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 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854.1919 
 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNlVERSrTