder 
 Davenant, was not improbably formed very shortly after the 
 commencement of the new proprietorship of the Crown, for 
 in 1605 one of Shakespear's Plays was performed before the 
 Corporation of Oxford, and as it was the comparatively new 
 tragedy of Samdet, in which the author not only bore a 
 part, but may be taken to have felt an unusual interest, and 
 the scene of representation was so near his native place, his 
 presence is almost as indubitable as at the commemorative 
 exhibition of Love's Labor's Lost at Southampton House 
 in 1605. The poet did not know the family till 1604 or 
 1605 — perhaps, till he visited Oxford in the latter year. 
 The character, which has been transmitted to us of John 
 Davenant, father of the dramatist, and his wife, and the 
 touching anecdote which Aubrey has handed down of the 
 boyish attachment of their son Robert to Shakespear, unite 
 in my judgment to warrant us in placing the relations on a 
 footing of the purest and most cordial friendship. John 
 Davenant, a hosteler of the Elizabethan type, was in the 
 year of his death (1621) Mayor of Oxford, and the family 
 
 ' Remains of an old building still existed here within living memory. 
 This is a part of the old city, and ancient remains survive under the pre- 
 sent road and pathways long anterior to the sixteenth century. The levels 
 have been raised throughout. An inn bearing the same sign stands on 
 the opposite side of Carfax behind the tower, which is the sole por- 
 tion left of St. Martin's or Carfax Church, where doubtless the Davenant 
 children were christened, and of wrhich the font, at which the poet may 
 have stood as a sponsor, was transferred to All Saints in the vicinity. 
 
156 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 maintained and even improved their social standing, and 
 were long connected (including Aubrey's " Parson Robert," 
 a fellow of St. John's, Oxford, and pastor of West Kington, 
 Wilts), with the University and the Church. We find 
 William Davenant, M.A. of Magdalen Hall, fourth son of 
 Sir William, a contributor in 1 657 to the verses accompany- 
 ing the funeral sermon of Henry Wilkinson, principal of 
 that house, on Margaret Corbet, wife of the pastor of 
 Hasely in the county, a lady of the most austere piety. 
 The Davenants had several other children, were highly 
 respected in Oxford, and the father and mother remained 
 to the last on the most affectionate terms. If the poet 
 stood sponsor to any of the children, it was surely to Robert, 
 rather than to William. As late as 1614 he became god- 
 father to William Walker of Stratford. 
 
 " I have heard Parson Robert say," Aubrey writes, " that 
 Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a hundred kisses." Kiss- 
 ing was more habitual in England between men at that time 
 than at present; Erasmus was particularly struck by the 
 fashion, when he was among us in 1499. The poet knew 
 Davenant as a child in his father's house — knew him about 
 the same age that I hold Tarlton to have known — and even 
 kissed — him. The passage in Hamlet, where the Prince 
 says, while he gazes at the skull : " Here hung those lips, that 
 I have kissed I know not how oft," had of course been 
 written some time, before Shakespear and the Davenants 
 became acquainted. 
 
 Of all the likenesses of the poet which have descended to 
 us, the Ashbourne or Kingdon three-quarter portrait,^ dated 
 1611, which seems to realize to us uniquely the almost com- 
 plete figure and proportions, and a second, which gives the 
 
 ^ This was copied in mezzotint in 1846, and is now reproduced in 
 autotype from that source. The original painting I have not so far 
 traced, but there is some probability that it once belonged to Joseph 
 Taylor the actor, perhaps after Burbage's death in 1619. The Rev. Joseph 
 Hunter speaks of it in 1845 as in the possession of Mr. Kingdon of Ash- 
 bourne, Derbyshire. My local inquiries two or three years ago elicited no 
 information. Oldys misasoribes the Chandos portrait to Burbage, and the 
 
Personal History 157 
 
 head only, and which constructively belongs to 1616, repre- 
 sent all that we have with a claim to contemporary origin 
 and authority ; and neither contributed to inspire the post- 
 humous bust at Stratford. The Droeshout portrait, which 
 accompanies the First Folio, and the Chandos portrait occupy 
 altogether different ground, and are, equally with the bust, 
 composite and eclectic, of different dates and quality. The 
 Ashbourne likeness represents Shakespear full-faced and 
 bareheaded, in a rich velvet dress with a belt round the 
 waist, his right forearm resting on a skull, which lies on a 
 table, and his left hand holding a glove. In his right hand 
 is a book with broad ties, and on his left thumb a ring with 
 a medallion. The date in the left upper corner marks the 
 juncture, when the poet was meditating retirement from 
 London, and when he may have stood for an artist in habili- 
 ments reserved for special occasions, as, for example, when he 
 did personal suit and service to the lady of the manor for his 
 property in Chapel Lane in 1602, or when he attended the 
 marriage of his beloved daughter Susanna at Stratford Church 
 in 1607. It would be a true pleasure to be able to believe, 
 that it was his steadfast and accomplished friend Richard 
 Burbage, whose excellent resemblances of himself and of his 
 theatrical associate Sly (heads only) are preserved at Dulwich, 
 who executed this memorial preparatory to the final fare- 
 well of Shakespear to him and the metropolis, and even in 
 view of a private suspicion, that the health of the poet was 
 already far from robust. I submit it as a circumstance favour- 
 able to such an opinion, that it is anonymous, as if identifi- 
 cation by his particular circle had been treated as a matter 
 of course, as much as his own portrait, and, if so, it would 
 be likelier that the work was undertaken at the artist's 
 request, and never saw Stratford. The presence of the skull 
 eminently merits notice and weight, as it may be interpreted 
 
 Felton one, dated 1597, is said to be by K. B. But the attribution is pos- 
 terior. The notion of Burbage's capability, however, is a little strengthened 
 by these oiroumstances, nor need there be any doubt on that point so far. 
 Oldys had almost certainly never seen the Ashbourne likeness, nor had 
 the writer of the article Skakespewr in the D.N.B. 
 
158 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 into a remembrance by Burbage of a passage in the play, in 
 which he had so often impersonated the hero. Burbage, as 
 an artist peculiarly familiar with the personal appearance of 
 the poet, doubtless undertook, when the monumental bust 
 for the church at home had been completed by Janssen the 
 stonemason in I^ondon, the colouring of the work in order to 
 produce a more realistic aspect, and improve the sufficiently 
 feeble and indifferent piece of statuary ; but even in 1748 
 the work from the united effect of neglect and damp was 
 in a state of decay, and the colouring must have already 
 become unrecognizable. In 1793 Malone caused the whole 
 to be covered with a coat of white paint. As the widow of 
 Shakespear survived till 1623, she had the opportunity — 
 possibly the satisfaction — of beholding the tribute of others to 
 her late husband in its pristine freshness, when she went with 
 the Doctor,and Susanna and Judith, to church, no less than the 
 place of interment,- while the original slab covered the remains,-* 
 I now proceed to say something more of the second por- 
 trait, a head of the dramatist, painted on board, when 
 Shakespear was very near his end, and about which the 
 tradition in 1750 was that it was painted to oblige " a much 
 valued friend." Than a journey to Stratford by the younger 
 Burbage on so sorrowful and solemn an occasion, although 
 he himself was in failing health, nothing can be more likely, 
 when we consider, how infinitely closer and older had been 
 their friendship than that subsisting between Shakespear 
 and Jonson and Drayton ; and the head, with an allowance 
 for all the circumstances, reminds us of those at Dulwich. 
 He was the only man in Shakespear's circle anywhere, to 
 whom such a performance can be ascribed. The head has 
 beneath it a copy of verses, which are said to have been 
 originally, though at present much defaced, written in letters 
 of gold.2 This, in common with the Ashbourne and Chandos 
 
 1 It has been replaced, probably more than once. 
 
 " According to an inscription on the back dated 1750. The poetical 
 relative Greene was at hand to compose the verses, and Burbage was, as 
 independent evidence seems to establish, perfectly capable of transferring 
 them to the panel, and gildiug them. 
 
Personal History 159 
 
 paintings, makes the hair of Shakespear dark, not auburn.^ 
 There is that peculiar brilliance in the eyes notoriously pre- 
 monitory of death. 
 
 If the Ashbourne portrait of 1611 is, as I hope, and think 
 it should be, accepted, that ^ and the head of 1616 form the 
 complement in the present direction of Shakespearean in- 
 heritance. A bust,^ in its integrity more or less suggestive, 
 in the chancel of a Midland provincial church,^nd a bizarre 
 portrait attached to a book by no means in all hands, long 
 constituted the only aids to a conversance with the personal 
 aspect of Shakespear, and they were surely unprepossessing 
 and unpersuasive enough. 
 
 Although the will in 1616 specifically left the wearing 
 apparel to Joan Hart, and the wardrobe must have compre- 
 hended numerous handsome and durable objects, the personal 
 effects of the poet of anything approaching an authentic 
 character are an absolutely negative quantity, unless we 
 accept the pair of gloves, which are said to have passed 
 from a descendant of Shakespear to John Ward the actor, 
 whose company in 1746 played Othello to defray the cost of 
 repairing the monument in the church, and who presented 
 them in 1769 to Garrick, Mrs. Garrick bequeathing them 
 in 1822 to Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Siddons left them to her 
 daughter Mrs. George Combe, who gave them to Mrs. Fanny 
 Kemble, and the latter presented them to Dr. Furness in 
 1874, in whose possession they still were in 1910. They are 
 described by Professor Wallace * as " of mouse-coloured 
 
 1 See Halliwell-PhiUipps, Outlines, 1886, ii. 258. 
 
 ^ It is quite possible that in 1623, when the idea of letting a portrait 
 accompany the Plays arose, the Ashbourne picture was not accessible. 
 In a group of heads on the title-page of Taylor the water-poet's Heads 
 of oR Fashions, 1642, is a caricature of the Droeshout, which was perhaps 
 superfluous. 
 
 ' The Jans^ens were busily employed about this time, both in London 
 and the provinces. They had come to England some time previous to 
 1619. Friends in London, maybe Burbage personally, defrayed the cost 
 of the bust, its transit and instalment. 
 
 i Centv/ry Magazine, August, 1910, where these excessively interesting 
 objects are illustrated. They are said to remain in good preservation. At 
 
160 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 cheverel, the fringe and stitching on the gauntlets being in 
 gold thread." The question is, were these the gloves which 
 are seen in the portrait of 1611 ? They may have immedi- 
 ately descended from the owner to his sister Joan Hart with 
 the rest. 
 
 Outside this small salvage there are only the articles 
 manufactured out of the New Place mulberry tree, namely, 
 the Harborne arm-chair, the Garrick cup, and the Sharpe 
 inkstand, all of which bear the stamp of authenticity, 
 although the interest attached to them is posthumous and 
 indirect. 
 
 The dearth of particulars dealing with the personal 
 history of the poet is at first sight the more surprizing when 
 it is taken into account that he was more or less constantly 
 mixed up with affairs likely to involve publicity. He surely 
 wrote letters ; not a fragment of one has ever been beheld — 
 only six signatures to documents, one accompanied by two 
 monosyllables in his hand : two or three autographs in 
 books : behold the sum total. He wrote his own plays, and 
 in several cases revised them, and edited plays by other 
 men ; no contemporary trace of either species of record has 
 come down to us even in a scrivener's copy. What one finds 
 described as original MSS. of Shakespear employed by the 
 editors of 1623 were almost to an absolute certainty nothing 
 more than scriveners' copies bearing, where they were 
 thought to demand them, corrections or additions by the 
 poet. He held conversations with friends and acquaintances ; 
 only a scarcely intelligible remark about certain enclosures 
 in his native place, and a statement at second hand about 
 Jaggard the printer, have been preserved. He had more or 
 less friendly relations with noble and even royal personages, 
 yet not a distinct or positive vestige of the intercourse has 
 survived. Yet how little has been transmitted about such 
 
 the sale of the effects of Charles Butler, Earl of Arran, at Bagshot Park, 
 Surrey, in 1759, gloves and mittens formerly belonging to distinguished 
 personages of the reign of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I. occurred, 
 and commanded high prices. 
 
Personal, History 161 
 
 important characters in a somewhat similar sphere of activity 
 as the Burbages, Alleyn, and Henslowe, and how far less we 
 should have, had not Henslowe left a Diary, and had not 
 Alleyn, besides leaving a Diary, founded a college, where his 
 papers were deposited ? I apprehend, notwithstanding, that 
 in the case of Shakespear, whose avocations were so constant 
 and so manifold during nearly thirty years, and who was a 
 personage of such exceptional eminence, a mass of precious 
 documentary and autograph matter was lost in some fire. 
 The handful of papers, which have escaped the ravages of 
 neglect and accident, must be the slenderest salvage. 
 
 It is to be taken into account that only a single manu- 
 script of Jonson is known — that of the Metamorphosed 
 Gypsies — and we hold only one or two original letters. We 
 are indebted to Drummond's Notes of his conversations with 
 that writer for a few details, and a volume of early tran- 
 scripts of Jonson, Chapman and Harvey correspondence, 
 which recently came to light, served to encourage the hope 
 that even better things may reward future gleaners or 
 explorers. Of Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and other contem- 
 poraries the information is even scantier, although they 
 wrote so much, and, except Marlowe, were before the world 
 so long. 
 
 During six or seven and twenty years, with occasional 
 intermissions, of his busy career, Shakespear was at work in 
 London day by day, mingling with friends, reading, writing, 
 concluding agreements, and filling parts at the theatre ; and 
 when every available source has been exhausted, we contem- 
 plate the accessions of three quarters of a century or more 
 to our stores with a pleasure qualified by the fear that the 
 end has been reached without enlightening us on many 
 outstanding problems. 
 
 The process of restoration in this case has been singularly 
 gradual, and a few new points have sufficed to confer on the 
 finder a kind of celebrity. The effect of many of the 
 fortuitous additions to Shakespearean biography has been 
 to shew, on the one hand, how incomplete our material yet 
 
 L 
 
162 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 remains, and is probably destined to remain, and on the 
 other, how close to the surface more or less important evi- 
 dences have lain during ages. Our earlier commentators or 
 editors would have been immeasurably surprized to learn 
 that in the Journal of the commander of an East-Indiaman, 
 1607, it is set down that for the sake of affording the crews 
 of two vessels, sailing in company, wholesome diversion, 
 the plays of Hamlet and Richard II. were performed on 
 board. ^ 
 
 How many men of letters and genius, who have passed 
 away almost within our own time, have left behind them 
 little more in the way of personal record ; and it is in reality 
 a source of regret, rather than a ground for astonishment, 
 that Shakespear, living and dying under conditions so im- 
 mensely more unpropitious to the survival of material 
 for his history, should have been so incompletely dis- 
 closed to us. 
 
 I am tempted to refer to one or two somewhat parallel 
 cases — in some respects more striking — of the oblivion, which 
 may overtake a man of eminence in his own day. There is 
 the deplorable example of the neglect and indifference dis- 
 played by his contemporaries and immediate posterity 
 toward the great Marquis of Worcester, of whom his modem 
 biographer writes: "So entirely are his countrymen un- 
 acquainted with the history of his life, that a very plausible 
 work might be written to disprove both his authorship of 
 the Century and his invention of the steam-engine. Indeed 
 Scotland has already contributed materials for the former, 
 and M. Arago, the Astronomer Royal of France, has all but 
 made out the latter." * The marquis died in poverty and 
 obscurity. We not only do not know the place of his death, 
 but the circumstances of his two marriages. Again, take 
 the case of Robert Gunsley, Parson of Titsey in Surrey, who 
 died in 1618, a notable benefactor to Maidstone. Yet 
 
 * Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 1865, p. cxi. 
 2 Dircks, Mfe, Times, and Scientific labours of the Second Marquis of 
 Worcester, 1865, viii. 
 
Personal History 163 
 
 a letter in 1722 in answer to a demand for information 
 respecting him, was met by an avowal, that all that could be 
 found was the record of his burial.i I could furnish a long 
 list of distinguished personages of former times and of all 
 countries, of whose careers the particulars are equally frag- 
 mentary. Of how many thousand Englishmen, who pursued 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries active and con- 
 spicuous callings, do we hold to-day not a single letter, not 
 a single anecdote — at most the dates of birth, burial, and 
 possibly marriage ! And how many of these corresponded all 
 over the country and the world, and could not carry on their 
 affairs, like the dramatist, with clients and friends vivd voce 
 or in earner^ ! Taking a nearly contemporary case — that of 
 Montaigne, a man of- fortune and political distinction, a 
 high municipal officer, and the personal acquaintance of 
 three kings — one between whom and his large and varied 
 circle thousands of letters arguably passed in the course of 
 thirty years ; and what is the fact ? Thirty-five epistolary 
 documents, some saved by having served as prefatory matter 
 to books, some by having been bound up by the recipients 
 among family papers, have by the unwearied researches of 
 editors and antiquaries been recovered in three centuries; 
 and of his father, also an eminent public character, we do 
 not possess in a literary sense a line.^ 
 
 ^ Newton, History and Antiquities of Maidstone, 1741, pp. 165-6. 
 
 " In the case of Gainsborough, Constable his brother-artist was unable 
 to procure within ten years of his death anything of consequence about 
 him at Ipswich, where he passed thirteen years of his life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Period of Neglect — Development of Puritanism and Dissent — A Shake- 
 spear in the United States in 1784 — Collective editions of the older 
 dramatists in slight demand— Remarks on the First Folio — State of 
 Shakespearean knowledge in 1710 — Original prices of the Plays and 
 Poems— Notable copies of the First and Second Folios— Posthumous 
 estimate of Shakespear and adaptation of his Plays by others. 
 
 The period of neglect, so far as public representations on 
 the stage, and the voice of critical opinion, went — the long 
 night preceding the break of a new day — during which 
 thousands of now priceless editicnes princyoes must have 
 silently perished, may be said to have set in, when the circle 
 or generation which beheld and welcomed the first folio, had 
 died away, and when the Civil War paralysed all theatrical 
 operations, and discouraged literary enterprize. 
 
 In a play called Love a la Mode, 1663, by a Person of 
 Honour, it is said : 
 
 " Were Shakespear, Fletcher, and renowned Ben 
 Alive, they'd yield to this more happie pen " 
 
 — which may be 'received as a piece of friendly doggerel, but 
 is in keeping with the spirit of the time both in the absolute 
 and relative extinction of the poet. It is equally character- 
 istic of the prevalent feeling, that in 1659, Edward Leigh, 
 Esquire, of Magdalen College, Oxford, in his England 
 Described, signalises Charlecote as " the ancient habitation 
 of the Lucies Knights," and immediately below dismisses 
 Stratford as " a little Mercate Town, where there is a stone 
 Bridge supported with fourteen Arches." But there was, 
 down to the closing years of the seventeenth century, an 
 undoubted bias of critical opinion or judgment adverse to 
 the survival or support of the lofty valuation of Shakespear 
 
 164 
 
Personal History 165 
 
 as a dramatist, leaving his non-dramatic work out of 
 account, even by his contemporaries and the immediately 
 succeeding age, imperfect as we may think that to have 
 been. In a performance by one Arrowsmith, entitled The 
 Reformation, a Comedy, 1673, the poet is classed with 
 Fletcher, Jonson, and Davenant as a man who had scribbled 
 himself into the bulk of follies, and who not only did not 
 know the laws of heroic or dramatic poetry, but how to 
 write true English. Such criticisms, if they serve no other 
 purpose, tend to exonerate those who lived nearer to Shake- 
 spear, or at his side, from deficiency of insight. 
 
 So shortly after 1616 as when Panthea, a volume of 
 poems by Sylvester and others, appeared, in 1630, Drayton 
 is pronounced " the Prince of English Poesy " ; this is per- 
 haps interpretable in a lyrical sense, yet Drayton's fellow- 
 countryman had left behind him evidence of his gifts in that 
 direction, too. Howell, in an undated letter (about 164)5) to 
 Sir Edward Spencer, refers to the lack of interest at that 
 period in antecedent authors. 
 
 To a limited extent, and in a narrow zone, the influence 
 of Davenant, Milton and his nephews, and Dryden succes- 
 sively tended to save from complete oblivion the Shake- 
 spearean tradition and the remembrance of the glories of the 
 old stage, and with these the fame of the poet underwent an 
 almost total eclipse. For the possession by his plays of the 
 later theatre was subject to conditions destructive of their 
 integrity ; they were improved and refined, as the phrase 
 went, to suit the audiences of the Restoration and the era 
 of Queen Anne; and his lyrics were only to be found in 
 anthologies, side by side with those of writers of second and 
 third-rate rank. Even in the Dictionary of Edward Philips, 
 on the appearance of a new edition by Kersey in 1696, the 
 pictorial frontispiece, with its group of representative por- 
 traits, does not include that of Shakespear, as if he had then 
 ceased to be viewed as a master of our language and an 
 ornament of our literature. 
 
 In the Epistle before an abridgment by James Wright 
 
166 Shakespeab : The Man and his Work 
 
 of Dugdale's Monastkon, 1693, he alludes to two of the 
 most famous writers in England, Dugdale and Shakespear, 
 " both Williams ; " and he of course puts the poet second in 
 order. Then onward to the eighteenth century revival — a 
 very gradual one — what scope there was for the conversion 
 of every kind of record into waste ! 
 
 Dugdale himself forsooth had not much to say about a 
 man, of whom his knowledge was, or ought to have been, so 
 considerable and complete. His eyes lacked training. He 
 indulges us in his History of the County with particulars of 
 many matters, on which he might with smaller disadvantage 
 have been less communicative — even silent. 
 
 Not merely among the generation or so which succeeded 
 him in order of time, but among those who had at least the 
 opportunity of seeing, if not of addressing him, does the 
 comparative silence, the inadequate appreciation, manifest 
 itself, and we find ourselves destitute of any copies of the 
 poems and plays carrying evidence of contemporary study 
 and approval, or the reverse, in the sense and way in which 
 annotated examples have descended to us of the works of 
 others. It might almost seem that his age reciprocated or 
 resented the sublime, perhaps cynical, indifference of the 
 poet, so far as anyone can judge, to the censure or applause 
 of others ; nor are we in possession of the slightest hint, 
 with the one or two exceptions which have been noted, what 
 views he entertained about attempts during his own lifetime 
 to treat subjects already handled by himself, as, for instance, 
 Christopher Brooke's Ghost of Richard the Third, 161 4, a 
 metrical composition assuming to unfold more than had 
 been hitherto shown " either in Chronicles, Plays, or Poems," 
 or the prose History of Hamlet, 1608, or the novel founded 
 by Wilkins on Pericles (or vice versa)^ printed in the same 
 year. The means of resolving some of these secrets may 
 
 ^ A case might be made out for the evolution of the drama from the 
 novel, which is more complete, and does not exhibit the appearance of 
 haste or of interruption by death. It is by no means certain that the 
 impression of the novel in 1608 had not been preceded by others. 
 
Personal History 167 
 
 have perished, with the thousands of early English books 
 and papers, which have returned to dust unseen and 
 unnoted. 
 
 The rise and development of Puritanism was not the only 
 factor in achieving almost the nearest approach possible to the 
 extermination of the more purely popular Elizabethan and 
 Jacobean literature. That movement was powerfully aided 
 by the spread of sectarianism and dissent and the advance 
 to the front of a narrow, bigoted, and sombre school of 
 authors which throughout the rural districts at all events, 
 and in all centres of religious intolerance, lifted up their 
 voices against profane and voluptuous writings. Men and 
 women began to acquire and cherish the Practice of Piety, 
 the Imitation of Christ, the Temple, the Synagogue, the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, the Testaments of the 
 Twelve Patriarchs, Supplication of Saints, and thousands of 
 other devout and fanatical effusions, a very pyramid of lean 
 and windy inanities, which gradually effaced the works of 
 the playwrights and lyrists all over the country, and from 
 the pulpit and in private conference with members of their 
 flocks pastors discouraged the perusal of all witless and 
 unholy devices, into the number of which the amatory works 
 of Shakespear indisputably entered. When James I. made 
 his progress through Lancashire in 1617, he noted and 
 reproved the prevalent intolerance of popular amusements, 
 and in the ensuing year appeared the Declaration concerning 
 Lawful Sports to be used. In Nathaniel Baxter's dedication 
 in 1578 to Sir Francis Walsingham of a translation from 
 Calvin and a second kindred author, he permits himself to 
 say that the comedies and tragedies exhibited on the stage 
 were not only profane, but mostly monstrous lies, and that 
 he had heard with shame that the infamous legend of 
 King Arthur and the vile and stinking story of the Saint 
 Graal were to be reprinted. The author of the Practice of 
 Piety ^ speaks very disrespectfully of Christians who attend 
 the performance of plays, and listen to the vassals of the 
 1 Ed. 1623, sign. A 4. 
 
168 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 devil scoffing religion, and blasphemously abusing holy scrip- 
 ture on their stages as familiarly as they use their tobacco- 
 pipes in their bibbing houses. 
 
 When Bagford and Ames formed their assemblages of 
 title-pages and fragments, we perceive, in wading through 
 the huge volumes, the classes of books, which had then sur- 
 vived in the largest numbers; the bulk are just what one at 
 the present time least seeks. If the really valuable records 
 were withdrawn and bound up separately, they would not 
 occupy a very large space. Of first editions of Shakespear 
 there are none, nor did a later biblioclast, Sir John Fenn, 
 meet with any, for as he remorselessly mutilated certain 
 other Elizabethan remains, now approximately ascertained 
 to be unique, he would not have hesitated to immolate an 
 editio princeps of the Passionate Pilgrim or Hamlet. When 
 the long-lost first impression of Greene's Groatsworth of 
 Wit, 1592, was at last found, it proved to have been 
 Fenn's; he had cut out the device from the title to enrich 
 his copy of Herbert's Ames, but considerately spared the 
 rest. 
 
 It is a notorious fact, that the descendants of some 
 branch at least of the Shakespear family, in common with 
 his own immediate kindred, embraced the tenets of Puri- 
 tanism ; and when we perceive the ostensible tendency of the 
 poet himself to keep aloof from his contemporary environ- 
 ments, it altogether becomes worth while to refer to the 
 gentleman, " Mr. Shakespear," whom the Hazlitts met at 
 Perth Amboy in the United States in 1784. What most 
 struck them there, a family diary says, " was a puritanical 
 old gentleman of the name of Shakespear," on whom they 
 looked with great reverence, thinking perhaps that with the 
 name he inherited the powers of the great dramatist ; and 
 the diarist affirms, that his features reminded her of the 
 latter. " He was dressed in a sad-coloured suit, was reserved 
 and stately, and took his coffee with the air of a prince in 
 disguise." ^ 
 
 ^ Pour Generations of a Literary PamOy, by W. C. Hazlitt, 1897, i. 32. 
 
Personal History 169 
 
 There is a little more in this passage and circumstance 
 than may at first sight suggest itself; for it thoroughly falls 
 in with my conception of the self-containing humour of the 
 man, whose fame drew attention to his namesake — this early 
 settler in the States, of whose antecedents it is to be re- 
 gretted that we hear nothing. Was he the representative 
 of a pilgrim father ? Was he of the Warwickshire stock ? 
 Was this reserve, this reticence, a prevailing and inherited 
 trait ?i 
 
 But so far as Stratford, and its muniments and re- 
 collections, go, the very name appears to have dropped out 
 of mention within a generation, even while representatives 
 of the poet yet resided there. Shakespear had kept aloof, 
 so far as he could, from local affairs, and his link with the 
 town where he first saw the light, was almost severed by his 
 committal to the ground. The names and personalities of 
 Hall, Quiney, Hart, Nash, Barnard, overlaid those of one 
 unspeakably greater than them all. 
 
 Although Prynne, in his Histriomastix, 1633, complains 
 that then ^ Shakespear's plays were printed in the best crown 
 paper, far better than most Bibles, collective editions of 
 dramatists were not in vogue about 1616. The monumental 
 honour which Jonson saw erected to his friend, and helped to 
 render somewhat more perfect, had been raised to himself in 
 his lifetime, and to him alone. A publisher had been found 
 to speculate in a first instalment of the Works in the very 
 year in which the world lost Shakespear, but even in this 
 exceptional case nearly a quarter of a century elapsed before 
 the whole undertaking was completed (1616-41), and the 
 author was not spared to witness the conclusion. Nor did 
 the much-applauded writings of Beaumont and Fletcher re- 
 ceive a similar homage till 1647 ; and the Plays of Marlowe, 
 
 ' It may be of collateral interest to remind the reader that at Haseley, 
 near Warwick, the residence of Job Throckmorton, a prominent actor in 
 the Martin Mar-prelate controversy, and at Whitefriars, Coventry, the 
 residence of John Hales, Esq., two at least of the famous series of Tracts 
 were secretly printed. 
 
 * The second folio edition had recently appeared. 
 
170 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Peele, Greene, Heywood, Middleton, Massinger, and Shirley 
 remained inedited down to modern days. Certain favourite 
 productions, dramatic or lyrical, were kept in print, and 
 passed through successive impressions ; there is quite a series 
 of posthumous issues of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece ; and 
 we encounter, only a few years posterior to the first appear- 
 ance of Venus and Adonis, in an early MS. addition to John 
 Bennet's Madrigals, 1599, a piece of dubious homage to 
 the poet as a lyrist, in the form of a sort of travestie, 
 beginning — 
 
 " Venus by Adonis side, 
 Crying kist and kissing cride ; 
 Fa, la, la " — 
 
 and the classical legend had been farther familiarized by 
 Constable in his Shepherd'' s Song of Venus and Adonis in 
 England's Helicon, 1600. But the cost and risk of the folio 
 format, where a large sale was required, at 20*. at least, to 
 reimburse the bookseller, seems in the case of the drama to 
 have long deterred the trade, while edition upon edition of 
 Burton's Anatomy, and scores of theological and mystical 
 works, were brought out without hesitation and without 
 danger. With respect to the Shakespear of 1623, however, 
 there were peculiar difficulties apart from the outlay, for 
 several of the Plays had never been committed to type, and 
 others had received at the hands of the author not only 
 revision but substantial amplification. The volume, as we 
 hold it in our hands to-day, is excessively creditable to those 
 who made themselves responsible for it, for I am of opinion 
 that the editors fulfilled their sacred trust conscientiously 
 and faithfully ; and it is because the critical superintendence 
 and selection of texts were not points then adequately appre- 
 ciated, that the precious and unique book, holding within 
 its covers matter nowhere else extant in type or MS., 
 cannot be treated as more than the foundation of an edition 
 aspiring to completeness and precision, and that the original 
 quartos, little esteemed in 1623, have to be enlisted as 
 prompters and coadjutors. For we are scarcely at liberty 
 
Personal History 171 
 
 to conclude that Shakespear approached his own dramatic 
 work in the separate quarto form or in MS. with any fore- 
 knowledge or solicitude in regard to a future collective 
 edition. His revising hand stopped far short of what might 
 have been accomplished— even of what to him would have 
 been obvious blemishes. The noble folio of Jonson did not 
 make its appearance, till his great friend was on the brink of 
 the grave, and it is by no means clear that, had it been 
 otherwise, he would have taken the initiative, as Jonson 
 perhaps did, in proposing such a speculation. How far in 
 the case of Jonson it answered, we do not absolutely hear ; 
 but no publisher ventured to undertake the Shakespear 
 single-handed. There is just the possibility that, had the 
 poet been spared a few years longer, he might have held in 
 his hands a copy of the folio, farther enriched by his own 
 corrections at press, yet his familiar negligence of his 
 literary interests through life discourages us. 
 
 Occasional uncertainty or indecision may very naturally 
 have existed as to the sequence of the plays ; in fact, in the 
 Daniel and Coutts copy there is a torn leaf indicative of an 
 original intention to let Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and 
 Cressida stand in consecutive order, and in a second, sold in 
 1855, two leaves in As You Like It were cancelled, and 
 reprinted at the time, thus evincing a readiness to ensure 
 accuracy. 
 
 Heming and Condell are regarded as the superintendents 
 of the folio; but the extent to which it exhibits so far 
 momentous inedited matter forces us to believe that there 
 was some other hand or hands concerned in the enterprize, 
 and it is to be remembered that Shakespear's two friends 
 claim no higher distinction than that of having collected the 
 texts, as if they were in the keeping of several persons, pre- 
 sumedly like the Sonnets. The distribution into Comedies, 
 Histories, and Tragedies seems, again, to reveal an editor 
 conversant with classical prototypes, nor must we forget, 
 that there is some ground for the theory, that in the case of 
 certain plays, notably Henry VIII., a skilled and sympa- 
 
172 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 thetic hand was needed to supply imperfections in the copy, 
 where the author left his MS. incomplete. Elsewhere I take 
 occasion to note that the production of the folio, seven years 
 after Shakespear's death, was an enterprise which was thought 
 sufficiently adventurous to demand a syndicate of four 
 stationers, of whom the rather well-known Edward Blount 
 was one, and Issac Jaggard, related to the publisher of the 
 Passhnate Pilgrim, 1599 and 1612, was another. The 
 watermarks on extant copies of the book as first issued 
 vary, as if the partners in the speculation had sent in to the 
 printer their respective quota of paper. 
 
 There had been, as we know, impressions in 1623 ^ and 
 1632, and a third appeared in 1663 ; but it is presumable, 
 from a notice attached to Beaumont and Fletcher's Wild 
 Goose Chase, 1652, that there was then some expectation of 
 republishing Shakespear's and Jonson's Plays once more. No 
 such plan was actually carried out, although the idea is again 
 mooted before the Beaumont and Fletcher of 1679 ; and in 
 fact Shakespear passed through two more folio issues, before 
 his friend again received a similar honour in 1692. It seems 
 to me extremely questionable, whether as many as 600 copies 
 of the First Folio of Shakespear were printed. 
 
 There are two clear and broad divisions, not merely prac- 
 ticable, but expedient for critical and other purposes, in the 
 first collective impression of the Plays : namely, those dramas 
 which had been committed separately to type at anterior 
 dates, and those which did not appear till 1623. On the 
 whole, the texts of the latter group are far purer than those 
 of the reprints from the quartos with or without castigation 
 on the part of the author or of an editor unnamed. This 
 point raises the interesting question as to the nature of the 
 material or printer's copy, which supplied the basis for so 
 much of this historical volume. In their Epistle to the 
 Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, " the two incomparable 
 brethren," Heming and Condell say: "We [that is, immediate 
 
 ^ The Lenox Copy has been cited as bearing the date 1622 ; but the 
 final numeral has been sophisticated. 
 
Personal History 
 
 173 
 
 posterity] have scarce received from him a blot in his papers." 
 The term " papers " might signify autographs or transcripts 
 — almost indubitably we should understand the latter ; and 
 at any rate the reference is to unprinted texts which, if they 
 were scrivener's copies, would naturally be transfers from lost 
 originals, bearing the final corrections and additions of the 
 dramatist, as contrasted with the faulty and imperfect pre- 
 
 WILLIAM HEEBBRT, EAEL OP PEMBROKE (1601-30). 
 
 ^^ 
 
 PHILIP HBKBBET, EAKL OF MONTGOMEBY (1605-30).^ 
 
 sentations derived from unauthorized sources, and offered to 
 us in the quartos. For the relative accuracy of the plays 
 first published in 1623 the world may therefore be indebted 
 to the care exercised by such as had the task of converting 
 Shakespear's possibly not too lucid characters as an editor or 
 reviser of his ovra labours into something which seemed more 
 intelligible, even if it was not what was really intended. The 
 
 1 He succeeded his brother as Earl of Pembroke in 1630, and survived 
 till 1650. 
 
174 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 exact history of the transition of the pieces previously printed 
 to their places in the folio, and of the peremptory need of 
 their occasional co-operation in the process of forming an 
 acceptable text, is a part of the subject beset by incon- 
 sistencies and contradictions. We are plainly reduced to the 
 position of adopting an eclectic principle at the hazard of 
 unwittingly reversing in places the ultimatum of the person 
 best entitled to decide. The obscurity, in which the descent 
 of the material edited by Heming and Condell, and possibly 
 overseen by Jonson, is involved, makes it hopeless to arrive at 
 any confident solution of the presence, amid so much that is 
 excellent, of not a little that is absolutely unworthy of the 
 poet. Editorship by the author himself was very loosely 
 performed, as in Love's Labors Lost, 1598, which exception- 
 ally underwent revision between performance and publi- 
 cation in separate form. But within the covers of the 
 folio of 1623 there is proof of a castigating and amplifying 
 hand, where the texts had been suffered to pass unread or 
 unfinished in the quartos, and this is signally exemplified in 
 the Merry Wives of Windsor of 1602. On the whole, my 
 verdict is in favour of the employment in 1623 of printed 
 and manuscript texts enriched by the hand of the poet, 
 perhaps without the intervention of a scrivener, and the 
 consequent misinterpretation of occasional words or sentences 
 by the printer. 
 
 The measure of editorial attention and vigilance in the 
 conduct of the folio of 1623 through the press was anyhow 
 sensibly governed and stimulated by the friendly and intelli- 
 gent zeal of Shakespear's two fellows, whom he had kindly 
 remembered in his will, and who stood to him in better stead 
 than the folks at New Place. But anyhow altogether the 
 world is an everlasting debtor to the combined effort which 
 vested in its hands the unique inheritance, where so much, 
 had the MSS. copies perished, would have been irreparably 
 lost, since no duplicates had ever been beheld. 
 
 The panegyrical matter attached to the first and second 
 folio edition of the Plays, as well as that scattered among 
 
Personal History 175 
 
 separate publications, partakes of the same inadequate 
 quality from a modern point of view and from our com- 
 parative critical standard. There were throughout these 
 complimentary tributes, with a willingness and desire to do 
 justice to the departed writer, symptoms tha,t hardly a single 
 contributor grasped the full bearings and extent of his thesis, 
 or the vast difference between himself and the man whom he 
 undertook to commend. Such a deficiency of insight is most 
 noticeable in the verses by Jonson and Milton, because these 
 two witnesses were the most eminent among all those who 
 united to transmit their testimony to us; and the case of 
 Jonson is the more striking from his closer and more direct 
 contact with the object of his praise. The metrical and 
 prose estimates, the latter in the Discoveries, seem as hearty 
 and genuine as they are unsatisfactory ; and Jonson screens 
 himself behind the immaturity of his judgment. He was in 
 1623 fifty years of age — either a fool or a physician, as the 
 saying goes. His lines embrace within their limits a homage 
 truly magnificent ; but they scarcely make a serious attempt 
 to discriminate or define the noble and peculiar gifts of the 
 poet, who had been associated with him in so many ways. 
 They are too long, too diffuse, too classical. But they 
 enshrine a noble and unforgetable sentiment, where Jonson 
 pronounces his great friend "a Monument without a Tomb." 
 In my view I am supported by the words of Dryden, who 
 stigmatizes Jonson's verses as "an insolent, sparing, and 
 invidious panegyric," and proceeds to deliver the opinion, 
 that Shakespear had excelled all the ancient playwrights. 
 But Jonson himself, whose humour appears to have been 
 somewhat wayward, elsewhere prints that appreciation, to 
 which even Dryden could have found little to add. I, of 
 course, allude to the passage in Poetaster, 1602, just when 
 his contemporary and friend was lavishing on the world some 
 of his finest, most characteristic, and most unapproachable 
 compositions, where he makes Shakespear's natural genius 
 take precedence of all rules of art, and prognosticates his 
 immortality. This judgment may be taken to have been 
 
176 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 committed to paper, when Jonson had had a full opportunity 
 of founding an opinion, not only on some of the historical 
 plays, but on the Merry Wives on the one hand and on 
 Hamlet on the other. Yet what are we to think, if the 
 passage in Bartholomew Fair, 1614, points to Shakespear, 
 as I suppose it does, of Jonson classing the Winter''s Tale 
 and the Tempest among Drolleries ? And again, even when 
 he refers to his contemporary's superiority to rules of art, 
 he appears to confound the thing itself with the regulations 
 or canons, by which he deemed that it should be regulated. 
 On that point Shakespear became his own lawyer. 
 
 As I have said, Jonson may have had in certain moods a 
 true perception of the higher reach of his friend, and have 
 entertained a jealousy of one, who stood between him and 
 the first place in dramatic art ; and there is the additional 
 circumstance to be taken into account, that, if Shakespear, 
 as we think, received a gracious letter from his sovereign, 
 doubtless allusive to his poetical gifts, such an unique tribute 
 could scarcely fail to produce some heart-burning on Jonson's 
 part, seeing that the latter had been in his Masques so much 
 more closely in touch with the Court. 
 
 The mediocre lines by Milton on Shakespear, com- 
 mencing : — 
 
 " What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd bones 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? " 
 
 are borrowed, so far as the opening and cue go, from a 
 passage in the play of Tancred and Gismtmda, 1591, where 
 the Second Chorus is made to say : — 
 
 " Queen Artemisia thought an heap of stones 
 (Although they were the wonder of that age) 
 A worthless grave, wherein to rest the bones 
 Of her dear lord " ^ 
 
 The author of Lycidas and Comus had perhaps fallen in 
 with the old drama, and had appropriated the image. The 
 main, if not sole, significance of Milton's testimony lies in 
 
 ^ Hazlitt's Dodsley, vii. 48. 
 
Personal History 177 
 
 the expression which he applies to the volume, in which it 
 was set down — in the word unvalued, in relation to the 
 Plays, as if the newer writer was conscious in 1632, as a young 
 man of four-and-twenty, of the inadequate estimation of the 
 dramatist, who had prematurely passed away, when he was a 
 child of eight. Immediately after the death of Shakespear, 
 and even down to 1630, the plays continued to attract large 
 and appreciative audiences at the ordinary theatres and to 
 be performed at Court. But the cases are sufficiently rare, 
 where, during the interval between the closing of the theatres 
 and the Restoration, they were demanded even in book-form. 
 The exceptions are the Merchant of Venice, 1652, Lear and 
 Othello, 1 655, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, of which last 
 no copy is known, although it is advertized as on sale in 1656 
 in quarto with dramas by Jonson, Shirley, and others. In an 
 Address to the Reader before a catalogue of books on sale 
 in 1656, the stationers say that " here are some few Playes 
 worn out of print, which we purpose to reprint," so that the 
 call for such things continued or was perhaps reviving. 
 Evelyn the Diarist witnessed the performance of Hamlet in 
 1661, and was mainly impressed by the disgust which the old 
 plays began to inspire in "this refined age." Nine years 
 elapsed between the output of the first and second folios, and 
 it is a fact that speaks for itself that, in launching it, it was 
 thought desirable to distribute the risk among six, instead 
 of four, stationers. In 1663, however, Evelyn's criticism not- 
 withstanding, a single publisher undertook the book with the 
 supplementary dramas annexed. For the fourth folio the 
 paper appears to have been procured from Holland, and bears 
 the Dutch maker's water mark and name (Van Duvantegard). 
 
 The compiler of a MS. List of Plays * about 1690 
 mentions Timon and Othello as then still in vogue at the 
 theatres, but presumably with alterations. 
 
 No copy of any of Shakespear's Works, plays or poems, 
 has been so far traced to Jonson's possession, although he 
 was the owner of two successive libraries. As the first of 
 ^ A small 12° vol. bought for the British Museum in 1902. 
 
 M 
 
178 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 these was at least partly burned, let us imagine his friend's 
 productions having fallen a prey to the flames in the fire at 
 Westminster, more especially as we remain without vestiges 
 in his hands of the books of many others, in which or whom 
 he was likely to be interested. 
 
 It is merely just to add to what has been said on this 
 point that homage of an at least equally effusive and flatter- 
 ing tenor is offered by Jonson, in his lyrical works, to others 
 — perhaps even of a more extravagant character ; but then 
 the writer was less constrained ; there was no element of 
 professional comparison or contrast where he was addressing 
 himself to the lords and ladies of the Court, or to purely 
 private individuals, and where the eulogy could scarcely 
 react. 
 
 Shakespear's fellows took false measurement of him, and 
 regarded him as no more than one of themselves, and even a 
 man who, like Milton, was outside the theatrical ring, did 
 nothing toward a x-eadjustment of the estimate. His de- 
 ficiency of insight was more excusable, looking at his years, 
 than that of Jonson ; and both judgments were made public 
 at a short interval. But in the present and a few similar 
 cases it is quite as much to the absence of perspective as to 
 any sentiment of jealousy or failure of sympathy that we owe 
 imperfect appreciation ; and, it being so, the result must be 
 that a man of exceptional gifts rarely hears of them from his 
 friends. In estimating the thought and langulpPIMfij|ake- 
 spear we should draw a line at the period which his^^Rind 
 labours covered, and try to forget all that has since been 
 added to our stores of suggestion and illustration, and the 
 effect must be to elevate our appreciation, yet at the same 
 time to shew the broad community in all ages between 
 human nature and genius. 
 
 So far as the collected productions went, the issues of 
 1663 and 168S — an interval of over twenty years — satisfied 
 the public demand, till the first decade of the eighteenth 
 century had nearly expired, and that of 1685 can scarcely 
 have been very widely read, as fine copies are yet common 
 
Personal History 179 
 
 enough. It is very far from being so with the previous 
 folio. 
 
 The exclusion from the folio of 1623, which so far formed 
 a precedent for those of 1632, 1663, and 1685, of the non- 
 dramatic writings, was neither an oversight nor an accident. 
 It proceeded from a deliberate and correct persuasion on the 
 part of the editors, that the Plays represented the true life's 
 work of the author, and that the rest, if not disadvantageous, 
 was at all events immaterial, to his fame. Such an opinion 
 of course by no means contemplates the often exquisite 
 and delicious songs scattered through the dramatic series, 
 and which are as unexcelled as that for their beauty and 
 wisdom. 
 
 The state of Shakespearean knowledge, among such as 
 ought best to have known, was so low in or about 1710, that 
 Lintot the publisher, in editing the lyrics to accompany the 
 then recent edition of the plays by Howe, informs us that 
 "it is generally agreed he dy'd about the year 1616," and 
 he makes this circumstance a ground for holding that the 
 Passionate Pilgrim, having been printed seventeen years 
 before his death, wa^ published by himself. But, which is far 
 more extraordinary and unpardonable, Rowe himself, a man 
 of literary pretensions, refers in 1709 to the Poems of 1640 
 as a book, which he had but lately seen, and as to the 
 genuineness of the contents of which he could not conse- 
 quently speak. This was sixty years posterior to the ap- 
 pearance of the volume, and when Verms and Adonis and 
 Lucrece had already been inserted in the miscellany entitled 
 Poems on Affairs of State, 1703-7, as Shakespear's. Curi- 
 ously enough, the former took precedence, perhaps as a piece 
 modelled on a historical tradition ; and the publisher lets us 
 know that he owed the idea of reproducing them to certain 
 ingenious gentlemen, who thought that such labours of Mr. 
 William Shakespear's (the Great Genius of our English 
 Drama), Rape of Lucrece and his Venus and Adonis, which were 
 never printed in his works, might be preserved. This was in 
 1707, two years prior to the collected impression by Lintot of 
 
180 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the Poems. But, again, the bookseller, with the usual want 
 of a sense of proportion and propriety, lays nearly equal 
 stress on his good fortune in procuring from abroad a set of 
 satirical prints relating to contemporary French affairs, which 
 occur toward the end of the volume. 
 
 Extrinsically or bibliographically speaking, the languid 
 competition for this species of literature had a duration of a 
 century and a half (1600-1750), and within that period the 
 Pilgrim was bought for three halfpence in a volume with 
 Venus and Adonis, and the Sonnets for a shilling. Let us 
 not shed tears ; as they were acquired, so they were esti- 
 mated ; still the prophecy of Thorpe in 1 609 as to the 
 usurious rise in the value of these productions was very far 
 from being speedily fulfilled. A farther point seems to be 
 that only two copies of the first, and a single copy of the 
 second, folio, have apparently descended to us with evidences 
 of distinguished contemporary ownership. Of these one of 
 the first ^ and one of the second ^ were formerly the property 
 of Charles I., who is expressly stated by Milton to have 
 studied the books in his days of trouble — whether the first 
 or the second folio, for he had both at different times, is 
 uncertain. The remaining copy of the first is that presented 
 by Isaac Jaggard the publisher to Augustine Vincent the 
 herald, and bears the arms of Vincent in blind, but has been 
 damaged in the binding ; * and the Plummer of Middlestead 
 Hamlet of 1604 stands alone in having received in the 
 eighteenth century a separate binding of red morocco. 
 The plays, and indeed the poems equally, were not among 
 
 1 Said to have been preserved, and to be still, in a French library. 
 
 ' Now in the British Museum. It passed through the hands of Sir 
 Thomas Herbert, to whom the King gave it, and was successively in the 
 libraries of Askew and Steevens. At the Steevens sale in 1800 it was 
 acquired for George III. 
 
 ' A copy uncut as issued, presented to the family by the printer, is 
 said to be still preserved in this state in a specially made case, and to be 
 the property of the Sibthorp family. See my Roll of Honour, 1908, p. 214. 
 My informant was one of the staff at Sotherans', when the book was in 
 their hands for the making of the case. 
 
Personal History 181 
 
 those literary treasures, on which the early collector lavished 
 his money, as he might do on a Practice of Piety or a 
 Herbert's Temple. A sheep-jacket or a stitched wrapper 
 had to suffice; and it was the same with the other play- 
 wrights. There is, however, a copy of the folio of 1623, 
 which possesses a very special interest, as it was the very 
 book forwarded by the Stationers' Company, agreeably to 
 an arrangement with Sir Thomas Bodley, in sheets as printed, 
 and committed in February, 1623-4, to an Oxford binder, 
 William Wildgoose, to be bound in its calf vesture. In 
 1664 it was sold, on receipt of the more complete third folio, 
 to Richard Davis, the local bookseller, with other duplicates, 
 for ■£24, and has been recently recovered from the Turbutt 
 family, two of whose members were connected with Christ 
 Church and Magdalen, for the extravagant sum of ^£"2000, 
 raised by public subscription. Since its departure from its 
 original home, where it occupied a place on the shelves now 
 less worthily filled by vol. i. of Harris's History of Kent, it 
 has experienced very hard usage at the hands of its holders, 
 and is at present in a most lamentable state of deterioration, 
 nearly the whole of the title and the whole of the leaf with 
 Ben Jonson's verses having been lost, and many pages having 
 sustained damage. There are traces of a chain. Had the 
 Bodleian authorities kept the book, it might have been 
 unique in point of condition. But some of these purblind 
 academical wiseacres even questioned the utility of retaining 
 the copy of Milton's Minor Poems, 1645, presented by the 
 poet himself with an autograph letter. 
 
 It is particularly remarkable that in this copy portions, 
 however, are immaculate, while others are in different stages 
 of decay from unclean fingers, and there is a ground for 
 concluding, that the culprits were the Bachelors of Arts, 
 who honoured the book and its author by demanding it from 
 the librarian, and wiping their greasy hands on the parts, 
 where they found something arresting their attention. But 
 the point is that the mournful and disgusting neglect dates 
 back beyond the time, when the volume passed into the 
 
182 Shakespeab: The Man and his Work 
 
 possession of the family, from whose representatives it has at 
 last been recovered.^ 
 
 The plain truth seems to be that, while the presses of 
 the two universities teemed during these anterior centuries 
 with matter of the least possible concernment — the merest 
 rubbish in fact — in a permanent sense, there was no general 
 or official sympathy with such writings as those of Shake- 
 spear, notwithstanding the incidental mention of him by 
 Meres and by Clarke, and the performance of Hamlet at 
 Oxford and Cambridge ; and we possess no early edition of his 
 poems or his plays with an Oxford or Cambridge imprint. 
 In our time the Universities have produced collective editions 
 of the poet, and sorry and shameful performances they are. 
 
 We have contemporary authority for believing that the 
 price of issue of the Sonnets in 1609 was five silver pence of 
 the day, a penny in excess of the sum probably charged for 
 the quarto plays, which generally extend to the same 
 number of pages — some of them to more. But the Pilgrim 
 of 1599, making only 30 duodecimo leaves against 40 quarto 
 leaves of the Sonnets, was scarcely estimated at more than 
 twopence at the time of publication, nearly double what its 
 eighteenth century purchaser gave for it and the Venus and 
 Adonis together. In or about 1680 Narcissus Luttrell went 
 to the length of paying a shilling for the Sonnets, more than 
 twice the published price; but in 1687, according to a 
 contemporary catalogue, the first folio of the Plays, brought 
 out in 1623 at 20*., had temporarily receded to 14*.^ These 
 are samples of the call for such books by generations not 
 unwilling to pay heavy amounts for volumes, which at 
 
 ^ Mr. F. Madan's information to me, when I saw him at Oxford, June 
 19, 1911. 
 
 ' In 1712 Maurice Wynne gave 273. for a fine copy, yet surviving, of 
 the second folio. In 1685 a copy of the fourth, then just published, 
 fetched 12s. 8d. by auction. But the volume was still in stock, and might 
 be had in quires. Sir Richard Bulstrode, born in 1610, gave for Jonson's 
 works, 1616, 20s., but that was of course some years posterior to the date 
 of the book's appearance. The price attached to the Jonson may have 
 guided the publisher of the Shakespear a few years later. In Sir Henry 
 
Personal History 183 
 
 present command scarcely any amount whatever — which one 
 may have weighed out by^the pound or the hundredweight. 
 Four pence or a groat is the figure attached by the coeval 
 buyer to many a fugitive poem of the closing years of the 
 same century, composed of four or six printed leaves, a 
 symptom of the decrease in the purchasing power of money. 
 
 The paucity of Elizabethan dramatic and poetical remains 
 in general is to be ascribed to a prolonged term of deprecia- 
 tion, rather than to assiduity of perusal; even imperfect 
 copies or fragments of Shakespear lyrics and plays in the 
 original editions most sparingly occur, and the survival in a 
 few isolated cases in virgin state seems to tell the same story 
 of indiiFSrence and a changed taste. 
 
 After all, however, perhaps the most impressive evidence 
 of the prompt forgetfulness of Shakespear is the circumstance 
 that, in their conversations at Hawthornden in 1619, only 
 three years after his death, there was scarcely any ostensible 
 allusion worth mentioning to him or to his writings by 
 Jonson or Drummond, that there was an equal absence of 
 solicitude to impart and to invite intelligence ; and this was 
 while the old school of dramatic literature still held its 
 ground. At the same time, from the general tenor of the 
 disclosures of Jonson to his Scotish host, there is the less 
 room to suspect that we have lost any personal anecdotes of 
 the recently deceased poet of a disadvantageous complexion, 
 while the talk (for which we have to take Drummond's word) 
 resulted in a verdict for the late Master Shakespear as an 
 indifferent third. 
 
 The earliest symptoms of a consciousness among readers 
 and thinkers, that the writings of Shakespear preserved some 
 measure of vitality and permanence, are to be sought in 
 
 Mainwaring of Peover's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1647, occurs on 
 a flyleaf the coeval note of price, £1 3s. ed. In 1729 the Countess of Veer- 
 hoven's copy (now at all events imperfect) of second folio sold for 4s. It 
 had passed through many hands ; and had been formerly, perhaps 
 originally, the property of Elizabeth of Bohemia, having been given to 
 her by the Countess of Angus. It subsequently belonged to Prince Rupert, 
 who gave it to the Countess of Veerhoven. 
 
184 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 occasional references to him and them in such works and 
 authors as I have indicated; and a remarkable piece of 
 testimony has fallen in my way, illustrating the possession 
 by Charles I. of the first folio, namely, the performance 
 at Hampton Court before the King on October 17, 1630, of 
 A Midsummer Nighfs Dream?- Inasmuch, more especially, 
 as a preponderance of eulogy was bestowed by the earlier 
 critics on Shakespear's comic creations, a notable enunciation 
 is that of John Hales of Eton, who aflSrmed that "he would 
 shew all the poets of antiquity outdone by Shakespear in all 
 the topics and commonplaces made use of in Poetry"; and 
 there was a learned conference on the subject at Eton, at 
 which Lord Falkland,^ Sir John Suckling, and others were 
 present, and that view confirmed. But Hales at any rate 
 looked rather at the more superficial side than at the pro- 
 found dramatic reach. The Lyrics had enjoyed a consider- 
 able term of popularity during the life and after the death 
 of the writer, more especially the Venus and Adonis, which 
 is found appealing, even more perhaps than the Lucrece, to 
 classes of readers, who turned from the Sonnets as more 
 or less trite and unintelligible, even although Thorpe had 
 diplomatically introduced them as literary delicacies so far 
 withheld from the world, for the conspicuous declaration on 
 the title-page that they had never been printed before plainly 
 bespoke their anterior life in a manuscript form. The 
 dramatic labours were less demanded in book-form for 
 purposes of study or perusal subsequently to their appear- 
 ance on the stage. But it was the Plays, which eventually 
 won back for Shakespear his fame and his rank, while the 
 Poems began even in the eighteenth century to recede into 
 
 ^ In the same year the Merry Wives was reprinted, for the first time, 
 from the folio of 1623, and I suggest that this may have been also com- 
 manded at Court, although it is not mentioned in the MS. document, 
 forming part of a small folio volume in the original parchment wrapper, 
 with which I met a few years ago. 
 
 ^ Doubtless this occurred after the retirement of his lordship into 
 private life at his seat at Tew in Oxfordshire shortly after his accession 
 to the title in 1638. 
 
Personal, History 185 
 
 the background, to be tolerated for the sake of the rest — in 
 collective impressions of the works to be thrown in, as it 
 were, without farther charge. Nor were there wanting 
 editors, who treated them as pure surplusage. 
 
 During the seventeenth century and the commencing 
 years of the eighteenth there existed a minority, which could 
 point to the Plays on their bookshelves, and from time to 
 time turned over the leaves with a sort of vague interest 
 without any definite persuasion or any literary gain, but 
 with whom it was a more or less distinct tradition, that here 
 was a volume, of which some of the finest judges had formerly 
 spoken with afiectionate regard. 
 
 From 1712 or thereabout forward we meet with some of 
 the separate plays — Hamlet, Julius Ccesar, Othello, and a few 
 others — in editions of no critical pretensions from the presses 
 of Ireland and Scotland, as well as London, and (in transla- 
 tions) from those of Germany. The Comedies and Histories, 
 and the Lyrics, appear to have been in the least demand. 
 In one or two cases the original language was reproduced at 
 the Hague by a bookseller named Johnson. In 1731 the 
 Ruddimans printed for Allan Ramsay the tragedy of 
 Macbeth, as it was then in course of performance at the 
 Theatre Royal, Edinburgh. This was, it seems, the earliest 
 representation of the play, so peculiarly interesting to 
 Scotish readers and spectators across the border. 
 
 There was not any actual school of verbal criticism 
 previous to the days of Sir Thomas Hanmer, unless we are 
 to receive as such the remarks and suggestions made by the 
 second Earl of Rochester, and found among his papers after 
 his death at Woodstock in 1681. These, not printed till 
 1761,-'^ when Edward Capell (the Patron of Shakespear — the 
 expression is that of the author of the Pursuits of Litera- 
 ture) had begun to turn his attention to the subject, are 
 certainly far from important ; yet they are entitled to rank 
 as the starting-point in the process, scarcely even now 
 
 ' In the edition of the Works, 1761. The copy, which I used, I caused 
 to be sent across the water to Mr. Furness for use in his Variorum. 
 
186 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 brought to a conclusion, of textual collation and recension ; 
 and the strangest part of the matter seems to be, that such 
 a labour should have had such a pioneer. We probably owe 
 this lean critical exercitation to a cursory study of the Plays 
 of the earlier poet in connection with his own dramatic 
 efforts. Yet altogether we cannot help seeing that, during 
 the entire period from the Restoration to the issue of Rowe's 
 edition of the Plays in 1709, followed at leisurely intervals 
 by those of Pope, Theobald, and Hanmer, the name was 
 kept before the world by arbitrary adaptations of certain of 
 the separate pieces at the theatres of the three kingdoms, 
 while the day had yet to come for accurate and just appraise- 
 ment. In a List of Plays at the end of the Reformed Wife, 
 1700, Hamlet and Macbeth are included in such a subsidiary 
 way as to shew, that the advertizer considered them to be 
 less in demand, if not in merit, than productions by Waller, 
 Cowley, and Suckling. Nevertheless, as I have intimated, 
 some of the series in a more or less impure textual state 
 were kept in stock by a few leading booksellers in London 
 from about 1656 to about 1710. 
 
 The posthumous mentions, as a rule, merely establish, if 
 they do so much, the survival, in a few special directions, of 
 the memory of the poet and his dramatic, rather than his 
 lyrical writings ; and we perceive that in every instance the 
 resurrection of the name imports a text of the original 
 author adapted to a later and not improved taste. No 
 doubt, the playwrights of the Restoration, whatever they 
 might say or grant, studied the works of their predecessors, 
 and adopted any notions, which suited their purpose, with 
 or without recognition. One of the most curious examples 
 is the Duke of Newcastle's Triumphant Widow, 1677, which 
 betrays the Shakespear influence in several passages or 
 phrases. We meet there with imitations of Autolycus and 
 Shallow. Sir John Noddy is a poor copy of Falstaff. There 
 is also the notion about the woman being hors du garde for 
 her body at 14, which reminds us of the passage in A Winter''s 
 Tale. There is a passage in the dedication by Mrs. Behn 
 
Personal History 187 
 
 to Lord Worcester of her Emperor of the Moon, 1687, 
 which may seem to look back regretfully at the old Eliza- 
 bethan theatre; for the writer observes that it was the 
 admirable work of Shakespear, Fletcher, and Jonson, which 
 formerly enabled the town to keep so many houses open. 
 This utterance, however, is rather per se and exceptional, for 
 the excellent caterers for the stage in the post- Shakespearean 
 era deemed the work of the earlier masters, as a rule, only 
 admissible and likely to succeed, when they had reduced it 
 to their own level or standard. In an edition of Webster's 
 White Devil, 1672, the writer of the preface commends in 
 succession Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
 then proceeds to speak of the nght happy and copious in- 
 dustry of Mr. Shakespear, Mr. Dekker, and Mr. Hey wood. 
 In the Athenian Mercury for 1691, we read : " Father Jonson 
 was excellent at Humour, Shakespear deserves the name of 
 Sweetest which Milton gave him " ; and Lee, in more than 
 one of his own performances, dwells more or less discrimi- 
 natingly on the relative merits of Shakespear, Jonson and 
 Fletcher — as usual, without accentuating their disparity. In 
 short, our poet merely forms one of a group, not the 
 foremost figure; and Lord Lansdowne went so far, in 
 bringing out the Merchant of Venice in 1701, as to substi- 
 tute lines to make out the sense, where he had altered 
 the language of his predecessor. Possibly his lordship was 
 barely satisfied with the Rev. Edward Young's acclamation 
 of him in 1713 as " a second Shakespear." He did not stand 
 alone. Mary Fix, in the prologue to her Queen Catharine, 
 1698, makes this generous allowance : — 
 
 " Shakespear did oft his Countries worthies chuse, 
 Nor did they by his Pen their Lustre lose.'' 
 
 There is, however, the singular point in relation to 
 Webster's play above-mentioned, that in one extant copy 
 of it at any rate an impression of the Droeshout portrait is 
 printed on the back of the title. There is no more than the 
 incidental notice of the earlier writer to explain or justify 
 
188 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the proceeding. A curious preface to a reprint of Hamlet, 
 1683, seems to indicate a politic deference to current taste, 
 where it apprises us that certain passages marked with a * 
 were then omitted by the actors, but that, to do no wrong to 
 the incomparable author, they are retained as part of the 
 text. 
 
 The contention that the interest in Shakespear and his 
 work remained very languid and partial during the remainder 
 of the century which witnessed the close of his life, and 
 during the first half of the next one, is not impaired, I 
 think, by occasional visits to Stratford by persons who 
 happened to be travelling in the county on pleasure or 
 business, and the notice by them of the monument in the 
 church, as the birthplace and the actual dwelling do not 
 seem to have exdted any curiosity or attention. In fact, 
 with the fewest possible exceptions, and those confined to a 
 period when the poet was living, and in the full enjoy- 
 ment of his reputation, the references in printed books and 
 MSS. singularly coincide in their deplorable and irritating 
 ineptitude. 
 
II 
 
 THE LYRICAL WORK 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Lyrics of 1593-4 — Conditions, which favoured their successive appear- 
 ance — Venus and Adonis specially licensed by the Primate — Peculiar 
 feature about the two books — Significance of the motto on the title of 
 the Venus amd Adonis — Was Lucrece written in a London suburb ? — 
 The Plague of 1593 — Coeval notices of the Poems — The Passionate 
 Pilgrim — Shakespear's earliest Critics — Verses before the second issue 
 of Florio's Montaigne and beneath the portrait of James I. ascribable 
 to Shakespear — The verses before Florio's Second Fruits probably not 
 Shakespear's — Dubious authenticity of a passage in the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor. 
 
 The Works are not only classifiable into dramatic and non- 
 dramatic, but the latter may be subdivided into two almost 
 distinct types and sections : 1. The two early lyrical Poems 
 with the few occasional pieces contributed to miscellanies or 
 at any rate comprised in them, and the Sonnets; and (2) 
 the Songs incorporated with the Plays. A very brief com- 
 parative study of the two groups should suffice to satisfy any 
 one, that in the latter lay the main strength of the writer 
 outside the drama ; and while these productions are unequal, 
 some of the happiest and most excellent occur in the earliest 
 plays, some of the least so in those of the maturest period ; 
 yet, on the whole, they surpass the Venus and Adonis, 
 Lucrece, and Sonnets ; and the author may have shared the 
 indifference to those other efforts evinced and expressed by 
 so many modern critics. 
 
 There are no extant particulars of the circumstances, 
 under which Shakespear contracted a sort of acquaintance 
 with Henry Wriottesley, third Earl of Southampton of that 
 line, who as a mere boy had succeeded to the title in 1581, 
 and who in 1593 was still a minor under the guardianship of 
 Lord Burleigh. We know, from the letter to Hicks, that 
 in June, 1592, a few months prior to the issue of the poem, 
 
 191 
 
192 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the Earl was lodging in the Strand, a not unusual resort 
 even in earlier times for those who had no independent 
 residence in London. The Earl's father had died in 1581 
 at Southampton House, Holborn, however. Perhaps the 
 house, like Beaulieu, was out of repair, or he had not 
 entered into possession. His mother, after the death of 
 the second Earl, was remarried to Sir Thomas Heneage, 
 Vice- Chamberlain of the Queen's Household, of the Heneages 
 of Cadeby, Lincolnshire, himself a poet, as we know from 
 a recently discovered MS.^ But the union was a very brief 
 one, as Heneage died the same year. 
 
 The young Earl was apparently not reluctant to pose at 
 this early stage of his career as a patron of literary men, for,, 
 two years prior to the publication of Vemts and Adonis, John 
 Clapham had obtained leave to inscribe to him a Latin 
 poem called Narcissibs, a theme allied to that adopted by 
 Shakespear.^ As Southampton seems to have been about 
 this time near at hand, it may not therefore be necessary to 
 go beyond the supposition that the latter made a direct 
 appeal in a similar way. Perhaps Nash did the same, when 
 he procured his lordship's countenance for his Terrors of the 
 Night, 1594. But Southampton lived to see quite a small 
 library of works, in which his name was thus associated. 
 Peele in his poem, entitled Anglorum Ferice, compares him 
 to Bevis the local hero, saying that he was as gentle, as 
 valiant, and as debonnair. 
 
 Whatever may have been the precise origin of the first 
 production of Venus and Adonis, there is little doubt that a 
 helping agency to the prompt succession of the Lucrece was 
 the enforced suspension of theatrical performances and of 
 the Law Term in London owing to the plague of 1593, which 
 had been followed by the phenomenal weather of 1594. 
 Venus and Adonis was licensed on April 18, 1593, and 
 
 "■ Heneage had been in his younger days on intimate terms with Walter 
 Haddon, who addresses to bim several letters from Bruges in 1565-6. 
 
 ° The copy of Ond's Metamorphoses, 1502, owned by the poet, was in 
 all probability an early acquisition. 
 
The Lyrical Work 193 
 
 Lucrece on May 9, 1594. Both poems were inscribed to the 
 youthful Southampton, and were calculated to be agreeable 
 to his taste and flattering to his vanity. Yet a much more 
 remarkable feature in the presentation to the world of the 
 former book must strike us from one point of view as having 
 been its enrolment on the Stationers' Register under the 
 special authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the same 
 Dr. Whitgift, at whose house in November, 1592, Nash's 
 Summers' Last Will and Testament had been acted, but who 
 subsequently grew less tolerant, and closed the register 
 against Hall's Satires, Marlowe's Ovid, Cutwode's Bumble 
 Bee, and other questionable articles, with which Shakespear's 
 volume might have been not improperly bracketed. Perhaps 
 the noble lord, whose name was attached to the dedication, 
 despite his extreme youth and inexperience, had something 
 to do with the indulgence, and Field the publisher might 
 well be reassured by the hand of the Primate to the entry. 
 I do not know what his Grace might have done if the Earl 
 had backed the registration of another poetical effort of the 
 day — Nash's Choice of Valentines — addressed by the author 
 to his friend — to wit, the Earl, the dedicatee of his Terrors 
 of the Night, 1594, which just succeeded Shakespear's two 
 oblations. 
 
 A point of view which must not be neglected in en- 
 deavouring to illustrate the personal character of the poet, 
 is the taste and self-command, which he shews in the intro- 
 duction of his works, where it is to be presumed, that he 
 had the opportunity of exercising a direct control. The 
 forefronts and preliminary Epistles of the two earliest pro- 
 ducts — the Venits and Adonis and. Lucrece — how succinct both 
 alike are, how much to the purpose, and how dissimilar from 
 the florid and diffuse style then usually prevalent! If 
 Shakespear in his Sormets had the Affectionate Shepherd of 
 Barnfield in view, the latter writer seems to have admired 
 and copied the impressive brevity of the title to Venus and 
 Adonis, as exempt from bookseller's gai'nish as the noble 
 epistle to Lord Southampton is exempt from cliental adula- 
 
194 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 tion and servility. The fashion was, it must be said, not 
 Elizabethan or Shakespearean in its origin, for we occasion- 
 ally meet throughout the sixteenth century, when regular 
 title-pages had come into general vogue, with similar frugality 
 or similar reticence ; and, rather curiously, in a book which 
 the poet almost certainly held in his hand, and of which he 
 made, as I shew, larger use than was previously suspected 
 — the Hwndred Merry Tales — this peculiarity is signally con- 
 spicuous, and presents a striking contrast to the not long 
 posterior publication, the Merry Tales and Quick Answers, 
 which, we are assured on the threshold, were " very mery, 
 and pleasant to rede." It meets the eye again in Englamd's 
 Helicon, 1600, and Shakespear's Sonnets forsooth beti*ay a 
 similar prepossession. 
 
 The two addresses to Lord Southampton in two succes- 
 sive years exhaust the recourse of the poet to such a kind of 
 auxiliary tribute and homage. How many farther oppor- 
 tunities he had of linking noble and influential names with 
 his own we know well enough, and we equally know that he 
 never did so, although to take for granted his direct and 
 tolerably intimate relations with the Earls of Pembroke and 
 Montgomery cannot be very rash in the face of certain 
 familiar collateral indications. 
 
 It is observable that the terse, epigrammatic form was not 
 limited to the lyrics. It extends to the denominations of 
 the plays, as represented on the stage (not as separately 
 printed), wherever we may conclude that the author had a 
 ruling voice. Whatever might be his solicitude to attain a 
 successful reception of his dramas at the theatres, we must 
 acquit him of the disposition to fall into the booksellers' 
 foible of appetizing title-pages — quite an epidemic in his early 
 days, and extending to all classes of literature. 
 
 Taken in connection with the complaint in the Sonnets 
 that the name of the writer had been branded by occupa- 
 tion forced on him, presumably that of an actor, the quota- 
 tion from the Amores of Ovid on the title-page of Venus and 
 Adonis — 
 
The Lykical Work 195 
 
 " Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo 
 Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua — " 
 
 might at first appear to receive an unexpected illustration, 
 the Vilia of the couplet possibly implying unworthy em- 
 ployments for a season discarded, while the despised and 
 <iiscredited performer on the boards of other men's plays 
 assumed his true rank among the disciples of the Muses 
 under the most auspicious patronage. But it is to be sus- 
 pected that he had in view prior compositions by other pens 
 of a less classical complexion, although he had been antici- 
 pated by Lodge's Scilla's Metamorphosis, 1589, and at all 
 €vents Clapham's Narcissus, 1591, and we are not accus- 
 tomed to regard the Amores as among the more ambitious 
 efforts of the Homan bard. There was nothing unusual in 
 the metrical arrangement of Lodge's poem, and I can scarcely 
 subscribe to the opinion, that it served Shakespear as a 
 model. It was a brief interval, during which theatrical 
 exhibitions were discontinued in London ; and he proceeded 
 bard and sonneteer. 
 
 I have pointed to England^s Helicon, 1600, as somewhat 
 cognate in its prolegomena to other Shakespearean books; 
 but the most curious feature in it is the quotation from 
 TibuUus on the title-page : — 
 
 " Casta placent superis, 
 Pura cum veste venite, 
 Et manibus puris 
 
 Sumite fontis aquam.'' 
 
 Which sends us back to the Vilia miretur vulgus of '1593, 
 and more closely accords with the texture of the later 
 volume. The poet was a contributor to the miscellany. If he 
 suggested the motto he may have done so from a reference 
 to the original, which he is just as likely to have possessed 
 as the Ovid.^ He had soon resumed his theatrical operations, 
 
 1 There were two Aldine editions of Catullus, TibuUus, and Propertius, 
 1502 and 1515. Until the Ovid accidentally occurred, no one dreamed 
 that he had that, and then its genuineness was questioned till the key to 
 the signatures was pointed out by myself. This is a case, where one has 
 
196 Shakespear: The Man and his Wouk 
 
 and they were not so irksome in 1600 as they might have 
 been seven years before. 
 
 Impartially speaking, it is fortunate for his reputation 
 that the lyrical experiment was no more than a temporary 
 exigency. Looking at the maiden publication itself, one 
 distinguishes occasional passages, which seem to prognosticate 
 higher possibilities; but the Lucrece is decidedly inferior 
 in every way; its preparation was arguably more rapid. 
 In one or two descriptions in the 1593 volume we are 
 probably bound to recognize, rather than early Shoreditch 
 recollections, yet earlier Stratford ones. 
 
 A slender quarto volume in the Bodleian Library pre- 
 serves within its covers the sole surviving copy of the editio 
 princeps of Venus and Adonis, 1593, and a second work, 
 nearly equal in rarity, if not in fame, Giles Fletcher's Licia. 
 A singular history, of which we are not admitted to the 
 commencement, is attached to the book. It forms No. 396 
 of " A Catalogue of a Curious and Valuable Collection of 
 Books, which are now Selling (for Ready Money) at the 
 Prices affixed to each Article ; By William Ford, No. 14 
 Cromford Court, Manchester, MDCCCV." Ford's inter- 
 leaved copy is before me, with his MS. notes, relative to 
 the buyers and prices. Although the items are said to be 
 purchaseable at the figures attached, no figures are attached 
 to lots 395-6 ; and against the latter we find written by the 
 owner: "£25, 0. 0. Mr. Malone." The precious relic, 
 which comes second in ordei", is described as "original 
 edition, elegantly bound in Russia, gilt leaves, extraordinaiy 
 rare"; and nothing is said of its antecedents. Malone 
 hesitated to pay the amount asked, which -was presumably 
 higher, for Ford tells us that " £25 was the sum I at last 
 
 to gather the material inchmeal. It is fairly clear that he was not unac- 
 quainted with some of Ovid's other writings and even with other Roman 
 authors, and I take with satisfaction the opportunity to refer to an article 
 by Sir Sidney Lee in the Quarterly Review for April 1909, dealing very 
 exhaustively with the poet's obligations to Ovid, whom he may have 
 studied in his own peculiar way both in the original language and in 
 Golding's version, so far as the Metamorphoses were concerned. 
 
The Lyrical Work 197 
 
 ■obtained"; and he properly adds that, as the Lkia went 
 with it, the Shakespear really cost only about J'lO.^ 
 Bindley the collector, who evidently saw the book, recom- 
 mended Ford to put it up to auction, and considered that 
 it would have brought as much as one hundred guineas. 
 Heber was on the ground, and ran Malone close, for there 
 was a stipulation that the latter should surrender the Licia 
 to his competitor ; which, as the volume is in its original 
 state — in its Manchester livery — at the present moment, 
 was never carried out. 
 
 Ford does not assist us in tracing back the Venus and 
 Adonis to any anterior proprietor, nor is there any record 
 of a copy having been offered for public sale at any time 
 posterior to that of original issue ; but a collateral circum- 
 stance enables me to offer an elucidation, which I regard as 
 extremely plausible. During the years 1804—5, Mr. Thomas 
 Lister Parker, of Browsholme Hall, West Riding of York- 
 shire, was effecting extensive alterations in his residence. 
 He was a young man of four and twenty, and may have 
 taken no very considerable interest in early English litera- 
 ture, of which the library possessed a valuable collection. 
 While he was engaged, however, in carrying out repairs and 
 improvements, it seems to have occurred to him, that the 
 aspect of the books was not very handsome or ornamental, 
 and as he had engaged the services of other experts from a 
 distance for other departments, he called in Ford to put the 
 books in order, and where it was necessary, rebind them.^ 
 The owner was presumably more intent on rural employ- 
 ments and pursuits than on literary dilettantism, and the 
 less important items by no means improbably passed into 
 the hands of Ford, more especially as in 1810 four Caxtons 
 were sold to Lord Spencer, Mr. Grenville, and Mr. Towneley 
 
 1 Yet at the Voigt Sale in 1806 Malone gave over £40 for a tract by 
 <Jeorge Whetstone. 
 
 " See Account of Browsholme HaU, 1815, printed anonymously, but 
 .attributed to Mr. Parker himself. He furnishes no information about 
 Ford, which comes from Mr. Heber's memorandum attached to a copy of 
 Oasooigne's Posies, 1575, now in the Bodleian. 
 
198 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 for 165 guineas. It may not be irrelevant to mention that 
 there was a succession of Warwickshire Parkers interested 
 in literature, through whom those of Yorkshire, if related^ 
 may have heard of Venus and Adonis, when it was originally 
 published. 
 
 It is distinctly asserted by Mr. Heber, in a note printed 
 in the Bibliotheca Heheriana,^ that Mr. Parker, his personal 
 friend, had this transaction with the Manchester dealer,, 
 and he also speaks of certain of the items having been 
 shorn by the rebinder of some of their original amplitude 
 of margin.^ But it strikes me that we do not get here 
 the precise facts or true chronological sequence, and that 
 between the summons of Ford to Browsholme — I say, in 
 1804-5, when the structural and other embellishments were 
 in progress, and the premises were ostensibly in a state of 
 disorder — and the sale of the Caxtons a sensible interval 
 elapsed, — Ford being allowed to acquire the Venus and 
 Adonis and a few other prizes in 1804 or the following year 
 under the category of unbound sundries, in which Mr. 
 Parker, from his youth and inexperience, recognized no- 
 importance. The Caxtons appear to have been purchased 
 direct from the owner without any intermediary, the fame 
 of the library having been spread by the Manchester cata- 
 logue, and the indifference of Mr. Parker rendering the 
 negociation feasible. At the later point of time, there is 
 no vestige or suggestion of Ford or of any operation outside 
 the private disposal of the four books in question. The 
 account of Browsholme Hall alludes in 1815 to the ancient 
 library of the hereditary bow-bearers ^ of Bowland Forest 
 
 ^ My Confessions of a Collector, 1897, p. 25. 
 
 2 Hazlitt's Roll of Honowr, 1908, p. 175. 
 
 5 Blount describes the functions and position of this officer, and prints 
 his oath on entrance into his duties. Lexicon, 1670, sign. M. But he does- 
 not refer to the peculiar case of the Parkers. It appears that it was a 
 patent appointment. At all events on the 28th March, 1639, Edward 
 Nicholas was made Bow-bearer of Clarendon Forest, Wilts, by the Earl of 
 Pembroke. Clarendon Wood, mentioned in the Hazlitt Memoirs, is pro- 
 bably all that remains. Sotheby & Co., June 10, 1909, No. 440, a document 
 described as the original patent to Nicholas. 
 
The Lyrical Wokk 199 
 
 under the Dukes of Buccleuch as a thing of the past, and 
 specifies only a MS. on, vellum, of which the history is not 
 given, and the Caxtons, of which the history has been 
 related. Beyond the Shakespear and a few other rarities 
 there is not actually much in the 1805 catalogue of super- 
 lative moment; and it was perhaps the best haul, which 
 Ford ever obtained. Among the purchasers was Mr. Gifibrd, 
 who bought a large lot of the original editions of Shirley, 
 even now sufficiently common ; but Mr. Heber secured many 
 rare desiderata, and Mr. Malone earned oft' the spolia opima 
 in the Venus and Adonis and Licia, which, being among 
 the articles in need of new liveries, and being cognate in 
 subject and contemporary in date, were reclothed together 
 in russia, as, we now see them in the Bodleian. If my view 
 be correct, they were bought by the Parkers at the time of 
 publication. 
 
 A detail, which is far indeed from lacking significance, 
 but which is of course independent of the question of pro- 
 venance, is that in 1805 Ford, apparently a man of no mean 
 intelligence, and fully aware of the immense rarity of the 
 Shakespear piece, either found it bound up with the Licia, 
 precedence being given to the latter, or (which is far more 
 likely) himself united them with the same priority, and that 
 his relative estimation of the two was very nearly balanced, 
 whereas at the present moment ^£'50 or so might secure a 
 copy of Licia, and one of Venus cmd Adonis would leave 
 ^£"2000 behind it. More than a century since, not merely 
 was it unsurmised, that no duplicate — not even an imperfect 
 one — of the Shakespear was to occur, but it was probably 
 unknown, that no other record of the survival of the book 
 existed, since the mention in a Diary, formerly belonging 
 to a friend of George Steevens, of its contemporary purchase 
 on the 12th June, 1593, with another book, for twelve pence,^ 
 and the distance between the author and his contemporary — 
 
 1 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 1 886, ii. 9 1 . The price of it was presum- 
 ably four pence, as the other book, the Survey of Framce, 1592, was a much 
 larger volume. See Notes at end. 
 
200 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 all his contemporaries^ — -had yet to be realized. Ford 
 deemed the Fletcher rare and the other "extraordinary- 
 rare " ; yet, curiously enough again, he appraised the former 
 higher than the latter ; and in the same catalogue Lodge's 
 Phillis, 1593, is valued on a similar principle at =£'10, 10*. 
 About the time when this signally notable transaction 
 took place. Ford appears to have been a vigilant hunter 
 for any bibliographical prizes; and it was he through 
 whose hands passed Milton's copy of Browne's Britannia's 
 Pastorals?- 
 
 The extremely legitimate hypothesis that special condi- 
 tions of the nature suggested accelerated the appearance of 
 Lucrece may be allowed to carry with it the inference, that 
 that poem was composed in the country, that the author 
 escaped from the danger of contagion by leaving London, 
 not necessarily to go into Warwickshire, but to seek quarters 
 for the time in some spot, where he could work without 
 interruption. The detached hamlets, which were then sepa- 
 rated even from the western side of the town itself by wide 
 stretches of open country, afforded ready accommodation, 
 and it would be interesting to learn, whether the poet bent 
 his steps toward that group of suburban centres, where we 
 already know that some of his personal friends, at least very 
 soon after 1593, foregathered — Fulham and its environs — 
 which even long after the time of the poet formed an agree- 
 able neighbourhood. 
 
 The same visitation, which is credited with having afforded 
 Shakespear a respite from theatrical pursuits in the metro- 
 polis, enabling him to carry out his literary work, and com- 
 plete it for the press, led Edward Alleyn to make a provincial 
 tour with his company in the Eastern counties. But there 
 is no evidence that the poet and his fellows took a similar 
 step; there is no local colouring in Lucrece to assist us. 
 Shakespear, having ingratiated himself with Lord South- 
 ampton by the graceful and dutiful tribute before Veniis and 
 Adonis, might be naturally anxious to improve his standing 
 1 Browne's Works, by Hazlitt, ii. xxi. 
 
The Lyrical Work 201 
 
 with that promising young nobleman, and accordingly made 
 Lucrece^ of which the subject-matter had been growing 
 familiar since 1570 in ballad and book, follow closely behind 
 with a second and somewhat more confident address to the 
 same personage. As a dramatist and actor, the poet could 
 not fail to perceive the direct and indirect advantage cal- 
 culated to accrue from friendly goodwill in such a quarter 
 under many possible contingencies. 
 
 The citations of Francis Meres as a witness to the 
 celebrity and appreciation of Shakespear in 1598, in his Wifs 
 Treasury, printed in that year, and the marginal reference 
 of William Clarke, in his Polwianteia, 1595, to the Poems, 
 then newly published, have this feature in common, that 
 both were of academical origin ; and Hamlet, as we know, 
 was performed not only in London, but at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. Only two years after the appearance of WWs 
 Treasury, another Oxford man, Charles Butler, Musical 
 Doctor of Magdalen, issued his Two Books of Rhetoric in 
 Latin, where he speaks of Shakespear as " tragicus, comicus, 
 historicus " ; but this learned gentleman evidently discovered 
 no special value in him, except that he names him, and refers 
 to his fellow-dramatists as alii, whereas of the lyrical poets 
 he specifies several, including " Divinus ille vates Georgius 
 Wither," but not the author of Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece. 
 
 The association of Shakespear with University men in 
 1595-8, and the performance of Hamlet at Oxford and 
 Cambridge, reminds me that Henry Willobie, author of 
 Avisa, 1594, as well as his chambei'-fellow, Hadrian Dorrell, 
 
 1 The copy, formerly Sir W. Tite's and F. Locker- Lampson's, at present 
 before me, was found in a volume of law tracts, and was presented to Tite 
 by a friend at CoUumpton according to a MS. note by the recipient. 
 Curiously enough, Eandolph, in his Complaint agamit Cupid (Hazlitt's 
 edit. , 1875, p. 536), writes : — 
 
 " Besides, each day I'll write an elegy, 
 And in as lamentable poetry 
 As any Inns-of-Court man that hath gone 
 To bind an Ovid with a Littleton." 
 
202 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 were Oxford men, thus shewing a taste there for this class of 
 literature. I affirm that I am no convert to the speculation, 
 that Shakespear is to be viewed as the W.S. of Willobie's 
 Avisa, 1594, any more than that Avisa herself is the veiled 
 heroine of the Sonnets. I prefer to credit William Smith, 
 a rather prolific verse writer about the same period, and 
 equally a contributor to Emglcmd's Helicon, 1600, with the 
 authorship of the earlier verses. 
 
 Although, however, Meres was a member of both uni- 
 versities, he seems to have been resident in London in or 
 about 1598 ; for he dates his Godi^s Jrithmetic, 1597, from 
 his chamber in St. Mary Botolph Lane ; and he had relatives 
 of good position in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Meres was 
 by no means improbably a spectator at the performance of 
 some of the plays, which he enumerates, and a reader of the 
 Poems, if not of the " sugared " sonnets in MS., and he has 
 proved of service in one or two cases in establishing the 
 existence of a drama within his date. He was a student, 
 who included all the most recent publications in his range, 
 and he specifies all the most eminent verse writers of the 
 day. Indeed we find him launching into verse himself, and 
 prefixing a decastichon to a translation of Battista Alberto''s 
 Art of Loue, published in 1598 by William Leake, who was 
 concerned in the Vemis and Adonis of that date, and who had 
 succeeded to the possession of the White Greyhound, where 
 Shakespear had brought out, or Field for him, the first 
 impression of that poem, so that one may regard Meres as 
 hovering on the skirts of the literary set to which the great 
 poet belonged. His enumeration is little better than a string 
 of names, except that he tells us that Spenser " excelleth in 
 all things," and that Anthony Munday is " the best plotter." 
 He bestows a few lines on Shakespear, and he classes him 
 with those who are "the most passionate among us to 
 bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love." We perceive 
 that he had just been studying this particular question 
 a little. The author of Polimcmteia describes [Venus and] 
 Adonis as " Watson's heir," which is debateable. What- 
 
The Lyrical Work 203 
 
 ever may be the merit of Watson, his mind and that of 
 Shakespear were cast in different moulds. It is to be sus- 
 pected that in his Sonnets published between 1581 and 159S 
 Watson attained the height of his intellectual possibility 
 in any direction. 
 
 There is no reliable information on the circumstances, 
 under which poems by Shakespear were inserted, in company 
 with some by other pens, in the Passionate Pilgrim, 1599, by 
 William Jaggard. It was a small heterogeneous miscellany 
 formed somewhat at random, and two of the Shakespearean 
 pieces had appeared the year before.in Love's Labor's Lost, but 
 with variations, as from a different MS. source. One feature 
 in the book is that it purported to be on sale by the same 
 William Leake, whose name is similarly attached to the Verms 
 and Adonis of 1598 and 1602, but not to those of 1593 and 
 1594, and that when it reappeared in 1612 with additions, 
 it is said simply to be printed, not for, but by Jaggard, who, 
 we note, places the supplementary matter below the name 
 of Shakespear, so that it might be taken to be his or other- 
 wise. The peculiar association of the poet was not with 
 Leake, but with Field, the Stratford man, who put the 
 Venus and Adonis and Lucrece in type, and of whom we lose 
 sight after 1596. Nor do we know whether the writer him- 
 self furnished to the volume by Chester, called Love''s Martyr, 
 or Rosalia's Complaint, 1601, the verses there found, or 
 whether they were obtained through an indirect channel. 
 It was, so far as we can judge, no part of Shakespear 's plan 
 to associate himself and his work with others, and that, too, 
 at a period when joint authorship was quite a fashion. He 
 constituted in his own person a type, of which he was the 
 sole example. 
 
 But some lines are attached to a volume, which was 
 printed (for the second time) in 1613, which have no actual 
 signature, but so impressed me with the feeling that they 
 can have proceeded only from one pen, that I first printed 
 them as Shakespear's in 1903, and I think that the attri- 
 bution is generally accepted. They are not in the folio 
 
204 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 of 1603. I allude to the tribute prefixed to Florio's 
 Montaigne : — 
 
 Concerning the Honoe of Bookes. 
 
 Since Honor from the Honorer proceeds. 
 
 How well do they deserve that memorie 
 
 And leave in bookes for all posterities 
 
 The names of worthyes, and their vertuous deedes 
 
 When all their glorie els^ like water weedes 
 
 Without their element, presently dyes. 
 
 And all their greatnes quite forgotten lyes : 
 
 And when, and how they florisht no man heedes 
 
 How poore remembrances are statutes toomes 
 
 And other monuments that men erect 
 
 To Princes, which remaine in closed roomes 
 
 Where but a few behold them ; in respect 
 
 Of Bookes, that to the vniversall eye 
 
 Shew how they liu'd, the other where they lye. 
 
 The offering, vi^hich was not necessarily the result of an 
 appeal from Florio, and was possibly obtained by the ener- 
 getic and ubiquitous Blount, publisher of the book, may 
 have been an afterthought and an insertion at the last 
 moment. It follows a long copy of verses by Daniel of very 
 inferior quality, and although by a more careful distribution 
 of space the difficulty might have been obviated, it is so 
 cramped at the foot of the page, that no room remained for 
 a subscription, if any was furnished or intended. The want 
 of particular application, as well as the typographical peculi- 
 arity, may have something to do with the residence of the 
 poet at Stratford at this juncture ; and the lines would be 
 almost the latest, which came from his pen, assuming them 
 to be his. They look back on all that he had accomplished 
 toward the elevation of the book and its maker. 
 
 In the verses just quoted, which have (singularly enough) 
 no specific bearing on the immediate subject-matter, and 
 constitute a general homage to books, there is an unmistak- 
 able individuality absent from all other compositions of a 
 similar stamp within my acquaintance. They breathe the 
 
The Lyrical Work 205 
 
 air of a novice in the art of complimentary trifling, and 
 display a sort of self-restraint due to the fear of going too 
 far or saying too much. If the lines are really his, he 
 seldom enough cast his thoughts in so contracted a mould. 
 The singularity of the pointing, or want of it, strictly follows 
 the original before me. The figurative employment of water- 
 weeds in the fifth line has struck me as suggested to the poet 
 by those to be seen, then probably as now, in the stream 
 flowing behind New Place — a spectacle more than ever under 
 his eyes since his retirement to his native place, but which 
 he may well have constantly beheld, when he was a youth. 
 Did he tickle trout there? There is a rather suggestive 
 allusion in Twelfth Night. 
 
 The process of hypothetical ascription goes a step 
 farther in a similar or analogous direction, and I am dis- 
 posed to endorse the idea, that four lines beneath the portrait 
 of James I. accompanying the Bishop of Winchester's edition 
 of the King's Works in 1616, but not improbably in existence 
 in a separate shape somewhat earlier, are due to that master- 
 pen, which had no longer a higher function to discharge. 
 They are as follow : — 
 
 " Crounes have their compasse, length of dayes their date^ 
 Triumphes their tomhes, felicities ther fate : 
 Of more then earth, can earth make none partaker. 
 But knowledge makes the King most like his maker." 
 
 There is the graceful tribute to the literary labours of his 
 sovereign — the prince, from whom he had received personal 
 recognition — almost homage, and there is an even keener 
 sense of the prospect, which levels all distinctions. Granting 
 them to be his, the two copies of verse exhibit a common 
 anonymity and a common local origin ; they were doubtless 
 equally Stratford products, and these on James I. would be 
 absolutely his valedictory utterance. We cannot avoid 
 noting the innuendo, that a king owed his rank to his own 
 culture rather than to his Divine right, and we may collate 
 
206 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the observation, which he puts in Richard II. into the King's 
 mouth.i 
 
 Looking at the handsome tribute or homage to his genius 
 offered by James I. to Shakespear in that still-to-be-recovered 
 letter and otherwise, the poet's persistent anti-monarchical 
 pronouncements, were they not ungrateful! Perchance his 
 majesty failed to detect them, and had no one at his side 
 willing or able to point them out. 
 
 We have explicit evidence of his perusal of Montaigne,^ 
 and he has transplanted into his own pages sentiments, of 
 which the value and interest in his eyes perhaps induced 
 him on its reappearance ten years later to honour the book 
 in this unparalleled way. 
 
 It is within my knowledge that in 1591 lines attached to 
 Florio's Second Fruits, headed "Phaeton to his friend Florio," 
 have been almost accepted as from the same hand, and I 
 quite subscribe to the internal marks of resemblance to those 
 accompanying the Montaigne, which may be another mode 
 of casting a doubt on the latter, since I feel very strongly, 
 that the prior tribute, though not too early for an acquaint- 
 ance between the two men, is too early for a composition of 
 the kind by Shakespear — is in fact better than anything 
 undramatic which he is likely to have written in 1590-1 ; 
 nor is the superscription characteristic. The verses before 
 the Montaigne are pensive and concise, as they are unap- 
 propriated or anonymous. They read like the written 
 thought of one, who was not in mid-career, in the heyday of 
 life and activity, but who had reached the summit, and had 
 a large retrospect ; and a similar verdict may be pronounced 
 on the four lines below the king's portrait, which may be 
 deemed, again, as involving a sort of personal confession of 
 faith. 
 
 On the contrary, a drama entitled Phaeton was written 
 
 1 In a copy of W. Hakewill's Mbertie of the Sviject, 1641, Sir George 
 Leonard Staunton, the diplomatist, has inserted his autograph, 1776, with 
 the motto : " Tantum sumus, quantum noscimus." 
 
 ^ Particularly in the Mercliant of Venice, Meaawre for Measv/re, Hamlet, 
 and the Teitvpeit. 
 
The Lyrical Work 207 
 
 by Thomas Decker, and acted by the Lord Admirars men in 
 1597-8, perhaps at the Rose theatre ; ^ and I offer the sug- 
 gestion that the author may have not inaptly adopted the 
 name of the hero of his play in addressing a copy of verses 
 to Florio, unless it was too early for Decker, whose first 
 publication is dated 1598. Phaeton, however, is not speci- 
 fied as a new piece in that year ; and Decker was working 
 for the theatre at all events in 1594, when he completed his 
 Diocletian. The mythological tale of Phaeton was not un- 
 likely to have been simmering in the brain of Decker, then a 
 young man, before he reduced it to form ; and he may have 
 made it the subject of conversation, till he dubbed himself or 
 was familiarly dubbed by the name of his proposed hero, as 
 Drayton is said to have borne among his intimates the 
 sobriquet of Rowland, borrowed from the title to his Idea, 1593. 
 Of the last-named poet we get a more favourable notion from 
 the original painting at Dulwich than from the prints. 
 
 The poet was not to be coaxed or shamed into joining 
 the vociferous phalanx, which wept over the last of the 
 Tudors, and tendered its congratulations to the incoming 
 Stuart, either by the mild reproof of Chettle, or even by the 
 example of his cousin Greene, who penned an ephemeral 
 panegyric upon the notable occasion. But here was a rebuke 
 to him for his lukewarm enthusiasm at Stratford itself — at 
 his very door, as it were ; and in truth, whether he found him- 
 self in town or country at that particular juncture, he was apt 
 to be equally twitted with his unpatriotic indifference, I do 
 not even believe that the lines in the Merry Wives, referring 
 to his sovereign, were really written by him ; if they were, 
 they are the worst which he ever composed, and perhaps for 
 the very reason that such tributes were against the grain. 
 Anne Page delivers them in the character of the Fairy Queen. 
 They are not in the 4° of 1602. I have seen them applauded 
 as beautiful. But I think, that they must be bracketed with 
 the passage in Henry VIII., where Cranmer is made to foretell 
 the long reign and the greatness of Elizabeth. 
 
 1 Hazlitt's Mcmual of Old Plays, 1892, p. 221. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Shakespear's Sonnets considered — Their chronology — Their sequence — 
 Crudity of their style — The dedication to Mr. William Hammond, 
 under his initials, by Thorpe the finder and publisher — Impossibility 
 of the Pembroke theory — Points in evidence and disproof — ^Analogous 
 inscriptions — Enigmas in fashion in 1609 — Vindication of Thorpe — The 
 earliest real appreciator of the Poet — A MS. of Middleton's Oame of 
 Chess dedicated to W. Hammond — The dedicatee presumed to be of 
 the family of Hammond of St. Alban's Court, Nonnington, Kent — 
 That county shown to be in and before 1609 an unique literary centre 
 — List of families residing there and their friends, Marlowe, Chapman, 
 etc. — Source of the MSS. of Marlowe's Hero and Leomder and Imcwn — 
 Association of Thorpe and of Edward Blount with this Kentish circle 
 — Also of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, the Diarist — 
 Chapman and the Walsinghams of Chislehurst — Careers of Thorpe 
 and Blount traced — Both experts in trouvailles — Blount undertakes the 
 publication of Florio's Montaigne, after it had lain by for some time — 
 The Tersion registered in 1595 not Florio's. 
 
 The Sonnet and the Eclogue have ever been the two types 
 of literary product, over the meaning and moral of which 
 the writers of all ages seem to have thought fit to cast a veil 
 of mystery and contradiction, and to create an inexhaustible 
 field of controversy. Both classes of composition peculiarly 
 lend themselves to hyperbole and fantastic or passionate 
 extravagance. We peruse with a qualified interest the 
 Virgilian Bucolics, thoroughly aware of the prevailing vein, 
 and accepting with reserve the political and personal senti- 
 ments of the bard, as they are conveyed to us through the 
 interlocutors; and it was in the year immediately succeed- 
 ing the publication of Venus and Adonis here in England, 
 that a young Shropshire man, Richard Barnfield, produced, 
 absolutely without any clue to the actual writer, a very 
 poor and unreadable poem, in six-line stanzas, entitled the 
 
 208 
 
The Lyrical Work 209 
 
 Affectionate Shepherd. The Latin original strikes us, even 
 with a knowledge of Roman manners, as preposterous 
 enough; its English analogue is simply ridiculous, albeit 
 Barnfield makes his boy love Ganymede solely for his gifts. 
 But my allusion to these works was actuated by the desire 
 and necessity of shewing, how far they partake in common 
 of the structural weakness of a fabric disproportionate to its 
 base, or of a literary fancy or even biographical incident 
 overlaid under the author's hand by an afterbirth of casually 
 developed conceits, and this, in the case of Shakespear, to a 
 far larger extent than in that of the Shropshire poet, 
 owing perhaps to the extension of the work over a longer 
 period. But both writers in a way follow the method of 
 Virgil in making the leading character refer to former or 
 current female attachments abandoned or unreciprocated. 
 In the time of Elizabeth it was not unusual for one man to 
 address another as his lover, nor was this practice confined 
 to amatory poetry. 
 
 A survey of the dull and tedious poetical eifusions given 
 to the world during the Elizabethan era under this name 
 leads a practical investigator to the unchangeable view, that 
 there is no dependence on the authenticity of the sentiment 
 or the homogeneous truth of the narrative. A large allow- 
 ance has to be made for all those wilful and wanton artifices 
 of composition and phraseology, which seem to be proper to 
 this kind of work, and for all the capricious humours, of 
 which the source and sense are apt to be latent in the mind 
 of the writer, and to be lost with him, where he was led by 
 temperament or other cause to maintain reserve concerning 
 his literary methods and passing whims. 
 
 The Sonnets have constituted during the greater part of 
 a century backward from the existing time — not from the 
 date of their appearance, when, so far as we can tell, they 
 excited no particular interest, and certainly awakened no 
 curiosity as to their realism or otherwise — such a fruitful 
 and favourite theme for speculation and comment that to 
 propound anything fresh upon them and their character. 
 
210 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 would itself be a kind of art. The origin, succession, and 
 inner meaning of these productions have of recent years 
 formed a sort of cult. The fame of the author as a play- 
 wright has united with the obscurity of his personal history 
 to invest them with an importance, which their literary 
 merit surely does not justify ; and one proof of such a view 
 may be allowed to lie in the circumstance, that the school of 
 critics and biographers, which preceded the elevation of the 
 Sonnets to this new and higher rank, did not even disguise 
 its qualified estimate of their intrinsic value. Nor does it 
 seem to have impressed critics down to quite modern times, 
 that the series occupies a parallel standing to that, which we 
 hold from other contemporary pens, where the artificial 
 texture is owned by the writers themselves, and of which 
 many circulated in MS. previous to their committal to type 
 precisely in a similar way to Shakespear's. 
 
 The usual idea about the chronology of the Sonnets is 
 that they were written after 1594 and prior to 1598, when 
 they are said by Francis Meres to be extant in separate 
 papers, and to be in the possession of friends — of those, it is 
 fairly presumable, to whom they had been given, or for 
 whom they had been designed. We have accidental evidence 
 of that, which in the printed copy makes 94, being in 
 existence in 1596 ; and in Love's Labor's Lost, 1598, two, if 
 not three, make part of the text probably overseen by the 
 dramatist himself. But the accessions to the store after the 
 last-named date were doubtless very few, if more than a 
 single one. They were precisely that kind of liter'ary com- 
 position, which a poet would commit to paper from time to 
 time, as the fancy took him, or as he perceived the possi- 
 bility of strengthening a passage or pursuing an imagery ; 
 and the acquaintance of Meres with them was ostensibly 
 slight. He refers to them as sugared. A worse epithet 
 could hardly have been chosen ; but Weever seems to have 
 had the term in his mind, when he in his Epigrams, 1599, 
 used it toward the Lyrics of 1593-4 with an equal measure 
 of unfitness. The Sonnets are certainly impassioned and 
 
The Lyrical Wokk 211 
 
 amatory; but they are also philosophical, misanthropic, 
 bitter, sad, and weak. Although they did not appear in 
 type in a collective form, till nearly the entire series of plays 
 from the same pen was before the world, they virtually 
 belong, for the most part, to the period when the author 
 was temporarily dividing his energy between dramatic 
 adaptation and lyrical poetry of an original cast, and it may 
 perhaps be asked whether, had we not been admitted to an 
 explicit knowledge, that these compositions were Shake- 
 spear's, we should have been able to find in them convincing 
 evidence of his authorship. There is the slightest possible 
 clue to the true order; but it is clear that an interval of 
 some years elapsed between the earliest and the latest. 
 
 Inferentially the loose papers, of which Meres speaks in 
 1598 as distributed among Shakespear's friends, but which 
 in some cases may have remained in his own hands during 
 some time, were collected together by or for Thomas Thorpe, 
 son of an innholder at Barnet, a man about thirty, a 
 member of the Stationers' Company, and a person of superior 
 intelligence and insight, and given to the printer in the 
 order in which they present themselves in the 4° of 1609. 
 No one, I believe, has ever beheld a duplicate of them, or 
 any of them, in MS. within memory or even within tradition. 
 The careless treatment of such things by the average 
 Englishman almost warrants a belief in the possibility, that 
 the copy was not received by the editor (Thorpe), after it 
 had passed through numerous hands, in a very lucid state, 
 and that he found it necessary to supply lacunas arising from 
 damage to the slips of paper, on which the series of stanzas 
 was written, before he delivered the matter to the typo- 
 grapher or the publisher. Or, as an alternative, we may 
 speculate, whether Thorpe did not judge it desirable to have 
 the whole transcribed for press ; and in either case we seem 
 here to have the explanation of certain words and sentences, 
 which do not strike us as genuine Shakespearean utterances, 
 even supposing them to be anterior to the issue of Palladia 
 Ta/mia. 
 
212 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Whatever is capable of being thought and urged against 
 their biographical eloquence, it is not to be gainsaid that 
 here we are confronted with a solid body of authentic mate- 
 rial evolving from an intellect of a more than usually sound 
 and practical order, and, if they do not fundamentally reflect 
 the personal and private sentiments of the author, ostensibly 
 raising and warranting the inquiry, what do they mean ? It 
 is not that they can be alleged to be free from exaggeration ; 
 but after all possible allowances have we not a germ of 
 realism respondent to a riper and finer one in the dramas, 
 each seeming to substantiate the other, common exponents 
 of a domestic epic more melancholy than sublime. 
 
 The direct and personal element in certain writers is so 
 clear as to be unchallenged. A vein of obvious egoism per- 
 vades all their work, and the nature of the subject permitted 
 and suggested the treatment. But we have to bear in mind 
 that this is apt to be an inherent tendency in all authors, 
 and that generalization and selection are the result of train- 
 ing and self-constraint; and that even a dramatic author, 
 much less a sonneteer, should deliver to the world neutral 
 utterances without some private disclosures, is to ascribe to 
 him a larger measure of heroic forbearance than he is likely 
 to possess. Such touches in Shakespear as one suspects of 
 having a bearing on himself are assuredly couched in terms 
 apter to strike us than those, in whose sight or hearing they 
 were penned or delivered. Attention is drawn in these pages 
 to those very few cases where the poet has approached self- 
 valuation, and when we consider that the Plays, even more 
 than the Sonnets, afforded facilities for this personal trespass, 
 it must be allowed that he availed himself of his opportuni- 
 ties in both instances frugally enough. He was even there 
 too reserved for us, if not for his immediate readers or 
 hearers. 
 
 The Sonnets were doubtless composed at intervals, under 
 different impulses, at various levels of mood and tempera- 
 ment. There are a few notes of time and neighbourhood ; 
 here and there are touches which bespeak happier inspiration 
 
The Lybical Work 213 
 
 or later workmanship ; while of the literary history of the 
 Affectionate Shepherd we know nothing more than is vouch- 
 safed on the face of the pamphlet, which contains it. Yet 
 this superficial material so far helps us, that it corrobo- 
 rates the widely different notions of those days, when a 
 young poet takes up an equivocal theme and inscribes it 
 under the nom de phime of Daphnis to a noble lady. But 
 there is this vital diiference, that, whereas in the case of 
 Barnfield, the treatment is a mere imitation of a classical 
 prototype, the Sonnets embody to a considerable extent 
 a vague and incoherent rhapsody, in which the immediate 
 writer, another person of the same sex, and a woman, are the 
 persons of a sort of disjointed drama, and the woman is repre- 
 sented, first, as having refused the writer's suit and then as 
 being wedded to the rival. But the disentanglement of the 
 obscure and whimsical series of addresses is almost impos- 
 sible, partly perhaps because we have not the true sequence, 
 and partly because the text may be faulty. At best the 
 collection is, as a whole, sadly disappointing. Yet, poor 
 and weak as the Sonnets are, occasional lines or forms of 
 expression remind us of the plays, and assist us to a 
 recollection of whose writings these stanzas constitute part. 
 It is certainly a debateable point, whether the whole of the 
 MS. series is not to be regarded as posterior to the Affec- 
 tionate Shepherd, 1594, the spirit and temper are so closely 
 allied ; and in my opinion much of the sentiment is equally 
 ideal. 
 
 The Affectionate Shepherd keeps the classical model more 
 in sight, and while the slender aggregate is at a deader 
 level, the design is more consistently carried out, and the 
 poetical contrast between the ages of the parties is even more 
 «trongly marked, as Shakespear claims a far slighter seniority 
 to the youth in his mind's eye. Barnfield probably saw his 
 performance through the press ; Shakespear left his scattered 
 effusions to be gathered up by a third party, and printed 
 as they came to hand, without revision and without sequence. 
 The two lyrics and perhaps the Love's Lahor's Lost, 1598, 
 
214 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 appear to have exhausted the patience of the poet as a cor- 
 rector of the press, apart from his unseen hand in the texts^ 
 which form the folio of 1623. 
 
 Altogether, I have brought myself at least round to the 
 conclusion and belief that the publication of the maiden 
 effort of Barnfield, who in some verses printed in 1598 inti- 
 mated his warm appreciation of Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece, was the immediate initiative of Shakespear's ex- 
 periments as a sonneteer, and had it not been for the junior 
 poet we might not have had the volume by his contemporary 
 in our hands at the present moment. Such a view harmo- 
 nizes with the generally accepted chronology of the Shakespear 
 legacy, which, as I point out, departs from the lines observed 
 by Barnfield in obedience to his classical prototype, and 
 indulges in vague and mysterious innuendoes, of which the 
 dissolved essence amounts to little more than a slight enrich- 
 ment of the scanty biography. 
 
 Shakespear had no proved, or even probable, hand in 
 sending his Sonnets to the press, much less in arranging or 
 revising them, or in warranting the dedicatory Epistle. The 
 Venus and Adonis and Lucrece owed their publication to his. 
 personal agency, and were entrusted to the care of his fellow- 
 townsman, Richard Field. In the late autumn of 1608 — 
 the latter half of October — he was undoubtedly at Stratford, 
 where his mother had died in the beginning of September, and 
 where he attended the christening of his godchild, William 
 Walker, in the following month ; at this point of time the 
 Sonnets, though dated 1609, were doubtless in the press, at 
 any rate in the hands of Thorpe, with an immediate view to 
 utilization. The absence of Shakespear from London in 
 1608, even if it was unusually prolonged by reason of hi& 
 anxiety to learn the result of the visit of Greene to the 
 metropolis in October on his (and perhaps other) business). 
 rendering his personal presence at Stratford convenient, 
 was only temporary. He was, in any case, within reach ; 
 but it was assuredly familiar enough to " the well-wishing 
 adventurer in setting forth," that had he approached the 
 
The Lyrical Work 215 
 
 person most directly interested, he might have found him 
 neutral in the matter. 
 
 Thorpe does not only not suggest that he acted with 
 the author's cognizance, but subscribes with his own initials 
 the fantastically worded dedication to Mr. W. H., taking 
 credit to himself for setting forth the volume — a claim by 
 no means allowable beyond the imminent danger, had he not 
 intervened, that the MS. or MSS. would have completely 
 disappeared. We discern no higher or other merit in the 
 stationer ; and it is the more regrettable and unpardonable, 
 inasmuch as Thorpe appears to have been a man of more 
 than average standing, who might have served us all by 
 making the story clear, instead of handing us a senseless 
 and nearly insoluble puzzle. At the same time the whole 
 cast of the preliminaries almost forbids the suspicion of any 
 servile or venal motive toward the author. 
 
 While no duplicate texts of any of the series are known, 
 or have been cited as formerly existing, it is even a matter 
 of certainty that various copies of at least some were executed 
 under circumstances not at present ascertainable. For two, 
 which are intrinsically as much a part of the collection as 
 those belonging to the 4° of 1609, meet the eye in Love's 
 Labor's Lost in 1598, and recur in the Passionate Pilgrim, 
 1599, with textual diflPerences sufficiently matei-ial to justify 
 the assumption of two independent sources of supply. Re- 
 garding the rather exceptional circumstances attendant on 
 the publication of this particular drama, which actually seems 
 to have received touches from the hand of the author, the 
 readings of the 4° of Love's Labor''s Lost are apt to strike 
 one as moi'e authoritative than those of a book produced 
 under such equivocal conditions as the Pilgrim. The main 
 point, however, is that an ostensibly new and enlarged view 
 of the question is created by the reasonable inference, that 
 this book, as it was put into type in 1609, was not only 
 incorrectly arranged, but failed to represent all that Shake- 
 spear had written of this nature. For if the recovery of the 
 actual contents of the 1609 volume was fortuitous, the pre- 
 
216 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 servation of the two items not printed there was equally so ; 
 nor do we know how many others there may have been, 
 scattered here and there, and never regained. We readily 
 perceive that Jaggard, instead of appropriating the sonnets 
 introduced into the play, obtained other transcripts, and 
 that the Editor of 1609 — ten years later — made use of 
 neither, although this pair of stanzas presents the aspect of 
 conveniently falling into the text of the Sonnets after No. 
 152. Beyond them there is the letter in Act iv., sc. 3, of 
 Love's Labor's Lost, thrown into metrical form, and making 
 rather more than the canonical number of lines, yet which 
 strikes one as having been a composition lying by the author, 
 like the two others, and taken into service on the first 
 opportunity. 
 
 Thorpe addresses Mr. W. H. as the sole Begetter of 
 the Sonnets. Assuredly, if he comprehended the generally 
 accepted meaning of a common word, he wished to signify 
 that this gentleman was exclusively instrumental in inducing 
 the poet to write them ; for the difference between the forms 
 beget and get is intrinsically unimportant, and neither bore 
 or will bear in this case the forced meaning of mere acqui- 
 sition. That such was the truth few things, however, are 
 less probable. The series is only such to us ; it was com- 
 posed at different times, under different moods, and with 
 different persons or incidents in the mind's eye ; and we are 
 almost compelled to speculate, whether Thorpe was actually 
 ignorant, when he obtained the MS. or MSS., of the cir- 
 cumstances, under which it or they had been composed. 
 Although he lived so near to the publication of the Palladis 
 Tatnia of Meres in 1598, and received into his hands the 
 unprinted Sonnets from a person presumably conversant 
 with their nature and history, communications were then so 
 amazingly imperfect and accidental, that Thorpe may have 
 been as unaware that W. H. was merely a gatherer of 
 material, as Shakespear himself was in 1612-13, that a 
 stationer had put forth as his work poems from another pen 
 within the same twelvemonth. Whether Thorpe printed 
 
The Lyrical Wokk 217 
 
 the book exactly as it came to his hands, flus title-page and 
 dedication, without any editorial interference, and whether 
 the omission of certain matter, as above indicated, was due 
 to the negligence of the actual collector of the MSS., we 
 want fuller information before we can decide. But it is 
 not easy to understand in either case how the editor could 
 have been unaware of the two sonnets already twice in type, 
 and so naturally pertinent to the subject-matter. 
 
 So long ago as 1874^ the present writer adduced an 
 apparently new and a rather strong piece of evidence to 
 demonstrate the more than unlikelihood of a person in the 
 position of Thorpe venturing to address a nobleman in the 
 terms of the dedication of 1609, and set side by side two 
 dedicatory epistles by him, one to John Florio in 1610, and 
 another to William Earl of Pembroke in 1616, exhibiting 
 most conclusively the contrast in the relations toward the 
 literary man and the peer. In the epistle to Florio, Thorpe 
 signs himself: "Yours in true hearted love, T. T."; but in 
 that to his lordship he writes : " Your Lordships humbly 
 devoted, T. Th."; and, moreover, in the latter case he 
 rehearses all Lord Pembroke's titles, while in the former he 
 signalizes Florio as " a true favourer of forward spirits.'" 
 John Healey, translator of the Epictetus and other works, 
 was evidently in touch during his life with the Earl of 
 Pembroke, and not only with Thorpe, but with Edward 
 Blount, son of Ralph Blount, merchant tailor of London, 
 a stationer or publisher, of whom I shall have a good deal 
 more to say. An English version of Babelais had been 
 licensed in 1592 and again in 1594 ; but nothing farther is 
 known of it. But in 1605, as we learn, not from the book, 
 but from the Stationers' Register, Blount was one of two 
 persons concerned in issuing a strange Rabelaisian volume 
 by Healey, purporting to be a translation of Bishop Hall's 
 Mundus Alter et Idem, called : " The Discovery of a New 
 World, or A Description of the South Indies." This Healey 
 dedicated in terms implying favours already received from 
 ^ Prefaces, Dedications, Epistles, 1874, pp. 226-9, 
 
218 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the Earl of Pembroke, so that we hold in our hands in this 
 case a work indicating the sort of link between Blount and 
 Thorpe on the one hand and the Herberts of Wilton on the 
 other. The peroration of the Epistle Dedicatory is redolent 
 of the air of mystery, which surrounds other publications 
 just about this juncture, and the text displays a whimsical 
 and ebullient luxuriance of fancy worthy of the Frenchman. 
 But it is interesting to consider that Healey, who refers to 
 himself as the Cambridge Pilgrim, may not only have wit- 
 nessed the performance of Hamlet at that university in 
 1602, but have met the author, who, however, must have 
 gained from some other source his knowledge of Rabelais, as 
 he is mentioned in As You Like It. Quite possibly, if he 
 was in London, one of his foreign acquaintances, or, if in 
 Stratford, the Combes or the Quineys. 
 
 But beyond these points we note that, in inscribing the 
 1616 book to the Earl, Thorpe thought it necessary or 
 judicious to emphasize his sense of the liberty, which so 
 mean a man used in encroaching on the privacy of a per- 
 sonage of such high station and such scanty leisure, and 
 pleaded, that he took the step at the prayer of the departed 
 author, who regarded his lordship as "the true and real 
 upholder of learned endeavours." A few lines lower down, 
 the obsequious stationer reiterates his sense of the vast 
 disparity of rank in the words : " pardon my presumption, 
 great Lord, from so mean a man to so great a person." 
 
 Yet in 1609 — seven years prior, but when Lord Herbert 
 had succeeded to the superior title by the death of his father 
 in 1601 about eight or nine years — this same Thorpe, as we 
 are invited, if not required, to believe, approached him as 
 " Mr. VV. H.," and precisely in the kind of strain, which in 
 1610 he deemed, and rightly deemed, appropriate in dealing 
 with a man of letters, who was, no doubt, a more or less 
 intimate acquaintance. 
 
 It has been pleaded in an analogous case that William 
 Kemp the actor inscribed his Nine Days' Wonder, 1600, in 
 very familiar language to Anne [Mary] Fitton, who was 
 
The Lyricajl Work 219 
 
 one of Queen Elizabeth's maids of honour. In the first 
 place, the Fittons — the two ladies of that name — appear 
 to have been unusually affable, and, secondly, the terms 
 of Kemp's epistle are not wanting in deference. He ad- 
 dresses himself " To the true Ennobled Lady, and his most 
 bountiful! Mistris," and concludes with " Your worthy Ladi- 
 ships most vnworthy servant." He betrays his imperfect 
 acquaintance with the family by speaking of Mistress Arme 
 Fitton, who since 1587 had been espoused as a mere girl 
 to John Newdigate of Arbury in Warwickshire on the 
 Coventry side of the county ; but the lady whom he in- 
 tended was her sister Mary, who in the following year 
 involved herself in the gravest trouble by an intrigue 
 with the young Earl of Pembroke. The Fitton sisters 
 were what would be now designated Jree and easy or 
 even Just people; and Lady Penelope Rich, whose 
 name Barnfield associated with his Affectionate Shep- 
 herd, was a personage of the same stamp, who had been 
 strenuously courted on paper after her marriage in 1581 
 by no less a person than Sydney, and it has been held 
 that she served him in some measure as a lay figure for 
 his Stella. Barnfield superscribes a couple of dedicatory 
 stanzas "To the Right Excellent and most beautifull 
 Lady, the Ladie Penelope Ritch," and below we read : 
 " Your Honour's most aifectionate and perpetually deuoted 
 Shepheard, Daphnis." A mere lad of twenty was more 
 familiar in his tone toward Lady Penelope than Kemp 
 toward Mistress Fitton. The former was the daughter of 
 Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, and sister of the nobleman, 
 who is so repeatedly mentioned in these pages. She married 
 in 1581 Robert, Baron Rich, who subsequently became Earl 
 of Warwick, but was divorced from him in consequence of 
 her improper intimacy with Charles Blount, Baron Mount- 
 joy, afterward Earl of Devonshire. She died in 1607. She 
 had married at 20; in 1594 she was 33; it was an age, 
 when a woman of rare personal attractions was capable of 
 impressing a man many years her junior. 
 
220 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Enigmatical and, as we should perhaps judge, eccentric 
 addresses were even about the earlier Stuart time not un- 
 frequent. The theatre itself had contributed to level social 
 distinctions in certain ways. But the fashion and licence 
 had set in during the reign of Elizabeth, and the present 
 may be, on the whole, the best place for mentioning an 
 example. In 1599 Anthony Gibson edited a translation 
 from the French by Anthony Munday of a piece called 
 A WomcurCs Worth; it is perhaps observable that it is 
 dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess of Southampton; but the 
 two auxiliary points about the book are that, (1) on the 
 title-page it is said to be " written [? translated] by one that 
 hath heard much, seene much, but knowes a great deale 
 more," which occult declaration is succeeded by Munday 's 
 familiar motto : Patere aut abstme ; and (2) that of the four 
 introductory sonnets by Gibson, one is addressed to Mary 
 Fitton, who at this date still maintained her ground in 
 the world of fashion and letters and her situation at 
 Court. Moreover, at the masque celebrated at the Russells' 
 house in Blackfriars, June 16, 1600, to celebrate the mar- 
 riage of Mistress Anne Russell to Henry, Lord Herbert, son 
 of Edward, Earl of Worcester, the Queen, who honoured 
 the ceremony with her presence, took her place in a dance, 
 her partner being Mistress Fitton, who personified Afi'ection. 
 The contemporary account runs, that the lady wooed the 
 Queen to dance, and Elizabeth asked who she was. " Affec- 
 tion," replied the mask. " Affection is false," returned her 
 highness, yet nevertheless she rose, and danced.^ 
 
 Other members of the family were long more or less 
 mixed up with public matters, and in 1595 a certain 
 E. C. inscribed his volume of Sonnets to Edward Fitton, 
 Esquire, brother of the two sisters, and afterward knighted. 
 
 In the epistle before some copies of Troilus and Cressida, 
 1609, to which I must again refer, there is the quaint super- 
 scription : " A neuer writer to an euer reader — Newes," of 
 
 ' Subsequently to her disgrace in 1601 she married into the Polwhele 
 family, and her indiscretion was virtually condoned by her own relations. 
 
The Lyrical Work 221 
 
 the authorship of which internal evidence points to Thorpe, 
 and a preface to a historical tract of 1607 connected with 
 the Netherlands (B. M. Cat. 1077, d. 59) is headed : " Newes 
 to the Reader, or to whom the Buyer desires to send Newes,'' 
 and the signature at end is : " Thine, W. BB." In forming 
 an opinion on a matter belonging to a particular era, we 
 have to throw ourselves back into that era, so far as we are 
 enabled, and not commit the error of measuring our ancestors 
 by our own standard. 
 
 It strikes me, nevertheless, as out of keeping with what 
 we know of the relation of literary men of any class, especi- 
 ally of dramatists and poets, to the aristocracy at this time, 
 to assume, that Shakespear would venture to control directly 
 or otherwise the marriage of Herbert of Wilton ; and it is 
 to be always borne in mind that that nobleman was a very 
 young man indeed, when the Sonnets were published, and 
 scarcely more than a child, when many of them were written 
 and circulating in MS. He became Earl of Pembroke at one- 
 and-twenty in 1601. The champions of the Herbert theory 
 have gone so far as to cite the passage in Mioch Ado about 
 Nothing : — 
 
 " Beat. ... By my troth, I am exceeding ill, heigho ! 
 
 " Mary. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband ? 
 
 " Beat. For the letter that begins them all^ H." ^ 
 
 and are so good as to assure us that H stands for Herbert. 
 This is certainly as audacious and reckless a trespass on the 
 impersonality of the plays, which we are elsewhere instructed 
 to credit and respect, as can be conceived. I hold that the 
 Sonnets by no means necessarily represent a collection with 
 any single individual in view, nor do I grant that there is 
 any undermeaning or plan. When Shakespear had a man 
 in view — even a man so very young as Lord Southampton 
 was in 1593 — he is masculine, straightforward, laconic, yet 
 deferential. There is no vestige of pseudo-Platonism. 
 
 One clear ground of preference for the piratical origin 
 of the volume may be thought to be the readiness of Shake- 
 1 See a note in Knight's Shakespear, 1859, p. 173. 
 
222 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 spear, ever so apathetic in the unfair treatment by printers 
 and publishers of his literary property, to tolerate the trans- 
 action of Thorpe, so long as it was confined to the familiar 
 disregard of copyright, by which Shakespear was of course 
 only a common sufferer: but it is highly questionable, 
 whether even his forbearance would have extended so far as 
 to allow the association of such a book with Lord Pembroke, 
 had he really been the hero or subject of it. That he was, 
 is a perfectly modern theory dating from about 1830, and 
 I do not hesitate to pronounce it an excessively absurd one. 
 
 Thorpe was the publisher of a rather wide range of 
 books, and in coming across the manuscript of the Sonnets, 
 he merely followed a practice not uncommon in those, and 
 even in later, days ; but, although we should not have been 
 much poorer without them, Thorpe took no greater liberty 
 than the printers of some of the plays had already done, 
 notably the Yorkshire Tragedy printed as Shakespear's, and 
 as having been performed at his own theatre in 1608, pre- 
 sumably during the poefs absence in the country, without 
 admitting on his behalf the premises, that he had a con- 
 federate in the background, to wit the author. 
 
 It would be a severe injustice to Thorpe to omit or 
 refuse to concede that credit to the promoter of the book, 
 which it strikes me that he eminently deserves, as the first 
 person who appears to have presaged the enduring fame of 
 the author. He terms him Our Ever-Living Poet ; and he 
 so terms him in 1609, subsequently to the far less emphatic 
 tribute by Jonson in Poetaster in 1602, but years before 
 Jonson pronounced his eulogium in the folio of 1623, and 
 years upon years before any one else dreamed of taking 
 such a view, or forming such an estimate ; and even if this 
 testimony should be held to apply to the Sonnets only, there 
 is the passage in the Preface to TroUus and Cressida, pub- 
 lished in the same twelvemonth, where the writer — Thorpe, 
 I insist — says : " And believe this, when he is gone, and his 
 Comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up 
 a new English Inquisition." Shakespear had at earlier dates 
 
The Lyrical Work 223 
 
 been warmly commended by many admirers, but merely in 
 the same sense and measure, that others received general or 
 specific encomiums on their performances. The more em- 
 phatic and unqualified language of Thorpe was, and is, to 
 be interpreted in a manner far more correspondent with 
 modern ideas than it was with the ideas of the most ad- 
 vanced judges of the poet's own day. The literary speculator 
 was immensely before his time, and in four words defined 
 the permanent station of Shakespear, when he had given to 
 the world nearly all that he had to offer, more accurately 
 even than Dryden in that very perspicacious notice, which 
 forms part of his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 1668, and to 
 which he returns a little in the preface to his Juvenal in 
 1693. For anything approaching our present measurement 
 of the poet the latter was in his own time mainly indebted 
 to those literary rivals, whose animosity spoke for itself, and 
 to the precocious judgment of the publisher of the Sonnets. 
 From his immediate friends, so far as one is enabled to form 
 a conclusion, the praise was faint and scanty ; even his father 
 saw in him mainly " a good honest fellow." 
 
 I scarcely think that Thorpe would have agreed with his 
 friend Blount in considering Lyly " the only rare poet of 
 that time," and here at least the term could not be other- 
 wise than dramatically construed. There are two points in 
 the title-page of the Sonnets soliciting attention. The first 
 is the laconic structure of their introductory leaf, almost 
 recalling the Venus amd Adonis and hucrece, and the varia- 
 tion in copies, where the book is said to be on sale at 
 different addresses. Thorpe, in fact, as was his custom, 
 placed his venture in the hands of others for disposal 
 concurrently ; he was the middleman, who did not take the 
 money over the counter. Whether he invited Shakespear to 
 accept any, I decline to guess. 
 
 The identity of Thorpe is as clear as the ostensible and 
 arguable improbability of his approach to a nobleman on his 
 own account, not as in the case, where he sheltered himself 
 under the request of a deceased author, with a familiar air 
 
224 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 entirely out of accord with his own practice and feeling in 
 1616 and with the usage of the time. Failing the accept- 
 ance of W. H. as the initials of William Herbert, who 
 succeeded to the earldom in 1601, critics and biographers 
 have proposed other solutions of what is a riddle only to us. 
 In an old sale catalogue of C. J. Stewart the bookseller, a 
 MS. of Thomas Middleton's Game at Chess is found dedi- 
 cated to Mr. William Hammond. William Hammond of St. 
 Alban's Court, Nonnington, between Sandwich and Canter- 
 bury, Kent, afterward knighted, and apparently living in 
 1619, had a son of the same name, born in 1614, who was 
 not only related to Thomas Stanley and George Sandys the 
 poets, but in 1655 published a volume of verse on his own 
 account under the laconic title of Poems iy W. H. These 
 Nonnington Hammonds were persons with a literary en- 
 vironment and even taste, and in the absence of absolute 
 proof, but looking at all the circumstances, it is plausible 
 that the dedicatee of the Game at Chess was of that stock, 
 yet the elder gentleman of that name apparently died before 
 the play was produced, although he was living as Mr. 
 William Hammond in 1609, while his son was too young, a 
 mere boy, when it saw the light, to have recommended him- 
 self to any one for such a purpose. The objection and 
 difficulty lie in the circumstance, that we fail, possibly from 
 insufficient evidence, to see, how Hammond could be the only 
 begetter of the Sonnets ; and on the other hand, the survival 
 of the Middleton MS. was perfectly fortuitous, and was 
 perhaps only one link in a chain. The Hammonds of St. 
 Alban's Court, if this William Hammond was of their stock 
 (the elegiac writer, James Hammond, was a descendant) 
 might have told us the whole story ; and gratified — or dis- 
 appointed — us by solving the problem. The family is still 
 on the same ground in the person of Colonel Hammond, and 
 has been associated since 1804 with a banking concern at Can- 
 terbury. The Hammonds have in recent days intermarried 
 with another member of the Kentish group — the Oxindens of 
 Barham. 
 
The Lyrical Work 225 
 
 There is, however, a good deal more than a pretence to 
 a chain of evidence, lending us courage to form a somewhat 
 more favourable opinion of the Kentish and Hammond 
 theory. Besides the Hammonds of Nonnington and their 
 near connections above-mentioned, there were the Walsing- 
 hams and Camdens of Chislehurst,^ the Walsinghams' relatives 
 the Manwoods of St. Stephens or Hackington, Canterbury, 
 the Chewtes and Derings of Surrenden, the Manninghams of 
 East Mailing, the Chapmans of Godmersham,^ connected 
 with'the poet who, again, had an intimate friend in Matthew 
 Roydon (one of two brothers of literary taste and reputa- 
 tion), the Lambardes of Westcombe and Sevenoaks,^ the 
 Goldwells and perhaps the Tokes of Godington, the Oxin- 
 dens of Dene or Barham, near Canterbury, and the Twys- 
 dens* of East Peckham — all people of culture. With the 
 Walsinghams Christopher Marlowe had been on intimate 
 terms, and was at their house, when an order was given for 
 his arrest in connection with his so-called atheistical opinions 
 — opinions not, it appears, confined to him, but more or less 
 shared by Kyd the playwright, Marston, and others.^ He 
 eluded the holder of the warrant, and died at Deptford, 
 whither he had repaired, perhaps, to the house of a resident 
 relative, Anthony Marlowe,^ at the close of May, 1593, 
 leaving behind him certain unpublished MSS. 
 
 Five years later, Edward Blount the stationer, having 
 
 ^ Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of the great Bacon, and himself a great 
 man, was a native of Chislehurst. 
 
 ^ A copy of Lambarde's Kent, 1576, now before me, has the contem- 
 porary autograph of Thomas Chapman — 1 his neighbour at Godmersham. 
 
 ' The library has been (1902) sold ; but I fear that some of the books 
 — ^notably a Harm of York use — ^had long disappeared. 
 
 * In 1704 this family seems to have still maintained a good position. 
 In that year Wycherley presented a large paper copy of his MisceUameous 
 Poems, a, folio volume, accompanied by a portrait of himself as a young 
 man, "to the fairest lady in Kent, Mistress Jane Twysden." To the list 
 above-given may possibly be added the Palmers of Wingham Breux, who 
 are no longer there, and the Wottons of Boughton Malherbe. 
 
 ^ My Inedited Poetical MisceUanies, 1870, Notes. 
 
 " Ingram, Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, 1904, p. 241. 
 
 P 
 
226 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 obtained, as I reasonably conclude, from the Walsinghams, 
 independently or through their common friend George 
 Chapman, all that the deceased dramatist had finished of 
 his version of Hero and Leander, hastily published it — the 
 first and second Sestyad — while the interest and curiosity 
 in the unhappy case of the translator was yet fresh. But 
 Chapman, having been requested or having proposed to 
 complete the work, did so in a somewhat rapid manner, and 
 in the same year Blount was enabled to issue a second im- 
 pression, he inscribing the two Sestyads (Marlow^e's) to Sir 
 Thomas Walsingham, and Chapman the remainder to Lady 
 Walsingham. The speed with which the work was executed, 
 extended to the press, for of the only two copies known of 
 the full version, 1598, one exhibits marks of having been 
 partly reset, and the name Leander on the other is spelled 
 Leandr. Some idea of the intimacy between Blount and 
 Walsingham may be formed from the Epistle of the former 
 before the Hero and Leander, where he speaks of the death 
 of " our friend." The subjoined extract from that address 
 might suggest, that Blount had joined in paying the last 
 tribute to Marlowe : " when we haue brought the breathles 
 bodie to the earth : for albeit the eie there taketh his euer fare- 
 well of that beloued obiect, yet the impression of the man, 
 that he hath been deare vnto vs, liuing, an after life in our 
 memorie, there putteth vs in minde of further obsequies due 
 vnto the deseased. ... I suppose my selfe executor to the 
 vnhappie deceased author of this Poem, vpon whom, knowing 
 that in his life time many kind fauours ... so I cannot see 
 so far into the will of him dead that what soeuer issue of his 
 braine should chance to come abroad, that the first breath 
 it should take might be the gentle aire of your liking." 
 He adds that the unfinished tragedy had happened under 
 his hands to be imprinted, referring to the imperfect issue 
 in 1598. But Blount appears to have retained an interest 
 in the book down to 1617. 
 
 Chapman expresses himself in terms of gratitude to her 
 ladyship ; and in 1605 he prefixed to his All Fools a dedi- 
 
The Lyrical Work 227 
 
 catory sonnet to her husband not found in all copies.^ All 
 Fools was published for Thomas Thorpe; and the same 
 person brought out the Gentleman Usher in 1606 and the 
 Byron in 1608. I should not add here a particular reference 
 to the second edition of Thomas Wright's Passions of the 
 Mind, 1604, if it were not the case, that it possesses a copy 
 of laudatory verses by Jonson, that it has a second title- 
 page introducing an Addition occasioned by the death of 
 Queen Elizabeth, with the name of Thorpe as the stationer 
 {not vendor), and that it is dedicated to Shakespear's 
 Southampton. 
 
 The original association of Chapman the poet with Kent 
 is attributable, in the presence of the greatest darkness 
 respecting many points of his early life, to his presumed 
 relationship with the Chapmans of Godmersham — indeed 
 Anthony Wood thought him to be a Kentish man ; and this 
 Godmersham branch was related to the Manninghams, who 
 had at one time belonged to Hertfordshire.^ Of the Man- 
 ninghams the representative at this time was John Man- 
 ningham, from an entry in whose Diary Mr. Hunter first 
 discovered in 1828 the fact, that Twelfth Night had been 
 performed in the Middle Temple Hall in 1601-2, the drama 
 liaving been so far regarded as a later composition. So we 
 gradually repeople the Kent of Shakespear's day with a circle 
 distinguished by its literary sympathy and its friendly con- 
 tact with such men as Marlowe and Chapman, although we 
 have yet to await some clearer and more explicit proof of 
 any direct approximation of Shakespear to the set beyond 
 casual greetings at common rendezvous; and the reader 
 may be farther reminded, that one of these notable centres 
 in Kent, as he knew it, was the home of the Oxindens, where 
 the first ascertained attempt to form a collection of the early 
 
 ''■ It was in the Collier and Ouvry copy, sold among Ouvry's books in 
 1882, and had been apparently acquired from Rodd the bookseller. The 
 cause of its omission or withdrawal has to be discovered. 
 
 " Inversely the Bacons of Chislehurst, Kent, transferred themselves 
 to Hertfordshire, where Bacon's father founded the family seat at Gorham- 
 bury, near St. Albans. 
 
228 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 quartos is proved to have been made; and that the Man- 
 woods possessed a library of contemporary literature (MSS. 
 inclusive), the occasional occurrence of books with their 
 autographs and arms and other indications sufficiently 
 establishes. It was Sir Peter Manwood of these days, who 
 encouraged Richard KnoUes, apparently a Sandwich man, 
 to undertake his History of the Turks, published in 1603. 
 Thomas, his eldest son, was an intimate and valued friend of 
 William Browne, who consecrated to his memory the fourth 
 eclogue of the Shepherd's Pipe, 1614. The Manwoods, in 
 fact, originally sprang from a Sandwich stock, and Sir Peter 
 represented the borough in Parliament several times, notably 
 in 1601, when he may have fallen in with Knolles. He was 
 not only a person of culture, but a fosterer of it in others. 
 In 1561, his father, Sir Roger, had filled the part of the 
 lord chief baron in the masque of Palaphihs at the Middle 
 Temple; in 1564 he founded the grammar-school, which 
 still survives, and at present (1910) has sixty boys. A 
 nephew, John Manwood, published a well-known work on 
 Forest Law in 1598, having issued it previously in a private 
 form ; and he married a lady of his own county. 
 
 Kent thus appears to gain an inedited literary and even 
 Shakespearean interest cognate to that already claimed for 
 some of the southern and western outskirts of London, and 
 for one or two points in the Midlands, Coventry and War- 
 rington, about the same point of time. 
 
 It happened two years subsequently to the acquisition 
 by Blount of the MS. of Hero and Leander, that his friend 
 Thorpe fell in with a second posthumous relic of Marlowe, 
 equally fragmentary, namely, a linear version of the first 
 book of Lucan's Pharsalia. Ostensibly this discovery was 
 made elsewhere ; the Lucan and the Musaeus were in different 
 hands, or the possessor of the latter was not aware of the 
 fact, till perhaps Thorpe drew his attention to the matter. 
 At any rate, Thorpe, not Blount, found the Lucan, and 
 seems to have entered into a negociation with more than one 
 stationer, or to have formed more than one plan, before he 
 
The Lyrical Work 229 
 
 issued the poem separately in 1600 with an introductory 
 epistle to "his Kind and Trve Friend Edward Blvnt," 
 whom he expressly preferred to a nobler patron, and to 
 whom he acknowledges prior indebtedness. The original 
 notion about the appearance of the Lucan in print had 
 been that it should be annexed to the republication of 
 Hero and Leander in 1600 ; and it is actually specified on 
 the title-page of that volume as part of the contents. All 
 this tends to exemplify and define the relations between 
 Blount and Thorpe, Blount still retaining his interest in 
 the Musffius, although his name does not occur in every 
 impression. These two men of business were evidently of 
 somewhat congenial and cognate pursuits. During many 
 years the former had no settled address, but, like Thorpe, 
 deposited volumes on sale with a third party ; and, as we 
 have observed, he enters first on the scene. In that very 
 year 1600 he had had the opportunity of returning the 
 compliment paid to him by his confrere, when he brought 
 out in 1600 an anonymous version of a work by Conestagio 
 on the annexation of Portugal to Spain by Philip II. in 
 1580 ; but he preferred to associate the undertaking with 
 Lord Southampton, whom he informs that the translator 
 was his (Blount's) respected friend and a gentleman much 
 devoted to his Honour. Beyond this imperfect disclosure 
 he does not venture ; perhaps he did not wish the friend to 
 stand between him and his lordship. Blount had forsaken 
 for the moment his Kentish acquaintances, and was treading 
 on new ground — that first opened by Shakespear himself in 
 1593. 
 
 There is no other peculiarity about this course than the 
 certainly uncustomary proceeding in the case of the Lucan 
 of the inscription by one bookseller (Thorpe) to a second 
 (Blount) of a volume bearing the imprint of a third (Burre). 
 Thorpe in 1600 plays the same anomalous part as he in 
 1609 played in regard to the Sonnets of Shakespear, where 
 he figures, as we all know, as the " well-wishing adventurer," 
 and similarly confines himself to the employment of agents 
 
230 Shakespear: The Man and his Wouk 
 
 for retailing purposes. This principle he seems to have 
 generally followed at a later period, for a tract relating to 
 the affairs of the Netherlands, 1618, is said on the title to 
 be " printed by G. E. for Th : Th : and Richard Chambers " 
 — the latter a name, with which I am not otherwise fami- 
 liar. Thorpe here employs Eld, the printer of the Sonnets, 
 to execute this small volume, and keeps his own identity 
 a sort of secret, leaving Chambers to appear as the 
 salesman. 
 
 The preliminary inscription to Chapman's Byron offers 
 the auxiliary interest of being likewise addressed to Sir 
 Thomas Walsingham and his son and namesake jointly; 
 and here the dramatist signalizes Sir Thomas as his honour- 
 able and constant friend, and compliments them both on 
 their taste and scholarship, which placed them above " our 
 ignorant gentlemen." In 1605 Thorpe was beginning to lay 
 his hands on MSS. of Chapman, Jonson, and Coryat, with or 
 without an understanding with the authors ; and in the year 
 immediately previous one of Jonson's pieces had been first 
 entered to Blount, who transferred it to Thorpe, the latter 
 issuing it with a metrical commentary by Chapman on the 
 drama. 
 
 We seem altogether to make out an intimacy at least 
 from 1593 between the Walsinghams, Christopher Marlowe, 
 George Chapman, Edward Blount, and Thomas Thorpe. 
 All these were in different senses in touch with each other, 
 Marlowe of course dropping out of the circle at an early 
 stage ; and Thorpe had too keen a nose for eligible finds to 
 leave a stone unturned, if Blount or himself heard of any 
 commodity within reach likely to take the public. The 
 former had no deficiency of assurance, for in 1605 he 
 acquired the MS. of a small volume by Robert, afterward 
 Sir Robert, Dallington, printed it without the author's 
 knowledge, and then dedicated it to him ! ■■■ 
 
 ^ It is perhaps worthy of remark that neither Blount nor Thorpe laid 
 his hands on Marlowe's Dido or Edward II., both printed in 1594, the 
 former with an Elegy on the author by Nash, or on the Jew of Malta, 
 
The Lyrical Woek 231 
 
 The deduction, which arises from this preamble is, that 
 the Musaeus and Lucan, either one or both, were found at 
 Chislehurst (with other papers) after the death of Marlowe, 
 having been taken or sent thither by the poet, or that, the 
 former having occurred in the hands of the Walsinghams, 
 the other may have been preserved at their kinsfolk the 
 Manwoods', whom Marlowe "equally knew. These may be 
 more or less plausible inferences; but it enters more into 
 the nature of an hypothesis without question, whether the 
 Shakespear MS. was similarly deposited at Nonnington, the 
 residence of the Hammonds, and at a considerable distance 
 from Chislehurst, and in what manner and sense a member 
 of that family was instrumental in " begetting " the collec- 
 tion, as we have it in type, for there had been a lengthened 
 lapse of time between the find of the Lucan and that of the 
 Sonnets ; and, again, the latter stood in a materially different 
 position, since they were, according to our sole available 
 information, scattered in various quarters, and therefore 
 demanded at least the process of being brought together, a 
 service, which we are instructed by Thorpe, that we owe to 
 Mr. W. H. Thorpe had at intervals secured sundry MSS. 
 by other writers, keeping his hands tolerably full down to 
 1608 : in his eyes a literary production was mainly printer's 
 copy ; and the approximation to the begetter or collector 
 of the Sonnets, in the same range of country (as I dare to 
 
 licensed for the press in the same year, and consequently available, but, so 
 far as we are aware, not published, till it was edited in 1633 by Thomas 
 Heywood from a version performed at Court about 1625, no contemporary 
 text being perhaps even then extant. See farther my Mawiial of Old 
 Plays, 1892, p. 163, where I make out that a drama on the subject of 
 Mutius Scsevola may have been among Marlowe's posthumous papers. 
 The Dido, like the Hero amd Leander, was incomplete, and was finished by 
 Nash, although the title might lead to the supposition that the play was 
 the joint composition of the two dramatists. We do not know when 
 Marlowe executed his translation of some of Ovid's Elegies ; but it does 
 not seem to have been comprised in the finds after his death, nor was his 
 English version of the second Rape of Helen, by the Greek epic poet 
 Coluthus of Lycopolis from the Latin of Thomas Watson, printed in 
 1586. Comp. Notes under Titus Andronicus. 
 
232 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 contend) as the Marlowe and Lucan, occurred at a juncture, 
 perhaps, when he was looking out for a new speculation. 
 He was a man, who manifestly, in spite of his excellent 
 wishes, was no Quixote, for the Sormets, with its forty leaves 
 or eighty pages, cost him more than he felt he was justified 
 in dispensing to the public at a groat, and he fixed the 
 publishing price most unusually at fivepence, as attested by 
 two contemporary evidences. Thomas May's Heir, 1633, is 
 marked on the title, however, by a contemporary buyer as 
 having cost him the same amount. 
 
 Independently of the Marlowe and Shakespear, and the 
 two issues of Healey's Epictetus merely interesting to us 
 from their Shakespearean bearing, Thorpe is answerable, 
 as I have shown, for several other ventures of more or less 
 trifling bulk, and his career extended down to 1625. Blount 
 and he were evidently on good terms during all these years ; 
 in 1613 we find the former assigning to his friend a small 
 volume by Humphrey King, almost as if he had doubts of 
 its saleable virtue. A more complete acquaintance with 
 his personal fortunes might have revealed something un- 
 expectedly useful ; but we hear nothing farther of him, and 
 he died in 1635 in an almshouse. Forsooth, though the 
 actual facts are unknown to us, he merited a better fortune 
 — he who had delivered that unique emphatic verdict on 
 the fame of Shakespear, which the poet can scarcely have 
 failed to see in print — perhaps not quite with indifference, 
 nor quite with incredulity. Some of his enterprizes do not 
 strike one as peculiarly happy or intelligible ; but, no doubt, 
 he knew his business. In 1613 he had brought out a new 
 edition of Nash's Chrisfs Tears over Jerusalem, one of the 
 dullest productions of a very able writer. Nash had long 
 been dead, and was scarcely recollected in 1613, as we recol- 
 lect him to-day.^ 
 
 The career of Blount was distinguished by several literary 
 
 ^ I am unable to trace Thorpe or his representatives, unless he was of 
 kin to the WiUiam Thorpe, bookseller at Chester, of whom an engraved 
 business card, dated 1661, is extant. 
 
The Lyrical Work 233 
 
 events, of which two have a clear and direct bearing on Shake- 
 spear at a time anterior, not to the completion, but to the 
 issue of the Sonnets, while a third concerned the posthumous 
 folio of 1623. In 1601 appeared a strange composite volume, 
 now of extraordinary rarity, principally made up of a trans- 
 lation by Robert Chester of an Italian poem, to which he 
 gave the title of Love's Martyr or Rosalms Complaint, and 
 of a second composition on the legend of Arthur, described 
 as the maiden essay of a new British author. At the end, 
 however, occurs an appendix or supplement, which forms the 
 real value and interest of the book in the shape of original 
 verses by Shakespear, Marston, Chapman, and Jonson, 
 those by Shakespear extending to eighteen stanzas. A 
 peculiarity of this book, apart from the circumstance that it 
 was a more ambitious undertaking than the Musseus, running 
 in fact nearly to two hundred pages, was the absence of 
 any place of sale and indeed of any yendor, for at the foot 
 of the title-page we meet only with : London Imprmted for 
 E. B. 1601 — E. B. being the initials of Blount. Here we 
 appear to have the fruit of another and more extensive 
 and varied trouvaille, in which Thorpe had no visible interest 
 or hand ; the contributions from the pens of Shakespear and 
 other eminent poets had been acquired piecemeal, perchance 
 through his acquaintance Chapman ; and the Arthurian 
 subject-matter of the portion by " the new writer " recom- 
 mended it to adoption rather than Chester's own work or his 
 name. The stanzas by Shakespear must be taken to have 
 belonged to the same body of floating material as the Sonnets, 
 A Lover's Complaint, and the fragments in the Pilgrim, ; they 
 are obviously early work — inferior even to the Sonnets; 
 and they had probably strayed from the author's hands in 
 common with the rest of the scattered papers gradually 
 recovered and printed with or without leave. 
 
 Blount was ever on the book-hunting track. In 1608 
 he secured the MS. of Pericles; and could have authori- 
 tatively told us whence he derived it, and how far Shakespear 
 was concerned. He was by possibility uncertain, whether 
 
234 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 his MS. was the sole one in existence, for he entered it as a 
 precaution at Stationers' Hall on May 20. But he did not 
 proceed any farther, and surrendered the copyright to an- 
 other stationer, who brought out two corrupt impressions in 
 the following year. Blount seems scarcely to have possessed 
 that sort of literary sensibility evinced by Thorpe. As far 
 back as 1603 he had begun to traverse the rights of Simon 
 Waterson, Daniel's usual publisher, by bringing out several 
 of the minor pieces of that writer, and this he continued to 
 do till 1607. 
 
 Another and later achievement was one of far greater 
 magnitude and of a wholly different nature. It was the 
 English version of Montaigne, of which enough has already 
 been heard, and which might never have appeared, had the 
 one projected by Edward Aggas in 1595 been duly executed. 
 It could not have been worse than Florio's ; and from the 
 long experience of Aggas it would probably have been 
 superior. Again, in 1612, Blount was instrumental in intro- 
 ducing to the world the earliest English version of Don 
 Quixote by Thomas Shelton ; but the whole work was not 
 completed till 1620. Shelton apparently had a French 
 version at his side while he was engaged in his onerous 
 task. 
 
 The discoveries of these two nugget-winners, Thorpe and 
 Blount, are represented by a small group of books, bearing^ 
 date between 1598 and 1632, to which our national litera- 
 ture is a debtor : the Lucan and Musasus, the Shakespear 's 
 Sonnets, Pericles, the Montaigne, the Cervantes, the Folio 
 Shakespear, and the Lyly — the last for the songs — ran a 
 considerable risk of perishing, had they not stepped for- 
 ward ; and so let them not want their due ! On the whole, 
 considering the signal importance of the volume, the fourth 
 share of Blount in the First Folio must be allowed to be his 
 most distinguished title to our gratitude, although the cost 
 and I'isk to him individually were not great. The occur- 
 rence of his name as a partner in the venture is intelligible 
 and natural enough ; he had had a fairly good trial of the 
 
The Lyrical Work 235 
 
 marketability of Shakespeareana, and after many years of 
 publishing activity, and perhaps from other sources, as his 
 father belonged to one of the leading City Gilds, was pro- 
 bably in a position to put capital into a likely undertaking.^ 
 It deserves a passing note, that his zeal or enterprize some- 
 times led him to make an entry of some book in contemplation 
 beforehand, as when he registered a translation in this same 
 year (1623) by Jonson of the Argents of Barclay, of which 
 we hear and know no more. But his entertainment of the 
 project confirms the strange interest at the time in an 
 insipid work of fiction. Possibly Jonson or he, or both, 
 thought better of it ; they may have learned that there was 
 a rival version in hand. 
 
 I apprehend that one of Blount's latest speculations was 
 the collected edition of the plays of Lyly in 1632, encouraged 
 perhaps by the surviving popularity of the Euphues, and 
 this, again, entered into the category of a find, since 
 Blount succeeded in meeting with the songs omitted in 
 the quartos. In his preface he emphasizes the dramas as 
 "the greatest treasure our poet left behind him, six 
 ingots of refined invention richer than gold." Euphuistic 
 Blount ! 
 
 I may be thought to have expatiated fully at large on 
 the doings of Thorpe and Blount ; but I have so acted be- 
 cause I felt that in connection with an important aspect of 
 the literary career of Shakespear the former deserves to 
 occupy a more prominent rank and to have higher credit 
 awarded to him than have so far been the case, while it 
 seemed necessary to do what was possible to illustrate the 
 
 ^ In 1598 he joined with his wife Septima Blount in the lease to 
 Thomas Smyth, cordwayuer, of "a great new-built messuage, and one 
 great barn, with the stables and other edifices and buildings with a garden 
 abutting northward on Holborn Fields, and the said messuage abutting 
 westward on Gray's Inn street or lane, alias Purpoole lane, toward 
 Clerkenwell." The rent was £60 a year. A John Smyth, barber-surgeon, 
 is mentioned as residing on the same or a contiguous site. Original deed 
 sold at Puttick and Simpson's, July 9, 1909, No. 546. Blount's house was 
 known as the Bed Lion. 
 
236 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 association of Blount with Marlowe's posthumous papers, 
 Titus Andronicus inclusive, and his interest in Pericles. 
 Blount disappears after 1632 from public view ; the date of 
 his death is unknown to me. His career as a promoter 
 of literary ventures had spread over a longer period than 
 that of Thorpe, and he was also in a position to commit 
 himself at need to such larger and costlier undertakings as 
 the Montaigne, the Cervantes, and the Folio Shakespear 
 of 1623, a monumental tripos, had he achieved nothing 
 more. 
 
 Edward AUeyn registers the purchase in 1609 under 
 household stuff as " a book, Shaksper Sonettes, 5d " — and a 
 second copy apparently bought at the time, which long lay 
 at Althorp, bears a note on the title of the same original 
 cost doubtless under similar circumstances with the contem- 
 porary memorandum on the last page : " Commendacions to 
 my very kind and approued ffrind, B.M." — seeming to be- 
 speak the acquisition by some one, who subsequently gave 
 it to an acquaintance. With this inestimable salvage the 
 Malone copy of Venus and Adonis, 1593, may, as already 
 explained, possibly make up a triad ; and they are happily, 
 one and all, in English custody. 
 
 There are no critical appreciations either of the Venus 
 and Adonis and Lucrece, or of the Sonnets, at or near the 
 time of their original appearance. Their present rarity 
 bespeaks in some measure their temporary popularity, but 
 in a larger one the result of prolonged neglect almost amount- 
 ing to oblivion. The sole positive evidence of any con- 
 temporary of note having manifested sufficient interest in 
 the work to induce him to bestow a few pence on the pur- 
 chase is the entry in the Diary of Alleyn. The copy is not 
 now at Dulwich College. It may be one of those in the 
 Bodleian, or Alleyn may not have retained it after perusal. 
 Yet, although he was not a man of culture, he acquired 
 a notable collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean litera- 
 ture, which remained intact at Dulwich, I believe, till it 
 was mercilessly and dishonestly pillaged by Garrick and 
 
The Lyrical Work 237 
 
 Malone.'' But a second extant copy, as I have just 
 shown, was purchased at the original price, if not at the 
 same time. 
 
 ^ It is not surprising that these two gentlemen succeeded in obtaining 
 books of which no other copies have ever been beheld. Fortunately they 
 left their respective conveyances to the British Museum and Bodleian. 
 On the 2nd of July, 1909, I revisited Dulwioh, and looked with reverent 
 awe on the black marble slab, beneath which repose the ashes of AUeyn. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Sonnets continued — Absolute authenticity of the entire text canvassed 
 — Long interval, over vrhich the Sonnets extended (? 1592-1603) — A 
 line in Sonnet 94 common to the play of Edward III., 1596 — Support 
 for the view that there is no inner or occult sense in the series — Temp- 
 tation to look into the Sonnets for biographical helps — Absence of 
 real editorship in them— Influence of Barnfield in some, and of other 
 sonneteers. 
 
 The Sonnets, as published by Thorpe, are usually accepted 
 as exclusively from the pen of Shakespear, and the similarity 
 of style doubtless supports such a view. But Thorpe does 
 not tell us, where Mr. W. H. met with the manuscript copies, 
 which down to 1698, according to Meres, were in several 
 hands ; nor are we informed, whether the original autographs 
 were employed, or whether the "loose papers," to which 
 Meres alludes, were transcribed for the press. The super- 
 ficial assertion, that the book contains only Shakespear's 
 work, goes for nothing; Jaggard had said or implied the 
 same thing about the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. The 
 circumstances, it is true, are sensibly different ; the earlier 
 collection embraces matter palpably not Shakespearean ; but 
 there is quite sufficient probability, if some of the Sonnets 
 should raise a suspicion of a different parentage, to 
 second the doubt in the imminent chance that among the 
 Thorpe find there is a quatorzain or so inadvertently 
 attributed to the writer of the rest. Thus we find No. 
 107 embodying references, which can scarcely belong to a 
 period anterior to the death of Elizabeth and the succes- 
 sion of the House of Stuart, or, in other words, here is a 
 sonnet, which could not have formed part of the series, one 
 
The Lyrical Work 239 
 
 of the loose papers, particularised by Meres as in circulation 
 in 1598. 
 
 " Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, 
 Can yet the lease of my true love control, 
 Suppos'd as forfeit to a confin'd doom. 
 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd, 
 And the sad augurs mock their own presage ; 
 Incei-tainties now crown themselves assur'd, 
 And peace proclaims an olive of endless age. 
 Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
 My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes. 
 Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme. 
 While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. 
 And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent." 
 
 Within these poor and rough lines, of which the concluding 
 couplet reminds us of the verses beneath the portrait of 
 James I. in 1616, vve are told, that there are means of trac- 
 ing the death of Elizabeth and the advent of James I., which 
 may be so ; but some of the biographers equally see the 
 release of Lord Southampton in 1603, which shews their 
 faculty of penetrating below the surface much farther than 
 I can. The allusion to the change of dynasty, however, has 
 this virtue, that it seems to indicate the accession of new 
 matter posterior to the Meres notice, and why should this 
 sonnet be the sole afterbirth ? The clue to their repository 
 is vague enough in 1598 ; it is to be collected that such of 
 them as were in existence — the bulk — were scattered — that 
 the writer did not hold them ; and this process of gradual 
 augmentation, as occasion offered, may have proceeded nearly 
 down to the date of their transfer to type. Mr. W. H. 
 gathered the stragglers together either for Thorpe, or did 
 so propria motu, and handed them over to that individual on 
 his application direct or indirect — through Blount or the 
 Walsinghams. Whichever course was followed, I have 
 shown that the person responsible for the text overlooked 
 at all events two sonnets long since printed ; and he may by 
 
240 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 possibility have been misled as to the authorship of some, 
 which he inserts. 
 
 The seeming lack of interest on the part of Shakespear, 
 when the Sonnets were before the world, and even ostensible 
 denial of a voice in the business, only represented what had 
 occurred again and again, when his plays were openly pirated 
 by adventurous stationers ; yet the peculiar nature of the 
 Sonnets, their survival in a manuscript shape among a 
 private circle, and the probable ignorance of the world at 
 large of their existence, contribute to place them in a some- 
 what different position from that of actual and popular 
 dramas. Thorpe does not appear to have had at any time 
 business relations with the poet; but there is just this 
 distant possibility that Shakespear was an accessory before 
 the fact, insomuch that he acquiesced in the step, and even 
 had a hand in the title-page, which is characteristically and 
 suspiciously laconic. Supposing, however, such to have been 
 the case, the internal history of the book remains unaffected. 
 The author and the publisher of course knew who Mr. W. H. 
 was. If Shakespear was unwilling to make the Sonnets public 
 property in the usual manner, and ofl'ered no opposition to 
 their appearance with the strange credentials appended to 
 them by a third party, thus absolving him from censure : his 
 omission to castigate the text and determine the sequence 
 merely followed what had been his almost habitual practice. 
 
 There is more than a possibility, deduced from modern 
 usage, that the volume, though dated 1609, was ready at the 
 close of the previous year, and the personal movements of 
 the poet during the later months of 1608 are not actually 
 traceable. He was most probably at Stratford in September 
 on account of the death of his mother on the 8th ; he was 
 certainly there in part of October. The Sonnets could not 
 have occupied a long time at press; but if Thorpe felt it 
 needful or proper to obtain permission to print them, he 
 either did so prior to the departure of the author for Strat- 
 ford or after his return. The book bears on its face no 
 auxiliary indication. 
 
The Lyrical Work 241 
 
 One reason for the readiness of Shakespear to fall, if he 
 did so, into the scheme of Thorpe, and even to collude with 
 him, may have been the fear of what would be thought of 
 such a volume at home in Stratford, if it was reported to 
 have appeared with his sanction in the same way as the 
 other poems. We have to bear in mind, when we look 
 toward Stratford, that down to 1597 very little of his 
 acknowledged work had passed the press. The bulk was 
 retained by the theatres, and every effort used to hinder its 
 appearance in type. 
 
 Even the average reader of the Plays skips the Sonnets 
 as dull and unintelligible with some tincture of licentious- 
 ness. The attentive and intelligent one contracts an im- 
 pression, that they present numerous inconsistencies and 
 contradictions. The laborious and scientific student does 
 not more nearly approach a solution acceptable at sight. 
 
 The Sonnets, in other words, were formerly regarded as 
 mere exercises of poetical fancy and caprice. At present 
 they are held to be luminous in a sort of chiaroscuro way 
 with biographical and historical episodes, and to have, as it 
 were, a dramatis personce of their own. Some of us have 
 crossed over from one exti-eme to the other. A not unfair 
 or untrue estimate of these compositions may be, that they 
 most unfavourably compare with the dramas of a writer, 
 whose genius was, above all, dramatic, much in the same 
 way that Mr. Swinburne's and the late Laureate's plays com- 
 pare unfavourably with their lyrics, where they were, on the 
 whole, so supreme, and which are anyhow their speciality. 
 It is unfortunate, when a waterman undertakes to drive a 
 mail coach. 
 
 Robin Goodfellow, in his most tricksy mood, never used 
 his victims worse than Shakespear and Thorpe between them 
 have used us in this matter. We wade through the more 
 than a century and a half of stanzas, encountering stumbling- 
 blocks at short distances, and at length arrive — not at the 
 conclusion, for there is none, but at a place, where there is 
 no more to be read. The work is aTe\o<i, a literary torso, 
 
 a 
 
242 Shakespeab: The Man and his Work 
 
 loose papers verily! Small, very small loss to the world 
 and to the fame of the writer had it been, if the MS. had 
 perished. But then the passage in Meres would have sur- 
 vived to lead us to imagine its contents so different, and 
 make us miserable for ever; and, once more, these lyrics 
 incidentally shew that the same pen, which traced them 
 on paper, is not less responsible for the plays, which bear 
 the same name. 
 
 The order of the collection is manifestly casual, arbitrary, 
 and unauthoritative. The first and second stanzas deserve to 
 be considered among the best in point of thought and style ; 
 but they constitute an abrupt commencement. As there is 
 no warrant for the assumption that the author interposed — 
 always premising that the whole is due to one pen, for we 
 cannot be absolutely sure of so much as that — the arrange- 
 ment must be due to W. H., Thorpe, or the typographer. 
 Of the persons, who held the MSS., our knowledge is restricted 
 to the bare statement of Meres in 1598, that the Sonnets 
 were then in the hands of friends — whom or how many, we 
 do not learn ; there is the possibility, that the holder of 
 some may have been the recipient of sonnets by other lite- 
 rary acquaintances, and that he placed all such trifles together 
 without distinction ; nor would any attempt at a new arrange- 
 ment be of great avail, when the context of each sonnet, or 
 at least each short succession of sonnets, is so evidently the 
 fruit of some momentary impulse or some passing impression. 
 
 In The Reign of Edward III., 1596, a line also forms the 
 concluding one of the 94th Sonnet, from which the inference 
 may be that the latter was composed about the same time, 
 while the recollection of the image was fresh in the writer's 
 mind, and, moreover, that the series was at this date in pro- 
 cess of occasional formation, as some idea struck Shakespear 
 amid his ordinary work, and that the most recent inspira- 
 tions were retained till some one begged them or borrowed 
 them. At any rate, when the day came for bringing them 
 to light, a complete text, so far as we know, was in the 
 hands of one or more persons, Shakespear hardly inclusive. 
 
The Lyrical Work 243 
 
 There is also the singular expression, "prophetic soul," in 
 No. 107, above printed, which reappears in Hamlet. 
 
 The opiniori, if such a word may be allowed, that there 
 is no inner sense in the Sonnets, on which we can safely 
 depend, receives a confirmation, if a feeble one, from the 
 disregard of the sequence of 1609 in the collective volume of 
 1640, where the arrangement is entirely different, and the 
 quatorzains present themselves in the shape of detached 
 sentiments — indeed much in that, in which I apprehend that 
 they were periodically composed. The edition of 1640 had 
 •equally no critical supervision, and was little more than a 
 bookseller's venture, comprising, like the third edition of 
 the Pilgrwi, 1612, pieces not by Shakespear. It was the 
 last chance of separating from the sonnets written by the 
 poet any not from his pen, looking at the inferiority and 
 even the incongruity of some of the series and the suspicious 
 circumstances, under which the book was ushered into exist- 
 ence ; and it was a chance, which it was not the cue of the 
 bookseller to regard. 
 
 The Sonnets are certainly open to many strictures. They 
 strike one as an inconsequent rhapsody ; the sentiment is 
 ■often thin and weak, the diction poor, and the meti-e faulty. 
 Yet the case stands with them, as it does with the remaining 
 poems, differently from the dramatic series. There may be 
 in places insertions of words and even portions of lines, made 
 necessary by the defective state of the printer's copy ; yet 
 substantially we hold in our hands to-day the ipsissima verba 
 for better or for worse. 
 
 If the Sonnets were arranged by an editor, it must have 
 surely been one, who was ignorant of any covert allusion or 
 any necessity for consecutiveness ; but the presumption is, that 
 the printer received from Thorpe the MSS. much as they 
 came to hand from various sources, and committed the 154 
 quatorzains to type, as we at present see them. The whole, or 
 nearly the whole, wears the aspect of having been the product 
 of those years, when the writer was engaged in London in 
 revising other men's labours, and possibly in taking parts in 
 
244 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 the performances. Had he written them in or near the year 
 of issue, I apprehend that they would have been very differ- 
 ent ; and, again, had a sensible proportion been the fruit of 
 maturer thought, the contrast would have been unmistakably 
 powerful. As the matter stands, the entire work is of the 
 same second-rate leaven — a companion to the sonnets of 
 Constable, Watson, and Barnfield; and the encomium of 
 Meres in 1598, if it is not accurate criticism or criticism at 
 all, is just the sort of praise, which he extends to the three 
 writers above named, and which is the best deserved, I take 
 it, by Constable of all the four, although we must not forget 
 that Watson was almost the pioneer in this class of com- 
 position and in the imitation of the Italian school. 
 
 In some, if not too many of the Sonnets forsooth we 
 see the poetical expression of the author in its earliest and 
 rawest form. The inequality of merit and power are to be 
 securely attributed, not to any process of revision, but to the 
 term of years, over which the accumulation of matter seems 
 to have spread, that is to say, from 1594, when Shakespear 
 was thirty, to 1603, when he was forty, and to the conse- 
 quent growth of taste and experience. Yet few will be 
 probably found to contend that, had the poet written no- 
 thing else, we should be thinking of him to-day, as we do ; 
 his strength was clearly not in the sonnet, nor indeed in 
 lyrical work of any kind. He was essentially the Dramatist. 
 In the Play his genius found full scope, and in the Play 
 alone ; with many brilliant exceptions, even the interspersed 
 songs are comparatively inferior. 
 
 Taking the main bulk of the collection of 1609, it may 
 be regarded as chronologically concurrent with the first and 
 second epochs of dramatic work, when Shakespear passed 
 through the experimental stage of editorial recension to that 
 of original authorship, but when the power to create Hamlet, 
 Lear, Othello, and the Tempest could only just be surmised 
 from the superiority of the second series of dramas to their 
 predecessors. The poet never displayed a parallel advance 
 in lyrical poetry, partly perchance from want of leisure and 
 
The Lyrical Work 245 
 
 the more lucrative returns from the theatres, yet also partly 
 from the consciousness of a less marked bent in the other 
 direction. 
 
 Whatever judgment may be passed on these effusions as 
 poetical efforts, they are not inferior in that respect to 
 Vemis and Adonis and Litcrece, and they are infinitely more 
 interesting and important as biographical documents and 
 guides, in spite of all that has been expressed and written 
 to the contrary ; that they are unequal in merit may be set 
 down to their intermittent production under various influ- 
 ences. Within these lines I irrevocably assert that the 
 means are supplied to us of adding very sensibly to our 
 acquaintance with a very obscure subject, and of drawing 
 nearer to a tiresomely mysterious and reticent personality. 
 That is their worth — their sole worth. I rejoice that we 
 possess them. I grieve that they are so mediocre. Yet, 
 had they been of a finer yarn, they might — probably would 
 — have been less fruitful in co-operative suggestion. These 
 and the other lyrics are to be broadly and mainly regarded 
 and estimated, not only as Juvenilia, but as literary exer- 
 cises more or less foreign to the true gift of the writer. 
 
 The antecedent comparison with Barnfield extends be- 
 yond the style and cast of thought: for it is plain that, 
 when he composed his Sonnets, Shakespear, who in the Venus 
 and Adxmis and Lucrece had adopted a different class of story 
 as his groundwork, was also influenced by the Virgilian 
 model so transparent in the Affectionate Shepherd, and trace- 
 able back to Greek and even Oriental sentiment, where the 
 relationship was less fanciful and more gross. Let us re- 
 collect, however, that he was the senior of Barnfield by a 
 decade, and that we are entitled to look for something better 
 from a man of thirty, Shakespear's age in 1594, than from 
 one of twenty, Barnfield's age in the same year. 
 
 The extreme youth of Barnfield excuses the blemishes of 
 style, costume, and matter. The classical writers served as 
 general patterns in those days, and in addition to them the 
 Italian school had begun to exercise an influence of a rather 
 
246 Shakespear; The Man and his Work 
 
 despotic nature on the English sentimental writers. Barn- 
 field, when he took an old man's part in his first poem, acted 
 in deference to the early Italian conceit countenanced by 
 Petrarch no less than by Virgil; and he to some extent 
 followed up the same artificial and pointless device in the 
 sonnets appended to his Cynthia, 1595. The models fur- 
 nished by Watson and other earlier masters in this school of 
 writing were also of service to Shakespear. 
 
 The irresponsible power of the sonneteer is felt by no 
 one so strongly as the sonneteer himself, who has been 
 accustomed at all times to use his discretion with freedom 
 and impunity. Taking the 154 items which compose the 
 Shakespear series, the theories, hypotheses, and guesses ad- 
 vanced in regard to the meaning or aim of much that is 
 found there establish the acknowledged existence of am- 
 biguity ; and this feature has been deepened and aggravated 
 by our comparative ignorance of the daily and intimate life 
 of the poet during all the years of his separate residence in 
 London. It is no satisfaction or assistance to be informed 
 that there is perhaps no person of the period, occupying a 
 similar position, of whom we know so much ; for there is 
 none as to whom a distant age has been taught to acquire 
 so keen a curiosity. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Biographical lesson of the Sonnets — Herbert and Southampton — The Essex 
 plot — Performance of a scene from a play in various parts of London 
 — Bartholomew Griffin and his Fidessa — Observations on the question 
 of complexion — One of the day — Analogy in Othello — Shakespear and 
 Jonson's Masques of Blackness and Beauty — The Prince of Morocco in 
 the Merchant of Venice — ^Virtue of contraries — A youthful reminiscence 
 of Stratford in Sonnet 143 — Despondent vein in some of the series — 
 Hints at death and even saicide — Parallel passages from Hamlet and 
 Measwre for Measure illustrative of others in the Sonnets and in Mon- 
 taigne on the subject of Death — Autobiographical worth of the 
 Sonnets — Two of the group widely separated placed side by side (Nos. 
 2 and 73) — The writer prematurely old at forty — Shakespear's absten- 
 tion from complimentary addresses — Critical summary — Dr. Giles 
 Fletcher, Shakespear's contemporary, on the nature of this class of 
 writing — Drayton's Idea — Tennyson's Maud. 
 
 In lieu of a succession of amatory and fanciful exercises, 
 written at intervals under the sway of various humours, and 
 so embodying, in common with the whole race of such 
 products, the loose recollections of bygone years, a certain 
 type of modern scholarship discloses to us not merely un- 
 suspected material for the biography of the writer but for 
 the secret annals of the court of Elizabeth. We are assisted 
 in distinguishing passages in the lives of Lord Herbert and 
 Lord Southampton, the rivalry between the poet and the 
 former nobleman in the affections of Mary Fitton, a maid of 
 honour to the queen, the discontent of Shakespear with his 
 lot as a player, and his gratification at the return of South- 
 ampton to liberty and favour on the accession of James I. 
 There remains, oveu and above, the conventional courtship 
 by the sonneteer of the fair youth with the golden locks, 
 who is identified with Herbert, and the apparent union of 
 the dark lady with him, succeeded by a renewal of the 
 
 247 
 
248 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 original complaint, as if the order, in which we have re- 
 ceived the matter, was false. 
 
 Herbert and Southampton figure at the actual Court of 
 the queen as two dissolute and turbulent young men, of 
 whom one in 1601 seduces Mary Fitton, and refuses to marry 
 her, and the other seduces Elizabeth Vernon, daughter of 
 John Vernon of Hodnet in Shropshire, and makes her at the 
 last moment ^ that imperfect reparation in August, 1598, 
 on his return to London from serving under Essex in Spain 
 and Ireland. They both fell under the displeasure of their 
 royal mistress : the former on this account, the latter for 
 this and graver reasons. The patron of Shakespear was 
 disgraced in 1598 through the commission of a serious 
 misdemeanour, and in 1601 was implicated in the Essex 
 plot, for which Essex and himself were capitally condemned 
 on Thursday, February 19, 1601,^ and of which the details 
 are said to have been planned at Drewry House in Barbican. 
 Cecil, who is found at this very juncture referring to him as 
 " the poor young Earl," saved him from the scaffold ; but 
 he was imprisoned during the remainder of Elizabeth's 
 reign, and his estates escheated to the Crown. The 107th 
 Sonnet is pronounced by some to commemorate his release 
 and restoration to his honours and property, which promptly 
 (in seventeen days) followed the change of dynasty, and his 
 name occurs in the list of Free Suitors in the Court Leet of 
 the borough of Southampton, convened in May, 1603. His 
 attendance was in respect of his town residence in South- 
 ampton, Bugle Hall.^ When James I. came to the throne, 
 
 ' When she was on the eve of becoming a mother. He behaved worse 
 than the poet, who entered into a prenuptial bond six months prior to the 
 birth of Susanna Shakespear, nor did the nobleman perhaps share the 
 poet's lifelong conscientious qualms. But Mary Fitton seems to have 
 quite met her seducer half-way. See Lady Newdigate-Newdegate's 
 Monograph, 1897, p. 36. 
 
 ' Letter from John Bradshawe to Sir Lionel Tollemache, February 24, 
 1600-1. 
 
 ' Southampton Court Leet Records, 1907, p. 373. The Earl appears on 
 the roll of the Court in 1604-5, 1611, 1613, 1615-20. He died in 1624. 
 He had been a free suitor since at least 1594. He was more than once 
 
The Lyrical Work 249 
 
 authors were not afraid to deliver eulogies on Essex, and to 
 inscribe them to Southampton and others about the Court. 
 
 The wild political scheme, which cost the Earl of Essex 
 his life, and which we appear to see foreshadowed in the 
 Earl's preface under the initials A. B.to Sir Henry Savile's 
 Tacitibs, 1598, where he metaphorically speaks of the troubles 
 at Rome through " a good Prince governed by evil ministers," 
 " the misery of a torn and distracted State," and so on, which 
 responds to the occurrences in London two or three years 
 later, is associated with a bespoken performance in the 
 public streets prior to Sunday morning, the 8th February, 
 1601, the day fixed for the execution of the coup d'etat, of a 
 theatrical spectacle representing the deposition of Richard II., 
 an episode, of which the application was apt to be brought 
 home to Elizabeth by the papal bull of 1596, deposing her 
 as a heretic, and by the actual discovery of a Spanish project 
 for the invasion of England through one Richard Grafton, 
 a citizen of London,^ who had resided in Spain, and had 
 suffered losses there and during the Spanish naval operations 
 on the Irish coast in 1588. The actors were kept in ignor- 
 ance of the drift of the show, which was represented as "an 
 old play," and not likely to draw many people ; and Augus- 
 tine Phillips, one of the cast, accordingly received forty 
 shillings in aid. There is no hint of the direct interposition 
 of Shakespear ; the person who engaged the company is 
 officially said to have been Sir Giles Merrick, who looked on 
 the matter as a happy auxiliary stroke; yet there is a 
 powerful probability, that a rumour of the intention came 
 to the ears of the poet, and that he had advisedly kept out 
 of the way. His father, who died at Stratford in the same 
 autumn, may have been previously ill, and have called for 
 
 fined for absence, and under 1601 his name is obliterated, and over it is 
 written " in manibus dominse reginse," that is, his property had suffered 
 under his attainder. But in 1602 the queen herself is registered as the 
 holder of the status of Free Suitor in the Earl's room professedly on the 
 same ground. Ibid., 339, 357. 
 
 ^ He was perhaps related to William Grafton, captain of Our' 
 Lad/y. 
 
250 Shakespeae: The Man and his Woek 
 
 his presence. Phillips was examined before the Council; 
 but neither he nor the company suffered any penal con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Of the principals Essex alone fell.' About 300 persons 
 are said in contemporary narratives to have been engaged 
 in the plot, and to have issued from the residence of the 
 Earl with rapiers and daggers; but all real danger seems 
 to have been passed about three in the afternoon, when 
 many deserted the cause on hearing the royal proclama- 
 tion declaring Essex a traitor, and shortly afterward he, 
 Southampton, and four others, on surrendering, were com- 
 mitted to the Tower, and the rest to other prisons. Essex 
 himself was beheaded within the Tower on Ash- Wednesday 
 morning. The circumstances connected with the dramatic 
 feature in the conspiracy were most extraordinary. The 
 queen herself, in a conversation with William Lambarde 
 the historian, August 4, 1601, when he waited on her to 
 submit to her his Pandecta Rotulorum, and she accidentally 
 or otherwise opened the book at the reign of Richard II., 
 said : " I am Richard the Second, know yee not that ? " He 
 replied : " Such a wicked imagination was determined and 
 attempted by a most unkind gentleman — the most adorned 
 creature that ever your Maiestie made." The queen 
 farther remarked : " He thab will forget God, will also 
 forget his benefactors ; this tragedie was played fourtie times 
 in open streets and houses ; " and Elizabeth incidentally 
 mentioned that a portrait of Richard II. had been presented 
 to her by Lord Lumley — just then an equivocal gift. South- 
 ampton was scarcely less guilty than Essex ; but his youth 
 pleaded for him, and in the early part of 1605 Love's Labor's 
 Lost, which had been presented at Court in January of the 
 year, when the queen was not present, was performed before 
 Anne of Denmark in a very effective manner, as a graceful 
 
 ^ In the list of those implicated we see names subsequently connected 
 with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Hatfield MSS., 1906, pp. 86-7. A 
 curious case was that of Henry CufFe of Mertou College, Oxford, whose 
 fortune and fate are said by Melton in his Astrologaster, 1620, to have been 
 foretold by cartomancy in earlier life (p. 42). 
 
The Lyrical Work 251 
 
 thank-offering, at Southampton House in Holborn,^ there 
 being no other play in readiness, and Richard Burbage 
 recommending this piece, which (he said) would for wit and 
 mirth please her Majesty exceedingly. The author not 
 improbably took a part. 
 
 The exact nature of the play, or rather scene from a play, 
 introduced into the late tragical episode, has been variously 
 stated. There seems to have been a piece on the reign of 
 Henry IV., in which the deposition of his predecessor was 
 introduced, anterior to that of Shakespear as we possess it ; and 
 the printed copies of the latter do not comprise this incident 
 previously to the second issue of 1608, where the title-page 
 announces for the first time " new additions of the Parlia- 
 ment Scene and the deposing of King Richard." This novel 
 feature, at least in type, was possibly a recension by the 
 poet of the obnoxious political manifesto of 1601, which 
 then existed in MS. as part of another work, and in 1608 
 was deemed presentable without danger or offence. But the 
 attitude of Bacon toward his early patron and benefactor 
 Essex was not soon forgotten, and in fact survived him, for 
 a separate edition of the Apology was printed as late as 
 1642. 
 
 If we decline to accept the view, that the batch of 
 Sonnets embraces within it covert allusions and clues merely 
 awaiting pursuit, and constitutes an unique biographical 
 thesaurus, and treat them as occupying the same station as 
 their numerous analogues in our own and other languages 
 and literatures, alike ancient and modern, the really tangible 
 points are very few and relatively immaterial. Supposing 
 that we admit the revelations as genuine and sincere, it is a 
 logical sequitur, that all the extant collections of the same 
 class are to be similarly interpreted, and many and many a 
 
 '■ Lord Southampton continued, after his release from the Tower after 
 the death of Elizabeth, to enjoy the confidence and esteem of her succes- 
 sor, who supported his petition to the Crown in 1617 for leave to pull 
 down the house, and erect tenements upon the site. But the Council 
 would not agree to it, and the building long survived the Earl. 
 
252 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 literary life rewritten, saving only those instances, where the 
 author has left a disclaimer. 
 
 Sonnet 23 has the peculiarity that it seems to have 
 been composed just when circumstances led to a suspen- 
 sion of theatrical performances in London in 1593 and 
 the appearance of Shakespear as a lyrical writer. He 
 appears to glance at his own not too successful efforts as 
 a performer of parts, and to point to his books, that is, 
 his two poems, as pleaders for him — not surely from their 
 subject-matter, perchance from their literary pretensions. 
 
 In Sonnet 27 there are these lines : — 
 
 " Weary with toil I hasten to my bed, 
 The dear repose for limbs with travel tir'd ; 
 But then begins a journey in my head, 
 To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd : 
 For then my thoughts {far from where I abide) 
 Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee — " 
 
 What are we to infer hence, if it is not that the author had 
 paid a visit to a friend at a distance, and on his return 
 brooded over the severance.? But in No. 41 comes a dis- 
 closure that, besides the male friend, who resides far enough 
 away to render the journey to and fro fatiguing, there is a 
 third party to be considered, that party a woman ; for the 
 sonneteer says : — 
 
 " Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,* 
 Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd ; 
 And when a woman woos, what woman's son 
 Will sourly leave her, till she have prevailed ? 
 
 ^ See infra in the Note on Titus Andronicus. That drama and the 
 First Part of Henry VI., as altered by Shakespear, were before him, 
 perhaps, about the same point of time. The two passages may be given 
 side by side : — 
 
 Hervry YL, Pt. I. v. 3. Titus Andronicus. 
 
 " Suf. She's beautiful, and there- " She is a woman, therefore may be 
 
 fore to be woo'd ; wooed ; 
 
 She is a woman ; therefore to be She is a woman ; therefore may be 
 
 won — " won — " 
 
 When Titus Andronicus was printed in 1594, the other drama still remained 
 in MS. 
 
The Lyrical Work 253 
 
 Ah me ! but yet thou mightst thy suit forbear, 
 And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, 
 Who lead thee in their riot even there 
 Where thou art forc'd to break a twofold truth ; 
 Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee, 
 Thine by thy beauty being false to me." 
 
 A rival is superseding the writer in the affection of the 
 woman, and in the next stanza (a rare example of sequential 
 propriety) has married her. For Shakespear immediately 
 proceeds : — 
 
 " That thou hast her, it is not all my grief. 
 And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly ; 
 That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, 
 A loss in love that touches me more nearly — " 
 
 These poor lines can import only that the man, by marriage, 
 had inflicted a double wrong, in depriving his friend of his 
 society as a bachelor, and of the woman of whom that friend 
 was enamoured. But the quatorzain concludes with this 
 felicitous consolation : — 
 
 " But here's my joy ; ' my friend and I are one ; 
 Sweet flattery ! Then she loves me alone," 
 
 — a position which the new husband, unless he was unusually 
 generous or unusually phlegmatic, was scarcely likely to ac- 
 knowledge or relish. When we reach No. 50, however, an 
 expedition on horseback to the residence of the couple has 
 been undertaken ; and a succession of stanzas is occupied by 
 a whimsical rhapsody, of which the exact purport or drift is 
 problematical, as the allusions are directed to an individual, 
 that individual almost beyond question a man; the lady 
 disappears for a season. We come across her once more, 
 however, in Stanza 80, where an altogether novel piece of 
 news meets the eye, for here the rival is described as a 
 poetical contemporary, who has better succeeded in pane- 
 
 • A somewhat similar form occurs in Constable's Diana, 1592 (Sonnet 
 28 of Hazlitt's ed. 1859) :— 
 
 " But joy in this (though Fate 'gainst me repine) 
 My verse still lives to witness thee divine." 
 
254 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 gyrizing the lady. So many bards celebrated so many 
 obdurate or inconstant damsels at this time, that identifica- 
 tion might prove impossible, nor could we suffer ourselves 
 to be guided by the sonneteer's acknowledgment of the 
 superior genius of his opponent. At any rate he was a 
 verse-writer. For how can we otherwise translate into plain 
 prose the following lines ? — 
 
 " O, how I faint, when I of you do write, 
 Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, 
 And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
 To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame ; 
 But since your worth (wide as the ocean is) 
 The humble as the proudest sail doth bear. 
 My saucy bark, inferior far to his, 
 On your broad main doth wilfully appear — " 
 
 In 1596 Bartholomew Griffin published Fidessa, more 
 Chaste than Kind, in which he borrowed passages from Venus 
 and Adonis and elsewhere, including Gascoigne's Arraignment 
 of a Lover, which had been separately licensed and probably 
 printed in 1681. But his sonnets, like those of Shakespear, 
 may have been in existence before they were printed, and 
 the more famous writer, who may here pose as the humbler 
 one poetica licentid, may have been unaware that Griffin was 
 his debtor. It really appears to me unworthy of serious 
 notice that more than one critic has identified the person 
 shadowed in the above-quoted lines with Christopher Mar- 
 lowe, who died in 1593, and from whose pen we have nothing 
 answering to the description. 
 
 I submit for consideration these points in default of any 
 better solution : (1) Griffin was not only a Warwickshire 
 man, but appears to have belonged to a place so near to 
 Stratford as Coventry — to the same vicinity as Arbury, 
 the home of the Newdigates, who intermarried with the 
 Fittons; (2) He knew the ancient family of Essex at 
 Lambourn, in Berkshire, 46 miles from London; (3) He 
 had doubtless heard of his countryman's fame as a poet, 
 for there is evidence that he had more than had Venus 
 
The Lyrical Work 255 
 
 and Adonis under his eyes ; (4) Shakespear's 80th Sonnet 
 suggests his acquaintance with the literary gifts of a con- 
 temporary, who had been more successful than him in 
 ingratiating himself with a common lady friend at a distance 
 from London, yet at one accessible on horseback, even if 
 not without fatigue. I merely ask : Did Fidessa dwell at 
 Lambourn, and had Shakespear met her there or elsewhere ? 
 If she relented, and married Griffin, his nuptial state was of 
 brief duration, for his wife (whoever she was — her name was 
 Katherine) became a widow in 1602. 
 
 No. 107, which is elsewhere quoted at length, has not 
 exhausted the strangely elaborate picture of devotion, dis- 
 content, almost despair, and indeed Nos. 97 and 98 permit us 
 to judge, so far as we may judge at all from such witnesses, 
 that the poet has not revisited his married friend, nor the 
 latter him, and that the two continue to live at a distance 
 sufficient to make a meeting difficult. But No. 107, just 
 cited, goes farther, as it embodies a tolerably straightforward 
 and distinct reference to the change of dynasty in 1603 and 
 to " an olive of endless age " in James I. and his house. 
 
 The 127th and 144th of the series present the aspect of 
 being readable side by side : — 
 
 In the old age black was not " Two loves I have of comfort and 
 
 counted fair, despair, 
 
 Or if it were, it bore not beauty's Which like two spirits do suggest 
 
 name ! me still ; 
 
 But now is black beauty's sue- The better angel is a man right 
 
 cessive heir, fair. 
 
 And beauty slander'd with a The worser spirit a woman 
 
 bastard shame : colour'd ill, 
 
 For since each hand hath put on To win me soon to hell my female 
 
 nature's power, evil 
 
 Fairing the foul with art's false Tempteth my better angel from 
 
 borroVd face, my side. 
 
 Sweet beauty hath no name, no And would corrupt my saint to 
 
 holy hour, be a devil. 
 
 But is profan'd, if not lives in Wounding his purity with her 
 
 disgrace. foul pride. 
 
256 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Therefore my mistress' eyes are And whether that my angel be 
 
 raven black, turn'd fiend. 
 
 Her eyes so suited ; and they Suspect I may, yet not directly 
 
 mourners seem tell : 
 
 At such who, not born fair, no But being both from me, both 
 
 beauty lack, to each friend. 
 
 Slandering creation with a false I guess one angel in another's 
 
 esteem : hell. 
 
 Yet so they mourn, becom- Yet this shall I ne'er know, 
 
 ing of their woe, but live in doubt, 
 
 That every tongue says. Till my bad angel fire my 
 
 beauty should look so." good one out." 
 
 So far as any sense is capable of being extracted from 
 such wild and vague utterances, which bespeak early com- 
 position and an undisciplined and immature taste, the 
 marriage of the lady has proved in the writer's opinion 
 inauspicious alike for her husband and for him. She is a 
 person of dark complexion and of such a type of beauty as 
 was not formerly admired, and there is the danger, lest she 
 should by her conduct or disposition shorten her partner's 
 days. 
 
 So early as 1599-1600 a play had been accepted by 
 Philip Henslowe, entitled The Spanish Moor's Tragedy ; it 
 was the composite work of three contemporary dramatists, 
 Decker, Haughton, and Day ; but nothing is positively 
 ascertained about its history beyond the hypothesis that 
 it was identical with a piece published in 1657 under the 
 title of Lusfs Dominion, or. The Lascivious Queen, when 
 it was attributed to Marlowe. There was a prevalent feeling 
 about the time, when the two above-printed sonnets were 
 written, that a certain attraction resided in a swarthy hue 
 and dark eyes, nor was it out of favour in 1604, when 
 Jonson presented at Court his Masque of Blackness, where 
 Niger is made to say : — 
 
 " To do a kind and careful father's part. 
 In satisfying every pensive heart 
 Of these my daughters, my most loved birth : 
 Who, though they were the first-form'd dames of earth,* 
 
 1 ? rather " form'd of dame earth." 
 
The Lyrical Work 257 
 
 And in whose sparkling and refulgent eyes 
 The glorious sun did still delight to rise ; 
 Though he, the best judge and most formal cause 
 Of all dames' beauties, in their firm hues draws 
 Signs of his fervent'st love ; and thereby shows 
 That in their black the perfect'st beauty grows — " 
 
 And when in the same year Shakespear produced Othello, 
 with whom he makes Desdemona fall in love, the sonneteer 
 appears to say that a prejudice against blackness arose, but 
 was eventually overcome. But the quotation has no farther 
 value than the clue which it furnishes to the claim of dark 
 beauties at this period to a share of admiration ; and one 
 at least took captive the heart of the man-friend — a person 
 of the same rank as the writer — in the passages which I have 
 transcribed. In the 41st of the Shakespear series, above 
 quoted, there is a passage which, if it is intended to point 
 to the dark lady, may import a question of colour, and the 
 fairer complexion of the poet may have fascinated by contrast. 
 
 Blackness, however, before the conclusion of the masque, 
 cedes the first place to Beauty ; and in 1607-8 Jonson pre- 
 pared as a sequel his Masque of Beauty. It is immaterial 
 to the argument that Othello was probably not more than 
 swarthy, nor the heroine, if she was a Venetian, a blonde, 
 unless she was a person of foreign origin, a Georgian or 
 Circassian, and therefore not a person whom a man of 
 Othello's rank would seek in marriage. The antithesis is 
 the poet's, and upon it — the sympathy of contrast — the 
 drama greatly leans ; and he has made it stronger even than 
 he had likely warrant in describing the skin of the lady as 
 " whiter than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster." ^ 
 
 1 Oomp. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 1886, ii. 257. Webster may have 
 derived the title of his White Devil, 1612, from the tract entitled : "The 
 Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to Englishmen," 1609 ; or from one of 
 Thomas Adams's Sermons : possibly he pictured Vittoria Corombona with 
 an alabaster skin. But loAiie cfewii was a current phrase. In a French trans- 
 lation of Drake's Voyages, 1641, we are informed that the tigers of the Congo 
 would not attack a white man, but fell on the blacks, and If they found a 
 white man and a black one sleeping side by side, they would take the latter 
 and leave the former. These tigers were leopards. 
 
 R 
 
258 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Moor is simply = Italian Moro, the name of a noble Venetian 
 family, which attained ducal rank in the fifteenth century 
 in the person of a distinguished soldier. 
 
 I confess that I cannot coincide in the view, that Antony 
 mid Cleopatra falls within the present category, or the 
 period of its origin would of course have suited well — the 
 end of 1607. That drama is rather Asiatic or Oriental in 
 its complexion and costume than a vehicle for contrasts of 
 colour, like Jonson's masques and Shakespear's Othello. It 
 was a sort of sequel and, as it were, corollary to Julius 
 Ccesar, and both were based on Plutarch. Nor is there any 
 valid reason to suppose a revival in Antony and Cleopatra 
 of the phantom dark lady of the Sonnets, whom I do not 
 trace outside those compositions, probably completed, as 
 we hold them, before 1604. At the same time, it is ex- 
 cessively likely that Shakespear had before him, while he 
 was at work on his masterly drama, the doctrine and force 
 of contraries, and such a feature was at hand for his discreet 
 use in the Spanish Moor''s Tragedy, if that and Lusfs 
 Dominion be identical, years before Jonson wrote his 
 masques, yet when nearly all the Sonnets had been already 
 laid aside or distributed in MS. The voluptuous and 
 passionate temperament of the Lascivious Queen may have 
 possessed its suggestive value side by side with the Plutarch 
 narrative and Daniel's academic and tedious performance. 
 
 In Much Ado About Nothing Claudio makes a merit of 
 being prepared to accept Hero, " were she an Ethiope," 
 which might either bespeak him a fair man, or the play 
 anterior to the sonnet or sonnets where dark complexions 
 are more favourably viewed. 
 
 There is the additional consideration to be regarded, 
 that, if Shakespear enjoyed the opportunity of seeing the 
 Masque of Blackness in MS. (for it was not published till 
 1608), the idea of the two sonnets, which are placed to- 
 gether for comparison or collation, was more than possibly 
 suggested by that work, of which the fame, as a successful 
 and splendid court pageant, could hardly escape general 
 
The Lyrical Work 259 
 
 notice; and I mention for what it may be worth the 
 circumstance that, when the production in question and 
 the Masque of Beauty came out in one volume, they pur- 
 ported to be printed for no other than Thomas Thorpe. 
 Should it have been the case that the allusions to Blackness 
 fell under the eye of Shakespear, before he wrote the sonnets 
 numbered 127 and 144, there is, on the one hand, a new, 
 if a very slight, illustrative point, and, on the other, a 
 farther extension of the period, over which the collection 
 spread itself, before it saw the light. 
 
 Shakespear was certainly not scrupulous in his use of 
 poetical licence. In the Merchant of Venice he had already 
 made the Prince of Morocco a character and one of the 
 suitors of Portia ; he attributes to him fabulous exploits in 
 the field of battle ; and, which is more to my purpose, he 
 makes him an apologist for his complexion — " the shadowed 
 livery of the burnished sun." But, in pleading for the equal 
 quality of the blood beneath the sable skin, the poet went 
 fai-ther than the praise or defente of dark women of his 
 own nationality, and rather evinced that generosity of senti- 
 ment, which expressed itself through Hamlet, Shylock, and 
 other characters, in reproof of certain narrow insular pre- 
 judices. At the same time the virtue of contrast was ever 
 present to the artist, and he could not resist the temptation 
 of drawing into service the Ethiopian's teeth and the bright 
 jewel hanging at the iEthiop's ear. In the Wmter''s Tale, 
 Act ii. scene 1, there is a return, however, to the question 
 of dark beauty in the passage : " yet black brows, they say, 
 become some women best — " The topic certainly laid strong 
 hold of the writer, and manifests him as a close observer 
 of the sex — which we need not question. The designation 
 Ethiopian seems to have been so intimately associated with 
 a dark complexion, that Lisle entitled his version of Helio- 
 dorus in 1631, by way of distinction and novelty, the Fair 
 Ethiopian, and Harl. MS. 7313 contains an inedited drama 
 of the seventeenth century called the White ^thiopicm, 
 founded on the same story. 
 
260 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 The member of the group just preceding the 144th is 
 partly occupied by a domestic reminiscence of Stratford 
 in the youth of the writer — perhaps in his earliest married 
 lifei;— 
 
 " Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch 
 One of her feather'd creatures broke away. 
 Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch 
 In pursuit of the thing she would have stay ; 
 Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase" . . . 
 
 and the thought descends to this anti-climax : — 
 
 " So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 
 Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind ; 
 But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, 
 And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind : 
 So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will, 
 If thou turn back, and my loud crying still. " 
 
 The next quotation is from No. 152 : — 
 
 " In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn. 
 But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing ; 
 In act thy bed-vow broke, and new faith torn, 
 In vowing new hate after new love bearing — " 
 
 The closing couplet of No. 151 is : — 
 
 " No want of conscience hold it that I call 
 Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall." 
 
 The two passages are in immediate juxtaposition; the 
 second in order assuredly refers to a woman, and the first may 
 do so, more probably to the wife, as the allusion would not 
 suit an unmarried woman, while the previous stanzas wear the 
 aspect of applying to the man friend, whom in No. 104 he 
 seems to intimate that he had known three years. 
 
 The whole is a tiresome and tantalizing rigmarole, much 
 of the verse as poetry and even as rhythm of the poorest 
 quality, and the arrangement defective, yet incapable of 
 
 1 In an earlier place I have cited other illustrations of that side of the 
 subject. 
 
The Lyrical Work 261 
 
 rectification by any editor, owing to the piecemeal fashion 
 in which the contents of the printed volume accumulated 
 during many long years. Yet the whole context, while it 
 here and there hardly bespeaks a Shakespearean parentage, 
 has the air of belonging to the same train of associations. 
 
 The self-depreciatory and hypochondriacal temperament, 
 which colours the Sonnets, and points in one or two places 
 to death or even suicide as a climax to a blighted and dis- 
 consolate life, was surely not an absolute invention.^ Was 
 it not prompted and justified by unhappy domestic condi- 
 tions and an enforced severance from all, who should have 
 been nearest and dearest ? In Montaigne Shakespear might 
 have met with matter for both sides of the argument, as they 
 are delivered by Hamlet himself and in Measure for Measure 
 by Claudio. These opinions belong to the period comprised 
 between the production of those two pieces — to 1602-4 or 
 thereabout. The French writer regarded the closing scene 
 more philosophically than his English follower ; and a care- 
 ful perusal of the passages in the plays satisfies me that our 
 poet was haunted during many years by speculations on the 
 question of self-murder and its spiritual bearing. It may 
 be of service to place his remarks in juxtaposition, and 
 invite a comparison between them and his utterances in the 
 Sonnets : — 
 
 Bamlet (1602), Act iii. Sc. 1. Measure for Measure (1604), 
 
 ee TT rri t. J- i 1 Act iii. Sc. 1. 
 
 "Ham. To be, or not to be, 
 
 that is the question ; " ciaud. Ay ! but to die, and 
 
 Whether 't is nobler in the mind go we know not where ; 
 
 to suffer To lie in cold obstruction, and to 
 
 The slings and arrows of out- rot; 
 
 rageous fortune. This sensible warm motion to be- 
 
 Or to take arms against a sea of come 
 
 troubles, A kneaded clod, and the delighted 
 
 And by opposing end themi" — to spirit 
 
 die, — to sleep To bathe in fiery floods, or to 
 
 No more . . . reside 
 
 1 When Napoleon was at Valence in 1786, he seems, under an analogous 
 influence, to have canvassed the same question. 
 
262 Shakespear: The Max and his Work 
 
 For in that sleep of death what 
 
 dreams may come. 
 When we have shuffled off this 
 
 mortal coil. 
 Must give us pause ; there's the 
 
 respect. 
 That makes calamity of so long 
 
 life: 
 For who would bear the whips 
 
 and scorns of time, 
 When he himself might his quietus 
 
 make 
 With a bare bodkin . . . ? 
 But that the dread of something 
 
 after death. 
 The undiscover'd country, from 
 
 whose bourn 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the 
 
 wiU; 
 And makes us rather bear those 
 
 ills we have. 
 Than fly to others that we know 
 
 not of? 
 Thus conscience does make 
 
 cowards of us all — " 
 
 In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed 
 ice : 
 
 To be imprison'd in the viewless 
 winds. 
 
 And blown with restless violence 
 round about 
 
 The pendent world, or to be worse 
 than worst 
 
 Of those, that lawless and in- 
 certain thoughts 
 
 Imagine howling — 't is too hor- 
 rible. 
 
 The weariest and most loathed 
 worldly life, 
 
 That age, ache, penury, and im- 
 prisonment 
 
 Can lay on nature, is a para^lise 
 
 To what we fear of death." 
 
 Again and again Shakespear reverts to the topic and the 
 pain; and we may make what allowance we please for his 
 acute intellectual sensibility, and for poetical or dramatic 
 licence, without shaking the conviction that in these several 
 indirect records there is an undercurrent of autobiography, 
 just as there is in the analogous confessions of faith on the 
 part of Montaigne. At the same time, in a later pro- 
 duction, Antony and Cleopatra, death is treated more lightly 
 and indifferently. I am not sure whether we are to ascribe 
 that to the circumstances, to the Oriental temperament of 
 the heroine. Regarding the Sonnets as a group of stanzas 
 printed without critical decorum and without final recension 
 by the writer, perhaps even left in a state not admitting 
 clear and consecutive arrangement, there seems to be warrant 
 for turning the material there discoverable and select pas- 
 
The Lyeical Work 263 
 
 sages in the Plays to a biographical account for the' purpose 
 of shedding light on that portion of the life of Shakespear , 
 which intervened between his departure from Stratford 
 about 1587 and his comparative emergence from obscurity 
 in his private relations in 1608. 
 
 Two of the number (ii. and Ixxiii.), which lie far apart in 
 the sole text, deal with a cognate subject, and were probably, 
 with some immediately following in order, among the latest 
 compositions in the series ; they contrast the man of middle 
 age with his junior, whom he counsels to marry, before he 
 becomes such another as himself, and in order to transmit 
 his type to posterity. There are those who identify with 
 the recipient of such advice the young Earl of Pembroke. 
 Below are the two sonnets side by side : — 
 
 "When forty winters havebesieg'd^ " That time of year thou may'st in 
 
 thy brow, me behold. 
 
 And dug deep trenches in thy When yellow leaves, or none, or 
 
 beauty's field, few, do hang 
 
 Thy youth's proudlivery, so gaz'd Upon those boughs, which shake 
 
 on now, against the cold, 
 
 Will be a tatter'd weed, of small Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the 
 
 worth held : sweet birds sang. 
 
 Then being ask'd, where all thy In me thou see'st the twilight of 
 
 beauty lies, such day 
 
 Where all the treasure of thy As after sunset fadeth in the 
 
 lusty days, west, 
 
 To say, within thy own deep- Which by and by black night 
 
 sunken eyes, doth ta^e away. 
 
 Were an all-eating shame and Death's second self, that seals up 
 
 thriftless praise. all ii '^^st- 
 
 ^ Old copy and modern editions read sJiall besiege ; but the action is 
 progressive, not simultaneous. Napoleon, whose career was almost ex- 
 actly of equal duration with that of Shakespear, exhausted his physical 
 energy prematurely. He once said, that a man could not at forty do what 
 he had done at thirty. It was of him and Byron that Macaulay observed 
 that, at a time of life, when other men had scarcely completed their educa- 
 tion, they had risen to the height of power and fame. 
 
264 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 How much more praise deserv'd In me thou see'st the glowing of 
 
 thy heauty's use, such fire. 
 
 If thou could'st answer — ' This That on the ashes of his youth 
 
 fair child of mine, doth lie. 
 
 Shall sum my countj and make As the deathbed, whereon it must 
 
 my eld ^ excuse — ' expire, 
 
 Proving his beauty by succession Consum'd with that which it was 
 
 thine. nourish'd by. 
 
 This were to be new made, This thou perceiv'st which 
 
 when thou art old, makes thy love more 
 
 And see thy blood warm, strong, 
 
 when thou feel'st it cold." To love that well, which 
 
 thou must leave ere long.'' 
 
 The canon in pastoral poetry of all ages and counti'ies, 
 which licenses the fictitious assumption of years without 
 ostensible motive or benefit in one man paying an artificial 
 courtship to another, assuredly does not apply here. Is it 
 reasonable to seek or accept any explanation except or be- 
 yond the superficial one ? Is it necessary ? These exercises 
 may be partly at least ascribed to a stage in the life of 
 Shakespear, when he had reached his prime; some — one 
 almost certainly — were composed as late as 1603, when he 
 was thirty-nine, and there is no particular hazard — the order 
 in the book being untrustworthy — nay, false — in setting 
 down this pair of stanzas to the very year, when the forty 
 winters had done their work, and had wrought more than aver- 
 age havoc on a system, worn by incessant intellectual labour. 
 
 On the whole, I have arrived at the conclusion, after 
 considering all the evidence at my command, that, while 
 Shakespear unquestionably had in his mind, as he penned 
 the Sonnets at intervals, persons, events, and passages in 
 other writers of the same class of composition, the stanzas 
 are a trophy of luxuriant and wayward fancy, and a reflex 
 of impressions in actual life elaborated — not always with 
 judgment and taste — too often coarsely and carelessly. The 
 Lover's Complaint and portions of the Passionate Pilgrim 
 might just as well in substance have made part of the series ; 
 1 Old copy and editions old. 
 
The Lyrical Wokk 265 
 
 they are equally incoherent and generic ; and in the Pilgrim 
 there is a stanza, which might have dropped out of Vervus 
 and Adonis. 
 
 The method pursued by Shakespear in the structure and 
 costume of his Sonnets and of certain cognate productions 
 presents no peculiarity. They simply follow the precedent 
 set by the earliest and most celebrated authors of these 
 privileged compositions. There is precisely the same em- 
 pirical affectation of personality, the same studied minuteness 
 of description, the same pathetic or engaging story of per- 
 jured love or passionate despair. We encounter all the 
 emotions, of which our nature is susceptible, depicted in all 
 their verisimilitude, vividness, and force. There is a ground- 
 work of real circumstances connected or detached, which are 
 to the writer somewhat, what to an artist is a sketch or a 
 series of sketches for a painting; and for the rest he is 
 responsible. He fabricates an artificial tissue, according to 
 his plan and power, gradually under temporary or wavering 
 sensations, or by one sustained effort possibly under one; 
 and in his person the world usually has and loses the sole 
 trustworthy exponent of the miisaic of fact and fable. The 
 Shakespear bequest strikes me as falling under the first 
 category. A great deal has been said on the nature of the 
 Elizabethan sonnet and its continental counterpart ; but no 
 one has put the matter so sensibly and so pithily as the 
 author of one of the long series — Dr. Giles Fletcher, who 
 says, in the preface to his Licia (1593) : " a man may write 
 of love, and not be in love, as well as of husbandry, and not 
 go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness 
 and be profane." Shakespear's own countryman, however, 
 and contemporary, Drayton, accentuates the true character 
 of his book of sonnets in another and more direct way ; for 
 he expressly confers on it or on his mistress the name of 
 Idea, which is neither more nor less than an admission, that 
 the verses were of a fanciful and romantic texture. Unlike 
 Shakespear, Drayton made haste to bring his work of this 
 class before the public; it was printed in 1593; and as his 
 
266 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 personal friendship with his fellow-countryman is a matter 
 of record, his volume may be thought to deserve a high place 
 among those, which, if they did not serve as models, at 
 least contributed to suggest an experiment in that style of 
 composition. 
 
 Let us take the case of Tennyson's Maud, than which a 
 stranger and more incoherent rhapsody was probably never 
 composed. To affirm that the stanzas reflect the genuine 
 sentiments of the writer may be more or less hazardous; 
 but it is totally out of the question to believe that they tell 
 an authentic and connected story, and as with Shakespear's 
 Sonnets and certain of his miscellaneous lyrics in the Pilgrim 
 and Love's Martyr, the constituent parts of Maud are sus- 
 ceptible of rearrangement or redistribution at pleasure. 
 
 I adduce this recent and familiar example to illustrate 
 the prevailing infidelity of the entire amatory and senti- 
 mental school of verse, which had its rise among the classics, 
 but was more immediately indebted to renascent Italy ; and 
 such a view is fortified by the transparent plagiarisms of 
 every description one from the other, and by the ingenuous 
 avowal of one or two of their motives and meaning. These 
 specious compositions resemble the prose novel, which de- 
 lineates character, as they portray passions both alike more 
 or less insincere and imaginary ; they were in the main 
 poetical exercitations, breathing artificial or assumed 
 emotions ; and such were the sonnets of Shakespear him- 
 self — the offspring of a labouring and teeming fancy, happily 
 equal to grander efforts in another field, where, as here, the 
 level and the quality fluctuated, but where also there 
 were abundant examples of a loftier reach and a broader 
 scope. The Shakespearean lyrics, save a few real gems,, 
 cannot for a moment bear comparison with the plays. But 
 even in those there is a strange and puzzling disparity, 
 insomuch that, while there is a vast deal in Shakespear far 
 beyond any other modern dramatist, there is a respectable 
 body of matter in others, which rises above Shakespear, 
 when he is not at his best. 
 
The Lyrical Woek 267 
 
 No real key is forthcoming to the Man and Woman 
 shadowed out in the series. I fail to appreciate the worth 
 and weight of the Fitton theory. But there may have been 
 some temporary amour belonging to the obscure period 
 between 1587 and 1603, on which the stanzas or sonnets 
 more immediately portraying this passion and grief must be 
 taken to be a fantastic and hyperbolical superstructure. The 
 nature of Shakespear was undoubtedly emotional, and his 
 position a trying one during all that time. We owe to the 
 twofold agency some of the scandal, which makes part of 
 the Ana and of some of the biographies, including the 
 foolish Davenant gossip. 
 
 How wholesomely and at the same time suggestively 
 different from the alleged covert portraiture of individuals 
 and incidents there is that apostrophe to Essex, in the un- 
 fulfilled expectation of his triumphal return from Ireland 
 with Southampton in 1599, in Henry V. . — 
 
 " Were now the general of our gracious empress. 
 As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, 
 Bringing rehellion broached on his sword, 
 How many would this peaceful city quit 
 To welcome him ! — " 
 
Ill 
 
 THE DRAMATIC WORK 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Shakespear and Montaigne — Strong intellectual affinity between them — 
 Some account of John Florio, Montaigne's English translator — 
 Delay and difficulty in obtaining a publisher for his book — Shake- 
 spear not necessarily indebted to the English version — Parallel 
 passages of Shakespear and Montaigne — The Florio effort a singu- 
 larly poor one — Its value to English literature and sentiment — 
 Common characteristics and bearings of the two writers. 
 
 The approach of Shakespear to the great French casuist, 
 and the loan from him of a few ideas of an original and 
 unusual cast, was the homage of one man of genius to 
 another ; and the obligation was incurred by the poet, when 
 he was far more widely and favourably known in his own 
 country than Montaigne in France or elsewhere, although 
 the Essays had passed through three or four impressions 
 in the course of a few years. There was no lack in England 
 among French scholars of an acquaintance with the more 
 prominent publications in that language, and the appear- 
 ance of the posthumous edition of 1595 under the editorial 
 care of Mile, de Gournay at once awakened a new interest 
 in the author and his work. On the 20th October, the 
 same year, Edward Aggas, a stationer and himself a volu- 
 minous and experienced translator from the French, entered 
 at Stationers' Hall under the hands of the Wardens " The 
 Essais of Michaell Lord of Mountene " ; but no price was 
 paid, apparently and indeed almost certainly, because Aggas 
 had not the MS. in readiness, and had simply registered 
 it to forestall competitors. He, it may be presumed, in- 
 tended to carry out the undertaking himself, as he had 
 already done a number of others; and we hear no more 
 of the matter. Aggas did not live to accomplish his task. 
 
 271 
 
272 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Between 1595 and 1600, when Edward Blount the pub- 
 lisher applied to the licensing authorities once more, there 
 was no farther progress toward an English Montaigne, and 
 the entry in the Register was three years old, before the 
 long-desired book actually appeared. During these eight 
 years such as were exceptionally interested in the class of 
 literature had no alternative but to resort to the original ; 
 and I apprehend that among this small minority was 
 Thomas Quiney, grandson of Adrian Quiney, a mercer of 
 Stratford,^ and son of that particular friend of the poet, 
 Richard Quiney. These Quineys, who were mercers and 
 vintners, and had relations with London, if not with the 
 wine-growing provinces of France, notably Bordeaux itself,^ 
 •where the Essays first saw the light, were very early house- 
 holders at Stratford, and persons of exceptional culture, and 
 Thomas, who subsequently espoused Judith Shakespear, was 
 a most likely man to invest in one of the earlier Bordeaux 
 editions of the Essays on their first appearance. These 
 contained Books First and Second only ; and to those por- 
 tions the indebtedness of the poet seems to be restricted. 
 Moreover, it is observable, that in the passages, which he 
 has employed, that in the Tempest inclusive, Shakespear 
 reproduces the substance of his original, rather than the 
 text, as if the general idea had fixed itself in his mind, and 
 he wrote from recollection, not with the volume before him — 
 recollection, that is to say, of what Quiney had read and 
 explained to him. There is a confirmation of my idea and 
 contention as to the use by his English contemporaries of 
 the French editio princeps of the Essays on its first appear- 
 ance by the recovery of the copy, which belonged to Jonson, 
 and presents his usual marks of ownership. 
 
 "^ Probably this may be the same person, whose name occurs as one 
 of the parties to an indenture about 1580, cited in my ffandbooh, 1867, 
 under 4. (F.). He is there described, however, as Adrian Quiney, gold- 
 smith. The conjoint name Is very uncommon. 
 
 ' It is said that, so far back as the fourteenth century, the consump- 
 tion of the Bordeaux wine, as it is generically termed, was larger in 
 England than in France. 
 
The Dramatic Woek 273 
 
 In the presence of a copy of the Florio version once 
 in the hands of Shakespear, and of the fact, that it was 
 in type soon enough to serve for reference in the case, at 
 all events, of Measure for Measure and the Tempest, it 
 would he futile to contend, that the dramatist did not open 
 its leaves, and refresh his impressions. But I adduce the 
 foregoing testimony to shew, that he was not necessarily 
 dependent on the translation. 
 
 At a later date (1604-12) he may have had the advantage 
 of the neighbourhood and acquaintance of the Mountjoy or 
 Monjoy and Bellot families, who resided not far from Black- 
 friars, and from the former of whom, as we now know, he 
 hired the tenement occupied by him more or less during 
 several years of literary activity. 
 
 The Frenchman, in spite of all his variety, humour, and 
 ndiveU, was purely an author for the closet and for scholars 
 and thinkers. His contemporary profited by the enormous 
 advantage, which his standing as a playwright and- per- 
 former in plays conferred on him. In his time, and very 
 nearly down to the present, the English readers of Mon- 
 taigne were extremely few and uncritical; and that the 
 poet had borrowed from him here and there was almost 
 imknown. 
 
 It was natural enough that Shakespear should, with his 
 proneness to the impounding of all matter of a con- 
 vertible character, shew himself peculiarly alert, when his 
 attention was directed by some accident to this singular 
 work, in turning over the pages, perchance (as I have 
 submitted) with Quiney, and earmarking anything which 
 struck him. 
 
 The Englishman might well acquire a peculiar sym- 
 pathy with the Gascon seigneur, mainly familiar to his 
 own countrymen as a distinguished municipal dignitary and 
 the trusted friend of his King, from the close affinity of 
 their intellectual bent; for throughout the more philo- 
 sophical of Shakespear's writings there is the identical drift 
 to a novel and almost paradoxical view of men and things 
 
274 Shakespear: The Man and his Work. 
 
 so conspicuous in the Essays. It is the cue of Hamlet to 
 turn commonplaces bottom upward, and Montaigne does 
 the same. But the exceptional interest evinced in the 
 English volume seems in the presence of the strongest 
 possible doubt, whether Shakespear, as a rule, retained 
 any material after exhaustion, to be proved by his inser- 
 tion of his name inside the cover of a copy, thus linking 
 it with that of a man of cognate genius. 
 
 The leading circumstances of the life of John Florio, 
 his parentage, his acquaintances, and his pursuits as an 
 author and teacher, are sufBciently familiar. He was an 
 Italian tutor in London, as his father had been before him, 
 and was employed in many noble families, where a pro- 
 ficiency in languages had become a part of the ordinary 
 course of education, among others in those of the Earls of 
 Pembroke and Southampton ; and it is usually supposed 
 that his wife was a sister of Samuel Daniel the poet. 
 Whether the lady, who became Rose Florio, had been 
 Rose Daniel, or otherwise, does not immediately concern 
 the case beyond the circumstance, that the alliance would 
 tend to add one more distinguished member to the literary 
 circle at Fulham and its vicinity about the time s>i Shake- 
 spear. But it is clearly relevant to bear in mind that 
 Florio was professionally associated with two noblemen, 
 whose names and careers are so intimately bound up with 
 our poet ; and the prior movements and whereabouts of the 
 Italian possess a certain share of significance. In 1578 he 
 published his First Fruits, and in 1579 he was a parishioner 
 of St. Clement Danes, where the Churchwardens' accounts for 
 the year shew him, in common with John Fox the martyr- 
 ologist, as a defaulter.^ In 1605 we find him described as 
 one of the grooms of the Queen's most honourable Privy 
 Chamber, which may not only have involved a small stipend, 
 
 1 Folio MS. on parchment, 21 Eliz., formerly in the Phillipps collec- 
 tion, and most obligingly placed at my disposal by Mr. Bernard Quaritch. 
 A William, Marlowe was then residing in the parish. A Clement Marlowe 
 has registered his name as the possessor of a medical treatise printed 
 in 1630. 
 
The Dramatic Work 275 
 
 but have involved a not inconvenient protection against 
 creditors. At this time he was a man well past middle life, 
 and Gervase Markham, in dedicating to him in terms of 
 respect and esteem an impression of a work on horsemanship, 
 1605, reminds Florio that the latter had designated him 
 his son, that is, in a literary sense. At a later date (1619) 
 he had moved into Shoe Lane, a locality which had been 
 from a very remote period a fashionable and favourite 
 quarter, and where he was able to secure the lease of a 
 house, which he retained till his death, and by his will 
 directed to be sold for the benefit of his estate. From his 
 literary ventures he derived, in all likelihood, very limited 
 benefit ; his version of Montaigne seems to have been some 
 years in hand ; and both that and his Italian Dictionary fell 
 into the possession of the stationer Blount, ever on the watch 
 for bargains. 
 
 The delay in committing the English Montaigne to the 
 press has been proposed as a very reasonable ground for 
 conjecturing that the manuscript was seen and used by 
 those, who enjoyed the benefit of friendly access to the 
 translator, Shakespear among the number. But we are 
 fortunately placed above the necessity in this case of re- 
 course to guess-work, for there is the contemporary evidence 
 in print of Sir William Cornwallis, that he had actually 
 inspected portions of the version in the hands of Florio, 
 of whose character and personal appearance he furnishes us 
 with an edifying account ; ^ and such a substantial piece of 
 evidence has more than one kind of value and bearing, inas- 
 much as it not only creates the possibility or more, that 
 Shakespear may have equally had the manuscript under his 
 
 ^ Essays, 1600, p. 92, quoted by Hunter, New lUustr. of Sh., i. 143-4. 
 See my edition of Montaigne, 1902, i., xl.-xli. Florio was befriended 
 in his pecuniary straits by Nicholas Sanders, of Ewell, the benefactor 
 of other literary men about 1590. In the dedication to him of Greenes 
 Vision (1593) the publisher terms him an especial Mecenas of Art. He 
 may have assisted Greene in his last days. Was he related to the 
 Mathew Saunders, Esq., whose name appears as the patron in 1606 of 
 Southwell's Fourfold Meditation! See my Prefaces, 1874, p. 128. 
 
276 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 eyes, before it was published, but illustrates the habit, ever» 
 of a mere amateurish writer, such as Cornwallis, taking the 
 trouble to pay a visit to Florio in the City, and examine 
 his work. To the English essayist the analogous produc- 
 tion of the Frenchman would be naturally of particular 
 interest, as very few books of that kind had been so far 
 written in this country. I indicate, however, that, so far 
 as Shakespear himself was concerned, he had most probably 
 had facilities for mastering salient passages and points in 
 the First and Second Books of the Essays in the original 
 language. 
 
 Perhaps there is not a more favourable illustration of 
 the general superiority of the notions derived from foreign 
 sources and other writers, as they offer themselves to our 
 criticism in the pages of the English playwright, than the 
 example in the Merchant of Venice, where Shakespear was 
 ostensibly indebted to Montaigne. I transcribe below in 
 parallel columns the two places: — 
 
 Montaigne. Shakespear. 
 
 (Book I. Sect. 22.) Merchant of Venice, v. i. 
 
 " We need not go to what is " Lor. See, Jessica. Look how 
 reported of the people about the the floor of heaven 
 
 cataracts of the Nile, and what Is thick inlaid with patinas of 
 philosophers believe of the music bright gold, 
 
 of the spheres, that the bodies There's not the smallest orb which 
 of those circles being solid and thou behold' st, 
 
 smooth, and coming to touch and But in his motion like an angel 
 rub upon one another, cannot fail sings, 
 
 of creating a marvellous harmony. Still quiring to the young-eyed 
 the changes and cadences of which cherubims : 
 
 cause the revolution and dances Such harmony is in immortal 
 of the stars." souls." 
 
 Anyone can judge for himself, how far the Englishman 
 has left the Frenchman behind in depth and in delicacy of 
 treatment. In the more familiar parallel passage from the 
 Tempest,^ there is this plainly observable, that Shakespear 
 
 1 Montaigne's Works, by Hazlitt, 1902, i. 243-4, and iv. 17. 
 
The Dramatic Work 
 
 277 
 
 was no convert to Gonzalo's philosophy, which he merely 
 enunciates on purpose to laugh at its empiricism, although 
 the dramatist has sensibly paraphrased and retrenched the 
 original language. 
 
 I shall now give side by side the original French, Florio"'s 
 English version, and Shakespear's loose transmutation, partly 
 by way of exhibiting the method of Florio : — 
 
 Montaigne. 
 (Original French.) 
 lis [Lycurgus and 
 Plato] n'ont peu imagi- 
 ner vne naifuet^ si pure 
 & simple, comme nous 
 la voyons par experi- 
 ence: ny n'ont peu 
 croire que uostre so- 
 ciety se peust maintenir 
 auec si peu d'artifice, & 
 de fondeure humaine. 
 C'est vne nation, diroy- 
 le k, Platon, en laquelle 
 il n'y a aucun eespeoe 
 de traflque ; nulle cog- 
 noissanoe de lettres ; 
 nulle science de nom- 
 bres ; nul nom de ma- 
 gistrat, ny de superi- 
 ority politique, nul 
 vsage de seruice, de 
 riohesse, ou de pauv- 
 retd ; nuls contrats ; 
 nuUes successions ; 
 nuls partages ; nuUes 
 occupations qu'oysiues ; 
 nul respect de parente, 
 <jue commun ; nuls 
 vestemens ; nulle agri- 
 culture ; nul metal ; nul 
 vsage de vin ou de bled. 
 Les paroles mesmes, qui 
 signifient la mensonge, 
 la trahision, la dissimu- 
 lation, I'auarice, I'enuie, 
 la detraction, le pardon, 
 
 Floeio. 
 " They could not ima- 
 gine a genuitie so pure 
 and simple, as we see it 
 by experience, nor ever 
 beleeve our sooietie 
 might be maintained 
 with so little arte and 
 humane combination. 
 It is a nation, would I 
 answere Plato,that hath 
 no kind of traffike, no 
 knowledge of letters, no 
 intelligence of numbers, 
 no name of magistrate, 
 nor of politike superi- 
 oritie ; no vse of service, 
 of riches, or of poverty ; 
 no contracts, no succes- 
 sions, no dividences, no 
 occupation but idle ; no 
 respect of kindred, but 
 common; no apparrell 
 but naturall, no manur- 
 ing of lands, no vse of 
 wine, come, or mettle. 
 The very words that 
 import lying, falsehood, 
 treason, dissimulation, 
 covetousness, envie, de- 
 traction, and pardon, 
 were never heard of 
 amongst them. How 
 dissonant would hee 
 finde his imaginary 
 commonwealth from 
 this perfection? 
 
 Shakespbab. 
 (Act ii. Sc. I.) 
 
 Oon. V the common- 
 wealth I would by 
 contraries 
 
 Execute all things ; for 
 no kind of traffic 
 
 Would I admit ; no 
 name of magistrate ; 
 
 Letters should not be 
 known ; riches, po- 
 verty, 
 
 And use of service, 
 none; contract, suc- 
 cession. 
 
 Bourn, bound of land, 
 tilth, vineyard, none ; 
 
 No use of metal, corn, 
 or wine, or oil ; 
 
 No occupation ; aU men 
 idle, all ; 
 
 And women too, but in- 
 nocent and pure ; 
 
 No sovereignty — . . . . 
 
 All things in common 
 nature should pro- 
 duce 
 
 Without sweat or en- 
 deavour ; treason, 
 felony, 
 
 Sword, pike, knife, gun, 
 or need of any engine. 
 
 Would I not have ; but 
 nature should bring 
 forth. 
 
 Of its own kind, all 
 foison, all abundance. 
 
278 Shakespear: The Man and his Wokk 
 
 inouyes. Combien trou- Hos natura modos pri- To feed my innocent 
 ueroit il la republique mumdedit. people, 
 
 qu'il a imagin^e, es- Nature at first vprise, 
 
 loignde de cette perfec- These manners did de- 
 tion 1 vise. 
 
 Hos natura modos prima Furthermore, they live 
 
 dedit. in a country of so ex- 
 
 Oudemeurant,iIsviuent ceeding pleasant and 
 
 en vne contr^e de pais temperate situation, 
 
 tres - plaisante, & bien that as my testimonies 
 
 temper^e : de fajon qu'a have tolde me it is very 
 
 ce que m'ont dit mes rare to see a sicke body 
 
 tesmoigns, il est rare amongst them ; and 
 
 d'y voir, vn homme they have further as- 
 
 malade ; & m'ont as- sured me, they never 
 
 seur^, n'en y auoir veu saw any man there, 
 
 aucun tremblaut, chas- shaking with the palsie, 
 
 sieux, edent6, ou courb6 toothlesse, with eyes 
 
 de Tieillesse." drooping,or crooked and 
 stooping through age." 
 
 The version by Florio was long the sole ordinary 
 medium, through which a conversance with the book was 
 possible for anyone not an exceptionally advanced French 
 scholar. But that it is a deplorably bad one there cannot 
 be any doubt in the mind of all, who have mastered the 
 original, and take the trouble to check even here and there 
 the Italian preceptor''s ludicrous misrenderings, somewhat 
 aggravated by his puerile attempts to give English metrical 
 equivalents for the classical and other foreign quotations. 
 Florio cannot surely have understood the language, which 
 he professed to interpret. His undertaking to-day is 
 almost worthless. Different was the case, when it saw the 
 light. It tended to promote the moral and political influ- 
 ence of Montaigne in England, and to enrich our literature 
 with fresh ideas and suggestions. Its literal fidelity or 
 otherwise could not stand in the way of that. As for 
 Florio's personality it seems to have long survived in a 
 certain circle, for in 1673 Giovanni Torriano, an Italian 
 teacher, gives in one of his books, published in that year, 
 his address, " At the sign of Resolute John Florio, Author 
 
The Dramatic Work 279 
 
 of the Italian Dictionary, in Mitre Court, in Fleet Street, 
 over against Fetter Lane." 
 
 Montaigne differed from his English contemporary, 
 inasmuch as he delivered his views, where they were his 
 own, or referred to himself, direct — without an inter- 
 mediary; he was not only his own analyst, but largely 
 his own biographer. But our poet, except in those pas- 
 sages of the Sonnets, where we imagine that we detect 
 allusions to his own actual feelings and experiences, reached 
 the ear and eye of the world through the sole channel, 
 which was open to him — such of his persons of the play 
 as could with fair propriety be charged with carrying the 
 message. The genius of the author is answerable in the 
 present instance most notably for the illusion, that the 
 characters of his creation are flesh and blood ; and this, so 
 to speak, fallacy throws us at first off our guard, till we 
 have taken time to realize the true facts. All the figures, 
 which move on and off the stage in these dramas, were as 
 completely under the subjection of the poet as Ariel was 
 under that of a not greater magician, Prospero ; and I am 
 most emphatically for the enlistment in the service of the 
 biographer of the not, after all, very numerous places, 
 where Shakespear interposes his individuality in the only 
 way, in which he was able, or chose, to do so. I set down 
 these lines with the passages in Hamlet (iii. 1) and Measure 
 for Measure (iii. 1) before me, side by side with the remarks, 
 which Montaigne has left behind him on the same subject 
 — that of Death ; and a collation seems to favour the idea, 
 that the repugnance to the inevitable end was far keener in 
 the Englishman at thirty-eight than in the Frenchman at 
 forty-seven or so, and that the former, under some cir- 
 cumstances of personal unhappiness, was dissuaded from 
 suicide by the uncertainty of future punishments and 
 rewards. 
 
 Several places in the First and Second Books of the 
 Essays of Montaigne have been pointed out, as more than 
 probable sources of Shakespearean inspiration. The least 
 
280 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 known one may be that in the Apology of Raimond de 
 Sebonde,^ where there is a striking illustration of the pas- 
 sage in Hamlet, iv. 3, where the prince is interrogated as to 
 Polonius : — 
 
 " King. Now, Hamlet, where is Polonius ? — " 
 
 In the Essay we read : " lice are' sufficient to vacate Sylla's 
 dictatorship ; and the life and heart of a great and trium- 
 phant emperor is the breakfast of a little worm." This 
 class of speculation is a common favourite with these two 
 illustrious thinkers. 
 
 The community of sentiment, where death and suicide 
 are discussed in Measure for Measure, is too remarkable to 
 permit us to presume an accidental coincidence. The two- 
 fold topic is handled in the Sonnets; and possibly the 
 stanzas, where the writer touches this painful theme, are 
 referable to the same epoch and frame of mind, when 
 Shakespear was alone in the metropolis, and had been 
 bereaved of his only son, who died in 1596. 
 
 A very remarkable affinity of sentiment between these 
 two great personages, although it lies in a matter of second- 
 ary consequence, is distinguishable in that common distaste, 
 implied in the English writer, but expressed in the French 
 one, for ostentatious and fulsome forefronts, from which 
 there was a curious revolt just about the time of Shakespear, 
 he himself being a conspicuous member of the minority. 
 This point I touch elsewhere ; but it seemed well to add 
 it to the other similitudes, which have been adduced, more 
 especially as it so much more partakes of the nature of an 
 independent coincidence. Than the title-pages, which came, 
 as I presume, direct from the hand of our poet, nothing can 
 well be more succinct, nor were the epistles to Lord South- 
 ampton much less so. The latter were special personal 
 exigencies, just as Montaigne thought fit to mention that 
 he was a chevalier and a gentleman of his majesty's chamber. 
 Even these particulars, if it had been put to him, he might 
 1 Book II. c. xii. Hazlitt's ed. 1902, ii. 294. 
 
The Dramatic Work 281 
 
 have admitted to be surplusage. Yet he pleads, rather for 
 others perhaps than for himself, that such titles of distinc- 
 tion, however numerous, having been acquired at consider- 
 able outlay, were not to be disregarded without offence ; 
 and then he winds up the paper by observing : — " le trouue 
 pareillement de mauvaise grace d'en charger le front & in- 
 scription des liures, que nous faisons imprimer ; " which I 
 apprehend to be exactly what Shakespear felt. 
 
 When one places two contemporary writers, such as 
 Montaigne and Shakespear, before one in one's mind's eye, 
 side by side, one sees that in either case the main strength 
 lay in the presentment of common notions and feelings in 
 new and striking points of view. The author of the Essays 
 did not set himself to tell us what he thought so much as 
 what he felt, what instincts, motives, and passions swayed 
 him, and this task he carried out, as he promised in his 
 exordium, only too fully and candidly. Of course, no writer 
 ever, before or since, spared himself so little, and so entirely 
 admitted to his inmost confidence the world for all time. 
 His confessions have been accepted with some allowance for 
 humour and hyperbole, and some for their very frankness. 
 The English dramatist and poet was differently situated 
 in almost every respect from a man, whom he broadly 
 resembled in the possession of an emphatically original in- 
 tellect. Shakespear has made autobiographical disclosures ; 
 but he used as his vehicle, instead of a book of prose theses 
 more or less calculated for the closet of the scholar, the 
 sonnet and the play; and in the latter he enjoyed the 
 opportunity and advantage (if it was an advantage) of 
 choosing spokesmen whose enunciations to the majority of 
 hearers and readers conveyed no hidden sense, only too 
 pregnant as they were with significance to the author and, 
 maybe, a few others. 
 
 The profundity and delicacy of perception, so manifest 
 in the Englishman, are far less conspicuous in the Essayist ; 
 but each excelled in his way in startling his admirers by 
 fresh glosses on familiar truths and whimsical, even para- 
 
282 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 doxica], inversions of accepted opinions ; and a vindication 
 of this criticism may be said to lie in the passages, where 
 it is shown that our poet saw his account in conveying usable 
 points from what was then a work still under probation and 
 still imperfectly understood even in France. Had Mon- 
 taigne had under his eyes the English plays, especially those 
 of higher reach, he would have been the first to adopt any 
 suggestion, which happened to impress him. But he died 
 a year before Venits and Adonis appeared, and, moreover, 
 French writers, when they did not borrow from each other, 
 usually resorted to the classics. 
 
 When we say and allow that Shakespear boiTOwed a story 
 or even an idea, more or less widely diffused, from this or 
 that source, and so transformed and individualized it, that 
 its immediate extraction became obscure, it may be unsafe 
 to pronounce, whence the raw material was drawn. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Baconian Hoax — Shakespear's Plays (not his Poems) the reputed work 
 of Francis Bacon, lawyer, philosopher, and essayist — Absence of any 
 contemporary or early testimony in support of the claim of Bacon as 
 a playwright — Indefeasible title of Shakespear to his own pro- 
 ductions — Involuntary evidence of Robert Greene in 1592 to the 
 eminence of Shakespear at that time as a dramatist — The likenesses 
 of the poet and the tributes to his genius by contemporaries and 
 intimate friends — Parallel calendar of the literary careers of the two 
 men — Vast difference in their antecedents and surroundings — Possi- 
 bility, rather than probability, of the concern of Bacon in some of the 
 English historical plays in their first sketches — Remarks on the group 
 or sequence of Histories — Sketch of the earlier life of Bacon — His 
 ample leisure during many years — His versatility of talent not peculiar 
 — The style of Bacon academical and hard both in the Essays and in 
 his quasi-dramatic efforts for performance at the Inns of Court — 
 Poverty of his acknowledged verses — Bacon connected with represen- 
 tations at the Inns from 1587 to 1613 — Uniform un-Shakespearean 
 oharaqter of the entire body of these compositions — The cryptogram 
 a not uncommon vehicle for concealment in the days of Bacon — Its 
 presumed origin. 
 
 Some sixty years since more than the literary world was 
 startled by the alleged discovery of grounds, on which the 
 Plays not the Poems, were ascribable to another. The 
 claim advanced proceeded on purely internal indications, 
 yet the plea sought corroboration from certain obvious 
 circumstances belonging to the personality of the hitherto 
 assumed author. It was pointed out — not for the first 
 time — that on the one hand Shakespear was ostensibly an 
 uneducated man, the son of uneducated parents, that next 
 to nothing was preserved of his life and movements, and 
 that, while his existence was proved, and it was not denied 
 that he had published certain poems and sonnets, connect- 
 ing him with one or more distinguished personages, he was 
 simply incapable of composing the dramas, which had so far 
 passed under his name without doubt or challenge. On the 
 
 283 
 
284 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 contrary, this new school contended that more than one 
 indication contributed to identify with these dramatic pro- 
 ductions — if not, forsooth, with a moiety of all those written 
 about the same time— no less a personage than Francis 
 Bacon, who had left, it was asserted and even actually 
 demonstrated, in a then not unfrequent form, in a crypto- 
 gram, the absolute proof of his responsibility for the plays, 
 or at any rate, certain of them, ascribed to Shakespear, 
 and habitually cited and acknowledged as his by intimate 
 friends, acquaintances, and other contemporaries, including 
 two successive sovereigns, who clearly entertained no mis- 
 givings of his claims as a dramatist, as well as no suspicion 
 of the Baconian interest, by foreign adapters or admirers at 
 or near the age itself, and by each succeeding one. 
 
 This silly and shallow fallacy, which proposes to deprive 
 the country of one of its two greatest men, found a degree 
 of support and adherence, chiefly in the United States, not 
 very creditable to the parties concerned, and manifestly due 
 to the failure, more natural perhaps abroad than on English 
 ground, to grasp all the facts, and to take a comprehensive 
 view of the question ; and the Baconian parentage of Shake- 
 spear's Plays — not, let us remember, his Lyrics, for the 
 Shakespearean authorship of which the testimony is too 
 absolute even for the Baconians — became at all events a 
 debatable theme at home and across the Atlantic, a more or 
 less diffused creed, on which I understand that hundreds of 
 waste-paper books and pamphlets have already been written. 
 Yet it is safe to affirm that the title of Shakespear to his 
 splendid literary estate. Plays and Poems alike, is perfectly 
 unimpaired. 
 
 It will enter to some general extent into my plan to 
 shew that (1) Bacon could not have written the Plays, or 
 any of the Plays, as Shakespear left them ; (2J that Shake- 
 spear did write them, as we at present possess them ; and 
 (3) that the Baconian theory may nevertheless have some 
 measure of verisimilitude, yet in a very different way. 
 
 The knowledge that Bacon had written some kind of 
 
The Dramatic Work 285 
 
 poetry is more than three centuries of age. i^ubrey ^ refers 
 to the letter addressed by Bacon to " Mr. Davis," knighted 
 in 1607, the well-known poet and brother lawyer, which is 
 inserted in the collection published in 1702, and in which 
 the writer solicits indulgence for " concealed poets." It may 
 be thence augured that his correspondent was aware of 
 Bacon having at this time (perhaps about 1600) written 
 compositions in verse. Aubrey proceeds to quote the verses 
 on a Bubble, printed by Farnaby in his ^ AvQoKo'^ia, 1629. 
 
 The Duke of Newcastle, in his Triumphant Widow, 1677, 
 makes Justice Spoilwit say : " There was one Mr. Francis 
 Bacon, a very pretty hopeful man of our house, that did 
 write Essays." But the Duke does not suggest that he 
 wrote plays, which would, had it been so, have impressed 
 him-more. Aubrey was most assuredly unaware, that the 
 subject of his notice had done more than indulge his fancy, 
 like his father before him, the Lord Keeper, who has left the 
 world the metrical " Recreations of his Age." ^ Some of them 
 were of a playful tenor, and all more than equal to the few 
 things of the kind traceable to the son in occasional efforts 
 of a lighter and different character. Aubrey does not, I 
 submit, offer the least suggestion, that there was a current 
 belief at that time as to Bacon having penned any import- 
 ant or distinct contributions to the national drama or even 
 to undramatic poetry, for, had he cited the same author's 
 partial version of the Psalms, which was perhaps unknown 
 to him, he could barely have pretended that it was much 
 more meritorious than the verses on a Bubble — any farther 
 removed from Dr. Watts. At any occult key to dramatic 
 labours of any kind Aubrey does not remotely hint. The 
 copy of verses by Bacon, which is termed a parody, is of no 
 farther significance than the tone, which recalls the melan- 
 choly Jaques — with a difference, possibly from having been 
 a spectator at the play, and brought away the notion. 
 
 Not only in Shakespear's life-time were the Plays and 
 
 1 Aubrey's Letters, &c., ed. Bliss, ii. 224. 
 
 ' Folio MS. sold at Sotheby's, May 6, 1903, No. 122. 
 
286 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Poems equally published as his ; but when he was no more, 
 and while Bacon yet survived, they similarly continued to 
 be so, without any ostensible demurrer on the part of Bacon 
 or any of his friends ; and the First Folio almost ostenta- 
 tiously sets forth the authorship of Shakespear, as Love's 
 Labor's Lost, 1598, the Lear of 1608, and the Sonnets of 
 1609, had previously done, while no fewer than five poetical 
 miscellanies between 1599 and 1601 ^ contained his appa- 
 rently unchallenged contributions, accompanied by his name, 
 and, which is perhaps more, certain pieces, which were dis- 
 owned, not because he was not capable of writing them, but 
 because he did not do so. Two at least of these appropria- 
 tions were made, not by Shakespear, but by the bookseHers 
 under the influence of common kno'wledge ; the 1598 one was 
 probably due to Shakespear himself; and in the collective 
 editions of the Plays men, who had been personally inti- 
 mate with the poet, who had acted in these compositions, 
 when they were brought on the stage, who enjoyed the 
 opportunity far better than we do of hearing reports and 
 rumours about the pieces and their origin, who might even 
 have beheld their friend with his pen in his hand, with 
 the unfinished manuscript before him, attested his exclusive 
 claim within their information to the work. 
 
 There is at least no dispute that a William Shakespear 
 lived between certain dates, published certain approved 
 poems, was on friendly terms not only with other literary 
 men, but with persons of rank and distinction, who were 
 flattered by his compliments, and sensible of his power; 
 and that he had been at a remarkably early stage of his 
 professional career viewed by a certain coterie with more 
 than sufficient jealousy and dislike to have led to the speedy 
 ■exposure of his false assumption of undue credit, had there 
 been such a matter within their cognizance. He was, as 
 we all are aware, accused by Greene, as the spokesman of 
 himself and others, of having dishonestly misappropriated 
 
 1 Passionate Pilgrim, Bodenham's Selvidere, Englcmd's Helicon, England's 
 Parnassus, Love's Martyr. 
 
The Dramatic Work 287 
 
 their material, or, in the precise language of the complain- 
 ants, of " having beautified himself with their feathers," or, 
 as an unequivocal spokesman for Greene puts it in 1594, 
 *' purloined their plumes." The irritation was apt to become 
 the keener from the concurrent rivalry of Marlowe, who 
 threatened to become quite as grave a source of trouble 
 to Greene and others, inasmuch as in his Tamburlaine he 
 had so plainly shown his mastery of the " Cambyses vein," 
 and a power of outstripping them all ; and accordingly 
 Marlowe involved himself in the same class of diatribe if 
 not so pungently worded. It is the more requisite to adduce 
 this point, inasmuch as the ordinary impression is, that the 
 enmity of Greene was concentrated on Shakespear. 
 
 The charge, so far as Shakespear was personally con- 
 cerned, became public property in 1592 by the issue of 
 Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit;^ but the feeling had 
 rankled in the bosoms of the writer of the pamphlet and 
 his immediate set some time, we may be almost sure, before 
 it found vent in type. Greene rightly or wrongly upbraided 
 Shake-scene or Johannes Factotum with nefarious practices, 
 or, if his arraignment may be translated into other words, 
 he and some about him were becoming sensible of the rise 
 of a new master and a new theatrical school ; and if it be 
 the fact that Gabriel Harvey, in his Four Letters and Certain 
 Sormets, apparently published a little before the Groatsworth 
 of Wit, meant Shakespear, where he alludes, among " spring- 
 ing wits," " singularly to one, whom I salute with a hundred 
 blessings," the irritation was naturally aggravated. To be 
 assailed by Greene was an ipso facto title to the goodwill 
 of Harvey, For the immediate purpose, the hostility of 
 Greene is valuable, because it seems to intimate that he 
 had no justification whatever for alleging, that Shakespear 
 
 ^ It is remarkable that in the entry of this pamphlet at Stationers' 
 Hall, 1592, it is said to be allowed or licensed "vppon the perill of Henrye 
 Chettle," but it was also "under master Watkins hande," as if the 
 authorities declined to sanction its appearance without the warranty of 
 Chettle, who seems clearly to have been the person responsible for bring- 
 ing it into the hall. 
 
288 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 was guilty of a graver offence than carrying the authorized 
 revision of other men's work so far perhaps now and then 
 as to overlay and obliterate the First Sketch ; nor would 
 Shakespear have incurred the animosity of his fellow play- 
 wrights, had he limited himself to manuscripts submitted 
 to the managers by outsiders and amateurs. He presumed 
 to trespass, of course with the concurrence of proprietors, 
 on higher ground, and to imply practically that he could 
 outdo Greene and his friends. On that point the world 
 has long come to a conclusion, even if we accord to them 
 their fair share of credit as aids and prompters; but the 
 author of the Groatsworih of Wit performed, as it has 
 happened, yeoman service in satisfying us for ever that in 
 1592 William Shakespear was already by the acknowledg- 
 ment of a circle, in which we may include Peele and 
 Marlowe, if not Munday, their superior as a dramatist, 
 even if his performances were more or less under obligations 
 to their prima stamina. Setting aside the qualified measure 
 of appreciation by Spenser in Colin Clout of the so-called 
 Aetion (the Aetius of Procopius), the author at any rate 
 reckoned him as an independent unit. The poem was 
 written in 1591, printed in 1595. 
 
 One main and solid point is this : that the William 
 Shakespear interred at Stratford, and whose monumental 
 bust is to be seen in the chancel there, and the William 
 Shakespear whose name and semblance are so conspicuous 
 on the title of the 1623 volume, were then accepted by 
 common assent as one and the same. Indeed the small 
 gallery of resemblances executed between 1623 and 1700, 
 and all more or less unauthentic, at any rate united in 
 recognizing one person as the author of the Works both 
 lyrical and dramatic — that person Shakespear. 
 
 Shakespear-Baconism, originally a tender and perishable 
 home-sprung seedling, was transplanted into a foreign soil, 
 and gained an almost tropical luxuriance. An American 
 atmosphere and a distant contemplation have evidently done 
 something for the cause and the cry. It is a possibility that 
 
The Dramatic Work 289 
 
 some of these adventurers, if they were to settle down for a 
 season at Stratford and purchase Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's 
 Outlines, and digest the contents, might grow disposed 
 to reconsider their signally precipitate and unwise verdict. 
 For an acceptance or rejection of the proposition, that 
 Shakespear comprised in his schedule of more or less re- 
 written plays some in a transitional state sketched with or 
 without his knowledge by Bacon, and placed in his hands 
 in the customary way through a third party, does not sub- 
 stantially affect the central argument, that the Plays of 
 Shakespear are by Shakespear. 
 
 There may be no harm in drawing up for reference and 
 comparison a view of the respective occupations of the two 
 men during the continuance of their literary labours. There 
 is said to be always a danger in underrating adversaries, 
 and we must do our utmost to lay this ungentle ghost, lest 
 others should be emboldened by his example. Let us take 
 these two almost contemporary biographies in outline from 
 starting-point to close: — 
 
 Calendar of Biographical Parallelisms. ' 
 
 Bacon (1561-1626). Shakespear (1664^1616). 
 
 1. Born in London, Jan. 22, 1. Born at Stratford, April 
 1661, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, 22-3, 1564, son of John Shake- 
 Lord Keeper, a native of Chisle- spear and his wife, daughter of 
 hurst, Kent, and of the learned Robert Arden, persons of yeo- 
 Anne Cooke, who translated man rank and at least average 
 Jewell's Apology, printed in 1562 education. 
 
 and again in 1564. 
 
 2. Sent to the University of 2. Educated at Stratford Gram- 
 Cambridge, on Oct. 13, 1574. mar School, one of the best in 
 
 England. 
 
 3. Leaves Cambridge to go to 3. Pursues employment under 
 Paris, 1577, dissatisfied with aca- his father, acquires a knowledge 
 demical methods, studies statistics of rural life, probably witnesses 
 and diplomacy, and writes a piece exhibitions of travelling actors, 
 On the State of Europe. is noted by his father for his 
 
 humour, and described as "a 
 good fellow " in conversation with 
 a third party. 
 
 T 
 
290 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Bacon {continued) 
 
 4. Recalled to England by the 
 sudden death of his father, 
 1678-9. 
 
 5. Engages in legal studies, 
 tries to obtain official employ- 
 ment, writes pamphlets on cur- 
 rent affairs. A very obscure 
 epoch, 1680-5. 
 
 6. Becomes Counsel Extraor- 
 dinary to the Queen, 1590. Forms 
 a friendship with the Earl of 
 Essex, who makes him a present 
 of Twickenham Park, 1694. 
 
 7. Becomes member of Parlia- 
 ment for Middlesex, 1595. Con- 
 tinues to be in pecuniary straits, 
 and is once arrested for debt. 
 Composes masques and other 
 occasional pieces of a dry and 
 starched character, writes his 
 Essays in Latin, and afterward 
 translates them into English and 
 publishes them, 1597. 
 
 8. Writes by royal command 
 the justification of the death of 
 Essex, 1601. Marries the daugh- 
 ter of a London Alderman. 
 Knighted by James I., 1603. 
 Counsel to the Crown, 1604. 
 
 Shakespear {continued) 
 
 4. Visits London as a boy, and 
 meets the Burbages, Tarlton, &c., 
 1674^80. 
 
 6. Marries, November 1582, 
 Ann Hathaway, with a dower of 
 £60 of modern money. His 
 daughter Susanna is born, May 
 1583. Leaves Stratford, where 
 his father had become involved 
 in pecuniary straits, and comes 
 up to London, assists Burbage 
 at his hostelry in Shoreditch. 
 Enjoys opportunities of seeing 
 the performances at his theatre, 
 1686-8. 
 
 6. Begins to write for the stage 
 as a corrector of other men's plays. 
 Is assailed by Robert Greene 
 (1592) as a dangerous rival to 
 himself and others. Publishes 
 Venus and Adonis and Lucrece 
 (1693-4). 
 
 7. Produces Romeo and Juliet, 
 Richard 11. , Richard III., &c., 
 1594-7. Applies, probably in his 
 father's name, for a grant of arms 
 from Heralds' College. Loses his 
 only son, 1696. Presumed sepa- 
 ration from his wife. 
 
 8. Purchases New Place, 1697, 
 for £60. Continues to bring out 
 year by year his great dramatic 
 masterpieces. A scene from 
 Richard II., performed in the 
 streets and other public places 
 without his avowed cognizance, 
 and during his presumed absence 
 at Stratford, by the partizans of 
 Essex, 1601. 
 
The Dramatic Work 
 
 291 
 
 Bacon (continued) 
 9. Is still occupied^ amid pro- 
 fessional work, in literary labours. 
 Published in 1605 his Advance- 
 ment of Learning. 
 
 10. Pursues his philosophical 
 researches pari passu with his poli- 
 tical functions, 1605-09. Acquires 
 habits of increased extravagance. 
 
 11. Attorney - General, 1613. 
 Periodical reprints of the Essays. 
 His expensive habits and love of 
 splendour impoverish and com- 
 promise him. The man of genius 
 and of the world, but not of busi- 
 ness. Prepares the masque of the 
 Inner Temple and Gray's Inn to 
 celebrate the marriage of the 
 King's daughter to the Elector 
 Palatine, Feb. 1613-14. 
 
 12. Rises in estimation as a 
 lawyer and a philosophical and 
 moral writer. His Essays are 
 translated into Italian, 1618. Be- 
 comes Lord Keeper (1617), Regent 
 during the absence of the King 
 
 Shakespear (continued) 
 6. Writes at short notice, for 
 presentment before the Queen, 
 the Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 1602. Bamlet produced, 1602. 
 Shakespear receives a magnifi- 
 cent eulogy from Jonson in the 
 Poetaster, 1602, and (about 1606) 
 an autograph letter from James I., 
 which was still in existence in 
 or about 1720. Buys a moiety 
 of remaining lease of the great 
 tithes of Stratford, &c., for £440. 
 
 10. Shakespear's Sonnets, writ- 
 ten at intervals during many 
 years, are published by the finder 
 of the MS. or papers, 1609. The 
 dramatic series proceeds. Shake- 
 spear accumulates property. New 
 Place let to T. Greene. 
 
 11. Shakespear retires from 
 London, 1613. Buys a house 
 and appurtenances in Black- 
 friars as an investment, 1613, 
 for £140, barring dower to 
 his wife. Co-operates with Bur- 
 bage in executing a commission 
 for the young Earl of Rutland 
 (1613). Probably witnesses the 
 festivities at the marriage of the 
 Princess Elizabeth and the visit 
 of the Savoyard Ambassador to 
 the Blackfriars theatre (1613). 
 The man of genius and busi- 
 ness — not (save the mark !) of 
 letters. 
 
 12. At or near Stratford. 
 Health fails. Makes his will, 
 bequeathing most part of his 
 estate to the HaUs. His wife 
 receives practically nothing be- 
 yond her strict legal lien on the 
 
292 Shakespeab: The Man and his Work 
 
 Bacon {continued) Shdkespear {continued) 
 
 in Scotland (1617), Lord Chan- estate. Dies. Is buried April 25, 
 cellor and Baron Verulam (1619), 1616. 
 and Viscount St. Alban (1620). 
 The Novum, Organon completed 
 and printed (1620). The History 
 of Henry VII. published, 1622. 
 First complete edition of the 
 Essays appears, 1625, apparently- 
 seen through the press by the 
 author. Dies in embarrassed cir- 
 cumstances, 1626. 
 
 In the Philosopher and Essayist we conceive that we 
 realize a man of a totally distinct type. His birth was 
 distinguished ; on his father's and mother's side he had the 
 promise of high mental gifts, and more than fulfilled it ; 
 the road to greatness was opened to him by all the advan- 
 tages, which rank, influence, and wealth are capable of con- 
 ferring ; he gradually developed to the view of the world a 
 commanding intellect, boundless ambition, an inextinguish- 
 able thirst for knowledge, and a literary aptitude at once of 
 the profoundest and of the most multifarious reach. His 
 versatility was almost a conceit. He seemed to aim at be- 
 coming the second Universal Doctor. But a rather material 
 and interesting point of correspondence between Shakespear 
 and him, and the contemporary of them both, Montaigne, 
 is, that these three men were not estimated during their 
 lives, or during a long course of years succeeding their 
 deaths, at anything near their true value. We are able to 
 glean, that Bacon was regarded as a learned and ingenious 
 speculator, not quite so much so perhaps as his sovereign : 
 but the world at large entertained no suspicion that he was 
 of the intellectual magnitude, which the moderns tardily 
 discerned ; and the author of the Novum Organon and the 
 New Atlcmtis was painfully aware of the fact, insomuch that 
 he entrusted to an unknown posterity the duty of assigning 
 to him his proper station. 
 
 When one regards the chronological sequence or succes- 
 
The Dramatic Work 293 
 
 sion even of those works, which he lived to publish, their 
 lofty aim, their varied character, and their laborious execu- 
 tion, one wonders in what manner Bacon contrived to spare 
 from his almost incessant professional engagements leisure 
 to commit to writing, when they had assumed a tangible 
 form in his mind, this vast mass of matured and condensed 
 thought ; and more especially is such the case when he con- 
 currently interested himself in mathematical studies, and 
 was a reader of the technical works of Briggs and his fol- 
 lower Napier of Merchistoun, as well as perhaps of the 
 continental emblem-writers of the day. We become aware 
 that he employed secretaries and amanuenses, and even that 
 he maintained at one time at Twickenham a scrivener's 
 establishment to facilitate the production of fair copies — 
 probably of any sort of manuscript matter, legal or literary, 
 in hand. Yet the personal toil, where the topic was in- 
 tricate and abstruse, must have been immense, and it was 
 perhaps saved from being quite insupportable by what we 
 know of the legible character of the author's writing — the 
 Itahan, not the Court, style. By his direct instrumentality 
 or by the offices of editors, especially Rawley, most part of 
 what he did is laid before us; but it is impossible to be 
 assured that we have all. Rawley appears to have made 
 himself well acquainted with the literary labours of his em- 
 ployer. He does not allude to his poetical effiDrts, nor did 
 he deem the translation of the Psalms, the product of a 
 sick chamber toward the close, as worth reprinting. He 
 cannot have failed to have at least heard of it. 
 
 In connection with the clear need for clerical assistance, 
 apart from the question of a concern in current dramatic 
 literature, it is a matter of notoriety, that the scrivener 
 was called into service at this time for every species of 
 transcript, and that numerous manuscript copies of old 
 plays and poems exist in this shape, including two or three 
 of the Latin tragedy of Richard III. It was an expedient 
 for saving time or for securing accuracy. 
 
 The tradition in the time of Charles II. was, that Titus 
 
294 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 Andronicus was brought to the theatre "by a private 
 author," and improved by Shakespear, after it had been 
 some time on the stage under a somewhat different title. 
 But the fact seems to be, that Shakespear did not inter- 
 vene till Marlowe suddenly died in 1593, leaving that 
 and other papers, some unfinished, behind him, and then 
 the MS. having been obtained by a theatre from the same 
 persons who found the Dido, Edward II., and Hero amd 
 Leander,^ the poet put certain touches to the play and 
 perhaps proposed the name by which it was subsequently 
 known. The immediate point, however, is, that there was 
 according to Ravenscroft, the seventeenth century play- 
 wright, a system or custom in his time of MSS. being offered 
 to the playhouses by private or anonymous authors, who 
 thus submitted on speculation without any clue to their 
 identity dramatic essays which they did not care to print, 
 and which in their actual form were unsuitable for repre- 
 sentation ; and I harbour the opinion that, not such a piece 
 as Titus Andronicus, but such as the first drafts of Henry IV., 
 Henry V., and Henry VI. were not improbably of Baconian 
 origin — far more probably, indeed, than from the pens usually 
 named in connection with them, and that these products of 
 a man of genius, wholly destitute of theatrical experience 
 beyond such as sufficed to set forth a Court or Gray's Inn 
 pageant, were laid before the more practical artist in a 
 scrivener's transcript. 
 
 This suggestion defers to the passing remark of Aubrey, 
 a witness not to be too indiscriminately dismissed, that 
 Bacon was a good poet, and concealed his labours in that 
 direction. Aubrey does not even say that the poetry was 
 dramatic, and Bacon has left nothing in the lyrical way to 
 entitle him to consideration. 
 
 The present writer might not have acquiesced even so 
 far in the indication of Aubrey, had it not struck him, that 
 
 ^ Probably Edward Blount, wlio used the Hero wnd Lewnder himself, 
 but transferred or surrendered the dramatic MSS. to those better able to 
 deal with them. 
 
The Dramatic Work 295 
 
 the History of Henry VII., not published till 1622, was in 
 its inception or germ just such another lame offspring as 
 the First Sketches of the other reigns, and was rewritten as 
 a historical narrative at a posterior date, when the idea of 
 bringing the subject on the stage had been abandoned by 
 the author, or discouraged by those to whom he conjectur- 
 ally submitted his other MSS. It is fairly obvious that the 
 most dramatic episode in a Henry VII. play would be the 
 very one, which so largely contributes to the success of 
 Richard III. — the Bosworth scene ; and then, moreover, this 
 part of the English Annals had been preoccupied by at 
 least one inferior pen, before the great poet undertook it as 
 part of his series ; and this circumstance suggests a farther 
 speculation, whether the priina stamina of Bacon's Henry VII. 
 was one of the two ante-Shakespearean dramas on the sub- 
 ject. We do not know that Bacon even wrote such a piece, 
 but he evidently took an interest in the period and class of 
 subject, and left behind him a MS. History of the reign of 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 The group of Histories, in their original rough-hewn 
 state, and in the shape which they assumed under the hand 
 of Shakespear, extends from John to Richard III. We must 
 all feel that we are treading on debatable ground, so far 
 as the First Sketches go ; but, after all, the attribution of 
 these pieces is conjectural, and there is a complete set of the 
 prototypes, so altered, modified, and strengthened by a second 
 pen, or by other pens, that the first author is not always 
 recognizable. As Shakespear 's Richard III. is held to have 
 preceded his Richard II. in order of production — though the 
 proof is not very clear — it may well be the fact that, when 
 the former was completed, it was discovered that the reign 
 of Richard II. was alone substantially required to make the 
 dramatization of English history consecutive from Edward 
 I., plus John ; and the annals of the country in such a shape 
 were calculated, perhaps, to please and satisfy many, before 
 the Duke of Marlborough pronounced his celebrated dictum. 
 Yet there seems to have been, side by side with the appetite 
 
296 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 for the successive chronological episodes in their eclectic or 
 chastened dramatic shape, a call for an account of the several 
 regnal epochs in book form, and a series of historical narra- 
 tives by Sir John Hayward and others, ran parallel with 
 the incessant theatrical presentations, possibly owing to a 
 curiosity on the part of some to compare notes before or 
 after. But the (more or less) orthodox account met with 
 fewer students than the fourpenny playbook, and is still 
 suspiciously common, whereas the other almost unexception- 
 ally perished under the fingers and thumbs of audiences. 
 
 The more youthful transactions of Bacon are less obscure 
 than those of his contemporary, mainly because he was led 
 by his professional and political connections into a fairly 
 plentiful correspondence with persons accustomed to preserve 
 their papers, and from the same cause is mentioned in the 
 correspondence and memoirs of others ; and the silence of 
 certain years is in fact due to the accidental absence of such 
 lights. 1580-82, for instance, is an almost blank interval, 
 during which he may have occupied his time with dramatic 
 experiments — such as the Conference of Pleasure, which is 
 analogous to the MSS. noted by Spedding under a later date 
 (1592-95), and which that editor correctly describes as pre- 
 senting " a certain affectation and rhetorical cadence." 
 
 There was a protracted term, even down nearly to the 
 close of the sixteenth century, however, before regular pre- 
 ferment arrived, when Bacon was without settled occupation 
 and in want of money; glad to employ his versatile pen on 
 any current question before the Government and the public ; 
 and to this epoch, if to any, we must, I think, assign desul- 
 tory efforts to dramatize incidents or scenes in English 
 history, partly suggested by visits to the playhouses, and 
 partly so by the experiments, of which some are extant. 
 There are indications that the composition of the historical 
 series, commencing with Henry IV., had already started in 
 1587, before Shakespear entered on the scene,,^ and when 
 Bacon was still very young. 
 
 1 Hunter's New Illustrations, ii, 63. 
 
The Dramatic Work 297 
 
 What Bacon may have written of this nature we are 
 quite authorized to conclude unfit for theatrical use; but 
 the first drafts of Henry IV., V., VI. were possibly his, yet 
 not even as they were originally exhibited and published, 
 but submitted to a revising pen. If that pen was Shake- 
 spear's, we are unable to believe that he engaged in this 
 kind of work prior to 1590 ; and thenceforward during 
 some years he did little else in a dramatic direction. In 
 1592, when the Groatsworth of Wit appeared, the entire 
 historical series, however, had reached the First Sketch 
 stage, and had made Greene violently indignant and angry, 
 which is another way of saying, that the latter believed 
 Shakespear to have had a prominent hand in them. 
 
 That Bacon, situated as he was in constant and anxious 
 expectation of legal advancement, did not venture to asso- 
 ciate himself publicly with such performances, had they even 
 been capable of utilization as he left them, is perfectly 
 obvious, and, as I have suggested, his essays of this nature, 
 if he made them, may have been among those which found 
 their way to the theatre without any hint of their parentage 
 — which were sent by hand in the shape of a transcript. 
 As to elaborate concealment of his identity, I must own 
 that I fail to perceive the slightest rational :foundation for 
 the idea ; the nearest approach to a disguise of the kind was 
 in a few early letters, where he whimsically subscribes him- 
 self B. Fra. A scrivener's copy delivered by an anonymous 
 bearer was surely sufficient protection for an outsider or 
 "private person." 
 
 It may be worth while to add that the playwrights, 
 having omitted in their episodical History of England to 
 treat the interval between the fall of Richard III. and the 
 reign of Henry VIII., Bacon, occupying a wholly different 
 position from that in which we see him before 1600, sup- 
 plied in his prose History of Henry VII. the gap and the 
 deficiency in a manner sufficiently conclusive to prove the 
 need, which any productions, previously thrown into a 
 dramatic form, would have had of an editor. 
 
298 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 There was nothing very unusual in the wide range of 
 the studies of Bacon. English scholars before and of his 
 time signalized themselves, as we are enabled to judge from 
 the extant lists of their works, as well as from the allusions 
 readable in them, by their active interest in subjects as 
 different in their character as in their importance ; and so 
 conspicuous a personage as Sir Thomas More, a contempo- 
 rary of Bacon's father, and a fresh tradition in Bacon's own 
 day, comes into our thoughts. If we take into our hands 
 his Collected Works, 1557, a rather ponderous folio of 1600 
 or 1700 pages, we perceive that between its covers it em- 
 braces nearly every sort of polite learning and literary thesis, 
 and that the drama and poetry are not overlooked. The 
 present writer advanced many years since the plausible 
 suggestion, that More had a hand even in a jest-book ; and 
 he is reported to have furnished John Heywood with the 
 plots of some of his comic interludes. Versatility was in 
 fact a sort of cult toward the Elizabethan era ; but this 
 admission is very far from helping the Baconian theorists, 
 inasmuch as the same individual may display a share of 
 proficiency in many directions, yet never attain supreme 
 excellence in more than one. In the case of Bacon, that 
 specialism was assuredly not poetry. We read with pleasure 
 the Essays and Sylva Sylvarum, and perhaps the History of 
 Henry the Seventh, and is it not so, that we take the Novum 
 Organon (a title borrowed from Aristotle) on trust as a new 
 philosophical gospel, which we have yet to master? We 
 turn with a painful sensation to the version of some of the 
 Psalms on two accounts, the physical prostration of the 
 translator and the poverty of the translation; and we at 
 length conclude, that the sole redeeming feature in the small 
 volume is the interesting inscription in an extant copy to 
 the pious George Herbert, interesting alike from its mutually 
 honourable terms and from the insight, which it betrays, 
 into the poetical bias of his " affectionate friend." Bacon 
 looked up to the writer of the Temple as the happiest union 
 of Divinity and Poesy. 
 
The Dramatic Work 299 
 
 The testimony of Aubrey, then, and the visible fruit of 
 the Baconian muse, combine, with the estimate of poetry 
 presumed from the appreciation of Herbert, to discourage 
 us from imagining that the author of the Life of Henry VII. 
 ever rose to higher flights in metre and fancy ; and I empha- 
 size the work just mentioned because I have speculated 
 whether Bacon can have had any hand in the first drafts 
 of the dramatic series devoted to the reigns of earlier 
 English kings, of the original sources of which so little is 
 ascertained. It is impossible to believe that he failed to 
 attend performances at the theatres, when any piece of 
 congenial character or striking texture was announced ; we 
 are aware how his intellectual temper led him to become an 
 essayist in almost all branches of human learning and cul- 
 ture ; and our " concealed poet " may have been, even without 
 the knowledge of those to whom he transmitted the MS. or 
 MSS., the author of one or more of those imperfect histori- 
 cal dramas, first supplied with occasional touches, and even- 
 tually recast by a second and stronger hand — stronger, at 
 least, in this class of work, both from a loftier imaginative 
 scope and from a keener practical instinct. At the same 
 time, regarding the historical plays as a series from a modern 
 point of view rather than as the consecutive separate com- 
 positions, which they originally were, I have to confess that 
 they seem to me tedious and prolix with only too sparing a 
 leaven of true Shakespearean touches. One observes through- 
 out this section of the dramas the tendency of the writer to 
 drift into rhyme or to retain that form. 
 
 I cannot help seeing how, in the Essays, whose senten- 
 tious structure would bring them nearest to the dramatic 
 form and feeling, there is an almost total absence of con- 
 sanguinity. These productions are in fact the Sermones 
 Fideks, which the author terms them in the original Latin ; 
 they rise above commonplace infinitely more seldom than 
 those of Montaigne; and they would not have sufficed to 
 lift the name of Bacon to its acknowledged height in spite 
 of the bitterest detraction, had he not been emphatically 
 
300 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 in philosophical, what Shakespear was in dramatic, litera- 
 ture, and the Fi-ench master in ethics. 
 
 Some time before the entrance of Bacon at Gray's Inn 
 — in fact, when he was still in his infancy, the English 
 versions of the Phcenisscs of Euripides and the Suppositi of 
 Ariosto had been presented there, no doubt under the 
 superintendence of their translators or paraphrasts, Francis 
 Kinwelmersh and George Gascoigne. These productions, 
 if they were seen by Shakespear, were presumably known 
 to him only through the printed copies in the editions of 
 Gascoigne ; at any rate, he has shown an acquaintance with 
 both in the Winter's Tale and the Taming of the Shrew. 
 These dramas were exhibited at the Inn in 1566; but it 
 was not till 1587 that Bacon, then a young man of six or 
 seven and twenty, took part in an undertaking of an 
 analogous character produced under the auspices of Kin- 
 welmersh himself, then an elderly person, and others, and 
 performed before the Court at Greenwich. This was the 
 piece usually known as the Misfortunes of Arthur; and 
 Bacon was no farther concerned in it than in the prepara- 
 tion of the dumb-shows. 
 
 But the introduction to theatrical life was not to be 
 limited to this comparatively humble experiment, and there 
 are indications among certain papers preserved in a muti- 
 lated state at Northumberland House, that Bacon, some 
 years subsequently, addressed himself to the task of execut- 
 ing devices for representation at Court on special occasions. 
 These exist only in the form and to the extent, that they 
 have been printed by Spedding ; ^ the remainder of the 
 MSS. copies appear to have perished in the fire at Northum- 
 berland House in 1780. They, or some of them, exhibit 
 the result, very frequently apparent in MSS. of early date, 
 of having passed through the hands of a person, who has 
 amused himself by scribbling in vacant places the names of 
 then celebrated persons, Shakespear's among the number. 
 The circumstance establishes absolutely nothing, as any 
 * A Conference of Pleasure, &o., 8°, 1870. 
 
The Dramatic Work 301 
 
 one conversant with the practice must know and allow^ 
 but the presence of these scrawls has been enlisted by the 
 Baconians on their side as a piece of subsidiary or collateral 
 evidence. There has been a recent disposition to associate 
 with these remains the name of the poetical writing-master, 
 John Davies of Hereford, on the strength of some of the 
 entries, which indicate a professional or at any rate culti- 
 vated character. Judging, however, from the salvage, the 
 MSS. here in question have no dramatic pretensions, and 
 partake rather of the nature of addresses or themes ; and 
 they are perhaps merely of use as shewing that the writer 
 had a taste, amid graver and more practical studies, for the 
 sort of literature, which may be classible as bordering on 
 the theatrical. This employment belonged to a stage of 
 his career, when he was still enjoying a certain amount of 
 leisure, and when his official rank and engagements had 
 not rendered his direct and public attention to such minor 
 unprofessional matters inexpedient on more than one 
 account. In or about 1594 he seems to have commenced 
 the formation of a commonplace book, in which he noted 
 down, during a series of years extending beyond Shake- 
 spear's life, sentences and phrases from authors perused or 
 studied by him for subsequent use in his own literary com- 
 positions. This MS., which is in the Harleian collection at 
 the British Museum, is one of a sufficiently familiar type, 
 and was scarcely worth printing. As a document or witness 
 it is valueless. 
 
 In 1594, appeared the Gray's-Inn Masque, by Francis 
 Davison, son of a Secretary of State, yet, like Bacon, dis- 
 tinguished by a keen rehsh for literature, and making his 
 first mark as the composer of a quasi-dramatic piece. 
 Davison was considerably the junior of Bacon; and it is 
 not unreasonable to suppose, or dangerous to grant, that 
 he imbibed from the latter, a member of the same Inn and 
 a family connection, his taste for what we may term amateur 
 theatricals, as well as for the belles lettres. It is shown i^ 
 1 Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1826, prolegomena. 
 
302 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 that both these personages were in touch with the Herberts 
 of Wilton and other families, remarkable for their culture. 
 Francis Davison, not long after his admission to Gray's Inn, 
 however, travelled abroad, and during some time we hear of 
 him only through his correspondence with Anthony Bacon, 
 brother of Francis ; Davison appears to have visited Italy, 
 or at all events he brought back with him a still extant 
 copy of Tasso's Torrismondo, printed at Ferrara in 1587, 
 and left in it marks of his ownership and perusal; but 
 whatever sympathy with dramatic and literary studies the 
 younger Davison contracted, his kinsman, fellow-student, 
 and senior was doubtless the initiating motor, the tutelary 
 force. In 1594 Bacon was thirty-three, his friend only 
 nineteen or twenty. The influence in this direction, to 
 some extent reciprocal, was fostered and sustained by the 
 circles, in which both moved. At the same time Bacon and 
 Davison were destined to achieve widely different careers ; 
 and the former was to find himself in a position, where it 
 became increasingly impracticable for him to devote his 
 time, and, which was more, to lend his name openly to 
 dramatic performances of any kind. 
 
 It is of considerable importance to become aware that 
 Bacon did not abandon his propensity for the more acade- 
 mical side of dramatic composition, even when he had 
 attained a conspicuous position as a legal adviser and 
 officer of the Crown. For in 1613 he devised, as it was 
 phrased in those days, a masque for presentation at one 
 of the Inns of Court in honour of the marriage of the 
 Lady Elizabeth Stuart, the king's daughter, to' the Elector 
 Palatine,^ and this performance, which drew a large crowd 
 of spectators, is precisely of the same quality as those earlier 
 efforts of which I have just spoken, establishing the osten- 
 sible boundary of the power of the author in this direction 
 — perhaps indeed the limit of his aim, if or when he found 
 that his more youthful aspirations as a dramatist of the 
 
 "• Hazlitt's Manual of Old English Plays, p. 150. 
 
The Deamatic Work 303 
 
 more regular type were good only as pegs or skeletons for 
 another and more capable workman. 
 
 The employment of cyphers, which is traced from the 
 Continent, and was an early diplomatic and political pre- 
 caution at Venice, came into vogue in England, and was 
 habitual during the Civil Troubles, and even in private 
 communications of a delicate or compromising nature. The 
 practice originally contemplated protection, not mystery; 
 but the latter became in certain cases a collateral element, 
 and assumed many arbitrary and fantastic forms, some of 
 which, where the question has grown one of importance, have 
 been laboriously unriddled, while others have resisted dis- 
 entanglement. Less absolute in its cryptographic obscurity, 
 yet germane in its character and object, was the Veiled 
 Allusion and the occult signature ; and these two modified 
 and secondary types freely pervade the amatory literature 
 and confidential correspondence of the period, which I am 
 considering in more immediate connection with Shakespear. 
 A comparative study of the productions in verse of the 
 fifteenth and succeeding century seems to reveal a change of 
 treatment and tone, which it may not be too fanciful to 
 ascribe to social agencies and the tendency of the line of 
 demarcation between the classes to become narrower and less 
 peremptory ; and this circumstance is at least in some degree 
 responsible for the necessity which was appreciated of dis- 
 guising familiar expressions of sentiment on the part of an 
 author to a noble friend in such a manner as to be in- 
 telligible only to a certain person or a certain set of persons. 
 There undoubtedly is in our hands a fairly considerable 
 variety of instances of this new aspect of the relationship of 
 men of culture to men and women of rank, carrying with it 
 a real or supposed responsibility, as I have said, for con- 
 cealing confidential or clandestine intimacies from the public 
 eye and ear ; and we owe to such a condition of afiairs to- 
 ward the close of the Elizabethan era the modern hypothesis 
 touching undercurrents of significant meaning in the Shake- 
 spear Sonnets, as printed in 1609. 
 
304 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 I am capable of crediting any kind or degree of absurdity 
 in such a direction. The motives might be manifold. The 
 aim might be playful or politic. Occasionally we are unable 
 to discern any aim at all, as in the reputed letters of Sir 
 Christopher Hatton to Queen Elizabeth, under the enig- 
 matical subscription Lydde, where there is nothing, so far 
 as the sense can be made out, which might not have ap- 
 peared above the real name of the writer ; but in a tract of 
 1576 immediately relative to the affairs of the Nether- 
 lands,'^ we meet with a strange account how " by an other 
 Embassadour lewde and vncomely letters haue bin written 
 vnder fancy signes of the names of Oriana, Amadis, and such 
 vnprincely toyes . .' . and howe the same rashe personage 
 hath not bin misliked there for his so doing" — which ap- 
 pears equally to point to a confidential correspondence with 
 her Majesty. The topic and the usage, however, had grown 
 of sufficiently wide interest in 1591 to induce a publisher in 
 London to undertake or recommend the issue of a Latin 
 volume on the subject by Porta of Naples. It was dedicated 
 to the Wizard Earl of Northumberland by a third party, 
 who had perhaps brought over the MS. ; it was printed cum 
 privilegio ; and the Earl mayhap paid the bill. We come 
 to different ground, however, and a different phase of the 
 question, when we are invited to regard the Sonnets of 
 Shakespear as secretly importing a great deal more than is^ 
 to be gathered on the surface or from the context, so far as 
 there is such a thing as a context ; and we perceive, besides, 
 that we approach a field of discussion, which has received, 
 since it was first opened about seventy years since, numerous 
 fresh contributors, with a chronic tendency to periodical 
 recruits, each apparently more imaginative than the pre- 
 ceding one, and each more energetic in the exercise of 
 perverted ingenuity. 
 
 I have not dwelt very much on the Cryptogram itself, 
 
 * Certain Letters wherein is set forth a Discourse of the Peace, &c. 1576. 
 In a note of Queen Elizabeth to Burleigh in 1583, she addresses him as 
 Sir Spiritt, and terms it a nickname. 
 
The Dramatic Work 305 
 
 because I share the general feeling in England, that it is a 
 pure emanation from the modern fancy, not the legacy of 
 Bacon, not present to his mind . I believe that it is a visionary 
 conception, which, were it allowed, might be made of universal 
 application to anonymous or doubtful pieces of literature. 
 
 Taking any part of the prose works of Bacon as tests of 
 treatment and style, it is impossible not to be struck by the 
 absence of affinity with the Shakespear dramas ; and if Bacon 
 actually wrote any of the latter series — not the Comedies or 
 the Tragedies, but the Histories, as they lie before us, one 
 thing may be predicated of him, that he displayed a power 
 of disguising his literary identity unattained by any other 
 writer on record. 
 
 The Baconian doctrine is a purely modern one. It is of 
 English origin, but of American development. If I were 
 asked by what agency it has been spread, I should be dis- 
 posed to lay no slight stress on that unexampled absence of 
 self-assertion on the part of Shakespear, which might have 
 received a modifying or qualifying influence from records 
 beyond our present ken, but which at the same time is of a 
 piece with the remarkable circumstance that, while so many 
 refer to him, he refers to so few — and then merely through 
 dramatis personcB, and that, living at a point of time, when 
 the commendatory verse and the elegiac tribute were rife, 
 he abstained from identifying himself with either, unless, 
 which is dubious, he actually gave the poem assigned to him 
 in Love's Martyr, 1601, to the Editor, and unless, which is 
 far more likely, he is answerable for the noteworthy lines 
 inserted among the prolegomena to the second folio of Florio's 
 Montaigne, and those attached to the portrait of James I. 
 before his works in 1616. 
 
 Secondly, I should plead, and with some amount of 
 confidence, that the coeval existence in England of two 
 individuals,' more lavishly endowed with intellectual quali- 
 
 ^ Among the pseudo-Shakespeareana put from time to time on the 
 market, was -a, copy of Bacon's Essays, with MSS. notes ascribed to 
 
306 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 fications than any others of English or indeed any origin 
 before or since, is so eminently calculated to impress ob- 
 servers or critics as an incredible phenomenon, that the 
 apparent opportunity of escape from the miracle by the 
 reduction of one of them to an umbra or a cat's-paw acquired 
 a new force and a new felicity. It had always struck us as 
 extraordinary, and almost as a problem to be explained, 
 how three such profound thinkers as Montaigne, Bacon, and 
 Shakespear belonged to one era, nearly to the same exact 
 interval of years, how they lived, as it were, side by side, 
 yet strangers to each other : each so supreme in his way and 
 so different in his origin and surrounding influences ; and at 
 length, according to some, the mystery is unravelled, the 
 veil is rent asunder, and not Stratford, but Gorhambury, is 
 entitled to the glory of being the First Village in the world 
 — a Cathedral City without a Bishop — a Shrine with relics 
 canonized by no Church — only by the voice of all educated 
 mankind. 
 
 I have tried to secure support for my theory, that Bacon 
 sent scriveners' copies of certain dramas anonymously to the 
 theatre, with which Shakespear at the commencement of his 
 career was associated, and that, if they survive at all, it is 
 in the form of those First Sketches^ which we familiarly 
 know, and which, crude as they are, would have been still 
 more so in the absence of editorship — that editorship, 
 plural or singular ; if the latter, Shakespear's : that is to 
 say, before Shakespear took them in hand, they had per- 
 haps already been subjected to a measure of revision by 
 some one else. 
 
 Looking at the Rutland clue, and at Bacon's share 
 at the same date in devising the Gray's Inn and Temple 
 Masque for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, are we 
 not taken behind the scenes a little more, and enabled to 
 see the sort of relationship in those days among persons 
 interested in theatricals; and, if Bacon was personally 
 acquainted with Jonson, it seems to amount to a mathe- 
 matical sequence, that Shakespear and he must have met — 
 
The Dramatic Work 307 
 
 that is, in later days, when each in his own way had so 
 risen in public estimation and social standing. It must ever 
 remain a debatable point, whether Shakespear was really 
 Bacon's dramatic editor, and whether Bacon became aware 
 of it. 
 
 There appears to me to be immense force in the twofold 
 circumstance that the Baconians absolutely yield the Lyrics, 
 the Sonnets inclusive, where there are one or two links with 
 the Plays, and are satisfied with depriving Shakespear of the 
 latter, the songs inclusive ; and that Jonson, who was in 
 communication with Bacon as well as with Shakespear, 
 would have been well-nigh the last man to have employed 
 the terms, which he has subscribed, had he had any ground 
 whatever for suspecting that Bacon had any hand in the 
 matter even to the extent of a first sketch in any of the 
 dramatic series, and could scarcely, again, have long re- 
 mained in ignorance of the truth. Would he not have 
 blurted it out to Drummond in 1619? 
 
 Granting that Bacon sent anonymously to the theatre, 
 with which Shakespear was connected, the first drafts of 
 the Historical Plays, what sort of reputation as a dramatist 
 would he have enjoyed, had these achievements been left 
 in their unwrought state, and been eventually published 
 as his ? What they are in the form, which they assumed 
 under Shakespear's castigating hand, we know well enough. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 More favourable oonditioiis for dramatic writers about 1587 — Two inde- 
 pendent sobools of theatrical management — Henslowe and Alleyn — 
 The Burbages, Tarlton, and Shakespear — Thomas Ooryat on the 
 English and Continental stages about 1610 — Opinion of John Florio 
 on the English drama of his day — Gosson and other contemporary 
 critics — Some particulars about the Elizabethan theatres, internal 
 arrangements, and prices of seats — Dramatic exhibitions in inn yards- 
 — Sixpenny rooms at the theatre and their occupants— Notices of 
 contemporary visitors to the theatre — Robert Tofte and his mistress 
 at the original performance of Love' s Labor' s Lost in 1598 — Elizabethan 
 play-bills altogether different from ours — Methods of advertizing new 
 pieces — Contrast between the old and the modern presentation of 
 plays — Preparation of the quartos — Special features of interest in 
 some — Earliest collectors of them — Explanation of their present 
 rarity. 
 
 The Elizabethan drama which, even apart from Shakespear 
 or any other individual writer, displayed a conspicuous and 
 splendid advance on the contributions to the theatre, which 
 preceded it, may be said to have become what we see it 
 through agencies of comparatively recent existence. The 
 beneficial influence of the revival of learning and of the 
 restoration to notice and study of the ancient classical 
 authors had not immediately affected England ; but the 
 introduction of typography, the spirit of foreign adven- 
 ture, and the firm establishment on the throne of the house 
 of Tudor, co-operated in drawing this country into closer 
 intimacy with the continent and even with more remote 
 regions. The taste for the Latin and Greek masters was 
 followed by that for the more noted literary productions^ 
 of France, Spain, and Italy; but a conversance with the 
 languages long remained limited, and the result was, that 
 the Englishman found himself provided in the course of 
 about fifty years with a library of volumes, which formed 
 a sort of cycloptedia of information on all the topics, which. 
 
 308 
 
The Dramatic Work 309 
 
 a writer for the stage was likely to utilize. In or about 
 1595 such an inestimable and indispensable resource already 
 existed in a very advanced state toward completeness, and 
 Shakespear himself was in possession, as it were, of the 
 means of enlarging and varying his experience to an almost 
 unrestricted extent. It may be affirmed that this develop- 
 ment of literature in the shape of translations or, as in 
 the case of Fox, Holinshed, and Hakluyt, compilations, 
 was a circumstance which rendered the dramatic labours 
 of the poet infinitely more practicable and possible, while 
 the beneficent institution of public schools had initiated 
 him at home in an acquaintance with Latin sufficient to lay 
 the groundwork in his mind of Venus and Adonis and 
 Lucrece. Of no fewer than four of his dramas the scenes 
 are laid in Northern Italy, and if we were to withdraw from 
 the total all those which depended for their execution on 
 a more or less recent enrichment of our literary stores from 
 continental sources, we should encounter a sadly attenuated 
 
 The times had grown more propitious to the dramatist 
 and actor about the middle of the long reign of Elizabeth ; 
 toleration of theatrical spectacles had the customary and 
 natural eflect of producing those more or less capable of 
 their preparation and presentment; and the liking and 
 favour of the Queen toward this species of amusement and 
 instruction soon spread to the younger or gayer members 
 of the Court. Such a revolution in sentiment had an 
 almost necessary tendency to elevate the status of the 
 higher class of performers, who soon associated on amicable 
 terms with many of the nobility and gentry ; and after the 
 Stuart accession, so far from James I. bringing into fashion 
 the bigotry of Scotish life and thought, the passion of the 
 aristocracy for playgoing sensibly increased. The followers 
 of the profession might still be rogues and vagabonds by 
 a statutory fiction; but the licensed companies numbered 
 among them persons of respectable origin and unimpeach- 
 able repute. Such were Shakespear, the Burbages, AUeyn ; 
 
310 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 such was Lawrence Fletcher, the son of a bishop, who in 
 1601 was admitted to the freedom of Aberdeen as the 
 principal member of a theatrical company which performed 
 there, and came recommended by James VI. And such 
 indeed were all the Fletchers, Dr. Giles Fletcher having 
 written that remarkable dramatic poem on Richard III., 
 which preceded the Shakespearean play in the order of its 
 appearance. Such, once more, were Nathaniel Field, alike 
 actor and author,^ son of John Field, the preacher against 
 actors; and Augustine Phillips, of whom the latter left 
 under his will in 1605^ a thirty-shilling piece in gold to 
 his fellow Shakespear — almost the sole memorial of the 
 kind, and a fact first brought to light in a communication 
 by Sir Thomas Phillipps to the Society of Antiquaries in 
 1837. Phillips, however, like Tarlton, Kempe, and Armin, 
 was apparently a low comedian, who did not disdain farcical 
 parts, and was perhaps not less acceptable to our poet on 
 that account. The Jig of the Slippers by Phillips was 
 licensed for the press in 1595 ; but it is not at present 
 known. It probably followed the lines of Kerape's Jigs, 
 which have equally failed to come down to us. 
 
 The standing of Shakespear himself when he had occu- 
 pied some years in London as a dramatic recensor, and had 
 given to the world two original lyrical productions, men- 
 tioned soon after their issue in 1593-4 with approval, might, 
 under existing conditions, have entitled him to accept or 
 cultivate the acquaintance of any member of that fashionable 
 and brilliant circle, to which the playhouse was as much a 
 part of daily life as the Court and the drawing-rooms. 
 
 Another and independent voucher for the social eleva- 
 
 ' His brother Theophilus was nominated in 1609, on the special 
 recommendation of the King, to the living of St. Peter's, Coruhill, and 
 became Bishop of Hereford. 
 
 ^ After her husband's death the widow married a man, who squandered 
 the estate of about £800 of money of that time, and then deserted her, and 
 went abroad. The Globe theatre gave her an annuity. Yet, under her 
 husband's will in the event of her re-marriage, Eiohard Burbage had been 
 nominated executor, probably to protect the property. Phillips possessed 
 several musical instruments, which were left to friends. 
 
The Dramatic Wokk 311 
 
 tion and acceptability of the playwright and actor — not 
 unfrequently, as we know, a dual function united in the 
 same individual — is the very remarkable fact, that a con- 
 siderable proportion of the theatrical performers mentioned 
 in the first folio edition of Shakespear, 1623, occur as com- 
 municants in the books of St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, a 
 church within easy reach of the Globe and other theatres, 
 within the Liberty of the Clink, and readily accessible 
 to our poet himself during his residence in the Borough, 
 if he thought proper to take part in such observances. 
 From the general tenor of his writings down to the last I 
 should judge that, if he did so, it was as a matter of policy 
 and form rather than of conscientious persuasion. This point 
 does not invalidate the significant fact that the conven- 
 tional estimate of the stage in the Shakespearean era had 
 sensibly risen, and that the more distinguished followers of 
 the profession at least were desirous of being recognized as 
 reputable members of society, although the attendance at 
 communion was, strictly speaking, enjoined on all inhabit- 
 ants of the Liberty of sixteen years and upward.^ The 
 inhabitants of the Bankside having places at St. Saviour's 
 assigned to them on the North side, it is a reasonable pre- 
 sumption that Shakespear, if he attended a service, or 
 received communion, sat in that part, where the Gower 
 monument then already stood, and may have thus had his 
 attention drawn to it. It has since been removed elsewhere. 
 Shakespear, in my view, would be a man who, whatever 
 his private sentiments on religious points and observances 
 might be, was guarded in his expression of opinion, where it 
 was likely to be prejudicial to him in a professional way. 
 He supplies us with the means of conjecturing what his 
 notions were on many questions of this class in passages 
 scattered through his plays — not his poems — notably where, 
 in Miu:h Ado About Nothing, he brings in the saying found 
 in the interlude of Lusty Juventus fifty years before : " God 
 is a good man," and where, in King John, he speaks of the 
 '■ Wheatley's Cumdngham, 1891, iil. 425. 
 
312 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 brain as " the soul's dwelling-house," and, once more, in the 
 closing act of Antony and Cleopatra, his allusion to "the 
 little O the earth." i Yet the general bias of his mind was 
 not to be readily disguised from his immediate or intimate 
 surroundings, either at home or elsewhere, even had he so 
 desired. I should be inclined to augur that Shakespear was 
 not surpassed by Montaigne in the breadth of his sympathies 
 or the courage of his speculations ; but what the French 
 writer laid before the world as his own utterances, the Eng- 
 lish one could put into the mouths which struck him as most 
 appropriate or most telling. 
 
 Two types or schools seem to offer themselves to our 
 notice in the theatrical annals of the Shakespear era : Hens- 
 lowe and Alleyn, for whom the very successful Fortune 
 theatre was built in 1601 by the carpenter Peter Street, and 
 the needy clients whom Henslowe at all events ungenerously 
 remunerated ; and, on the other side, the two Burbages, 
 father and son, Tarlton, and, above all, the man of genius 
 and of business, Shakespear who, as soon as his powers were 
 known and felt, lost no time in emancipating himself from 
 any undignified dependence on others, Henslowe, under whose 
 management he had acted as one of the Lord Chamberlain's 
 men, included,^ and learned to make the stage a source of 
 more than bare subsistence. The two Burbages and Tarlton 
 were persons already holding an excellent position, when 
 Shakespear originally settled in the metropolis, and all three 
 were professionally connected, and during many years neigh- 
 bours in Shoreditch, It was suggested, and I think with 
 some reason, by the late Dr. Ingleby that, whatever discredit 
 had been thrown on the stage in the Elizabethan time, was 
 due rather to the dramatic than the theatrical profession — 
 to such persons as Marlowe and Greene, and that it was 
 Shakespear and Jonson who helped to raise the Drama and 
 its surroundings in the public estimation, even if they could 
 not quite attain the point alleged by Dr. Watts to have been 
 
 ^ I quote the passage vnfra. 
 
 ^ See a Note on Titui AndironvMi, infra. 
 
The Dramatic Work 313 
 
 reached by Bacon in keeping within the bounds prescribed 
 by Virtue and Rehgion. 
 
 It is observable that, at least at the very commencement 
 of the accession of James I. to the British throne, such a 
 volume as the Jests of George Peele should have found its 
 way to Scotland, as some of them form marginalia to a re- 
 impression at Edinburgh in 1603 of the Thrie Tailes of the 
 thrie Priests of Peblis. In 1604, when the first of the Eng- 
 lish Stuarts finally entered London, the King's Company of 
 Players was allotted a place in the procession next to the 
 Falconers (a rather odd juxtaposition), and each of the nine 
 members was allotted four yards and a half of scarlet cloth 
 for the occasion. The name of Shakespeare heads the list, 
 and those of his fellows follow. Whether the precedence was 
 accidental or otherwise, it is impossible to pronounce ; but his 
 claim and rank as a performer on the stage of his own and 
 other men's dramas seem to be amply recognized. A contem- 
 porary series of engravings preserves the triumphal arches, 
 under which the pageant passed, the chief figure on that day 
 in all eyes not the chief figure any longer or ever to be again. 
 
 When the youngest brother of the poet, Edmund the 
 playwright, a young man of seven-and-twenty, was com- 
 mitted to the earth in 1607, the event was honoured, doubt- 
 less through the instigation of Shakespear, then resident 
 close at hand, by a special forenoon peal of the great bell of 
 St. Saviour's. In the succeeding year, Lawrence Fletcher 
 the actor received a similar compliment by an afternoon 
 peal; and in both instances there was a fee of 20s. The 
 case of Edmund Shakespear, a person of no individual con- 
 sequence, may have been exceptional and the result of fra- 
 ternal influence. But the ordinary fee at Stratford for 
 ringing the sauncing bell within the usual hours was four- 
 pence, and it was an established usage.^ 
 
 Alleyn and Henslowe, related by marriage, and equally 
 men of practical character, did not confine their attention to 
 
 1 At the interment of William Caxton in 1491, at St. Margaret's, West- 
 minster, the charge was sixpence. — Blades, 1877, p. 159. 
 
314 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 purely theatrical speculations. They engaged with success 
 in bear-baiting and similar spectacles, amusements which we 
 decry as barbarous and degrading, even while we pursue 
 others not less so at this very moment. Alleyn himself, a 
 man of benevolent disposition, once baited a lion at the 
 Tower, where Henry Stephens the Low-Country printer tells 
 us that he saw one leave his food, and become entranced 
 by the notes of a musical instrument ; and Shakespear must 
 have now and then looked on, when the bills had announced 
 an entertainment at the Bear-garden. He makes Master 
 Slender say that the sight was meat and drink to him ; 
 possibly it was so to the man who set down the saying, and 
 who, unless he has been belied, could enjoy all good things, 
 whatever we may think of the then and long after unappre- 
 ciated brutality of this type of diversion. The poet specifi- 
 cally alludes to the famous bear Sackerson in the Merry Wives, 
 and in Twelfth Night he makes Sir Andrew Aguecheek regret 
 that he had not followed the arts, instead of dancing, fencing, 
 and bear-baiting. Henslowe, whatever view we may take 
 of his character and culture, was equally with Alleyn a man 
 of social repute, and became a sworn Groom of the Queen's 
 Chamber, which in one instance served him in procuring 
 freedom from arrest in an action for debt as security for 
 Lodge the poet. This privilege, which extended to the 
 Grooms of the Privy Chamber, and was enjoyed by the 
 royal Players as a body, had in view the inconvenience apt 
 to arise from the inability of a person under detention to 
 fill his part in a performance. The right was of coui-se 
 limited to civil suits, and those on whom it was conferred, 
 were under the jurisdiction and protection of the Lord 
 Chamberlain.'^ Tarlton had been sworn, as we have seen, one 
 of the Queen's players in 1583; and in his case the pre- 
 caution can hardly have been superfluous. 
 
 Theatrical management at the outset was not improb- 
 
 ' In March 1604 Augustine Phillips, John Heminge, and ten others 
 unnamed, were required to place themselves at the disposal of the 
 Spanish embassy at Somerset House from August 9 to August 27, doubt- 
 less for professional purposes. Shakespear is not mentioned. 
 
The Dramatic Work 315 
 
 ably viewed as a more or less precarious speculation, only 
 fit for persons of collateral resources ; and so we find that as 
 Burbage the elder had his hostelry, Henslowe could depend 
 on his business as a dyer. The father of Alleyn kept the 
 Pye near Bishopsgate; and as this was in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of two or three other houses, in whose yards 
 plays were exhibited, Alleyn, as a boy, may have been thus 
 led to take an interest in such matters ; but the founder of 
 Dulwich College does not seem to have followed the paternal 
 calling, nor do we know whether his comparative affluence 
 was partly inherited or was wholly due to his own practical 
 and professional ability .'^ This plurality was not limited 
 to managers, for Tarlton, prince of the old school of low 
 comedians, was concurrently and successively the keeper of 
 more than one tavern, and evidently made the two vocations 
 play into each other. In 1596, when the Prince of Anhalt 
 was on his travels, and visited London in summer time, the 
 theatre had developed into an important and favourite insti- 
 tution. Kohn says : — The Prince notices four playhouses 
 only, but it is a known fact that there were at least seven, 
 and perhaps ten, in 1596, of which some had been built 
 posterior to Shakespear's arrival in London about ten years 
 before. The mention of four only is explained by the fact 
 that not all the theatres were open at that time in summer, 
 or perhaps the Prince had visited those theatres which were 
 called " Public," and not those which were called Private. 
 
 It is an important and interesting point of view, that 
 not only the playwright, but the performer, who gained a 
 certain standing in Tudor and Stuart times by his popular 
 acceptance, had the advantage, if he chose, of becoming, 
 instead of a wage-earner, a sharer in one or other of the 
 numerous houses which successively arose in the metropolis. 
 We used to be accustomed to restrict this privilege to 
 Shakespear himself; but it has grown into a familiar fact, 
 
 1 It is elsewhere mentioned that in 1604 he became by purchase lord 
 of the manor of Kennington, which he relinquished in favour of Dulwich 
 in the ensuing year. The Calton-AUeyn agreement is preserved at 
 Dulwich. 
 
316 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 that such men as John Marston and Michael Drayton : 
 Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and William Kempe, 
 were partners or sharers in diflFerent proportions doubtless 
 regulated by their drawing power either as writers or actors 
 or by their means of purchasing an interest, and that the 
 early English theatre was practically conducted on this 
 basis and principle, which involved occasional disputes. 
 The receipts wei'e independent of the proprietorship of the 
 building which, in the case of the Globe theatre, was vested 
 in seven owners: Cuthbert and Richard Burbage as to one 
 half, and William Shakespear and four others as to the re- 
 maining moiety. The two Burbages held two shares and a 
 half each, doubtless in view of their larger capital, and it is 
 curiously significant of the way, in which these details came 
 to the public knowledge at the time, that in a tract of 1605 
 Richard is nicknamed " Sir Simon Two Shares and a Half." 
 
 The comings-m of a player are characterized by Earle in his 
 Microcosmography, written about 1626, as tolerable, "yet, like 
 Halifax great Vicarage, mostly in twopences " — twopences of 
 the day. The dramatist, who, like Shakespear himself, com- 
 bined with the production of a piece a share in the profits and 
 a place in the cast, naturally gained under three heads. 
 
 The ancients, who applied our word for the entire build- 
 ing to the portion only set apart for the audience, conducted 
 their theatrical arrangements under different climatic and 
 intellectual conditions from ours, so far as we are enabled 
 to inform ourselves; but the supply of refreshments was 
 even more a feature in the business than among us either 
 formerly or now. How, again, the commissariat was ordered, 
 we do not hear; but in England it is so much the case, 
 that the iicffet, as we term it, has always been a prominent 
 part of the undertaking, that the Elizabethan theatre may 
 almost be said to have been an evolution from the tavern 
 or hostelry, as we at present observe in such institutions as 
 the Gaiety, the Criterion, and the Pavilion. The fellow- 
 ship between the playhouse and the restaurant was of very 
 early growth and uninterrupted in its continuance, and a 
 
The Dramatic Work 317 
 
 favouring cause was perhaps the incessant multitude of 
 strangers, who had no fixed or regular domiciles in London, 
 and of whom the foreign section was habituated to res- 
 taurants. In fact in such universally accessible books as 
 Pepys's and Evelyn's Diaries one perceives, how usual it 
 was to dispense hospitality in this way instead of receiv- 
 ing visitors at home; and to-day the Londoner still gives 
 his friends a dinner at the hotel, as a prelude to a visit 
 with them to the playhouse under the same roof and 
 management. In 1622 we find in a legal document, refer- 
 ring to the second or restored Fortune theatre in Golding 
 Lane, a statement that it had a tap-house attached to it. 
 
 Hentzner and other writers of the day inform us that 
 apples, pears, and nuts were sold in the Elizabethan and 
 Stuart theatre, and we collect that a method of denoting 
 displeasure at a performer was to throw a pippin at him, 
 a practical kind of criticism limited, no doubt, to the gallery 
 and pit. This was known, it seems, in 1629 at all events, 
 as pippin-pelting. But^ long before that time, in one of 
 Tarlton's Jests, a fellow is represented as wantonly throw- 
 ing a pippin at that celebrated comedian, when he was per- 
 forming at the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and furnishing 
 him with an occasion for one of his extempore sallies, as well 
 as for a subsequent retaliation. 
 
 Gosson, in his Plays Confuted in Five Actions, printed 
 about 1581, exhibits the peculiar animosity of a renegade 
 against his original occupation and study. He evidently 
 intends to attack the class of subject and plot, which the 
 immediate predecessors of Shakespear had introduced, and 
 which the Stratford poet carried to such perfection and 
 refinement, where he says : " When the soul of your plays 
 is either mere trifles, or Italian bawdry, or wooing of gentle- 
 women, what are we taught ? " ^ So early as 1553, Wilson 
 in his Art of Rhetoric had denounced the employment of 
 strange inkhorn terms ; Gascoigne equally condemns phrases 
 which smell of the inkhorn ; and a few years later Putten- 
 ^ Eru/lish Drama and Stage, 1869, p. 181. 
 
318 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 ham, in his Art of English Poesy, 1589 (written some years 
 prior), alludes to the adoption at the theatres of learned 
 or foreign phrases, " fetched from the inkhorn or borrowed 
 of strangers," which implies a resort to continental models ; 
 but he also leads us to understand that the less educated 
 part of the audience paid greater attention to the show 
 than to the dialogue. Sir William Cornwallis,^ more par- 
 ticularly speaking of Paris Garden, writes : " There is another 
 sort worse than these, that never utter anything of their own, 
 but get Jests by heart, and rob books and men of pretty tales, 
 and yet hope for this to have a place above the salt." 
 
 In the Prologue to the Life and Repentance of Mary 
 Magdalen, a play, 1566, there is a mention of halfpenny 
 and penny places at theatrical exhibitions; but whether 
 such a tariff referred to the provinces or to inferior houses, 
 one cannot be quite clear; but just about the same time, 
 in a jest-book of 1567,^ a penny or even a halfpenny is said 
 to be accepted at the gate, two men standing there with a 
 box, " as the fashion is," to take the money. The anecdote 
 seems to indicate what was then the average recognized 
 demand. The twopenny places were usually patronized by 
 the inferior gentry. A silver half-groat represented about 
 a shilling of our currency, so that this was really a sub- 
 stantial charge. At private houses certain persons were 
 allowed to sit on the stage, for which the charge was six- 
 pence extra. This practice naturally entailed occasional 
 inconvenience and confusion, as we see from a passage 
 quoted by i Collier from the Induction to Marston's Mal- 
 content, 1604. FitzgeofFrey, in his Satires, 1620, referring 
 to a gallant of the times, says : " Turne oft in Pauls, call 
 for a stoole o' th' stage " — as if it were a mark of distinction 
 to occupy such a place. 
 
 In Martini's Month's Mind, by John Penri and Job 
 Throckmorton, 1589, the writers tell us that the price of 
 admission to the theatre was a penny, that is to say, a silver 
 
 ^ Esmyes by Sir William OornwaUys the yonger, 1606, sign. H 3. 
 2 Tales and Quiche Answeres, 1567, No. 133. 
 
The Dramatic Work 319 
 
 penny of Elizabeth, worth about sixpence of our reckoning. 
 But Larnbarde, in his Perambulation of Kent, written in 
 1570, lets us into the secret that it cost three pence to get 
 a good place, namely, a penny at the gate, a penny at " the 
 entry of the Scaffold, " and a penny for " a quiet standing " — 
 about eighteen pence altogether of our money. In the Raven's 
 Almanac by T. Decker, 1609, there is a mention of the two- 
 penny galleries, in " the most perspicuous place of which you 
 shall clearly, and with an ape's eye, behold all the parts." 
 
 At the commencement of the Civil War, and just before 
 the suppression of the theatres, the author of the Stage- 
 Player's Complaint, 164il, specifies sixpenny rooms, occupied 
 by women of bad character in the hope of attracting pren- 
 tices or lawyers' clerks, and threepenny galleries ; so that 
 prices seem to have risen in greater proportion than the 
 probably lower value of money, yet the commune vulgus not 
 only elbowed its way in, but competed for good seats. 
 
 The admission to Davenant's First Day's Entertain- 
 ment at Rutland House, 1657, was five shillings, and 150 
 persons attended ; as it was a sort of private performance, 
 there was probably only one tariff; and, again, where a party 
 of distinction visited the theatre, some special arrangements 
 were concluded. The charges, when the Savoyard Ambas- 
 sador attended the performance of a new play at the Black- 
 friars in 1613 with his suite, were .£'3, 10s. Od., and on a 
 second occasion £^; Paris Garden ^ — perhaps to witness a 
 bear-baiting — cost only £1. These sums were in money 
 of that time, and the whole was at the cost of his enter- 
 tainers. The probability is that in these cases, and at 
 ordinary attendances of royalty, private boxes with hang- 
 ings were specially prepared. 
 
 Pepys in his Diary under 1667-8, January 1, notes: 
 " When I began first to be able to bestow a play on 
 myself, I do not remember that I saw so many by half 
 of the ordinary prentices and mean people in the pit at 
 2s, 6d, a piece as now : I going for several years no higher 
 1 See the Supplement to my Blount's Tenwres, 1909, pp. 12, 72. 
 
320 Shakespeak: The Man and his Wokk 
 
 than the 12d. and then the 18d. places, though I strained hard 
 to go in, when I did, so much the vanity and prodigality of 
 the age is to be observed in this particular." But in 1677 
 the ordinary charge for seats in the boxes on first nights had 
 risen to five shillings — a really extravagant figure, when we 
 consider that the sum represented thirty shillings or upward 
 of modern ciu-rency. The ta§te for theatricals had since 
 1641, however, experienced a great revival. 
 
 One material difference between the ordinary public 
 theatre and the private or Court house was that in the 
 latter an element powerfully conducive to the effect, while 
 it may have been more or less trying, was the introduction 
 at the commencement of the seventeenth century of a system 
 of artificial illumination by wax candles suspended from the 
 roof in candelabras, over which metal shades were fixed to 
 obviate any risk of the flame igniting the thatched roof, and 
 these accessories were arguably concurrent with the idea of 
 evening performances of plays, and of course formed an in- 
 dispensable feature in them. Judging from the fact that in 
 one case the instalment of apparatus extended to sixteen 
 chandeliers of two different calibres, each accommodating 
 about fifteen lights, the cost was too considerable for the 
 prices charged at the ordinary houses, and the new fashion 
 was an additional source of revenue to the ancient Gild of 
 Wax-Chandlers. 
 
 Some interesting and prizable particulars of contem- 
 porary performances of Shakespear's plays are already 
 before the general reader. They are derived from the 
 Diaries of John Manningham and Dr. Forman, and from 
 incidental notices in a variety of directions and ways, not- 
 ably in Kempe's Nine Dales Wonder, 1600; in Wrighfs 
 Passions of the Mind, 1601, where we are introduced to the 
 wide slops of Tarlton and Kempe, not very dissimilar from 
 those of the clown of our own time ; in the case of Pericles, 
 where the attendance of George Wilkins with his note-book 
 bore fruit in a novel on the same subject from his pen ; ^ 
 
 1 Kandolph the poet seems to have witnessed the presentation of 
 Pericles. He twice refers to the piece. 
 
The Dramatic Work 321 
 
 and in a poem by a Yorkshireman, George Daniel of 
 Beswick, who describes FalstafF, as he saw him on the stage 
 about 1640. But the mention in a printed book of 1598 ^ 
 of the visit of Robert Tofte to the exhibition of Love's 
 Labor's Lost, then a recent play, which he had seen on its 
 original appearance some time before, in company with his 
 mistress, Euphemia Carill, of Warrington, has a bearing 
 of its own, although the writer — Tofte himself — tantalizes 
 us in a not unusual way by keeping strict silence as to 
 what he thought of the piece and the author, and as to 
 the nature of the cast. All that he deemed it necessary 
 to say was that the title and texture of the drama caused 
 him pain, and that he stayed in the house reluctantly in 
 attendance on the lady. Tofte by no means stood alone 
 in failing to foresee that posterity would have been in an 
 immeasurably greater degree his debtor, had he at any 
 rate supplemented the expression of his transient personal 
 sentiments with a ray or so of light on the scene under 
 his eyes. 
 
 I must pursue the anecdote of Tofte and his mistress so 
 far as to point out that, at the end of his translation of 
 Boiardo's Orlando Inamorato, published in this same year, 
 he describes himself: II Disgraziato R. T. G[entilhuomo], 
 and there seems some link between the Alba and the 
 Boiardo, as regards their common suggestion of despond- 
 ency — perhaps only the fugitive ira amamtiwn. The main 
 interest for us is his presence at the theatre on the present 
 occasion, and his title to a place among Shakespear's travelled 
 acquaintances. 
 
 At this time it may be just remarked that Anthony 
 Babington resided at Warrington, and exhibited his literary 
 tastes by compiling a commonplace book of contemporary 
 verse, dated 1-596, and now in the British Museum. Four 
 years after, he prefixed a sonnet to Bodenham's England's 
 Helicon, 1600, where we find matter common to the MS. 
 
 With more immediate reference to such lights and 
 
 1 Alba. The Months Mind of a Melcmcholy Lover, 12°, 1598. 
 
 X 
 
322 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 guides as Forman and Manningham, there is the encourag- 
 ing contingency, that other Notes on the Plays, as they 
 were witnessed by contemporary frequenters of the theatre, 
 set down at the moment, as it were, in the contemporary 
 atmosphere, may await casual revelation by some fortunate 
 explorer. It merely occurs to me to repeat that George 
 Chapman, in his maiden dramatic publication, the Blind 
 Beggar of Alexandria, 1598, furnishes evidence of having 
 attended the performance of As You Like It, or of having 
 had under his eyes an early MS. copy. 
 
 Hentzner in his Itinerary is more sparing than we could 
 have desired in his account of this side of his English ex- 
 periences, where he might so advantageously have been 
 communicative; but he saw among us little more than he 
 could see at home; and the Due de Rohan, who visited 
 London in 1600, is yet more reticent. The former merely 
 observes : " Without the city are some Theatres, where 
 English actors represent almost every day Comedies and 
 Tragedies to numerous audiences ; these are concluded with 
 variety of dances, accompanied by excellent music, and the 
 excessive applause of those that are present." 
 
 In the uncompleted English Drama and Stage, 1869, by 
 the present writer, will be found a large assortment of facts 
 and references, illustrating Shakespear from this point of 
 view, and assisting us to realize the condition and aspect 
 of the London playhouses in or about his time. There 
 are entries of obvious pertinence almost innumei'able : how 
 ladies mistook the actors for the persons whom they repre- 
 sented; what comparison the singers of ballads in the 
 streets bore to the singers on the stage; the contrast of 
 the entertainment at the Bear Garden with that at the 
 playhouses ; allusions to the two Bull ^ inns in Gracechurch 
 and Bishopsgate streets, and the Cross-Keys, in whose yards 
 dramatic performances were held; the early and inveterate 
 fondness of Londoners for plays and interludes ; the strew- 
 
 1 In a Stuart broadside cited by me {English Drama and Stage, ix.) 
 players are under the sign Taurus. 
 
The Dramatic Work 323 
 
 ing of the stage with rushes; the dressers or tiremen at 
 theatres ; and the high price charged for tobacco there by 
 the tobacco-men, who asked for just as much as would fill 
 a penny pipe what was not twelve - pence a hoi'seload. 
 Hentzner was much struck in 1598 by the habit of smoking 
 the weed in clay« pipes. 
 
 Of engraved views of the English theatres that 
 familiar one of the Globe on the Bankside is, no doubt, 
 the earliest, and we possess it in two shapes : the old and 
 the new house (after the fire of 1613). Of the Blackfriars 
 house there does not appear to be any similar representation ; 
 but from a contemporary MS. its dimensions are given as 
 66 feet x 46. The most ancient interior appears to be that 
 accompanjdng Alabaster's Roxana, 1632, which has also been 
 published. Of the four Bear Gardens in London, where 
 bears and bulls were baited, the Hope theatre, sometimes 
 adapted to this purpose, was probably the only one which 
 had boxes for the spectators raised considerably above the 
 arena. In 1670 Evelyn saw a dog tossed by a bull into a 
 lady's lap in one of them. Pepys mentions a similar episode 
 under 1666. 
 
 The dearth of personal testimony to the state of the 
 theatres of London in former times may make it warrant- 
 able to quote a passage from a volume of Travels in Eng- 
 land,^ written by Henri de Misson and published in 1698, 
 when many of the old-time traditions were still preserved. 
 The author is not so explicit as might have been desired; 
 but he states certain facts, which came under his notice. 
 " There are two theatres in London," he says, in a marginal 
 note ; adding, that a third has just been opened, " one large 
 and fine, where they sometimes perform Operas, sometimes 
 Comedies; the other smaller, which is only for Comedy. 
 The parterre is in the form of an amphitheatre and supplied 
 with benches without backs, covered with green cloth. The 
 
 ^ Memoi/res et Observations Faites par un Voyagewr en Angleterre; A la 
 Haye, 1698, 8°. Comp. Donaldson, Theatre of the Greeks, 7th ed. 1860, 
 p. 220 et aeqq. 
 
324 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 men of quality, especially the young ones, some respectable 
 ladies, and many young girls seeking their fortune, sit there 
 pell-mell, talk, play, chaff, listen to what others are saying, 
 or not. Farther, against the wall, under the first gallery, 
 rises another amphitheatre, which is occupied by persons 
 of the highest quality, among whom one observes very few 
 men. The galleries, of which there is only a double row, 
 are filled by the common sort of people, and more so the 
 upper one." In the Epilogue to Timoleon, 1697, the closing- 
 lines are spoken to the side-boxes. 
 
 Thomas Coryat, who had opportunities of comparing 
 the English and Venetian stages in the days of the poet, 
 gives in his volume of Travels, published in 1611, the 
 superiority to his own country. Speaking of Venice, he 
 observes : " The play-house is very beggarly and base in 
 comparison of our stately playhouses in England, neither 
 can their actors compare with us for apparel, shows and 
 music." On the other hand, John Florio speaks very 
 disrespectfully even of the historical type of drama, which. 
 we usually credit the poet with having brought to such a 
 height of perfection, and suggests that it was inferior to 
 the Italian mode ; and certainly a Venetian spectator — nay, 
 Florio himself — at the performance of the Merchant of Venice 
 or Othello in London might have well wondered, whence 
 the author obtained his ideas, even while, in the case of 
 the Moor, he might have appreciated the passion, and have 
 forgiven the violence. In one of the Dialogues, which occur 
 in his Fruits, Florio says : — 
 
 " G. And then after dinner we will goe see a plaie. 
 
 H. The plaies that they plaie in England are not right comedies. 
 
 T. Yet they doo nothing else but plaie euery daye. 
 
 H. Yea but they are neither right comedies, nor right tragedies. 
 
 G. How would you name them then ? 
 
 H. Representations of histories, without any decorum." 
 
 Nor would the Blurt, Master Constable of Middleton, 1602,, 
 Webster's White Devil, 1612, or the Venice Preserved of 
 Otway, 1682, have been regarded as truer to historical 
 
The Dramatic Work 325 
 
 facts and local colouring by an Italian spectator. Webster 
 thought himself at liberty to transform a member of a 
 noble Italian family (Vittoria Accoramboni of Gubbio) in 
 the drama just named into a Venetian courtezan. Otway's 
 work, whatever its technical merit may be, is historically 
 waste paper. So Shakespear by no means stood alone in 
 his faulty rendering of incidents and plots, and even his 
 academical contemporaries and scholars, such as Jonson, 
 not seldom tripped in their history and geography. 
 
 Florio, who may be assumed to have also witnessed the 
 original presentation of Romeo and Juliet and the Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona, doubtless included them in the same 
 censure. All four dramas were of Italian origin. Any 
 improprieties in Hamlet and such other pieces, as purported 
 to reproduce historical events, the immediate critic would 
 be less likely, as he was less competent, to detect; he 
 confines himself to the inaccurate manner, in which Shake- 
 spear and the actors who interpreted his text, rendered the 
 subject, so far as his local knowledge enabled him to judge. 
 Coryat first saw women on the stage at Venice in 1610. 
 He had heard, he says, that they had sometimes appeared 
 in London. But such had been the case only in private 
 entertainments. The Venetian actresses shewed, he thought, 
 as good grace, action, gesture, and whatsoever is convenient 
 to a player as any man he had ever seen. So far as the 
 English stage is concerned, we possess very few reliable 
 indications how far Shakespear and contemporary play- 
 wrights were seconded in their efforts by the performers of 
 the parts. If Shakespear really coached Burbage before he 
 made his debut in Hamlet, he may have followed a general 
 and understood practice, at least in difficult cases. 
 
 The luxurious and realistic presentation of the plays of 
 Shakespear on the modern stage has been a process of slow 
 growth, and is a response to the call of a more highly 
 educated auditory for mechanical and decorative accessories 
 more in keeping with the immediate subject-matter. The 
 author, it is quite unnecessary to remark, never saw his 
 
326 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 labours illustrated and seconded by such an imposing 
 costume, nor did he probably dream of the possibility of 
 generations of Englishmen arising to honour the products 
 of his master-pen with all the auxiliary resources of study, 
 skill, and cost. Throwing ourselves back in thought to the 
 original performances, as they were successively exhibited 
 on the boards in town and country, it argues much alike 
 for the author and the spectators that, in spite of all the 
 disadvantages attendant on want of scenery and other 
 appliances, this series of plays was so successful, and brought 
 Shakespear and his partners substantial profits. For, on 
 the whole, they were spectacles destitute of the adventitious 
 attraction of strong and coarse melodramatic incident, and 
 appealed by their historical instruction, their delicate senti- 
 ment, and their refined humour, to crowded houses, em- 
 bracing all ranks of people, who must have gradually learned 
 to distinguish between such pieces and those of the older 
 school. Rude and inadequate as the scenic arrangements 
 long remained,' thousands were sent home better and wiser, 
 and thousands, before the great Duke of Marlborough was 
 born, learned all their history, and not a little of their 
 wisdom, at the Curtain, the Blackfriars, the Globe, and 
 the Fortune. Even ministers of the Church formed part 
 of the company, or bought the book of the play second- 
 hand, and made use of it in their next discourse. In the 
 Gallanfs Burden, by Thomas Adams, 1612, we meet with 
 the Job-like phrase in Richard III., where the ghost of 
 Earl Rivers visits the king the night before the battle of 
 Bosworth Field : " Despair and die." Those, who were not 
 content with Shakespear, might go to Sir Richard Baker's 
 Chronicle, so soon as it appeared; but that was not till 
 1643. 
 
 Of the old-time dressing-room and theatrical wardrobe 
 
 ^ Holoroft, speaking of Mills, the Scotish theatrical manager of those 
 days, states that the company played Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd dur- 
 ing several years without scenery and music. JAfe apud Hazlitt's Works, 
 ii. 77. This was about 1775. 
 
The Dramatic Work 327 
 
 our knowledge is deplorably scanty and casual, and down to 
 the nineteenth century this side or aspect of the question 
 seems to have attracted very slight attention. Charles 
 Bansley, in a tract of Edward VI.'s time, speaks of " a 
 double fardingale and a caped cassock much like a player's 
 gown." ' A contemporary satirist apprises us by the way, 
 how AUeyn was dressed, when he took the leading part in 
 Marlowe's Faustus. One or two tracts of the seventeenth 
 century offer us rough woodcuts of actors of the day. 
 There is one of Tarlton — the only one — which impresses 
 us as a caricature. But it has been a neglected theme, 
 while it is a theme highly meriting fuller attention and 
 treatment.^ 
 
 The latter-day treatment of dramas cast in a remote 
 time, and either here and there or entirely on foreign 
 soil, is far from unexceptionable, for in spite of the most 
 elaborate and conscientious efforts to place such pieces 
 effectively on the modern boards, there cannot fail to be 
 in a certain measure a deficiency of the original costume 
 and atmosphere, while the inherent improprieties in the 
 description of localities and persons abroad, from hearsay 
 or guesswork, are irremediable in the absence of the 
 author and those who were at his side, and learned their 
 parts under his eye, as an artist now assumes the right 
 to dress and interpret at his or her pleasure with mixed 
 results. The writer for the closet escapes these drawbacks, 
 because he dispenses with the theatrical wardrobe, and 
 deals only with isolated passages, so long as his text strikes 
 him as correct. 
 
 The anecdotes, which we have inherited, of the approach 
 of Shakespear to the Court in connection with the perform- 
 ance of his own pieces or even those of others belonging to 
 his theatre, have to be read with a recollection, that all 
 theatrical spectacles exhibited before our earlier sovereigns 
 
 1 Hazlitt's Popula/t Poetry, 1866, iv. 239. 
 
 2 See what is said in the Notes to the Merehmt of Venice, infra, on the 
 mode in which Shylock should be attired. 
 
328 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 took place, not in the ordinary playhouses, but at the private 
 one, long known as the Cockpit, in Whitehall. This con- 
 sideration modifies, and assists in explaining, the story of 
 Elizabeth honouring the dramatist-actor with a particular 
 notice on one occasion ; and a similar criticism may be said 
 to apply to the theatricals at Oxford in 1605, celebrating 
 the visit of James I. to that city and university. Incidents 
 of this class, described without an allusion to the surround- 
 ing circumstances, are liable to misconstruction. 
 
 Anyone tolerably conversant with the drama of the 
 period will probably assent to the comparative freedom of 
 the Shakespearean series from grossness, and that is the very 
 expression which the dramatist uses in referring to what 
 were known as "dead men's fingers," but sometimes bore a 
 coarser name. How far this valuable result is attributable 
 to natural inclination, and how far to politic restraint, it is 
 imprudent to assert ; but the opportunities, which the poet 
 enjoyed, of gauging the public temper, while he served his 
 apprenticeship to the profession as a corrector and per- 
 former, possibly influenced him in excluding from his texts 
 passages and expressions likely to militate against the 
 general acceptability of his pieces, when he commenced on 
 his own independent account as a writer, and to make them 
 less appropriate for representation at Court or in what was 
 known as a private house. At the same time, in many 
 passages of masterly excellence and supreme value, words 
 and forms of expression meet the eye, which are incapable 
 of repetition on a modern stage or in a modern drawing- 
 room. It must be recollected, however, that the plays of 
 Shakespear, in comparison with many both of earlier and 
 later date, are remarkably decorous, and that, down to the 
 eighteenth century, a licence, no longer tolerated, prevailed 
 in phraseology and innuendo among both sexes and all 
 classes — a licence not very far removed from that of the 
 Court and times of Charles II. 
 
 Play-bills, as we understand the term, were unknown in, 
 and indeed long after, the days of our poet. What are 
 
The Dramatic Wokk 329 
 
 described in more than one place as bills of the play were 
 advertisements attached to walls or other conspicuous places, 
 announcing a forthcoming performance. The play-books 
 specified in connection with the presentation of the miracle- 
 play of St. George at Bassingbourne in 1511 were doubtless 
 manuscript prompter's copies.' In Merry Tales and Quick 
 Answers, 1567, No. 133, we have a story " how a merry man 
 devised to call people to a play," and the account opens 
 thus : " A merry man, called Qualities, on a time set up 
 bills upon posts about London, that whosoever would come 
 to Northumberland Place, should hear such an antic play, 
 that, both for the matter and handling, the like was never 
 heard before. For all they that should play therein were 
 gentlemen." The narrative proceeds to say that a great 
 crowd was attracted, and that the whole affair was a hoax. 
 The point is, that we here see, what the play-bill was ; and 
 the same sort of deception, practised by a Lincoln's Inn man 
 in 1602,^ shews, if it were necessary, a similar use of the ex- 
 pression. In 1587, a privilege was accorded to John Charl- 
 wood for the "onelye ymprintinge of all maner of Billes 
 for players"; and this right appears to have been subse- 
 quently exercised by James Roberts, whose place of business 
 iji Barbican had been previously that of Charlwood, and 
 was convenient for the East End theatres. In his Wit and 
 Mirth, 1629, containing anecdotes of anterior date, Taylor 
 the Water-Poet narrates a story of Nathaniel Field illus- 
 trative of the practice of advertizing new plays on posts 
 everywhere. 
 
 The practice of " setting up bills," preparatorily to the 
 exhibition of a play, was equally usual in Germany, and 
 Kohn furnishes a highly curious document' of this class, 
 seeming to point to a preference for short pieces and a call 
 for light, amusing, and even ludicrous, matter ; and a broad- 
 
 ^ Hazlitt's Warton, 1871, ii. 233. 
 
 2 Collier's Bibliographical Catalogue, 1865, i. xliv., quoting a letter of 
 John Chamberlain, 19 Nov., 1602. 
 
 ' ShaJeetpea/re in Oermany, 1865, facsimiles at end. 
 
330 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 side of a precisely analogous description has descended to us, 
 shewing that in 1541 the Mystere des Actes des Apostres was 
 announced as about to be exhibited in Paris by cry and procla- 
 mation.i The only English document which has fallen in the 
 way of the writer is a notification from the press of the above- 
 named Charlwood of a tilting match to take place about 
 1590 at Westminster. It is in the form of a challenge by 
 Callophisus to any one questioning the virtues of a certain 
 unnamed lady; the aifair had been postponed from the 
 15th to the 22d January, and was to be honoured by the 
 royal presence.^ 
 
 A second mode of notifying forthcoming novelties which 
 survived Shakespear, and remained in vogue till the more 
 modern type of play-bill arose, was an intimation of the 
 project through the Epilogue or Chorus at the end of a 
 play, as in the Second Part of Henry IV., where we have : — 
 " If you be not too much cloyd with fat meat, our humble 
 author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and 
 make you merry with fair Katherine of France " ; Henry V. 
 concludes with the lines beginning — 
 
 " Thus far with rough and all unable pen 
 Our bending author hath pursued the story — " 
 
 And the Chorus farther alludes to the plays on Henry VI., 
 " which oft our stage hath shown." But there is no promise 
 of new pieces on that reign from Shakespear's hand as author 
 or editor. The Epilogue and Chorus, from which the fore- 
 going extracts are given, are not in the foundation-plays ; 
 
 ^ Le Cry et Proclamation Pviilicque pour iouer la Mistire des Actes des 
 Apostres en la ViUe de Paris, 1541. Reprinted in facsimile, 8vo, 1830. 
 
 2 Comp. Current Notes, June, 1855, for a notice of the early custom of 
 a player in a forthcoming performance visiting beforehand the principal 
 places in a town, and when the drum had attracted an audience, announc- 
 ing the features of the piece, and extolling its merits. This practice 
 survived, at all events in the provinces, down to the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century, as Hazlitt shews in a passage, where he describes an 
 incident during his residence under his father's roof at Wem in Shropshire 
 about 1798. 
 
The Dramatic Work 331 
 
 yet withal there is the Marlowe and Kyd leaven, the First 
 Sketch rawness. 
 
 A word may be here said of the expressions humble and 
 bending author, as they seem to be very early examples of 
 such propitiatory phraseology; and the second form indi- 
 cates that the lines were delivered in a kneeling posture. 
 
 At the conclusion of his Glasse of Gouernement, 1575, 
 Gascoigne has this passage allusive to a demonstration by 
 the audience of approval or otherwise, when the performance 
 was at an end : — 
 
 " Fidtis. I thanke you. Sir. My Masters, the common 
 saying is, clap your handes ; but the circumstance of this 
 wofull tragicall comedie considered, I may say iustly vnto 
 you wring your handes : neuerthelesse I leaue it to your 
 discretion." 
 
 There used to be a commonly accepted statement, that 
 Ravenscroft's Anatomist was the first drama sold in the 
 theatre ; but nothing is more improbable or indeed untrue. 
 To go no farther, the dramas of Shakespear from 1597 
 onward, published at fourpence of the time, owe in fact 
 their unique scarcity in the editiones principes to their pur- 
 chase by the immediate audience and destruction after a 
 first perusal. They were received as aids to the perform- 
 ance, not as literary possessions, and the issue was presumably 
 limited. Fennor, in his Descriptions, 1616, explicitly states 
 that there were then at the theatres persons whose function 
 it was to offer books for sale, before the performance com- 
 menced, and whose cry was — " Buy a new book ? " 
 
 Nevertheless, five collectors and preservers of the quartos 
 of Shakespear and others are now known to us ; Humphrey 
 Dyson the Notary, of whom we hold several in the first 
 impressions in the finest state ; Henry Oxinden of Barham, 
 near Canterbury, who enumerates in his MS. Common- 
 place Book, 1647, 122 separate pieces, bound up by 
 him in six volumes; Griffith Williams, Bishop of Ossory 
 (1590-1672), Curzon-Howe family of Gopsal, Leicester- 
 shire, in whose hands a poorly preserved collection. 
 
332 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 originally (I think), bound up together, and including 
 Richard III., 1597, and Hamlet, 1604, till quite recently 
 (1907) remained, and finally an individual who transmitted 
 seventeen. 
 
 The Oxindens are elsewhere specified as being among the 
 Kentish gentry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who 
 distinguished themselves by their taste for literature ; ^ they 
 are still resident in the county, but have fallen into com- 
 parative indigence. This series of volumes included Udall's 
 Ralph Roister Doister, The Tide Tarrieth No Man, The 
 Taming of a Shrew, 1594, Marlowe's Dido, 1594, Peele's 
 Edward I., Shakespear's Hamlet, 1603, and Chapman's 
 
 Hevi: OjcmDetv^ of fiarKanv A^m^^. i£^q 
 
 Byron, of which two, the Ralph Roister Doister and the 
 Hamlet, are no longer known in a complete state ; and I am 
 strongly disposed to identify the property with that found 
 to be preserved in 1810 at Lee Priory, the seat of Sir Egerton 
 Brydges, and in 1826 sold by auction. Here there were 142 
 lots ; but the local and other conditions are too persuasive 
 to allow one to doubt the fact.^ 
 
 A second extremely important assemblage of Shakespear 
 and Elizabethan quartos, that formerly the property of the 
 Bishop of Ossory, was also bound up (like Oxinden's) at the 
 time in a series of volumes, of which two were abstracted 
 under unknown circumstances, and sold at Manchester and 
 
 ' My eminent and esteemed friend, the late Henry Bradshaw of Cam- 
 bridge, informed me that he was related to the Oxindens. 
 
 " Curiously enough, Triphook of St. James's Street, in a catalogue issued 
 about the same time (probably before) had Thersites and Jack Juggler on 
 sale (Nos. 325-6). As Brydges was sometimes in financial straits, he may 
 have first tried to sell the plays or some of them through Triphook. 
 
The Dramatic Work 333 
 
 in London respectively in 1881 and 1905. The others were 
 dispersed in London in 1907, and were, as they had Jong 
 been, in the possession of Lord Mostyn.i They comprised 
 some long-sought desiderata, but no Shakespearean sur- 
 prises. They originally belonged to Griffith Williams. 
 
 A different class of document and witness to the con- 
 tinuous call for the plays in the way of occasional reference 
 or perusal meets our eyes in several extant or traceable sets 
 of certain of these productions, of which the stocks survived, 
 or which were judged likely to repay republication. These 
 bound collections, which probably date back beyond the 
 launch of the Folio of 1623, while they include such dramas 
 as the Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, 
 Lear, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, leave outside their 
 covers even capital efforts of the same pen already issued in 
 a separate shape, Hamlet included. But the truth is, that it 
 was not here a question of literary or dramatic importance, 
 but of commercial exigency and proprietorship, and the 
 descent of these composite volumes is due to the possession 
 by one or two stationers of remainders of some, and of the 
 means of republishing others with the original typographical 
 particulars retained. How many sets were originally made 
 up, is unknowable; but several are preserved intact, and 
 others undoubtedly existed down to relatively modern times. 
 The series forms two divisions : the original re-issues of 1619 
 and the plays of 1600 and 1608 reproduced in 1619 with 
 the original imprints preserved.^ The two likeliest persons 
 to have been interested in this venture were Thomas Pavier 
 and William Jaggard. 
 
 The group is not invariably in the same order of sequence, 
 but the contents are identical. It is to be noted that T. P., 
 
 ^ They are identical with the series mentioned to me many years since 
 by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps as being at Mostyn or Gloddaeth. See my Roll 
 ofHonowr, 1908, p. 262. 
 
 2 Mr. Dring informs me, that he has seen two or three oases, where the 
 fictitious date has been torn off. Ewmlel had been assigned by N. Ling's, 
 executors to John Smethwick in 1607. 
 
334 Shakkspear: The Man and his Work 
 
 that is Thomas Pavier, had bought the stock of Roberts. 
 We have : — 
 
 The Whole Contention axii Pericles . . . . 1619 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, printed by Roberts . 1600 
 
 Merchant of Venice ■ 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, printed for T. P. . . . 1600 
 
 Henry V 1608 
 
 King Lear (tvro differing imprints, &c.) . . 1608 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor 1619 
 
 A Yorkshire Tragedy 1619 
 
 This step on the part of the binder of 1620 or thereabout 
 may very well have extended to the amount of the old and 
 new stock, and the surviving sets are not likely to represent 
 more than a slender residue. It perhaps helped to keep 
 before the world — at least before the student — these writings, 
 till the Folio placed them in possession of something like 
 the whole. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the 
 Folio was a large and costly volume, and that the fourpenny 
 or sixpenny quarto or even the collective nine quartos at three 
 or four and sixpence long appealed to many. Elsewhere 
 occasion is taken to mention that some of the series were on 
 regular sale from 1631 to 1656, side by side with the dramatic 
 works of others of the old school, namely : — 
 
 The Taming of a Shrew. 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 Lear. 
 
 Othello. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 The last four, while the theatres were closed. 
 
 With reference to the preparation of the quartos there is 
 the consideration, that the text depended not only on the 
 copy, but on the printer employed ^ and on the accuracy of 
 the MS. supplied, not by the author, but by some attendant 
 at the theatre, who had obtained a transcript prior to the 
 
 1 In the case of Marlowe's Tambwrlaine, 1590, Richard Jones the printer 
 confesses that he had suppressed, on his own initiative, certain matter 
 which had formed part of the play on the stage. 
 
The Dramatic Work 335 
 
 performance to secure its committal to type in due time for 
 sale in the house or at the doors. The practice was one de- 
 pendent on circumstances, and the printer seldom enjoyed 
 the opportunity of examining the matter handed to him, nor 
 did he perhaps very often demand its credentials. When 
 the Second Part of Henry IV. had been printed in 1600, 
 and many copies distributed, it was found that some of 
 the text was deficient, and in the residue of the impression 
 four pages were inserted — at whose instance we do not hear, 
 possibly at Shakespear's own. Again in the case of Richard 
 II., 1597, the Devonshire copy offers important various 
 readings for the better, appearing to shew a hand behind 
 the scenes, before the whole impression was printed, and 
 under such circumstances it was more probably than other- 
 wise that of the writer, who appears to have been rather 
 more on the alert than usual in paying attention to typo- 
 graphical details. 
 
 The conditions under which we hold in our hands the 
 first quarto of Love's Labor's Lost, 1598, exhibit a different 
 peculiarity. For, either while the MS. was at press, or 
 prior, some one — Shakespear, I apprehend — introduced a 
 new passage in one part of a scene without discovering 
 that substantially similar matter was already a page or so 
 away in the printer's copy. The two detached states of the 
 text are most readily seen by juxtaposition, and do not im- 
 press us very favourably with the vigilance of the poet as a 
 proof-reader : — 
 
 First insertion. Second insertion. 
 
 " From women's eyes this doctrine " From women's eyes this doctrine 
 I derive : I derive ; 
 
 They are the ground, the books, They sparkle still the right Pro- 
 
 the academes, methean fire ; 
 
 From whence doth spring the true They are the books, the arts, the 
 Promethean fire." academes. 
 
 That show, contain, and nourish 
 
 all the world ; 
 Else none at all in ought proves 
 excellent." 
 
336 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 There is not much to be said, by way of preference, in favour 
 of one version or the other ; but the coexistence of the two 
 is a circumstance without an absolute parallel in the literary 
 history of the poet, so far as we are admitted to a knowledge 
 of his methods apart from the final settlement exhibited in 
 the folio of 1623, unless we may class as such the virtual 
 repetition by the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, i. 3, of the 
 conceit about Juliet falling backward ; and this was a 
 drama equally overseen by the author prior to its first 
 appearance in a genuine shape in 1599. 
 
 The title-pages of the quartos were, however, as a rule, 
 the handiwork of the stationer, who issued them ; and they 
 are not, on the whole, immoderately pretentious. Yet in 
 that of the Merry Wives, 1602, the humorous and laughable 
 side is accentuated, and clearly intentional prominence is 
 given to Falstafi^, Sir Hugh Evans, Shallow, Slender, Pistol, 
 and Nym. The authorship is perhaps betrayed by the error 
 in describing Sir Hugh as " the Welsh Knight." The piece 
 must have been viewed on the stage as a farce rather than a 
 regular comedy, and when it was presented in book-form, 
 there was an aim to put the same attribute distinctly 
 forward. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Principle of dramatic adaptation of great antiquity — Abundance of 
 MSS. submitted to the theatres by outsiders as well as professional 
 dramatists — Pieces which may have come in this way to Burbg,ge's 
 Theatre, while Shakespear was serving him as an Editor — Arden of 
 FaversJuxm, Warning for Fair Women, Muoedorus, &c. — A Shakespearean 
 Apocrypha — Absence of a law of copyright — Shakespear predisposed 
 to treat all available material as his own property — Sciography — • 
 Robert Greene and his friends — Their attacks on Shakespear — Greene's 
 own sins — Shakespear between 1587 and 1592 — His earlier work 
 solely adapted material — His method — His rapidity or quickness of 
 study — Vast difference between the first sketch and the perfected 
 work — Great advantage of elaboration of outlines — His probably 
 inconsiderable obligations to book-learning — Publications within his 
 reach, to which he may have resorted in unequal measure — Absence 
 of collaboration in his plays. 
 
 The process of adapting dramatic compositions is probably 
 almost as ancient as the drama itself. The presentment of 
 a piece on the stage even in the most primitive times was 
 apt to reveal defects, which were supplied by the writer 
 himself, his friends, or his successors ; and even the works of 
 ^Eschylus were thought to stand in need of early editorship. 
 Of about an hundred and thirty plays ascribed to Plautus, it is 
 stated by Aulus Gellius that only about a fifth was actually 
 from his pen, the remainder being works by anterior play- 
 wrights, and revised by him to render them suitable for an 
 improved, or at all events altered, taste ; the Mencechmi, the 
 production with which the English student is most familiar, 
 is taken to have been borrowed from Epicharmus, who 
 lived in the fifth century b.c.,^ and was contemporary with 
 JEschylus. These references are worth notice, because to 
 some extent they display a perfect analogy with the state 
 
 * Donaldson's Theatre of the Greeks, 1860, pp. 165-6. 
 337 V 
 
338 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 of the theatre, when Shakespear first undertook to castigate 
 and embellish certain manuscript efforts of others, some 
 already introduced on the boards, others deemed impracti- 
 cable without previous recension, before he commenced his 
 own independent career as a dramatic creator. He started 
 by building on other men's foundations, as Thomas Durfey 
 admits that he himself did ; but he succeeded better than 
 Durfey. 
 
 Having fixed himself in the metropolis about 1587, there 
 is no substantial ground for the hypothesis that he quitted 
 the scene of his first entrance on life and apprenticeship 
 to the drama during several years, unless it was for a brief 
 visit to his Warwickshire home, while connubial relations 
 were still unstrained ; and the theory, that he accompanied 
 the players, who visited Stratford in the year just named, 
 appears to be unsustained either by evidence or likelihood. 
 He was only five-and-twenty, and had the task before him 
 of shewing his quality, before he could emerge, even with 
 the help of well-wishers, from a subordinate rank among 
 the staff at the playhouse, to which he first attached 
 himself. 
 
 There are several domestic and historical melodramas, 
 such as Arden of F aver sham, Titus Andronicus, Selimus, the 
 Spanish Moor's Tragedy, A Warning for Fair Women, and 
 others, perhaps the Wars of Cyrus taken from Xeno- 
 phon, which are anonymous, and which have been thought 
 by the earlier critics to be Shakespear's, because his style 
 was visible, perhaps, here and there ; but since there is at 
 present slight room to doubt that the poet was commissioned 
 at an early stage of his London career to read manuscripts, 
 and insert or revise sentences and portions of scenes at his 
 discretion, we cannot have any real difficulty in arriving at 
 a solution of the mystery, and our regret is, that he some- 
 times exercised his office with too sparing a hand, and left 
 tell-tale blemishes untouched. The group which I have 
 enumerated forms a theatrical or dramatic school, which had 
 a long lease of popularity, and can scarcely yet be said to 
 
The Dramatic Work 339 
 
 have fallen out of public favour. The melodrama, with its 
 sensationalism and sanguinary incident, was an inheritance 
 from the Roman stage, where crime and bloodshed were 
 features rendered familiar and tolerable by national tem- 
 perament and habit. The comedy of Mucedorus, 1598, has 
 been sometimes held to contain a passage interpolated by 
 Shakespear. But in Titus Andronicus, as I elsewhere shew, 
 matter offers itself, substantially common to the First Part 
 •of Henry VI. and the Sonnets, and in. a third play, which 
 betrays far stronger marks of an editorial hand — that hand 
 Shakespear "'s — the Reign of Edward the Third, published 
 in 1596, a line of Sonnet 94 is incorporated verbatim, as if, 
 like Goldsmith, he was addicted to the repetition of a phrase 
 or figure, which had pleased him, and had lingered in his 
 memory, like the "prophetic soul" of the Sonnets repro- 
 duced in Hamlet. His treatment of such a subject would 
 be strictly in a line with his English historical series, just as 
 Titus Andronicus, so far as he is actually responsible for it, 
 may have led the way to the Roman Plays longo intervalh. 
 It is by no means clear that the Shakespearean Apocrypha, if 
 we may apply such a term to plays to which he stands only 
 in the relation of editor, might not be sensibly enlarged, for 
 in reading some of the anonymous pieces produced and 
 printed down even to 1600, we can never be sure, that the 
 €ye and hand of a master have not been there ; and in a 
 drama, for instance, such as LooTc about You, performed by 
 the Lord Admiral's servants before the year just named, 
 there are vestiges of superior manipulation, and in the 
 Earl of Gloucester, a dramatis persona, we observe a hint 
 for the cynical and deranged types of character worked out 
 more fully and ably in Timon and Lear. But even in the 
 Histories, incorporated with the acknowledged works, a seam 
 of the more immature style and cast of thought peeps out 
 here and there — an expression or a passage, a perhaps un- 
 conscious retention of the old leaven. 
 
 In another way the presence of the poet behind the 
 scenes, in the earlier stages of his career at least, must be 
 
340 Shakespear: The Man and his Wokk 
 
 allowed to have afforded him an excellent opportunity of 
 hearing what manuscripts were in course of submission or 
 under consideration at the leading theatres ; and there is 
 an old note on the title-page of the play of George 
 A 'Green, the Finder of Wakefield, 1599 (but written some 
 years prior), to the effect that it was the work of a minister 
 or clergyman, who took the part of the Finder himself, 
 "teste W. Shakespeare" — that is to say, I conclude, that 
 the author of the memorandum had been so informed by 
 no less a person than the poet. But it is added just below r 
 "Ed. Juby saith that this play was made by Ro. Green." 
 Juby was part-writer of a drama on the subject of Samson, 
 performed in 1602. The fact seems to be that the drama 
 in question was composed by Greene, while he still held 
 the living of ToUesbury in Essex, and that he was the 
 minister, to whom the memorandum points ; and it farther 
 shews his theatrical leaning in having taken the leading 
 part in the performance — a circumstance, which was ex- 
 tremely likely to have come to the ears of Shakespear 
 during his earlier career in London. 
 
 In the time of Shakespear the absence of any system 
 of copyright outside the rather uncertain official machinery 
 under the control of the Lord Chamberlain, and the want 
 of general publicity, when no newspapers existed, combined 
 to favour a general habit of plagiarism, especially as re- 
 garded the use in productions intended for the stage of 
 passages from those intended for the closet and vice versa. 
 Borrowers were, broadly speaking, of two orders : those- 
 who borrowed and bettered, and those who borrowed, and 
 marred in the appropriation. Nothing more serious than 
 reproof in print attended these operations ; and there was 
 a case or so, where even a portrait of one literary gentleman 
 was made to do service for another, who desired to spare 
 himself the trouble and expense of sitting for his own 
 likeness. Our poet certainly, as has been copiously demon- 
 strated, was a prominent disciple of this school, and he 
 can scarcely be said to have drawn any line. For from 
 
The Dramatic Work 341 
 
 the dramas of others and from their lyrics he drew what- 
 ever struck his fancy as apt to dovetail happily into some 
 scene, passage, or sentence in his own ; he was of the con- 
 veyancers, who did not disimprove what he so honoured ; 
 and, the quarry secured, the remainder dropped from his 
 hand, as the mouse's skin does on the grass from the owl 
 in the bough overhead. It was feuille morte. His im- 
 mediate predecessors and contemporaries unconsciously pre- 
 pared material in book-form or otherwise for one, who 
 almost exclusively read with a single object — the trans- 
 mutation of what they had written into what he thought 
 that they should, had they been of his turn of mind. 
 Shakespear did not scruple to appropriate material, whether 
 it came to him by word of mouth or from the book of a 
 contemporary. Others acted by him with corresponding 
 freedom, not corresponding success. Plagiarism and mis- 
 ascription were everywhere rife, and seem to have been 
 generally tolerated. Even a man, whose dramatic writings 
 and fame at all events were vital to him in a commercial 
 sense, permitted others to attach his name or his initials 
 to plays with which he had no concern, and made no 
 sign — none perceptible to us. That he disapproved of such 
 practices we augur from his expression to Heywood of 
 annoyance at the piracy of Jaggard in the case of the Pas- 
 skmate Pilgrim. 
 
 The prevailing impersonality, forestalling the counsel 
 of the French novelist Flaubert to his pupil Maupassant, 
 renders the few salient exceptions the more conspicuous. 
 The lunge at the Puritans may perhaps be paired with 
 that (in the Merry Wives) at the then late Sir Thomas 
 Lucy, which is even more direct, being aimed at an indi- 
 vidual instead of a sect, and which might better have been 
 left unwritten, inasmuch as in Henry IV, his impression of 
 the Knight, while Lucy yet lived, strikes one as by no 
 means unfriendly. 
 
 The generalization and neutrality of the dramatist, as 
 distinguished from the sonneteer, are well maintained, how- 
 
342 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 ever, although there is in so many places liberty and power 
 to draw conclusions. Of course, when the quest of the Man 
 and his Career in the Writer and his Work is set on foot, 
 there is an inherent drift to fanciful speculation. Of all 
 the wild theories, which have been broached in type, the first 
 place is assuredly due, so far as violent unlikelihood goes, 
 with all our advanced knowledge of dates and facts, to that 
 which makes the poet and his wife the originals of Fenton 
 and Anne Page in the Merry Wives. 
 
 With what feelings such a man must have contemplated 
 the enormous accumulation, even down to his day, of objects 
 in book-form : a deluge of dry goods garnered up in libraries 
 or on bookshelves ! He was by no means, one judges, a col- 
 lector. He utilized, adapted, transformed whatever printed 
 or oral material came to hand ; there was a subtle principle 
 of selection, combination, and eye for similitude ; but he 
 did not value the sources, where they were books, as pos- 
 sessions, when all the points, if there were such, had been 
 noted. The Harts, who did not become actually extinct till 
 the commencement of the nineteenth century (1806), would 
 have kept at least some of his books ; a copy of Loys Le 
 Roy, Of tlie Interchangeable Course or Variety of things, 
 1594, possesses an early signature of John Hart.^ Even if 
 Mrs. Hall did not approve of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and 
 the Sonnets, or, which is quite likely, did not set eyes on 
 them, there was almost beyond doubt a family Bible of the 
 Genevan type,^ which did its share of service in imparting to 
 the Plays a scriptural flavour passim, as the poet turned over 
 the leaves, and took mental notes of passages and phrases 
 which struck him. I single out this probable feature in 
 the home, because it is more than likely that the poet 
 kept any other books, which he might have acquired for 
 use, in London, and of such the ulterior destiny is with 
 
 ^ When Captain Medwin asked Hazlitt whether he thought that 
 Shakespear was an unlearned man, Hazlitt replied: "Sir, he was, if 
 not the most learned, the best read man of his age, by which I mean 
 that he made the best use of his reading." 
 
 ^ This version differs in many places from the authorized one of 161 1, 
 
The Dramatic Work 343 
 
 two exceptions unknown. The first folio might have lain 
 without offence on an upper shelf at Stratford, if it had 
 been sent as a gift from the publisher to Mistress Shake- 
 spear ; but it did not appear till the November of the year 
 (1623), in which she died in the August. But the presump- 
 tion is, that whatever there may have been in the nature of 
 a book-closet at New Place in 1616, was more or less 
 speedily scattered by succession or otherwise. 
 
 In a study of the private and literary life of Shakespear 
 so much presents itself, which contradicts ordinary experi- 
 ence, that we almost grow accustomed to an inversion of the 
 biographical annals of less superlatively gifted and less 
 peculiarly mooded persons. Shakespear must have held in 
 his hands in the course of his life a very large number of 
 books and pamphlets; but instead of retaining them, he 
 almost undoubtedly cast away volumes or items of every 
 kind, when they had served their purpose, or he saw that 
 they were incapable of serving one. Here he offered a dia- 
 metrical contrast to the learned Jonson, who formed two 
 successive libraries, and to Burton, who was a bibliomaniac ; 
 but Bacon, on the other hand, is not identified with any 
 permanent collection of books. It would be possible, and it 
 might prove interesting, to compile a list of works which 
 there is fairly solid ground for believing that Shakespear 
 had at some time or other under his eyes, and to which he 
 was indebted for an outline, a scene, a hint, a name, or a 
 phrase. Such an inventory would place him in the posi- 
 tion of a collector of a new and not the least wise type, 
 and would leave behind it in the distance the so-called 
 Shdkespear's Library. 
 
 As the matter stands, there are only the first edition of 
 Florio's Montaigne and the Latin Ovid of 1502 to stand 
 sponsors for the rest. Among the serious responsibilities of 
 his illiterate surroundings was the discouragement from the 
 formation of a closet of books, no less than the destruction 
 or dispersion of such few as might have insensibly accumu- 
 lated in town, and (in some cases perhaps) been ultimately 
 
344 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 transferred by the Halls to the Warwickshire home. But 
 there should always be before us the consideration that 
 down to a point of time long posterior to the poet private 
 libraries in the modern sense had scarcely any existence. 
 
 We possess in fee the inheritance, which he has left to us 
 in common with the remainder of humanity, to be a happi- 
 ness and an instruction to generations yet unborn. It might 
 be ungracious to say that, had the precious gift been less 
 ample, we should not perhaps have been much poorer or less 
 sensible of the benefit conferred on us for ever ; yet I express 
 at least my own sentiments when I declare that I could have 
 dispensed (save on biographical grounds) with all the lyrics, 
 except the songs interspersed through the plays, and with 
 certain of the plays, if it were not for a few redeeming 
 passages. Nor would the rank of the poet have suffered, 
 had he been known to us only as the writer of a dozen or so 
 of the dramatic series : Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Antony and 
 Cleopatra, Timon, Merchant of Venice, Othello, the Merry 
 Wives, As You Like It, A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and 
 the Tempest, although how could we spare the Falstaff scenes 
 in Henry IV. and V, ? 
 
 The constitutional tendency to the humorous vein is 
 mentioned and illustrated hereafter. But the finest and 
 noblest compositions are the Tragedies, partly because they 
 lend themselves to the higher flights of passion and sensi- 
 bility ; and Shakespear lived to divert into that channel the 
 whole force of his intellect. 
 
 To the Plays, as well as to the Poems, we have to go in 
 quest of elucidations, such as they are, of the poet's family 
 history, his private emotions, and even his public views and 
 political bias. Some passages, indeed, are so obviously auto- 
 biographical, that we are spared the pains of reading be- 
 tween the lines or being satisfied with an hypothesis. 
 Nothing could be more natural, where the course of the 
 drama afibrded facilities for introducing as a normal human 
 trait or incident something within his own knowledge — 
 even something which had occurred under his own roof. 
 
The Dramatic Work 345 
 
 When we take in our hands the complete dramatic com- 
 positions of Shakespear, and peruse them at our leisure, we 
 too rarely pause to reflect on the conditions under which 
 they were originally and severally given, not always even to 
 the press, but to the theatre-going public. We too often 
 fail to appreciate the search for a theme or a story likely to 
 prove popular, the hours of toil and thought, while the 
 selected topic was in hand, the arrangements as to its 
 presentation on the stage, the fixture of the cast, and the 
 anxious moments, till the verdict of the audience was de- 
 livered. 
 
 The originality and individuality of the poet considered, 
 there has perhaps never been in dramatic annals or experi- 
 ence one who less depended on his own unassisted invention, 
 or who to a more complete extent laid under tribute the 
 imperfect, yet suggestive and serviceable, labours of prede- 
 cessors. Shakespear approached the sphere of literary 
 activity, which he was to make his career, at a juncture 
 when several of his countrymen, whose education and cul- 
 ture might be said to excel his own, who had been bred at 
 universities, and who had profited by foreign travel, were 
 in possession of the stage, and were familiar to the public 
 ear. 
 
 Those writers who had anticipated the author in lyrical 
 composition were evidently studied by him, on the identical 
 principle pursued in the plays, and reflect in his pages 
 thoughts and images reproduced with a difference. 
 
 It is sufficiently singular that, whereas the poet was long 
 upbraided by critics as illiterate, some of them have now 
 crossed over to the opposite side, and wish us to believe that 
 there was no book, English or foreign, worth reading, which 
 escaped him. The moral, which I presume to draw is, that 
 certain industrious hunters have met with stray passages in 
 works of or before the time of the poet, similar in tenor to 
 passages in his writings, and have conferred a distinction on 
 this author rather than those others. There is a way of look- 
 ing at this particular aspect of the poet's literary character 
 
346 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 and methods, which should have struck many students of 
 the subject, and it is the facilities, which he, during his pro- 
 longed sojourn in the metropolis, enjoyed of casting his 
 eyes over any new publications, and assimilating service- 
 able matter; nor should it be forgotten, that the value of 
 the great majority of so-called Shakespeareana lies in its 
 demonstration of the literary stores open to use in the days 
 of the dramatist, and accessible to him in sundry ways, rather 
 than in any proof, which it supplies of his direct personal 
 inspection of the volumes in their original form and 
 language. 
 
 His readiness to convert his predecessors to useful account 
 might be illustrated almost to any extent. He did not 
 scruple to transfer to his own page even the very expression 
 with which he met in the productions of others ; and this 
 criticism does not contemplate his scientific revision of older 
 plays so much as his casual loan of details, perhaps in an 
 undramatic work, perhaps even in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 which fell in his way. I shall give a rather remarkable 
 example of his obligation to a source, at present known only 
 in a fragmentary shape, for the inspiration of a passage in 
 Hamlet. In act 2, scene % there is the place, where the 
 Prince expatiates on dreams : — 
 
 " Ham. O God ! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count my- 
 self a King of infinite space, were it not that I have had dreams." 
 
 " Guil. Which dreams indeed are ambition ; for the very substance 
 of the ambitious is merply the shadow of a dream. 
 
 "Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow." 
 
 Long ago, Mr. H. G. Norton of Liverpool reprinted from 
 a fragment of five leaves then in his possession " The Wak- 
 ing Man's Dream," conjectured by him to be a portion of a 
 reprint of the> Storybook by Richard Edwards described by 
 Warton the historian as having been seen by him at Chi- 
 chester in the hands of William Collins, probably in 1755, 
 when his brother Joseph and himself went down to see the 
 poet in his last illness. This relic commences with what is 
 called The Fifth Event in these terras • " The Greeke pro- 
 
The Dramatic Work 347 
 
 verbe saith, that a man is but the dreame of a shaddow, or 
 the shaddow of a dreame" — and so the writer proceeds. 
 But my sole object was to exhibit the precise adoption of 
 the phrase and notion in the cited sentence from the book 
 by the playwright, the common original purporting to be 
 Greek. There is no positive evidence that the fragment 
 belongs to the work by Edwards, except that both contain 
 the plot of the induction of the Taming of a Shrew ; and 
 the Collins book is not at present forthcoming. This scio- 
 graphical form of conceit was taken up by Daniel in those 
 lines : — 
 
 " Are they shadows that we see, 
 
 And can shadows pleasure give ? 
 
 Pleasures only shadows be. 
 
 Cast by bodies we conceive — " 
 
 I shall only dwell for a moment on the rather important 
 part which this phase of life and thought plays in the Mid- 
 summer Nighfs Dream and its convenience for dramatic 
 purposes. It dates back to the Hebrew Scriptures and 
 possibly farther. 
 
 The poet had, no doubt, a rather heavy cross to bear 
 from the moment, when he discovered the possession of such 
 high gifts, until he had rendered his position secure, and 
 had established a new era. Not only were the professional 
 jealousy and disparagement to be overcome ; but until the 
 greater portion of the reign of Elizabeth had run out, the 
 state of public opinion was adverse to the stage. If the 
 advent of the Stuarts was productive of no other benefit, 
 it arrested the puritanical movement, and yielded infinitely 
 larger scope to the theatrical profession. 
 
 In 1592, when Greene denounced him as a poacher on 
 the domain, which he seems to have viewed as the freehold 
 of his immediate set and himself, Shakespear had inferribly 
 raised his reputation as an editor and adapter to a sufficient 
 height to render him an object of antipathy or dislike. We 
 are surely to allow the lapse of half-a-dozen years for such a 
 measure of success on the part of one, who had exchanged 
 
348 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 his provincial for a London home, with a view to a liveli- 
 hood, if not something more : a comparative novice, though 
 not, as I think, a friendless stranger. Of his performances 
 as a corrector of other men's manuscripts in the interval we 
 seem to feel that we know something ; but I am convinced 
 that we are far from knowing all about his employment 
 between 1587 and 1592 apart from his original lyrical work, 
 some to be shortly before the public, some not yet to see 
 the light — never to see it for all he cared. A man of 
 his pliant intellect and masterful grasp — a quinquennial 
 term, where a mwleus or a skeleton of some sort was forth- 
 coming, was nearly incapable of expiring, before " Johannes 
 Factotum," as the irate Greene christens him, had a notable 
 record to shew. Since some of the dramatic compositions, 
 First Sketches or otherwise, were tolerably popular, and 
 had lengthened runs, there is slight doubt, that the poet 
 introduced fresh touches now and again at the instance of 
 managers, and had the MS. recopied for use. Greene pos- 
 sibly owed the nickname, which he bestowed on Shakespear, 
 to the passage in Gascoigne's Supposes, 1566, where we fall 
 in with a Magister Factotwm. To Greene the intrusion of 
 Shakespear — and even of Marlowe — on the scene was apt to 
 be a source of peculiar annoyance and resentment, as he, like 
 Lodge, had begun by producing works, not only of an un- 
 dramatic, but even of a devotional or moral tenor,^ suc- 
 ceeded by a brief experiment in medicine ; and it was not 
 till a late stage in his not long career, that he proceeded to 
 contribute to the stage, just at the point of time when 
 Shakespear was slowly making a name for himself, and 
 securing commissions from managers ; nor is there any doubt 
 
 ^ Greene was not improbably the natural son of Sir Thomas Greene, 
 a priest, of Wilby, Suffolk, and a writer on alchemy. There are two or 
 three publications dated between 1581 and 1584 with the poet's name or 
 initials, seeming to point to a temporary, if not original, association with 
 the Church, which he subsequently, it appears, abandoned for the medical 
 profession. On the title of one of his tracts, 1585, he describes himself as 
 Student in Physic. A scholar, a traveller, a graduate of both universities, 
 and a poet of no mean power, this unhappy man ruined his career by his 
 
The Dramatic Work 349 
 
 that the later comer on the ground was responsible for sup- 
 planting Greene and his school, even while he added injury 
 to insult by adopting some of their suggestions. 
 
 The author of a tract entitled Greenes Funeralls, 1594, 
 evidently a friend of the then deceased dramatist, tries to 
 exhibit the reverse of the medal, to turn the tables on 
 Shakespear. He says : — 
 
 " Greene is the pleasing Obiect of an eie ; 
 Greene pleasde the eies of all that lookt vppon him. 
 Greene is the ground of euerie Painters die ; 
 Greene gaue the ground to all that wrote vpon him. 
 Nay more the men that so eclipst his fame, 
 Pui'loynde his Plumes, can they deny the same ? " 
 
 In the last couplet the plural number is used ; but the shaft 
 was levelled at one target — at " the tiger's heart wrapped 
 in a player's hide." 
 
 Nearly all Shakespear's more important productions, it 
 is notable, are developments of other authors' labours. His 
 brain was an alchemical laboratory, from which poor material 
 emerged so transmuted, that the original writer might have 
 scarcely recognized his offspring, if he had been yet living, 
 and might at the same time have entertained that prejudice 
 against his finisher or rather transformer, of which we hear from 
 Greene. But the advantage, which Shakespear derived from 
 the employment of the labours of his predecessors was even 
 greater than has been generally allowed. To have the 
 essay of another in type or even in writing before one tends 
 to confer on the first text of a revised work the benefit and 
 attributes of a second issue. One detects and amends the 
 faults of some one else instead of one's own. The possession 
 
 dissolute habits, partly contracted, according to his own admission, at 
 Cambridge, where he received from fellow-students the inducement to go 
 abroad. In the course of his life he played many parts, of which we are 
 perhaps no losers by not knowing more. Even in 1581 he produced, 
 according to an entry at Stationers' Hall, a ballad, the prototype, judging 
 from the title, of the Oroatsworth of Wit. See MS. Ashmole, 1467, art. 3^ 
 9, 12, &c., for a possible clue to his parentage, and Dyce's Greene and PeelCy 
 1861, p. 58. 
 
350 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 of a sketch by a writer of so receptive a mind was analogous 
 to that of one by a painter, who outlines roughly on paper 
 what he subsequently elaborates on canvas. 
 
 Greene did not hesitate on his part to press into his 
 service the work of others, when he was in search of a topic 
 for a fresh essay ; and his Quip for an Upstart Courtkr, 1592, 
 where he so violently assails the Harveys, is little more than 
 a rechavffi of the Debate between Pride and Lowliness, printed 
 by Francis Thynne about two decades before, and (as Greene 
 possibly calculated) forgotten. Then it became the turn of 
 Greene to suffer the wrong, which he had so freely inflicted 
 on others ; and in 1615 his Disputation between a He-Cony- 
 catcher and a She-Conycatcher, 1592, was served up by some 
 one else as a new cate of his own under the title of Thieves 
 FalUng out. True Men come hy their Goods. Even in the 
 theatrical department, Greene had not invariably succeeded 
 in maintaining an immaculate repute ; he was constantly in 
 great straits ; and he was upbraided by a contemporary for 
 having raised funds in one instance by selling his Orlando 
 Furioso twice over. At any rate, he was tolerably vulner- 
 able, if Shakespear had cared to recriminate, which we may 
 rest satisfied that he did not publicly do, much less in 
 print. Orlando was acted at the Rose Theatre in 1591, 
 and Shakespeare may have very well seen it performed, or 
 have glanced at the printed copy of 1594, for he has bor- 
 rowed a little from it, and, had the author been living, might 
 have incurred some additional reproof on this account. 
 
 Shakespear found himself mainly befriended by two 
 distinct classes of germ or prototype, the actual drama and 
 the story awaiting dramatization. To the former category 
 his earlier labours were exclusively confined ; it was easier 
 to deal with a ready-made piece, than to transform a nar- 
 rative written for the closet into one suitable for the stage ; 
 and it is a tolerably secure hypothesis that in the treatment 
 of First Sketches from other pens the matter derived from 
 the Chronicles and other elaborate works was, to a large 
 extent, the fruit of original research and adaptation by the 
 
The Dramatic Work 351 
 
 first author and not by Shakespear, who was more bent on 
 the reception of his work by audiences than on verifying 
 history. He so far paid homage to his predecessors — to 
 those who had had their work exhibited on the stage in its 
 unrevised shape, and to those who brought or sent MSS. to 
 the theatre on approval. Much more of other playwrights' 
 work than we are ever likely to know enjoyed' the advantage 
 of his castigation ; but in the later and maturer period the 
 rough copy, whether reduced to theatrical shape or not, 
 whether such a production as the old Hamlet or as Greene's 
 Pandosto, emerged from the crucible refined and spiritualized 
 beyond identification. But outside this range fell such pro- 
 bably quite exceptional cases as that of Jonson's Every Man 
 in his Humor ^ of which the eventual acceptance by the Lord 
 Chamberlain's Company in 1598 is usually ascribed to the 
 friendly offices of Shakespear. 
 
 The method of Shakespear seems to have been to pro- 
 cure or adopt a groundwork in print or manuscript, to 
 accumulate suggestions from conversation or hearsay, and 
 to rely for the rest on his own vast and fertile fancy. His 
 aggregate indebtedness to the entire corpus of raw material 
 assembled together in Shakespear'' s Library was assuredly 
 very insignificant. Yet some of these supposed originals 
 were his sole resource, so far as book-learning went. I 
 apprehend that the poet resorted to manuscripts sparingly, 
 unless they were acting copies of other men's plays sub- 
 mitted for his revision. 
 
 The reputed solecisms in historical, geographical, and 
 other directions, to whatever they may amount, are largely 
 susceptible of being explained by the nature of his leading 
 aims, which were truth to nature and accuracy of delinea- 
 tion. He had ever before his eyes the sovereign need of 
 fulfilling theatrical requirements and impressing the popular 
 fancy ; and these objects he assuredly attained, when through 
 a succession of years in so consummate a degree he appealed 
 
 '^ This had been a popular phrase since Tarlton's time. See Old Eng- 
 lish Jest-Boohs, 1864, ii. 250. 
 
352 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 to every phase of human sensibility — to our everlasting 
 sense of humour, of beauty, of terror, of pathos. Names 
 of persons and places were subordinate to the plot and the 
 dialogue, of both of which we are able to perceive the pro- 
 gressive refinement and intellectual subtlety — features so 
 surprisingly and provokingly absent even in his most 
 eminent contemporaries, Jonson inclusive. 
 
 This profound and happy intuition, on which rests, 
 perhaps more than on an3rthing else, his fame to-day, and 
 of which there are glimpses even in his earliest work, 
 stands alone ; and it is conceivable that it was sparingly 
 appreciated by contemporaries. Near the opening of the 
 Merchant of Venice there is the passage : — 
 
 " Salarino ... I should not see the sandy hour-glass run. 
 But I should think of shallows and of flats ; 
 And see my wealthy Andrew dock'd in sand, 
 Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs, 
 To kiss her burial. Should I go to church, 
 And see the holy edifice of stone. 
 And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks 
 Which, touching my gentle vessel's side. 
 Would scatter all her spices on the stream ; 
 Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks — " 
 
 This sort of inner sense an Elizabethan audience might 
 have scarcely caught; and such treatment is common. 
 Some may remember the passage, where he says, " Hell is 
 empty; all the devils are here," and that in Hamlet, v. 1, 
 where the Prince says, referring to himself and Ophelia : — 
 
 "Let them throw 
 Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 
 Singeing his pate against the burning zone, 
 Make Ossa like a wart — " 
 
 It is plain that Shakespear had a kindness for this class of 
 imagery, and we see with what a master's hand he drew it. 
 This is the respect, in which Tennyson (and perhaps to a 
 
The Dramatic Work 353 
 
 limited extent Lovell Beddoes i) among the moderns most 
 resemble him; we recognize the principle here and there 
 in Byron. Let me draw farther attention to an exquisite 
 passage in Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2, where the Egyptian 
 queen describes her Roman lover. There is no finer passage 
 even in Shakespear : — 
 
 " Gleo. I dreamt there was an emperor Antony, 
 
 O, such another sleep, that I might see 
 
 But such another man ! 
 Dol, I understand not, madam. 
 
 Cleo. His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck 
 
 A sun and moon, which kept their course, and lighted 
 
 The little O, the earth—" 
 
 And so the queen proceeds, surfeiting the contemporary 
 audience — and us — with tragic pathos, which the poet 
 brings in the Clown to relieve for a few moments as a pre- 
 paration for the sublime catastrophe. 
 
 Again, in that fascinating song in Measure for Measure, 
 of which the authorship is treated as doubtful, as it origi- 
 nally appeared in Robert Jones's First Boole ofAvrs, 1600, 
 but which must strike any one as almost unquestionably 
 from Shakespear's pen, there is that pair of phrases : " break 
 of day " and " lights that do mislead the morn," applied to 
 a woman's eyes. These esoteric subtleties began before 
 the poet entered on his career, and belong, more or less, to 
 all literatures; but no writer of any nation ever handled 
 them as Shakespear has done. They are richly inter- 
 spersed in the more philosophical productions or passages, 
 and form a contrast to the superficial commonplace of the 
 normal writer in verse or prose.^ In As You Like It, ii. 7, 
 Jaques says : " I must have liberty withal, as large a charter 
 
 1 Beddoes, however, is too apt, even in his best work, to impart to his 
 niceties of sentiment the air of forced conceits. 
 
 ^ \nA Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608, there is a passage or so of the same 
 quality as where the Husband says: "What is there in three dice to 
 make a man draw thrice three thousand acres into the compass of a round 
 table . . .?" 
 
 z 
 
354 Shakespeak: The Man and his Wokk 
 
 as the wind to blow on whom I please ; for so fools have. 
 ..." And then, to make an end of this point, even in 
 one of the Sonnets, where there is so thick a vein of alloy, 
 how matchless are the following lines : — 
 
 " When in the chronicle of wasted time 
 
 I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
 
 And beauty making beautiful old rime 
 
 In praise of Ladies dead and lovely Knights ; 
 
 Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best. 
 
 Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 
 
 I see their antique pen would have exprest 
 
 Even such a beauty as you master now. 
 
 So all their praises are but prophecies 
 
 Of this our time, all you prefiguring ; 
 
 And for they look'd but with divining eyes. 
 
 They had not skill enough your worth to sing ; 
 For we, which now behold these present days, 
 Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.'' 
 
 This covetable quality and gift are conspicuously deficient 
 in all the other writers, not only of his own, but of earlier 
 and later times. One may wade through the entire body of 
 English dramatic literature in the vain search for anything 
 of the kind, and a single passage of Shakespear often out- 
 weighs in value and beauty a whole volume of dramas from 
 another pen. But there are frequent suggestions of this 
 treatment in Oriental literature, where the picturesque 
 phraseology partakes of the same character. 
 
 The surviving proportion of the manuscript dramas 
 offered to the theatres during the Elizabethan and Jacobean 
 periods has been represented as so low as one in fifty. But 
 these pieces were brought or sent in many cases by strangers 
 and outsiders, and were first and perhaps only attempts in 
 this class of composition; yet there is evidence that plays 
 written by such experienced hands as Peele and Greene have 
 been lost. Shakespear, however, was so far happily situated 
 in the present respect, that his early acquisition of a vested 
 interest in the theatre and company, with which he asso- 
 ciated himself, secured him a control over his papers and 
 
The Dramatic Work 355 
 
 copy ; and there is little or no ground for the apprehension, 
 that, whatever may be the case with mere slight rifacimenti 
 of other men's work, any production with a distinct claim 
 to his main authorship has failed to descend to us. 
 
 The loss of contributions or offerings to the theatres in 
 London, however great it may have been, was probably in- 
 significant in comparison with that, which we have sustained 
 from the destruction of dramatic literature once extant in 
 €rreece and Rome, if any conclusion is to be drawn from the 
 references and extracts in such works as the Deipnosophistce 
 of Athenseus and the Bibliotheca of Photius. 
 
 The curious diversity of more or less casual suggestions 
 in the Plays and Poems assists in encouraging us to lean to 
 the idea, that Shakespear was more prone to the appropria- 
 tion of detached incidents and expressions, which he very 
 probably in some cases husbanded against an opportunity 
 for use, than to complete dependence on any given original ; 
 which goes some distance toward repeating, that ShaJce- 
 spear's Library is a far less considerable creditor than it 
 is generally reputed to have been. In fact, there were 
 cases, where a simple phrase on a title-page was sufficient to 
 develope a train of thought. Take the somewhat famous 
 passage, where Gonzalo in the Tempest is the mouthpiece for 
 a declaration of heterodox views on government. The main 
 notion is from the Essay of Montaigne On Cannibals; but 
 the English writer almost seems to have had before him a 
 volume, now very rare, called The Defence of Contraries, 
 translated from the French by a fellow-playwright, An- 
 thony Munday. Perhaps he did no more than carry away 
 the terms of the title-page; and a second case occxirs in 
 Cymbeline, where the author perhaps recollected the passage 
 in the Squire of Low Degree, in making Imogen mistake the 
 headless body of Cloten for that of her lord. In the Second 
 Part of Henry IV., i. 3, where FalstafF is speaking of apo- 
 plexy, he tells the Chief Justice, that he "has read the 
 cause of his effects in Galen." There is evidence that Gale's 
 Certain Works of Chirwrgery, translated from Galen, was in 
 
356 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Stratford (perhaps in the hands of Dr. Hall) in 1604, and 
 was cited in a suit brought by the poet against Philip 
 Rogers. But the probability is, that the name of Galen 
 was more generally familiar, since I do not recollect that in 
 Gale's translation of some of his productions he had any- 
 thing specifically bearing on the complaint. Shakespear 
 doubtless used Galen in a typical or representative sense.^ 
 
 Quite a small library of translations and compilations 
 accumulated in our country during the life of the poet, and 
 while we may regard such books with comparative distrust 
 and indifference, they strike one as just the handy material, 
 from which Shakespear may have been content to furnish 
 himself with particulars on various branches of knowledge 
 and learning without an undue demand on his patience or 
 time. In common with more ordinary persons, the poet 
 carried down with him from his school-days at home many 
 useful hints and cues. We find among the names of the 
 masters at the local school, while he was yet at Stratford, 
 though no longer a pupil, that of Jenkins, from whose lips 
 he might have derived some of the Welsh idioms of Sir 
 Hugh Evans ; but there were many Welsh settlers in the 
 borough at that period, particularly those other very early 
 acquaintances the Ap-Roberts family. 
 
 From his dependence on suggestion, and on a quick 
 study of salient features rather than on the exhaustive 
 perusal or mastery of a volume, he may well have regarded 
 with more tolerant eyes than ourselves much of the rather 
 dull and poor literary material in the department of fiction, 
 produced by the age just preceding his own and by his contem- 
 poraries ; but I picture him to myself skipping a great deal, 
 and mentally storing only those passages or points which he 
 judged to be dramatically manageable. His vision glanced 
 
 1 The works of this noted man were much studied in England during 
 the Elizabethan era, and in Scotland. Archbishop Cranmer had an edition 
 in six folio volumes, as well as one of the separate treatises formerly the 
 property of Darnley's mother. Collections of books in olden times were 
 more miscellaneous and fortuitous, and Shakespear was by no means alone* 
 or peculiar in his casual gleaning habit. 
 
The Dramatic Work 357 
 
 from the printed book before him to the stage and the 
 theatrical company, on which the mere literary treatment 
 was bound to wait. Passages, which might tell in the prose 
 or even lyrical form, were frequently unadapted for the 
 boards ; and it amounts to this, that the poet held a confer- 
 ence with someone else through his published work, just as 
 he would have done by word of mouth ; he took from his 
 text just as much as suited him, or as little, as he would 
 have taken in the course of conversation. 
 
 The array of books of reference is of course not without 
 its fanciful and forsooth its commercial element, as there is 
 a powerful inducement to bring within the range of Shake- 
 speai'eana items, which have otherwise slight pretensions to 
 notice and value. It is a pity that the pecuniary motive 
 should have tended to set back to so considerable an extent 
 the limits of the reading and toll of the poet ; and some of 
 the authorities or sources quoted are purely ridiculous. In 
 the Merchant of Venice he quotes Scylla and Charybdis, and 
 straightway Philippe Gaul tier of Lille's Alewandreis is added 
 to the Shakespearean book-closet or shelf. This sort of thing 
 is childish and preposterous. The saying was of course a 
 proverb three or four centuries ago — more so, in fact, than 
 it at present is. I apprehend that it is necessary to reject 
 all the hypotheses as to his direct debt to foreign analogues 
 beyond a collection of their general tenor from others and 
 the possession by such means of sufficient suggestion for his 
 purpose ; but, on the contrary, one conceives him likely to 
 have welcomed and attentively studied such comprehensive 
 miscellanies as the Mirror for Magistrates, the Palace of 
 Pleasure, Fenton's Tragical Discourses, Twyne's Pattern of 
 Painful Adventures, and Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft ; but 
 Holinshed's Chronicle, of which a new edition appeared in 
 1586, just when Shakespear first arrived in London on the 
 business of life. Fox's Martyrs, North's Plutarch, Hakluyt's 
 Voyages, and perhaps the English Froissart for Henry V., 
 were bulkier undertakings, which he could hardly afford to 
 ignore or neglect ; the Holinshed for the English historical 
 
358 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 series and the Plutarch for the Roman plays. There were 
 many other publications of the day, which he laid under 
 tribute for incidental expressions or images; for example, 
 Golding's, Turbervile's, and even Marlowe's, Ovid, and the 
 English version of the World of Wonders by Henri Etienne, 
 to the latter of which Mr. Caldecott attached no slight im- 
 portance.^ So far as the English Ovids are concerned, their 
 claim to a place among Shakespeareana may certainly be 
 thought to be shared by the original Latin text of the Meta- 
 morphoses almost unquestionably acquired by the poet at an 
 early date, and not much less available for the limited pur- 
 poses to which he applied such aids. Two primers, the 
 Sententice Pueriles, mentioned by Lyly the Euphuist in his 
 Pappe with a Hatchet, and Lily's Accidence are cited as 
 having fallen under his notice, the normal A.B.C., which 
 passed through a greater number of editions than we have 
 on record, was in universal acceptance and use ; The Short 
 Introduction of Grammar was surely not unknown ; and he 
 expressly quotes the Mantuan Eclogues of Battista Spagnuoli, 
 of which there were English renderings from 1567 to 1594 ; 
 but any way he merely dipped into the volume cursorily and 
 places in the mouth of Holofernes a line from one of these 
 pastorals, then so popular as to be read in schools. Keeping 
 before our eyes the fact that the seminary at Stratford held 
 a high rank among the educational institutions of its class, 
 having been improved under the Edward VI. scheme, and 
 that the masters' fees were unusually high — higher than at 
 the contemporary Eton, it is improper to deny to Shake- 
 spear, above all, the credit of being sufficiently conversant 
 with these elementary manuals to select what suited him ; 
 and in fact it was his special aim to take cognizance of such 
 popular works rather than of advanced treatises. 
 
 The scene in the Merry Wives of Windsor (iv. 1), where 
 
 ^ See Hunter's New Illustrations of Shakespeare, i. 322, for an account 
 of the visit of this distinguished foreigner to London. He was of course 
 only one of thousands, who came over here both prior to the Shakesperean 
 era, and while the poet enjoyed opportunities of meeting or hearing of 
 them. 
 
The Dramatic Work 359 
 
 Sir Hugh Evans examines William Page in his grammar in 
 the presence of Mrs. Page and Mrs. Quickly, is so manifestly 
 a transfer from Stratford school, that it is necessary to admit 
 it as an unique curiosity. Shakespear's master may have 
 addressed him as William. The Cambrian patois belongs to 
 Stratford, rather than to Windsor. 
 
 "Mrs. Page. How now, Sir Hugh, no school to-day? 
 
 Sir Hiigh. No, Master Slender is let the boys leave to play. 
 
 Quickly. Blessing of his heart I 
 
 Mrs. Page. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits nothing in 
 the world in his book. I pray you, ask him some questions in his 
 accidence. 
 
 Sir Hugh. Come hither, William ; hold up your head ; come. 
 
 Mrs. Page. Come on, sirrah ; hold up your head ; answer your 
 master ; be not afraid. 
 
 Sir Hugh. William, how many numbers is in nouns ? 
 
 Will. Two. 
 
 Quickly. Truly I thought there had been one number more, 
 because they say o(Ps nouns. 
 
 Sir Hugh. Peace your tattlings. What is /air, William ? 
 
 Will. Pulcher. 
 
 Quickly. Polecats ! There are fairer things than polecats, sure. 
 
 Sir Hugh. You are a very simplicity 'oman. I pray you, peace. 
 What is lapis, William .i" 
 
 Will. A stone. 
 
 Sir Hugh. And what is a stone, William .'' 
 
 Will. A pebble. 
 
 Sir Hugh. No, it is lapis. I pray you remember in your prain. 
 
 Will. Lapis. 
 
 Sir Hugh. That is a good William. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Page eventually concludes that William is a better 
 scholar than she thought he was. Had Mrs. Shakespear 
 expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of her little boy ? 
 We notice that Master Slender begs a holiday for the boys 
 — an usage, which has come down to our time. 
 
 The utilization of the accessible body of materials and 
 authorities by Shakespear and his fellow-playwrights was 
 not only natural, but peremptory : there was not till centuries 
 later any critical school of history or biography. Audiences 
 and readers alike relied on such books as there were for 
 
360 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 all the knowledge which they possessed, and in the pro- 
 duction on the boards of pieces founded on favourite and 
 familiar writers even the more scholarly spectator was able 
 to relish the dexterous seizure and presentment of the salient 
 points in some famous story which he had already learned 
 at college or at home. Had a truer version of it been put 
 before him, he might have liked it less well. 
 
 In some unexplored recess, an addition to our positive 
 acquaintance with the bookish appurtenances of the poet 
 may come to light. If we were to compute the importance 
 of such a discovery by the obligation incurred, we should 
 most cordially welcome a Holinshed or a Plutarch — more 
 particularly, if, in addition to his autograph, it should 
 possess marginalia or even underscorings. 
 
 Whether the debt of the poet to such dry productions 
 as Greene's Pandosto and Lodge's Rosalynd, was great or 
 slender, their popular acceptance in the closet or study must 
 have been immeasurably greater than that of his plays in 
 book-form, many of which did not reach a second edition, 
 while of the others there was no printed text in his lifetime. 
 The public resorted to the theatre to witness their per- 
 formance on the stage, for beyond the mere dialogue and 
 plot there were all those adventitious accessories, which 
 have always rendered the playhouse attractive to thousands, 
 who do not read plays ; and here lies, perhaps, the solution 
 of the mystery surrounding the unquestionable rarity of 
 the early quartos, which served for the immediate reference 
 of those, who contemplated a visit to the place of repre- 
 sentation, or desired to refresh their memories at home, 
 rather than as literary productions deserving of shelf- 
 room. 
 
 Perhaps of all the sources of inspiration that which not 
 only equals, but surpasses the dramatic analogue in merit 
 is the Pattern of Pamful Adventures, by Laurence Twyne, 
 which is even now far more readable than Rosalynd or 
 Pandosto, or than the play of Pericles more or less based 
 upon it, and which is Shakespear's in very partial measure. 
 
The Dramatic Work 361 
 
 The novel is characterized by that modern tone, which 
 distinguishes all literary work of the higher class. 
 
 In the writer's Shakespear's Library, 1875, he has shown 
 reason for ascribing to the dramatist in his Italian scenes 
 a recourse to Thomas's History of Italy, 154'9, from the 
 pen of a resident at Venice and a personal observer, Fenton's 
 Guicciardini, 1579, of which both Barnabe Barnes (in his 
 DeviTs Charier, 1607) and Massinger made use, and Har- 
 ington's Ariosto, 1591, as well as to the Palace of PleoMire 
 above named. The Ariosto was printed by the poet's 
 countryman, Richard Field, and is on that account more 
 likely to have been in his hands soon after its issue, as 
 Field and he at that date were on friendly terms. 
 
 Quick and easy study was, no doubt, agreeable to the 
 poet, especially where it was so often a mere case of seizing 
 a few clues or situations and a name or so. The old Lear 
 had been performed at the Rose theatre in April, 1593 ; 
 and Shakespear might have been present to take notes. In 
 Richard Harvey's Philadelphus, 1593, the King and his three 
 daughters are incidentally introduced, and there we meet 
 with the name Cordelia ; but the character might have been 
 prompted by the Antigone in the PhoenisscB of Euripides, 
 exhibited at Gray's Inn in 1566, but accessible to Shake- 
 spear in the printed works of Gascoigne. All such hints 
 were useful, but not vital ; they served as a groundwork 
 without much help from historians, who were not calculated 
 to transform it into what we have the privilege of possess- 
 ing. Such a cursory survey of possible material or sugges- 
 tion, looking at the vast and incessant output of printed 
 paper, must have sufficed to inspire Shakespear with a lively 
 sense of the valuelessness of much that he handled and cast 
 away, and a disposition to forestall Tennyson in his stigma 
 of " miserable books." 
 
 The volume of material, of which we have the nett 
 matured essence in the Plays, falls under two distinct and 
 almost independent categories : that which he derived from 
 more or less attentive perusal of books and pamphlets within 
 
362 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 his reach, and that which came to him by word of mouth 
 from associates more familiar than himself with certain 
 subjects and certain localities. The measure of obligation 
 was as unequal as the source of it was various. In several 
 instances, whatever estimate may be formed of such dramas 
 anterior to his own on the same theme as have actually 
 come down to us, the foundation-play was beyond question 
 of immense service ; for it supplied the general plot, and left 
 to Shakespear just that function, where he was supreme, the 
 task of introducing happy and masterly touches, of modifying 
 the dramatis persorwB, and even of changing the consummation. 
 
 Shakespear presented himself on the scene at an epoch 
 when our national literature had been vastly enriched not 
 merely by original compositions of a dramatic texture, but 
 by an infinite diversity of works shedding a new light on 
 foreign manners and ancient history; and among his per- 
 sonal friends in different degrees of intimacy were men, who 
 had spent years in travel and adventure abroad, either on 
 the Continent or in more remote regions, and from whose 
 casual discourse innumerable hints were readily to be 
 gleaned, even where the speakers had not committed their 
 experiences to print. 
 
 Shakespear stood alone, in a sense and a way which have 
 not been, I apprehend, sufficiently emphasized, if indeed 
 even noticed, by his biographers and critics. While he was 
 almost undoubtedly concerned in the editorship of a larger 
 number of dramatic compositions than can be authorita- 
 tively attributed to him, we must see, arguing from those 
 cases, where the evidence of his revising hand is more or 
 less before us, that he differed from his professional con- 
 temporaries in refraining from collaboration with them, and 
 so long as he continued to play the part of an adapter, 
 limited himself to the improvement, as he judged it to be, 
 of the work of others. The hostility of Greene and his 
 friends might have been disarmed, if the young provincial 
 intruder had offered to join their ranks, and strengthen 
 their position. But he elected to act differently. 
 
The Dramatic Work 363 
 
 Then as now there was a firm literary ring, from which 
 Shakespear held himself aloof. He treated the satirical or 
 abusive reflections upon him with a dignified and consistent 
 restraint ; his detractors and he have changed places ; he 
 has come into his own ; and they are no more than the flies 
 tickling the lion's nose. Had he been a cleverer man, his 
 history would have perhaps been less obscure. His friends 
 might have told us more about him, and he might have told 
 us more himself. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Self -culture — Value and influence of verbal cominunication — Kabelals — 
 Au ostensible source of error — Giulio Eomano — ^Characters and inci- 
 dents drawn from life — FalstafE and the buck-basket — Vindication 
 of the poet from illiteracy and ignorance — The censure of Jonson — 
 Superiority of Shakespear in a knowledge of his art — Curious slips 
 in the Plays — Their prevailing character historical — Deliberate dis- 
 regard of the Unities — The Tablets in Hamlet. 
 
 The opportunities of Shakespear for self-culture, subse- 
 quently to his attainment of manhood, regarding his 
 peculiar aptitude for assimilation, have been unquestionably 
 underrated, and the prevailing tendency has been to treat 
 the Works as a prodigy emanating from an untaught 
 genius. The world's greatest heroes and ornaments have 
 been of such a cast, men of such beginnings, no heavier 
 debtors to schools, seminaries and universities, but who 
 have more wealthily profited by the learning and experi- 
 ence of others than those who frequented them. Our 
 national poet, in the first place, quitted home, as it is 
 taken, in 1586-7, fairly grounded in one of the most cele- 
 brated chartered provincial grammar schools — that of his 
 native town' — as Marlowe had been at Canterbury, richly 
 stocked with all the knowledge of nature and human nature, 
 which the country was capable of yielding, with a fair in- 
 sight into legal details and terms, from the paternal neces- 
 sity or humour for litigation, and an at least superficial 
 acquaintance with theatrical matters derived from the com- 
 panies, which periodically visited Stratford and neighbour- 
 ing places within reach. It has been rather inconsiderately 
 contended by some that he was a lawyer, because he has 
 introduced many legal expressions into his plays and even 
 his poems, and by others, that if it were not so, he had a 
 ' The original charter is deposited in the Birthplace Museum. 
 
 364 
 
The Dramatic Work 365 
 
 lawyer at his elbow. But, in the first place, other dramatists 
 of or about the time, who have been signalized neither as 
 lawyers nor lawyers' acquaintances, displayed precisely the 
 same taste and ability in such a direction, and, again, the 
 more intimate and regular relations between Shakespear and 
 his kinsman Greene belonged, so far as we can discover, to 
 a late period in the poet's dramatic career, when in fact 
 nearly all the plays had been written and presented. For 
 help in difficulties, where French was in question the 
 Quineys and the Combes were at hand, if he happened to 
 be at home, and the Essays of Montaigne had been six 
 years before the world in the original language, when he 
 settled in London. Moreover, the instinctive and heredi- 
 tary rural grasp of elementary law and legal diction has 
 always been in advance of that of the dwellers in great 
 centres, and in the days of the poet, in common with many 
 of his dramatic contemporaries, a country-bred man, this was 
 in a far larger degree so from the dearth of technical books 
 and the still prevailing illiteracy. The talk in the taproom 
 or parlour of the village ale-house formed the unofficial 
 bureau, where local and current questions of right were dis- 
 cussed by the elders of the hamlet.' 
 
 His evident advantage from the friendship of the Bur- 
 bages, of whom Richard was somewhere about his own age 
 and in 1586 quite a beginner like himself, answers for his 
 unusual rapidity in gaining a footing among the actors and 
 those persons of quality or men of letters, who frequented 
 the successive theatres in Shoreditch and the Borough ; and 
 the latter — the unprofessional section — were possessors by 
 training or practical experience of the most widely varied 
 knowledge — able to impart to Shakespear the points of 
 learning, in which he might be deficient, and which no one 
 was better qualified to turn to account. These facilities 
 formed an education more fruitful than book - lore and 
 
 1 Gasooigne speaks in his Adventures of Master F. I. from the Italian 
 of BarteUi of a certain matter in legal phraseology — " the seuerall vse of a 
 more commodious common," &c. Works by Hazlitt, L 436. 
 
366 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 academical courses. Like Hobbes of Malmesbury, the poet 
 set little by reading, but on different grounds. He pre- 
 ferred to go to the sources himself, whence the literature 
 came ; he studied humanity, as he had begun by studying 
 nature, from life ; and even the more scholarly Jonson found 
 it necessary to do the same thing in certain cases in order 
 to eke out the shortcomings, if not to temper the gravity, 
 of his classical creations. Our poet was a better observer 
 than student, and he may be judged to have preferred to 
 rely on oral channels. 
 
 The taste for continental and even more distant excur- 
 sions had been created and fostered, just about the time 
 when Shakespear began to seek material for his work, by 
 the widely and rapidly difiused spirit of maritime adven- 
 ture and discovery. We hear, independently of practical 
 explorers like Raleigh, of such men as Thomas Lodge, 
 Bartholomew Young, Lewes Lewkenor,"^ Robert Tofte, 
 John Dowland, and Nicholas Breton, all more or less well- 
 known names, acquiring in the Elizabethan period a 
 familiarity with foreign travel, and visiting France, Spain, 
 Italy, and even Denmark ; and Spenser, we now know, 
 contemplated about 1576 a tour on the Continent, and 
 collected some of the books likely to serve him as guides. 
 
 In 1597 Dowland published his First Booh of Airs, and 
 in a preface recorded his experience as a traveller ; on the 
 title-page he describes himself as a Lutenist ; and in 1600 
 we find him installed at Elsinore as Lutenist to the King 
 of Denmark, which are circumstances to be admitted as 
 evidence of the probabilities of such a man as our poet 
 learning all that he required without pressing with his own 
 feet any foreign ground. Lodge made voyages with Captain 
 Clark in 1588 and with Cavendish in 1592. His Margarite 
 oj" America was penned in the Straits of Magellan. 
 
 On the other hand, numberless were the persons of all 
 European nationalities, all ranks, and all vocations, who 
 came to London, and with whom it is not particularly 
 ^ See Kohn's Shakespear in Cfermany, 1865, p. xix. 
 
The Dramatic Work 367 
 
 fanciful to suppose that Shakespear may have exchanged 
 ideas. Of the four men of letters above specified, Lodge 
 produced, as we all know, the foundation-novel of As You 
 Like It, while Young translated the Diana of Montemayor, 
 where there is a hint of a passage in the Winter's Tah; 
 the version was partly finished in 1583, but not printed 
 till 1598. When one turns over the pages of a volume 
 such as the translation by Lewes, afterwards Sir Lewes, 
 Lewkenor of the Spanish Mandevik of Mi/racles of Torque- 
 mada, printed in 1600, one perceives one of the collateral 
 helps, which served our dramatist somewhat in the same 
 way and degree as equally trivial indications have served 
 other original creators. Sir Lewes, as Master of the Cere- 
 monies, had excellent opportunities of seeing all the dis- 
 tinguished foreigners, who came to the English court, as 
 part of his business was to arrange their reception at the 
 port of entry, and provide the means of conveyance by 
 road to London. This fact is illustrated by an original 
 bill of charges of 1609. Another member of the Lewkenor 
 family had in fact brought out in 1600 a sufficiently dull 
 and jejune volume appealing to such as wished to form an 
 idea of foreign countries without actually visiting them, 
 from which Shakespear would have benefited less than from 
 half-an-hour's talk with a practical traveller. Bi-eton cyni- 
 cally remarked that those, who lived always at home, saw 
 nothing but home. Yet he failed to enrich us in his books 
 as the result of his own experience, even if he has by chance 
 enriched Shakespear, who evinced his perfect appreciation 
 of sympathy beyond a man's own country in that sentence : 
 " Prythee think there's livers out of Britain." 
 
 Apart from persons of culture and from books, as I 
 suggest, the poet was befriended by those foreigners, who 
 settled in London, and attached themselves to the theatres 
 as members of the orchestra or as independent performers 
 on musical instruments or even composers of music — all 
 chiefly Italians. 
 
 A remark in a book, as in conversation, has often proved 
 
368 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 capable at the hands of a man of genius of an indirect or 
 ulterior bearing unimaginable by the writer or speaker. 
 No doubt, Raleigh and Shakespear met, and found each 
 other mutually interesting. They were fellow-contributors 
 to Englavd's Helicon, 1600, and possibly Raleigh could have 
 told us if the poet had really any share in the production 
 of the volume. 
 
 Summing up the possibilities and more in the way of 
 external aids to such learning as might have been beyond 
 his personal reach, the information at our command tends to 
 justify the opinion, that there was a surfeit, rather than 
 a deficiency, of stores in nearly every direction ; and the 
 dramatic series may be securely regarded as the fruit of the 
 direct intercourse of the poet with men and women of all 
 ranks and conditions in town and country, supplemented by 
 a moderate amount of desultory reading, which rapid study 
 turned to usurious profit. The manifold range of the stores 
 known as Shakespeareana demonstrates the wide variety of 
 form, which an idea may assume, or to which it may be con- 
 verted. The romancist, the emblem-engraver, the satirist, 
 the traveller, the professional man, the character-painter, 
 the country clown, the fellow-playwright, are only some of 
 the benefactors, whom Shakespear beheld round him, and 
 who served him, some by supplying him with the means of 
 improving on them, some with the opportunity of proving, 
 how difficult it was really to excel. 
 
 The diffusion of a limited acquaintance with the English 
 drama in the Low Countries and Germany, through the 
 visits of travellers and men of business, at least from Tudor 
 times, and through the performance of plays by our theatri- 
 cal companies abroad, more particularly when our political 
 interests were enlisted in the wars and dynastic struggles of 
 the seventeenth century, favoured the study of our dramatic 
 literature by Dutch and German scholars, and led in several 
 cases to the adaptation to Continental stages and other 
 purposes of pieces of which the originals have perished, or 
 are no longer known in their primary form. Instances are 
 
The Dramatic Work 369 
 
 recorded where natives of the Fatherland took back home 
 with them books and tracts, which are yet on the shelves of 
 public libraries abroad, and have even lived to acquire the 
 reputation of uniqueness.^ So far as Shakespear is con- 
 cerned, this aspect of the question is mainly confined to a 
 German version of portions of A Midsmnmer Nighfs Dream 
 and a Dutch one of Martin Slaughter's lost work, Alexander 
 and Lodwick, which exhibits points of resemblance to the 
 Comedy of Errors and Pericles, the former comprised among 
 the collective poetical works of Andreas Gryphius, published 
 at Leipsic in 1661-3, the latter separately printed at Am- 
 sterdam in 1618. The Gryphius volume also includes the 
 play of Cardenio, licensed for the press in 1 65S as the work 
 of Fletcher and Shakespear, and usually identified with the 
 production entitled Love's Pilgrimage, in which Fletcher, 
 Jonson, and Massinger are supposed to have had successive 
 hands. In Gryphius it is called Cardenio wnd Celinde, Oder 
 UnglilcMich Berlibete. The link between ourselves and the 
 Continent as regards translations or paraphrases into English 
 has been more completely traced than the foreign loans from 
 ourselves, as relations with other countries became more 
 intimate. But this part and aspect of the subject have been 
 sufficiently treated in readily accessible books. So far as 
 the early German stage is concerned, it truly seems to have 
 owed more to us than we to it. The obligation of our own 
 writers to conversational intelligence is in exact keeping 
 with that of the ancients, who similarly turned travellers to 
 account, and to those who did not travel or write, they 
 formed sources of culture. In the nautical terminology and 
 costume belonging to certain parts of the Tempest I am in- 
 clined to trace visits to the waterside below-bridge, where 
 seafarers might always be overheard or spoken with — a 
 region within easy walk of any part of the City, and which 
 
 1 Did Prince Otto of Hesse obtain, when he was in London in 1611, 
 that copy of Marlowe's Edward II., 1594, now preserved at Cassel? A 
 similar instance is known of the copy of the Patterne of pamefull Aduen- 
 tures, now at Zurich, which was bought by another German visitor to the 
 English metropolis about 1616. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 even to-day scarcely any man in quest of illustrations of life 
 and character neglects to study at some time or other; 
 and long before the drama just named was even contem- 
 plated, the poet had visited the Kentish coast, and had 
 possibly beheld a shipwreck with his own eyes. But the 
 " ballad in print," which he seems to say that he so loved, 
 did not yield in his time, so far as I know, any seafarers'" 
 argot. 
 
 The most signal example of the loan of a plot from a 
 foreign production, which has never been translated into our 
 language, presents itself in Twelfth Night, where we meet 
 with the same story as in the once and long popular Italian 
 work called the Intronati, of which, originally published in 
 or before 1537, there was an impression in 1585, a date 
 suggestive of the purchase by some Englishman abroad, 
 through whom Shakespear obtained particulars of the con- 
 tents. Hunter ^ has gone into this matter rather fully ; and 
 I see nothing to add to his account or view. But with GT 
 Inga/rmi, or rather Ingannati, it so far stands differently, in 
 that John Manningham of the Middle Temple, and of the 
 Manninghams of Kent, in his account of the performance of 
 Twelfth Night in the Hall of the Inn in 1601-2, expressly 
 notifies his acquaintance with the Italian piece, as if it was 
 one familiar at all events to persons interested in dramatic 
 literature, and if to the diarist, why not the more so to the 
 author of Twelfth Night, whether the latter was able abso- 
 lutely to master the original text or otherwise ; for Man- 
 ningham furnishes an abstract or outline. He describes it 
 as much like the Comedy of Errors. We are unfortunately 
 in the dark as to the precise circumstances ; but I hazard 
 the notion, that Manningham, if he was conversant with 
 the Ingannati, and even possessed a copy, imparted the 
 suggestion of treating the subject to Shakespear, when 
 the plan for a theatrical performance at the Middle 
 Temple was before the Inn. It is much more than 
 possible, that, as Manningham belonged to that Kentish 
 ' New Illustrations, i. 391 et seqq. 
 
The Dramatic Work 371 
 
 coterie, which included so many of the best families 
 in the county, Marlowe's friends the literary Walsinghams 
 among them, it was not the first meeting of the diarist 
 and the poet. 
 
 The theory that Shakespear, where he refers to the 
 advantages and even necessity of foreign travel, is reflecting 
 personal experiences, and has committed to paper the nett 
 fruit of his continental tours as a member of a company of 
 players, demands in my opinion more direct proof than we 
 at present possess or are likely to gain. From the appear- 
 ance in so early a drama as the Two Gentlemen of Verona of 
 the mind and feeling of the writer on this subject we are 
 the more warranted in concluding that here as everywhere 
 else the voice made audible to us through the centuries is 
 that of one whose mission or role was to bring all our race 
 into his service as spokesmen, and that in this particular 
 case hearsay has been transmuted into the semblance of 
 actual practice. 
 
 The resources at Shakespear's disposal, where he thought 
 fit to appeal for verifications or other aid in the treatment 
 of foreign localities, persons, fashions, and languages, were, in 
 fact, not only numerous and diversified, but more extensive 
 than we have, or are likely to acquire any means of ascer- 
 taining. From perfectly fortuitous circumstances, incidents 
 and expressions have been traced to the most obscure and 
 trivial origin, demonstrating that it was part of the great 
 writer's plan to make his brain a receptacle for every imagin- 
 able item which caught his eye or his ear at home and in 
 London. What was taken to be a signal illustration of this 
 ubiquity was the discovery in the borough records of Strat- 
 ford of the word aroint, which occurs both in Macbeth and 
 Lear and there only, dramas composed at the precise period 
 (1608), when Shakespear was involved in the Addenbroke 
 suit, and when he may have accompanied Greene the lawyer 
 to examine certain municipal papers. But there is a pro- 
 verb : " Rynt you witch, quoth Bessie Lockit to her mother," 
 where the form rynt strikes one as more provincial than 
 
372 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 aroint, and may excellently well have come to the poet's ear* 
 in conversation. There is the slightest possible likelihood 
 that he had seen the ancient drawing by Michael Burghers. 
 But there is a second respect, in which his grasp and storage 
 are even more surprisingly shown, and it is in the numerous 
 instances in which he has profited by a perusal of the Genevan 
 Bible. 
 
 Perhaps he knew little more of the sea-card mentioned 
 in Macbeth than he may have casually gleaned from Hood's 
 Mariner's Guide, 1596. The sentiment and diction of com- 
 mon life remain substantially the same from age to age. 
 Shakespear wrote : — 
 
 " There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we will — " 
 
 and not so long since an old Yorkshire labourer, cutting 
 some pegs for skewers at the roadside, explained that he 
 had bought them " rough hewn," and was " shaping their 
 ends." The poet may have met or seen such another per- 
 forming an identical operation. 
 
 The poet passed through two successive stages of in- 
 struction : the first during his school-days and rural career 
 prior to 1586, while he was mentally assimilating all the 
 folklore of his own and the contiguous shires, and serving 
 an apprenticeship to the drama by bearing a part in local 
 theatricals conducted by countrymen, who only saw in him 
 one of themselves; the second and final stage, when he 
 removed to London, practically as a permanence, and in 
 like manner and in a greatly augmented measure turned to 
 lucrative account his observance and receptivity. Nothing 
 was too trivial for him, nothing too subtle, nothing too> 
 comprehensive. 
 
 The means at hand for deciphering the sense of a passage 
 or allusion in a French, Italian, or classical work were ever 
 considerable, since the influx of foreigners into England on 
 educational missions commenced long before the time of the 
 poet ; and where these scholars came in immediate contact 
 
The Dramatic Work 373 
 
 with him, nothing could be more natural than that he 
 should seek their incidental aid, or that they should com- 
 municate to him details, which might strike them as service- 
 able. They were in fact the media, through which in many 
 other directions lack of personal knowledge was necessarily 
 supplied by translators, interpreters, and secretaries. It is 
 obvious that, before a man really started on a large under- 
 taking, he would make the book a topic of conversation, and 
 even place portions of it in MS. in the hands of those, whom 
 he happened to know.^ 
 
 The numerous quotations in Latin, Italian, French, and 
 even Spanish, which are interspersed in the plays, and indeed 
 sometimes with scanty propriety, only create surprize in the 
 minds of those, who underestimate the poet's opportunities 
 of mastering popular or favourite sayings, and procuring a 
 friend to overlook any passage of a more elaborate kind in a 
 foreign language as in Henry V., or who, passing from one 
 extreme to the other, forget how such a man, whatever his 
 deficiencies may have been at the outset, had ample time 
 during his prolonged sojourn in London among scholars, 
 travellers, and linguists, to supply all that he originally 
 lacked. The poet throughout his career and in one sense 
 {unconsciously, as it were) long after played two parts, from 
 which he solemnly dissuaded us — those of a borrower and a 
 lender. 
 
 We put a play, as it has come to us from the pen of this 
 artist side by side with the material, out of which he partly 
 at least constructed it ; and we are surprized at the contrast 
 between the one and the other. Much of the difierence and 
 disparity are of course asci-ibable to the superior skill of 
 Shakespear and to his nearly uniform practice of refusing to 
 copy what was before him in a servile spirit; but much, 
 again, has to be credited to the reduction of printed proto- 
 types to the dramatic form, where there existed peculiar 
 
 1 So we find Cotgrave the lexicographer communicating in an extant 
 letter of 1610, which I printed for the first time, with some one deemed 
 likely to be of service to him in his forthcoming book. 
 
374 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 facilities for selection and modification. Thus our poet 
 enjoyed, his marvellous faculties always granted, two dis- 
 tinct points of vantage : the antecedent play, which yielded 
 at any rate a basis, and the prose or metrical story, which 
 he was at liberty to use at his discretion. Many ground- 
 ■ works, themselves in their entirety impracticable, had left 
 the press, and were ready to hand, when he began to write. 
 It therefore follows that, when the dramatist started on his 
 career, the circumstances were more favourable in respect to 
 prima stamina than they had ever been before. I have no 
 doubt whatever that, where in lists of Shakespeareana certain 
 monographs incorporated in their books by Holinshed, Fox, 
 and Stow, are claimed as part of the poefs library, the true 
 fact is, that he used the material, where it happened to 
 occur, and if he employs the very expressions found in the 
 originals, it is because they were transferred bodily to the 
 larger books, and he did not think fit to vary the language. 
 
 In the almost daily publication of news-sheets and pam- 
 phlets relative to foreign affairs on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, in the continual chances of encountering in London 
 persons who had returned from the Continent and America, 
 full of novel and startling intelligence, the dramatist found 
 abundant channels for leai'ning what was going on every- 
 where; and the incessant output of popular ephemerides, 
 including those " ballads in print, which I love even too 
 well," proved helpful in their way. Shakespear, in his 
 absorption of every scrap calculated to fall into its place, is 
 amusingly illustrated by his introduction into a dialogue 
 of the stereotyped terms of an Elizabethan imprint : Cum, 
 privilegio ad imprim^ndium solum, and, in another way, by 
 his pressure into service, as a comparison, of " the face of 
 an old Roman coin." 
 
 Shakespear''s Library may be more accurately pronounced 
 to offer samples of the stores, which were at the writer's com- 
 mand : and much of them were rather the harvest of actual 
 observation. Before he quitted school, there was an actual 
 surfeit of advanced books of instruction or reference even 
 
The Dramatic Work 375 
 
 outside those of a strictly historical complexion. For the 
 market began about 1560 to swarm with an endless assort- 
 ment of manuals directly calculated for the use of teachers 
 of languages and their pupils, travellers, and continental 
 visitors, but from Shakespear's point of view full of sugges- 
 tions for dialogue and character, and likelier to have been 
 used by him than more elaborate undertakings, such as the 
 Civil Conversation of Guazzo, on which rather too strong 
 stress has of late been laid by an amateur. This family of 
 literary aids the present writer has elsewhere ^ rather fully 
 described and exemplified; with the compilers it is not 
 extravagant to suppose a personal intimacy on the part of 
 the poet. 
 
 Douce* long since entertained the view, more immedi- 
 ately in regard to the Tempest, that ordinary intercourse 
 might have furnished, or at least suggested, some particulars, 
 that are not to be found in any of the printed accounts. 
 The familiarity of the dramatist, through a conversational 
 medium, with certain subjects and authors, not available in 
 an English dress, may or may not apply to Rabelais, who 
 occurs in As You Like It, either pursuant to more or less 
 appreciative comments on him and his notable work in 
 London literary circles, or to a lost English version. Gar- 
 gantua is introduced into a prose history of Tom Thumb, 
 1621. 
 
 There appears to have been, both at home and abroad, an 
 usage much more in vogue than at present, of booksellers' 
 shops being made the rendezvous of authors and a lounge, 
 where a man might glance at a volume observed by himself 
 or brought under his notice by a friend, and the reference 
 library of Shakespear was, I surmise, to a large extent of 
 such a nature. There is an anecdote in print of a meeting 
 between the Earl of Southampton and the author of the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, when the former called at a shop in 
 Oxford to ask for Burton's work on its first appearance. The 
 
 ^ Schools, SchoolbooTcs, cmd Schoolmasters, 1888. 
 2 Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1807, i. p. 5. 
 
376 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 Earl of the tradition might have been the peer associated 
 with Shakespear or his successor, who came into the title in 
 1625, or one might have mused, whether in later life the 
 former contracted a taste for soberer reading than Venus 
 and Adonis or Nash's Choice of Valentines. 
 
 Instances occurred, where verbal communications mis- 
 carried in the sense, that Shakespear, to whose ears so many 
 different and conflicting items of news and knowledge were 
 constantly coming, could not invariably retain the precise 
 facts, or was the recipient of an incorrect account. Refer- 
 ence has been incidentally made to the enthusiastic notice 
 of Giulio Romano, painter, architect, and engineer, in the 
 Winter's Tale. He is described in the' play as a sculptor, 
 and the scene is laid in Sicily. Romano was not a sculptor, 
 and was wholly unconnected with that island ; but he lived 
 till 1546, and there may have been a tradition in Shake- 
 spear's time that this "rare Italian master" was a very 
 expert hand at portraiture, which was true enough; but 
 the statue of Paulina's mother was almost assuredly not from 
 his hand. Wherever the poet fell in with the information, 
 he misunderstood or forgot the particulars ; but that they 
 were oral there is little doubt ; and if one may argue from 
 the known to the unknown, an imperfect or inaccurate state- 
 ment by a friend or a casual acquaintance was apt to be 
 responsible for faulty notions about points beyond the 
 immediate or personal cognizance of the dramatist. Since 
 it has been contended that he resorted for his purpose in 
 this case to the original Italian of Vasari, all that can be 
 said is that, had he done so, he would not perhaps have 
 made the mistake. 
 
 The characters of Shakespear, drawn from life, as dis- 
 tinguished from those borrowed from books or hearsay, have 
 become, from the long lapse of time and the fundamental 
 changes of sentiment and usage, sufficiently archasological to 
 demand editors and scholiasts. But when these characters 
 were originally depicted on paper, and represented on the 
 boards, they were such as spectators of average opportunities 
 
The Dramatic Work 377 
 
 and powers of observation had no difficulty in recogniz- 
 ing and appreciating. The majority of the audience might 
 find it requisite to accept on trust retrospective historical 
 portraitures, emanating from authors whose writings were 
 beyond their reach, and, again, they might not always 
 penetrate the subtle and delicate processes of thought in the 
 speakers charged with the delivery of philosophical specula- 
 tions. But the traits of common human nature, allusions 
 to customs and beliefs, citations of popular stories and songs, 
 went home to all without the glossarial aid, which nearly all 
 at present require. The author transferred to the stage, 
 through the medium of his pen, real men and women, whom 
 he had seen with his own eyes, with a suitable deference to 
 theatrical demands ; and those who attended his theatre, if 
 they did not detect their own likenesses, imagined that they 
 detected people not dissimilar from themselves. They heard 
 the language, which was on all lips, and the feelings, which 
 all could reciprocate. They asked for no dictionary of 
 archaisms. It was, one may apprehend, the aim of Shake- 
 spear to divest of an air of antiquity, as far as possible, 
 all his impersonations, and hence sometimes sprang his 
 anachronisms. 
 
 All evidences adding to the already immensely increased 
 knowledge, that Shakespear faithfully reflects in his admir- 
 able writings the language, the spirit, and the usages of his 
 own age, are deserving of notice and preservation. The 
 ludicrous incident in the Merry Wives of Windsor of Falstaff 
 concealing himself in the buck-basket carries on the face of 
 it an appearance of improbability, looking at the physical 
 dimensions of the excellent knight, till we see that in those 
 days baskets were not uncommonly employed by porters to 
 convey home persons who did not wish to come under the 
 cognizance of the watch. There is an anecdote of Sir Joce- 
 line Percy, who was born in 1578, was knighted in 1599, and 
 died in 1631, where a son of the Earl of Northumberland 
 engages a porter to take him in his basket to the place where 
 the knight lodged, and where the fellow, on his arrival. 
 
378 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 cleverly eludes observation, and deters spectators by giving 
 out that his freight has the falling sickness.^ This gentle- 
 man appears from Jonson's Conversations with Drummond in 
 1619 to have been altogether an odd character. 
 
 Nevertheless, the unlikelihood of Falstaff meeting with 
 a basket of this or any other kind capable of forming a 
 temporary refuge for his person, so far from disappearing, 
 preserves its original vigour. 
 
 The critical (and perhaps somewhat vulnerable) rejoinder 
 of Jonson, that it would have been well if Shakespear, instead 
 of never blotting a line, had blotted a thousand, is in har- 
 mony with the persuasion of many, who peruse the plays 
 and poems (especially the Sonnets); and Cowley the poet 
 was of the same way of thinking. Taking the heavy aggre- 
 gate, there is an abundance of passages, which might have 
 been revised, of lines, which might have been cancelled, of 
 phrases, which have the air of having been insufficiently 
 considered; and the present point is the more remarkable, 
 since, on the contrary, there are hundreds of instances, 
 where the texture and language of a sentence, as left by 
 the poet, could not be altered without injury to the extent 
 of a single word. This inconsistency and inequality are not 
 easily explainable, because we do not know with any degree 
 of precision how the poet worked, and can merely surmise 
 from their character in what way the additions to the First 
 Folio were made from the antecedent quartos or from un- 
 printed scriveners' copies alike bearing the latest corrections 
 of the author. The doubt and obscurity are equally palpable 
 in the Sonnets, but on a different ground, inasmuch as we 
 cannot trace their history in their passage from the hands 
 of the writer to those of the printer ; and a farther diffi- 
 culty is made by the rhymed tags and certain current 
 allusions introduced on the spur of the moment, like the 
 mention of the loss of Marlowe in As You Like It — a 
 deplorable couplet, disfiguring that beautiful drama, and, 
 curiously enough, incorrectly introduced by Chapman, possibly 
 1 Thorns' Anecdotes and Traditions, 1839, pp. 65-6. 
 
The Dramatic Work 379 
 
 from recollection, in the Blind Beggar of A lexandria. It 
 is the transcendent merit of Shakespear at his best, which 
 throws into such conspicuous relief inferior passages, and 
 leads us to ask ourselves, whether they are due to the 
 same pen. The growth of experience and taste in such a 
 case as the present is a fact too obvious for discussion. 
 We have only to place side by side Love's Labor's Lost and 
 the Taming of a Shrew with Hamlet, Lear, and the Tempest ; 
 and a comparison of the Induction to the first-named piece 
 and the Players' scene in Hamlet demonstrates how the 
 poet chastened and matured his earlier comic or humorous 
 manner; and perchance the serious vein would have been 
 permitted to predominate to a larger extent, if the entire 
 succession of dramas had not been written with a primary 
 view to the approval and applause of an average audience. 
 We have better reason to be grateful than to be surprized, 
 that the dramatist steered so clear in his later and inde- 
 pendent work of the strong meat supplied to the playgoer 
 in his earlier days by a group of melodramatists, who seemed 
 to aim at outvying each other. It was a very arduous task 
 to combine commercial success on the stage with improved 
 methods and a higher standard. 
 
 We are all aware that Hamlet recalls to the Players a 
 drama — an excellent one indeed — which was never acted, 
 quoth he, because it pleased not the million ; it was caviare 
 to the general.-*- Our poet understood his business no less 
 than his art, yet he carefully and wisely avoided that error 
 of the Greek and Roman playwrights in depicting current 
 and local manners and thought instead of the general and 
 enduring truth of Nature. The writers for the stage and 
 even for the closet, who, like Aristophanes in his Comedies, 
 and Erasmus in his Epistoke Oiscurorum Virorum, too much 
 deferred to temporary convention and sentiment, are apt 
 to grow illegible, because they demand at every other line 
 an explanatory clavis. 
 
 The illiteracy of the poet, for which the evidence is in 
 ^ Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
380 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 my judgment wanting, if we recollect that the acquaintance 
 with certain points in history, geography, and science was 
 in his day, and long after, very imperfect, was, no doubt, 
 at an early stage, a piece of criticism levelled against him 
 by men, like Jonson, of larger academical acquirements, and 
 the object of the stricture must have soon become sensible 
 of its share of truth, and have applied himself, with the 
 aid, partly of books, partly of more learned friends outside 
 the dramatic world, to the removal or mitigation of the 
 fault, insomuch that here and there classical references are 
 introduced, as, for instance, in the dialogue between 
 Launcelot Gobbo and Jessica, in the Merchant of Venice, 
 with total unfitness. To rebut the charge of want of 
 scholarship the author committed the not unusual error 
 of ascribing scholarship to persons, who were not likely 
 to possess any, and on the other hand of indiscreetly bring- 
 ing in unsuitable quotations. Gobbo, as a Venetian or 
 Italian, very naturally uses the term Via! for Away! but 
 in the same speech he betrays his ignorance by speaking 
 of " devil incarnation.'''' The writer of the original Taming 
 of a Shrew, 1594, makes Sly the tinker in the Induction 
 use the words Omne bene, and Shakespear quite as infelici- 
 tously, in his version, puts into the mouth of the same 
 character the exclamation paucas pallabris — an incorrect 
 text of a familiar Spanish saying. 
 
 In As You Like It Touchstone is made to say: "I am 
 here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, 
 honest Ovid, was among the Goths"; to which Jaques 
 replied : " knowledge ill-inhabited ! worse than Jove in a 
 thatched house." The allusion is to the residence of Ovid 
 in Pontus, of which he wrote a metrical account ; but, as 
 there is no early English version of Ex Ponto, Shakespear 
 most probably caught from some one the piece of personal 
 history, and gives Touchstone the credit of knowing a point 
 in classical lore, of which he was profoundly unaware ; but 
 that he had acquainted himself with the original Latin of 
 some of the Roman poet's works we seem to have an indica- 
 
The Dramatic Work 381 
 
 tion in the early citation of a couplet from the Amores and 
 in the trace of a recent perusal of the Fasti in Hamlet, where 
 he makes the Prince and Laertes familiar with Pelion and 
 Ossa and Olympos, as naturally ascribing to them learning, 
 which they did not possess, as in his reference to Ossa he 
 evolves from his imagination a figure, of which no other 
 brain might have been capable. The comment of Jaques 
 may serve as a reproof both for the English poet and his 
 character. The definition of Ovid as capricious (the Italian 
 capriccioso) or goatish may have had something to do with 
 the goats of Audrey, and almost betrays such a man as 
 Florio in the way of a coach; the epithet honest is less 
 reconcileable. 
 
 Elsewhere he cites the comedies of Plautus and Seneca 
 as the best, without being fully aware of the immense difier- 
 ence between the two writers — at least in Hamlet, ii. 2, he 
 makes Polonius offer the somewhat vague piece of criticism, 
 that " Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light." 
 The former he perhaps knew chiefly, if not solely, from the 
 English version of the Menaschmi, 1595. The latter was 
 accessible to him in the translation of 1581, but has not 
 been credited with laying him under any literary obligation. 
 
 I trust, however, that I shall be able to induce many to 
 cross over with me to the other side, when I declare the 
 opinion, not that Shakespear was a scholar in the sense that 
 Jonson, Selden, and Drayton were, but that he devoted his 
 utmost energy and attention to the supply of any educa- 
 tional deficiencies by fertile contact with others. Jonson, 
 whose sentiments and views were apt to fluctuate in obedi- 
 ence to passing impressions, recorded his notions about 
 Shakespear, when the latter was no more, in terms to some 
 extent qualified, yet on the whole significant of his sense of 
 the possession by the departed poet of exceptionally high 
 gifts. The dramatic compositions, instead of being founded 
 on local or popular incidents, are almost, with the single 
 exception of the Merry Wives, which was influenced by the 
 association of Windsor with the Court, either historical or 
 
382 Shakespeab: The Man and his Work 
 
 continental, which may be thought to impugn the author- 
 ship of the apocryphal pieces. His own proverbial maxim : 
 
 " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin '' 
 
 was, in its usually accepted sense, splendidly exemplified in 
 the poet's daring disregard of all unities, and reliance for 
 success and approbation on a profound truth of insight and 
 an amazing intellectual fecundity. He, in common, according 
 to Florio, with all our English playwrights, made havoc 
 of history, biography, and chronology ; yet he produced 
 work of a quality which makes us lose sight of rules, and 
 forgive the violence offered on nearly every page to the pre- 
 judices even of a moderately educated reader. The ranger 
 over the universal domain of human thought and wisdom, 
 many of whose lines are familiar to millions ignorant of 
 their source, was not to be constrained by scholastic and 
 local technicalities. His dramatis personoe were drawn from 
 all sides, and became naturalized subjects of the British 
 crown almost as much as the actors who filled the parts. 
 
 It is to be well considered that, had Shakespear been a 
 scholar, even to the extent and in the sense, in which Jonson 
 and Chapman were scholars, he would almost certainly have 
 displeased and disappointed us by the display of the faults 
 and blemishes incidental to scholarship. Of Shakespear's 
 method this is predicable, that he never adopted any story 
 or antecedent drama as a whole ; he treated the material at 
 his command even in the First Sketches as a mere rmcleus, 
 which he filled up and finished in his own way, and so it 
 was in a larger measure, as was to be expected, in his later 
 and more independent work. He took a phrase here, a 
 sentence there, in a third quarter a notion or the ground- 
 work of a novel. But he adopted no more than he chose, 
 and not seldom altered even that. As far as his occasional 
 slips are concerned, many of them may be set down to his 
 too precipitate adoption of a channel for giving utterance 
 to the ideas, which all too thickly thronged in his brain. 
 We cannot fail to observe, how different is the text of 
 
The Dramatic Work 383 
 
 Romeo and Juliet from the almost undoubted and exclusive 
 originals. Broke and Painter : how Shakespear has merely 
 used his guides, so far as it suited him, and has avoided 
 their prolixity and dilation — how, in other words, he has 
 displayed here, as elsewhere, precisely that art and scope, 
 which in one of his Sonnets he perhaps somewhat disin- 
 genuously professes to desire. 
 
 If in certain places Shakespear approached a little more 
 nearly to the normal level by his higher flights, more fre- 
 quent and more conspicuous in some of his maturer work — 
 his tragedies, above all — he makes the rest appear to us by 
 comparison less brilliant and less exceptional. It would 
 not be very difficult to select from his writings specimens, 
 which in a detached form might strike a person unacquainted 
 with the merits of the author as mediocre or commonplace ; 
 and the same experiment applied to any great man of letters 
 would be apt to lead to a similar result. Homer sometimes 
 nodded, we are told; and the greatest minds occasionally 
 fall short of their highest capability. Shakespear in one 
 way is entitled to more indulgent consideration even than 
 a writer who, like Montaigne, subjected his text to careful 
 and repeated correction; yet this standpoint, again, oflFers 
 a saving clause; for, looking at the extent, variety, and 
 compass of the Plays, it is surely wonderful that, in spite 
 of the author's unfortunate licence to his printers, in addi- 
 tion to his failure to revise the manuscripts, there has come 
 down to us all such a monument as no other age, no other 
 country, can shew. Truly, as Bacon puts it, borrowing the 
 figure from his predecessor Gascoigne, a man's nature runs 
 either to Herbs or Weeds ; Shakespear's trended not a little 
 toward the former, but with a most rich infusion of what 
 Gascoigne classes as Flowers. 
 
 The general estimate of him by Jonson is not altogether 
 untrue or unfair, especially if we place ourselves in his 
 situation. For, if we demur to his approximate collocation 
 of Kyd with Shakespear, it is certain that Marlowe and Lyly 
 were inspiring influences, and that their work was not in- 
 
384 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 attentively studied by Shakespear for his own melodramatic 
 and mythological creations. The debt of one sort to Lyly 
 in his fairy scenes and songs is as clear as that of another 
 and less momentous sort in his Euphues} 
 
 We are enabled to look at the whole question in per- 
 spective, and to exercise a judgment based on the modern 
 canons of comparative criticism. Jonson was not so situ- 
 ated. He evidently entertained an exalted estimate of 
 the powers of Shakespear, and preserved to the last 
 his private friendship with him. But he equally knew 
 Marlowe, and had facilities superior to ours for measuring 
 the relative pretensions of the two writers, and for learning 
 the extent of the indebtedness of Shakespear to his prede- 
 cessor in tragic poetry. Considering that in 1602, when he 
 printed his Poetaster, Marlowe had been seven years in his 
 grave, and that the Stratford dramatist, and not himself, 
 was generally admitted to have not only succeeded to the 
 first place, but to have far outshone his precursor, the tone 
 and attitude of Jonson may be accepted as magnanimous, 
 particularly if (of which there can be barely any doubt) for 
 the Virgil of the Jonsonian piece we are at liberty to substi- 
 tute another name. Yet the magnanimity was surpassed, 
 when Shakespear (if the tradition be true) overpersuaded the 
 actors, who had been disposed to refuse Every Man in his 
 Humour, — at a moment, when its acceptance was vitally 
 important to the author. For the play is dull and prolix 
 enough, and the part assigned to Shakespear — that of 
 Knowell — was one, which he could scarcely have relished, if 
 there had been any choice. The prodigious disparity, which 
 in a few years manifested itself, between Shakespear and his 
 dramatic contemporaries was not only imperfectly evident to 
 the immediate age, but to many succeeding generations ; and 
 it is almost the case that his full honours have come to him 
 only within the memory of some yet living. 
 
 By what process the poet assisted his memory by com- 
 mitting to paper impressions, remarks, names, and other 
 1 See Notes to Love's Labor's Lost, infra. 
 
The Dramatic Work 385 
 
 details, which he might not require for immediate use, we 
 are only able to guess from the common habit of the time, 
 both here and abroad, where writers carried their tablets. 
 Montaigne particularly refers to his in one of his Essays,^ 
 and seems to have kept them by him, even, perhaps, when 
 they had served their purpose ; and Shakespear makes one 
 of the characters in Love's Labor's Lost, 1598, and Hamlet ^ 
 speak of them. They were issued in book-form for the 
 pocket, and although the majority of copies has perished, 
 eight London impressions are recorded between 1577 and 
 1625. They were of all ephemerides the least likely to 
 survive. What can be more natural and legitimate to 
 suppose than that the poet should give his chara'cter — his 
 alter ego — what he himself was wont to use .'' There is no 
 doubt that literary Englishmen formerly took these tablets 
 to the theatre for the purpose of making memoranda likely 
 to serve them in their work. They were part of the vast 
 heritage of modern Europe from the ancients. The tragic 
 poet Euripides is reported to have carried with him at his 
 girdle his tablet and stylus to assist his recollection. 
 
 In the Clouds of Aristophanes Strepsiades i-ecords his 
 debts and the names of his creditors in his tablets, and the 
 Roman emperor Commodus used them for registering the 
 names of his intended victims. The Friar in Chaucer^ has 
 this method of making notes ; and something of the same 
 kind has been related of our King Alfred and his handbook, 
 and of the good Queen Bertha of France, wife of Robert le 
 Pieux. A very beautiful cover in sculptured ivory of one of 
 
 - Book I., oh. 19. 
 
 ' Act i., scene 5. When the Ghost has told his tale, the Prince 
 exclaims : " My tables, my tables ! meet it is I set it down." 
 
 ' In the SonvpTuywr's Tale the mendicant friar is accompanied by his 
 fellow, who makes notes for him : 
 
 " His felaw had a staf typped with horn, 
 A payr of tablis al of yvory, 
 And a poyntel y-polischt fetisly, 
 And wroot the names alway as he stood 
 Of alia folk that yaf him any good — " 
 These Tables are mentioned by Decker in his Knighfs Oonjiinng, 1607. 
 
 2b 
 
386 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the fourteenth century was accidentally found in a hedge at 
 Bodmin in Cornwall in 1865. In 1622 James Howell sent 
 his friend Caldwall a silver Dutch example — one bound in 
 silver. A very considerable number of perfect and artistic 
 specimens of various origin is known to exist. So that I 
 hardly comprehend why Gesner has made the article figure 
 in his Gallery of Obsolete Inventions, 1565, when it was in 
 such general vogue in his day, and in the days before him, 
 nor is yet out of fashion.^ 
 
 1 In my grandfather Hazlitt's Notes of a Jov/rney through France amd 
 Italy, 1826, he mentions a fellow-traveller, a Spaniard, who carried his 
 tables. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Proneness of Shakespear to Farce — Its origin and motives — Prominence 
 on title-pages of comic impersonations — The Clown on the old stage — 
 Tarlton, Kempe, and Armin — Free use of the names of real personages 
 in plays — Oldcastle and Fastolfe — ^Parsons the Jesuit as a critic of 
 Shakespear — The Boar's Head — Dramatis Personce — Ariel and Puck — 
 Illustrations of critical indecorum — The snatches and fragments of 
 ballads introduced into the plays and their frequent impropriety. 
 
 When Shakespear began to write for the stage in London, 
 after a certain introductory training at home, at school, and 
 among his young friends and neighbours far and near, the 
 farcical element had long been an indispensable feature in 
 performances, even where the ground-plot was of a diametri- 
 cally opposite drift. This feature entered into dramatic 
 spectacles, when they ceased to be wholly religious or alle- 
 gorical, and was found to constitute the most attractive part 
 of the, entertainment ; a study of the earlier volumes of the 
 last edition of Dodsley will shew anyone the stress and 
 reliance laid on the Vice or Clown ; and the same experience 
 manifested itself abroad, where actors of English pieces 
 adapted for continental use, foreigners or otherwise, learned 
 to depend on the comic side, and to make that the leading, 
 instead of the subsidiary, business. Milton blamed his own 
 literary contemporaries for " intermixing comic stuff with 
 tragic sadness and gravity, brought in without discretion, 
 corruptly to gratify the people " ; but he was scarcely a 
 good witness, and Shakespear would not have made so 
 excellent a thing of dramatic composition, if he had had the 
 opportunity of following the admonition of the later writer, 
 who ruined one of his best pieces — his Lycidas — by a most 
 undramatic conclusion. 
 
 Shakespear, with his natural insight, wrote to some 
 
 387 
 
388 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 extent down to the popular grasp and call ; and I even hold 
 that he did so not altogether without a certain share of 
 genuine relish and complacency, an inheritance from early 
 rural associations, and indeed from hereditary sympathy ; as 
 early as 1592, when he could hardly have been much known 
 as a dramatist — certainly not as an original one, Chettle 
 in his Kindharts Dream recognizes his " facetious grace in 
 writing." A Yorkshireman, George Daniel of Beswick, 
 member of a knightly family, and himself a votary of the 
 Muses, testifies to the weight which the popular imper- 
 sonations of the poet carried in his case, where he says in 
 A Vindication of Poetry : — 
 
 " Draiton is sweet and smooth, though not exact 
 Perhaps to stricter eyes, yet he shall live 
 Beyond their malice. To the scene and act 
 Read comic Shakespeare — " 
 
 Daniel had from his own account, in his prolix effort entitled 
 Trinarchodia, 1650, witnessed the performance of those 
 dramas in which Sir John Falstaff successively appeared, 
 and describes the personal appearance of the fat Knight on 
 the boards, which had yielded him in bygone years sincere 
 enjoyment. This gentleman came into the world in the 
 very year in which Shakespear left it — an inadequate com- 
 pensation ! But Milton and Daniel were far from standing 
 alone in adopting such a view, for in his Worthies, 1662, 
 Fuller observes of him : " Though his genius generally was 
 jocular, and inclining him to festivity, yet he could, when 
 so disposed, be solemn and serious, as appears by his 
 tragedies," which last, however, our excellent author could 
 find no better term than mournful to characterize. 
 
 The bulk of our early dramatic literature, anterior to 
 Shakespear, or belonging to his era, is principally of value 
 and interest as illustrative of manners and customs, and we 
 should, no doubt, be poorer without it ; but the more finished 
 and thoughtful work of Shakespear, on the contrary, uniquely 
 impresses us with its profundity and permanence, combined 
 
The Dramatic Work 389 
 
 ■with an apparent absence of effort and what the poet him- 
 self terms "a property of easiness." One or two of his 
 contemporaries here and there approach him more or less 
 nearly ; but it is needless to say that none of them has left 
 behind him a literary inheritance a hundredth part so wealthy 
 — scarcely all of them together. He has not only drawn an 
 extensive and varied series of characters for our profit and 
 delight, but he has made them all shareholders in his own 
 catholic humanity. 
 
 The mind of the poet could scarcely fail to have been 
 powerfully impressed and influenced by the succession of 
 pieces appertaining either to the category of mere farces or 
 drolleries, or to the department of regular comedy with a 
 conspicuous share of humorous incident, which issued from 
 the press in the half century antecedent to his career as a 
 dramatist, and which were readily available in shops and on 
 stalls. Such performances as Thersites, where the bombastic 
 vein is paramount, and Jack Juggler, Ralph Roister Doister 
 and Gammer Gurton's Needle, were doubly serviceable, inas- 
 much as they not only grounded him in the rudiments of 
 his art, but shewed the class of amusement, which the 
 general taste demanded and enjoyed, if not as the main 
 element, at any rate as an auxiliary one. At the same time 
 we do not fail to observe that, while he lavishly introduced 
 humorous incidents, phrases, and notions into his work for 
 the stage, he never advertized such matter on the bills, as 
 it were, at a time, when so many dramatists and popular 
 writers were making humour their cue and cry — almost 
 wearing it threadbare. 
 
 His attention was drawn to Plautus by the English ver- 
 sion of the Mencechmi, published in 1595, although it is 
 doubtful whether it was of much use to him ; but at a 
 prior date an adaptation of the Amphitrtu) of the same 
 Roman author had appeared under the above-mentioned 
 title of Jack Juggler — a piece of coarse humour, which 
 must have commended itself to Shakespear, whatever its 
 shortcomings may have been in his eyes. 
 
390 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 The gods have, from the most ancient times, jealously- 
 asserted their rights. Seneca,'- speaking of the Mvmes of 
 Publius Syrus, implies that they wei'e calculated by their 
 language for the upper gallery ; but even Aristophanes found 
 it imperative to obey the immediate humour of the public 
 in a State more prone than England to fluctuations of senti- 
 ment and resources. But, save in the Oldcastle and Fal- 
 stafF episodes, Shakespear, unlike the Greek comedian, never 
 permitted himself an indulgence in broad and palpable 
 personalities. Shakespear here obeyed a traditional demand ; 
 and it was, we may be sure, no reluctant compliance. In 
 the Chorus at the end of the Second Part oj Henry IV. 
 we recollect that the author promises another play with Sir 
 John Falstaff in it as the foremost attraction. 
 
 A glance at some of the dramas in their original printed 
 state will satisfy us that the comic effects were a source of 
 great reliance, if not to the author, to his publisher — argu- 
 ably to both. This is particularly evident from the pro- 
 minence accorded to the fat Knight in the Merry Wives, as 
 published in 1602 ; and a second feature, which makes itself 
 conspicuous from the outset, is the presence of the conceit. 
 Romeo and Juliet and Love''s Labor''s Lost are termed " ex- 
 cellent conceited comedies " ; it was a homage to a different 
 and higher type of visitor ; and indeed the Merry Wives is 
 equally so described. The dramatist angled with two kinds 
 of bait : conceited comedies and lamentable tragedies ; and 
 where Shakespear so far outshone his contemporaries was, 
 one feels, in his happy reconcilement of sallies of refined 
 wit and creations of a splendid and exuberant fancy with 
 popularity of manner and form. 
 
 The discovery, which was common to the Continent, of 
 the vulgar predilection for what was entertaining rather 
 than instructive or artistic, accounts for the English series 
 of Drolls, which were the comic portions of plays altered to 
 suit the requirements of showmen at fairs and markets. All 
 that the popular voice demanded in A Midsummer Nighfs 
 ^ Beloe's Avilus Oellius, iii. 301. 
 
The Dramatic Work 391 
 
 Dream, for instance, was an interlude called Bottom the 
 Weaver ; and this, and others constructed on the same prin- 
 ciple, proved saleable, when Kirkman offered them about 
 1660 in a printed shape. The clown usurped the first place 
 in the bill. It was, to a certain extent, however, a return 
 to an early sentiment and practice. In 1576 the comedy of 
 Common Conditions is explicitly stated on the title-page 
 to be so named after the Vice. In his later compositions 
 Shakespear evinced a tendency to depose the clown from 
 his earlier rank, and to make him a subsidiary expedient. 
 
 This was a departure from the complete presentation of 
 a drama distinct from the case, where as in 1601 a scene 
 from Richard II. or Henry IV. was given on political grounds 
 in several parts of London, and equally so from the occa- 
 sional practice of curtailing a performance for exhibition at 
 Court, as in the abridged versions of Much Ado in 1613 
 under the names of Benedick and Beatrice and of Twelfth 
 Night shown in the early part of 1623 under the title of 
 Malvolio, or once more, as in the revival of Henry VIII., 
 about the period of the Restoration at a school, almost 
 inevitably in an abridged shape.^ 
 
 The early status of the clown in the drama necessarily 
 underwent many changes and vicissitudes. In the rudi- 
 mentary and transitional productions, this personage, in 
 his capacity as the Vice, is seen to occupy a rank pro- 
 portioned to the character of the piece, but to fill a part 
 superior to that, which was eventually allotted to him 
 under the more modern appellation. A few men of genius 
 lent special importance to this feature in theatrical exhi- 
 bitions both before and during the age of Shakespear, who 
 must have received from his father, as well as by way of 
 a general tradition, a notion of the character, as it prevailed 
 under some of the earlier Tudors ; and their performances, 
 although from their nature and object eminently and pri- 
 marily ludicrous, were equally distinct from the later per- 
 formance — almost in dumb-show in the days of Grimaldi — 
 ^ See Notes under Benry VIII. 
 
392 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 and from the still more contemporary and vulgar treatment, 
 which reduced the clown to a motley and garrulous buffoon. 
 On the Elizabethan stage his presence was felt to be essential 
 as a leaven and a relief to the more serious business ; and 
 there is a strong probability, that an actor of such a class, 
 who could hold an audience, was not only very valuable, but 
 exercised his own fancy and discretion in utterances not found 
 in his copy, still less in the printed book transmitted to us, 
 which is precisely what his successors have continued to do. 
 
 The contact of Shakespear as a youth with Tarlton, that 
 great master in the art, as it began to be understood and 
 practised in the Elizabethan age, was an excellent intro- 
 duction to a knowledge of the means of drawing houses; 
 and I shall be surprized, if I am mistaken in my theory, 
 that in this department Shakespear should be regarded as 
 Tarlton's pupil. But he lived to witness the practicability 
 of introducing to the stage, as in Twelfth Night, a chastened 
 type, a creation more refined than even in some of his own 
 anterior work. 
 
 Besides Tarlton, Kempe, and Augustine Phillips who 
 at all events occasionally appeared in low comedy, a man 
 highly distinguished as a comic artist was Robert Armin, 
 apparently a native of Cheshire, and originally apprenticed 
 to a goldsmith in Lombard Street, while Tarlton was keep- 
 ing a tavern in Gracechurch Street just by; the gold- 
 smith's assistant was led by this circumstance and a natural 
 inclination to change his vocation ; Tarlton made him his 
 adopted son, inviting him to his own performances ; and the 
 experiment succeeded. So careers are diverted ; so Shakespear 
 himself narrowly escaped becoming a Stratford alderman. 
 Armin had belonged to the Curtain in 1600 ; but in 1605 
 he was on the staff of the Globe; he so describes himself 
 on the title-pages of two successive editions of a tract 
 printed by him in those years, and he is said in TarUoris 
 Jests to be then (that is, when they were printed) playing 
 there ; and of course Shakespear and he were necessarily 
 intimate. He perhaps helped to console the poet for the 
 
The Dramatic Work 393 
 
 loss of his old Shoreditch friend. Armin was, as I say, a 
 man who, in common with Tarlton and possibly Kempe, 
 interested himself with matters outside the theatre. Besides 
 the piece above noticed he wrote in 1590 a preface to 
 A Brief Resolution of a Right Religion, by C. S., when 
 he was perhaps a young man, and in 1604 some forewords to 
 the account published by his relative Gilbert Dugdale of 
 the Caldwell case ; in 1609 he brought out a translation 
 of the Eight Night, Fifth Novel of the Notti Piacevole of 
 Straparola, under the title of The Italian Taylor and his 
 Boy, which he honourably declares in the dedication to 
 Lord and Lady Haddington to be the work of Matthew 
 Roydon, then probably advanced in years, who was living 
 in retirement in Sussex. I say thus much of Armin, because 
 I take him to have belonged to the later Shakespear circle, 
 as the elder Burbage and Tarlton did to the earlier one; 
 and there is the collateral and by no means unimportant 
 point that Straparola had English admirers and readers at 
 that date. It was in the same year, that the Children of 
 the Revels performed his History of the Two Maids of 
 More-clacke [Mortlake], in which Armin took the part of 
 John of the Hospital, the Very Fool of his tract on the 
 Six Sorts of Fools, 1600, and the supposed original of the 
 proverb, " As mad as a hatter." 
 
 There are many enough, who might plead guilty to a 
 relish for the humorous scenes in the old play, where they 
 are of their kind excellent, and next to them perhaps the 
 sublimely tragic impress us, yet in so different a way, and 
 so much more involuntarily. A line of distinction has to 
 be drawn, however, between the humorous vein in Falstaff' 
 and other characters, where the author indulges with gusto 
 his own propensity for wit and fun, and those rather tire- 
 some and weak tongue-combats, where he obeys the fashion 
 of the day, as in Love''s Labor's Lost. The comic and auto- 
 biographical elements are found in a thinner strain in the 
 later plays and the Roman series ; and we feel the loss. The 
 sublimely tragical and philosophical passages or scenes have 
 
394 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 of course their own splendid merit and irresistible fascination, 
 especially such conceptions as Hamlet, Jaques, Lear, and 
 even Timon; and we seem to think that we should know 
 sadly less of Shakespear, were we without the prince of 
 Denmark, in whose name and in the Sormets he so preciously 
 reveals to us his own personality. Yet in the Comedies he 
 was most himself — his saner, healthier self. Certain of the 
 dramatic works might be happily bartered for one or two 
 more pieces, unfolding farther particulars of the life, and 
 completing or verifying imperfect or dubious vestiges ; and 
 Shakespear might bear the strain, if a few characters and 
 passages were cancelled. 
 
 Side by side with the comic propensity and vein, which 
 had of course its professional justification, there was the 
 strong and even coarse melodramatic element in some of 
 the plays, especially those revised by him at the commence- 
 ment of his career, such as Titiis Andronicus; and here, 
 again, he responded to a taste and a call, which have 
 always existed, and which are by no means extinct ; and it 
 is a circumstance as noteworthy as it is honourable, that 
 he so soon weaned himself from the school of Preston, 
 Kyd, and Marlowe, if not of Greene and Peele, and 
 educated his audiences in productions of a purer and 
 higher cast. 
 
 The usurpation of the names of living personages, where 
 purely fictitious and fanciful ones might have served equally 
 well, is quite characteristic of the poet, and almost a foible ; 
 in one instance, in the second part of Henry IV. where 
 Shallow recalls his former associates at Clement's Inn, we 
 seem to have a medley of real and fanciful names; yet 
 Shakespear was uncommonly successful in encountering 
 strange patronymics, which have been not seldom casually 
 authenticated by counterparts in modern days. Provincial 
 nomenclature almost awaits an editor. There is in the 
 Merry Wives the physician Caius, a sort of droll, with his 
 Anglo-French jargon. The name is evidently taken from 
 a well-known Cambridge scholar and antiquary, who was 
 
The Dramatic Wokk 395 
 
 living within the time of Shakespear; but the personality 
 and character seem to be a composite invention ; the real 
 Caius has been thought to have been a Rosicrucian, yet 
 he had little enough in common with his theatrical name- 
 sake, and the latter is not impossibly a portrait of an 
 eccentric medical man, who practised at Windsor about the 
 time. Dr. Caius speaks broken English, but barely a 
 Frenchman's broken English.^ The Duke de Jarmany would 
 have probably had the same nondescript gibberish put 
 into his mouth, had he been brought on the stage. The 
 diction of Caius is sui generis ; as mine host of the Garter 
 puts it, " he hacks our English." Those — and there must 
 have been many — who had been familiar with the real 
 personage, were apt to feel some mystification at his 
 dramatic presentment, claiming a nationality not his own, 
 and murdering a language which was so. The selection 
 of Windsor itself as the scene of the play had more than 
 one plea in its favour. It was a frequent seat of the Court ; 
 the Duke had been invested with the Garter there, anu 
 there was the adjacent forest with its Heme myth. 
 
 A parallel case of the adoption of actual names is found 
 in the Welsh parson Evans, for it seems that there was 
 a curate at Cheltenham just a little anterior to the date 
 of the play, one Sir John Evans, whose burial is recorded 
 under 1574, and of whom the poet might have casually 
 heard. Dramatic licence seems to have been almost un- 
 limited in the absence of special circumstances. The play 
 of Arden of Faversham, founded on a terrible murder 
 during the reign of Edward VI., was played on the stage 
 when members of the family concerned were still living, 
 and when Shakespear, descended from the Warwickshire 
 branch, was on the ground to witness the performance, 
 with the authorship or recension of which he has been 
 rather hastily credited ; and there was the yet more 
 
 ^ It is to be regretted that we have no knowledge of the French 
 Doctor, acted by the Lord Admiral's Servants at the Eose Theatre in 
 1595. Hazlitt's McmvAxl of Old Plays, 1892, p. 91. 
 
S96 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 striking case of the dramatization in 1602 by William 
 Haughton of a much more recent crime, the murder by 
 Francis Cartwright of a clergyman named Storr, which had 
 taken place only in the August of the year named. A play 
 ■on the murder of Robert Beech, a chandler in Thames Street, 
 and A YorJeskire Tragedy were similarly presented without 
 ostensible interference or offence within the briefest possible 
 interval from the actual occurrences in 1594 and 1605. Once 
 more, the Page family, so conspicuous in the Merry Wives, 
 strike one as due to the close neighbourhood of the Pages 
 of Bray in Berkshire at that very time. 
 
 Henry VIII. is of course outside the present category, 
 so far as regards personalities. Its references to Elizabeth 
 had ceased to awaken criticism or action, when it was put 
 on the stage in the time of her successor. By his nomen- 
 clature he ostensibly set far less store than by his portraiture. 
 Where he has not bestowed appellations belonging to real 
 and almost contemporary persons, he has been content, 
 especially in his subsidiary characters, to bestow the first 
 name which occurred to his mind. Such an one as Petruc- 
 chio, in the Taming of a Shrew, was within his hearing 
 or knowledge when the drama was in preparation; it is 
 found in Gascoigne's Supposes, 1566 ; there was Ludovico 
 Petrucchio, who was concerned in a book on the Spanish 
 Armada, and Petrucchio Ubaldini, who published several 
 ■works at London and elsewhere about the same time. The 
 adoption of the name was Shakespear's, for in the founda- 
 tion-piece of 1594 it does not occur. Perhaps one of the 
 most casual loans of this sort was that of Gadshill as the 
 name of an ostler in the First Part of Henry IV., where 
 the actual scene is in the near vicinity. 
 
 There is the appeal to the less educated spectators in 
 the jargon put into the mouths of foreigners here and else- 
 where, picked up from intercourse even with real persons, 
 who are sufficiently numerous at this date, and substantiated 
 by the polyglot vocabularies and conversation-books, which 
 were found indispensable, as habits of travelling abroad 
 
The Dramatic Work 397 
 
 became more general here and on the Continent.^ The Eliza- 
 bethan Englishman possessed a fair acquaintance with French 
 and even Italian, nor was the Dutch language by any means- 
 unknown ; but German was scarcely at all understood, and 
 there were no educational works at that time devoted to it. 
 Germany was almost as much a terra incognita in the six- 
 teenth century as America or Polynesia, and the average 
 play-goer had the vaguest idea of a Duke de Jarmany, and 
 might very well imagine a cousin-german and a German 
 cousin to be one and the same. The popular knowledge of 
 Germany and its institutions does not seem to have much ad- 
 vanced since the time, when readerseagerly bought the Famous- 
 History of the Three Kings of Cologne, which passed through 
 repeated editions. The prevailing ignorance is illustrated 
 by the successful impersonation by swindlers of representa- 
 tives of some German potentate, as commemorated in the 
 Merry Wives. The strange word Garmombles may have- 
 been an imperfect grasp oi Graf Morwppelgart [Montbeliard] 
 or a distortion of the, name itself. 
 
 The name of FalstafF, and his association with the Boar's- 
 Head in Cheap, have awakened a good deal of discussion 
 and speculation. Shakespear, having abandoned the name- 
 of Oldcastle (Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps explicitly asserts, by 
 the command of the Queen, on the complaint of the Cobham 
 family), substituted another, which appeared to some a 
 thinly disguised form of that of an ancient and distinguished 
 family in Norfolk and Wiltshire, one member of which. Sir 
 John Fastolfe, was present at Agincourt, and had literary 
 tastes, as in 1450 he persuaded his son-in-law Stephen Scrope- 
 to undertake a translation of the Sayings and Dictes of Philo- 
 sophers from the French. The enlistment of names in plays- 
 is so often fortuitous or obscure, that there is a great diffi- 
 culty in tracing their sources. Here the poet found ready 
 to his hand the owners of the Boar's Head in Southwark,. 
 which really existed in the time of Henry IV., and took the 
 liberty of transferring it to the other side of the river,. 
 "■ Hazlitt's Schools, Schoolboohs, and Schoolmasters, 1888, p. 255 et seqq. 
 
898 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 where such a house stood in his own day, and converting 
 Fastolfe into Falstaff. There is a tradition that the emen- 
 dation, by which Oldcastle was thus superseded, did not 
 escape the notice of the Fastolfes; but if any direct objec- 
 tion was raised, it was not pressed, or was not successful ; 
 and Falstaff remained. The resentment of the Caistor 
 family might have been aggravated by the alleged cir- 
 cumstance that Sir John Fastolfe was credited with certain 
 personal peculiarities not dissimilar from his dramatic 
 counterpart ; and the tradition possibly operated to the 
 disadvantage of his representatives. The author of a Life 
 of St. George of Cappadocia, 1633, however, refers to him 
 as " a valiant captain, though on the stage they have been 
 pleased to make merry with him." And a writer in the 
 Proceedings of the British Archaeological Association for 
 1858 refutes the charge of cowardice on the field of battle 
 preferred against him in the First Part of Henry VI. After 
 all, perhaps, the least sensible proceeding was the bestowal 
 of the nickname of " Fastolfe's buckram men " on the seven 
 senior scholars at Magdalen College, Oxford, whom Sir John 
 Fastolfe had endowed from his lands in East Anglia with a 
 benefaction of a silver penny a week each.^ It was a piece 
 of academical slack-baked humour. 
 
 But the surrender of the original name was intention- 
 ally or otherwise left incomplete, for in Henry IV. Prince 
 Henry addresses the Knight as " my old lad of the castle." 
 As regards the name itself, it is that of several places in 
 England and Ireland, and even of a residence near Hereford. 
 
 Parsons the Jesuit was never sorry to have an oppor- 
 tunity of casting a stone at the Protestants and even at the 
 Lollards, for in a work published by him in 1604, when the 
 honoured name of Oldcastle had been withdrawn, so far as 
 we know, from the dramas, where Falstaff now appears, he 
 (Parsons) introduces Oldcastle as a " Ruffian-Knight as all 
 England knoweth, and commonly brought in by comediants 
 on their stages " ; which is hardly a correct statement, and 
 1 Hazlitt's Proverbs, 1907, p. 150. 
 
The Dramatic Work 399 
 
 the writer characteristically serves his own immediate pur- 
 pose by representing him as put to death for robberies and 
 rebellion under Henry V. Parsons gave a religious opponent, 
 who had long ceased to agitate the world by his sectarian 
 views, the benefit of the delinquencies, which are ascribed 
 by the Elizabethan playwright to a totally distinct person. 
 
 This confusion in the cases of Falstaff and Fastolfe, the 
 two Bardolphs, one a real historical personage, who died 
 about 1404, the other a fanciful creation of a different type, 
 and (in As You Like It) the two Jaques, appears to be a 
 Shakespearean idiosyncrasy. Such a thing is unknown to the 
 modern drama ; but whether it struck the original audiences 
 as an error or blemish is another matter ; the absence of 
 playbills rendered the fault less conspicuous. All that 
 transpires is that the Fastolfes were affronted by the resem- 
 blance to their name of that of a disreputable character, 
 aggravated by his association with an inn, of which they 
 were the owners. There is no proof of official interposition 
 in the latter instance. The Oldcastle difficulty had perhaps 
 become a mere recollection, when the drama by Drayton 
 and others upon the real individual was reproduced as one 
 of a series of performances before Charles I. at Hampton 
 Court in 1630. 
 
 Long before the dramas in which Falstaff figures were 
 written, Eastcheap had grown celebrated as a centre for 
 houses of entertainment. In the World and the Child, an 
 interlude, 1522, there is the following passage : — 
 
 " Yea, and we shall be right welcome I dare well say. 
 In East Cheap for to dine ; 
 
 And then we will with Lombards at passage play. 
 And at the Pope's Head sweet wine assay." 
 
 And in a very early naval song we have : — 
 
 " He that will in East Cheap eat a goose so fat. 
 With harp, pipe, and song, 
 Must lie in Newgate on a mat. 
 Be the night never so long." 
 
 Lydgate celebrated the locality in his London Lichpenny. 
 
400 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 The Dagger in Cheap is mentioned in A C. Mery Talys^ 
 1526, and still survived in the days of the poet. Shakespear 
 had no lack of illustrative material at his very elbow, when 
 he portrayed these festive and popular scenes; and they 
 serve as justifying documents. In modelling or portraying 
 Falstaff Shakespear runs prodigally and unctuously riot over 
 this miracle of bulk, and heaps on the huge and jocund 
 knight a pitiless avalanche of expletives, almost as if his pen 
 had broken away from his control. When he cast his eye 
 on the completed passage and picture, he must have chuckled 
 over his own stupendous volley of ludicrous objurgation, his 
 felicitous and exhaustive tour de force, that corrmcopice of 
 wicked raillery, that whole calendar of vituperative nomen- 
 clature. Falstaff, however, offers himself here and there in 
 a graver and soberer mood, and we like him little the less ; 
 he recalls rather in these serious intervals his creator, who 
 has chosen to make him the exponent of his own political 
 sentiments. When we look more closely at the character,, 
 as it has been delineated for us, we begin to ask the question. 
 What sort of man the dramatist desired to represent in regard 
 to his antecedents. The Sir John Fastolfe of history is 
 twice slightly introduced into the First Part of Henry VI., 
 where Shakespear may have met with the name in the course 
 of revising the original piece ; but Shakespear's Falstaff has 
 nothing beyond the slightly modified name in common with 
 Fastolfe, while, again, the Falstaff of Henry IV.-V., and the 
 Falstaff of the Merry Wives — the Falstaff Redivivus, as it 
 were — offer discrepancies, which render a rather puzzling 
 character yet more so. The theatrical conception and em- 
 bodiment are purely Shakespearean, and perhaps a little 
 overdrawn. As a mere soldier, who had retired from the 
 wars, and had the command of leisure to divert himself as he 
 chose, we could understand his associations and the attitude 
 toward him. But he professes to be of equestrian rank, 
 and this was then sparingly 'bestowed. The author, how- 
 ever, disregarded an incongruity, which was treated, maybe, 
 as privileged ; audiences discerned nothing out of keeping. 
 
The Dramatic Work 401 
 
 and Elizabeth was perhaps gratified by the commanded pre- 
 sentment of the fat knight in love. 
 
 The melodious appellation Rosalind was by no means 
 new to English literature, scarcely to Shakespear himself, 
 when he adopted it as one of the personce in As You Like It. 
 For in the cast of Lovers Labor's Lost the slightly variant 
 form Rosaline presents itself. But Rosalind had been ren- 
 dered tolerably familiar by Spenser, first in his Shepherd's 
 Calendar, 1579, and again in his Fa^ry Queen, 1590, and, 
 once more, by Lodge in his dull and pedantic novel, which 
 equally saw the light in the last-mentioned year. We do not 
 absolutely know what immediately induced Shakespear to 
 appropriate the name ; but as he seems to have glanced at the 
 pamphlet of Lodge, and was ostensibly indebted to it for a 
 general suggestion and outline of the story, the novelist may 
 be entitled to the credit of this contribution. The criticism 
 on Lodge applies only to his prose text and his treatment of 
 the subject, which betray the influence of Lyly, as some of his 
 vocabulary does that of Spenser ; but the l5Tical portions are 
 excellent. His book continued to have a sale down to the Civil 
 War : but after 1609 the stationer does not seem to have dis- 
 cerned any lingering virtue in the feature which commended 
 itself to Shakespear so long ago, and does so to us to-day. The 
 conceit had had its run ; but for a season it held possession 
 of the public ear, and even in 1604 it retained sufficient 
 fascination to prevail on Thomas Newton to christen a 
 volume A Fragrant Posy made of Three Flowers: Rose, 
 Rosalind, and Rosemary. The charm discovered in Rosalind 
 extended to no other characters except Adam Spencer, who is 
 a compound in Lodge of the Adam and Jaques of the play, 
 in both cases, especially the latter, with a measureless differ- 
 ence, and Gamymede, which rather awkwardly becomes in the 
 play, as it is in the romance, the designation of the disguised 
 Rosalind. The Alinda of Lodge Shakespear transformed 
 into Caelia, which was just beginning to enjoy a fairly dur- 
 able acceptance ; but he remembered his original, when he 
 made her take the name of Aliena in their flight to the 
 
 2c 
 
402 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 forest. The poet in those scenes, where he has portrayed 
 romantic disguises for some temporary purpose, found himself 
 in no want of precedents and prototypes, as the early litera- 
 ture of every European region abounds with adventures, of 
 which the vital essence is the incognito eventually revealed. 
 
 In christening other personce, the author may seem to 
 betray an indifference, and to have taken any fantastic 
 forms, which struck his fancy. On our ears they are apt to 
 jar, at least ; yet we cannot be sure that, uncouth as they 
 may be, they did not answer the object in view — the amuse- 
 ment of the occupiers of penny seats. The name of Auto- 
 lycus necessitates a few words. Shakespear, let us suppose, 
 had heard the hero and his reputed attributes mentioned by 
 his learned acquaintances ; but the mere name might have 
 met his eye in the Metamorphoses of Ovid which, whatever 
 may be said about Golding's version, he was surely not 
 incapable of reading in the original, and of which a copy of 
 the Aldine edition of 1502 was an early possession ; Chap- 
 man's Odyssey was too late for the purpose ; and most of 
 the authorities, which notice Autolycus, Athenaeus included, 
 were scarcely accessible in former days even to the scholar. 
 At any rate the idea conveyed to the dramatist of this 
 character in real life was singularly imperfect and inaccurate, 
 or he has merely adopted the appellation, in the same way 
 that he has adopted others, without any strict historical 
 propriety. But it is worthy of mention that, just about 
 the time when this person of the play was introduced into 
 A Winter's Tale, Coryat's Crudities had become known 
 in London, and there we have the mountebank with his 
 amorous printed songs. Coryat was by no means an un- 
 likely man, on his return from his Travels in 1611, to have 
 fallen in with the dramatist. His fame had been diffused to an 
 unusual degree by his numerous admirers. Yet a character 
 precisely cognate to Autolycus presents himself in a tract by 
 Thomas Newbery, called Dives Pragmaticus, printed in 1563.^ 
 
 1 In 1568-9 was licensed to W. Pickering a ballad entitled: The 
 pedler and his pacTce. As neither is at present known, it is uncertain 
 whether a ballad called The Pedler, licensed to R. Jones in 1570, was the 
 same or a different production. 
 
The Dramatic Work 403 
 
 The name of Sly, introduced as that of a tinker in the 
 Induction to The Tammg of a Shrew, and which is adopted 
 from the original 4° of 1594, was not an unusual one in 
 Shakespear's London. There was a John Sly or Slea, an 
 actor in Henry Vlll.th's time, and a William Sly, a performer 
 in the poet's own plays, of whom there is a contemporary 
 head in the Dulwich Gallery. Unless therefore the poet 
 had a hand in the nomenclature of the present drama, he 
 was not primarily responsible for the freedom ; but he can 
 hardly have had anything to do with so crude a piece of 
 work, which was perhaps suggested by the story of the Wife 
 Lapped in Morels Skin. There was in 1612 a Clement Sly, 
 who is described as a fencer and a gallant of London. He 
 closed his career at that date on the scajfold. But for the 
 name itself Shakespear had not to go beyond Stratford. If 
 the poet and Sly the fencer ever saw each other, he is more 
 likely to have acquired technical terms from him or some 
 other practical source than from an obscure Italian treatise 
 of 1610, to which some of the critics refer us. Tarlton was 
 a master of fence ; but in this respect he cannot be thought 
 to have been of service. 
 
 In the Tempest he makes the coarse vixen in the song of 
 Stephano bear the name of the heroine in the former play, 
 adopting, to be sure, that bestowed on her in the foundation- 
 piece of 1594, as though it was associated in his mind with 
 unamiable qualities. I have speculated, whether this feeling 
 had any reference to his sister-in-law Catherine Hathaway ; 
 but in 1594 a ballad, no longer known, was printed under 
 the title of The Cooling of Curst Kate; it was possibly 
 founded on the piece just then in course of exhibition. 
 
 It has been elsewhere indicated that Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern, two of the dramatis personce in Hamlet, were 
 not merely names of actual persons, but of persons living in 
 Denmark at the time, to whom, among others, the edition 
 of Tycho Brahe's Astronomy, 1602, is in a sense inscribed. 
 The poet can scarcely have possessed or studied the volume ; 
 but it is more than likely that he saw it in the hands ot 
 
404 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 some one, or had its immediate bearing on the work in 
 hand pointed out to him. 
 
 The vocabulary found in the interlude, which makes part 
 oi A Midsummer Nighfs Dream — Pease-blossom, Moth, Cob- 
 web, Mustard-seed, Squash, and Peascod, strikes us as fan- 
 tastic and improbable enough ; and so it was intended, no 
 doubt, by the poet. Yet there is no limit to the odd patro- 
 nymics encountered in various records, and lately I met with 
 William Pescod, a book-collector of the eighteenth century 
 with an ex-libris. Shakespear did not foresee this promotion. 
 
 Then, again, the peculiar name of Gobbo in the Merchant 
 of Venice makes one speculate whence Shakespear received it. 
 Giovanni Gobbo was a Venetian courier in the service of the 
 Republic aboutl517,and frequently brought despatches to the 
 embassy in London ; and the family or name survived at Venice 
 down to 1846 in the person of Angelo de' Gobbi, a clown. 
 
 The examples of critical indecorum and unfitness are not 
 restricted to the comic parts or to the less mature efforts, 
 for, by way of illustration, the fascinating conception of 
 Ariel in the Tempest presents, on closer scrutiny, a serious 
 want of homogeneity. Such a charge demands justification ; 
 and it is not difficult to offer it ; nor in a minor degree to 
 do so in respect to Puck, who is the corresponding char- 
 acter in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Both creations are 
 spiritual and superhuman ; and it is here that the incon- 
 sistency and contradiction lie, partly because in the delinea- 
 tion of such properties there must always be a difficulty in 
 fixing a limit and a need to be perpetually on one's guard 
 against the incongruous. I suppose Puck to be a develop- 
 ment of the Robin Goodfellow of prose fiction, a spirit 
 which, under different names, seems to have been common 
 to European folk-lore. In Act ii., Sc. 1, of A Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, and within a few lines, the poet appears to 
 portray a character out of harmony with itself; for he 
 makes Oberon, addressing Puck, to say : — 
 
 " That very time 1 saw, but thou could'st not, 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth — " 
 
The Dramatic Work 405 
 
 Yet, just beneath, we have : — 
 
 "Puck: I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes." 
 
 Where the time is a figure of speech, as forty seconds, 
 or four, would be equally appropriate and credible. The 
 delimitation of time strikes one as unhappy, unless we are to 
 credit the poet with a forestalment of the electric telegraph. 
 Then, again, where Puck reappears, having procured the 
 narcotic juice, he cannot at first find the object of his quest; 
 and a little farther, where Oberon comes on, and to him 
 Puck, the former has to be advised what has occurred. Puck 
 farther commits a mistake by applying the juice to the 
 wrong person. We have to be careful when we play with 
 edged tools. 
 
 When we turn to the Tempest and consider the part of 
 Ariel, it is not the same thing, and Ariel is as superior to 
 Puck as the Tempest itself is to the Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream. He realizes in an immeasurably higher degree our 
 ideal of a spirit, incorporeal, invisible, omnipotent : yet he 
 is represented as having been a captive and a thrall under 
 the dominion of a witch, whom Prospero reduced to submis- 
 sion; and the sole evidence of the source of the latter's 
 power consists of his possession of a book and a staff. 
 He is realized to us as a deposed Italian Prince, who has 
 presumably studied in earlier life and during his tenure 
 of authority the magical art, which enables him to win 
 the island from a potent necromancer, Sycorax, mother of 
 Caliban, to liberate Ariel, whom he makes his instrument, 
 and to convert Caliban into a serf. The latter is depicted 
 as a mere clown, destitute of the maternal gifts, yet sensible 
 of the wrong which he has suffered, and appealing to a deity 
 of his own for redress and protection. 
 
 But the key to the control, first of Sycorax, and then of 
 Prospero, over Ariel can hardly be said to be fully forth- 
 coming. The power of this spirit is more conspicuous in 
 some ways than that of his master, yet he is successively 
 
406 Shakespear: The Man and his Wobk 
 
 betrayed into servitude by a witch and an unprofessional 
 student of the occult sciences ; and the superhuman faculty 
 of the latter seems to be mainly limited to the command of 
 the services of a spirit, who is lord of all save his own free- 
 dom. In his conception of Ariel, Shakespear recollected 
 Puck ; and the mightier fairy combines, as we perceive, some 
 of the qualifications of Robin Goodfellow or Brownie. Where 
 all is imaginary, the licence is infinite ; but it must be nicely 
 adjusted, and the very luxuriance of the author's fancy has 
 led him here and there into discrepancies. Of these not the 
 least serious is that in the scene, where he makes this spirit 
 play on a tabor and pipe, unless we are to conclude, that 
 Ariel created a sound resembling those instruments. The 
 inconsistency, however, is not limited to a single passage, for 
 in another place Ariel helps to attire Prospero. These con- 
 tradictions are not unfrequent in Oriental literature ; in the 
 Arabian Nights the Ifritah is delivered from a mightier 
 power by a mortal, to whom she dedicates her services 
 thenceforth, and she farther announces to the Caliph that 
 she is a Moslem.^ 
 
 The presentation of Ariel in the song, " Where the bee 
 sucks, there lurk I," is absolutely incompatible with the 
 notion, which the poet elsewhere gives us, of the nature 
 either of Puck or of Ariel. A spirit may have no dimen- 
 sions ; we have no warrant for defining its aspect or com- 
 pass; but it must be affirmed and allowed that we have 
 before us in the two plays pieces of mythological invention 
 irreconcilable with each other. Even the most palpable 
 fable or fiction has to shew an oneness. 
 
 In Oriental fiction, where the operations of Nature are 
 suspended with Oriental despotism, these matters are better 
 managed ; the transformation or transition is instantaneous ; 
 the illusion is absolute; and so it is to a considerable extent 
 in the Teutonic folk-lore. For a magician or necromancer 
 there is neither time nor space ; it is pure volition. 
 
 His debt to anterior or contemporary literature for his 
 1 Ed. 1886, i. 163. 
 
The Dramatic Work 407 
 
 fairy mythology does not appear to exceed the barest hints, 
 and A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, so dependent on this 
 feature, betrays slight traces indeed of direct external assist- 
 ance, although the influence of Lyly has been put forward 
 with some show of reason. The burlesque performance, to 
 which the interlude amounts, was perhaps suggested by a 
 poem on the same subject from the pen of Dunstan Gale, 
 ready for the press in 1596, and not improbably printed, yet 
 not at present known in so early an issue ; and this might tend 
 to fix the production of the drama between that date and 
 1600, when it appeared in type. 
 
 The monograph of Chappell on the Music of the Olden 
 Time touches our subject at many points, particularly in 
 respect to the display of acquaintance with musical termin- 
 ology in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. But singing, accom- 
 panied by instrumental harmony or otherwise, was universal 
 during the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, as we know 
 that it once more became under Charles II. There Shake- 
 spear could work ad vivum, and might have under his obser- 
 vation day by day the means of elaborating and verifying 
 his descriptions. Nor where he painted foreign scenes and 
 allusions of such a class, was he so prone to misdirection, 
 since so many of the composers and musicians in England 
 in his day were either Frenchmen or Italians, or countrymen 
 who had acquired part of their education abroad, or, again, 
 like the author of the Polyolbion, a Warwickshire man, 
 prided themselves on the wide scope of their culture. Here, 
 too, we have to presume verbal communication, for I do 
 not think that there is any absolute evidence of the friend- 
 ship of Shakespear with the composers of his age, immensely 
 probable as it may seem, for we do not hear of his acquaint- 
 ance even with Henry Walker of Blackfriars, the vendor of 
 the premises there to him, and described as a Minstrel,^ till 
 1613. 
 
 ^ That is, I presume, a member of the Minstrels' or Musicians' Gild, 
 existing in 1472-3, and reincorporated in 1604. It was a poor fraternity ; 
 • but Walker seems to have been a man of some substance. 
 
408 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 There appears to be no satisfactory solution of the origin 
 or source of many of those whimsical snatches and fragments 
 which the poet, apart from complete songs or ballads, has 
 introduced into his plays ; and the reason for the diflSculty 
 and obscurity may be the natural fate of all such ephe- 
 merides, more especially, when they were not committed to 
 type or even to writing. " King Stephen was a noble peer," 
 " Then up he rose," and a few others, strike one as having 
 been playful inventions of the dramatist. But it is truly 
 hazardous to venture on any conclusion. Chappell's list of 
 tunes and airs, though very copious, is still imperfect enough, 
 and hundreds of these popular jingles have doubtless perished 
 without leaving a trace behind them. The same thing is 
 happening under our own eyes. It strikes one as being a 
 circumstance not quite without its significance, in respect to 
 the Stephen fragment, that in 1660 the History of King 
 Stephen, by William Shakespear, was registered at Stationers' 
 Hall. Of its character, as it is so far unregained, one can 
 say nothing, and the attribution may have been erroneous. 
 It is to be hoped that, as a whole, it was superior to the 
 sample in Hamlet, if that belonged to it. 
 
 The bridal reveille matin in Cymiieline, or what appears 
 to be so intended, " Hark ! hark ! the lark — " was one of 
 a body of compositions of the same class, of which the 
 Stationers' Register preserves a record, the actual texts not 
 having survived.^ 
 
 As a partial clue to this minor detail, I do not think 
 that I can do better than refer the reader to Dr. Rimbault's 
 Little Book of Songs and Ballads, 1851. There we may 
 observe among the varied contents several quaint and 
 scrappy compositions, some taken from old music-books, 
 and akin to those in the pages of Shakespear, to which I am 
 immediately alluding. 
 
 The art of song-writing, both original and adapted, was 
 of very ancient growth and of very extensive development, 
 
 ' More on this subject may be seen in my Faiths and FolUore, 1905, 
 p. 451. 
 
The Dramatic Work 409 
 
 even before the idea of introducing lyrical productions into 
 plays had arisen in England. The celebrated composition 
 in Gammer Gurton's Needle, " Back and side go bare — "" seems 
 to have been taken up by the writer into his text, for it 
 exists in a MS. older even than the reputed date of the 
 play (1566), and probably a considerable proportion of this 
 feature in works for the stage was derived from manuscript, 
 printed, or oral sources, some no longer traceable. Shake- 
 spear, in common with his fellow-playwrights, was not unapt 
 to appropriate what he found suitable to his purpose in this 
 as in other ways, although there are a few instances, where 
 independent parentage cannot so far be established, and 
 where the signal merit favours one conclusion. The songs 
 in Ralph Roister Doister have much the air of having been 
 Udairs own invention. It may perhaps be something to the 
 purpose to point out that Heywood in his Rape of Lucrece, 
 1608, reproduces as his own the lines : " Now, what is love," 
 already printed in England's Helicon, 1600, and spoils them 
 by variation.^ 
 
 Shakespear, more especially when he had acquired a 
 substantial stake in the theatres, to which he attached 
 himself, was obliged to keep a side-look to the galleries; 
 and hence arise these ad captandum features even in his 
 ripest work, proving his sense of a need for reaching the 
 less critical portion of the audience. Otherwise it would 
 be inconceivable that in Othello he could deem it expedient 
 to insert such grossly incongruous fragments as are put 
 into the mouth of lago, although Cassio applauds them as 
 excellent, and the author of The Knave in Graine new Vampt, 
 by J. D. 1640, refers to one of them with satisfaction ; and 
 in the Tempest, composed even later — about 1612-13 — there 
 
 ^ See Bullen's reprint of Engla/nd's Helicon, 1614, xxi, where it is shown 
 that the poem had been printed in the Phoenix. Neat, 1593. In EnglaTid's 
 Helicon, 1600 and 1614, it is assigned to Ignoto. But in the former edition 
 the author was originally said to be Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom it is 
 given in Davison's MS. list. This I mention to illustrate the uncertainty 
 of the parentage of such productions at the time. Were the lines Hey- 
 wood's 1 
 
410 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 are vestiges of the same leaven explainable and justifiable 
 only on the same ground. 
 
 That Shakespear lent himself to the popular appetite 
 for the humorous element, even when it was inappropriate, 
 we have no need to feel surprize; but he makes noble 
 amends by giving us some of the most beautiful and capti- 
 vating lyrics in the language, melodious productions which 
 we may be sure charmed Elizabethan audiences at least 
 as intensely as they do us in the book at the present hour. 
 The first song of Autolycus in the Winter's Tale: "When 
 daffodils begin to peer," is on the exact lines of some which 
 occur in England's Helicon, 1600 — a volume of the highest 
 interest, probably superintended by Anthony Babington of 
 Warrington, who has an introductory sonnet, and in which 
 1 am disposed to recognize the poet as more than a con- 
 tributor ; and in the structure of the dainty little composi- 
 tion, with which Twelfth Night concludes, we are reminded 
 of one or two of the roundelays in the same pure and 
 fragrant miscellany. 
 
 As I have referred to Dr. Rimbault and Mr. Chappell 
 for the musical side of this question, 1 may permit myself 
 to take a similar course in regard to Dancing and its inci- 
 dence to the monograph by Mr. Elson, 1901. The remarks, 
 which I have ventured to offer on the universality of the 
 taste for Music, are scarcely less applicable to the cognate 
 accomplishment, and I would also submit that here, too, 
 personal intercourse with teachers and amateurs, many or 
 most of whom would be in touch with the theatres, assisted 
 the poet in becoming a master of terpsichorean lore. 
 
IV 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF 
 THE PLAYS 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF 
 THE PLAYS 
 
 The tables of contents of the successive editions of the plays 
 are calculated to aflFord a misleading idea of the actual sequence 
 and of the varied circumstances, which led to the choice of 
 themes or topics. The apprenticeship of the poet to the ser- 
 vice of the theatre was occupied by a progressively influential 
 and perceptible hand in the revision or recast of a considerable 
 body of extant production belonging to a dramatic school, 
 which succeeded to that in vogue from the time of the earliest 
 Tudors, and sought to substitute for the Latin academic piece 
 and the religious drama or low comic interlude in the ver- 
 nacular the coarse melodrama. Shakespear did not stand alone 
 at the outset as an improver of the stage ; Marlowe, Greene, 
 and Peele, did their part ; but they did not, so far as we know, 
 traverse to any extent the rather large historical series, which 
 constituted and should be ranked as Shakespear's dramatic 
 juvenilia, not as they appear in the folio of 1623, but in their 
 original stage or stages of recension, and to the two-part 
 Henry IV. the Merry Wives of Windsor is regardable as a 
 special corollary. The order of succession is to some extent 
 correlative with the literary costume and atmosphere, which 
 were governed by the time of life and the growth of observation 
 and experience. The dramatic series have the appearance of 
 falling automatically, so to speak, into their places, and in a 
 large measure indicate consecutive suggestion. Setting aside 
 the folio of 1623, we first get the Historical Series, including 
 Titles Andronicus, but not Henry VIII. (which stands on special 
 ground) ; secondly, the plays founded on Italian plots, starting 
 with the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and intermittently ending 
 with Othello ; and to a certain extent concurrently the composi- 
 tions on Roman history due to the study of North's Plutarch. 
 Then there is the series of comedies, beginning with Laue's 
 
 113 
 
414 Shakespeau : The Man and his Work 
 
 Labor's Lost, alternating with tragedies, both based on very- 
 slender external foundations, and indebted for their excellence 
 and permanent value to original treatment. 
 
 The contemporary texts are classifiable into three divisions : 
 the quartos printed without the author's concurrence, and left 
 unrevised ; those similarly printed, and subsequently more or 
 less corrected by him ; and such as, having received his latest 
 emendations and additions, first appeared in the Folio of 1623. 
 Hamlet, as explained below, is so far peculiarly situated, that we 
 have to form a text from the quartos, 1603-4, and the Folio of 
 1623. 
 
 A Table of the Plays, which may be approximately correct, 
 follows : — 
 
 Titus Andronicus. — Slightly touched by Shakespear. Printed in 
 1594. 
 
 English Historical Plays : John to Richard III. Including the 
 Reign of Edward III., printed in 1596. This, in common 
 with the rest of the series, was merely revised by the poet, 
 and certain additions introduced. King John is mentioned 
 by Meres in 1598 as Shakespear's. The dramatist did not 
 see much worth adopting in the rough prior drama of 
 1591. It may be generally remarked in this series the 
 dramatist followed the notions of his day regarding 
 historical events, even then of more or less distant date 
 and of obscure character. 
 
 Roman Plays. Written between 1594 and 1608. Antony and 
 Cleopatra forms a sequel to Julitis Ccesar. The former was 
 licensed for the press. May 20, l608. Coriolanus appears 
 to have been in hand in the same year, while he had at 
 all events the plan of Macbeth before him. But none of 
 this group, except Titus Andronicus, which appeared in 
 1594, and merely received some amendments from Shake- 
 spear, was printed at the time. 
 
 Timon of Athens. — One of the composite plays, perhaps the last 
 of the series. 
 
 The Two Gentlemen of Verona. — We notice here the buoyancy of 
 early authorship so conspicuous in Love's Labor's Lost. 
 
 The Comedy of Errors. — Only part-written by Shakespear. 
 
Chronological Table of the Plays 415 
 
 Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost, 1598. — Written just before Christmas, 1597. 
 
 Love's Labor Won, or Much Ado about Nothing. — Not printed till 
 l600j but mentioned by Meres in 1598. 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 Merchant of Venice. — Licensed conditionally in 1598, and again 
 in 1600. 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream. — Written, as the Merry Wives to 
 some extent was, with the dramas of Lyly in his mind's 
 eye. Twice printed in 1600, by James Roberts, apparently 
 with the date subsequently inserted in an unusually large 
 type, and secondly by him for Thomas Fisher — the; superior 
 text. 
 
 The Merry Wives of Windsor. — This play carried on the comic 
 treatment of some of the historical pieces, where Falstaff 
 was introduced, and at the same time brought back to 
 some extent the fairies of a Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 The poet had in the epilogue to Henry IV. Part 2, deemed 
 it almost necessary to apologize for bringing on the fat 
 knight again, as he did in Henry V., where he gave us, as 
 he thought, the closing scene. The incongruities of time 
 and place are obvious. But it is a case of ben trovato. We 
 have to take such gifts as these and wink. The 4° of 
 l602 is defective. The first true text is that in the Folio. 
 
 As You Like It. — Licensed in l600. 
 
 Hamlet. — Founded, it is to be presumed rather than affirmed, 
 on an antecedent drama, of which there are casual frag- 
 mentary vestiges, perhaps on more than one, and on oral 
 information. The topic was recommended by the Danish 
 marriage of James VI. First printed almost completely in 
 1623; but some passages there omitted are in the 4° of 
 1604. It strikes me as a plausible supposition that the 
 text of l60S may have proceeded from the same hand as 
 the imperfect text of the Merry Wives, l602. 
 
 The poet is here profounder, more sententious, more 
 cynical, less florid and fantastic in his diction, and at the 
 same time less picturesque and imaginative in a poetical 
 sense. 
 
 Twelfth Night, l602.— Written for the Middle Temple, and first 
 
416 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 performed there. An adaptation seems to have been 
 exhibited at Court early in l623. First printed in that 
 year in the Folio. 
 
 Othello. — A survival of the once rather crucial question of the 
 contrast of colour, of which we see so much made in the 
 Sonnets and elsewhere. The play was presented on 
 All Hallowmas Day, l604, Richard Burbage taking the 
 name-partj and preceded Jonson's Masques of Blackness 
 and Beauty and the publication of Shakespear's Sonnets, 
 where the physiological problem is discussed. 
 
 Measure for Measure. — Acted at Whitehall in l604. 
 
 Lear. — Presented by the Globe company at Whitehall on St. 
 Stephen's night, I606. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew. — Licensed in l607. First printed in 1623. 
 Shakespear found the name Sly in the poor parent-play of 
 1594. 
 
 A Yorkshire Tragedy. — I think it probable that this may have 
 proceeded, as Mr. Bertram Dobell has contended, from the 
 pen of George Wilkins, and may possibly have been left by 
 him unfinished, and received a few touches from Shake- 
 spear, who was then still residing in London. Wilkins 
 died in the autumn of I6O8. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. — Printed in I6O9. 
 
 Pericles. — Augmented by Shakespear. There is a slight hint 
 of the cognominal Athenian and of a reference to North's 
 Plutarch. Twice carelessly printed in I609. 
 
 Cymheline. 
 
 Macbeth. — An outcome of the Scotish succession. See Notes, 
 infra. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra. — Licensed in May, I6O8. 
 
 A Winter's Tale. — Otherwise known as A Winter Night's Vision 
 in contradistinction to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The 
 play is attributable to I6IO-II ; it appears to have been 
 repeatedly performed in the latter year. 
 
 The Tempest. — Acted at the Blackfriars and at Court in I61I. 
 First printed in 1623. 
 
 Henry VIII. — First printed in 1623. Much of it is by another 
 hand, possibly more than one. 
 
V 
 NOTES 
 
 2d 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 I. PERSONAL HISTORY 
 
 P. 7- Local grammar-school. — Shakespear's master was Mr. Acton 
 (or Aston) or Mr. Roche. Mr. Jenkins was a little after his time as 
 a pupil ; but he may have immediately suggested the Welsh jargon 
 at a rather later date. James Howell carried his books to Hereford 
 school in a calf-leather satchel. Comp. p. 369. 
 
 P. 12. Place of Shakespear's marriage. — In Halliwell - Phillipps's 
 Outlines, 1886j ii. 364j he discredits the traditional hearsay emanating 
 from an unnamed old lady, who had heard in her childhood, and 
 informed some one in 1862, that the poet and his wife were united at 
 Luddington on the Avon, at that time a chapelry. But the chapel and 
 its register have long disappeared. 
 
 P. 14. Recollections of domestic incidents. — See Notes to Twelfth Night, 
 ii. 1, infra. 
 
 P. 21. Travelling range. — See Halliwell-Phillipps, Visits of Shake- 
 spear's Company of Actors to the Cities and Towns of England, 8°, 1887. 
 The visits were paid between 1697 and 1613, and extended over Kent, 
 Sussex, Essex (Safeon Walden), Somersetshire, Devonshire, Leicester- 
 shire, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Shropshire. The 
 poet did not necessarily form part of the cast in all these excursions, 
 probably in none of the later ones. 
 
 Pp. 24-8. The Lucys. — In a MS. Memoir of Lady Lucy, Sir Thomas's 
 wife, by her daughter-in-law, there is an interesting account of her 
 ladyship's agreeable relations with Sir Francis Walsingham, who, it is 
 said, whenever she passed him, although he might be busily engaged, 
 would put oif his hat to her, at a time when his house was the resort 
 of the greatest personages in the kingdom. She had been brought 
 up at Walsingham's or under his wardship. 
 
 This MS. struck me as imperfect at the beginning. At the end 
 was a supplement of a few pages. The title on top of first page was 
 added afterward in a different hand, and here the account was said to 
 have been wiitten for Mr. Moor. 
 
 P. 32. The Cliffs of Dover.— The fourth act of The Second Part of 
 Henry VL opens in Kent, on the seashore near Dover, a possible 
 recollection of the visit to that port in 1597. 
 
 419 
 
420 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Pp. 39-40. — Shakespear as an actor. — It has been stated that the poet 
 included in his list of impersonations that of Sejanus in Jouson's play 
 of that name, produced in 1603, which involved Jonson in trouble, and 
 in which, curiously enough, there had been a second hand, perhaps 
 Chapman. But a perusal of the drama, apart from any supposed 
 political reflections, leaves a sense of level dulness on the mind — at 
 least on mine, and I cannot help feeling that Shakespear was unlucky 
 in his choice or acceptance of parts, and must have viewed with relief 
 the severance of his connection with a side of the pursuit ill-suited to 
 his bent. In Jonson's two productions, where his friend was in the 
 cast, there is, as Shakespear may have well felt, an absence of spring, 
 subtlety, and brilliance. 
 
 I may refer the reader to the curious anecdote respecting the poet 
 and the queen printed in Shakespear s Library, 1875, Part 2, i. 400-1 ; 
 but it has much the air of a hen trovato. 
 
 P. 50. The Claptons. — Sir Hugh Clopton owned New Place as early 
 as 1483, but does not appear to have always resided there. He was of 
 the Mercers' Gild, and, dying in London, was buried at St. Margaret's, 
 Lothbury. 
 
 P. 86. Piked shoes. — See my Livery Companies, 1892, p. 466, for a 
 very curious extract from Stow on this subject. Comp. p. 465. 
 
 P. 104. Autographic remains. — The Marlowes of Canterbury, who 
 appear to have occupied a somewhat parallel social and educational 
 position to the Shakespears, also employed a mark. See Ingram, 
 Christopher Marlowe and his Associates, 1904, pp. 266-9. 
 
 P. 108. Signature of the poet in Florio's Montaigne. — While Sir F. 
 Madden in his pamphlet, 1838, improperly completed the W of the 
 Christian name, which in the original is faulty, in a facsimile pre- 
 fixed to Dyce's Shakespear, 1875, the significant and material marks 
 in the folds of the same letter are suppressed. 
 
 P. 116. — Dr. Young, Bishop of Rochester, seems to have appointed 
 Spenser his secretary immediately on his election to the see, to which 
 he was nominated only 31 Jan. 1577-8. 
 
 P. 142. — Thomas Greene the so-called cousin. There is an illustra- 
 tion of the lax way in which this term was formerly used, in Much Ado 
 about Nothing, ii. 1 : — 
 
 " Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly. 
 Beat. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight." 
 
 P. 146. Richard IIL and Burhage. — Exactly the same thing is 
 i-elated in a recent Life of the famous singer Garcia in reference to one 
 of his distinguished pupils. But see p. 322 for the habitual identifica- 
 tion by female spectators of the performers with the individuals. This 
 surrender of personality is true art ; the converse is more familiar. 
 
 P. 150, Tarlton. — In Pigges Goranto, 1642, the popular rhyme : — 
 " The King of France went up the hill — " 
 
Notes 421 
 
 of which there are varying versions, is described as " Old Tarlton's 
 Song." One Oliver Pygge published in 1589 a tracts containing 
 Meditations on the Spanish Armada ; if the title of the tract above- 
 cited intends the same person, he was Tarlton's contemporary. 
 
 A ballad entitled, " An Excellent Medley," belonging to the seven- 
 teenth century, is directed to be sung to the tune of" Tarlton's Medley." 
 
 P. 150. Tarlton's own way. — Agreeably to the Horatian aphorism, 
 it was also the late Mr. Toole's. I have seen him sing a humorous 
 song on the stage with the ostensible copy held before him, and at the 
 conclusion he turned the paper round to the house, and it exhibited 
 only a caricature. 
 
 P. 155. Biohert Davenant. — See a very interesting account of his 
 friendship with Sir John Suckling the poet in my edition of Suckling, 
 1892, xxxiv.-v. Through such a channel the latter may have derived 
 some particulars of Shakespear, for whom he entertained a great 
 admiration. In a full-length portrait by Vandyke, formerly in the 
 possession of the family, he is represented holding a copy of Shakespear's 
 Works. This picture was seen by Aubrey at Suckling's sister Lady South- 
 cott's house in Bishopsgate Street. It is the one engraved by Vertue. 
 
 Suckling marked his respect for Shakespear in a rather odd way by 
 writing some supplementary stanzas to Lucrece. 
 
 P. 158. Head of the Dramatist. — The portrait, presumably also by 
 Burbage, exhibiting the poet in his last moments, has the appearance 
 of having been executed, while the dying man was propped up in bed. 
 
 The verses painted on a second board, and originally gilt, are as 
 follow : — 
 
 " How speake thatte Browe soe pensive yet serene 
 The Incidde Teare juste startynge to thine eyne 
 Dost thou nowe dwelle onne Romeo's ill starr'd love 
 Or doth the tortured Moore thy passion move 
 None so. Alasse no more shall phantsies creatures 
 Adumbrate or enshroude the Poetes Features 
 To realle Illes hys Frame nowe falles a Preye 
 He feels approache the EVninge of LyfFes Daye — 
 And e'er another Dawne arise to cheere 
 Lyfes busie Sonnes may droppe poore Wil Shakspere 
 Sic cecinit Cygnus Avoniae et obiit 23 Aprilis 1616 jET 52." 
 
 In Burbage's day there were special manuals of instruction in the art 
 of engraving and gilding on various substances from 1583 onward. 
 
 P. 160. Dearth of biographical particulars. — The purely casual or 
 desultory manner, in which biographical points relative to our early 
 writers arise, has been recently illustrated by the resemblance noted 
 by an Annandale man to the physiognomy of the Scot of those parts 
 in the portrait of Jonson, who told Drummond of Hawthornden in 1619 
 that his grandfather came from Carlisle, and (he thought) previously 
 from Annandale. It were much to be desired, that we could recover some 
 more intimate traits of Shakespear — his varied phases of expression, his 
 speaking tones, his gesture, his features in gladness and in sorrow. 
 
422 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 p. 192. Clapham's Narcissus, 1591. — This poem may have suggested 
 the very dull and foolish Twelfth-Night Merriment performed in the 
 Hall of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1602. Comp. my Manual of Old 
 Plays, 1892, pp. 89 and 163. 
 
 P. 315. Pye near Bishopsgate. — Comp. Hazlitt's Livery Companies of 
 London, 1892, p. 175. 
 
 II. THE LYRICAL WORK 
 
 P. 193. Venus and Adonis and Archbishop Whitgift. — There does 
 not appear to he a copy of either quarto, 1593-4, at Lambeth, pursuant 
 to the special licence, and the question arises, whether the licentious 
 cast of the poem led on inspection not only to the failure to retain it 
 in the library, but to a partial suppression, since of the first only a 
 single copy is traceable and of the second not more than three. The 
 Lucrece of 1594 is almost equally rare, only six perfect copies having 
 occurred to notice. The bibliographical history of other Elizabethan 
 volumes, such as Chute's Beauty Dishonoured, 1593, has yet to be ascer- 
 tained, where not more than a copy or two has come down to us, while 
 of other books of a poetical character of the same period there is a 
 fairly ample survival. Compare what I mention at p. 193 of the 
 shortly subsequent action of Whitgift in respect to other equivocal 
 publications. 
 
 The Marchioness of Newcastle, in the Second Part of Lovers 
 Adventures, Sc. 29, has the following passage, which also seems to 
 point to Drayton's Idcea : — 
 
 " Lady Amorous. Faith he appears like Adonas. 
 
 Lady Wagtail. Did you ever see Adonas ? 
 
 Lady Amorous. No, but I have heard the Poets describe him. 
 
 Lady Wagtail. Venus and Adonas are only two poetical Ideas, or 
 two Ideas in poetical brains. 
 
 Lady Amorous. Why, Ideas hath no names. 
 
 Lady Wagtail. O yes, for Poets christens their Ideas with names, 
 as orderly as Christian Fathers doth their children " — 
 
 The preceding passage is in a way curious, as it illustrates the 
 ignorance or negligence of a woman of rank and letters, who could 
 scribble with much facility any amount of twaddle and ribaldry, and 
 had the shallowest store of learning and taste. If her ladyship pro- 
 nounced Adonis as she spelled it, the effect must have been odd. 
 
 P. 200. Lucrece. — Shakespear, in the edition of this poem published 
 by himself in 1694, entitles it simply Lucrece. Why do the Editors 
 presume to call it the Rape of Lucrece ? Insufficient stress has been 
 laid on the peculiar interest and significance of the Argument prefixed 
 to this work. It was almost certainly written by Shakespear with a 
 copy of North's Plutarch before him, and it is the sole attempt on his 
 part to do anything of the kind, as well as his only prose essay. It 
 is of course a mere rough abstract without any claim to thoughtful 
 composition. 
 
Notes 423 
 
 Apart from the treatment of the story as he found it related in 
 hooksj the poet was apt to meet with the name as a printer's sign 
 on the very numerous publications of Thomas Berthelet and Thomas 
 Purfoot, sometimes accompanied by the woodcut representing Lucretia 
 Romana ; and this may have operated as a suggestion. 
 
 The story lingered fairly long in the poet's memory^ and in Twelfth 
 Night, written in 1602, we have the Lucrece knife and seal (ii. 6), as in 
 Macbeth, ii. 1, written just about the same period, we meet with a 
 second reference. 
 
 P. 205. Sense of the prospect, which levels all distinctions. — Comp. p. 86. 
 The same vein of thought is found in Measure for Measure, iii. 3, and 
 in Cymheline, iv. 4. 
 
 P. 225. I might have added the Smiths of Bidborough, Kent. 
 Sir Thomas Smith published in 1606 two editions of his Voiage and 
 Entertainment into Rushia. Also Thomas Wotton of Boughton- 
 Malherbe (1621-85). 
 
 P. 237, Note. — Malone cut out of a document at Stratford the 
 original signature of John Hall, Shakespear's son-in-law, and inserted 
 it in his copy of the Observations, which did not accompany the other 
 books to Oxford. But it has been since detached and restored. 
 
 P. 249. Richard Grafton. — It appears from a monograph by Mr. 
 J. A. Kingdon, 1895, that Grafton and Thomas Poyntz, Citizens and 
 Orocers of London, had suffered loss and danger, in common with 
 Tyndale, Coverdale and others, in their exertions for the propagation 
 of the Bible in English. From an extant document it appears that the 
 persons apprehended for complicity in the plot were distributed over no 
 fewer than eight London prisons : the Tower, Newgate, the Marshalsea, 
 the Guard House, the Fleet, the two counters in Wood Street and the 
 Poultry, and Ludgate. 
 
 P. 262. With a bare bodkin.— See my Randolph, 1875, p. 202, and 
 the note. 
 
 Sonnets. — L "From fairest creatures we desire increase.'' 
 
 So, in the Epistle before Greene's Menaphon, 1589, Nash calls 
 Peele's Arraignment of Paris, 1584, his "first increase," i.e., offspring. 
 This opening line touches the voluptuous side of cruelty ; it is one, 
 which Shakespear at thirty-one was more likely to write than Barn- 
 field as a youth eleven years his junior. 
 
 Comp. the cognate sentiment in Sonnet 41 : 
 
 " Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd " — 
 
 And, bearing in mind that the same ardent, pitiless, and almost 
 libidinous, passion lies at the base of the Lucrece, we become at liberty 
 to ascribe all three productions to one period and one bias. 
 
 V. " Those hours that with gentle work did frame." 
 Hours is a dissyllable — houres. 
 
 XXIII. This, with Nos. 17, 29 and 80, seems to form a group of 
 connected utterances of a more or less realistic stamp, approaching 
 self-valuation variously couched. 
 
424 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 XXIX. Comp. the line, rather redoleat of a specious humility : 
 
 " Desiring this man's art and that man's scope " — 
 
 with wlat I say about the poetical rival at pp. 263-6. And, again, the 
 serenade in Oymbeline, ii. 3, with the lines in the same stanza : — 
 
 " Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate" — 
 
 where we have the primum stamen of the production in the play and 
 an argument for the authorship of the Songs by the poet. Yet, as 
 regards the passage in the Sonnet, the line may have been traced, 
 before his maturer inspii-ation came to him. 
 
 XLI. ". . . . my seat forbear.'' 
 
 Read thy suit. The last two lines of the quatorzain are obscurely 
 worded, and scarcely surrender to a first perusal, owing to the presence 
 of three persons of the drama. 
 
 L. " How heavy do I journey on my way " — 
 
 In 1739 it was usual for those desirous of travelling from Glasgow 
 to London to ride on horseback, and until they reached Grantham, 
 there was no turnpike road. The whole traffic passed over a narrow 
 causeway. Oliver's History of the Holy Trinity Guild, Sleaford, 1837, 
 p. 46. Shakespear's son-in-law Hall rode on horseback long distances 
 — as much as 40 miles— to see distinguished patients ; and the poet 
 himself in his youth knew what it was to cover a good deal of ground 
 afoot, as he seems to recollect in that little catch in A Winter's Tale, 
 "Jog on, jog on, the footpath way." Did he and his two sureties 
 trudge in 1582 from Stratford to Worcester on that matrimonial 
 errand ? 
 
 CVII. "And peace proclaims olives of endless age." 
 
 Read : " And peace proclaims an olive of endless age." 
 The text, as it stands, is neither sense nor metre, and the point 
 seems to be that the new Stuart line represents a perpetual olive. A 
 succession of olives would not answer to the context. In the Cam- 
 bridge verses on Cromwell, 4°, 1654, the Protector is described as 
 Oliva Pacis. 
 
 CXXVII. The undisciplined and immature power and taste 
 bespeak early composition prior to the appearance of Pembroke and 
 the Fittons on the scene. Mary Fitton, at all events, was a fair 
 woman, and would not answer to the dark lady, who here and there 
 crosses the stage, as it were, long before Jonson thought of his Masque 
 of Blackness. 
 
 CLII. In act thy hed-vow broke, and new faith torn. 
 
 I have suggested a side-look here to his own case and the possi- 
 bility of the disclosure about 1596 of an intrigue in his absence 
 between his wife and a third party, leading to a permanent rupture. 
 
 A Lover's Complaint. Comp. Current Notes, June, 1855, p. 48, for 
 an illustration of the ancient method of sealing letters in the 7th 
 stanza. 
 
Notes 425 
 
 III. THE DRAMATIC WORK 
 
 ROMAN OR CLASSICAL PLAYS 
 (1594-1608) 
 
 The insinuations by Jonson, and possibly by others, of his want of 
 scholarship, and the appearance in 1579 of the English version of 
 Plutarch's Lives, were doubtless contributory agencies in leading 
 Shakespear to turn his attention to a field, which he had so far only 
 slightly touched in his lyrics and perhaps in Titus Andronicus. The 
 second edition of the Plutarch came in 1595 from the press of his 
 friend and countryman Richard Field, who had published the Veniis 
 and Adonis two years prior ; it is impossible to say with confidence, 
 that such was the case ; yet it is an extremely plausible idea that the 
 poet, frequenting the shop or office of Field, may have seen there the 
 book, of which he has made so free an use^ and even have had an 
 early copy, given to him. Field brought out another impression in 
 1603, which would be quite early enough for the plays, and nearer to 
 the period of their composition, while, on the other hand, the com- 
 mercial dealings of the poet with Field do not seem to have extended 
 beyond 1596. The point is, after all, of the slightest possible conse- 
 quence ; but undue stress has been laid on it by one or two Shake- 
 spearean students ; and I must go so far as to plead (i.) that the use by 
 Shakespear of an edition of the Lives printed in 1612 is barred by the 
 generally admitted circumstance that at that date the poet had com- 
 pleted the series, as well as The Tempest, and was preparing to leave 
 London for ever ; (ii.) that he had turned his attention, at least in an 
 editorial capacity, to this class of subject — perhaps as early as 1593-4, 
 when Titus Andronicus came from the press ; and that in Lucrece, 
 1594, the Argument appears to be derived from Plutarch, where he 
 also got the name Leonato in Much Ado about Nothing; (iii.) that before 
 1601 Julius GcBsar was in hand ; and (iv.) that early in 1608 Antony and 
 Cleopatra was entered at Stationers' Hall, while in Ooriolanus there is 
 the apparent chronological clue in the passage reminiscent of the death 
 of the writer's mother in September, 1608. There has been a disposi- 
 tion to suppose that Shakespear used for the last drama Fulbecke's 
 Historical Collection, 1601. I must take this opportunity of noting, 
 that 1 see no sufficient ground for attaching importance to any rela- 
 tions between Shakespear and VautroUier the printer in Blackfriars, 
 who died early in 1588, and whose daughter married Richard Field. 
 
 The present series (including Timon of Athens) may be regarded as 
 the earliest systematic and sustained attempt to place on the English 
 stage a view of the course of ancient history in a more or less popular 
 and attractive form. The scheme was doubtless suggested in chief 
 measure by the appearance of the English Plutarch and partly by 
 certain less elaborate and less technically constructed pieces on classical 
 themes, in the nature of interludes, which had multiplied during the 
 reign of Elizabeth. 
 
426 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Titus Andronicus 
 
 It may be useful to state iu respect to this drama, first, the known 
 facts ; secondly, the probabilities. The former are : — 
 
 1. That a piece called Tittis and Vespasian was performed by no 
 fewer than three companies between April 11, 1591, and January 15, 
 1593-4, the name Vespasian being that, not of the Roman emperor, 
 but of a dramatis persona, and Titus signifying Titus Andronicus. 
 
 2. That a German version of the play appeared, in which the form 
 was retained. 
 
 3. That in January or February, 1593-4, the play was altered, 
 Titus Andronicus substituted for Titus and the name of Vespasian 
 withdrawn. 
 
 4. That on February 6, 1593-4, the play, as altered, was licensed 
 to John Danter (with a ballad on the subject), under the hands of 
 both the Wardens and of Master Woodcock respectively, as " A Noble 
 Roman Historye of Tytus Andronicus," and printed accordingly, 4°, 
 1594, without any author's name. 
 
 5. That it was republished with immaterial variations in 1600 
 and 1611. 
 
 6. That between 1611 and 1623 it received the addition of a new 
 scene (Act iii., Scene 2) of a suspiciously Shakespearean complexion, 
 apart from other touches by the same tell-tale hand, especially one in 
 Act ii., Sc. 1, where two lines spoken by Demetrius not only recall 
 the forty-first Sonnet, but a passage in Henry VI., Part I., Act v., 
 Sc. 3.1 
 
 7. That it was admitted into the first folio of 1623, from which 
 the so-called Doubtful Plays are otherwise excluded, as an unquestioned 
 work of the dramatist. 
 
 8. That it is enumerated by Meres in 1598 among Shakespear's 
 works. 
 
 9. That Edward Ravenscroft, a dramatist of the later Stuart era, 
 who altered the play in 1686, had heard that it was revised by 
 Shakespear. He had apparently not heard who wrote it. 
 
 The probabilities are : — 
 
 1. That Titus Andronicus was not by an author living, when it was 
 licensed under new auspices in 1593-4, and that Shakespear had so 
 far no hand in it beyond an editorial one. 
 
 2. That it was not, from its nature, an anonymous work of Bacon. 
 
 3. That Jonson, when he alludes to it in his Bartholomew Fair, first 
 acted in 1614, was unacquainted with the circumstances attendant on 
 the alterations in the play, when he couples it with Kyd's Jeronimo. 
 
 4. That Shakespear was most probably in London, when Marlowe 
 died, and we know from the reference in As You Like It, that he was 
 affected by the event, as it is the sole afi'air of the kind, outside his own 
 family, which he permitted himself to notice in print. 
 
 5. That the text employed and spoken by Henslowe's companies 
 demanded at Shakespear's hands suf&cient castigation to render it at 
 least as much his work as the original WTiter's. 
 
 6. That the Editor of the 1623 folio had the use of a copy of one 
 
 1 See both printed s\i.pra iu ch. xii. 
 
Notes 427 
 
 of the quartos — probably that of 1611 — with the supplementary scene 
 inserted in MS. in its place. 
 
 Altogether the evidence leans very strongly indeed toward the 
 Shakespearean editorship of this drama, as we possess it, especially in 
 the Folio. The original authorship is a question, on which we are 
 perhaps not entitled to speak with equal confidence, more particularly 
 as we have no text of the parent play before us, to enable us to dis- 
 criminate between the composition as it left the writer's hands and as 
 it presents itself in the 4° of 1594. On the other hand, no second 
 plausible candidate for the attribution suggests itself, unless it were 
 Jonson, who, while in his Bartholomew Fair he sneers at that style of 
 writing, received payments in 1601-2 for the additions to the Spanish 
 Tragedy; and the recent death of Marlowe (June, 1593) afforded the 
 opportunity for recension. If we may believe Greene's Groat's-worth of 
 Wit, 1592, Shakespear had for some time been a trusted hand in that 
 kind of work, and the supplementary matter first printed in 1623 
 makes for his editorial association with the play. 
 
 I think that, on the whole, the most judicial exposition of the case 
 is that to be read in Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 1886. But he does 
 not draw attention to the significant parallelism pointed out above. 
 The part of Andronicus, taken by Edward Alleyn, must have been 
 almost the earliest prominent impersonation which was undertaken 
 by him. Shakespear at this early stage seems to have worked in some 
 measure with Henslowe, although he subsequently and finally associated 
 himself with the Burbages. 
 
 The authors of Camhyses and the Spanish Tragedy may be treated 
 as the foster parents of Marlowe. Tamburlaine overflows with the 
 same crude and vulgar rant. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. Luc. " This is the pearl that pleas'd your empress' eye." 
 
 Malone thought that this line referred to the proverb : " A black 
 man is a jewel in a fair woman's eye " ; but as there seems to be 
 no early trace of the saying, the latter may have been formed out of 
 the passage in the play. See the remarks in the text, pp. 256-7. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. "The idiot holds his bauble for a god." 
 
 This line strikes me as very Shakespearean, yet it is not inconsistent 
 with the alleged scepticism of Marlowe. 
 
 TiMON OP Athens 
 
 Shakespear's play seems to have been written by some one inde- 
 pendently of the academic production first printed by Dyce, which is 
 by no means without merit, and is preferable to Shakespear's in one 
 leading respect, that it represents Timon as squandering his own 
 wealth, instead of that borrowed from others ; which necessarily for- 
 feits our sympathy with the central person of the drama on the score 
 of ingratitude. But it is a prolix and tedious piece. Both authors, 
 whoever they were (I have heard George Wilkins, who died in August, 
 1608, named as one), went to Plutarch and others for their notion about 
 Timon, under which name there were living, more than a century 
 apart, two individuals not wholly dissimilar in character. I think 
 it beyond doubt that this is one of the Shakespearean series belonging 
 to the group of recast texts, and that the Stratford poet only appears 
 
428 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 here and there, where he deemed retouching expedient. We have no 
 earlier copy than that of 1623. But it was prohably in existence prior 
 to As You Like It, and in the " churlish philosopher " Bpimantus we 
 seem to recognize a crude conception of Jaques, himself a somewhat 
 unfelicitous mouthpiece for dry caustic humour. 
 
 In the old Timnn {Shakespear' s Library, I875j part ii. vol. 2, p. 452) 
 it may be incidentally noted that Gelasimus says : — 
 
 " What J shall wee trauayle through that citty, where 
 The candles walke, and cattes play on the fiddle ? " 
 
 The character and passage do not occur in Shakespear's play ; perhaps 
 there may be some allusion to the nursery rhyme of — 
 
 " Hey ! diddle, diddle, 
 The cat and the fiddle — " 
 
 thiB first line of which some make a corruption from the Greek. See 
 Halliwell (Popular Rhymes, 1849, p. 271). 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. "... The strain of man's bred out 
 Into baboon and monkey." 
 
 The poet was not perhaps a disciple of the Simian theory^ but he 
 here suggests the possibility of our development from that quarter. 
 
 COBIOLANUS 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. "Allaying Tyber— " 
 
 So Lovelace in his Lucasta, 1649, uses the expression, "Allaying 
 Thames." 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORICAL SERIES 
 {King John to Richard III.) 
 
 King John 
 
 Shakespear had before him the rough drama, published anony- 
 mously in 1591, and said to have been performed by the Queen's 
 Players sundry times in the City of London. We have the authority 
 of Meres for believing that the text revised by Shakespear was in 
 existence in, if not before, 1598, unless Meres confounded the two 
 pieces ; and on the other hand there is the anterior note of time in the 
 presumed allusion to the death of Hamnet Shakespear in 1596, for the 
 insertion of which, however, we seem to have no means of precise 
 chronological fixture, as no text of the play, as we possess it, prior to 
 the Folio of 1623, is known. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. "To make a more requital of your love." 
 
 Under 1579 in the North Accounts occurs : " Dec. 19. The polers 
 
 of my hoppground in part of a more soom . . . x^" 
 
 More is the equivalent of the Scotish or Celtic word mawr for 
 
 greater =lja.t. major. 
 
 Act. ii., Sc. 2. " Look where three fai-things goes." 
 
Notes 429 
 
 There were two types of the silver coin of Elizabeth of this value, 
 more probably the hammered variety was the one, which the poet had 
 in view. But there were no such pieces in the reign, under which this 
 drama is laid. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 7. " P. Hen. ... his pure brain 
 
 (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling house)." 
 
 This, which is a Shakespearean interpolation, strikes me as a most 
 extraordinary proof of the poet's insight, standing in place of advanced 
 scientific knowledge, since he here clearly announces his own hypo- 
 thesis, couched (as usual) in general terms, as to the identity of the 
 soul with the brain, although he did not go so far as to trace that of 
 the brain with the blood, nor was it necessary for him as a dramatist 
 to do so. I elsewhere allude to the ostensible reminiscence of the 
 death of the poet's son in 1596. 
 
 Richard II. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 4. Note the reference to the proposal that the queen 
 and her ladies should play at bowls, and to the terms employed in the 
 game. No doubt, the poet knew and enjoyed it. It is mentioned in 
 the Squyr of Lowe Degre, and in the account of the capture of Jack 
 Cade at or near Heathfield in Sussex. 
 
 Henby IV., Part I. 
 
 Some of the humorous matter put into the mouth of FalstafF in this 
 two-part play, inimitable as it is, does not bear too close scrutiny as 
 regards anachronisms and other improprieties. The fertility of fancy 
 is wonderful. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. " , . . sparmaceti for an inward bruise — " 
 
 The belief in the virtue of all the oils known to science in the poet's 
 time extended to that derived from the head of this particular kind of 
 ■whale. The allusion and figure may be due to Shakespear having seen 
 it in one of the professional treatises of the time, or having heard of 
 the remedy from Dr. Hall. Of suggestion and guidance in the direc- 
 tion of gunshot wounds there had been no dearth since the more general 
 use of firearms and artillery. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. " 2 Carrier. . . . this house is turned upside down, 
 since Robin Ostler died. 
 
 " 1 Oar. Poor fellow ! never joyed, since the price of oats rose ; it 
 was the death of him." 
 
 The interest of this passage is in a manner considerable, for the 
 scene laid at Rochester seems to be founded on the poet's first experi- 
 ence at Shoreditch as a servant of James Burbage, and this Robin was 
 in Burbage's employment previous to the arrival of Shakespear in 
 London as a permanence. In 1633, to guard against the engrossing 
 practice, by which chandlers bought up stocks, to re-sell at an arbitrary 
 profit, the Star Chamber fixed the charge of oats at sixpence a peck 
 Winchester measure. 
 
430 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 " 2 Oar. Why, they will allow us ne'er a Jordan, and then we leak 
 in your chimney." 
 
 This passage is very curious, because to leak is the exact English 
 equivalent of the French ^ij-e I'eau; and the French do not employ 
 the latter in such a sense, while we say to make water— to leak. In a 
 French satirical poem, almost contemporary with Shakespear, by Mellin 
 de Saint Gellais, called Folie aux Hostellers, there is this singular coin- 
 cidence : "lis ont loi sans vous offenser, Ne trouvant le pot a pisser, 
 Ue pisser a la cheminee." 
 
 Sc. 3. " Poins. How the [fat] rogue roared." {Exeunt. 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps owned an unique fragment of an edition of this 
 play, held by him to have preceded the ordinary known one of 1598, 
 and he took occasion to remark, that it is the only existing record of 
 the true reading in Poius's speech : " How t\iefat rogue roar'd ! " 
 
 Sc. 4. " P. Hen. What manner of man, an' it like your majesty ? " 
 
 Too high a praise cannot be given to this subtly humorous imper- 
 sonation by FalstafF of the King and his reference to himself as the 
 sole eligible associate of the prince. The passage is a masterpiece of 
 invention and wit. 
 
 "P. Hen. Hark, how hard he fetches breath : search his pockets." 
 
 This is where discovery is made of Falstaffs tavern-bill and of the 
 disproportion of ale and bread. But it may be worth while to indicate 
 a not unlikely source for the humorous notion in one of the Merry 
 Tales of Skelton, informing us, " how the Welshman did desire Skelton 
 to aid him in his suit to the king for a patent to sell drink." See 
 Hazlitt's Studies in Jocular Literature, 1890, p. 170. 
 
 Eleven men in Buckram. I have seen it suggested, that Shakespear, 
 in making buckram the dress, may have been thinking of the attire of 
 the morris-dancers. See my Faiths and Folklore, 1905, v. Mumming. 
 
 As regards the passages in the two parts of this play, where the 
 tongue-combats between Prince Henry and Falstaff occur, it is difficult 
 to be sure whether Shakespear intended to portray the manners of the 
 precise period, or did not rather rely on the traditional character of 
 Henry V. when prince, and his unique bonhomie. 
 
 Henry IV., Part II. 
 
 Dramatis Persona. Lord Bardolph. A family of this name is said 
 to have resided in Shakespear's time in Duke's Lane, Richmond, 
 Surrey. There was a succession of Lords Bardolf down to 1406, and 
 a manor of Bardolph or Bardolf in Addington, Surrey. 
 
 It strikes me as a breach of propriety in a dramatic series, where 
 there was the opportunity for revision, to give the same name to two 
 such different characters as Lord Bardolph and the Bardolph of the 
 Merry Wives ; and it is almost worse with the two Jaques in As Yow 
 Like It. The form Bardolph seems to be derived from the French Bar- 
 doulph. Yet this was one of the series, which received important and 
 authoritative additions, and fell under the eye of a corrector^ — doubtless 
 the poet himself, between 1600 and the issue of the folio in 1623. 
 Comp. Merry Wives of Windsor, infra. 
 
 Induction. "The blunt monster with uncounted heads." 
 
Notes 431 
 
 See Warton's H.E.P., 1871, iii., 172, where he refers to this 
 passage, but speaks of Shakespear describing Rumour with many 
 tongues. Blunt may be here interpreted to signify plain-spoken. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " Fal. Sirrah, you giant . . ." 
 
 FalstafF addresses his diminutive page, and speaks ironically. I 
 suggest Sirrah, young giant. 
 
 "Fal. . . . Where is Bardolph?" 
 
 See a long note in my Proverbs, 1907, p. 116. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. Where Pistol is made to say (Globe edit. 1895) : 
 " Si fortune me tormente, sperato me contente" which is absolute non- 
 sensBj he may be meant to blunder. Anyhow, the poet found the 
 quotation in Copley's Wits, Pits, and Fancies, 1595 ; and the correct 
 form is : " Si la fortuna me tormenta, la speranza me contenta." For 
 Copley either gave it wrongly, or Mr. Collier (Bihl Cat. 1865, i. 156) 
 has not accurately transcribed the passage from the ed. of 1614, which 
 he employed. See an account of the drinking cup of Ogilby (or Ogilvy) 
 of Airlie in Willis's Current Notes, Oct. 1855, where the version of the 
 same sentiment is : 
 
 " Si la Fortune me tourmente, 
 L'Esperance me contente." 
 
 In this production the poet impresses us in the scenes from low 
 life, how closely he had studied and how carefully he had retained in 
 his memory, the sentiments and' expressions then current in all places 
 of popular resort. Of course it is the same thing throughout the 
 series, where the necessity or the opportunity existed. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. " Shallow. O, Sir John, do you remember since we 
 lay all night in the windmill in St. George's Fields } " 
 
 The Widflete Mill stood in 1632 next to the Falcon Inn in South- 
 wark, and may have been the one intended by the poet. See Surrey 
 Arch. Coll. xvi., 78. The Mill is mentioned as early as 1113, when it 
 was given with the hide of land and other appurtenances to the monks 
 of Bermondsey. Brayley and Britton's Surrey, iii. 172. 
 
 "Shallow. ... I remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at 
 Clement's Inn. — I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show." 
 
 This show was presented before Queen Elizabeth in 1587-8 under 
 the superintendence of Hugh Offley, Sheriff of London. Was our 
 poet there, and did he take apart — that which he assigns to Shallow } 
 See Black's History of the Leathersellers, 1871, p. 66. 
 
 There is a curious ellipsis in the same act and scene, where Shallow 
 asks : " How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair .''... How a 
 score of ewes now ? " 
 
 Where Bull-calf and Mouldy refer to Bardolph as corporate and 
 corporal respectively, the forms are probably to be taken as illiterate in 
 both cases, and corporate should stand in the first passage also. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 4. " K. Henry. Most subject is the fattest soil to 
 weeds." 
 
 The modern Somersetshire farmer likes to see couch grass on his. 
 land. 
 
432 Shakespeak; The Man and his Work 
 
 " King Henry. I pray you take me up, and bear me hence into 
 some other chamber." 
 
 The King is in the Jerusalem Chamber in Westminster Abbey, and 
 when he is moved, seems to be transported to an inner room. He had 
 swooned in the chamber itself, but he probably died in the inner apart- 
 ment, where he had been laid on a bed. 
 
 Actv., Sc.l. "Davy. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith's note." 
 
 JVb<e= invoice, which is still the sense in French and other 
 languages. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3. Where Pistol uses the expression : " fig me, like the 
 bragging Spaniard," the poet may have had in mind a tract entitled : 
 "A Fig for the Spaniard," 1591. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3. "Davy. . . . What you want in meat, we'll have in 
 drink. . . ." 
 
 A recollection of the story of the Welshman in Skelton's Merry 
 Tales. 
 
 "Davy. There is a dish of leathercoats for you." 
 
 An early mention of this kind of apple, supposed to be identical 
 with the golden russet. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 4. " Doll. Come, you thin thing ; come, you rascal ! " 
 
 The sense of rascal in this passage is probably well understood ; it 
 is a term used in the Book of St. Albans to signify a lean animal, and 
 again in A C. Mery Talys, 1526, repr. 1887, folio ix. verso. 
 
 The habit of iteration in Justice Shallow is a prototype of that of 
 his majesty George III. 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 The French contained here may have been within the poet's com- 
 petence, or it may have been revised for him by friends- — perhaps by 
 Thomas Quiney, Thomas Combe, or any one else at hand. But there 
 is no occasion to presume any profound knowledge of the language. 
 
 Dramatis Persona. Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas Fitzalan, 
 a son of the Earl of Arundel, had died in February, 1413, during the 
 reign of Henry IV. His successor, Henry Ohicheley, does not seem to 
 have been translated from St. David's till 27th April, 1413, whereas 
 Henry IV. died in March of the same year. Henry V. was crowned 
 on the 10th April. Shakespear probably made the primate a character 
 without entering into the question of succession or personality. 
 
 Bardolph. 
 
 See Note to K. Henry IV., Part 2, supra. In this play FalstafPs 
 comrades, Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym, become soldiers in the new 
 King's army. 
 
 Chorus. See Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 0, for a Muse of fire. 
 
 F. W. in a MS. note on a form of receipt of the time of Henry VIII. 
 in reference to the word /eir toT! fire quotes Chatterton : ''O for a 
 spryte alle feir ! " and remarks that the passage or phrase is merely 
 Shakespear's altered. 
 
Notes 433 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. The scamhling and unquiet times. 
 
 In the Northumberland Household Book, 1512, a section is occupied 
 by directions for the diet to be observed on the Mondays and Saturdays 
 throughout Lent, which are described as the Scamling Days. The 
 expression scambled eggs seems to be of the same origin. The sense of 
 the word in the play may be a secondary one, that of stirring up or 
 exciting. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. Sumless treasuries. 
 
 Should we not read sunless treasuries .'' The sense appears to re- 
 quire property withdrawn from the light of the sun rather than 
 wealth of measureless extent. It is a peculiarly Shakespearean turn 
 of expression. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. " Nym. ... I will do as I may.'' 
 
 Should not we read die ! 
 
 Sc. 3. " Quick. . . . and a' babbled of green fields." 
 
 This is the famous emendation of Theobald, 1726. The line does 
 not occur in the 4°s of 1600 and 1608. Comp. p. 128. 
 
 Lupton, in the third book of his Notable Things, first published in 
 1579j writes under the section devoted to Death-Omens : " If the fore- 
 head of the sick wax red, and his brows fall down, and his nose wax 
 sharp and cold, . . .ifhe pulls straws or the cloaths of his bed, . . . 
 these are almost certain tokens of death." It is almost impossible to 
 believe that this passage was not directly borrowed by Shakespear, 
 where he makes Mrs. Quickly employ the identical figures and 
 sentiment. 
 
 " Quick. ... 'A made a finer end, and went away, an it had been 
 any christom child." 
 
 See my Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 114. Christom is a malaprop- 
 ism for chrisome. 
 
 " Boy. Yes, that a' did, and said they were devils incarnate.'' 
 
 A recollection of Lodge's tract, which Shakespear uses again, when 
 he makes Gobbo, in the Merchant of Venice, refer to Shylock as " a very 
 devil incarnation." 
 
 " Quick. . . . but then he was rheumatic.'' 
 
 A malapropism for romantic. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Like greyhounds in the slips — " 
 
 See Glossary to my Blount's Tenures, 1874, pp. 439-40. 
 
 In his Essay, The Fight, Hazlitt speaks of a man, whom he met, 
 " one of that true English breed that went with Harry the Fifth to 
 Harfleur, ' standing like greyhounds in the slips.' " 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 4. The dialogue between Pistol and the French 
 prisoner was intended to be funny — well, perhaps it pleased the 
 gods. Is pesant more than a misspelling.'' In the seventh line of 
 Chorus, is garden right .'' 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. Fluellen takes Pistol's injunction to eat the leek 
 literally, instead of proverbially. 
 
 2e 
 
434 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Henry VI. 
 
 See Hunter's New Illustrations, ii. 63, where the original drama, 
 which Shakespear altered, is supposed to have been written in 1587. 
 Mr. Fleay associates with much confidence the names of Greene, 
 Marlowe, Peele, and Lodge, with these dramas, and leads us to believe 
 that Shakespear converted the aggregate raw material into what we 
 have in the Folio. This is of course pure speculation. 
 
 In 1602 Thomas Pavier the stationer entered the first and second 
 parts of the Contention as the J?r«< and second parts of Henry VI.; but 
 the same person published the Whole Contention in 1619. Henry VI., 
 as we now have it, first appeared in the Folio of 1623. 
 
 This series has awakened perhaps a lai-ger amount of criticism and 
 disagreement than any of the dramas included in the Folio of 1623. 
 There is no doubt, that plays on the abnormally long and eventful 
 reign were in course of performance at the theatres, even before Shake- 
 spear commenced his labours as an editor, and after all the speculations 
 on the subject we seem to have to fall back on the general proposition, 
 that the poet is answerable only for occasional interpolations and 
 amendments, for which we have to rely on internal evidence, in the 
 Second and Third Parts, the First remaining in its original crudity, 
 and gaining admission hy way of completeness, although the period 
 covered is replete with stirring historical incidents, capable of seizure 
 by a dramatist. 
 
 The ascertainable points regarding this sequential triplet are : — 
 1. That the third part, and probably the second, were in existence 
 and on the stage during the lifetime of Robert Greene, who travestied 
 a line in the former, as if it had been within his knowledge more or 
 less from the pen of some one, to whom he was not friendly ; 2. That 
 these two parts were successively published in 1594 as the First Part 
 of the Contention and in 1595 as the True Tragedy of Richard Duke of 
 York, in the former case without any indication of a place of per- 
 formance, in the latter as played by the Earl of Pembroke's servants ; 
 3. That the complete tripartite drama was iirst printed in 1623, the 
 whole from an independent MS., of which the earliest portion had not 
 previously appeared in print, while the text of the second and third 
 varied from those published in 1594-5 in certain particulars ; 4. That 
 the final Chorus to Shakespear's Henry V. alludes to the earlier annals 
 of Henry VI. having been often shown on the stage, but in what precise 
 shape we are left in doubt ; 5. That this Chorus does not occur in the 
 Famous Victories, and was doubtless an addition from another pen by 
 way of introducing the theatrical representation of the events of the 
 succeeding reign. 
 
 The most plausible, if not most probable, solution of the difficulty 
 attendant on the postponement of a committal to type of the First Part 
 till 1623, and of the discrepancy between the state of the text and that 
 of the sequels in the Folio, is, that the play or plays dealing with the 
 opening years of the reign of Henry VI. did not exist in any form 
 commending itself to Shakespear's attention, that he limited his 
 editorship to the salient features in the Second and Third Parts, as 
 they occur in the posthumous collective edition, and that a text of 
 
Notes 435 
 
 Part I. was subsequently derived from some MS. source to supply the 
 gap between the marriage of Henry V. and the events, which imme- 
 diately followed. The copies, from which the Second and Third Parts 
 were published in 1594-5 with marks of a revising hand, have served 
 to furnish better readings than those found in the Folio and vice versa ; 
 but for the First Part there is no alternative resource ; and the question 
 arises, whether the terms of the Chorus at the end of Henry V. do not 
 imply one of two things, an absence at that time of any MS. of the 
 First Part or a disinclination, on the part of Shakespear or the players, 
 to include it in the series, although the writer has judiciously laid a 
 fair proportion of the scene on English ground. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Dramatis Persorue.— It is a remark applicable to this and all the 
 ■other plays in all the editions, that the names and descriptions are 
 given in an illiterate and slovenly way. For instance, in the piece 
 immediately concerned the Maid of Orleans is introduced as Joan 
 la Pucelle, and Reignier of Anjou occurs instead of Rene. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 7. " Lucy. . . . created for his rare success in arms. . . ." 
 See Courthope's Historic Peerage, 1857, p. 434. The recitation 
 of titles is not accurate. The Lucy of this drama may have been the 
 Sir William de Lucy, founder of the priory at Shelford in Notting- 
 hamshire, and stated to have been the first of the name in the owner- 
 ship of Charlecote. The character does not appear in the First Sketch, 
 and was perhaps suggested to the writer by the circumstance of the 
 vicinity, which is tantamount to an admission that the MS. drama 
 passed through Shakespear's hands, and received a few touches from 
 his pen, even if it did not find a printer, till it was incorporated with 
 the other portions in 162S. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. " Duch. . . . Though in this place most master wear 
 no breeches." 
 
 Compare note on As You Like It, iii., 1. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. " Queen Margaret. Thy sale of offices, . . . would 
 make thee quickly hop without thy head," and just below the Duchess 
 ■of Gloucester exclaims : — 
 
 " Could I come near your beauty with my nails, 
 I'd set my ten commandments in your face." 
 
 The writer has in either case transferred to the highest life the 
 manners of the lowest. It may be just worth noting that Hall the 
 historian makes the Duke of York refer to Queen Margaret as "a 
 ^scolding woman, whose only weapons are her tongue and her nails." 
 
436 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Apparently she also made free use of her hands, for in the same 
 scene the poet makes her hox the Duchess of Gloucester's ear. 
 
 As we do not accurately know when this play received its present 
 form, it becomes diflBcult to decide, whether a passage in the old 
 Taming of a Shrew, 1594 : — 
 
 " Hands off I say, and get you from this place, 
 Or I will set my ten commandments in your face" — 
 
 {Shakespeare Library, 1875, part 2, p. 602) is entitled to priority. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. Car. Mediae [euro] teipsum. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. "Wife. A plum-tree, master." 
 
 A current vulgarism for the womb. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. " Duck. My shame will not be shifted with my 
 sheet — " 
 
 Note the inner sense so conspicuous throughout the dramatic series, 
 more especially as the poet's concern in the play has been canvassed. 
 
 Act. iii. For a misapprehension on the part of Shakespear in regard 
 to Duke Humphrey, see Antiquary, 1907, p. 214. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. Names of recruits. — These strike one as incon- 
 siderate and unfelicitous, far more so than those introduced elsewhere, 
 as the scene is hardly so well adapted for humorous treatment. Shake- 
 spear found it hard to resist the temptation to tickle the palate of the 
 gods. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1 . " Saff. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is 
 death." 
 
 Suffolk refers to Walter Wbitmore, and must be understood to use 
 the old form TTo^er for Walter, as in the conversion of Burgh- Walter 
 into Bridgewater. In the Jests of the Widow Edyth, 1573, one of the 
 characters is Water Smyth. See my Old English Jest Books, 1864-6, 
 iii. 82, 108. The tract in question first appeared in 1525, and at the 
 end we have : "Finis. Quod Waterius Smyth." 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 7. " Cade. . . . thou hast caused printing to be 
 used. . . ." 
 
 So in Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, a library of printed books is given to 
 a person of the drama. These anachronisms were habitual. 
 
 Sc. 8. The White Hart Inn was demolished only in 1889. But it 
 had been rebuilt two centuries prior. 
 
 Sc. 10, Kent. Iden's Garden. 
 
 The generally accepted account is that Cade was slain in an ale- 
 house garden at Heathfield in Sussex, where he was engaged in a game 
 of bowls, on the 12th July, 1450. 
 
Notes 437 
 
 Part III. 
 
 For an account of the costly funeral expenses in connection with 
 the removal of the body of the king from the Tower to Chertsey, and 
 its interment there, see Bray ley and Britten's Surrey, ii. 167. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. " Glo. I hear, yet say not much, but think the 
 more." 
 
 This appears to be the original form of the saying, which was after- 
 ward debited to the Frenchman's or the Welshman's jackdaw. But 
 a still briefer form is in Heywood. All three versions occur in my 
 Proverbs, 1907. 
 
 Sc. 8. " Where peremptory Warwick now remains — " 
 
 For purposes of scansion the penultimate syllable of peremptory 
 is made long. Was this, however, the contemporary pronunciation, 
 or was it the poet's ? 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 The play of Buckingham was acted at the Rose Theatre by the Earl 
 of Sussex's servants in 1693. As it is not otherwise known, we cannot 
 tell, whether it served the poet for his own drama, or was a piece re- 
 lating to the second Duke, beheaded in 1621. The play, to which 
 Heywood wrote a Prologue and Epilogue, printed among his Pleasant 
 Dialogues and Drnmmas, 1637, was perhaps an abridgment or adapta- 
 tion, as the leading part is said to have been taken by " a young witty 
 lad." Heywood states that he was interested in the performance ; not 
 improbably he prepared it for some juvenile entertainment. 
 
 As Henry V. overlaps in a rather awkward manner the two-part 
 play on Henry IV., so the present drama to some extent pursues and 
 concludes the story of Henry VI. It is a production very far indeed 
 from deficient in fine passages and thoughts which may go a con- 
 siderable way to enriching the so-called Beauties of the poet; but 
 it is, like almost all the dramatic writings, open to adverse criticism on 
 more than a single account. It is not only a tragedy, but a succession 
 of tragedies, where comic interludes seem to be against the grain of the 
 piece, if there were room for them. We seem to be from first to last 
 in a gruesome, sanguinary atmosphere ; nor is that all. The scene be- 
 tween Gloucester and the Lady Anne is robbed of some of its interest 
 and value by the abrupt and improbable conversion of the latter, espe- 
 cially in the face of the duke's coarse allusions, looking at his future 
 wife's rank, and the work ends in a manner, which inspires the feeling 
 of foreshortening from exigencies of space and time. The catastrophe 
 is crowded into a disproportionately narrow compass. The crowning 
 episode culminating in Bosworth field, represents the two headquarters 
 of the opposing forces in juxtaposition. Even on the most commodious 
 modern stage such an arrangement could only be taken for granted, 
 like the carriage and pair in genteel comedy, and the actual busi- 
 ness has, as we know, to be taken in sections, winding up with the 
 duel between Richard and Henrr. 
 
438 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 Richard III. impresses one as a refined advance on the school of 
 Kyd and Marlowe with a higher intellectual reach. The character of 
 the consummate and callous Gloucester was drawn with a masterly 
 skill new alike to the playwright and the playgoer. 
 
 Dramatis Persona. — Elizabeth of York. Died of the plague in the 
 summer of 1511. " The queen of sad mischance." 
 Actv.,Sc. 3. 
 
 " Batcliff. My lord ; 'tis I. The early village cock 
 Hath twice done salutation to the moru.'- 
 
 Read Clock. In Chaucer {Nonne Prestes Tale) we have : 
 
 " Wei sikerer was his crowyiug in his logge, 
 Then is a clok or an abbay orologge." 
 
 And Browne {Brit. Past, i. 4) writes : 
 
 "By this had chanticleere, the village-clocke, 
 Bidden the good-wife for her Maids to knocke." 
 
 The sense is, that chanticleer served the village for a timepiece, which 
 was otherwise deficient. The words are spoken in the vicinity of 
 Market-Bosworth . 
 
 In a play, where the king is the central figure almost throughout, 
 and where his personal prowess and natural character are brought 
 forward into conspicuous relief in the closing scene at Bosworth, it is 
 important to have before us as clear a conception as possible of the 
 physical aspect of Richard in relation to his alleged humped back ; and 
 the reader or editor may advantageously refer to a document printed 
 by Robert Davies (Extracts from the Municipal Records of York, 1843, 
 p. 220) and the note, which embodies the evidence of a second con- 
 temporary of the king (John Rous). The latter does not specify a 
 humped back, but a disparity in the height of the shoulders, the left 
 one being lower than the right. The other witness adduced by Davies, 
 William Burton, schoolmaster of St. Leonard's Hospital, terms Richard 
 "a crookebake." 
 
 The popular legend about the Children in the Wood and its 
 association with the murder of the two princes in the Tower had in 
 1695 assumed the form of a story localized in Norfolk, where it was, 
 in a ballad still extant, related of a gentleman in that county, and the 
 abuse of the trust reposed by him in his brother. We have only 
 reprints of the Elizabethan production, of which Shakespear apparently 
 made no use. 
 
 As regards the rather hackneyed allusion to the strawberries reared 
 in the garden at Ely Place, it may be sufficient to refer to my Old 
 Garden Literature, 1887, p. 139, adding, that the residence was in 
 Shakespear's time in the possession of the Hattons, although at the 
 period, when the scene is laid, it was doubtless the London hotel of 
 the Bishops of Ely. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 3. Where the writer alludes to the lady, that would 
 not be a queen for all the mud of Egypt, he seems to have recollected 
 a passage and a phrase in Antony and Cleopatra, where the queen speaks 
 of Nilus' mud. 
 
Notes 439 
 
 Act iv,, Sc. 5. Sir Christopher Urswick. 
 
 A foreigrner and a priest, and a Bachelor of Divinity. He was 
 appointed Chaplain to Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, 
 mother of the future Henry VII., and was employed as a confidential 
 agent by the countess and her relatives at the close of the brief reign 
 of Richard. The dramatist represents him as in the service of Lord 
 Stanley. The ecclesiastic changed his name to Bainbridge, became 
 Abbot of Abingdon, Bishop of Durham, and, subsequently to 1486, 
 Archbishop of York. Ob. 1614. 
 
 RiOHABD II. 
 
 Act ii,, Sc. 1. "Duke of York. . , . Report of fashions in proud 
 Italy, 
 
 Whose manners still our tardy apish nation 
 Limps after in base imitation." 
 
 The writer probably had in his mind, when he set down this 
 passage, the title-page (nothing more) of a dull puritanical tract by 
 W. R., probably William Rankins, entitled : " The English Ape, the 
 Italian Imitation, the Foote-Steppes of Fraunce," &c., 1688. Dekker, 
 in Old Fortunatus, 1600, referring to Compliment, describes him as 
 "apish, childish, and Italianate," and in his Notable Discovery of 
 Oosenage, 1591, Greene similarly remarks : " I haue English thoughts, 
 not a deuil incarnate because I am Italianate." But our proneness to 
 follow foreign modes is equally exposed and derided in a tract entitled 
 The Mint of Deformities, by J. G., 1600. Elsewhere, the Duke of 
 Norfolk, says Shakespear : — 
 
 " Retir'd himself to Italy ; 
 And there at Venice gave 
 His body to that pleasant country's earth." 
 
 But a different view of the matter presents itself in my Venetian 
 Bepuhlic, 1900, ii. 583. 
 
 Comp. Notes on Samlet, iii. 2, and Richard III., v. 3. 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 See post. 
 
 Two Gentlemen op Vbbona. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. Dialogue between Julia and Lucetta. 
 
 Note the technical details of music. But the speakers were Italians, 
 who might be supposed to be more conversant with these minutiee. 
 
 Fr. Mignon is used here for dear in the form minion, which subse- 
 quently acquired a very different sense. 
 
 Comedy op Errors. 
 
 PM. Numerous analogues and prototypes have been from time 
 to time pointed out. Of course it is an ancient idea. But see my 
 Wartm,, 1871, i. 276. The piece, as published among Shakespear's 
 
440 Shakespear: The Man and hts Work 
 
 workSj strikes one as a tiresome^ wiredrawn farce, of which the poet 
 may be responsible only for certain touches, which stand out from the 
 prevailing commonplace dialogue and sentiment in high relief. The 
 whole action is circumscribed within a single day. 
 Take, as probable interpolations by Shakespear : 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 2. Adr. . . 
 
 " For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall 
 A drop of water in the breaking gulf, 
 And take unmingled thence that drop again — " 
 
 Ant. S. ..." In Ephesus I am but two hours old — " 
 
 But the whole scene, from the entrance of the two women, is debate- 
 able. 
 
 A " History of Error," which reads like an earlier drama on the 
 same lines, appears to have been exhibited at Hampton Court in 1577. 
 See my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, v. Error. 
 
 The phrase comedy or play of errors became proverbial. See " Meet- 
 ing of Gallants at an Ordinary," 1604, &c. Comp. Alexander & Lod- 
 wick in Manual, 1892, in v. and a note under Cynibeline. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. Where Angelo the goldsmith values the chain three 
 odd ducats over a certain weight, he had in his mind the strict standard 
 and purity of the Venetian gold coin so called. 
 
 Romeo and Jdliet. 
 
 The edition of 1697 is imperfect ; the first text with any preten- 
 sions to accuracy is that of 1599, where the play is said on the title to 
 be "newly corrected, augmented, and amended" — doubtless by the 
 author. We perhaps meet here with the earliest distinct traces of that 
 peculiar appreciation of the inner sense and that affection for the 
 popular mythology which present themselves most freely in such plays 
 as Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream respectively. Yet there is 
 the occasional betrayal of the influence of Lyly's Euphues in the 
 language and sentiment and, I apprehend, of the presence of two 
 writers, that is to say, of a piece of a crude character taken in hand by 
 Shakespear, who has not, as elsewhere, been suflSciently diligent in his 
 revision, inasmuch as certain passages are as unworthy of him, as others 
 are excellently characteristic. It is more or less a "conceited" 
 comedy throughout, but then we get the conceits of Shakespear, not 
 Lyly or others, and even Shakespear's become tiresome. Mr. A. E. 
 Thiselton observes to me : " a similar incident to the scene, where 
 Antipholus of Syracuse has been mistaken for Antipholus of Ephesus 
 by the wife of the latter, is in the Amphitruo of Plautus," and the same 
 gentleman adds that Shakespear does not seem to him to have made 
 much use of the Mencechmi. 
 
 The interest in the subject had induced a stationer on the 5th 
 August, 1596, to register " a newe ballad of Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 My grandfather Hazlitt, in his Gharaeters of Shakespear's Plays, 
 1817, notices the objection offered to the youth of the hero and 
 heroine ; but indeed the poet has been true here to local costume, since 
 he was portraying the manners of a more southern people, where women 
 
Notes 441 
 
 irrive at maturity earlier than among ourselves, and where, hesides, 
 t would have been treated as contrary to etiquette for the lovers to 
 neet privately prior to the nuptials. Such interviews as thus took 
 )lace were therefore apt to be clandestine. As regards the greater 
 )recocity of the Italians, see what Lady Capulet is made to say in Act 
 I., Sc. 3. 
 
 In 1869 Mr. F. W. Cosens printed a translation from Lope de Vega 
 )f the tragi-comedy of Castelvines y Monieses, supposed to be an 
 malogue of Shakespear's play. But there appears to have been an 
 ^rlier version in 1770. More recently an American gentleman has 
 jntered into the question of the sources of this play, which were, no 
 loubt. Broke and Painter (using Boaistuau), and he has called atten- 
 ;ion to a Dutch dramatic composition on the subject by Jacob Struijs 
 irritten about 1630, where there is a feeble dilation of the story. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Borneo. — This name is already found in the 
 Venetian Annals of the first half of the thirteenth century. Hazlitt's 
 Venetian Republic, i. 356. Mercutio. — This name seems to be taken 
 From Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1566-7, ii. 221. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. "^1 at. Clubs, bills and partisans. . . ." 
 
 The poist transferred to Italy the accessories of his own country. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 2. 
 
 " Merc. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. 
 Nor will he sit under a medlar-tree. 
 And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit, 
 As maids call medlars when they laugh alone." 
 
 In one or two eighteenth-century jest-books there is the key to the 
 meaning of the poet and to the vulgar name, at which he points. 
 Probably the contemporary audience was at no loss for a solution, 
 although I have not elsewhere met in our earlier literature with what 
 may have been a popular expression, and was at all events familiar to 
 the poet. 
 
 Comp. the citation infra on Hamlet, iv. 7. Shakespear must have 
 listened with a certain unction to the free talk of the girls, whom he 
 encountered here and there. Montaigne similarly lets us know that 
 he occasionally overheard unseen the conversation of some of his 
 female neighbovirs, and that it was apt to be of a character unsuitable 
 for publication even in France and by him. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. i. Mercutio calls Tybald "king of cats," in allu- 
 sion to the popular name for a cat, and says that he will have one 
 of his nine lives, the same animal being proverbially endowed with that 
 number. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 6. 
 "Jul. I must hear from thee every day i' the hour, 
 For in a minute there are many days." 
 
 Note the fine inner sense. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 6. " Cap. Hang thee, young baggage—" 
 
 This is only one of too numerous instances, where the poet neglects 
 and violates propriety of diction and costume, and panders to the gods. 
 Even in the case of a purely English audience, and laid in England, 
 
442 Shakespear: The Man and his Woek 
 
 such and even worse language was not fit; but, applied to a noble 
 Italian lady, especially by her father, and by the Nurse to Romeo, it 
 was of course simply preposterous. 
 
 " Some say the lark and loathed toad changed eyes — " 
 
 That is to say, in the popular fancy, the ill-favoured eye of the lark 
 would better become the toad and vice versa. There are analogous 
 sayings respecting the adder and the blindworm and the partridge and 
 the woodcock. Bishop Warburton's note, copied into the editions, 
 amounts to nothing. Comp. my Proverbs, 1907, pp. 245, 249. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. The instructions of Friar Laurence to Juliet with a 
 view to frustrating her union with Paris are illustrated, so far as the 
 manner, in which she was to be laid on the bier, by a description by 
 Coryat of a funeral, which he witnessed at Venice in 1610. 
 " Jul. Give me, give me ! O, tell not me of fear — " 
 The metre is faulty, and the next utterance of Juliet seems to 
 shew that the true reading is : — " Give, give me strength — " 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. Ourfew. The poet in this passage and elsewhere 
 seems to be vague in his notions about this usage, which he assigns to 
 different hours of the day or night. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost. 
 
 This comparatively weak and crude play was, no doubt, written 
 almost immediately prior to its performance before the queen at the 
 Christmas immediately preceding its publication (according to the terms 
 of the peculiarly authoritative title-page of 1698), and was, subse- 
 quently to presentation, corrected and augmented by the author, who 
 is most probably — almost certainly the hand, which has introduced any 
 changes and additions, and duplicated in one place inadvertently a 
 passage. What farther makes for personal interposition is, that on the 
 title-page of the play, at first printed in 1598, the orthography of the 
 name corresponds with the second form adopted by the poet in his 
 authentic signatures, and differs from that found in the other quartos 
 as altered, in the folios, in the Sonnets, and in the Poems of 1640. 
 
 The poet, when he had before him the yet unprinted MS. not only 
 committed the above-named oversight, but either left other errors of the 
 copyist uncorrected, or made final autographic changes in such a way 
 as to be unintelligible to the printer. In one extant copy of the 4° of 
 1598 there is an indication of the presence of the poet, when a portion 
 of the impression had been worked, in a. very material restoration of 
 the sense. See Dyce's 3rd ed., ii. 249. 
 
 Shakespear seems, when he wrote the passages, where Holofernes 
 appears, to, have come fresh from contact with one of the numerous 
 preceptors to be then found in London, by no means necessarily Florio, 
 but rather a professional school-master like Eichard Mulcaster, who 
 deemed that he had a dramatic gift, and superintended the theatrical 
 exhibitions of the St. Paul's boys, who were known as Mulcaster's 
 Children. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost was acted by the King's Company in or before 
 January, 1605, and again at Southampton House in the same year. 
 
Notes 443 
 
 The character of Don Adriano de Armado may have received a 
 ;ouch or so from an unique pamphlet of the time called the Rodomon- 
 ades of Captain Viques, 1591, which was not, I believe, known to exist, 
 ;ill I met with a copy in the library of Peterborough Cathedral, and 
 irom the interlude of Thersites, as well as by possibility from the 
 ;haracter of Gloriosns in Rich's romance of Brusanus, King of 
 Bungaria, 1592. But it was a fairly diffused type. It may be farther 
 [lointed out that in this early drama the author betrays his contact, in 
 ;he letters printed as part of the text, with a book by William Fulwood, 
 called The Enemy of Idleness, 1568, of which there were several later 
 mpressions in Shakespear's lifetime, and two just about the date, 
 when the present play was in hand, namely, in 1593 and 1598. 
 
 In the list of Dramatis Personce, the names of Biron and Holofernes 
 suggest the remarks (1) that, if the poet intended the Due de Biron of 
 ;he time, the portrait is a strange caricature, and if he did not, the 
 idoption of the name of a prominent French statesman strikes one as 
 injudicious. It is worse than the Oldcastle and Fastolfe case, for 
 [here at all events the individuals were not living ; (2) that Holofernes 
 is a name found in two earlier dramatic productions, 1566 and 1672. 
 3ee my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, in v. The editors lay the accent 
 jn the second syllable of Biron, and the metre seems to require it ; 
 3ut the pronunciation involved is false. The original form of the 
 French name was Buron. The Russian one is Bur on. 
 
 There is no mention of any visit of the Due de Biron of history to 
 London prior to 1601, when he had quarters at Crosby Place, Bishops- 
 fate, not long before his execution, and too late to have suggested the 
 lame to the dramatist. He was of course a conspicuous public char- 
 icter long before, yet hardly in the way, which the play portrays. The 
 nconsistency culminates here in the line where the French duke is 
 made to allude figuratively to "Love's Tyburn," as to a London 
 ocality, with which he was familiar. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. The dancing horse. 
 
 The celebrity of this famous animal long survived him ; for he is 
 •eferred to in a French version of Apuleius, printed at Antwerp, 8° 
 L633. 
 
 Longamlle, 
 
 Why should this foi-m be adopted ? The proper and only one is 
 Longueville. There is much need of improvement under this head in 
 nany places. 
 
 Act i., Sc, 2. " Biron. Lady, I will commend you to mine own 
 leart." 
 
 A Gallicism. Ovm is not required, and destroys the rhythm. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. " Thou canst not hit it." 
 
 This is imitated in Wily Beguiled, 1606, where we also meet with 
 •ecoUections of the Shakespearean incident of the Jew robbed by his 
 laughter, of the moonlight scene, where Lorenzo and Jessica converse, 
 ind of the lover, who carves the name of his mistress on the bark of 
 
444 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 trees. The author of Wily Beguiled had evidently seen or read the 
 three plays where these episodes occur : Love's Labor's Lost, Merchant of 
 Venice, and As You Like It. Comp. Chappell's Popular Music, 239. 
 
 Activ.,Sc. 2. "Hoi. . . . Venegia, Venegia." 
 
 The saying seems to be traceable back to an Italian collection of 
 proverbs, published in 1535. See Molmenti, Vita Privata di Venezia, 
 1908, parte terza, p. 87, note. The Venetian form Venegia requires the 
 cognate one pregia instead of the pretia of the Editors. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. " Jaq. God give you good morrow, master 
 person." 
 
 Person for Parson is usual enough. In Luke Shepherd's Dialogue, 
 printed about 1648, the form is Mast Person. The older spelling is the 
 more correct, as the parson was and is the representative of the congre- 
 gation before the Almighty. 
 
 Ibid. " Hoi. Good old Mantuan— " 
 
 The Eclogues of Battista Spagnuoli of Mantua was a book read in 
 schools in the poet's day, and may well have been seen by him at 
 Stratford. The Latin text was constantly reprinted. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. The chain were longer and the letter short. 
 
 Surely shorter is preferable — and right. 
 
 Song between Spring and Winter. 
 
 This beautiful lyric is a striking contrast to the main text, and 
 suggests later composition. 
 
 The word squire, which is found in this play for square, and which 
 is in Mr. Bartlett's Concordance entered under squier, occurs in the 
 Shakespearean sense in the English version of Bloome's Architecture, 
 1608. 
 
 We remark in this play the almost torrential cataract bursting 
 from an imagination of boundless wealth, and revelling in its own 
 amazing ebullience. The dramatist had studied Lyly's Euphues with 
 advantage, but he uses little more than the cue. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing exhibits the dramatist's great advance in 
 the art of composition and dialogue since the appearance of the Comedy 
 of Errors and Love's Labor's Lost, where the action is usually vivacious, 
 but with a vast difference. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Leonato, Governor of Messina. Possibly the 
 Leonnatus of Plutarch. The poet might have his 1595 North before 
 him just now. But the name was to be found in Harington's Ariosto, 
 1591, and Sydney's Arcadia, 1590. Comp. my Shakespear' s Library, 
 1875, Part I., iii. 82 et seqq. 
 
 Beatrice. The certainly fascinating and piquant character of this 
 lady, while she may strike us as rather too profound for a great lady 
 of the day, was not at all improbably based on a real person, for that 
 there were women of rank with similar traits, striking the worldliest 
 among us as with all their gaiety and broad fun delightfully pure at 
 
Notes 445 
 
 lartj with a fair allowance for the temper and feeling of the timBj the 
 wcdota of Sir Nicholas Lestrauge of Hunstanton furnish repeated 
 ■oofs. These stories are merely such as Lestrange noted down from 
 sarsay or otherwise ; hut they carry their moral and their value as 
 irallels : — 
 
 "Sir Henry Yelverton's lady us'd to say of anyone that was a 
 idower, and had a son to inherit his estate, and desir'd a second wife, 
 lat nobody would have him he was so sun-burnt." 
 
 " Mrs. Ratcliffe, an old courtier in Queen Elizabeth's time, told a 
 ord, whose conversation and discourse she did not like, that his wit 
 as like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and when that was 
 iten, you might throw away the rest." [Mrs. or rather Mistress 
 Atcliffe here mentioned was Margaret Ratcliffe of Ordsdale, Bucks, 
 [aid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth.] 
 
 " Sir John Heydon and the Lady Gary had good wits, and lov'd 
 ) he breaking of staves one upon another. Sir John comes in one 
 ay very brisk, in a pair of printed velvet breeches (which was then 
 lie fashion), but some way defective, so as she had a flurt at them 
 resently. ' Hold you contented, good madam,' says he ; ' for if it were 
 ot for printing and painting, your face and my breech would soon be 
 ut of fashion.' " 
 
 "The Lady Gary us'd to tell Sir John Heydon (for their two wits 
 rere ever clashing) that, when he was poor, and never a penny in his 
 urse, he was as good company as any was in England, but that if he 
 ras but forty-shilling strong, there was no dealing with him on any 
 erms." 
 
 This class of repartee belongs to the same school and period as that 
 .ttributed to the sprightly and superbly incorrigible Beatrice, with 
 he notable difference, that in the latter case we enjoy the advantage 
 if the superior taste and delicacy of the dramatic artist, as well as his. 
 uperior wit 
 
 The effervescent vivacity, mad merry vein of Beatrice, and her 
 •obust animal spirits, present a foil to the gentler and more softly 
 emiuine Hero. Portia in the Merchant of Venice is invested with 
 lomething of the same exuberant, almost hysterical, gaiety and in- 
 genuous A-ankness. 
 
 Hero. This name was, no doubt, a loan from Marlowe's poem, 
 1598, with which Shakespear shews himself acquainted in Much Ado 
 ibout Nothing. 
 
 Dogberry. See supra. 
 
 It is not ever easy to decide, whether the dramatist took his 
 ;haracters with their dialogue from living models, or whether he was 
 partly at all events indebted to a glance at some contemporary publi- 
 3ation, where a passage or a phrase struck his fancy. But it is quite 
 worth while, as the author was one of the Kentish set, which is shown 
 by me to have been more or less in touch with Shakespeareana at the 
 time, to remind readers, that in 1583 William Lambarde of Sevenoaks 
 published a small volume, in which he describes, inter alia, the functions 
 of constables, and which Shakespear turned perhaps to account in his 
 own way. The original impersonator of Dogberry was William Kempe 
 and Richard Cowley of Verges. 
 
446 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. Messenger. 
 
 The messenger here introduced must he understood from the part 
 assigned to him to he a diplomatic personage. The laying the scene 
 in a street is unusual, hut is to he reconciled with the open-air life of 
 Sicily. 
 
 "Beat. Is it possihle Disdain should die, while she hath 
 
 such meet food to feed it . . . ? " 
 
 Read to feed her, for the text personifies the sentiment as Lady 
 Disdain, and a few words farther on we have her presence. 
 
 " D. Pedro. This is the sum of all : Leonato . . ." 
 
 I propose to read : "This is the sum of all. Signior Claudio and 
 signior Benedick . . ." The pointing is inaccurate, and the name of 
 Leonato is improperly repeated. 
 
 Sigh away Sundays. 
 
 An apparent reference to the practice of Sunday weddings, which, 
 as I mention ahove, the poet incongruously made applicahle to all 
 ranks of society. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. (and elsewhere in the play.) Cotisin and uncle. 
 
 In the Arabian Nights the latter phrase or name is used still more 
 vaguely and approaches nearer to the modem convention of the 
 pawnhroker. In the Nights we find aunt introduced in a similarly 
 loose seuse. Comp. p. 420. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " Beat. . . . Therefore I will even take sixpence in 
 earnest of the bearward, and lead his apes into hell." 
 
 This form of the phrase varies from that usually received, and may 
 suggest a different interpretation of an obscure figure of speech. Comp. 
 p. 420. 
 
 " Bened. Ho ! now you strike like the blind man — " 
 
 A direct allusion to the story in Merry Tales and Quick Answers. 
 See my Old English Jest Books, i. 142. In the same act and scene 
 Beatrice is made to say that it was imputed to her that she was dis- 
 dainful, and had her good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales. The 
 lady's obligation to the latter, of which two editions are known, hut 
 of which others probably once existed, is not immediately conspicuous, 
 although the poet could hardly fail to be acquainted with both works 
 at least by repute. 
 
 A copy of the C. Mery Talys, probably an Elizabethan impression 
 now lost, was in the library of Captain Cox in 1575, according to 
 Laneham, but whether one of the original impressions or a reprint we 
 cannot tell. The work was licensed to John Charlwood in 1582 and 
 to James Roberts in 1594. The author of Pappe with an Hatchet 
 (1590-2), reputed to be Lyly, states in that tract that the " hundred 
 merrie tales " was then coming out, and it was most probably the one, 
 which fell in Shakespear's way, but of course distinct from the Cox copy. 
 
 " Beat. Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sunburnt.' 
 
 Dr. Johnson proposed that we should read wood, for which Mr. 
 Hunter censures him, hut I do not. The antithesis intended was 
 between a place, where the sun shone, and where it did not. In 
 Vincent's Discovery of Errors in Brooke's Catalogue of the Nobility 
 
Notes 447 
 
 522, the Address to York Herald (Brooke) has near the opening the 
 Uowing sentence : — " I acknowledge^ he that walkes fiftie yeeres in 
 le SunnCj cannot choose but bee Sunburnt " — where the expression is 
 'idently used to signify the acquisition of experience. The children 
 . Norfolk used to endeavour to catch their Valentines on the proper 
 ly before sunrise, or they would be, it was said, sunburnt. In his 
 arcemiologia, 1639, Clarke has : " He hath the sun on his face" ; but 
 3j as usual, fails to explain. Comp. the rather enigmatical passage in 
 amlet, i. 2, where Hamlet questions Polonius about his daughter. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. This part of the story was probably drawn from 
 arington's Arwsto, 1591, or from Beverley's separate translation of 
 le tale of Ariodanto and Genem-a. The incident was borrowed by the 
 ithor of a later play called the Partial Law. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. " Dogh. Five shillings to one on't, with any man 
 ho knows the statues — " 
 
 The two forms statute and status appear to have been long used 
 terchangeably. Here statue is misapplied as a trait of ignorance, 
 ut see Gesta Romanorum, ed. Madden, p. 25, where the same thing is 
 und. 
 
 You are to bid any man stand in the prince's name. 
 
 The second of Tarlton's Court- Witty Jests shews " how Tarlton de- 
 lived the watch in Fleet Street," when they commanded him to stand. 
 
 Sc. 5. Dogb. . . . God's a good man. 
 
 See Hazlitt's Proverbs, 1907, p. 167. The sense in the interlude of 
 •isty Juventus is, that God cannot be made better, and we must take 
 im as He is. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. Outler^ poetry. Comp. Merchant of Venice, v. 1, 
 fra. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. " Bend. ... I can find out no rhyme to lady but baby. 
 This is a skit at Peele's song in the Arraignment of Paris, 1584. 
 at see also Chappell's Popular Music, 92, 179, 187- 
 Sc. 3. Heavily, heavily, not heavenly, heavenly. 
 See Collier's Bibl. Gat., i. 454. 
 
 Sc. 4. Claud. A halting sonnet of his own pure brain . Comp. p. 429. 
 Pure in both passages is = Lat. merus. 
 
 All's Well That Ends Well. 
 
 Shakespear might have derived the suggestion for this title from 
 eywood's Proverbs, or from the Posies in the Lottery of 1567. See 
 y Proverbs, 1907, p. 53. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 6. " Glo. I am a woodland fellow — " 
 
 Bishop Warburton took exception to this passage as being " impious 
 ash." But that was a bishop's saying. The poet simply puts him- 
 If in the shoes, so to speak, of a rude countryman, surrounded by 
 Dods and the means of kindling fires, who deduces in his own fashion 
 om the melodramatic picture drawn by the Church itself of the 
 icked passing through the broad gate leading to eternal punishment 
 
448 Shakespeak: The Man and his Work 
 
 by fire a preference for the narrow one, which will suit humble folks 
 like him better, but is not sufficiently spacious to admit pomp. The 
 cumulative image of the wood, the fire. Hell, and the two gates, was 
 not to be resisted, and the poet makes a point by supposing that the 
 rich and the great would desire to enter accompanied by all their 
 worldly belongings— a not very uncommon illusion in those days or 
 even in these. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3. " Lafni. . . . Good Tom Drum, lend me a hand- 
 kerchief — '•' 
 
 The " Historic of Tom Drum " forms part of Deloney's Gentle Craft, 
 4°, 1598. He was the ancestor of Jack Drum, the hero of a play 
 ascribed to Marston, and printed in 1601. It is to be remarked that 
 there is a recollection of Romeo and Juliet in a passage, where Diana 
 
 " I am, my lord, a wretched Floi-entine 
 Derived from the ancient Capulet." 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 It may be worth while to draw attention to two entries at pp. 23 
 and 120 of my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, where I offer remarks on a 
 play by Dekker variously called BaraMin and the Jew of Venice, and 
 apparently produced in 1599 for Heuslowe, who paid Ods. for it. 
 
 Roberts entered the Shakespear drama in 1598 with the alternative 
 sub-title of the Jew of Venice ; the Jev was too attractive to let drop. 
 But he went no farther. 
 
 I suggest that, after the eventual output of Roberts's 4° of 1600, 
 Thomas Hayes the stationer, whose daughter Roberts had married, 
 obtained the means of revising the text from the author, and brought 
 out his 4°, which is so much rarer, and at the time may have super- 
 seded its predecessor. 
 
 It is a characteristic point, and in sympathy with the effort to 
 present the popular side, even in the printed book, that the running 
 title in both quartos of 1600 is " The Comicall History of the Merchant 
 of Venice" — a definition, which our modern notion of humour certainly 
 fails to comprehend and hesitates to accept. The play has no more 
 title to be treated as a comedy than Hamlet or Othello, both of which 
 offer incidental pleasantries. But it is repeatedly cited in early records 
 as the Venetian Comedy; and it may be surmised that the term, as well 
 as Comical, were equally understood both before and after Shakespear's 
 day, and by him, in a more strictly technical sense than their modern 
 acceptation. Of the three classes of theatrical performance outside 
 tragedy we still recognize genteel and low comedy, and the farce pure 
 and simple. In the Merchant of Venice, as originally put on the stage, 
 there was an evident intention to attire Shylock so as to make him a 
 butt for the gallery ; yet he can hardly be said to answer, so far as his 
 part is concerned, to low comedy or farce. 
 
 I do not agree with Mr. Fleay that the drama translated into 
 German, and performed in or about 1611, apparently at Halle, was 
 necessarily Shakespear's Merchant of Venice, although it was probably 
 so. For Dekker 's Jew of Venice had preceded it. The latter, however. 
 
Notes 449 
 
 s not known to have been printedj and the former had been in type 
 ince 1600. 
 
 It is not very surprizing that Shakespear should have acquired 
 luch an imperfect notion of Venice and its institutions, when we see 
 md knoWj that in his time there was no English work, which conveyed 
 I clear and accurate idea of either. It seems regrettable that, before he 
 Jut pen to paper to write his Venetian scenes — nay, his Italian ones, 
 ;oo — he did not spend an hour with some friend, who was personally 
 'amiliar with the country and its peculiar institutions. He has been 
 fuilty of the same fault in Othello. 
 
 Without disparaging the intellectual or human value of the present 
 llama its localization was particularly unhappy, since almost all the 
 illusions referring to Venice are erroneous and absurd. 
 
 It is fairly well known, that there was an anterior drama on the 
 subject. The special ballad on the story was probably founded on the 
 jlay, as usual. The story of the Bond is common to excess ; one of 
 ;he earliest places where it occurs is in the Gesta Eomanorum (edit. 
 Vladden, No. 40) ; but see Hazlitt's Tales and Legends, 1892, p. 128) ; 
 md much the same may be predicated of the ring in Act v. Rings 
 Jave figured in romance since the production of the Seixn Wise 
 Masters. 
 
 It is perhaps deserving of passing notice that in those places, where 
 ;he legends of the three caskets are given in i-hyme the poet allows 
 limself to adhere in the next few lines to rhymed couplets, before he 
 •eturns to blank verse. In Borneo and Juliet, i. 3, the rhyming couplet 
 ntervenes without any ostensible motive or inducement. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Shylock. See what is said in my Venetian 
 Republic, 1900, ii. 749, as to the mode in which the character should be 
 ittired. It seems to be quite high time that in our theatrical ward- 
 •obe we should shake ourselves loose from the ludicrous ineptitudes 
 )f the 18th and 19th centuries. Who is responsible for these barbarisms 
 —the stage manager or the costumier ? It is said to have been Talma, 
 yho died in 1826, who initiated in France a reform in this particular, 
 [n the series of engravings by Giacomo Franco, published about the 
 jeriod of the play, there is a figure of the contemporary merchant, 
 vhich might be serviceable to any filler of the part, except that he 
 ihould have what Bacon calls " an orange-tawny bonnet." See Mol- 
 nenti. Vita Privata, 1906, ii. 440, 444. Not a little light on the 
 :heatrical wardrobe in the poet's day is thrown by the stage directions 
 n the old copies. 
 
 In a tract published shortly after the play, we have an account 
 )f a Jew, who followed an army, and uttered certain prophecies, and 
 vhose name is given as Caleb Shilocke. Possibly the circumstance and 
 ;he individual had fallen under the notice of the poet in some other 
 md earlier way. But it is the sole trace of the name, and is a quite 
 •ecent recovery. Shylock may be connected with the Shiluk negroes, 
 nentioned in Sir Harry Johnston's Nile Quest, p. 211. 
 
 It is just perhaps worth incidental mention that at least from 1562 
 lown to the poet's day the press produced a copious succession of 
 )allads and of more elaborate and serious diatribes against usury. 
 
 Portia. This name seems to be borrowed from the lost drama by 
 
 2f 
 
450 Shakespeae: The Man and his Work 
 
 Thomas Kyd, mentioned by himself in 1694. The idea of a lady dis- 
 guised in male equipments pleading in a Venetian court is chimerical 
 — an impersonation as historically outrageous under the actual circum- 
 stances as the episodes in the Bravo of Venice. Such a stratagem would 
 have been simply out of the question, where the scene is laid, although 
 counsel not belonging to a place were sometimes engaged to conduct 
 suits in the courts of Italy in those days. Yet, take the character as a 
 whole, we would rather not be without her. 
 
 Where the residence of Portia is described in the editions as " on 
 the Continent," it should rather be on the terra firma ; but the lady 
 probably had a villa on one of the outer islands. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. " Gra. There are a sort of men . . ," 
 
 The visages likened to the thick slime on the top of a stagnant pool. 
 
 Sc. 3. "Shy. Three thousand ducats — " 
 
 The poet had an imperfect conception of what this sum repre- 
 sented, as the Venetian ducat was = 9/5 of English money, so that 
 3000 d. would be=about £1400 or £9000 of our present money. In 
 another play he makes 6000 ducats payable as ransom to a pirate! 
 In Twelfth Night a character has 3000 ducats a year income. It was a 
 figure of speech. The gold piece had no mark of value and no name ; 
 the silver one was termed Ducatus Venetus not Venetorum, as Hunter 
 gives it. Thomas, in his History of Italy, first published in 1649, leads 
 us to understand that the Venetian nobles were accustomed to husband 
 their resources, so far as domestic expenditure went, in order to have 
 an appreciable amount available for loans, for which they got 10, 12, 
 and even 15 per cent, from the Government, so that the Jews were not 
 the only offenders in this direction. 
 
 " Shy. Water-thieves and land-thieves — " 
 
 In Shakespear's London there were certain localities of notorious 
 repute, of which one was known as the Bermudas, probably from a 
 vague association with the region so called, in the time of Jonson, who 
 refers to " the pirates here at hand." 
 
 See Gesta Bomanorum, ed. Madden, p. 246. Shylock, just below, 
 adopts what is still a favourite device, in disclaiming the personal pos- 
 session of so large a sum as Antonio requires — but he has a friend ! 
 
 Shylock refers to the season, when Laban's and Jacob's ewes were 
 rank, that is, in heat. The word is not explained in this sense by 
 Nares, Halliwell, or Dyce (1875), although the last, under /«&ome 
 refers to it. Shylock refuses to dine with Bassanio and his friend in 
 this scene, but afterward (Act ii., Sc. 5) sups with them in order to 
 " feed upon the prodigal Christian." The Jew's real objection had 
 been to partake of pork ; but that in fact was a dish not usually 
 placed on the tables of the better classes at Venice, and would assuredly 
 not have been so in such circumstances. The prior passage reads like 
 a compound catchpenny epigram for the meridian of the penny seats. 
 
 Sc. 9. " Even in the ^rce and road of casualty.'' 
 Force should ha face. Rood is equivalent to path. 
 
Notes 451 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Shy. Out upon her ! — " 
 Note the fine conflict of feeling. 
 " Meet me at our synagogue — " 
 What a remorseless satire ! 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. "Shy. Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- 
 sions .'' " 
 
 The use of the word dimensions, which Shakespear here introduces, 
 may be perhaps illustrated from a passage in Montaigne {JEssais, var. 
 ed. 1874, ii. 211), where, speaking of watchdogs' dreams, he says : — 
 " Les chiens de garde, que nous voyons souuent gronder en songeant, 
 & puis iapper tout a faict, & s'esveiller en sursaut, comme s'ils apper- 
 Beuoient quelque estranger arriuer : cet estranger que leur ame void, 
 B'est vn homme spirituel, & imperceptible, sans dimension, sans couleur, 
 & sans estre." 
 
 Act iii, Sc. 5. " Laun. . . . thus, when I shun Scylla . . ." 
 
 What could Lancelot or Jessica know about the story ? 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. Venice. A Court of Justice. 
 
 Historically this scene is a misconception, as the Duke or Doge at 
 this time never presided in person over the Courts. The poet should 
 liave known, that the same was the case at home. The scene, where 
 ;he Duke is made to say, " Make room," is mere grotesque caricature. 
 
 " Shy. If every ducat." 
 This is purely rhetorical. 
 
 " Por. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow, 
 Yet in such rule that the Venetian law 
 Cannot impugn you." 
 
 Portia would have had great diflSculty in substantiating this state- 
 nent. 
 
 " Bos. . . . But life itself, my wife, and all the world. 
 Are not with me esteem'd above thy life." 
 
 This is a, reproduction of the classical sentiment — the friend less 
 sasily replaced than the kindred, and more to be cherished or lamented. 
 Shakespear seems to have immediately borrowed the idea from 
 Montaigne, who borrowed it from Herodotus. It is the story of 
 Psammenitus ; but the moral of the latter materially varies (Rawlin- 
 on's Herodotus, ii. 340). 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. "Port. ... It is enacted in the laws of Venice — " 
 
 A pure poetical invention. In the same scene Portia inquires : 
 ' Are there balance here to weigh the flesh .'' " A misreading anyhow, 
 t should either be a balance or balances. Again, Antonio, addressing the 
 )uke, makes a stipulation i-egarding the conversion of Shylock utterly 
 ut of unison with Venetian constitutional ideas and principles. Where 
 ihylock rejects Bassanio's offer of twice the amount, the improbability, 
 rhen the Court was evidently against the Jew, strikes one as grave 
 adeed. I may farther observe that, where Portia first allows the 
 xecution of the sentence, and stipulates only for the least possible 
 
452 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 bloodshed^ and subsequently prescribes that no blood whatever 
 may be spilled, the ostensible inconsistency aimed at prolonging the 
 false confidence of Shylock. 
 
 Sc. 2. "For. . . . we shall have oM swearing." 
 Observe the peculiar sense of the word. It is still in use : but this 
 is an early example. See my Proverbs, 1907, p. 344. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. 
 
 " Lor. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings." 
 
 In this passage Shakespear has been thought to be under obliga- 
 tions to Montaigne, Book i., ch. 22 ; and I have in my Essay shown 
 that the poet probably made use of the French text, and not of Florio'a 
 version. The Merchant of Venice existed, much as we see it, in 1598. 
 Just at the commencement of this speech by Lorenzo, where he is made 
 to say : " Sit, Jessica," let it be observed that the two are already seated 
 on a bank, and that he now invites the attention of his female com- 
 panion to certain of the astronomical bodies, which people usually 
 stand to observe. I would read : " See, Jessica." 
 
 I do not know whether it will be thought ungraceful hyper- 
 criticism to speak of the dialogue between the lovers just above as 
 rather too redolent of the inkhorn — as misappropriated learning. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. " Port. That light we see is burning in my hall — " 
 In a letter from the Venetian Ambassador in London to the Doge, 
 April 23, 1617, he says: " Una candella facea fiamma conveniente a la 
 candella, ma ben diffundeva el suo splendore lontano." And admire 
 the fine passage which follows — " When the moon shone, we did not 
 see the candle, &c.," although the sentiment is perhaps too lofty and 
 subtle for Portia. 
 
 " Port. If you had known the virtue of the ring. . . ." 
 Observe the unique iteration for emphasis. Yet there is a some- 
 what similar treatment in Act iii., Sc. 3, where Shylock says : " I'll 
 have my bond, &c.," and in OtheKo, iv. 21, the Moor likewise iterates 
 for emphasis the term and sentence relative to Desdemona's reputed 
 inconstancy. 
 
 " Gra. ... A paltry ring 
 
 That she did give me ; whose posy was 
 
 For all the world like cutlers' poetry — " 
 
 See an interesting note in Willis's Current Notes for July, 1855. 
 
 For the Rialto scene the prolegomena to Robert Tofte's translation 
 from Nicole de Montreux of Honour's Academy, 1610, may be worth a 
 glance. See my Dodsley, ix. 220. One at least of the earliest views 
 of the famous bridge is in the well-known folio collection of Franco, 
 published about the time, when the English play appeared. 
 
 In the protest of a Venetian bill of exchange of April 17, 1460, it is 
 said that the incident occurred in front of the dwelling of Humphrey 
 Hayford, citizen and goldsmith of London, in Lombard Street, "where 
 merchants of divers nations are wont daily to congregate." This i& 
 the language of the compiler of the Calendar ; but Lombard Street in 
 
Notes 453 
 
 the Plantagenet time and after was the English Rialto, and must have 
 frequently fallen under the eye of the dramatist during his lengthened 
 sojourn in the metropolis. Rawdon Brown's Calendar of Italian State 
 Papers, 1864, p. 88. 
 
 Is this not rather a melodrama than anything else? A tragical 
 climax is in a manner threatened, hut only threatened. Its citation 
 as the Venetian Comedy is not altogether improper. 
 
 Perhaps it has not hitherto received sufficient attention that Shake- 
 spear associated two of his dramatic labours, this and Othello, with a 
 remote Italian city and government, of which the English knowledge 
 was at that time comparatively slender and most inaccurate, since it 
 was derived either from apocryphal publications or travellers' hearsay. 
 Probably in the older piece by Dekker, no longer known, the Jew had 
 the place of honour on the stage as well as in the title ; but Shake- 
 spear puts the Merchant in the forefront ; yet Antonio does not con- 
 tribute to make the production what it is so much as Shylock and one 
 or two other dramatis persones. The main point, however, is that 
 certain political circumstances, set forth in my Venetian Republic, 1900, 
 rendered the place and name just about the time objects of peculiar 
 public interest, and conferred, as I say, on the Republic the unique 
 distinction of being twice identified with this series of masterpieces. 
 The most substantial testimony of this fact may be the appearance in 
 1612 of a translation by W. Shute from the French of M. de Pougasses 
 of the General History of the Magnificent State of Venice, a large folio 
 volume with a. map and other illustrations, which it must have cost 
 A considerable sum to produce ; and it is not quite irrelevant to men- 
 tion that it was dedicated to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dbeam. 
 
 From a passage in Dr. King's Lectures on Jonas, preached at York, 
 some authorities have deduced the fact, that the present play was 
 written in 1593-4, when England was visited after the plague, which 
 I take to have led Shakespear to quit London for the suburbs, by 
 extraordinary weather, and an impression of 1595 has not been alto- 
 gether discredited. A so far unregained play of Huon of Bordeaux, in 
 which Oberon is a character, is said to have been acted by the Earl of 
 Sussex's men in 1593, and may have suggested the adoption of the 
 fairy element. 
 
 The Gei-man version of the interlude in the Gryphius volume, 1663, 
 was, as usual, adapted to suit local taste. It seems strange that Shake- 
 spear should have formed so humble an opinion of the Court of Theseus 
 as to present to it a farce suitable for a country barn ; and the question 
 arises, whether this feature, as well as the revised Induction to the 
 Taming of a Shrew, were not originally prepared for some rural enter- 
 tainment in Warwickshire. There is nothing in either, which Shake- 
 spear might not have written, before he left the country in 1586-7. 
 ■The period of Theseus and Paris was as undetermined in the sixteenth 
 century, as it is to-day, but these two personages are represented as 
 having successively carried off the same woman. They may have lived 
 centuries apart — if at all. Shakespear has breathed into the character 
 of the Duke of Athens a vitality, of which Plutarch despaired ! I do 
 
454 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 not know whether the English poet's eye ever fell on the poem by John 
 Trussell on the subject, printed in 1596 ; but the name and story of 
 Theseus had been familiarized to some extent by Underdowne's Theseus. 
 and Ariadne, 1566, and Turbervile's Ovid, 1667. 
 
 In his James the Fourth, 1698, but probably printed earlier, as it 
 was licensed in 1594, Greene has introduced an interlude of Oberon. 
 See my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, v. King of Fairies. Oberon is a 
 conspicuous character in the ancient romance of Hvxm of Bordeaux. 
 Not quite too felicitously, perhaps, Dekker, in his Whore of Babylon, 
 1607, introduces ''Titania the Fairy Queene," allegorizing under that 
 name the late Queen Elizabeth. In 1608 was licensed to Thomas 
 Pavier the History of Titana and Theseus, which was apparently sug- 
 gested by Shakespear's play, and which is at present known only in a 
 reprint of 1636. 
 
 In 1623 Sir Henry Herbert licensed, as by Ford and Dekker, " a 
 new play called the Fairy Knight." I hardly know whether a 4° MS. 
 before me has anything to do with this otherwise lost piece. It is 
 called : " The iFaery Knight Or Oberon the Second." In it Politico, a 
 foolish politician, is the pretended king of Fairies, and Loswello is the 
 fairy knight. 
 
 The title " western flower," apostrophized in this play, is identified 
 with Lettice, Countess of Leicester, the wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of 
 Leicester, mother of Queen Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Essex. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 2. " And then the whole quire hold their hips and 
 loflFe— " 
 
 This form or pronunciation of laugh is required in the nursery 
 rhyme of Old Mother Hubbard, where the dog is said to be laughing. 
 Loffe was, no doubt, an accepted form, as Shakespear did not want it 
 for the rhyme. 
 
 Act T., Sc. 1. Helen's beauty. The prose romance of Faustus, 
 printed in German in 1687 at Berlin, had been recently (1592) pub- 
 lished in English, and may well have attracted Shakespear's notice, 
 as it did of other writers of the time. One of the visions of Faustus 
 is that of Helena of Greece. My Prose Writings, 1906, p. 36. 
 
 ''He sees more devils than vast hell can hold — " It has been 
 thought that he had in his eye the book by Lodge, to which he 
 evidently alludes in Henry V. But here he may have rather had 
 before him the ancient popular conception of the lower regions and 
 its ministration under Lucifer or Satan by a legion of evil spirits, 
 whose function it was to inflict on sinners both in Purgatory and Hell 
 the appointed torments. Elsewhere he figures Hell as empty, because 
 "all the devils are here.'' 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 
 This drama is stated to have been produced in an unusually short 
 time for performance before the Queen, who desired to see Falstaff in 
 love — a sort of parallel with the Orlamdo Furioso and Orlando Inamorato. 
 The date of its composition has been variously given ; but the death of 
 Falstaff is introduced into Henry V. In the text, as imperfectly printed 
 in 1602, there is an incorrect quotation from EngUvn£s Helicon, 1600, 
 
Notes 455 
 
 of a ballad-poem, first printed, I believe, in that miscellany, though 
 written before 1593, when the author (Marlowe) died. In the accepted 
 version it is fuller, yet still inaccurate ; but the sole point is that, 
 unless Shakespear met with the verses in MS., he appears to have 
 borrowed the extract from the 1600 volume, with which, as I have 
 elsewhere stated, he was not only in all probability acquainted, but 
 to which he was a contributor. The first true text is in the folio 
 of 1623. 
 
 The traditional story about Elizabeth's call for a play, which should 
 exhibit Falstaff in love, involved the author and the world in an un- 
 foreseen dilemma, for the deceased knight had perforce to suffer a 
 resurrection, and to tread the boards once more with new surroundings 
 and a new cast. In the two-part Henry IV. and in Henry V. he had 
 already gained splendid notoriety as a roysterer and a boon-companion 
 with a sort of faint indication of military engagements, partaking of a 
 serio-comic character, and not at all apt, one would have thought, to 
 arouse the susceptibilities of the Fastolfes. When the poet set him- 
 self the task of writing the Merry Wives, with Falstafl' as a lover in the 
 dramatis personce, the chronological propriety, on the one hand, was 
 violated ; but on the other, the personal affront to the Fastolfes be- 
 came still 'less substantial and sustainable, and the families, which 
 had the best ground for complaint, were the Lucys of Charlecote and 
 the Pages of Berkshire, the former in the persons of Justice Shallow 
 and his cousin reproduced from the two-part Henry IV. and the latter 
 new creations. Both in the historical plays and here the knighthood 
 of Falstaff appears to be mythical. A house in what is now known as 
 Park Street, but in the poet's day was Moor Lane, Windsor, leading 
 to Frog Moor (Frogmore) is traditionally reported to have been " Ann 
 Foorde's House " — perhaps it occupies the site. 
 
 Where Ford's House, the Street, and Frogmore are mentioned, these 
 points should be attended to — in the scenery inclusive. 
 
 Heme the Hunter is in the 4° of 1602 called Home. The so-called 
 Heme's Oak was destroyed in 1796. But comp. Shakespear's Library, 
 1875, Part II., vol. ii., p. 188. 
 
 The reference to " Bucklersbury in simple time" prompts the 
 suggestion that it was there that Sadler of Sti-atford had his druggist's 
 emporium. From the special intimacy between the Shakespears and 
 the Sadlers the poet must have frequently visited Sadler, who then 
 resided so near him alike in Borough and Blackfriars days. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Sir Hugh Evans. 
 
 Shakespear made early acquaintance with the Welsh and their 
 peculiarities, as there were settlers in his boyhood at Stratford, in- 
 cluding the Ap-Roberts family, from the Principality. See my 
 Shakespear's Library, part 2, ii. 108. In the Borough records, 6-6 
 Philip and Mary, Lewis Ap- Williams was one of the Chamberlains, 
 and in or about 1676 Mr. Jenkins was the schoolmaster. 
 
 -Dr. Caius. 
 
 The notion of a humorous medical man offers itself in a German 
 play mentioned by Kohn under the name of John Clan the English 
 clown, a physician. Shakespear in Germany, 1866, Ixvi. 
 
456 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. Bully rook. The Editor of the Phimpton Correspond- 
 ence, 18S9, p. 168, says that in his opinion we should read bully rag. 
 See my Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 506. At all events the existing 
 form occurs four times in the plays. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. These Knights will hack. 
 
 An inserted reference to suit the extravagance with which James I. 
 created knights as a means of raising money. The words of the text 
 form the title of a Jacobean ballad. 
 
 Sc. 2. " Shal. ... I hear the parson is no jester." 
 V or jester we should read_/M«ter or yott*ier= fighter. Comp. Actiii., 
 Sc. 1. 
 
 -Mumhudget. Comp. Old English Jest Books, ii. p. 222, where 
 
 the passage from the play is cited by me. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. Where Evans the schoolmaster quotes the verses^ 
 "To shallow rivers, to whose falls — " from England's Helicon, 1600, 
 we may safely suspect that Shakespear had the then recently published 
 volume before him, and happened to cast his eye on the passage. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. "Mrs. Ford. How now, my eyas muske !" 
 Comp. Merie Tales ofSkelton, No. vi. 
 Act iv., Sc. 5. ^^ Simple. I may not conceal them, sir." 
 " Host. Conceal them, or thou diest." 
 
 Simple seems to misuse the word conceal for reveal, and mine host 
 does not correct him, unless it is a misprint. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 6. " Fal. Divide me like a bribe-buck." 
 
 This sentence and notion are perhaps derived from a tract by John 
 Lacy, called Wyl Buck his Testament, printed about 1560, for in As 
 You Like It, Act ii., Sc. 1, Jaques is quoted as having said : " Poor 
 deer, thou mak'st a testament." 
 
 The German Duke, who visited England in 1592, is said by some 
 of the editors to have travelled under the name of the Count Mombe- 
 liard. But the Dukes of Wiirtemberg were also by marriage Counts 
 of Montbelia/rd, in Burgundy, a title which they retained down to the 
 French Revolution. A portrait of the Duke, who came over here, is 
 to be found in a 4° volume published at Tubingen in 1604 {Panegyrici 
 Tres Anglo-Wirrtembergici, &c.). 
 
 The present play is said to have been presented at the Cockpit as 
 late as November 16, 1638. A copy of the 4° of 1619 was found many 
 years ago at Charlecote, and is almost the only thing of the kind pre- 
 served there. Did the Lucy of that day buy it to see what was said 
 about his predecessor .'' 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 Some remarks on the dramatis personce and the obligations of 
 Shakespear to Lodge's Rosalynd, 1590, will be found in the text. 
 
 As You Like It seems in the poet's day to have been a proverbial 
 phrase, and to have commended itself to him on that account. The 
 play was separately licensed, August 4, 1600, but apparently not so 
 published. As the lines referring to the death of Marlowe were in- 
 
Notes 457 
 
 correctly quoted (as from memory) in Chapman's Blind Beggar of 
 Aletvtmdria, 1598j the Shakespear drama may be taken to have been 
 then on the stage, and to have been witnessed by the other poet. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Jaques. Milton seems to have been more or 
 less a student of Shakespear. Had he this character in his mind's eye, 
 when he composed his Allegro and Penseroso ? 
 
 Sir Rowland de Bois. 
 
 I scarcely know whether it is vvorth while to mention that in the 
 legend of Fulk Fitmwarin, the hero adopts at the Court of France the 
 nom de guerre of Sir Amis du Bois. The Shakespearean character and 
 name are not in Lodge's Bosalynd. 
 
 Act i.j Sc. 1. Orl. "As I remember . . ." 
 
 This seems to begin abruptly, and there should be before " as I 
 
 remember" a . Before "charged" just below a word or two are 
 
 apparently deficient, query, ''my father." If Orlando received 1000 
 crowns as a legacy from his father — they must have been of gold — the 
 amount was sufficient to render him independent of his brother, had 
 he so chosen. But Shakespear was rather imperfectly versed in mone- 
 tary values, except those current at home, as is shown in the Merchant 
 of Venice and elsewhere. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. " 1st Lord. . . . ' Poor deer,' quoth he, ' thou mak'st 
 a testament.' " 
 
 Comp. note on Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 6. 
 
 "DukeS. Shew me the place : 
 
 I love to cope him in these sullen fits — " 
 
 The melancholy Jaques is introduced shortly after, and we are to 
 interpret sullen in the sense of ruminant self-absorption. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. The world's a stage. 
 
 This idea occurred to Pythagoras and to Palladas the grammarian, 
 of whom the latter lived eleven centuries before Shakespear. He 
 says : — 
 
 " This life a theatre we well may call. 
 
 Where every actor must perform with art : 
 Or laugh it through, and make a farce of all. 
 Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part." 
 
 And so from the Anthology of Stobseus, a book on the shelves of 
 Jonson at least, Shakespear might have learned that the Ages of Man 
 was as old as Plato. 
 
 In Damon and Pithias, written about 1566, the comparison of 
 Pythagoras is cited in these terms : — 
 
 " Pythagoras said, that this world was like a stage, 
 Whereon many play their parts." 
 
 And in his Essays Montaigne introduces the same sentiment from 
 Petronius Arbiter: Mundus univeraus eoeercet histrionem. We thus 
 gain a consensus of opinion and sympathy on the similitude of a 
 transitory existence to an actor crossing the boards from the pens of 
 philosophical writers living so many ages apart. So early did the 
 
458 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 figure strike a thinker as appropriate and picturesque, and so hard it 
 has proved to add to it any new force. I meet with a parallel 
 sentence : Mundus scena, vita transitus : venisti, vidisti, abiisti. It 
 is the identical conceit. But our poet, perhaps feeling that the thing 
 was decies repetita, improved on the old saw hy making it a peg 
 whereon to hang the Seven Ages of Man. 
 
 The same train of thought is observable in the song in Twelfth 
 Night : " When that I was and a tiny little boy," and there and in the 
 schoolboy with his satchel Shakespear may have recalled his own daily 
 boyish trudge between his home and his lessons. In the Merry Wives, 
 iv. Ij the poet almost seems to have introduced the scene, where 
 William the schoolboy comes on the stage, for the sake of the old 
 personal association. 
 
 Act. ii., Sc. 6. Under the greenwood tree. 
 
 In the Proverbs of Eendyng {Reliquiee Antiques, i. p. 113) we meet 
 with a curious prototype of this sentiment : " Under boske shal men 
 weder abide." Comp. my Proverbs, 3rd edit., p. 609, where I give a 
 modernised rendering : — 
 
 " Under the greenwood tree, 
 Hard weather endured must be, 
 Quoth Hendyng." 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 6. " Jaques. ' Good morrow, fool,' quoth I ; ' No, sir, 
 quoth he, ' call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune.'" 
 
 See my English Proverbs, 1907, p. 166, and Montaigne, Essays, 
 1902, iv. p. 48. Jaques alludes to the common adage : " Fools have 
 fortune." 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 7. " Jaq. And then he drew a dial from his poke." 
 This allusion is merely quoted for the sake of mentioning that, at 
 a period long after that of the poet, the usage of carrying sun-dials as 
 time-keepers, prevailed in the Midlands and North. A ring dial of 
 the seventeenth century, which had belonged to a ploughman employed 
 on Worksop Manor, was lately advertised as having been obtained 
 from his descendant. He bore it, not in his pocket, like the fool in 
 the play, but on his breast — perhaps he had no pocket. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 7. In the passage, where Jaques says, "A. fool! A 
 fool ! " and afterward, as a sort of aside ("a miserable world "), Hunter 
 would substitute ort for world, and points out that ort recurs in Troilus 
 and Cressida in the sense of fragments. I do not agree with the change, 
 but think that a mark of admiration is wanted after world. The 
 word ort is not properly explained ; it is = Dutch oort, the quarter of a 
 duit, a mere fraction. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Duke Fred. . . . But were I not the better part 
 made mercy." 
 
 This sentence is rather elliptical. The sense is, " But were not 
 the better part of me made of mercy " or merciful. Comp. Henry VI., 
 Part II., Act i., Sc. 3 : " Dueh. Though in this place most master 
 wear no breeches " — i.e. she, who is most master, wears no breeches. 
 
Notes 459 
 
 Act iii.. So. 2. 
 
 " Orl. ... O Rosalind, these trees shall he my books, 
 And in their barks my thoughts I'll character — " 
 
 This minor incident is directly borrowed from the novel ; and the 
 author of Wily Beguiled, 1606, again, hits adopted it from one or the 
 other — more probably from Shakespear, whom he seems to have 
 studied. But the notion is at least as old as Aristophanes, who ridi- 
 cules the practice in his Acharnians. It is one still in full vogue. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. These are allusions to the Oargantua of Rabelais 
 and to Ovid's Epistoke ex Ponto, which must have been derived from 
 the French or from oral communication, unless a version of Rabelais 
 registered in 1592 and again in 1594 was published, and has perished. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. " Touchstone. Good even, good master What ye 
 call 11^" 
 
 Compare Hazlitt's Proverbs, 1907, p. 520. The colloquialism is more 
 common than it used to be. Vide supra. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 5. Chapman and As You Like It. 
 
 Hooper, in his edition of Chapman, expresses the opinion, that the- 
 writer may have seen Marlowe's translation of Musaeus in MS., as it 
 was licensed in 1593, and in fact, from what we now have some means 
 of knowing or at least conjecturing, he may have had under his eyes 
 the MS. itself. But, as he merely cites the lines quoted by Shakespear 
 in the play, I think that there is no doubt, whence he derived his 
 acquaintance with the matter. The citation may serve to establish 
 the performance of the drama in or before 1598. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. " Touchstone. It is meat and drink to me to see a 
 clown — " 
 
 The poet appears to have relished this figure of speech, as he puts 
 it in the Merry Wives into the mouth of Slender. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 The marriage of James VI. of Scotland in 1590 to a Danish princess 
 seems to have drawn the two countries together, and to have had the 
 e£Fect of introducing on the English stage dramatic productions illus- 
 trative of Danish history — Shakespear's play inclusive. In 1603 a 
 small volume of Prophecies, by Merlin and others, purported to in- 
 clude, besides England, Scotland, and part of France, Denmark, doubt- 
 less in compliment to the queen, and as late as 1 622 Davies of Hereford 
 penned his Bien Venu " to our dear brethren the Danes." 
 
 The prototype of all the Hamlet narratives seems to have been 
 Saxo Grammaticus, who through the Systorie of Hamblet (if there was 
 an impression antecedent to that of 1608) may have very well become 
 known to Shakespear. Saxo Grammaticus tells the story very diffei- 
 ently from the English dramatist ; but there are episodes in his version, 
 in common with those derived from it in Italian, French, and English, 
 which Shakespear utilized in his eclectic and assimilating fashion. 
 
 The earliest play on this subject was apparently in existence in 
 1688, and is doubtless distinct from one licensed for performance 
 by the Lord Admiral's and Lord Chamberlain's men at the Newington 
 
460 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 theatre, June 9, 1594. Now, a difficulty arises, if it be one, that on 
 July 7, 1602, Henslowe paid Henry Chettle, in earnest of " Danish 
 Tragedy," 20s., that is, of a new production so entitled, for such a sum 
 would not have been advanced on account for mere alterations ; and 
 it is wholly uncertain, whether the work was completed, or, if so, is 
 extant. But it seems singular that three dramatic efforts : the First 
 sketch of Samlet, 1588, by Kyd in Mr. Fleay's view, the printed 
 copy, 1603, and this play by Chettle, should be concurrently, as it 
 were, before the public, where the subject was not one of striking 
 popularity, since the Danish marriage of James VI. of Scotland was 
 barely sufficient to awaken so lively an interest in so remote a region. 
 Of course, the Danish Tragedy by Chettle might have been wholly 
 unconnected with the Hamlet in any form. But comp. Troilus and 
 Oressida, supra. The Hamlet quoted by Lodge in his Wit's Miserie, 
 1596, was doubtless the one shown at the Newington playhouse. 
 
 In the list of early English plays in Germany given by Kohn and 
 Fleay occur : " King of Denmark and King of Sweden," a tragi-comedy, 
 identified by Fleay with Sir Glyomon and Sir Glamydes, and, accord- 
 ing to him, by R. Wilson. This is merely mentioned to shew the 
 interest in Danish topics or plots. 
 
 In a collection of proverbs by John Clarke (Parcemiologia, 1639), 
 there is the saying : 
 
 A trout bmkt wUb 
 fami kgu 
 
 There is no such passage in the Shakespear play ; and it may be a 
 sentence supposed to be characteristic of the Danish prince. I give 
 the name exactly as it presents itself in the original. Is there a 
 possibility that the saying is a salvage from the older drama, or one 
 of them, which reached the proverb-gatherer by hearsay ? The intro- 
 duction of the adage into plays was, equally with the ballad, an ante- 
 Shakespearean device, and constituted part of the scheme in the elder 
 playwrights of popularizing their performances, and catching the 
 popular taste. If this apparent fragment of dialogue really belongs 
 to the ante-Shakespear drama, it, with the passage in Lodge's Wit's 
 Miserie, 1596, where the writer refers to the Ghost, who cried so miser- 
 ably at the theatre, " Hamlet, revenge," and a similar one in Westward 
 Ho, 1607, constitute all that survives of the text, and the two bits do 
 not inspire us with a very lofty notion of the merit of the rest, of 
 which Kohn has printed a modernized German version. But it is so 
 far curious, that the 1588 or even 1594 play should have been so long 
 remembered, as neither was printed. 
 
 As regards the pirated 4° of 1603 we do not even know whether 
 the person, who took down what he heard or remembered, did so in 
 London or at one of the universities, where the play was shown, or, 
 again, whether there was a second hand in the work — a spectator, who 
 recollected passages missed by the other. But even the joint result 
 did not save the necessity of offering a text, exhibiting omissions and 
 interpolations by guesswork. Nor was the 4° of 1604 or the Folio 
 complete. All three have to be called into service to form what the 
 modern editions present. 
 
Notes 461 
 
 It is by no means foreign to the purpose to remind the reader that 
 in 1784 Holcroftj desirous of producing an English version of Le 
 Manage de Figaro by Beaumarchais on the London stage, arranged 
 with his friend Bonneville to attend the performance during a week 
 or so, when they had obtained between them a complete and accurate 
 copy of the French text. Memoirs (Hazlitt's Works, ii. 112). 
 
 I very strongly incline to the notion that the Hamlet of 1603 was 
 due to an Oxford or Cambridge source, and may have been assisted by 
 a prompter's copy. We do not hear of shorthand being employed for 
 this sort of purpose, although the art had been introduced iu the pre- 
 ceding century. 
 
 It is difficult to decide, in the presence of the rival Eamlets, to 
 which the series of allusions collected by Halliwell-Phillipps {Out- 
 lines, 6th ed., ii. 513) belong. A. strange piece of neutral criticism 
 seems to be that, which Gabriel Harvey is said to have inserted in his- 
 copy of Speght's Chaucer, 1598, where he brackets Lucrece and Hamlet 
 as haying in them wherewith "to please the wiser sort." 
 
 As the play opens with a view in front of the Castle of Elsinore, 
 it becomes of a certain interest to cite the Dutch Wagenaer of 1600, 
 where an engraving of this building occurs. Whether the poet saw it, 
 is problematical ; but an account may, as in so many other cases, have 
 indirectly reached him. 
 
 I conclude that for theatrical accuracy the Dane ought to be 
 represented with flaxen hair ; and there may be something in that 
 line of Ophelia's song : " all flaxen was his poll " ; which, looking at her 
 frame of mind, is not inconsistent with " his beard as white as snow ; "" 
 but we have Hamlets of all complexions as well as statures. The real 
 one is said to grow pursier, as the dramatist may have done iu middle 
 life. It is a play for the closet. The imagination can paint best the 
 stage effects and accessories. 
 
 What may be perhaps termed the unofficial side of the principal 
 character betrays itself at every turn. No prince, in other words, was 
 ever so wise as Shakespear, and the philosophy of Jaques is apt t» 
 strike us as more germane to the character and the poet. 
 
 The misanthropic vein, so conspicuous in this play, in Timon, and 
 to a certain extent in Lear, betrays itself in the celebrated song in 
 As You lAke It, commencing, " Under the Greenwood Tree," and in 
 the character of Jaques. But the misanthropy of the banished Amiens: 
 is perfectly unlike that of Hamlet or Jaques, as all fail to resemble the 
 misanthropy of Timon or of Lear, where the operating agency is in- 
 gratitude, yet, again, ingratitude of a totally difl'erent nature and 
 origin. The caustic humour of the Prince of Denmark is a product, 
 of intellectual insight, that of Jaques of physical temperament, carried 
 almost to affectation or whimsicality. We seem to recognize the per- 
 sonal idiosyncrasies of Shakespear himself behind Hamlet in a far 
 greater and truer measure than in the other cases. This would be a 
 piece of autobiography which I should be most unwilling to discredit 
 and surrender. 
 
 The drama continued to be reprinted down to 1637, on the title- 
 page of which issue we encounter the strange statement, that the text, 
 has been enlarged, '^according to the true and perfect copy last 
 printed." 
 
462 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 A post-Restoration edition of Hamlet, 1676, is well known, but at 
 the end of a play by R. Rhodes, Flora's Vagaries, 1670, the tragedy 
 is advertised as on sale. There had been apparently no separate 
 impressions since 1637. Evelyn saw it performed, Nov. 26, 1661. 
 
 Where the Prince of Denmark speaks of a player wearing two 
 Proven9al roses in his slashed shoes, it is more or less material here to 
 mention that for Provence we ought to read Provins. But Sir Hugh 
 Plat (Flora's Paradise, 1608, p. 77) has Province roses, apparently under 
 the same erroneous impression. The flower is said to have been brought 
 home by the Crusaders. 
 
 Act i., So. 1. "It faded on the crowing of the cock." 
 Comp. History of Tom Thumhe, 1630 (Hazlitt's Popular Poetry, 
 ii. 191) :— 
 
 " And so with peace and quietnesse 
 he left this earth below ; 
 And vp into the Fayry Land 
 his ghost A\d. fading goe." 
 
 I conclude that the statement in Gildon's Langbaine that the 
 Ghost scene was written by the poet in his own house at Stratford, 
 adjoining to the churchyard, is little more than a fanciful conjecture. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " that this too too solid flesh would melt ! " 
 Comp. Dekker where he speaks of Christ as 
 
 "The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him.'' 
 
 The duplicated form too too is not uncommon. 
 
 " In my mind's eye, Horatio." 
 
 Shakespear probably knew that the human eye was a mere 
 mechanical medium, through which we distinguish objects, and that 
 the real visual faculty resided in the mind or x-ather in the blood. 
 
 The treatment of the Ghost in this play is a piece of dramatic 
 licence, when it becomes visible to others besides Hamlet, and much 
 more, when it is made to speak in a passage, where it and the Prince 
 are left alone. Shakespear could not, consistently with theatrical 
 exigencies, keep within due bounds, limit the experience to a piece of 
 mental refraction — " to the mind's eye." Nevertheless the Ghost is 
 little more than a time-bound vision and a dumbshow, and does not 
 really contradict the sentiment of the " undiscovered country " and 
 " irrepassable bourne." If, as is generally thought, the poet fiUed the 
 part, he had not much to get by heart, and even that offered a certain 
 impropriety. 
 
 It was a fine saying of some one to Hazlitt, referring to a passage 
 in Mozart, that it was a soliloquy equal to any in Hamlet. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. "Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks." 
 An expression borrowed by Henry Parrot for his volume of 
 Epigrams, 1613 ; it occurs again in Act v., Sc. 2. He adopted another 
 title from this play, the Mouse Trap. The latter is cited by Sharpham 
 
Notes 463 
 
 his Fleire, 1607, at least in the edition of 1610 before me — in the 
 dress to the Reader-Hearer, where he says that his play has not 
 me like a Mouse-trap to inveigle your good opinions. A line or so 
 low a making should be a-making. 
 
 " my prophetic soul! mine uncle." 
 
 Comp. Sonnet 107 for this identical expression. Such parallels 
 ike something for the mutual authentication and ownership of 
 ays and Poems. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 5. Where the Ghost declares to Hamlet that he is in 
 ranee. 
 
 "Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature. 
 Are burnt and purg'd away — " 
 
 We recall the beautiful and pathetic story of the Child of Bristol 
 [azlitt's Popular Poetry, 1864). But as Horatio puts it, Hamlet 
 raxes desperate with imagination." He sees these things in his 
 nind's eye." 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 2. " Ham. . . . for there is nothing either good or 
 d but thinking makes it so." 
 
 Comp. Montaigne, I., 19, " Que le goust des biens et des mauoc, iSfc." 
 
 " — were it not that I have had dreams.'' 
 Comp. Jonson's Masque of Blackness: — 
 
 " For sure they saw't, for ^thiops never dream." 
 
 Coleridge once said to my grandfather Hazlitt, when the latter 
 Id him that he did not dream, " Then you have no imagination." 
 
 Where Shakespear puts the sentiment (see p. 346) into Hamlet's 
 juth, he seemed to imply by the term dreams an extension of 
 3ntal perception or insight. 
 
 " Ham. Ay, sir, to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man 
 :ked out of ten thousand." 
 
 This, strangely enough, appears to be an exact inversion of the 
 thor's sense. Should we not read : " Ay, sir, as this world goes, to 
 
 honest, &c." 
 
 "jBo«. ... we coted them on the way." 
 
 0'ofe(i= accosted. We keep the old French form accoster. 
 
 "Ham. Look, where by abridgments come" — i.e., the actors. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 2. " Pol. Do you know me, my lord .'' 
 
 Ham. Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger. 
 
 Pol. Not I, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.'' 
 
 This reference of Hamlet seems to be ironical. Fishmongers, even 
 the time of Elizabeth, enjoyed a bad name as regraters and ex- 
 rtioners ; and the unreasonably high price of fish is a matter of 
 rticular remark in the Fishmongers' pageant of 1590, recovered a 
 V years since by me. 
 
464 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 It was the same at Rome and Athens. See St. John's Manners and 
 Customs of Ancient Greece, 1842^ iii. 99. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question." 
 This passage, and one in Measure for Measure, are compared supra 
 with one in Montaigne. 
 
 " — the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn — " It has been 
 inconsiderately objected to this passage, that in the same drama the 
 author makes Hamlet's father revisit the world. But in the present 
 case there is the high philosophical sentiment, in the Ghost scene the 
 politic homage to popular belief. 
 
 "Get thee to a nunnery : Why wouldst thou be a breeder of 
 sinners?" 
 
 Read : " Why, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners ! " 
 
 Sc. 2. — "Ham. ... A very very Paiocke." 
 
 Some explain this to be a baiocco, a Roman copper coin ; but I fear 
 that there were no baiocchi contemporary with Shakespear. 1 suggest 
 pie-0, the being a pleonasm. In the same scene the allusion to the 
 oblivion, into which the hobby-horse had fallen, seems suggestive of a 
 glance by the writer at Kemp's Nine daies Wonder, 1600. 
 
 In the same scene there is the dialogue between Hamlet and 
 Polonius, " very like a whale, &c.," which reappears in one with Osric 
 in V. 2, as if the dramatist relished this sort of banter. 
 
 " Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap ? . . ." 
 
 This passage is construable with the anecdotes, which we possess 
 of the freedom of speech recognized in the poet's day (and long after) 
 even between persons of the two sexes in high life. Comp. Notes to 
 Much Ado about Nothing, supra. Shakespear, however, dealt very 
 sparingly with this class of allusion. Possibly the passage from Hamlet 
 may represent a transfer from the present play, which may have borne 
 to the later one the same sort of relation which the old Taming of a 
 Shrew, 1694, bore to Shakespear's. The poet by possibility witnessed 
 the performance, or had in his hands a MS. of the Hamlet, which we 
 know only from fragments. 
 
 " Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate — " that is, while 
 the Duke in the play sleeps. Comp. Richard II. iii. 2 : 
 
 " Rich. For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings ; 
 How some have been depos'd, some slain in war ; 
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd ; 
 Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kilPd — " 
 So that the notion was in the poet's mind in or before 1597, and 
 comp. the Ghost scene in Richard III., v. 3. The two opening lines 
 remind one of the story of Shelley and Leigh Hunt in a coach with a 
 nervous and unlettered old lady. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 6. " Oph. You must sing down a down, ari you call 
 him a down a. 0, how the wheel becomes it ! " 
 
 The speaker appears to refer to a tune, which could be sung, while 
 
Notes 465 
 
 he spinning-wheel was in motion. But a song of the Spinning Wheel 
 3 notified hy Chappell, p. 622, as hy T. Durfey, or at any rate as 
 idited by him ; there was such a tune in the time of James I. A 
 lallad of the Seaman's Victory of the time of Charles II. is directed to 
 le sung to it. Early Naval Ballads, 1841, p. 47. In 1910 I observed a. 
 fheel at Kenmare in Kerry, having at the side a seat for the spinner. 
 Phere were in fact two with diffei-ing wheels. 
 
 Act iv., So. 5. They say the owl was a halter's daughter. 
 
 See Halliwell's Popular Rhymes, 1849, p. 167, where this is de- 
 icribed, on the authority of a writer in the Qentleman's Magazine, as a 
 Herefordshire fairy tale. But it also belongs to Gloucestershire, where 
 fesus is substituted for the fairy. The fable may have been more or 
 ess widely diffused — at all events over that part of England. Comp. 
 ny Proverbs, 1907, p. 433. 
 
 Ophelia's mental derangement is made to run into channels, which 
 iertainly do not impress one as germane to the character, her rank, 
 ige, and sex considered. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 5. " Oph. (sings). They bore him bare-fac'd on the 
 jier." 
 
 See Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 260, and the illustration. 
 Ophelia seems to imply, if a coffin at all, a lidless one. 
 
 " Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance — " 
 
 This idea or theory prevailed before the time of the poet. In Cur- 
 rent Notes for January, 1856, a passage is cited from Robinson's Hand- 
 ful of Pleasant Delights, 1584, embodying the precise form of popular 
 belief. 
 
 Sc. 7. ''Queen. ... Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and 
 long purples. 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them." 
 
 In the queen's account of the death of Ophelia there is the charac- 
 teristic Shakespearean figure in allusion to her dress of " her garments 
 heavy with their drink." In the same place "long purples " are de- 
 scribed as being vulgarly known under a grosser name. What were 
 these long purples, otherwise " dead men's fingers " ? It is an odd 
 reference for a royal lady. But both are terms which I have not 
 found glossed anywhere. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. " The age is grown so picked." 
 
 Picked appears to be a term borrowed from the peaked or piked 
 shoes formerly in use, and the sentence immediately succeeding may 
 be thought to corroborate such an etymology. But the definition of 
 nice or spruce is also admissible as a secondary meaning or acceptation. 
 Shakespear through Hamlet points to the appreciable development 
 of democratic feeling, of which his sovereign and he lived only to see 
 the rise. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. "Ham. Let me see. Alas! PoorYorick!" 
 
 See a curious copy of verses founded on this passage in my Inedited 
 Poetical Miscellanies, 1870, called " A Conference with a Dead Man's 
 Head." Comp. suprd for farther remarks on this scene. 
 
 2g 
 
466 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 In digging a new grave in old ground, where successive interments 
 have taken place, it is not unusual to encounter remains, skulls of 
 course included. A skull was picked up on Barnes Common^ near 
 the cemetery, not long since (1907) by one of the keepers. But there 
 is a measure of unfitness in apostrophizing such a thing, where it 
 referred to a person buried within a brief period, as the same plot of 
 earth would not have been probably broken at so short an interval for 
 another body. 
 
 " 1 Glown. It must be se offendendo . . ." 
 
 The phonetic learning of the speaker of course arises from him 
 having misheard the real phrase, felo de se. It is open to doubt, 
 whether the fellow had ever heard the latter, and the use of the 
 expression is not an unfelicitous piece of humour. 
 
 " 1 Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg'd as we have 
 warrantise . . . 
 
 Warrantise, not warramties, as in some of the old editions. Prior 
 (Ancient Danish Ballads', 1860, i., xli.) pointed out that the " virgin 
 crants " and " maiden strewments " have their counterparts and ana- 
 logues in the early Danish pre-nuptial usages. 
 
 In the same act and scene we get the phrase, which is put into the 
 mouth of the clown, " crowner's quest law," and it is explained by the 
 authorities as a vulgarism for coroner's ; but in a tract printed in the 
 reign of Henry VIII., of which only one complete copy is at present 
 known to me — " The enquirie and verdite of the quest panneld of 
 the death of Richard Hune," Thomas Barnewell is described at the 
 end as " Crowner of the Citie of London." It was a familiar form of 
 the word. 
 
 " even Christian.'' 
 
 A very early use of even for equal or fellow occurs in a broadside 
 from the press of Caxton (about 1484), containing Prayers to be said at 
 deathbeds. See Blades, ed. 1877, p. 283. 
 
 " Laer. To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head Of blue 
 
 Olympus." 
 
 A little below the poet makes Hamlet refer to Ossa, in both cases 
 with equal improbability ; but we see that he had been studying Ovid's 
 Fasti, and hastened to utilize the information. 
 
 It is to be remarked, however, that the figure of speech, which may 
 become Hamlet himself, is not so fitly put into the mouth of Laertes. 
 The notion was before the poet, and a fine and subtle one it was and 
 is ; but he should not have weakened the efiect by distributing it. He 
 hits the mark better, where in the same scene he makes Laertes ejacu- 
 late: "The devil take thy soul!" to which the Prince responds: 
 " Thou pray'st not well ! " 
 
 As the passage stands, Laertes is made to prompt Hamlet to the 
 sentiment, which the latter carries a step farther. This is a dramatic 
 impropriety. 
 
 " Ham. Woult drink up Eisil .'' eat a crocodile .'' " 
 I see easle explained as a Scotish term, derived from A.S. ysle, 
 meaning hot ashes. The Prince is distracted, and there is the 
 
Notes 467 
 
 •whimsical collocation of a crocodile. A little before, where the 
 iqueen says: " What thence ? " unless we are to understand, "What's 
 the matter?" I should be disposed to read : "What then?" lithen 
 were in the MS. copy written thenne, it might be easily misread. 
 
 Act v., So. 2. " Sam. . . . and praise be rashness for it—" 
 
 Read praised. 
 
 " Ham. The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit — " 
 
 Should it not be o'ergrows ? 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 This drama, performed at Candlemas at the Middle Temple, in 
 February 1601-2, was first printed in the folio of 1623, and in 
 the contemporary, Manningham Diary under 1601-2 is explicitly 
 registered under its double title (suggestive of an option), so that 
 Marston in 1607 must have adopted the latter portion, as he could 
 scarcely have been unaware of the Shakespear piece — at all events 
 by report. 
 
 Marston survived till 1634 ; but he relinquished literary pursuits 
 at an early date, and went into the Church — a parallel case to some 
 extent with Gosson and Lodge, and the converse of Greene. But he 
 had been at one time as much a free-thinker as Marlowe. 
 
 There appears to be no means of ascertaining from the Middle 
 Temple records, what the circumstances were in connection with the 
 production of the play, the character of the dresses and appointments, 
 and the performers of the parts. Old Twelfth Night fell on January 
 12, 1601-2, nor is there any ground for supposing that the play had 
 been already presented elsewheie. An official of the Inn suggests, that 
 the Header for the time being (a function discharged in Shakespear's 
 day by some eminent lawyer) may, with a committee of Benchers or 
 members, have superintended the business. In the printed Records 
 there are brief references to festivities intended at Christmas, 1599- 
 1601, but not to this event, which conferred on the Inn such an unique 
 distinction — one, of which it still remains serenely unconscious. Halli- 
 well-Phillipps seems to have thought that the play was produced on 
 Twelfth Night itself ; but I deem it likelier that the title occurred or 
 was proposed to the poet, while he was engaged in the work. It is 
 somewhat difficult to decide, whether the sort of droll or Lusiuncula 
 performed at St. John's College, Oxford, by youths of the parish, at 
 Twelfth Night, 1602, and founded on Ovid's story of Narcissus, was 
 prompted by the Shakespear piece, or was an accidental coincidence. It 
 seems to be little more than a transfer from the Latin, and is poor stuff. 
 
 The play concludes with the Clown's song, " When that I was and a 
 little tiny boy ; " and the refrain, " With hey, ho, the wind and the rain," 
 is strictly in unison with the structui-e of several Elizabethan madri- 
 gals. But, moreover, the composition seems to have given rise to a 
 popular ballad ; for in a volume by C. T., doubtless Cyril Tourneur, 
 printed in 1605, under the title of Laugh and Lie Downe, or the 
 worldes Folly, we meet with a list of such pieces then professedly 
 current, and among them, "O, the winde and the weather and 
 the raine." I scarcely know whether the season at which Twelfth 
 Night was performed at the Temple had anything to do with 
 
468 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 the tenor of the ditty put into the mouth of the clown. Shake- 
 spear himself, judging from numerous allusions in the plays, was 
 not indifferent to the weather, and went so far at last as to base 
 one of his finest productions on it^ namely, the Tempest. But we 
 do not appear to know whether the refrain in Twelfth Night and 
 the ballad of 1605 were from a common source, or whether Shake- 
 spear originated it, so much of this species of literature has perished. 
 It may be assuredly said that there is, in the presence of certain 
 lyrical productions, almost certainly from his pen, no ground for 
 questioning his authorship of others — of some of those interspersed 
 in the plays, a few of which are eminently beautiful, while others 
 are neither better nor worse than his acknowledged non-dramatic 
 writings. 
 
 In the song above mentioned, where the clown doubtless accom- 
 panied the words with the characteristic and significant gesture, I 
 should be inclined to read : " When that I was, ah ! a tiny little 
 boy." For the word and scarcely bears any sense in either of its 
 acceptations; and comp. the song in Hamlet: "To contract, O, the 
 time, for, ah ! my behove — " If this suggestion be correct or sound, 
 the snatch by the Fool in Lear may be susceptible of a similar 
 emendation. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. " Seb. . . . He left behind him myself and a sister, 
 both born in an hour." 
 
 On February 2, 1584-5, were born to Shakespear twin children, 
 Hamnet (or Hamlet) and Judith. I do not know, whether it is an 
 extravagant hypothesis, that the poet, when he was writing this play, 
 had in his mind this trivial domestic detail. It was almost precisely 
 the same time of the year. But not more than four years had elapsed 
 since the impressive death of Hamnet in 1596. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 3. 0, the twelfth day of December. 
 
 This song seems to be lost. See Ritson's Ancient Songs, ed. 1877, 
 Ixxx. But the one partly given in the same scene, " Farewell, dear 
 heart, since I must needs be gone,'' seems to have been derived from 
 Robert Jones's First Book of Airs, 1600, which, when the play was in 
 course of composition was a novelty in the musical and literary world, 
 and fell well in with Sir Toby's favourite diversion. Shakespear evi- 
 dently preferred for quotation or use the more recent popular produc- 
 tions to such as might have faded out of the general recollection of 
 playgoers. Comp. my note infra on Sonnet 29. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 5. "Mai. M. O. A. I. . . ." 
 
 Shakespear here, and in the letter which follows, seems to satirize 
 the mysterious and euphuistic style, which had been in vogue before 
 his time, and which continued to form a feature in literary fiction 
 both in England and abroad. It belongs to the same family as the 
 cypher and cryptogram. 
 
 "Mai. ... It is, in contempt of question, her hand." 
 
 i.e. beyond or outside doubt. 
 
 "Maria. . . . here comes the trout that must be caught 
 
 with tickling." 
 
Notes 469 
 
 The poet recollected the sport itself on his own Avon in early 
 days. He uses the expression metaphorically here and elsewhere — in 
 the passage speaking of "groping for trout in a peculiar river." But 
 in tickling trout we tickle, not the fish, but the water. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Clo. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, 
 send thee a beard." 
 
 " Viola. By my troth, I'll tell thee I am almost sick for one ; though 
 I would not have it grow on my chin . . ." 
 
 Shakespear had in his recollection, or under his eye, the story in 
 A C. Mery Talys, 1526, folio x. The dramatist surely overlooked the 
 fact that Viola personated a man, and in any case the sentiment would 
 not have been of the delicatest. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. " He does smile his face into more lines than is in 
 the new map with the augmentation of the Indies." 
 
 An allusion to the then recent appearance of the Hydrographical 
 Map by Molyneux, inserted in the second edition of Hakluyt's 
 Voyages, 1699-1600. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 4. Illyria. The savage state of this province was a 
 tradition. See Four Years (1515-19) at the Court of Henry VIII., by 
 Rawdon Brown, 1854, i. 24. 
 
 There is slight risk in assuming that the author superintended the 
 details of the presentation. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. " Why should I not, had I the heart to do it, 
 Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, 
 ' Kill what Hove.!"' 
 
 Which seems to be derived from Underdowne's version of Heliodorus, 
 fii-st printed about 1569, and Shakespear worked out the same idea in 
 Othello. See the Notes on that play. 
 
 Measure fob Measure. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. "^ As I subscribe not these nor any other, 
 
 But in the loss of question." 
 Loss of question = casus quaestionis, which signifies the failure of an 
 argument in logic. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Clavd. Ay, but to die, and go we know not 
 where." 
 
 This passage, and the one in Hamlet, may be compared with Mon- 
 taigne, i. 19 ; but more is said on the subject supra. The remark of 
 Claudio, just below : "I am so out of love with life," seems forced and 
 abrupt. In the same scene (see p. 135, supra) the sentence, " What 
 should such fellows as I — " impresses us as more pertinent to the 
 writer than to the prince. 
 
 " Claud. . . . the pendent world." 
 
 This expression appears to me to denote the poet's sense of the 
 suspension of our globe in space and maintenance in its place by the 
 force of attraction. See my Man Considered in Relation to God and a 
 Church, 1908, p. 376. 
 
470 Shakespeau: The Man and his Work 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. "Take, O take those lips away — " 
 Rimbault {Musical Ilhistrations of Percy's Seliques, 1850, p. 12) pro- 
 perly points out thatj with the exception of the iirst stanza here given, 
 the earliest authority for the ascription of this song to Shakespear is 
 the posthumous edition of the Poems, 1640. But comp. Bell's Songs 
 from the Dramatists, 18S4, pp. 95-6, where it is shown that the verses 
 are more fully given, yet as part of the text, that is to say, not as by 
 Shakespear^ iu the Bloody Brother, 1639 (acted two years' before). I 
 would say that I know no author capable of having composed such a 
 masterpiece except the writer of the earlier drama ; but it seems 
 curious that, if he had the entire composition by him, he did not insert 
 it either here or in some miscellany of the time. The play, however, 
 was not presented till 1604. Of the length of time, during which the 
 lyrical poems, belonging to plays, were apt to be held over, the sup- 
 pression of the songs in Lyly's dramatic works till their appearance in 
 a collective form in 1632 is a singular illustration. 
 
 Act V. " — faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes 
 Stand like the forfeits in a barbei-'s shop, 
 As much in mock as mark." 
 
 The commentators have sufBciently dwelled perhaps on this passage. 
 I would merely add, that the premises of the Shakespearean barber 
 contained a more multifarious and complex assortment of stock than 
 those of his modern namesake, when the Barbers aud Surgeons became 
 independent Gilds. See my JAvery Companies of London, 1892, p. 365. 
 Mr. Thiselton tells me that the Forfeits are mentioned in Plain Perciml 
 the Peace-Maker of England (about 1589, and attributed to Richard 
 Harvey). 
 
 Othello. 
 
 This play, of which the first complete text is in the folio of 1623, 
 is not true to history. No Moor was ever employed by Venice, and 
 the facts of the campaign in Cyprus are altogether different, although 
 they still shew Desdemona's Tower at Famagusta. In 1604, when 
 Othello is said to have been composed, the Cypriot episode was well 
 within memory ; the Battle of Lepanto, which followed it, occurred in 
 the autumn of 1571. The Venetian house of Moro, which gave a Doge 
 to the Republic and a second distinguished personage in the shape of 
 a great soldier in the preceding century, may have occasioned the mis- 
 take. Some farther remarks on this subject will be found in the text. 
 
 Note here the contrast between Black and White, the sexual sym- 
 pathy of opposite colours, carried on from the Sonnets, as well as the 
 recollection of the early lyrics. Compare, for the foundation story, my 
 Shakespear's Library, 1875, Part I., vol. ii. p. 282 ; but the writer appears 
 to have been some one at a distance from Venice, and, like Shakespear, 
 imperfectly conversant with the costume of the Republic. 
 
 Altogether the view taken by editors of the play and its sources 
 seems to me to be open to doubt and deserving of farther and more 
 careful investigation, except that it has to be said that in the treatment 
 of real or supposed originals the poet has generally permitted himself 
 a free hand. But there is little doubt, that the true station of Desde- 
 mona, as well as that of Othello himself, has been misunderstood by 
 
Notes 471 
 
 those unacquainted with local conditions. As regards the so-called 
 Moor, it should be recollected that the Venetians themselves in their 
 prevailing' complexions were sufficiently swarthy to appear dark to a 
 Western European. 
 
 This and Troilus and Oressida are the two dramas exceptionally 
 accompanied by prefetory matter. The introduction in this case pur- 
 ports to be written by the stationer; but it has a rather Thorpiau 
 flavour, and he was still in considerable evidence. 
 
 Othello had been entered to Lawrence Hayes in 1619 ; he was the 
 son of Thomas Hayes, who had printed one or two of Shakespear's 
 dramas. But when Thomas Walkley re-entered the play in 1621, 
 instead of naming it, as Hayes had done, the JEtMopian History, he 
 registered it under the name now familiar, lest it might be confounded 
 with a new edition of Heliodorus then in the press. The Merchant of 
 Venice had been published by the elder Hayes in 1600, and the scene 
 of Othello was partly laid in the same locality. 
 
 The oviginal designation is interesting, because it shews the con- 
 ception of what the hero should appear. In a Collection of Treatises 
 on Tobacco, 1682, there is a reference to the death of Desdemona in 
 illustration of the fatal charms of the weed : " And loves, and kills, 
 like the Venetian Moor." The smothering episode was one especially 
 apt to dwell in the minds of audiences, and to be carried out in full 
 form. It was at once conventional and melodramatic. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. It may be dramatically immaterial what official 
 machinery lago is made to quote in respect to his promotion or 
 otherwise ; but he could scarcely have been at Rhodes in 1522 and at 
 Cyprus in 1571. 
 
 Grange, a house or farm. 
 
 Brahantio. " What tell'st thou me of robbing ? this is Venice, 
 My hoase is not a grange." 
 
 The note on this passage explains grange to be strictly and properly the 
 farm of a monastery, where the religious deposited their corn {grangia, 
 Lat. from granum). But in Lincolnshire, and other northern counties 
 [and in Wales], they call every lone house, or fai'm which stands 
 solitary, a grange. — Chalmers' edit, of Shakespeare. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. " lago. Virtue .' a fig ! it is in ourselves that we 
 
 are thus and thus — " 
 
 So in Sir Thomas More, in its amended form, we have : 
 
 "More. It is in Heaven that I am thus and thus — " 
 
 The question of the authorship of Sir Thomas More is not a settled 
 
 point. The MS. may have been seen by Shakespear ; but the piece was 
 
 not his. The expression is certainly unusual, although it is no more 
 
 than a variant of so-and-so. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 1. " logo. Come on, come on ; you are pictures out of 
 doors." 
 
 The form lago is really the early English way of spelling the 
 Spanish Jago= James. Jago is a well-known West-country family name. 
 But Shakespear may have met with the precise form in Richard Harvey's 
 Philadelphus, 1593. 
 
472 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Compare a passage in Middleton's Blurt, Master Constable, 1602 
 (works ed. Dyce^ i. 280), which reads like the prototype of the one in 
 Shakespear, and my Proverbs, 1907, p- 649. A writer in MacmillarCs 
 Magazine in 1907 speaks of women with the faces of angels and the 
 souls of courtezans. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. All the green willow. 
 
 A hallad under this title is cited in Laugh and Lie Down, or the 
 World's Folly, 1605, hy Cyril Tourneur, as sung to the famous tune of 
 Dindong. This is so far important, that it was almost concurrent with 
 the first presentation of Othello, and Shakespear altered it or a portion 
 to suit his purpose. Comp. note at p. 474. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. " 0th. That handkerchief, which I so lov'd and gave 
 thee. 
 Thou gav'st to Cassio — " 
 
 Tradition warrants the view, that Burbage, who filled, as we know, 
 the part, roared this sentence — possibly under the author's direction. 
 
 Leab. 
 
 See Madden's Oesia Romanorum, p. 450. And also Stories 15 
 and 33. There seems to be almost too early a transition to mental 
 derangement here, as there is in Macbeth to callous criminality. 
 But Lear was an older man. His phrenzy of indignation resolves 
 itself into amentia, mere senile dotage. There may be said to be a 
 surfeit of insanity in the play, with Edgar's pretended madness. 
 The strength of the poet lay in sentiment and passion rather than 
 in plot. But the mad scenes display a fecundity — almost riotousness 
 — of imagination, descending here and there to a fetid level, nowhere 
 else surpassed even by Shakespear himself ; and we cannot fail to note 
 the sympathy and relief, which Lear finds in the storm (Act iii., sc. 4), 
 which helps to divert his thoughts from greater troubles. 
 
 The drama, which suggested to Shakespear his own vastly superior 
 one, was acted in 1593 by the Queen's and Lord Sussex's men, and 
 licensed for the press the same year, although no earlier or other 
 edition than that of 1605 is at present known. Shakespear's Lear 
 followed much more closely than the printed copy suggests the 
 foundation-play, and the poet must have set about the work very 
 shortly after the re-appearance of the Old Chronicle-history in 1606. 
 The new composition was performed before James I. on December 26, 
 1606, by the Globe Company, and Halliwell-Phillipps considers, I 
 think wrongly, that it had been exhibited at that house in the 
 summer of the year. 
 
 At least a twelvemonth elapsed between the presentation before 
 the Court and the issue in a printed shape, and there was an inter- 
 mediate negociation on the part of the publisher with the licensing 
 authorities. Even when the copy was sent to press, it seems to have 
 been found to exhibit certain misreadings, which were rectified in 
 some copies of the first issue of 1608. The conspicuous station of 
 the name of Shakespear on the title-page of 1608 is due, no doubt, 
 to a solicitude on the part of the publisher not to have it confounded 
 with the parent piece so recently printed or reprinted. 
 
Notes 473 
 
 Act i., Sc. 4. 
 
 " Fool. . . . That such a king should play bopeep, 
 And go HiBfool among." 
 Perhaps there was the intention to play on the similarity between 
 fool axiAfoule, Fi-. for crowd or throng. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. {Song) : " He that has and a little tiny wit." 
 
 Comp. the song at end of Twelfth Night : " When that I was and a 
 little tiny boy — " and see my note. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 4. " Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill." 
 
 The obscene significance of this line was sufficiently manifest to 
 an average contemporary audience, and it is one of those passages, 
 which might have been advantageously absent, as the sentiment is 
 not even proper to the character. It is pure bawdry— only too virile, 
 as the modern phrase is. The drama was originally presented at 
 Whitehall before James 1. Singularly enough, in common with Hot 
 Cockles, the phrase seems to have undergone a metamorphosis into a 
 nursery rhyme in a varied form, and the original sense was forgotten. 
 See Halliwell's Archaic Dictionary in v. 
 
 Child Rowland to the dark tower came ; 
 His word was still, — Pie,foh, andfum, 
 I smell the blood of a British man." 
 
 Fragments of two ballads or stories, both apparently lost to us in 
 their Elizabethan garb, the former altogether, seem to be cited here, 
 and jumbled up together. The second, so far as I can make out, be- 
 longs to the legend of Jack the Giant Killer, of which there is no pre- 
 sent text prior to 1711. 
 
 Sc. 4. " Edgar. . . . Whom the foul fiend . . ." Comp. A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, ii. 1. 
 
 ..." through fire and through flame. . . ." 
 
 This is a recollection of the song in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 ii. 1, or could the writer have had a copy of the earlier play at his 
 elbow.'' We ought to read : '' thorough fire and thorough flame." 
 
 " But mice and rats. . . ." 
 
 Shakespear copied this almost literally from the romance of Sir 
 Bevis of Hampton. See my Warton, 1871, iii. 198. 
 
 iii., 6. The quotations of songs within the knowledge of 
 
 the writer, but no longer extant, at all events in print, are interesting 
 and even important. I refer to " Come over the bourn, Bessie, to me," 
 and " Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd .'' " — the latter the proto- 
 type oi Little Boy Blue. 
 
 Taming op a Shrew, 
 
 The anonymous writer of the foundation-play, 1594, was indebted 
 to Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Faustus. The plot, a familiar one, is 
 found in El Conde Lucanor, by Juan Manuel, 1575, ch. 45 ; but the 
 notion is Oriental ; we get it in Haroon-el-Reschid and the Caliph of 
 a Day ; and the story has been related of Philip le Bon, Duke of 
 Burgundy. 
 
474 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 A ballad called the Coolinge of Curst Kate was licensed in 1594, and 
 was doubtless suggested by the play. In the Tempest the name Kate 
 is used for a termagant. 
 
 The word-combat between Katherine and Petruchio in Act ii., 
 sc. 1, of the Shakespear production reminds us of Beatrice in Much 
 Ado about Nothing with a signal difference, and indeed the wit and learn- 
 ing of the lady are even more improbable. But both passages strongly 
 contrast with the very coarse and vulgar dialogue in the 4° of 1594. 
 
 Induction. — The tradition that the comic or farcical effects, here 
 worked out in a more artistic and refined manner than in the parent- 
 play, recall an actual adventure of the poet, is inadmissible. We are 
 not acquainted with the name of the dramatist, to whom we owe the 
 older piece ; but two rather curious points may be noticed : the 
 common presence of the name of Sly the tinker, a Stratford one, in 
 both plays, and the common employment of the term " ten command- 
 ments " for the ten finger-nails (jlenry VI., Part I.). There is no 
 textual trace of Shakespear in the 4° of 1594. In his own work there 
 is an unusual extent in the proem of local costume and colouring. 
 
 In the first scene of the Induction note the abrupt and forced 
 conceit where the sleeping man is supposed to be discovered — 
 " Lord. What's here ?— " 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1 [of Induction]. Before an Alehouse on a Heath. 
 
 Barton-on-the-Heath, where Shakespear's relatives the Lamberts 
 resided. The heath was subsequently enclosed. 
 
 In this scene the poet takes occasion to dwell almost ostentatiously 
 on the different breeds of dogs familiar to him from early days. 
 
 Captain Robert Dover, who promoted the revival of the Cotswold 
 games, was in early life an attorney at Barton. 
 
 Sc. 2. Marian Hacket. 
 
 The Hackets were living at Quinton, near Wilmecote, in 1591. 
 
 Enter Players. 
 
 This seems to be the prototype of the far finer and more thought- 
 ful passage in Hamlet. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1 [of Play], " Imc. . . . I am arrived for fruitful 
 Lombardy. 
 
 Surely /or should be/rom, and Shakespear may have written fro. The 
 speaker has left the fruitful region behind him, and has come to profit by 
 the course of learning pursuable at the Studio or University of Padua. 
 "Imc. Basta." 
 
 This word should be printed in Italics. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. " Orumio. Why, Jack boy, ho boy, and as much 
 news as thou wilt." 
 
 " Jacke boy, ho boy, Newes : 
 The cat is in the well. 
 Let us sing now for her knell 
 Ding dong, ding dong, bell." 
 
 — Ravenscroft's Pammelia, 1609 (quoted in 
 Current Notes, Sept. 1855). 
 
Notes 475 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. 
 
 Read : " Here is a wonder, if you talk of wonder " ; the article 
 before the last word being surplusage, and destroying the metre. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. Re-enter Katharina. 
 
 Blades (William Caxton, 1877, pp. 273-5) quotes from the Book of 
 the Knight of La Tour Landry, 1484, the story in the 18th chapter : 
 " How a woman sprange vpon the table," as an illustration of this 
 closing scene. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. " Kath. Fie, &e !— " 
 
 The whole of this speech down to the line "I am asham'd — " 
 seems to belong to Petruchio, and Katherine follows naturally with 
 an apology for her former frowardness. 
 
 So feebly and lamely does the play end, that one suspects that 
 it was left incomplete or part of the MS. lost. The plot is the exact 
 reverse of the Griselda type of story. In that the meek heroine 
 overcame by her submission the harder nature of the man ; in this the 
 man subdues the skittish or vixenish woman by a specious exhibition 
 of domineering temper. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 The piece on this subject cited by Anthony, Wood was almost 
 certainly in Latin. See my Manual of Old Plays, 1892, p. 238. 
 
 It is very remarkable that on February 7, 1602-3, a play was 
 registered as " The Booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by 
 my Lo. Chamberlains men," and as the work of Chettle and Dekker. 
 It is almost undoubtedly the same production as that mentioned by 
 Henslowe in 1599 ; but it is no longer known, so that there is no 
 means of collation with Shakespear's drama. But the poet apparently 
 had the subject and even the actual drama before him, when he com- 
 posed the passage in Twelfth Night, iii. 1. 
 
 The Shakespear piece was licensed January 28, 1608-9, and published, 
 4°, 1609 ; and a circumstance is associated with the first printed copy, 
 which may, in the presence of the testimony to an anterior work, 
 favour the theory, that the drama, as we possess it, was not originally, 
 and is not wholly, from the pen of Shakespear ; for when the printing 
 had been completed, a cancel title was given, in which it was dis- 
 closed, that the piece had been performed at the Globe by the king's 
 servants, whereas on the original forefront there had been no hint of 
 it having been placed on the stage. 
 
 Although this drama did not appear in type till 1609, and was not 
 perhaps completed in its actual form much earlier, it betrays, in some 
 passages, the immature taste manifest in the productions, which 
 belong to the first stage of Shakespear's dramatic career. We seem 
 to have a recast of the older piece with some of the original leaven 
 retained, and the matter most unusually inserted between inverted 
 commas may be part of the 1699 otherwise lost text. 
 
 The title-page, where it is called the Famous Historie, and the 
 Preface, were probably the work of Thomas Thorpe, who was a man 
 behind the scenes in several similar ventures, most notably in the 
 case of Shakespear's Sonnets issued in the same year. 
 
476 Shakespear : The Man and his Work 
 
 Act i., Sc. 1. " Tro. Call here my varlet." 
 
 For&f= valet, which originally signified a personage of the highest 
 rank, as under the Greek dynasty the heir to the throne was known 
 as the Valet of Constantinople. See my Venetian Republic, 1900, 
 i. 371. 
 
 " / have (as when the sun doth light a'scorn) 
 
 Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile — " 
 
 The modern editors print light a storm, which is evidently 
 nonsense. The figure in the second line should have guarded them 
 against such a deviation from the original copies, as the aspect of the 
 sun slightly veiled in cloud or mist is apt to be not dissimilar from 
 that of the features puckered into a smile. But in fact a superior 
 reading would be ascaunt, i.e. across or athwart — a word easily 
 misheard or misread a'scorn. 
 
 -" 0, that her hand- 
 
 I should omit her, unless we are to conclude some exceptional 
 emphasis to be desired, and, as Knight suggested, the meaning to 
 be, 0, that hand of hers. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. An idle head. 
 
 Why idle ? The comparison is with an addh egg. The word should 
 surely be addle. This play is full of such catches and quips. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 
 
 This line is given to Ulysses, and does not seem to carry, where it 
 occurs, our modern acceptation, nor is it easy to decide what the poet 
 really meant from the context, the next line proceeding to reflect on 
 the fickleness of general taste. Even taking the familiar sentence in 
 our present way of interpreting it, it does not exactly bear the signi- 
 fication attached to it, but rather that a natural touch everywhere 
 draws man and man together. 
 
 Pericles. 
 
 The accounts of Apollonius of Tyre in the Gesta Romanorum and 
 in Gower's Confessio Amantis were followed by a French compilation 
 translated into English by Robert Copland, and printed in 1610. The 
 subject continued to attract attention in England, and in or before 
 1576 Lawrence Twyne wrote what he called a gathering into English 
 under the title of the Patterne of painefull Aduentures, a composition 
 of consummate excellence, which passed through three editions, the 
 last being in 1607. In that year an unknown dramatist, supposed by 
 Mr. Fleay to have been George Wilkins, then very busy with his pen 
 on various themes for the stage, produced a play called Pericles Prince 
 of Tyre at the Globe Theatre, in which Alleyn took a part, doubtless 
 that of the hero. Certain it is, that matter was then, or very .shortly 
 afterward, introduced by a second pen, said to be Shakespear's with 
 some show of probability ; but it is elsewhere put, that there is a 
 ground for viewing the novel entitled the Painful Adventures of 
 Pericles as the original of the play rather than the reverse. The play 
 itself did not see the light in type till 1609, although it had oeeu 
 
Notes 477 
 
 licensed. May 20, 1608, and then offered a text beyond measure 
 corrupt. One of the interpolations of the Stratford poet may be 
 taken to be the opening lines of the first Act, spoken by Gower, down 
 to "taper-light." I have already intimated an inclination to surmise 
 that the novel was the prior production, all that has been said on the 
 subject notwithstanding. 
 
 The drama has no connection with the Athenian Pericles beyond 
 the name ; but I suggest that Shakespear had North's Plutarch at his 
 elbow, while he was engaged in putting some finishing touches to the 
 Wilkins play, and was struck by the name, the sole resemblance being 
 in the common love of music, and the poet not being aware, that the 
 Pericles of history was a different man. 
 
 Randolph, who died in 1635, alludes to Periehs in his Cambridge 
 " Oratio Prevaricatoria," 1632 : — 
 
 " Insignis Pericles non audet tarn celebres res.'' 
 
 And in his " Hey for Honesty " the same writer speaks of the hero 
 of the play once more : — 
 
 " Penia. Nay if this were so, the very tailors, though they damned 
 you all to hell under their shopboards, would scorn to come to the 
 making up of as good a man as Pericles, Prince of Tyre." 
 
 The gifted and witty satirist was born within Shakespear's time — 
 before Milton, and it is a pity that he failed to lend his testimony to 
 the authorship of the drama, which he almost certainly saw on the 
 stage. As it is, we seem to have no earlier witness than Dryden, 
 who, where he says : " Shakespear's own muse his Pericles first bore," 
 seems to suggest an early composition — a criticism, which cannot be 
 accepted. 
 
 Prologue. Enter Gower. It has been suggested that the introduction 
 of the earlier poet in this case arose from the familiarity of Shakespear 
 with his monument in St. John's Chapel on the north side of St. 
 Saviour's Church. But we do not know that he wrote the prologue or 
 the play itself beyond certain subsequent additions. 
 
 Cymbeline. 
 Dramatis Persona. The character of Imogen, so far as the name 
 goes, had been contemplated by the dramatist, when he was engaged 
 in composing Much Ado about Nothing years hefore. There she was 
 intended to be the wife of Leonato, and in the old copies is made in 
 the stage-directions to enter twice. But the poet withdrew the part, 
 and reserved the name, misprinted Innogen in the quarto, and intro- 
 duced her under altered circumstances in the present play. 
 
 There is the once popular song of later date, " Alonzo the Brave 
 and the Fair Imogen." See p. 355 supra. 
 
 Actii., Sc. 2. "lach. . . . On her left breast 
 
 A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 F the bottom of a cowslip." 
 How indefatigable and unerring in the observation of Nature ! 
 Act iii., Sc. 4. "Imogen . . . Some jay of Italy, 
 
 AVhose mother was her painting. ..." 
 This reading of the old copy Payne Collier proposed to supersede 
 
478 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 by one alleged to have beeu found in his corrected second foliOj " Who 
 smothers her with painting " ; but Halliwell-Phillipps very properly 
 defended the original text in his Few Bemarks, 1862, and the sense of 
 the poet is tolerably obvious and in conformity with the language of 
 the time. The use of artificial cosmetics was very general. Tuke 
 published a monograph on it in 1616. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 See Buchanan, Rerum Scoticarum Historia, 1582, fol. 73-4. 
 
 A play with this title was apparently performed within the know- 
 ledge of William Kempe the actor, and is referred to in his Nine 
 Dales Wonder, 1600, as something which he had not seen, and of the 
 title of which he was dubious. He describes it as "the miserable 
 stolen story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat," by a penny 
 ,poet. Wake in his Rex Platonicus, 1607, notices a piece, apparently 
 in Latin and of short extent, which he terms lusiuncula, exhibited 
 before James I. in 1605 at St. John's College, Oxford, concurrently 
 with another and more elaborate performance by Matthew Gwinne, 
 where in a sort of Epilogue he alludes to Banquo. This was too early 
 for George Wilkins, of whom something has been said supra, and who, 
 like Marlowe, left, it almost seems, at his death certain di-amatic 
 works behind him in an incomplete state, Macbeth and Timon in- 
 clusive, and consequently the play, which Kempe mentions, must have 
 been an anterior one on the subject not hitherto identified. Wilkins 
 accomplished all his work for the theatre, so far as one can see, in 
 1607-8. As regards the lusiuncula above-mentioned, comp. Notes on 
 Twelfth Night, supra. 
 
 The claim of the 1577 edition of Holinshed to be that used by the 
 dramatist may be thought to derive some support from its rough 
 woodcut of the meeting of Macbeth and Banquo with the three 
 witches on the heath. The book, when Shakespear had occasion to 
 resort to it, had been before the public many years, the first edition 
 appearing in 1577, the second in 1586, so that the balance of proba- 
 bility in favour of his employment of one or the other is fairly equal. 
 The engravings in the prior issue were apt to strike him, if he fell in 
 with a copy of what must have been then a common book, poor and 
 trite as they are. But I can well imagine him glancing at intervals 
 at half-a-dozen copies of the Chronicle, edition immaterial, none of 
 them his own. 
 
 There has been a good deal of speculation how far Middleton in 
 his Witch, of which there is no contemporary edition, is entitled to 
 the credit of having preceded Shakespear's Macbeth. But Middleton 
 made very free with the character of Falstaff in his Mad World, my 
 Masters, 1608, and marred what he stole. There is very slight doubt, 
 indeed, that his Witch was suggested by the Shakespear play ; it had 
 been long since performed, according to the MS., by his Majesty's 
 Servants at the theatre in the Blackfriars. 
 
 The Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Tempest 
 became the receptacles for the result of the poet's reading and observa- 
 tion in the attractive field of fairy mythology ; and so in Macbeth he 
 found full and happy scope for his studies of witch-lore, which then 
 
Notes 479 
 
 yet more powerfully appealed to the popular fancy. Scot's Discovery 
 of Witchcraft had appeared in 1584, and whatever may be said of it, 
 its popularity cannot have been great, owing perhaps to its bulk and 
 price ; for it was not reprinted till 1654. But Shakespear may very 
 well have had his attention directed to it ; and it was a topic in so 
 many mouths, that material and information sufficient to qualify an 
 author — especially such an one — for his task were never lacking ; and, 
 besides, the commentators enumerate other literary productions within 
 his reach, while he composed the play, where in the Dramatis Personce 
 the witches occupy a place and rank equal to those of the fairies in 
 the other pieces named. 
 
 The tragical interest is not less strong here than in Hamlet and 
 Othello, yet how different ! The philosophical vein is rather less pro- 
 nounced ; the low comedy is almost absent ; and the necromantic 
 element does not indemnify us for the loss of Ariel and Puck, since 
 there is little which rises above the ordinary accounts in books, thrown 
 into metre and dialogue. 
 
 The arguable presence of Shakespear at Oxford in 1605, when 
 theatrical performances were prepared in honour of James 1. and his 
 court, suggests his elaboration of the subject of the lusiuneula, which 
 with the Vertumnus of Matthew Gwinne was exhibited at Oxford on 
 that occasion. Both these pieces were probably in Latin, and com- 
 bined to send his majesty to sleep. The Scotish plot of the Macbeth 
 naturally recommended itself to the poet, whether he actually wit- 
 nessed the perforaiance or not, as a favourable opportunity for pleasing 
 the new dynasty, as at an earlier date he had in a sense dedicated the 
 Merry Wives to the last of the Tudors. The Latin interlude served 
 no farther than as a hint for a study ; it hardly supplied a nucleus or 
 outline ; and the tragedy is essentially Shakespear's own conception 
 and execution, with all its beauties, all its strength, all its incon- 
 gruities. There are passages here in which Shakespear almost sur- 
 passes himself; and it is a moot point, whether we should not accord 
 to the Ghost of Banquo precedence over that of Hamlet's father. It 
 is undoubtedly a more conspicuous and laboured feature in the pro- 
 duction, and may be held to exhaust Shakespear's fancy in this direc- 
 tion. The poet, since the completion of Hamlet, had had opportunities 
 of collecting all that could be said on the matter, if we place the 
 composition of Macbeth somewhere about 1608. 
 
 The sentiments and mental reach of Macbeth are utterly beyond 
 probability — far more so than those of the Prince of Denmark. We 
 have only to figure to ourselves what sort of person a Scotish sovereign 
 of an almost prehistoric era is likely to have been, how little removed 
 from a savage chief, to be convinced, that here once more Shakespear 
 has used the license of a playwright to make his personality trans- 
 parent through one of his characters ; and where the result is in a 
 literary and poetical respect so excellent, we have to reconcile our- 
 selves to the sacrifice of some of the unities. Still less does the 
 artistic presentment of the play on the stage seem proper to the 
 circumstances. It may be sumptuous and impressive; but.it is 
 empirical. 
 
 I do not quite know whether it may be deemed an odd assignment 
 of parts, where the role of First Witch was about 1738 played by Joe 
 
480 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Miller. It was a function, for which he was at least as well qualified 
 as for the pateruity of the Jests, and the impropriety was certainly 
 not greater than that in Johnson's Highwaymen, 1734, where Falstaff 
 is represented on Gad's Hill in Georgian attire. 
 
 In the Address to the Reader before his Lancashire Witches, 1691, 
 Thomas Shadwell has the candour and good sense to say : " For the 
 Magical Part, I had no hopes of equalling Shakespear in fancy, who 
 created his Witchcraft for the most part out of his own imagination 
 (in which faculty no man ever excell'd him) and therefore I resolved 
 to take mine from authority. And to that end, there is not one 
 action in the play, nay scarce a word concerning it, but it is borrow'd 
 from some autient or modern Witchmonger which you will find in 
 the notes." 
 
 Where Lady Macbeth refers to " the cat in the adage," it might be 
 noticed that it is a popular error to suppose, that domestic cats object 
 to wet their feet, even when there is no cogent need. They may be 
 constantly seen walking deliberately on the soaked ground, and some 
 descriptions of the feline family are excellent swimmers. 
 
 Acti., Sc. 1. "2 Witch. . . . When the hurly-burly's done " — 
 Shakespear perhaps remembered the passage in the First Part of 
 Henry VI., i. 3 ; "... enter in the hurly-burly the Mayor of London 
 and Officers." Comp. Hake : — 
 
 " In fine when certainty of Death was known 
 Of her our Queene did hurly-burly rise .'' 
 No none at all — " 
 
 — Of Oolds Kingdom and this Vnhelping Age, 1604. 
 Act i., Sc. 1. " Hover through the fog and filthy air " — 
 The poet, brought up in a rural district, spent the busiest years of 
 his literary life in a city, not so thronged with houses and defiled by 
 such foul odours as the London of a later day, yet already offering a 
 contrast to the country surroundings, which he knew as a younger 
 man, and without sufficient reflection, or due acquaintance with the 
 locality, transferred the atmosphere of London (in winter perhaps) 
 to a Scotish moor. London proper in his day was infinitely more 
 circumscribed than the city we know, and all the obnoxious odours 
 and corrupt atmosphere were concentrated within a correspondingly 
 narrow zone. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. " 1 WUch. . . . I'll do, I'll do, I'll do." 
 This emphasis, and artifice of composition, resembles that of the 
 ring in the Merchant of Venice, v. 1 : — 
 
 " If you had known the virtue of the ring. 
 Or half her worthiness that gave the ring. 
 Or your own honour to contain the ring. 
 You would not then have parted vrith the ring — " 
 
 This structure appears to have caught the fancy of George Wilkins, 
 who in his Miseries of Inforst Marriage, 1607, and (if it be his, which 
 seems likely) A Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608, has carried the mode to some- 
 thing like a parody or caricature. Of course he only saw it in the 
 Merchant of Venice, so far as Shakespear was concerned. 
 
Notes 481 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. "Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the water 
 has. . . ." 
 
 Notice the similarity of touch or treatment to Hamlet. 
 
 Sc. 6. " Lady Macbeth. . . . yet do I fear thy nature. 
 It is too full of the milk of human kindness." 
 
 Not only does this description of Macbeth fail to correspond with 
 what has been previously said of him as a warrior, but his wife is 
 made to give vent to her passionate feelings too immoderately and 
 too abruptly, as it is her first entrance on the scene. Such dark and 
 bloody purposes require more leisurely and gradual evolution. 
 
 Sc. 7. " Macb. If it were done, when 't is done. . . ." 
 All this is good and very good ; it is a farther instance of itera- 
 tion ; but the language and philosophy are those, not of the speaker, 
 but of the dramatist throwing himself back hundreds of years, and 
 giving Macbeth the benefit of his own more advanced period and, far 
 beyond that, of his own matchless invention — such as never entered 
 into the head of any one of his nation before or since. The interlocu- 
 tion between the Thane and his wife strikes us from the outset as a 
 continuation of something, which has gone before ; the speakers have 
 laid the foundations of their plot in earner d. We see, when we arrive 
 at the third scene of Act iii., how well Lady Macbeth has dissembled, 
 or how unobservant Macduff .has been of her character. 
 
 Actii.,Sc. 1. "Macb. . . . With Tarquin's ravishing sides . . " 
 The passage is doubtless corrupt ; and the true reading is not 
 immediately evident; perhaps for sides, for which the justification 
 is not strong, we might try shade, i.e. ghost. The motion is stealthy 
 and rapid. I wish to call attention to the remembrance by the poet 
 of his own Lucrece, published so long before. He refers to the story 
 in the Taming of a Shrew, ii. 2. 
 
 In the dialogue between the Thane and Lady Macbeth we beem to 
 be required to discriminate between the brave soldier, who faces danger 
 and death in the battlefield, and yet shrinks from the commission of 
 the act, to which he is urged by his callous and domineering consort. 
 
 Sc. 3. "Enter a Porter . . ." 
 This is a characteristic diversion and artifice to break the monotony 
 of the tragical action. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. " Macb. . . . my genius is rebuk'd, as 'tis said, 
 Mark Antony's was by Csesar - . ." 
 
 Two points seem to be worthy of consideration here : the absurd 
 attribution to Macbeth of a knowledge of Roman history and the 
 apparent allusion to Mark Antony as a character already treated, as if 
 Antony and Cleopatra had been completed, or as if the subject were at 
 least before the poet, when he penned the present lines and those in 
 Act v., Sc. 7. Moreover, in this stage of the play, we perceive the 
 mastery and moral deterioration, which Lady Macbeth has wrought 
 over her husband, who, having scrupled to murder Duncan, has not 
 only been over-persuaded, but has hardened his nature to the com- 
 mission of a second murder without the need of instigation. The 
 scene between Macbeth and the proposed assassins of Banquo is far 
 
 2 H 
 
482 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 more natural than some of those preceding it ; and in the following 
 scene, where Lady Macbeth reappears, her lord assuredly ceases to 
 yield her any ground of displeasure or fear on the score of irresolution. 
 In this Act the interposition of Hecate is abnormal and mysterious, 
 and in Act iv., Sc. 1, Macbeth is represented as enjoying the privilege 
 of conversational intercourse with her and the three witches previously 
 introduced as addressing Macbeth and Banquo, but as vanishing when 
 addressed by them in turn. 
 
 Actiii., Sc. 5. "1 Witch. Why, how now, Hecate? ..." 
 The poet makes Hecate a dissyllable. So does Keats. Tennyson 
 similarly sinned in the case of Ganymede. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 1. Enter the three witches. 
 
 I have not found any source for the process of incantation elsewhere 
 than in the Secrets of Alexis of Piedmont, transl. by Warde, 1562, a very 
 popular book, where animal ingredients are somewhat similarly re- 
 commended for employment. But before Warde's time we find such 
 a personage as Diana of Poictiers mixing, or causing to be mixed, for 
 Henry Il.'s children a powder, in which two of the ingredients were 
 the fat of a licornis (a fish so called) and the hair of a dead man. 
 Here, however, as elsewhere, the poet had used his own imaginative 
 faculty, and leaves his authorities behind him. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. The reference to the revival in a modified form in 
 1606 of the ancient usage of touching for the King's Evil or Struma is 
 not historically correct, since, to go no farther, William Tooker, D.D., 
 mentions it as in vogue in 1697, and in his Treatise upon it written 
 and printed in 1602, William Clowes, one of Elizabeth's surgeons, 
 speaks of it as cm-ed by royal touch. At the same time, this circum- 
 stance does not appear to me to affect the question of the chronology 
 of the drama. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3- Till Birnam forest come to Dunsinane. 
 
 It is just worthy of notice that this was already proverbial. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 7. 
 
 " Macb. . . . But swords I smile at. 
 Weapons laugh to scorn, 
 Brandish'd by man that's of a woman born." 
 
 This is the latest moral evolution of the Thane, and it proves 
 a fatal and retributive one. He is infatuated by his supposed invul- 
 nerability, and is slain by Macduff. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra. 
 
 I have elsewhere noted that this drama was separately registered. 
 May 20, 1608, though no such edition is known. The poet apparently 
 had the subject before him, while he was engaged in the composition of 
 Macbeth. The story is included in Fulbeck's Historical Collections, 1601. 
 
 The play, fine and generally inoffensive as it is, though unusually 
 lengthy, contains phrases and even passages, which might shock the 
 prudery of a modern audience, should it be put on the stage in its 
 unexpurgated state. But then so much of the poet's work is silently 
 bowdlerized. 
 
Notes 483 
 
 In reference to the passage, where Cleopatra speaks of being laid 
 naked on Nilus' mud, we find in Henry VIII. an allusion to the mud 
 of Egypt, as if the same uncommon sentiment or notion was present 
 to the writer. It is a peculiar expression, and the parallel may serve 
 just a little toward the authorship of the later drama. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. " Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus here ? " 
 Cleopatra refers to the asp, "that kills and pains not." 
 In Churchyard's verses before Gascoigne's Posies, \Si15, he says : — 
 "The kinde aiid loving worme that woulde his ladie please.'' 
 I am informed that in Germany a mother will call her child, " a 
 little worm," and Cleopatra elsewhere ejcplicitly speaks of herself as 
 addressed by Antony as "a serpent of old Nile" by way of endear- 
 ment, worm and serpent being formerly synomymmis. 
 
 The allusion abeady quoted to " the little O the Earth " presented 
 itself to the dramatist, perhaps, as a reminiscence of " the wooden O " 
 ■applied to the circular Globe playhouse in the Prologue to Henry V. 
 
 A Winter's Tale. 
 
 This play was also qrigin^Uy known as A Winter Night's Tale — a 
 sequel to A Mid^mmer NighCs JDream.^ Richard Niccols owed to it the 
 suggestion of his Winter Night's Vision, and the editors of the 1623 
 folio decided on a title not likely to clash with the latter, yet clearly 
 less expressive and appropriate. 
 
 In Marlowe's Rich Jew of Malta, written before 1693, Barabas says : — 
 " Now I remember those old women's words. 
 Who in my wealth would tell me winter's tales." 
 
 Thig may perhaps be considered as the penultimate drama pro- 
 'duced by ^hakespear. It was acted before James I., Nov. 6, 1612 
 (Fleay, (?Ar. Hist., 1886, p. 249) ; but it seems doubtful, whether the 
 author attended the performance. 
 
 In the gong beginning, "When daffodils begin to peer," the 
 structure of the earlier stanzas suggests the influence of some of the 
 lyrics in Mnglamts Helicon, 1600. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Autolycus. 
 
 This character is apparently indebted to Newber/s Dives Pragmati- 
 ■ctis, 1563, reprinted from the only known copy in my Fugitive Tracts, 
 1875. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " Leon. ... Or else be impudently negative—" 
 
 Should we not rep.d impotently ? 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. " Shep. . . . Who loves another best." 
 
 Read the other. 
 
 "the fann'd snow 
 
 That" s bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er," 
 
 1 Steevens, on the back of a letter addressed to him by Garriok about 
 1770, cites a Winter Night's Pastime, and assigns to it the totally im- 
 prob^bledate 1594 as that of the original completion or performance. It 
 jnay be perhaps rightly ascribed to 1611-12. 
 
484 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 See an interesting paper in Antiquary for February, 1899, by Mr. 
 H. P. Feasey, for an illustration of the term bolted, of which the older 
 spelling was boulted or butted. 
 
 "Mop. ... I love a ballad in print. . . ." 
 
 The ballads here recited are skits on those which actually appeared, 
 and of which some are extant. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3. Giulio Romano. 
 
 I have referred to this personage and passage supra. 
 
 As regards the apparent geographical solecism in placing Bohemia 
 on the sea-coast, there was long a prevailing ignorance on these points 
 among early writers other than scholars. The indifFerence to accuracy 
 did not affect theatrical success^ and it is by no means chargeable to 
 Shakespear alone. Jonson, in his Masques, almost overwhelms us by 
 his show of erudition ; but then they were for the Court. There is a 
 vague mention of the Land of Bealm in the ballad-romance of Roswall 
 and Lillian, of which we seem to possess no impression anterior to 
 1663 (Hazlitt's Popular Poetry of Scotland, ii. 239-67). Of the chil- 
 dren of the hero and heroine it is said : 
 
 " The eldest son was King of Bealm, 
 The second fell to Naples' Realm, 
 The third son King of Bane was made.'' 
 
 And so excellent an authority as Sir Clements Markham has stated 
 that under the Norman kings of Sicily a part of the coast of Apulia 
 was called Boemia — i.e. Bealm. But I apprehend that Shakespear 
 really meant Bohemia, then beginning to be a little known in England, 
 even if he misdescribed it as " a desert country near the sea." That 
 would scarcely apply to Apulia. 
 
 Shakespear even treats it as a port. The use of geographical terms 
 and almost prehistoric names had its precedents, but it had its incon- 
 venient and disconcerting side, at least from the point of view of 
 educated persons. The dramatist, however, kept before his eyes 
 popular audiences, the majority of which cared nothing for errors and 
 contradictions, or even for niceties of theatrical costume, of which 
 they were not qualified to form a judgment. Nor would such an 
 audience to-day. How many at a, modern London playhouse conld 
 tell you where Bohemia is, what sort of person the actual Faust, what 
 the period of Hamlet } Shakespear saw that these passed unobserved 
 in the widely read novel, and may have concluded that they were 
 good enough for the drama. The character and dialogue were a 
 different matter. He glances at the insular ignorance of his country- 
 men and contemporaries, in the passage where he delivers the in- 
 junction : " Prythee, think there's livers out of Britain." It is one, 
 forsooth, which has barely ceased to be applicable. 
 
 It is almost necessary to point out that in the poet's account of the 
 flowers distributed to the sheepshearers by Perdita he has included 
 some, which are peculiar to the spring. 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 Foundation. See Sir Kenelm Digby's Voyage into the Mediterranean, 
 1628, p. 72. At that time the island of Lampedusa is said to have- 
 
Notes 485 
 
 l>een uninhabited^ with circumstances of mystery, which are not ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Dramatis Personce. Frospero = in sense Faustus, and the character 
 follows at a distance that of the German magician, whose story was 
 published in English in or before 1692, and was at once dramatized by 
 Marlowe ; but there has arisen a curious question, whether the 
 dramatist did not immediately borrow the name from that of a con- 
 temporary riding-master in London, although Prospero Camuglio was 
 the name of a Milanese ambassador in 1461 {Cal. of State Papers, 
 Venetian Series, 1864, p. 108 et seqq.). As a Christian name it was 
 ^miliar in Italy, however, and the dramatist might have met with it 
 in Commines. The supernatural attributes given to Duke Prospero 
 have a curious side-light shed upon them by the mention in Froissart 
 of the Duchess of Orleans, daughter to Bernabo Visconti, Duke of 
 Milan, and her expulsion from Paris by reason of her suspected 
 magical practices on Charles VI. The Italian of the Middle Ages and 
 Renaissance was usually held to be peculiarly adept in the employ- 
 ment of necromantic arts. Shakespear's use of demonology — not 
 ■witchcraft — limited itself to casual allusions. The delightful creation 
 of Miranda — the maiden who had never beheld a man, except her 
 father, is an inversion of the mediaeval fable " de filio regis qui nun- 
 quam viderat mulieres." Very probably Mr. Fleay is correct in suppos- 
 ing that this and the Winter's Tale were Shakespear's latest dramatic 
 efforts. It is now an accepted view, that the former was acted at 
 Court in the autumn of 1611. 
 
 Ariel. I offer some remarks on this conception supra. 
 
 The disputed reading in the song : " where the bee sucks, 
 
 there|j'^''M I"— would be terminated by me by a judgment for 
 
 lurk ; for Ariel, sis a spirit, needs no physical sustenance, and indeed 
 I should, if I dared, go farther, and object to the word bat in the 
 fourth line, as it is out of symmetry with a cowslip's bell, and even a 
 mothi could bear such a burden as Ariel is here represented, although 
 elsewhere in the play he offers himself to our view as a mighty instru- 
 ment of the will of another. But the whole conception of Ariel is 
 sadly vulnerable. 
 
 Caliban. This character is not an attractive one, and in some 
 of the language, which is put into his mouth, the revolting coarse- 
 ness jars with the ideal simplicity and purity of Miranda. One can 
 scarcely avoid regretting that a passage or two was not omitted. 
 The drama is quite long enough to have borne some curtailment. 
 One would be exceedingly pleased to surrender the lines more 
 particularly in question as doubtful ; but the turn of thought, gravely 
 audacious as it is, is too Shakespearean, too introspective. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. In the song, " Full fathom five thy father lies," the 
 modern thinker must not too nicely scrutinize the suggested forma- 
 tion of coral from human bones, and must content himself with the 
 poetical subtlety of the notion. 
 
 " barren place and fertile." 
 
 Should we read plats for place ? 
 
486 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 1. "Mir. I am a fool, 
 
 To weep at what I am glad of." 
 
 This corresponds to the jest of the fool, who laughed, when it 
 rained, and wept, when the sun shone, hecause, said he, after rain 
 comes sunshine, and after sunshine rain. 
 
 Actv., Sc. 1. "Sle. . . Coragio." 
 
 There seems no reason, why this word should be misspelled. 
 
 "Prosp. I'll break my staif— " 
 
 The speaker (and writer) had in view the staif of office, which on 
 its expiration was broken by the holder, as in the ancient steward- 
 ship of the royal household in England. 
 
 " My true preserver, and a loyal sir 
 
 To him thou foUow'st ..." 
 
 For sir read servant. Perhaps in the MS. the word occurred in an 
 abbreviated form. But other words in the present passage seem 
 wrong or at least debateable. 
 
 On the nautical phraseology in this play I have already dwelled 
 in the text. 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 This play, which was possibly prompted by the previous com- 
 positions on the reign by W. S. in 1602, and by Samuel Rowley in 
 1605, was probably never completed by Shakespear, and remained in 
 MS. in an imperfect state, till 1613, when it was presented at the 
 Globe theatre, and formed the occasion of the loss of that house by 
 fire. It was, then, according to Sir Henry Wotton, a new play, that 
 is, it had not been shown before, and the circumstance, which drew 
 attention to its existence, was perhaps the appearance of Samuel 
 Rowley's piece on the same reign, of which we have a printed editioq 
 in 1605. It seems to be generally admitted, that Henry VIII. received 
 finishing touches from an editor under some unknown circumstances ; 
 some passages toward the end are very inferior ; it was not brought 
 on the stage again ; nor was any text of it made available till 1623. 
 The prologue and epilogue were by an independent pen. It was 
 perhaps the drama by Samuel Rowley, which prompted Drayton to 
 undertake his poem on the subject, published in 1607. 
 
 The " discharge of chambers," mentioned in the play, is held to 
 have been the cause of the catastrophe. We learn from a contem- 
 porary copy of verses, that Richard Burbage took a part in it, prob- 
 ably the leading one, and that Henry Condell and "Stuttering" 
 Hemings were there — doubtless sustaining the other characters. 
 Samuel Rowley's performance on the same reign, which embraced 
 the accession of Edward VI., had been some time on the stage at 
 another house. Not only was that reprinted in 1613, but also the 
 Cromwell play of 1602. One stimulated the call for the other. 
 
 Some kind of abridged adaptation of Henry VIII. seems from 
 a notice in a jest-book called Fragmenta Aulica, printed in 1662, to 
 have been in existence at that date, or before, and to have been per- 
 
Notes 487 
 
 formed at a school. The tradition as to the vocal impersonation of 
 the king was then fairly fresh and accurate : — 
 
 " A Company of little Boyes were hy their Schoolmaster not many 
 yeares since appointed to Act the play of King Henry the eight, and one 
 who had the presence (or the absence rather) as being of a whining 
 voice, puling spirit, consumptive body, was appointed to personate 
 King Henry himselfe, only because he had the richest cloaths, and his 
 Parents the best people of the parish, but when he had spoke his 
 speech rather like a Mouse than a Man, one of his fellow Actors told 
 him ; If you speak not HOH with a better spirit and voyce, your 
 Parliament will not grant you a Farthing." 
 
 This passage shews that the Hoh ! key was then regarded as proper 
 and essential to the part ; but in the play as printed in 1623 the king's 
 ejaculation is Ha ! In the Merry Wives of Windsor, as printed in 1602, 
 Falstaff is made to ask : 
 
 " Doe I speake like Home the hunter, ha ? " 
 
 — a curious parallel, which may have been due to the writer of 
 Henry VIII. recollecting in the earlier drama a passage there inserted 
 as a parody of the king's traditional utterance. But it occurs in our 
 early drama as a common interrogative exclamation. 
 
 The Gregory de Cassalis, mentioned in this drama, was the person- 
 age, who with his brother Gianbattista and a third, probably a relative, 
 ftancesco, figures so prominently in the Calendars of State Papers, 
 Venetian Series, 1520-26. Sir Gregory Casal had received the " large 
 commission " mentioned in the play from Wolsey, as Henry's lieutenant- 
 general, at Amiens. The English king had for the moment followed the 
 precedent of the Emperor Maximilian, who during his absence from 
 Germany invested with a similar dignity and power the Elector of 
 Saxony. 
 
 The "large commission" here specified as vested in Wolsey as 
 the king's lieutenant-general is precisely the document registered in 
 the Venetian Commemoriali under date of 1527 (Cal. of State Papers, 
 Venetian Series, i., Ixxxvi.). 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " Surveyor. Not long before your highness sped to 
 France, 
 The duke being at the Rose, within the parish 
 Saint Lawrence Poultney — " 
 
 See my Supplement to Blount's Tenures, 1909, v. Saint Lam-ence 
 Poultney and Ospring (the former a MS. addition in my own copy). 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 2. "... one that by suggestion 
 
 Tied all the kingdom ; simony was fair play." 
 
 A reference to the rapacious and unscrupulous policy of Wolsey, 
 which is amply illustrated by the State Papers, 
 
 Act v., Sc. 1. " K. Henry. Avoid the gallery . . ." 
 
 In my edition of Shakespear's Library under the play I give the 
 
 parallel passage from Fox's Martyrs, which seems more dramatic 
 
 than the scene from the play itself. Avoid = e\&ax. 
 
488 Shakespear: The Man and his Work 
 
 Two Noble Kinsmen. 
 
 It is really to be hoped that this weak and crude play, full of patent 
 and outrageous incongruities, will not continue to find a place in 
 editions of Shakespear, of whose genius it is wholly unworthy. It is 
 said on the title of the 4° of 1634 to be presented by the King's 
 Servants at the Blackfriars theatre, almost as if it was then only in 
 course of presentation, which may be tantamount to saying that it was 
 found among Fletcher's papers after his death in 1625, and was not 
 immediately put upon the stage ; and there is scarcely a possibility 
 that the MS. ever fell even under the observation of the greater poet. 
 It is surprizing, that so much ingenuity should have been wasted in 
 trying to decide, what parts or passages are to be ascribed to Shake- 
 spear. All that can be affirmed is, that here and there we are able to 
 note an expression, which reminds us of the Stratford man. Assuredly 
 there is no complete act or even scene from a second hand. The 
 occasional grossness is itself un-Shakespearean. The textual discrimi- 
 nations of Editors strike me as of no value whatever. 
 
 The reintroduction of the legend of Theseus, which had been 
 rendered familiar by A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, may shew a study 
 of the latter or a common resort to Plutarch, whose knowledge of the 
 mythological hero was as imperfect as that of the Englishman, or 
 indeed both, as the author of the Noble Kinsman takes Theseus from a 
 different seeing point, while he makes equal havoc of probability and 
 consistency. 
 
 It appears to be superfluous to make Shakespeare responsible for 
 more than he actually deserves in the direction of shortcomings. The 
 wonder is, that we have not the Birth of Merlin, first printed in 1662, 
 included in the editions. It is not much worse than the Noble Kinsmen. 
 
 As regards the date of the play in its printed shape there is not 
 much to guide us. The concluding stanza of the crazy song by the 
 Gaoler's Daughter in Act iii. , Sc. 5, suggests a loan (or vice versd) from 
 the nursery rhyme of the Three Jovial Welshmen (Halliwell, No. 290). 
 
 Sir John Oldcastlb. 
 
 From an unpublished MS. record it appears that this drama was 
 performed before Charles I. at Hampton Court, 6th January, 1630-31. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A.B.O., 358 
 
 Aberdeen, 310 
 
 Abingdon, Northamptonshire, 140 
 
 Abridgments (actors), 46B 
 
 Actes des Apo^tres, 1541, 330 
 
 Acton, Middlesex, 140 
 
 Acton (or Aston), Mr., 7 
 
 Aotorides, 99 
 
 Actors, Earnings of, 315-16 
 
 Actresses, 325 
 
 Adam the Scrivener, 118 
 
 Adams, Thomas, 257, 326 
 
 Addenbroke suit, 64, 77, 371 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 46, 142 
 
 Adelphi Theatre, 32 
 
 Advertisements of plays, 329-30 
 
 .ffischylus, 19, 337 
 
 .Ethiopian, 258 
 
 ^thiopiam Bistory, 470 
 
 Aetimi, 52, 288 
 
 Aggas, Edward, 271 
 
 Agincourt, 397 
 
 Alabaster, W., 52, 323 
 
 Alberto, Battista, 202 
 
 Aldersgate Street, 61, 319 
 
 AUxwnder and Lod/uiick, 369 
 
 Alexis of Piedmont, 482 
 
 Alfred, King, 385 
 
 AUeyn, Edward, 7, 40, 53, 68, 85, 
 
 118, 161, 200, 236-7, 312-15, 327, 
 
 476 
 Allodial affection for Stratford, 47 
 All the green willow, a song, 472 
 Allusion-Books, xviii.-xx. 
 Althorp, 236 
 
 America, 88, 153, 284, 288 
 Ames, Joseph, 168 
 Amphitruo, 389, 440 
 Anderson, Mr. Eustace, 125 
 Anglorum Specvlwrn, 1684, 19 
 Angus, Countess of, 183 
 AnfaaJt, Prince of, 315 
 Annandale, 421 
 Anne of Denmark, 91, 250 
 of Great Britain, vi,, 86, 165 
 
 Announcements of new plays, 
 
 328-30, 390 
 Antigone, 361 
 
 Anti-monarchical temper of Shake- 
 spear, 86, 204r-5 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 481-3 
 ApoUonius of Tyre, 476 
 Ap-Eoberts, Griffin, 8, 356, 455 
 
 Nicholas, 8, 356, 455 
 
 Apulia, 484 
 
 Apuleius, 443 
 
 Ap- Williams, 455 
 
 Arabian Nights, 62, 406, 473 
 
 Arago, M., 162 
 
 Arbury, co. Warwick, 219, 254 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury's palace 
 
 at Mortlake, 125 
 Arden, Forest of, 131-2 
 Arden of Faversham, 338, 395 
 Arden of Warwickshire, 4, 14, 59, 
 
 120, 130-1 
 (or Ardern) of Wye and Faver- 
 
 sham, Kent, 4, 131 
 Ariel, 405-6 
 Ariosto, 300, 361, 447 
 Aristophanes, 60, 379, 385, 459 
 Armiger, 54 
 
 Armin, Bobert, 41, 125, 310, 393 
 Arms, Grant of, 59 
 Aroimi or Bynt, 371 
 Arrowsmith's Reformation, 165 
 Arthur, King, 167 
 Arthur's Show, 431 
 Asbies, Shakespear estate of, 8, 
 
 56,59 
 Ascaunt, 476 
 Ascham, Roger, 127 
 Ashbourne portrait of 1611, 142-5 
 Aston Cantlow, 4 
 As you like it, a phrase, 456 
 Athenseus, 355, 402 
 Atheniam, Mercury, 187 
 Aubigny, Lord, 122 
 Aubrey, John, xi.-xii., 6, 16, 21, 
 
 131, 156, 285, 294, 299, 421 
 
 its 
 
490 
 
 Index 
 
 Augustinian Priory at Dunstable, 17 
 Aulus Gellius, 337 
 Austin, Henry, 94 
 Autobiographical allusions, 103-4, 
 
 260, 858 
 Autographic remains, 104-10, 420 
 Autolycus, 402, 410 
 Avonbauk, 179 
 
 B., A., 249 
 
 BB., W., 221 
 
 Babington, Anthony, 321, 410 
 
 Bacon, Ann, 123 
 
 Anthony, 302 
 
 Francis, xii., 6, 84, 251, 283 et 
 
 scg'2.,313, 343, 383,449 
 
 Sir N., 84, 285, 298 
 
 Bacons of Chislehurst, 227 
 Bagford, John, 168 
 Bainbridge. See UrswicTc. 
 Baker's Chronicle, 326 
 Balfour, Sir Andrew, 22 
 Ballad singers, 322 
 Banister, Edward, 122 
 Bankside, 39, 56, 121, 311, 323 
 Bankes's horse, 443 
 Banquo, 479 
 Bansley, Charles, 327 
 Barabbin, 448 
 Barber-Surgeons, 72, 140 
 Barbican, 329 
 Barclay and Perkins, 38 
 Barclay's Argenis, 235 
 Bardolf, 430-1 
 Barham, Kent, 225 
 Barkstead, WiUiam, 20 
 Barnards, The, 47, 140, 169 
 Barnes, Barnaby, 361 
 
 Common, 465 
 
 Barnet, 211 
 
 Barnfield, Richard, 83, 85, 208-9, 
 
 213-14, 244-5-6, 423 
 Barnewell, Thomas, 466 
 Barnwell near Cambridge, 19 
 Bartholomew the Less, St., 122 
 Barton-on-the-Heath, 474 
 Basque Provinces, 17 
 Bassingbourne, 329 
 Baxter, Nathaniel, 167 
 Bear-baiting, 314 
 Bear Gardens, 322-3 
 
 Street, Fulham, 127 
 
 Beaulieu, Hants, 63, 192 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, vi., 33, 169, 
 
 172, 182, 187 
 Beoon, Thomas, 131 
 
 Beddoes, Lovell, 353 
 
 Beech, Bobert, 396 
 
 Behn, Aphra, 186-7 
 
 Bellot, Jacques, 71 
 
 Belvoir Castle, 61 
 
 Beudish, Sir Thomas, 123 
 
 Bened/ioh amd Beatrice, 391 
 
 Bonnet's Madrigals, 170 
 
 Benson, John, 7 
 
 Berkeley Castle, 16 
 
 Berkshire, 254, 396 
 
 BermondseyAbbey, 431 
 
 Bermudas (a place so called), 450 
 
 Bertha of France, Queen, 385 
 
 Beswick, co. Yorkshire, 321, 388 
 
 Betrothal, 11 
 
 Betterton, Thomas, 112 
 
 Bevis of Hampton, 192 
 
 Bible in Shakespear house, 343, 347 
 
 Bibles, Printing of, 169 
 
 Biblioolasts, 168 
 
 Bindley, James, 197 
 
 Biron, Due de, 443 
 
 Birth of Merlin, 488 
 
 Bishopsgate. See BuU. 
 
 Blaokfriars' purchase, 63, 65, 68, 
 71, 83, 123, 135 
 
 Blaokfriars Theatre, 33, 37, 83, 
 124, 291, 320, 3-23, 440 
 
 Blaokfriars, the Old, 68, 71, 121-4, 
 220, 320, 455 
 
 Blackwell, William, 123 
 
 Bloody Brother, The, 470 
 
 Bloome's Architecture, 1608, 444 
 
 Bloomfield's Life of Thucydides, 
 xiv. 
 
 Blount, Charles, Earl of Devon- 
 shire, 219 
 
 Edward, 217 et seqq., 272, 275, 
 
 294 
 
 Ralph, 217 
 
 Septima, 235 
 
 Boar's Head in Cheap, 397 
 
 in Southwark, 397 
 
 Boccaccio, 113 
 Bodenbam, John, 321 
 Bodleian Library, 181 
 Bodley, Sir T., 125 
 Bodmin, Cornwall, 385-6 
 Bohemia, 484 
 Bohemianism, 69 
 Boiardo, Matteo, 321 
 Boleyns, The, 12, 89 
 Bond, Mrs., 131 
 Bonduca, 33, 118 
 
 Book of Sports, 168 
 
Index 
 
 491 
 
 Books, Shakespear's, 85, 342-3 
 
 Booths, plays in, 17 
 
 Bordeaux, 113, 132, 272 
 
 Bordelals, 132 
 
 Borough, The, 26, 121, 365, 455 
 
 Bosworth Field, 326, 437 
 
 Bow-bearer, 198 
 
 Bowland Forest, 198 
 
 Bowls, 429, 486 
 
 Bourrieune, 12 
 
 Bradshaw, Henry, 332 
 
 Bradshawe, John, 248 
 
 Bragge of Stratford, 109 
 
 Brandon, Gregory, 59 
 
 Brathwaite's Remains after Death, 
 
 1618, 152 
 Bravo of Venice, 450 
 Bray, Berks, 396 
 Breton, Nicholas, 367 
 Bricklayers' Gild, 6 
 Briggs, Henry, 293 
 Bristol, 21, 31, 65 
 
 Lord, Diary, 66 
 
 milk, 65 
 
 British Arohseological Association, 
 
 398 
 Broke, Arthur, 383, 441 
 Brooke, Christopher, 166 
 
 Ralph, 59 
 
 Browne, W., 122, 200 
 
 Brownie, 406 
 
 Browsholme Hall, Yorkshire, 197-9 
 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 332 
 
 Bucke, Paul, an actor, 118 
 
 Buckingham, 437 
 
 Buckinghamshire, 16, 445. See 
 
 Bucklersbury, 455 
 
 Buffet, 317 
 
 Bugle Hall, Southampton, 63, 114 
 
 BuU-baiting, 323 
 
 Bull Theatre in Bishopsgate Street, 
 
 149-50, 317, 322 
 
 in Gracechurch Street, 322 
 
 Bulstrode, Sir Richard, 182 
 Bundling, 11 
 Bunyan, John, 168 
 Burbage, Cuthbert, 38, 147, 316 
 
 James, 29-30, 33, 38, 144, 429 
 
 John, 29 
 
 Millioent, 144 
 
 Ninian, 145 
 
 Richard, xvii., 38, 45, 60-2, 
 
 121, 145, 158, 316, 325, 365, 416, 
 
 420, 486 
 Robert, 125 
 
 Burbages, The, 9, 22, 29 et aeqq., 34, 
 50, 53, 56, 120-1, 144-7, 161, 309, 
 312, 316, 365, 393 
 
 Burghers, Michael, 372 
 
 Burleigh, Lord, 63, 191, 304 
 
 Burman, Stephen, 13 
 
 Burmans of Shottery, 120 
 
 Burridge, Mr., 7 
 
 Burton, Robert, 170, 343, 375 
 
 Bury St. Edmunds, 66 
 
 Bust of Shakespear, 158-9 
 
 Butchers' Gild, 6 
 
 Butler, Charles, 201 
 
 Butler, Charles, Earl of Arran, 160 
 
 Byron, 263, 353 
 
 Cage, The, at Stratford, 139 
 
 Caistor, 398 
 
 Caius, Dr., 394-5 
 
 Caldecott, Thomas, 358 
 
 Caldwall, Daniel, 386 
 
 Caliban, 405 
 
 Callophisus, 330 
 
 Calton-Alleyn agreement, 315 
 
 Calvin, Jean, 167 
 
 Cambridge, 201, 349. See Vniver- 
 
 Gamibridge Pilgrim, The, 218 
 
 Cambridgeshire, 17 
 
 Camden, W., 225 
 
 Canterbury, 6, 225, 364, 420 
 
 Capel, Edward, 185 
 
 Capulet, 448 
 
 Gardenia, 369 
 
 Carfax, Oxford, 44, 155 
 
 Carill, Euphemia, 321 
 
 Carlisle, 421 
 
 Cartwright, Francis, 396 
 
 Cary, Lady, 445 
 
 Casal, Sir Gregory, 487 
 
 Caskets, Three, 449 
 
 Castle of Perseverance, 17 
 
 Casus qucestionis, 469 
 
 Cat and Piddle, 428 
 
 Catullus, 195 
 
 Cavendish, Richard, 366 
 
 Caxton, William, 313 
 
 Caxtons, 197 
 
 Cecil, Sir Robert, 21, 248 
 
 Cervantes, 234 
 
 Chamberlain, John, 329 
 
 Chambers, Richard, a stationer, 230 
 
 Chapel Lane, Stratford, 128, 157 
 
 Chapman, George, 97, 115, 226-7, 
 
 230, 233, 322, 378, 382, 402, 457 
 Chapmans, The, 225, 227 
 
492 
 
 Index 
 
 Chappell's Popular Music, 407 
 Charlecote, xviii., 21, 24, 36, 97, 
 
 164, 456 
 Charles I., 180, 184, 488 
 
 II., 22, 293, 328, 407 
 
 Oharlwood, John, 329-30 
 
 Charter of the Forest, 27-8 
 
 Charteris, Henry, 18 
 
 Chatterton, T., 432 
 
 Chaucer, G., 113, 118, 385, 461 
 
 Cheltenham, 395 
 
 Chertsey, 437 
 
 Chester, Robert, 203, 233, 305 
 
 Chettle, Henry, 40, 154, 207, 287, 
 
 388, 460 
 Chewtes of Sarrenden, 225 
 Chichester, 344 
 ChiM of Bristol, 463 
 Children in the Wood, 438 
 Chislehnrst, 225, 227 
 Christ Church, Oxford, 9 
 Chronology of the Plays, 413-16 
 Chute, Anthony, 422 
 Civil War, 308 
 Clan, John, 455 
 Clapham, John, Narcissus, 192, 195, 
 
 422 
 Clapping of hands after a perform- 
 ance, 331 
 Clarendon Forest, 198 
 
 Wood, 198 
 
 Clark, Captain, 366 
 
 Clarke, John, Parosmiologia, 447, 
 
 460 
 
 William, 182, 201-2 
 
 Clay pipes, 323 
 
 Clement Danes, St., 127, 274 
 
 Clement's Inn, 394, 431 
 
 Cleopatra, 438, 482-3 
 
 Clergymen quote Shakespear in 
 
 their sermons, 326 
 Clink, Liberty of the, 38, 311 
 Cloptons, The, 50, 55, 86, 420 
 Clowes, William, 482 
 Clown, The, 353, 363 et seqq., 455 
 Coaching in parts, 145, 325, 472 
 Cobbett, William, 86 
 Cobham, Lord, 122 
 Cookermouth, 25 
 Cockpit, 328, 456 
 Colchester, 148 
 Coleman Street, 140 
 Coleridge, S. T., 463 
 Collaboration, 362 
 Collective Editions of Dramatists, 
 
 169 et seqq., 333-4 
 
 Collectors (Earliest) of old plays, 
 
 331-3 
 Collins, Francis, 79, 82 
 
 William, 346 
 
 CoUumpton, 201 
 
 Colour, influence of, 88, 256-9, 416, 
 
 470 
 Coluthus, 231 
 Combe Family, 25, 54, 92, 120, 144, 
 
 151-3, 365 
 Comedy of errors, a phrase, 440 
 Comic bent of the poet, 17, 336, 344, 
 
 387 et seqq. 
 Comins, Matthew, 5 
 Commercial life. Early, 4-8 
 Commines, Philippe de, 485 
 Commodus, the emperor, 385 
 Common Conditions, 391 
 Communicants, theatrical, 311 
 Companies, theatrical, 9, 39, 50, 89, 
 
 207, 309, 312-13, 339, 351, 393, 
 
 416, 428, 442, 453, 459, 472 
 Condell, Henry, 66, 82, 125-6, 486 
 Condover, 147 
 Conestagio, 229 
 Conference of Pleaswe, 296, 300 
 Congo, 257 
 
 Conjugal relations, 134-8 
 Consistory Court at Worcester, 12, 
 
 67, 75, 78 
 Constable, Henry, 170, 244, 253 
 
 John, 163 
 
 " Contempt of question," 468 
 Goniention of Lancaster and York, 
 
 434-5 
 Continental influence, 308 
 Contraries, Defence of, 355 
 Controversies, literary, 95 
 Conversational fragments, 91, 95 
 Conversation-books, 396-7 
 Cook, James, of Warwick, 112, 141 
 Cooke, Anne, 289 
 Cooling of Cwrst Kate, 403, 474 
 Copland, Eobert, 476 
 Copyright, 94, 340 
 Corbet, Margaret, 156 
 
 Richard, 146-7 
 
 Cordelia, 361 
 
 Cordwainers' and Tanners' Gild of 
 
 Canterbury, 7 
 CornwaUis, Sir William, 275, 318 
 Corombona, Vittoria, 257, 325 
 Coryat, Thomas, 230, 324-5, 402, 442 
 Cosens, F. W., 441 
 Costume, theatrical, 327, 449 
 Cotgrave, Handle, 373 
 
Index 
 
 493 
 
 Cotswolds, 16 
 Cottons, The, 122 
 Court of Bequests, 72 
 Coventry, 169, 254, 446 
 Cowley, Abraham, 378 
 
 Richard, 445 
 
 Cox of Coventry, Captain, 446 
 Coxwell-Eogers family, 63 
 Cradle of Security, 18 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 89, 207, 356 
 Crendon, Bucks, 16 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 88, 424 
 
 Thomas, Earl of Essex, 486 
 
 Crosby Place, 443 
 
 Crosse, Henry, 54 
 
 Cross-Keys Inn, 322 
 
 Crowflowers, 465 
 
 Crowner, 466 
 
 Crown Inn at Oxford, 44, 155 
 
 Crusaders, 462 
 
 Cryptogram, 303-5 
 
 Cuffe, Henry, 250 
 
 Cupar, 18 
 
 Curfew, 442 
 
 Curtain Theatre, 38, 326, 393 
 
 Cutler's poetry, 447, 452 
 
 Cutwode, Thomas, 193 
 
 Cymhdvne, 71, 477 
 
 Cyphers, 303-4, 468 
 
 Cyprus, 470-1 
 
 DagObe in Cheap, 400 
 
 Dagonet, Sir, 431 
 
 Dallington, Sir Robert, 230 
 
 Damon and Pithias, 457 
 
 Da/nce of Death, 86 
 
 Dancing, 314, 410 
 
 Daniel, George, 321, 388 
 
 Samuel, 52, 56, 234, 258, 274, 
 
 347 
 Danish Tragedy, 460 
 Dark figure of the Sonnets, 247, 257-8 
 Darnley, Lord, 356 
 Dartford, 21 
 
 Davenant, John, 82, 120, 155-6 
 Robert, of St. John's College, 
 
 Oxford, 82, 120, 155-6, 421 
 Sir WiUiam, xii., xviii., xx., 
 
 Ill, 155-6, 165, 267 
 
 William, of Magdalen Hall, 156 
 
 David and Bathsheba, 135 
 
 Davies of Hereford, John, 40, 301, 
 
 424 
 Davis, Sir John, 285 
 Davison, Francis, 301-2 
 Day, John, 256 
 
 Dead men's fingers, 328, 465 
 
 Death, 469 
 
 Death omens, 433 
 
 Deer-stealing episode, 26 
 
 Defence of Contra/ries, 355 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 206-7, 319, 385, 
 
 439, 448, 454, 462 
 Deloney's OerMe Craft, 448 
 Democracy, 465 
 Dene, 225 
 
 Denmark, 366, 403, 459-60 
 Deptford, 225 
 Derings, The, 225 
 Desdemona, 256, 470-1 
 Dethick the Herald, 59 
 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 
 
 248-50, 267, 454 
 
 Walter, Earl of Essex, 219 
 
 Dials, sun, 458 
 
 Diana of Poictiers, 482 
 
 Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, 
 
 397 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, 484 
 Ding-dong, a tune, 472 
 Diocletian, 207 
 DionyskiiS the Tyra/nt, 18 
 " Dirt," 49 
 
 Distcmcei, Tables of, 22 
 Dobell, Bertram, 416 
 Dogberry, 16 
 
 Domestic melodrama, 338 
 Donne, Dr., 93 
 Dormer, Mary, 123 
 Dorrell, Hadrian, 201 
 Douce, Francis, 375 
 Dover, 21, 419 
 Dover, Robert, 474 
 Dowdeswell, 62 
 Dowland, John, 366 
 Down a down, 464 
 Down and Connor, Bishop of, 69 
 Drake, Sir F., 257 
 Drama, improved state of the, 308 et 
 
 seqq. 
 Dramatis Personce, 40, 241, 334-5, 
 
 358, 361-2, 380-1, 394, 401-6, 430- 
 
 2, 305, 382, 388-9, 394 et seqq., 407, 
 
 435, 438, 441, 442-4, 449, 464, 477, 
 
 479, 485 
 Drapers' Gild, 7 
 Drayton, Michael, xvii., 6, 56, 63, 
 
 67, 94, 115, 122, 144, 165, 207, 265, 
 
 381 
 Dreams, 344-5, 463 
 Drewry House, Barbican, 248 
 Droeshout, Martin, xix., 157, 187 
 
494 
 
 Index 
 
 Drolls, 176, 390-1 
 
 Drummond, W., xiv., 94, 161, 183, 
 
 307, 377, 421 
 Dryden, John, xiii. , xix., xx., 115 , 175 
 Du Bojs, Sir Amis, 257 
 Duchess of Malfy, 33 
 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 
 
 147 
 Dugdale, Gilbert, 833 
 
 Sir W., xiv.-xv., 166 
 
 Dulwioh, 315, 403 
 
 CoUege, 7, 85, 157, 207, 286, 408 
 
 Dumb Deadnesses, 96 
 Dundee, 18 
 Dunstable, 17 
 Durfey, Thomas, 338, 465 
 D wight, John, 144 
 Dyce, Rev. Alexander, 7 
 Dyers' Gild, 154, 315 
 Dyson, Humphrey, 331 
 
 Earlb'S Microcosmogrcuphy, 52, 56, 
 
 316 
 East Anglia, 7, 130 
 East Cheap, 397, 399 
 Eastward Hoe, a play, 89 
 East-Indiaman, Journal of an, 1607, 
 
 162 
 East Mailing, 225 
 East Peokham, 225 
 Edinburgh, 18, 185 
 Editorship, Early, 185-6 
 Edward the Third, 242, 339 
 Edwards, Richard, 344-5 
 Egyptian thief, 469 
 Egypt or Nile, mud of, 438, 482-3 
 Eld, George, 230 
 Electric telegraph, 405 
 Elizabeth, Queen, xxii., 89, 101, 122, 
 
 148, 207, 220, 227, 239, 247, 249, 
 
 304, 401, 431, 454 
 
 Daughter of James I., 61, 123, 
 
 183, 302 
 Elizabeth of York, 438 
 Elizabethan Drama, 308 et seqq. 
 Blsinore, Castle of, 461 
 Ely Place, 438 
 Emblem-writers, 152-3, 368 
 Emigrants (other) from Stratford, 
 
 49-50 
 Enclosures, 91-2 
 England's Helicon, 170, 179, 202, 
 
 321, 368, 381, 409, 455-6, 483 
 English Ape, 1588, 439 
 English Drama and Stage, 822 
 English plays studied abroad, 368 
 
 Engrossing or regrating, 429 
 
 Enigmatical addresses, 220-1, 304 
 
 Entertainment of visitors at Strat- 
 ford, 25, 64 
 
 at taverns, 68-9 
 
 Epicharmus, 337 
 
 Epiotetus, 217, 232 
 
 Episcopacy, Revolt against, 89 
 
 Erasmus, D., 156, 379 
 
 Errors of the Poet, 379-81, 404 
 
 Esil or Eisil, 466 
 
 Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, 
 
 50, 120, 131, 340 
 
 family, 254 
 
 Etienne, Henri, 358 
 
 Eton, 184, 368 
 
 Euripides, 300, 361, 385 
 
 Evans, Sir Hugh, 395 
 
 John, 395 
 
 Evelyn, John, xiv., 122, 133, 135, 
 177, 323, 462 
 
 Susanna, 133, 135 
 
 Fai/ry Knight, 454 
 Fairy Mythology, 404r-7 
 Falcon Inn, Southwark, 431 
 
 Stratford, 67 
 
 Falconers, King's, 313 
 Falkland, Lord, 184 
 False gallop of verses, 23 
 Falstafe, 17, 20, 27, 32, 104, 128, 
 
 186, 377, 388, 390, 397-401, 429- 
 
 31, 454, 480 
 Famagusta, 470 
 Family bereavements, 103 
 Famous Victories of Henry V., 12, 
 
 147, 149-50 
 Farmer, Dr. , 100 
 Faruaby, Thomas, 285 
 Fastolfes, The, 397-9, 455 
 Faustus, 40, 454 
 Faversham, 4, 131 
 Felo de se, 466 
 Fencing, 314, 403 
 Fenn, Sir John, 168 
 Fenton, Geffrey, 122, 357, 361 
 Field, Henry, 139, 153 
 
 John, 310 
 
 Nathaniel, 310, 329 
 
 Richard, 50, 121, 158, 203, 
 
 214, 334, 361 
 
 Theophilus, 310 
 
 Fields of Stratford, The, 120 
 Fire (Great) of London, 1666, 140 
 Fires at Stratford, 92 
 First Sketches, 294, 339, 350, 382 
 
Index 
 
 495 
 
 Fish-trade, 463-4 
 
 Fitton, Anne and Mary, 218-20, 
 
 247-8, 267, 424 
 
 Edward, 220 
 
 Fitzgeoffrey's Satires, 1620, 318 
 
 Flaubert, 341 
 
 Flaxen poll of Hamlet, 461 
 
 Fleay, Mr., xvi., 52 et idibi 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, 196, 265, 310 
 
 John, xTiu., 33, 118, 165, 369, 
 
 488 
 
 Lawrence, 311, 313 
 
 Richard, Bishop of London, 126 
 
 Florio, John, 274 
 
 the younger, 122, 125-7, 206, 
 
 217, 273 et seiq., 324-5, 343, 381-2, 
 
 442 
 
 Rose, 274 
 
 Foe or Defoe, Daniel, 6 
 Folie aux Hostellers, 430 
 Folio Edition of Shakespear, 1623, 
 
 180, 234, 286, 343 
 Folklore, 442, 478, 482, 484 
 Ford, John, 454 
 
 Wmiam, 196-200 
 
 Forde, Mistress, 455 
 Forestalment in marriage, 11-13 
 Forest Law, 228 
 Forfeits in barbers' shops, 470 
 Forgeries of Shakespear's signature, 
 
 109 
 Forman, Dr., 5, 26, 322 
 Fortune, Sir Edward, 53 
 Fortune theatre, 53, 85, 312, 317 
 Fotheringay, 24 
 Fougasses, M. de, 453 
 Foundation-plays. See First Sketches. 
 Four Sons of Aymon, a play, 118 
 Fox, John, 24, 274, 309, 488 
 Fragmenta Avlica, 1662, 486-7 
 Franco, G-iacomo, 449 
 Frederic V., Elector Palatine, 61, 
 
 302 
 Free-bench, 135 
 Free suitors, Southampton, 248 
 French Church in London, 72 
 French Doctor, The, 395 
 Frog Moor, The, 455 
 Froissart, 357, 485 
 Fruit sold at the theatre, 317 
 Fulk Fitzwarin, 457 
 Fulbeck, W., 482 
 Fulham, 125-7, 144, 274 
 Fuller, Thomas, 389 
 Fulwood, William, 443 
 Funeral usage, 465-6 
 
 Fumess Variorum, 159, 185 
 Fyfield, Essex, 50, 120, 130 
 
 Gad's Hill, 32, 480 
 Gadshill, an Ostler, 31, 396 
 Gainsborough, Thomas, 163 
 Gale, Dunstan, 407 
 
 Thomas, 355 
 
 Galen, 355-6 
 
 Oame at Chess, A , a play, 89 
 
 Oammer Ourton's Needle, 389 
 
 Garcia the singer, 420 
 
 Garmombles, 397 
 
 Garrick, David, 22, 85, 159, 236, 
 
 483 
 Gaiter King of Arms, 59 
 Gascoigne, G., 115, 197, 254, 306, 
 
 317, 331, 348, 361, 365, 383 
 Gaultier, Philippe, 367 
 Oenerosus, 54 
 Genevan Bible, 342, 346 
 Oeorge A' Green, 340 
 George of Cwppadoaia {St.), 398 
 German stage, early, 369 
 Gesner, Conrad, 386 
 Gestation, female, 78 
 Ghost in Hamlet, 145, 462, 464 
 Gibson, Anthony, 220 
 Gift Copies, 100, 114-15 
 Gilds of London, 30 
 Globe Theatre, 33, 56-7, 67, 83, 114, 
 
 146, 323, 392, 472, 475, 486 
 Gloddaeth, 333 
 Gloucester, 18, 142 
 
 Duchess of, 435 
 
 Duke of, 436 
 
 Gloucestershire, 16-17, 24, 465 
 Gloves, Shakespear's, 159-60 
 Gobbi, Angelo de', 404 
 Gobbo, Giovanni, 404, 433 
 
 Lancelot, 380 
 
 Godington, 225 
 Godmersham, 225, 227 
 " God is a good man," 311, 447 
 Gods (The) in the theatre, 390, 438 
 Golden Lion at Fulham, 126 
 Golding, Arthur, 196, 402 
 Goldsmith, 0., 339 
 Goldsmiths' HaU, 7 
 Goldwells, The, 225 
 Gorhambury, 84, 227, 306 
 Gosson, Stephen, 317 
 Gothic architecture, 17 
 Gournay, MUe. de, 271 
 Gower Monument at St. Saviour's, 
 811, 477 
 
496 
 
 Index 
 
 Grafton, Richard, 249, 423 
 
 WiUiam, 249 
 
 Grange, 471 
 
 Grant (proposed) of arms, 58 
 
 Gravedigger's Scene in Hamdet, 
 
 34—5 129 
 Gray's 'inn, 235, 300-1, 361 
 Gray's Inn Masque, 301 
 Gray's Inn or Furpoole Lane, 235 
 Great House. See New Place. 
 Greek theatre, 337, 379 
 Green room, 45 
 Greene, John, 143 
 
 Philip, 143 
 
 Robert, 19, 23, 36, 45, 132, 154, 
 
 168, 275, 287, 297, 312, 340, 347- 
 
 50, 394, 423, 439, 454 
 Thomas, 64-5, 67, 77, 79-80, 
 
 91-3, 103, 120, 134, 142-4, 161, 
 
 207, 371, 420 
 
 alias Shakespear, 142 
 
 Sir Thomas, a priest, 348 
 
 Greenside, near Edinburgh, 18 
 
 Greenwich, 300 
 
 Grenville, 'Thomas, 197 
 
 GrevUe, Sir Fulke, 24 
 
 Griffin, B., 254-5 
 
 Grimaldi, Joseph, 391 
 
 Griselda, 475 
 
 Grooms of the Privy Chamber, 
 
 314 
 
 of the Queen's Chamber, 314 
 
 Grove, Joseph, 5 
 Gryphius, Andreas, 369, 453 
 Guazzo's Civil Conversation, 1581, 
 
 375 
 Gunpowder Plot of 1605, 250 
 Gunsley, Robert, 162-3 
 Gwinne, Matthew, 478-9 
 
 Habbedasheet, 138-9 
 
 Hackets of Quinton, 474 
 
 Hackington, 225 
 
 Haddington, Lord and Lady, 393 
 
 Haddon, Walter, 192 
 
 Hague, 185 
 
 Hakluyt's Voyages, 309, 357 
 
 Hales, John, of Coventry, 169 
 
 John, of Eton, 184 
 
 Halifax Vicarage, 316 
 Hall, Bishop, 193, 217 
 
 John, of Maidstone, 140 
 
 John, of Stratford. See HaUs. 
 
 William, 106 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., xvi. et 
 alibi 
 
 HaUs, The, xiii., 47, 62-4, 67, 74-5, 
 
 78, 82-3, 92, 112, 120, 130, 140-2, 
 
 224, 344, 424, 429 
 Ham, Surrey, 94 
 Hamlet, the old, xxi., 36,42, 460, 464 
 
 a prose history, 1608, 166, 459 
 
 the name, 79-80 
 
 1603, 460-1 
 
 modern German version, 460 
 
 Hammonds of Nonnington, The, 
 
 224, 231 
 Hampshire, 63 
 Hampton Court, 184, 488 
 Hampton-in-Arden, 4 
 Hand-fastening, 10 
 Handwriting, 57-8, 104-11, 132-3 
 Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 185 
 Harborne arm-chair, 160 
 Haringtons, The, 60 
 Harrison, Stephen, 37 
 Hart family, 142, 342 
 
 George Shakespear, 142 
 
 Harts of Gloucester, 142 
 
 of Stratford, 64, 82, 142, 159, 
 
 342 
 Hartshill, 67 
 Harvards of Stratford and New 
 
 England, 121, 153 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 93, 115-16, 148, 
 
 150, 161, 287, 461 
 
 Richard, 361, 471 
 
 Harveys, The, 350 
 Haseley, oo. Warwick, 169 
 Hastings, Warren, 48 
 Hatfield MSS., 249 
 Hathaway, Anne, 10-13 
 
 Catherine, 13-14 
 
 Hathaways, The, 10, 12-14, 120 
 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 304 
 Haughton, William, 256, 396 
 Hayford, Humphrey, 452 
 Hayward, Sir John, 296 
 Hazlitt, W., xi., 198, 330, 342, 386^ 
 
 433, 440, 462-3 
 Hazlitts in America, 168 
 Healey, John, 217, 232 
 Heathfield, Sussex, 429 
 Heber, Richard, 196, 198 
 Hebrew Scriptures, 346 
 Hebrides, 11 
 Helen of Troy, 454 
 Heliodorus, 259 
 Hell, 454 
 
 Homing and Condell, 66, 82, 171 
 Heming, John, 33, 314, 486 
 Thomasina, 33 
 
Index 
 
 497 
 
 Hendyng, Proverbs of, 458 
 Heneage, Sir Thomas, 192 
 Henley-in-Arden, 131 
 Henley Street, 15, 65, 82, 106 
 Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles 
 
 I., 112 
 Henry II. of France, 482 
 
 V. of England, 45 
 
 VII., 58-9, 295 
 
 VIII., 12, 295, 396, 486-7 
 
 Henslowe, Philip, 39, 68, 74, 85, 
 
 160, 154, 161, 256, 312-13 
 Hentzner, Paul, 317, 322 
 Heralds' College, 56-9 
 Herbert, George, 167, 298-9 
 
 Edward, Lord Herbert of 
 
 Cherbury, 122 
 
 Sir Thomas, 180 
 
 Herberts of WUton, 101, 172, 194, 
 198, 217-18, 221, 247-8, 263, 
 274, 302, 453 
 Herbert's Amea, 168 
 Hereford, 398 
 Herefordshire, 465 
 Heme the Hunter, 395, 455 
 Herodotus, 451 
 Hertfordshire, 227 
 Hervey, John, first Earl of Bristol, 
 65 
 
 Heydon, Sir John, 445 
 
 Heywood, John, 49, 145, 298, 437 
 
 Thomas, 49, 91, 94-6, 122, 231, 
 
 341 
 
 Hicks, Sir Baptist, 114, 191 
 
 High Wycombe, 142 
 
 Hobbes, T., of Malmesbury, 366 
 
 Hodnet, Salop, 248 
 
 Holborn Fields, 235 
 
 Holcroft, T., 326, 461 
 
 Holerofts at Fulham, 126 
 
 Holinshed, 309, 357, 360 
 
 Holofernes, 127, 357 
 
 Holy Tiinity Church, Stratford, 
 73-4, 153 
 
 Gild, Sleaford, 424 
 
 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, 37 
 
 Priory, 38 
 
 Homer, 402 
 
 Hood's Mwrmer^s Ouide, 372 
 
 Hope Theatre, 37, 323 
 
 Horseback, 21 
 
 Horse-hire, 22 
 
 Horses, 28, 34 
 
 Hosteler, Elizabethan, 29-30 
 
 Hot Cockles, 473 
 
 Howell, James, 165, 386, 419 
 
 Sovdeglas, 150 
 Hune, Bichard, 466 
 Hunsdons, The, 122 
 Hunstanton, 445 
 Hunt, Leigh, 464 
 Hunter, Bev. Joseph, xvi. et alibi 
 Huon of Bordeaux, 453 
 Hurly-burly, 480 
 Husbandmen, 12 
 
 lAGO, 471 
 
 lUyria, 469 
 
 Imitation of Christ, 168 
 
 Imogen, 477 
 
 Imprese, 61 
 
 Indies, 469 
 
 Ingammi or Ingcmnati, 370 
 
 Ingleby, C. M., 92, 312 
 
 Inkhoi-n terms, 317-18 
 
 Inn, the Early, 68 
 
 Inner Sense, 280, 311-12, 352-4, 
 
 441, 452, 454, 465-6 
 Inns of Court, 41, 122. See Middle 
 
 Temple. 
 Intellectual incubation, 16-21, 30, 
 
 264, 476-7, 483, 485 
 Interest on money, 450 
 Intronati, 370 
 
 Introspection. See Inner Sense. 
 Ipswich, 5 
 Ira amcmtiAim, 321 
 Ireland, 248-9, 267, 465 
 Italian school of poetry, 244 
 influence on the English drama, 
 
 308-9 
 Italian Twylor and his Boy, 393 
 Italy, 439-42 
 Iteration, 452, 480-1 
 
 Jack Cade, 429 
 
 Jach Drum's Entertainment, 53 
 
 Jack Juggler, 332, 389 
 
 Jack Snacker of Witney, 18 
 
 Jack the Giant Killer, 473 
 
 Jacobus, gold, 62 
 
 Jaggard, W., 91, 203, 238, 335, 341 
 
 Jaggards, The, 91, 94-5, 160, 172, 
 
 180 
 James I., 101, 111, 116, 167, 205, 
 
 238-9, 309, 313 
 
 letter to Shakespear, 111 
 
 Jannsens, The, 159 
 Jargon, Anglo-French, 395 
 Jarmwny, Duke de, 395, 397, 456 
 Jerusalem Chamber, 432 
 Jesus Christ, 462 
 
 2i 
 
498 
 
 Index 
 
 Jew of Venice, xxi. 
 
 Jews, 89, 450 
 
 Jigs, 310 
 
 Job, 326 
 
 Johannes Factotv/m, 348 
 
 John of the Hospital, 393 
 
 Johnston, Sir Harry, 449 
 
 Joiners' GUd, 37 
 
 Jones, Robert, 353 
 
 Jonsou, Benjamin, xii., xvii.-xviii., 
 xxii., 6, 21, 40, 62, 66-7, 93, 94, 96, 
 115, 122, 161, 165, 169, 175-8, 183, 
 187, 227, 230, 233, 235, 256, 272, 
 343, 351-2, 369, 377, 380-2, 384, 
 416,420-1,450,484 
 
 Juby, Edward, 340 
 
 Juliet, 336 
 
 Kbmblb, Fanny, 159 
 
 Kemble, Roger, 107 
 
 Kempe, W., 151, 218, 310, 316, 321, 
 392, 445, 478 
 
 Kenniugton, 53, 315 
 
 Kent, 4, 20-1, 32, 130, 140, 224-8, 
 370-1, 419, 445 
 
 Kersey, John, 165 
 
 Key (common) to Shakespear's sig- 
 nature, 108-9 
 
 King, Humphrey, 232 
 
 Kingdon of Ashbourne, co. Derby, 
 156-7 
 
 King's Company of Players, 313 
 
 King's Evil, 482 
 
 King's Lectures on Jonas, 453 
 
 Kingsmill, Sir Richard, 24 
 
 Kinwelmersh, Francis, 300 
 
 Knight, Charles, xi. 
 
 Knolles' History of the Turks, 228 
 
 Knowell, 40, 384 
 
 Kohn's Shakespear in Germany, 315 
 et alibi 
 
 Kyd, Thomas, xix., 52, 145, 225, 
 331, 383, 394, 450 
 
 Lacy, John, 457 
 
 Lady's New Year's Gift, 1688, 118 
 
 Lambarde, William, 18, 225, 250, 
 
 319, 445 
 Lamberts, The, 56, 59, 120, 474 
 Lambourn, Berks, 254-5 
 Lancashire, 167 
 Lanes, The, 67 
 Languages, 364, 393 
 Lansdowne, Lord, 187 
 Lark and toad, 442 
 La Tour Landry, Knight of, 475 
 
 Latter-day presentation of plays, 
 , 327 
 I Launoe and his dog, 15 
 
 Laws' Resolution of Women's Rights, 
 1632, 10, 186 
 
 LazarUlo de Tormes, 150 
 
 Leak, 430 
 
 Leake, William, 202-3 
 
 Lear, the old, xxi., 472 
 
 Leathercoats, 15 
 
 Lee, Nathaniel, 187 
 
 Sir Sidney, 196 
 
 Lee Priory, 332 
 
 Legal knowledge of Shakespear and 
 his time, 80-1, 338 
 
 Le Houx, Jean, 46 
 
 Leicester, Lettice, Countess of, 454 
 
 Leigh, Edward, 164 
 
 Le Neve, Peter, 59 
 
 Leonato, 425, 444 
 
 Lepanto, Battle of, 470 
 
 Le Roy, Loys, 342 
 
 Leslie, General, 39 
 
 Lestrange, Sir Nicholas, 93, 445 
 
 Lewkenor, Sir Lewes, 366-7 
 
 Liber Precum Publiearum, 86 
 
 Libraries, Early English, 83 
 
 Licornis, 482 
 
 Lighting of private theatres, 320 
 
 Lily's Accidence, 358 
 
 Lincolnshire, 471 
 
 Links and Lanterns, use of, 35 
 
 Linlithgow, 18 
 
 Lintott, Bernard, 111, 179 
 
 Lion-baiting at the Tower, 314 
 
 Lisle, WiUiam, 259 
 
 Little Boy Blue, 473 
 
 " Little the earth," 312 
 
 Looker-Lampson, F., 201 
 
 Lodge, Thomas, 132, 195, 348, 360, 
 
 366-7, 401, 457, 460 
 Lombard Street, 452 
 London and the countryside, 30 
 London Lickpenny, 399 
 Long purples, 465 
 Look about You, 339 
 " Loss of question," 469 
 Lottery of 1567, 447 
 Love d. la Mode, 1663, 164 
 " Lover," 209 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost, 174, 335, 442-4 
 Love's Pilgrimage, 369 
 Lucan, 228-9 
 Lucanor, El Conde, 473 
 Lucrece, 200-1 
 LiKretia Romana, 423 
 
Index 
 
 499 
 
 Lucys of Charlecote, xviii., 21, 24^8, 
 97-8, 341, 419, 435, 455-6 
 
 of Cookermouth, 25 
 
 of Shelford, 435 
 
 Luddington, 419 
 
 Lumley, Lord, 250 
 
 Imst's Dominion, 256 
 
 Luttrell, Narcissus, 182 
 
 Lydde, 304 
 
 Lydgate, John, 399 
 
 Lyly, John, xix., 223, 234-5, 383-4, 
 401, 440, 446 
 
 Lyudsay, Sir David, 18 
 
 Lyrics, The, 175-249, 393-6 
 
 Macbeth, 185, 478-82 
 McuymiUan's Magazine, 472 
 Magdalen College, Oxford, 181, 201, 
 
 398 
 Magellan, Straits of, 366 
 Ma^ister Factotum, 348 
 Maiden or Maid Lane, 38, 56 
 Maidstone, 140, 162 
 Mainwaring, Sir Henry, 183 
 Malone, Edmond, 85, 96, 139, 158, 
 
 196, 236-7, 427 
 Malvolio, 391 
 Manningham, John, 45, 322, 370, 
 
 467 
 Manninghams, The, 225, 321 
 Manwoods, The, 225, 228, 231 
 Margaret, Queen, 435 
 
 Countess of Richmond, 439 
 
 Market-Bosworth, 438 
 Markham, Sir Clements, 484 
 
 Gervase, 275 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 295, 326 
 
 Marlowe, Anthony, 225 
 
 Christopher, xix., 7, 40, 45, 48, 
 
 52, 161, 169, 193, 225-6-7, 230-1, 
 
 254, 287-8, 294, 312, 327, 331, 334, 
 
 348, 364, 369, 371, 378. 383, 394, 
 
 420, 427, 455-6, 459, 478 
 - — - Clement, 274 
 
 William, 274 
 
 Marshalsea, 59 
 
 Marston, John, 53, 96, 225, 233, 318, 
 
 467 
 Mary Magdalene, Sepentance of, 1566, 
 
 20, 318 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 24 
 Mary (St.) Overy's, Southwark, 311 
 Massinger, PhUip, 170, 361, 369 
 Masters at Stratford school, 7-8, 
 
 358-9 
 Mast Person, 444 
 
 Material for Works, 308-9, 357-62 
 et seqq. 
 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 341 
 
 Mawr, 428 
 
 May, Thomas, 232 
 
 Medlar, 441 
 
 Medwin, Captain, 342 
 
 Melford, 93 
 
 Melodramatic inspiration, 379 
 
 Meunis, Sir John, 7, 129-30 
 
 Mental refraction, 462 
 
 Mercers' Gild, 420 
 
 Merchant Taylors, 466 
 
 Meres, Francis, xviii., 201-2, 210, 
 216, 239, 428 
 
 Merrick, Sir Giles, 249 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, on a pas- 
 sage in the, 207 
 
 Messina, 444 
 
 Middle Temple, 137, 227-8, 370, 415, 
 467 
 
 Middleton, T., 89, 224, 324, 472, 478 
 
 Midlands, The, 228 
 
 Mile-end Green, 33, 431 
 
 Miller, Joseph, 478-9 
 
 Mills the theatrical manager, 326, 
 329 
 
 Milton, John, xii., xix., xx., 165, 
 176, 180, 187, 200, 387-8, 457 
 
 " Mind's eye," 462-3 
 
 Mint of Deformities, 439 
 
 Miracle plays, 17 
 
 Miranda, 485 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates, 357 
 
 Misapplied scholarship, 380 
 
 Misfortwnes of Arthur, 300 
 
 Misson, Henri de, 323 
 
 Mitre Court, Fleet Street, 279 
 
 Moat Lane, Mortlake, 125 
 
 Modernness of Shakespear, 97 
 
 Monetary estimates, 450, 457 
 
 Monkwell or Mugwell Street, 73 
 
 Montagu of Beaulieu, Lord, 114 
 
 Montaigne, xii., 88, 96, 104, 107, 113, 
 163, 203-4, 234, 261-2, 271 et seqq., 
 299, 312, 343, 355, 365, 883, 420, 
 441, 451, 457, 469 
 
 Montbeliard, 397, 456 
 
 Montemayor, Georges de, 367 
 
 Montreux, Nicole de, 452 
 
 Moor Lane, Windsor, 455 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 298 
 
 a play so called, 18, 471 
 
 Moro, Venetian family of, 258, 470 
 
 Morocco, Prince of, 88, 259 
 
 Mortlake, 124^5, 393 
 
500 
 
 Index 
 
 Mostyn, Lord, 333 
 
 Mountjoy or Monjoy family, 71, 273 
 
 Mozart, 462 
 
 Muoedorus, 19, 339 
 
 Mulberry Tree at New Place, 64, 180 
 
 Muloaster, R., 442 
 
 Mumbudget, 456 
 
 Munday, A., 7, 202, 220, 355 
 
 Musaaus, 228-9, 459 
 
 Music, 407-10, 439, 468. See 
 
 Snatches. 
 Musicians' or Minstrels' Gild, 407 
 Mutius Scasvola, 231 
 Mysterious inscriptions, 220-1, 230 
 
 Napibk of Merchistoun, John, 293 
 Napoldon, 12, 261, 263 
 Narcissus, 422, 467 
 Nash, Thomas, 36, 95, 161, 192-3, 
 
 230-2, 376, 423 
 — — of Stratford, 85, 112, 120, 140 
 Necromancy, 485 
 Neglect, Period of, 164 et seqq. 
 Netherlands, 221, 304, 314, 368 
 Newbery's Dives Pragmaticus, 402 
 Newbold Revel, co. Warwick, xviii. 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 186, 285 
 
 Marchioness of, 422 
 
 Newdigate, Lady, 219 
 
 Newdigates of Arbury, Oxfordshire, 
 
 219 
 New England, 153 
 Newgate, 399 
 
 Newington theatre, 39, 459 
 New Inn, 151 
 New Place, 47, 50-1, 55, 58, 62-5, 
 
 67-9, 83-5, 112, 135, 174, 343 
 Newton, Thomas, 401 
 Nicools, Richard, 483 
 Nicholas, Daniel, 72 
 
 Edward, 198 
 
 Nilus' mud, 438, 483 
 Nomenclature, Shakespear's, 396 et 
 
 teqq. 
 Nonconformity, religious, 87 
 Nonnington, Kent, 224 
 Norden, John, 125 
 Norfolk, 447 
 Norfolk, Dukes of, 439 
 Norman's Rents, St. Saviour's, 121 
 North End, 125, 145 
 Northampton, Earl of, 40 
 Northumberland House, 300 
 
 Place, 329 
 
 Wizard Earl of, 304 
 
 Norton, H. G., of Liverpool, 344 
 
 Oats, price of, 429 
 
 Oberon, 454 
 
 Offljey, Hugh, 431 
 
 Ogilvy drinking-cup, 431 
 
 Oils, 429 
 
 Old, a phrase, 452 
 
 Oldcastle, 390, 397-400, 488 
 
 Old Mother Hubba/rd, 454 
 
 Oldys, W., Ill, 157 
 
 " Olive of endless age," 255, 424 
 
 Olympos, 380, 466 
 
 Operas, 823 
 
 Oral communication, 375 
 
 Ordsdale, Bucks, 445 
 
 Oriental literature, 354, 406, 473 
 
 Ort, 458 
 
 Orlamdo Furioso, 350 
 
 Orleans, Duchess of, 485 
 
 Orthography of the poet's name, 110 
 
 Osric, 464 
 
 Ostler, 32-3, 429 
 
 • (or Osteler), John, 83 
 
 William, 33, 122 
 
 OtheUo, 257 
 
 Otto of Hesse, Prince, 369 
 
 Otway, Thomas, 324 
 
 Ovid, 91, 94, 104-5, 194-5, 281, 343, 
 
 358, 381, 402, 454, 459, 466-7 
 Ovid's Ghost, 1657, 99 
 Owl, 465 
 Oxford, 5, 9, 21, 44, 46, 106, 116, 
 
 149, 155, 201, 328, 375, 422, 467, 
 
 478 
 Oxfordshire, 16, 19 
 Oxindens, The, 224-5, 227, 332 
 
 Padua, university of, 474 
 Page, Anne, 207, 342 
 
 Master, 16, 26, 98 
 
 Mrs., 359 
 
 WiUiam, 359 
 
 Pages of Bray, Berkshire, 342, 455 
 Painter's Palace of Pleaswe, 357, 
 
 883, 441 
 Paiooke, 464 
 Palwphilos, 228 
 
 Palladas the grammarian, 457 
 Palmers of Wingham Breux, Kent, 
 
 225 
 Papal Bull of 1596, 249 
 Parallel careers of Shakespear and 
 
 Bacon, 289-92 
 Paris, 458 
 
 Paris Garden, 318, 320 
 Parkers of Browsholme, 197-9 
 Parrot, Henry, 462 
 
Index 
 
 501 
 
 Parson's Green, 124-5 
 
 Parsons, Robert, 398 
 
 Pwrtial Lww, 447 
 
 Passionate PUgrim, 91, 94, 110, 168, 
 
 179, 203, 215, 238, 243, 341 
 Pattern of PamfiU. Adventures, 357, 
 
 360, 476 
 Patteson, Eev. Edward, 106-7 
 Pavier, Thomas, 335 
 Pedlar, 402 
 
 Peebles, Priests of, 813 
 Peele, George, 21, 121, 192, 288,318, 
 
 354, 394, 423 
 Pelion and Ossa, 881, 466 
 Pendent world. The, 469 
 Penley's market-garden at Mortlake, 
 
 125 
 Pennicuicke, Andrew, 114 
 Penri, John, 319 
 Pepys, S., xiv., 317, 820 
 Percy cognizance similar to Lucys', 
 
 25 
 Percy, Earl and Duke of Northum- 
 berland, 17, 25 
 
 Sir Joceline, 377 
 
 Pericles, 166, 233, 321, 360, 476-7 
 
 Perkes family, 120 
 
 Perne, Andrew, 149 
 
 Perth Amboy, 168 
 
 Pescod, William, 404 
 
 Petrarch, 113, 246 
 
 Petronius Arbiter, 457 
 
 Petrucchio, Ludovio, 396 
 
 Phaeton, 207 
 
 PhiUp II. of Spain, 229 
 
 le Bon, Duke of Burgundy, 
 
 473 
 Philips, Edward and John, 165 
 Phillips, Augustine, 121, 125-6, 
 
 249-50, 310, 314, 316, 892 
 Phillipps, Sir Thomas, 810 
 Phanissa of Euripides, 861 
 Photius, 355 
 Piked, 420, 465 
 Pillioock, 473 
 Pippin-pelting, 317 
 Pippins and cheese, 15 
 Piracy, literary, 91, 94, 96 
 Pix, Mary, 187 
 Plagiarism, 94 
 
 Plague of 1593, 192, 200, 252, 453 
 Piatt, Sir Hugh, 462 
 Plautus, 43, 337, 381, 389, 440 
 Play-bills, 328-9 
 Players in Warwickshire, companies 
 
 of, 9 
 
 Plays performed in provinces and in 
 
 Scotland, 17-18, 185 
 printed abroad and at home in 
 
 eighteenth century, 185 
 
 sold at the theatre, 331 
 
 Plumbe, WiUiam, 125 
 Plume, Archdeacon, 7, 129-80 
 Plummer of Middlestead, 180 
 Plutarch's Lives, 258, 425, 427, 444, 
 
 453 
 Poaching, 26-7 
 Poems on Affairs of State, 179 
 Points, Thomas, 423 
 Polonius, 464 
 Pope, Alexander, xii., 186 
 
 Thomas, 148, 316 
 
 Pork, 450 
 
 Porta, G. B., 304 
 
 Portia, 88,445,449, 451 
 
 Portrait (lost) of the poet's wife, 
 
 136 
 Portraits of Shakespear, xix., 136, 
 
 156-9, 187, 421 
 Postal service, 21, 67 
 Posthumous references to the poet, 
 
 185-6 
 Practice of Piety, 167, 181 
 Pre-nuptial contract, 10-12, 78 
 Presentation (contemporary) of 
 
 plays, 320-1 
 Presentation-copies of his books, 
 
 no, 100 
 Preston, Thomas, 394 
 Prices of admission to theatres, 
 
 318-20 
 of old editions of Shakespear, 
 
 182-3, 232, 236-7 
 Private boxes, 820 
 Procopius, 288 
 Professional tours. See Tours a/nd 
 
 Travellimg. 
 Profit-sharers, 56, 315-16 
 Proof-reader, Shakespear as a, 334^-6 
 Propertias, 195 
 
 " Prophecies of Merlin, &c.," 459 
 " Prophetic soul," 243, 339, 463 
 Prospero, 405, 485 
 Provins, 462 
 Prynne, W., 169 
 Psychology, 429 
 Pitch, 404-5 
 Puddle Dock, 123 
 Puerilet. See Sententice. 
 Pulton's Penal Statutes, 110 
 Purgatory, 468 
 
 Pnrpoole Lane, Clerkenwell, 235 
 2i2 
 
502 
 
 Index 
 
 Puritan, The, 90 
 
 Puritanism, 87, 89, 90, 134, 167, 
 
 341 
 Puttenham, George, 317-18 
 Pye near Bishopsgate, 315 
 Pygge, Oliver, 420-1 
 Pythagoras, 457 
 
 QUAEITCH, Bernard, 274 
 Quarto Shakespears, 331-6 
 Queen's Head AEey, London, 148 
 Quickly, Mrs., 128, 358, 433 
 Quiney, Adrian, 22, 272 
 
 Bichard, 111-12, 139, 272 
 
 Thomas, 74-5, 78, 139, 272, 
 
 432 
 Quineys, The, xiii., 47, 50, 78, 84, 
 
 126, 139, 272, 365 
 Quinton, 474 
 
 BABBLAis, 113, 127, 217-18, 459 
 Ealegh, Professor, xii. 
 Ealeigh, Carew, 33 
 
 Sir "Walter, 33, 366, 268 
 
 Salph Roister Doitter, 12, 332, 389 
 Eamsay, Allan, 185, 326 
 Eandolph, Eobert, 9 
 Thomas, xix., 9, 59-60, 201, 
 
 321, 477 
 Eankins, W., 439 
 Eascal, 432 
 
 Eatcliffe, Margaret, 445 
 Eavensoroft, E., xii., 294, 331, 426 
 Kawley, William, 293 
 Eay, Consul, 69 
 Eeaders at the Temple, 467 
 EeooUections of Stratford, Early, 
 
 8-9, 14-15, 20, 26, 260, 372 
 Bed Lion, Gray's Inn, 235 
 Eestaurant and early theatre, 316- 
 
 17 
 Besurreotion, Play on the, 18 
 Betlrement, Shakespear's, 69-71 
 Return from Parnassus, 53 
 Reveille matin, 408 
 Bevival, Period of, 183 et seqq, 
 Ehodes, 471 
 Bhodes, B., 461 
 Eialto bridge, 452 
 Bich, Lady Penelope, 213, 219 
 
 Eobert, Baron, 219 
 
 Eiohard II., 249-50-1, 464 
 
 III., 293, 326, 438, 464 
 
 Eiohardson of Shottery, John, 11, 
 
 120 
 Eimbault's Songs and BaUads, 408 
 
 Bings, 452 
 
 Eobert le Pieux, 385 
 
 Eoberts, James, 329 
 
 Eobin Goodfellow, 241, 404, 406 
 
 Bobin Ostler, 32-3, 429 
 
 Eobson, Simon, 33 
 
 Boohe, Mr., 7 
 
 Eochester, 31, 429 
 
 Earl of, 185 
 
 Bodd, Thomas, 227 
 
 Rodomontades of Captain Vigues, 443 
 
 Sogers, Philip, 153, 356 
 
 Thomas, 153 
 
 Eohan, Due de, 322 
 
 Eoman Plays, 339, 393, 425-8 
 
 Eomano, Giulio, 376 
 
 Romeo, 441 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 448 
 
 Bosalind, 401 
 
 Bosoius, 33 
 
 Bose Theatre, 207, 361, 437 
 
 Eose, Manor of the, 487 
 
 Bosemary, 465 
 
 Bosenorantz and Guildenstern, 403 
 
 Roswall and Lillian, 484 
 
 Bowe, Nicholas, xii. 
 
 Eowington, 128, 135 
 
 Bowley, Samuel, 486 
 
 Eoydons, The, 225, 333 
 
 Euddimans, The, 185 
 
 Bumour, 431 
 
 Eupert, Prince, 183 
 
 Eural theatricals, 453. See Plays. 
 
 Bushes, 322 
 
 Bussells, The, 123, 220 
 
 Rutland, Earl of, 61, 101, 123, 306 
 
 House, Aldersgate Street, 61, 
 
 319 
 Bye, 22 
 Bylands Library, Manchester, 109 
 
 Sackbrson, a bear, 314 
 
 Sadlers, The, of Stratford and 
 
 London, 22, 50, 79, 120-1, 455 
 St. Alban's Court, Nonnington, 
 
 Kent, 224 
 St. Anne's, Blackfriars, 62 
 St. Clement Danes, 227, 274 
 St. Gellais, 430 
 St. George, 329 
 St. George's Fields, 431 
 St. Giles, 23 
 Saint Oraal, 167 
 St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 37 
 St. John's College, Oxford, 422, 467, 
 
 478 
 
Index 
 
 503 
 
 St. Leonard's Hospital, 438 
 
 St. Martin's (or Carfax), Oxford, 155 
 
 St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, 311 
 
 St. Mary, Botolph Lane, 202 
 
 St. Paul's School, 442 
 
 St. Saviour's, Southwark, 311, 313, 
 
 477 
 St. Stephen's (or Hackington), Can- 
 terbury, 225 
 Sale of plays at the theatre doors, 
 
 381 
 Samphire, 32 
 SandeUs, Fulk, 11, 13, 120 
 Sanders, Nicholas, 275 
 Sandwich, 32, 228 
 Sandys, George, 224 
 Saunoing bell, 313 
 Saunders, Matthew, 275 
 SaviEe, Sir Henry, 249 
 Savoyard Ambassador, 291, 320 
 Saxo Grammaticus, 459 
 Sayings and Dictes of Philoaophers, 
 
 397 
 Scambling, 433 
 Scenic arrangements, 326 
 School-days, glimpses of, 359, 458, 
 
 468 
 Schools, Theatrical, 394 
 Soiography, 347 
 Scogiu's Jests, 150 
 Scotland, 18, 185, 309, 313 
 Soot's Discovery of Witchcraft, 357 
 Scott, Sir Walter, xviii. 
 Scrivener, The Elizabethan, 115, 
 
 116-17, 293, 306 
 Scriveners' Gild, 115-17, 293 
 Sorope, Stephen, 397 
 Scylla and Oharybdis, 357, 451 
 Sea-card, 372 
 Seafarer's argot, 369-70 
 Seal of John Sbakespear, 4 
 
 the poet, 79 
 
 Seaport towns preferred by players, 
 
 31 
 Seats on the stage, 318 
 Sebonde, Baimond de, 280 
 Selden, John, 122, 381 
 Self -appreciation, 101 
 Self -culture, 364 et seqq. 
 Self -depreciation, 261 
 Selimus, 338 
 Seneca, 381, 390 
 iSententice Pueriles, 358 
 Sequence of the Plays, 411-16 
 Sermones Fideles, 299 
 Seven Ages of Man, 457-8 
 
 Seven DeacUtf Sins, 148 
 
 Seven Deadly Sins Lane, Oxford, 
 
 149 
 Sevenoaks, 225 
 Seven Wise Masters, 449 
 Shadwell, Thomas, 480 
 Shakespear-Baconism, 288 
 Shakespear, Anne, 67, 74, 134^8, 
 
 343 
 
 Edmund, 121, 138, 313 
 
 Edward, 3 
 
 George, 3 
 
 Gilbert, 40, 128, 133, 138-9, 
 
 144 
 
 Gilbert, the younger, 138 
 
 Hamnet, 60, 70-1, 77, 79-80, 
 
 104, 428, 468 
 
 Henry, 110 
 
 Joan, 138, 142 
 
 — — John, 3 et seqq., 13, 26, 49, 58, 
 115, 127-33, 153, 249 
 
 Judith, 74-5, 78, 133, 135, 139 
 
 Mary, 59, 64, 214, 240. See 
 
 Arden, 
 
 Mr., 168 
 
 Richard, 3, 138 
 
 Richard, the younger, 103 
 
 Susanna, 64, 69, 75, 78, 82, 
 
 109, 112, 131, 133, 135, 138, 140 
 Thomas (two different per- 
 sons), 3, 57 
 Shakespear, as an actor, 39-40, 251, 
 
 384, 420 
 as an advanced thinker, 87- 
 
 90, 311, 429 
 — — - as a politician, 86, 204-5 
 
 as a proof-reader, 335-6, 442 
 
 distinguished as Master, 54, 
 
 55, 62, 136 
 
 MSS., 114 
 
 not a book-collector, 343 
 
 not a Humanitarian, 100 
 
 orthography of the name, 110, 
 
 442 
 
 Relics, 159-60 
 
 Shakespeareana. See Material, 
 Shakespears, other, 3, 57, 116 
 Shakespear's ancestral claims, 39 
 
 birthplace, 9, 42-8 
 
 books, 85 
 
 descendants, 139 
 
 experience primarily rural, 28 
 
 handwriting, 57, 108-10 
 
 lameness, 23 
 
 last days, 71 et seqq. 
 
 life in London, 28 et seqq. 
 
504 
 
 Index 
 
 Shakespear's literary and travelled 
 
 acquaintances, 366 
 
 marriage, 9-14, 55 
 
 personal character, 99 et seqq., 
 
 personal surroundings, 120 et 
 
 seqq., 343 
 
 receptive grasp, 74, 345 
 
 relative freedom from gross- 
 
 ness, 20, 328 
 
 schoolmaster, 7 
 
 travelling methods, 21-2 
 
 travelling range, 21 
 
 withdrawal from coverture, 60, 
 
 74, 77, 121, 135, 424 
 
 will, 75 -86 
 
 Shakespear's Cliff, 32 
 
 Library, xx., 21, 348, 351, 355, 
 
 357, 374-5, 428, 444, 455, 470, 
 
 488 
 
 London, 120-7 
 
 Shallow, Justice, 25, 27 
 Sharpham, Edward, 462 
 Shaw, Julius, 153 
 Sheen, Surrey, 107 
 Sheffield, John, Duke of Bucking- 
 hamshire, 111 
 Shelley, P. B., 464 
 Shelton, Thomas, 234, 348 
 Shepherd, Luke, 444 
 Shepherds Garland, 1597, 94 
 Bhilocke, Caleb, 449 
 Shiluk negroes, 44-9 
 Shirley, James, 170, 177, 199 
 Shoe Lane, 122, 127, 275 
 Shoredi^oh, 30-1, 36-7, 56-7, 121, 
 
 196, 365 
 Shottery, 10-U, 83, 136-7 
 Shrewsbury School, 7 
 Shropshire, 7, 10, 147, 183, 208, 248 
 Shute, W., 453 
 Shylock, 87, 488, 449 
 Sibthorps, The, 180 
 Sicily, 446 
 Siddons, Mrs., 159 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 7, 219 
 Signatures of Shakespear, nine 
 
 known, 82, 105, 108 
 
 ■ successive varying, 110 
 
 Silver Street, 72 
 
 Simian suggestion, 428 
 
 Singers of ballads in the streets, 
 
 322 
 Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, 460 
 " Sir Simon Two Shares and a 
 
 Half," 316 
 Skelton, John, 430 
 
 Skelton's Merry Tales, 150, 430, 432 
 
 456 
 Skipwiths, The, xviii. 
 SkuUs, disinterment of, 156-7, 465 
 Slaughter, Martin, 369 
 Slender, Master, 314, 359 
 Slops, clown's, 320 
 Sly, Clement, fencer, 403 
 
 John, actor, 403 
 
 WiUiam, actor, 121, 146, 157, 
 
 403 
 Sly the tinker, 403, 416, 474 
 Smethwick, near Birmingham, 106 
 Smith of Warwickshire, John, 1563- 
 
 1616, 15 
 
 William, 202 
 
 Smithfield, 22, 30, 33 
 Smiths of Bidborough, 423 
 Smyrna, 69 
 Smyth, John and Thomas, 235 
 
 Walter, 436 
 
 Snatches of baUads, 408, 467-8, 473 
 
 Snitterfield, 8, 57, 110 
 
 Somerset, Earl and Countess of, 122 
 
 Somerset House, 314 
 
 Somerset. See Worcester. 
 
 Somersetshire, 21, 432 
 
 Sommers (or Summers), William, 60 
 
 Songs in the Plays, 244, 408-9, 424, 
 
 467-8, 470, 473 
 Sonnets of Shakespeai-, 208 et seqq. 
 Sophocles, 45 
 Sotties, Early French, 20 
 " Soul's dwelling-house," 312 
 Southampton, 32, 63 
 
 Earl of. See WriothtsUy. 
 
 House, 40, 155, 192, 250-1 
 
 Southcott, Lady, 421 
 
 Southwark, 22, 121, 126, 154, 311, 
 
 431 
 Southwell, Robert, 275 
 Spagnuoli, B., 858, 444 
 Spain, 248, 880 
 
 Spanish Moor's Tragedy, 256, 338 
 Speght's Chaucer, 461 
 SpeUing-book of 1591, 111 
 Spenoe, Joseph, xii. 
 Spencer, Earl, 197, 236 
 
 Sir Edward, 165 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 52, 115-16, 150, 
 
 288, 366, 401, 420 
 Spinning-wheel, 14, 464-5 
 Sponsion, Secret, 10, 78 
 Sports to be used, lawful, 167 
 Sprat, Dean, 46 
 Squire of Lovs Degree, 355, 429 
 
Index 
 
 505 
 
 staff of office, 486 
 
 StaSords, Dnkes of Buckingham, 
 
 17, 437 
 Stage, improvement of the, 309 et 
 
 seqq, 
 
 and the Court, 309-10 
 
 Sta^e-Player's Complaint, 1641, 319 
 Stage-plays in the country, 17-20 
 Stanley, Thomas, 224 
 
 Lord, 439 
 
 Stanton-Harcourt, 19 
 
 Stapfer, Mark, 100 
 
 Star Chamber, 33 
 
 Stationers' Company, 151, 176-7, 
 
 181, 211, 217, 234 eS se??. 
 Staunton, Sir George L., 206 
 Steevens, George, 199, 483 
 Stephen, King, play on, 408 
 Stephens (or Stephanus), Henry, 
 
 314. See Etienne. 
 Stewart, C. J., 224 
 Stinchcombe Hill, 16 
 Stoboeus, 457 
 Stone, Staffordshire, 53 
 Stool on the stage, 318 
 Storre, William, 396 
 Strand, The, 63 
 Straparola, 393 
 Stratford grammar-school, 7, 358, 
 
 419 
 entertainment of strangers at, 
 
 25, 64^5 
 
 inns, 67-8 
 
 insanitary state of, 73 
 
 Old, 54 
 
 Stratford-on-Avon, xvii., 5, 6, 9, 12, 
 
 14^15, 21-2, 25, 46-8 et seqq. , 50, 64- 
 
 9, 73, 85, 91-2, 112, 123, 130, 132, 
 
 139, 143, 157, 169, 188, 196, 214, 
 
 240-1, 338, 343, 392, 462, 474 
 Street, Peter, 312 
 Struma, 482 
 
 Stuarts, The, 87, 98, 123, 238, 309 
 Suburbs of London, literary, 124-7, 
 
 151 
 Suckling, Sir John, 131, 184 
 
 the poet, 39, 131, 421 
 
 Suffolk, 17, 65 
 Suicide, 261, 279 
 Sunburned, 446-7 
 Sunday Marriages, 12, 446 
 Supposititious plays, 338 
 Suppression of Lyrics, 422 
 Surrenden, 225 
 Surrey, 162 
 Survival of early plays, 354 
 
 Sussex, 21, 31 
 Swinburne, A. C, 241 
 Swinburne's TreaUte of Testaments, 
 
 80 
 Sylla, 280 
 
 Sylvester, Joshua, 122, 125, 165 
 Syrus, Publius, 390 
 
 Tables of distances, 22 
 
 writing, 384-6 
 
 Tacitus, 249 
 
 Tales and Legends, Hazlitt's, 449 
 
 TaZts and Quick Answers, 194, 318, 
 
 329, 446 
 Tales, Mwndred Merry, 194, 400,432, 
 
 446, 469 
 Talma, 449 
 Taming of a Bhrew, 1594, 332, 380, 
 
 403 
 Tancred and Qismwnda, 1591, 176 
 Tanners' Gild. See Oordwainers. 
 Tarlton, Richard, 9, 29, 34-6, 41, 
 
 71, 121, 147, 310, 312, 314-15, 
 
 327, 351, 392-3, 403, 420-1 
 Tasso, T.,302 
 Taurus, the sign, 322 
 Taylor, John, the Water Poet, 159, 
 
 329 
 
 Robert, actor, 156 
 
 " Ten Commandments," 435, 474 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 46, 241, 266, 352, 
 
 361 
 Testamentary arrangements, 74-83 
 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 
 
 168 
 Teutonic folk-lore, 406 
 Tewkesbury, 142 
 
 Theatre, Early English, 314 et seqq. 
 analogy between early and 
 
 modern, 316 
 
 London, in 1698, 323 
 
 temptations and dangers of, in 
 
 the poet's day, 44-5 
 Theatre of Fine Devices (1593), 152 
 Theatres, 37-9, 53, 83, 85, 149-50, 
 
 207, 312, 315, 317-18 et seqq., 322, 
 
 326, 328, 361, 437, 456, 459 
 Theatrical headquarters, 124 et 
 
 seqq. 
 
 schools, 338-9, 379, 383, 394 
 
 taste, changes in, 57 
 
 wardrobe, &c., 326 
 
 Theobald, Lewis, 128 
 Thersites, 332, 389 
 Theseus, 453 
 Thiselton, A. B., 440, 470 
 
506 
 
 Index 
 
 Thomas's History of Italy, 361 
 Thoroughfares, state of, 121 
 Thorpe, Thomas, xi., xii., xviii., 94- 
 
 5, 211 et seqq., 259, 475 
 William, bookseller at Chester, 
 
 232 
 Thrale's Brewery, 57 
 " Thrasonical," 149 
 " Three farthings," 428-9 
 " Three Jovial Welshmen," 488 
 Three Kings of Cologne, 397 
 Three Ladies of London, 118 
 Three Tales of the three Priests of 
 
 Peebles, 313 
 Throckmorton, Job, 169, 319 
 Thuoydides, xiv. 
 Thwaits, Edward, 106 
 Thynne, Francis, 350 
 TibuUus, 195 
 
 Tilt-yard at Westminster, 330 
 Timoleon (1697), 324 
 Timons, the two, 398-9 
 Titana amd Theseus, 454 
 Tite, Sir W., 201 
 
 Tithes (Great) of Stratford, 83, 93 
 Title-pages, forms of, 386 
 Titsey, Surrey, 162-3 
 Titus Andronicus, 53, 236, 252, 294, 
 
 338-9, 394, 414, 426-7 
 Tobacco, 168, 323 
 Tobacco in theatres, 303 
 Tofte, Eobert, 321 
 Tokes, The, 225 
 ToUemache, Sir Lionel, 248 
 ToUesbury, Essex, 340 
 Tom Drum, 448 
 Tom Thumb, 375, 462 
 Tonbridge, Kent, 20 
 Tooker, W., 482 
 Toole, J. L., 421 
 Torquemada, T. de, 367 
 Torriano, Giovanni, 278 
 Tourneur, Cyril, 150, 467, 472 
 Tours of Elizabethan actors, 21, 
 
 31-2, 57, 419 
 Tower of London, 314 
 "Town," 65 
 Towneley, John, 197 
 Travelling, Elizabethan, 21, 419, 424 
 Triphook, Robert, 332 
 Troihis and Cressida, 475 
 Troth-plight, 10-11 
 Trout, 205, 468 
 Trussell, John, 454 
 Tubingen, 456 
 Turberville, George, 454 
 
 Turbutt family, 181 
 
 Twelfth day of Deceviber, a lost song, 
 
 468 
 Twelfth Night, 205 
 Twickenham, 293 
 Two Noble Kinsmen, 488 
 Twyne, Lawrence, 357, 360, 476 
 Twysdens, The, 225 
 Tybald, 441 
 Tycho Brahe, 403 
 
 Ubaldini, Petrucchio, 396 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 12, 332, 389, 409 
 
 Ulysses, 476 
 
 Underdown, Thomas, 454 
 
 " Under the greenwood tree," 458 
 
 Underwood, Henry, 118 
 
 John, 118 
 
 — Robert, 118 
 
 Universal Doctor, 292 
 
 Universities and Shakespear, 41, 
 
 181-2, 398, 201-2, 461 
 Ursula, St., 127 
 Urswiok, Christopher, 439 
 Usury, 449-50 
 
 Valentines, 447 
 
 Valet of Constantinople, 476 
 
 Van Duvantegard, a papermaker, 
 
 177 
 Vasari, Giorgio, 376 
 Veal and caU, dialogue on, 149 
 Veerhoven, Countess of, 183 
 Veiled Allusion, 304 
 Venice, 325, 422, 439-42, 445, 448 
 
 et seqq., 470-2 
 Venus and Adonis, 170, 192 et alibi 
 Vernon, Elizabeth, 248 
 John, of Hodnet, Shropshire, 
 
 248 
 Vice or Clown, 387-8, 391-4, 468 
 Views (Early) of theatres, 323 
 Village or Peasant performances, 
 
 16, 18. See Rural Theatricals. 
 VUlage tap-room, 365 
 Vincent, Augustine, 180 
 Virgil, 208, 246 
 Visconti, Bernab6, Duke of Milan, 
 
 485 
 Vocabularies, 374-5 
 Voigt sale, 197 
 Voltaire, xii., 88 
 Voluptuous side of cruelty, 423 
 
 WageruuM-, 1660, 461 
 
 " Waking Man's Dream," 346 
 
Index 
 
 507 
 
 Wales, 471. See Welsh. 
 
 Walham Green, 125 
 
 Walker, Anthony, D.D., 50, 130 
 
 Elizabeth, 50 
 
 Henry, minstrel, 123, 407 
 
 Sir Edward, Garter, 50, 86 
 
 William, 64, 82, 120, 156, 214 
 
 Wallace, Professor, 66, 73, 159 
 Waller, Bdmoud, 186 
 Walsinghams, The, 167, 225-6, 239, 
 
 371, 419 
 Wandering Jew, 257 
 Wapping, 121 
 Warburton, Bp., 442, 447 
 Ward, John, the actor, 107, 159 
 Wards and Liveries, Court of, 63 
 Warning (A) for Fair Women, 338 
 Warrington, 228, 321, 410 
 Warton, Joseph and Thomas, 346 
 Warwick, 6 
 Warwickshire, xviii., 24, 46, 130, 
 
 136, 453 
 Water for Walter, 436 
 Watermarks, 172, 177 
 Waterson, Simon, 234 
 Waterside obligations, 369 
 Water weeds, 204 
 Watson, Thomas, 202-3, 231, 244, 
 
 246 
 Watts, Dr., 285, 312 
 Wax-Chandlers, 321 
 Weather, 467 
 
 Webb of Snitterfield, Robert, 120 
 Webster, John, 33, 187, 257, 324-5, 
 
 460 
 Wedderbum, James, 18 
 Weever, John, 210 
 Welcombe enclosure, 66, 92 
 Welsh settlers at Stratford, 8, 
 
 455-6 
 Westcombe, Kent, 225 
 Westminster, 65 
 
 Abbey, 432 
 
 West's Symbdeography, 75, 80 
 Wever's I/mty Juventus, 311 
 " What ye caU it," 459 
 Whetstone, George, 197 
 White Ethiopian, a play, 259 
 White Devil, 187, 257 
 Whitefriars, Coventry, 169 
 Whitehall, 65 
 Whitgift, Dr., 193, 422 
 Whitmore, Walter or Water, 436 
 Whittington of Shottery, Thomas, 
 
 136-7 
 Whittinton's Vvlgaria, 117 
 
 Widflete mill, 431 
 
 Wife Lapped in Morels Skin, 403 
 
 Wilby, Suffolk, 348 
 
 Wildgoose, William, a binder, 181 
 
 Wilkins, George, 71, 121, 166, 321, 
 
 416, 427, 476, 478, 480 
 Wilkinson, Henry, 141 
 Williams, Griffith, Bishop of Ossory, 
 
 333 
 WiUis, B., 18 
 Willoby, Henry, 138, 201 
 WiUoughby Waterless, co. Leicester, 
 
 136 
 Wilmecote or Wincot, 4-5, 141, 474 
 Wilson, Robert, 460 
 
 Thomas, 317 
 
 Wilton. See Herberts. 
 Wily Beguiled, 443-4, 459 
 Windsor, 21, 359, 881, 395 
 Winter Night's Vision, A, 416, 485 
 Wither, George, 201 
 Witch-lore, 478 
 Witney, 18-19 
 
 Women-actors. See Actresses. 
 Wood, Anthony, 475 
 Woodstock, 185 
 Wolsey, Robert, 5 
 
 Cardinal, 5, 487 
 
 Worcester. See Consistory Court. 
 Worcester, Edward Somerset, Earl 
 
 of, 220 
 Edward Somerset, Marquis of, 
 
 162, 187 
 " World's (The) a stage," 457 
 Wordsworth's Peter BeU, 16 
 Worksop Manor, 458 
 World and Child (1522), 399 
 Worm, 483 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 486 
 
 Thomas, 394 
 
 Wottons, The, 225, 423 
 Wressil, 17 
 Wright, Edward, 34 
 
 James, 151, 165-6 
 
 Thomas, 227, 321 
 
 Wriothesley, Lady Elizabeth, 114 
 Elizabeth, Countess of South- 
 ampton, 220 
 Henry, Earl of, 62-3, 98, 101, 
 
 114, 191, 193-4, 200-1, 227, 229, 
 
 239, 248, 250-1, 267, 274, 280, 
 
 375 
 Thomas, Earl of Southampton, 
 
 114 
 Wiirtemberg, Duke of, 456 
 Wycherley, W., 225 
 
508 
 
 Wye, 4, 131 
 
 Wyl Buck his Testament, 456-7 
 
 Wyrme, Maurice, 182 
 
 Xbnophon, 338 
 
 Telvbeton, Lady, 445 
 Yoriok, 34-6, 38, 465 
 York, Duke of, 436 
 Herald, 58-9, 447 
 
 Index 
 
 York Hora, 225 
 Yorkshire labourer (A), 372 
 Yorkshire Tragedy, 353, 396 
 Young, Bartholomew, 367 
 
 Edward, 187 
 
 John, Bishop of Rochester, 116, 
 
 420 
 
 ZoucH, Lord, 9 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballanttnb, Hanson &■ Co. 
 Edinburgh 6° London 
 
 ■; } 
 
W. Carew Hazlitt's 
 
 Works 
 
 1859-1912 
 
 Q 
 
In One Volume, Large 8w, 532 +xxii//. 
 
 THE HAZLITTS 
 
 A New Account of their Origin and Descent, with particulars of 
 
 WiUiam Hazlitt (1778-1830), largely derived from his own 
 
 writings, Biographical Notices of his relatives and 
 
 immediate posterity, 
 
 And a Series of Illustrative Letters (1772-1865). 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES 
 
 The same, uniform with the preceding, containing a Narrative of 
 the later History of the Family, accompanied by a Survey of the 
 earlier state of the Western and other Suburbs of London. 1912, 
 Facsimiles. 
 
 THE 
 
 VENETIAN REPUBLIC : 
 
 ITS RISE, ITS GROWTH, AND ITS FALL, 421-1797 
 
 With a copious account of Venetian institutions. 
 3 vols. 1912. Bvo. Maps and other Illustrations. 
 
 *#* In preparation. Fourth Edition greatly enlarged. Only 250 Copies printed. 
 A Fifty Years' Laiour, 
 
 Fourth Edition. Rearranged, with large and Important Additions. 
 Demy 8vo, 478 + lii //. Price 6s. nett. 
 
 A BOOK FOR MEN AND WOMEN 
 
 MAN 
 
 CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO 
 
 GOD AND A CHURCH 
 
 By W. CAREW hazlitt 
 
 OF THE INNER TEMPLE 
 
 This book aims at dealing in a critical and methodical manner with 
 the most vital question which the human species can possibly have to 
 consider and resolve. It is also one which has lately been discussed 
 with freedom and candour in several of the daily and other papers, 
 but not in a manner or on lines calculated to lead to a satisfactory 
 conclusion and settlement. 
 
Mr. Hazlitt has made this subject a life-study from every conceiv- 
 able point of view, and has profited by all the latest scientific discoveries, 
 which he has collated for his purpose. He treats a topic, which is 
 indisputably superior in importance and interest to all others in the 
 world, with judicial impartiality. He has no professional or other 
 bias. His sole object is to attain the truth. 
 
 The present volume in no way or sense attacks Religion or a Faith 
 in God. But it involves a very severe attainder of the Church and of 
 the Society, for which the Church is largely responsible. In these 
 pages not merely the members of what is termed the Establishment, 
 but the Dissenter and the Romanist, will meet with plenty of matter 
 deserving their thoughtful study, and the keynote of the book is the 
 education of men and women to acquire valid independent opinions, 
 and to renounce the fatal habit of relying on the views and statements 
 of others, the clergy inclusive — nay, even above the rest. It is the 
 dear wish and hope of the Author to live to witness the day when men 
 and women will begin to form truer estimates of their nature and des- 
 tiny, and a fuller appreciation of the world to which they immediately 
 and temporarily belong, and some idea of its relationship to other 
 worlds, all members of a vast Universe. His Monograph therefore 
 comprises within its covers what amounts to a series of Essays on all 
 branches and aspects of the matter, and is written as simply and 
 plainly as possible in order to appeal to the general reader. 
 
 Reviews of the First Edition, 1891. 
 
 "A work of undeniable power.'' — Weekly Dispatch. 
 
 " The book is dangerously clever, with a merciless thoroughness and a captivating style 
 which are exceedingly taking." — Light. 
 
 " We have Mr. HazUtt's assurance that he has no bias towards infidelity, and does not 
 pose as a sceptic. He is, however, a relentless foe of the Churches and of their dogma. . . . 
 What Mr. Hazlitt demands is 'a gospel of life and truth in place of that of falsehood, 
 deception, and finance.' "—Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 
 
 " This author belongs to the Inner Middle Temple, and there be naturally finds time to 
 dream much, and that sometimes well to the point. . . . He is a keen satirist, and especially 
 turns his scathing pen on ecclesiastics who live as a civil service of the how-not<to-do-it 
 sort. . . . He hopes nobly for the liberation of minds and souls by processes of education, 
 reading, study, for which his twenty<seventh chapter gives good suggestions. His aim is 
 certainly high and noh\e."—Vorkshire Daily Observer. 
 
 " Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt is, I believe, a grandson of William Hazlitt, the well-known liter- 
 ary critic of the earlier half of the last century, who broke with the tradition of the Jeffrey 
 school, and was among the first to recognise the genius of Wordsworth and the Lakists. His 
 ' Man Considered in Relation to God and a Church ' is a thoughtful plea for the abandon- 
 ment of the ' superstitious and hybrid theological system under which so many of us live 
 and die' . . . forceful and interesting." — Clarion. 
 
 "Early English literature and Shakespearian research have been Mr. Carew Hazlitt's 
 favourite fields; and now, at the age of seventy-one (as he tells us himself in one of his 
 many personal asides), he ventures into the Freethought sphere, and gives us thirty-three 
 chapters on the Church, Bible, Evolution, Soul, Heaven, Hell, and Science." — Watts' 
 Literary Guide. 
 
 "Mr. Hazlitt believes that the only chance of shaking off the ignorance in which spiritual 
 pastors help to keep the nation, is to be found in the absolute secularisation of education." — 
 Daily Telegraph, 
 
 3 
 
"This neat little volume discusses very ably and fairly several important questions." — 
 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 
 
 " This is a well-written attack on a few of the irrational doctrines, folly, and trumpery, 
 that go by the name of religion." — Christian Life* 
 
 "Mr. Hazlitt sees that to overthrow the superstition which selects and endows incom- 
 petence, there must be a general lift in the quality and efficiency of education all round ; 
 and he sketches a plan or curriculum which does credit to his breadth of view." — National 
 Reformer. 
 
 "Mr. Hazlitt is an original thinker. On the whole, he expresses himself moderately, 
 temperately, and without needless offence. Those whose views Mr. Hazlitt voices are a grow- 
 ing number, and will read his little book with sympathy." — Birmingham Daily Post. 
 
 " This appears to be a work to which the author has devoted many years of thought. 
 It deals with the present unsatisfactory state of Society and the inability or unwillingness of 
 the Church to ameliorate affairs. Mr. Hazlitt analyses the Bible and New Testament, and 
 develops new theories into the origin of Man and of woman ; he dwells on the vital impor- 
 tance of the Blood, and has separate sections on the Soul, the Brain, Heaven and Hell, &c. 
 There is a strong suggestion that a subtle affinity exists between God, the Sun, and our 
 Blood. He considers that our entire social and religious system must be reconstructed, and 
 a new basis of thought and action gradually established." — QuaritclCs Catalogue. 
 
 " I feel constrained to write a little note of thanks to you for your book. It is just balm 
 to see put so clearly what one has been groping around about for years. It is brave, too. 
 ... I have several women friends, to whom your book will also come as balm. If one is 
 helped on the way, one ought at least to thank you." — Letter from a Lady, Nov. 2, 1905. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 XV. 
 
 I. 
 
 The Purpose and the 
 
 
 
 Scope. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 II. 
 
 Society in Town and 
 
 XVII 
 
 
 Country. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 III. 
 
 The World and the 
 
 XIX. 
 
 
 Church. 
 
 XX. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Some of the Difficulties. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Four Toll-Bars. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Revelation. Prayer. 
 Faith. Fasting. Re- 
 
 
 
 vivalism. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Clerical Auxiliary Insti- 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 
 tutions. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Medicine - Man and 
 
 
 
 Dei Gratia. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 IX. 
 
 MONASTICISM and LaTER 
 
 
 
 Teachers— What Chris- 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 
 tianity IS. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 X. 
 
 The Bible, or History 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 
 OF THE Israelites. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Bible, or History of 
 
 
 
 the Israelites (cent.). 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The New Testament. 
 
 
 XIII 
 
 The New Testament (cont). 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Autonomy of the Universe. 
 
 
 . Free Will and Pre- 
 destination 
 
 , Evolution. 
 
 . Natural History. 
 
 , Origin of Man. 
 
 . A Future State. 
 
 . A Future State (cont. ). 
 
 . Heaven and Hell. 
 
 . Eternal Punishment. 
 Purgatory. The 
 Devil. 
 
 , Know-Nothingness. 
 
 . Liberation. 
 
 , The Astronomer and 
 Geologist. 
 
 . The Astronomer and 
 Geologist [cont.). 
 
 . The Blood. 
 
 . The Brain. 
 
 , The Soul. 
 
 . Other Lessons of 
 Science. 
 Chemistry. Geography. 
 Chronology. 
 
 . A Summary. 
 INDEX. 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, LONDON. 
 
 And may be had or ordered of all Booksellers. 
 4 
 
In one vol. Demy 8w, Cloth. With Two New Portraits 
 and Seventeen Facsimiles. 
 
 Price I OS. 6d. 
 
 SHAKESPEAR: 
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 By W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 Fourth Edition, Revised. With Extensive and Important Addition s 
 
 The present volume is probably entitled to the credit of being wholly 
 on new and independent lines ; and after all the researches and con- 
 clusions of the editors and critics, it aims at placing in a fresh and 
 very different light many of the most important features in the biog- 
 raphy and literary history of the Poet. The book is the result of 
 a considerable amount of labour and thought, and owes a share of its 
 claim to attention to the wide and varied reading and studies of the 
 author, and to his lengthened bibliographical experience. It deals 
 with all the difficult and perplexing problems which have arisen, and 
 exist, in connection with the life and productions of Shakespear, the 
 first knowledge of London, the history of the Sonnets, the relations 
 between Shakespear and Bacon, those between the former and his 
 family, the deer-stealing affair, and the final removal to London ; and 
 it unavoidably conflicts at several points with the statements and 
 opinions of other workers in this field. The new Essay seeks to place 
 the private and professional career of our national Poet on a new 
 footing, in considerable measure by the collation of scattered facts and 
 allusions, and the presentment of many circumstances in fresh points 
 of view. 
 
 The keen and enduring interest in all that concerns Shakespear, 
 even to the most trivial and indirect particulars, throughout the world, 
 ought to secure for the present publication an indulgent, if not a 
 favourable, acceptance. Six columns of the Athenaum were devoted 
 to a favourable review of the first edition, 1903. 
 
 In a catalogue issued by Messrs. Sotheran & Co., under a volume 
 entitled The Lawes Resolution of Women's Rights, 1632, it is observed 
 in a note : — 
 
 This scarce volume has lately received special attention from the manner in which it has 
 been brought forward as an important illustration of the Early Life of Shakespear in Mr. 
 W. C. Hazlitt's new study of the Poet, where the author shows the state of early legal 
 and public feeling on the subject of Secret Betrothal, as connected with the connubial 
 relations between Shakespear and Ann Hathaway. 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, LONDON, 
 S 
 
THE ESSAYS AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 MONTAIGNE 
 
 The Text formed from a Collation of the best French 
 Editions, with a Biographical Sketch and Illustrative Notes. 
 4 vols. 8vo. Portraits, Illustrations, and Facsimiles. 
 
 This Edition contains more Letters than the latest French Edition by 
 MM. CouRBET and Royet, 1872-1900. 
 
 A MANUAL 
 
 FOR THE COLLECTOR AND AMATEUR 
 
 OF 
 
 OLD ENGLISH PLAYS 
 
 EDITED 
 
 FROM THE MATERIAL FORMED BY KIRKMAN, LANGBAINE, 
 
 DOWNES, OLDYS, AND HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS, WITH 
 
 EXTENSIVE ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 
 
 ENGLISH PROVERBS 
 
 AND 
 
 PROVERBIAL PHRASES 
 
 Third Edition, with Extensive Additions. Crown 8vo. 
 
 6 
 
SOME 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS 
 
 1906. 8vo. Price 6s. 
 
 Odysseus. 
 Robin Hood. 
 Whittington. 
 Faust or Faustus. 
 Anne Boleyn. 
 
 BUNYAN. 
 
 Dr. Johnson. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Mister Joseph Miller. 
 
 Italy and England formerly. 
 
 Some Deeper Uses of Popular 
 
 Literature. 
 Fame. 
 
 The Subject Continued. 
 
 On Persons who have done only 
 
 One Thing. 
 Form. 
 
 Writing and Painting. 
 Babyology. 
 Errata. 
 Ben Trovato. 
 RoYALisM or Socialism? 
 The Thought of Others. 
 Some Late and Living Authors. 
 Not Uncommon People. 
 Nemo. 
 
 Uniform with the same. Second Series. 1910. 
 pp. 222 +x. With Four Illustrations. 
 
 8vo. 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 V. 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 Master and Servant. 
 
 The Jest. 
 
 The Phrase. 
 
 The Vulgar Tongue. 
 
 The Saw. 
 
 ADVERSARIA 
 
 VI. Notes on the Story and 
 Play of "Arden of 
 Faversham." 
 VII. Memoranda of a Short 
 Tour in the Netherlands 
 DURING September, 1889. 
 VIII. A Supplementary Note to 
 MY " National Tales and 
 Legends," 1892. 
 IX. Udal's " Ralph Roister 
 
 Doister." 
 X. George Gascoigne. 
 XI. Dekker and Webster's " Sir 
 
 Thomas Wyat," 1607. 
 XII. Randle Cotgrave the Lexi- 
 cographer. 
 XIII. Thomas Randolph. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 xvin. 
 
 XIX. 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 XXII. 
 
 Edmond Waller. 
 
 Richard Lovelace. 
 
 Sir John Suckling. 
 
 Popular Poetry of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 A Rejoinder to Mr. 
 Gladstone's Manifesto, 
 1886 ; An Address to 
 the Electors of the 
 Kingston Division of 
 Surrey. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone and 
 Rationalism. 
 
 Revival of Irish Se- 
 cession; or, Unionism, 
 Old and New. 
 
 Literary Memoranda. 
 
 Notions for Novels. 
 
 HISTORIETTES 
 
 XXIII. An Early Italian Epi- 
 
 sode, 1523-1554- 
 
 XXIV. A Cause CfeLEBRE. 
 
 XXV. 
 XXVI. 
 
 St. Luke's-Super-Mare. 
 Off the Straight Line. 
 
 XXVII. My First and my Last. 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, LONDON. 
 7 
 
Classified List of Publications, all accompanied by 
 
 Critical and Illustrative Introductions 
 
 and Notes. 
 
 A SUCCINCT RECORD OF A BUSY LIFE (1859-1912). 
 
 HAZLITT (WILLIAM). 
 
 Memoirs of William Hazlitt. 1867. 2 vols. Portraits. 
 
 Four Generations of a Literary Family. 1897. 2 vols. Portraits 
 and Facsimiles. 
 
 Hazlitt's Works, edited by W. C. H. 1869-73. 8 vols. Not com- 
 pleted. 
 
 The Hazlitts : A New Account of the Origin of the Family, Autobio- 
 graphical Memoirs of William Hazlitt (1778-1830), Adversaria, and 
 Correspondence (1772-1865). 1911. 8vo. 532-Hxxii pp. Portraits 
 and Facsimiles. 
 
 The Later Hazlitts : Their Friends and Fortunes. And an account 
 of the former state of the Western and other Suburbs of London. 1912. 
 8vo. Facsimiles. Uniform with preceding. 
 
 LAMB (CHARLES). 
 
 
 
 
 Charles and Mary Lamb. 
 
 1874. 
 
 r2mo. 
 
 Facsimiles, 
 
 Letters of Charles Lamb. 
 
 1886. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 i2mo. 
 
 The Lambs. 1897. i2mo. 
 
 
 
 
 Lamb and Hazlitt. 1900. 
 
 l2mo. 
 
 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt has also contributed papers on Lamb to MacntUlan's Magazine^ 
 Strand Magazinct Atlantic Monthly ^ and Harper's Magazine^ as well as to Messrs. 
 Dent & Co.'s and Methuen & Co.'s editions of the Letters. 
 
 MONTAIGNE, ESSAYS AND LETTERS. 1902. 4 vols. 8vo. 
 Illustrations. Second and Revised Edition. 
 
 SCHOOLS, SCHOOL BOOKS, AND SCHOOLMASTERS. A 
 
 Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great 
 Britain. 1888. l2mo. 
 
 SHAKESPEAR. 
 
 Shakespear: The Man and his Work. Fourth Edition greatly 
 Enlarged. 1912. 8vo. Portraits and Facsimiles. 
 
 Shakespear's Library. A Revised and Enlarged Edition. 1875. 
 6 vols. i2mo. 
 
 Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances, illustrating Shakespear. 
 1875. i2mo. 
 
 DRAMA. 
 
 English Drama and Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 
 1543-1664. 1869. 4to. Facsimiles. 
 
 Dodsley's Collection of Old English Plays. Rearranged, Revised, 
 and Enlarged. 1874-6. 15 vols. 8vo. 
 
 A Manual of Old English Plays. Founded on Langbaine, Halliwell- 
 Phillipps, &c. With Extensive Additions. 1892. 410. Pp. 284+viii. 
 
 8 
 
FOLKLORE. 
 
 Faiths and Folklore. 1905. 2 vols. 8vo. Illustrations. 
 
 *,* A greatly improved and enlarged edition of my Popular AntiquUiis o/Creai 
 Britain^ 1870. 
 
 Tales and Legends of National Origin or Widely Current in 
 England from Early Times. 1892. Svo. 
 
 LAND TENURE : Blount (Thomas), Tenures of Land and Customs 
 of Manors. Originally published in 1679 in a small i2mo volume. 
 Greatly enlarged by the Beckwiths. 1784-1815. A New Edition, with 
 farther extensive additions, and the matter more conveniently arranged. 
 1874. Svo. Supplement, 1909. Pp. 112+iv. Svo. (50 Copies 
 printed.) 
 
 COOKERY : Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine. 1886. i2mo. 
 
 GARDENING : Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 1887. i2mo. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 Constable (Henry), Sonnets and other Poems, now first collected. 
 1859. Svo. 
 
 Lovelace (Richard), Poems, now first collected. With Memoir and 
 Notes. 1864. i2mo. 
 
 Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England. 1864-6. 4 
 vols. i2mo. 
 
 Early Popular Poetry of Scotland and the Northern Border. 
 1895. i2mo. 
 
 *^^* Dr. David Laing's Select Remains^ 1822, and his Early Metrical Tales^ 
 1826, republished with additions and corrections. 
 
 Browne (William), Poems. 2 vols. 1868-9. 4to. 
 
 Gascoigne (George), Complete Poems and Dramas. 1869-70. 4to. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 Carew (Thomas), Poems and Masque. 1870. 4to. 
 
 Randolph (Thomas), Poems and Plays. 1875. i2mo. 
 
 Herrick (Robert), Poems and Letters. 1890. 2 vols. i2mo. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 Suckling (Sir John), Poems, Plays, and Letters. 1892. 2 vols. 
 l2mo. Second Edition. 
 
 Warton (Thomas), History of English Poetry, from the 12th to 
 ttie Close of the i6th Century. An entirely New Edition, with Notes 
 and Corrections by Sir Frederic Madden, Thomas Wright, W. 
 Alois Wright, W. Walter Skeat, Richard Morris, F. J. Furni- 
 VALL, Henry Swbbt, &c., and the Editor. 1871. 4 vols. Large Svo. 
 
 9 
 
NUMISMATICS. 
 
 Coinage of the European Continent. 1893. Supplement to same. 
 1897. 2 vols. 8vo. 250 Illustrations. 
 
 The Coin-Collector. Second Edition, Revised. 1905. 8vo. Numerous 
 Illustrations. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Handbook of Early English Literature (1474-1660). 1867. Large 8vo, 
 
 Bibliographical Collections and Notes. Series I.-IV. With two 
 Appendices. 1876-1903. 8vo. 6 vols. 
 
 A Consolidated Bibliography will probably appear in 1913-14, if the 
 Editor lives so long, and will include all his latest Additions. The 
 undertaking will necessarily be voluminous, but it can scarcely fail to 
 possess a largely increased measure of value and utility. Fuller particulars 
 will in due course be given. 
 
 Catalogue of the Huth Library (the English portion). 1880. 5 vols. 
 Large 8vo. 
 
 Confessions of a Collector. 1897. Small 8vo. 
 
 The Book-Collector. A General Survey of the Pursuit. 1904. 8vo. 
 
 A Roll of Honour. An Alphabetical Catalogue of over 17,000 Men and 
 Women who, throughout the British Isles and in our Early Colonies, 
 have collected MSS. and printed books from the 14th to the 19th century. 
 With occasional Notes, a few Facsimiles, and Indexes of Localities and 
 Ranks or Occupations. I vol. Small 4to. Uniform with the Biblio- 
 graphical Society's Transactions. Price 21s. Only 250 copies printed. 
 
 JEST-BOOKS. 
 
 Old English Jest- Books (including A C. Mery Talys and Mery Tales 
 and Quicke Answeres, both used by Shakespear). 1863-4. 3 vols. 
 
 A C. Mery Talys, reproduced in photography from the unique Gottin- 
 gen copy of 1526. 1887. Folio. With an Introduction, Glossary, and 
 
 Notes. 
 
 The New London Jest-Book. 1871. 4to. 
 
 Studies in Jocular Literature. A Popular Subject more closely con- 
 sidered. 1890. i2mo. 
 
 10 
 
PRIVATELY PRINTED WORKS. 
 
 Narrative of the Journey of an Irish Gentleman through England 
 in I7S2. 8vo. 1869. 
 
 Inedited Poetical Miscellanies, 1584-1700. 8vo. 1870. Facsimiles. 
 
 Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles, from Early English Books, 
 1540-1701. 8vo. 1874. 
 
 Fugitive Tracts, written in Verse, 1493-1700. 2 vols, 4to. 1875. 
 Facsimiles. 
 
 *«* Of this series fifty copies only were printed. 
 
 Paris and Vienna, a Romance. Reprinted from the unique copy by 
 Caxton, 1485. 4to. 1868. Facsimile. 
 
 Inedited Tracts : Illustrating the Manners, Opinions, and Occu- 
 pations of Englishmen during the i6th and 17th centuries (1579- 
 1618). 4to. 1868. Facsimiles. 
 
 An Address to the Electors of the Kingston Division of Surrey 
 in rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's Manifesto. 1886. 8vo. 
 
 Baron's Daughter (The). A Poem. 1877. 4to. 
 
 Poems. 1877. i2mo. Second Edition. 1897. l2mo. 
 
 Montagu & Co. A Comedy in Four Acts. Founded on the Labou- 
 chere romance of real life. 1897. l2mo. 
 
 II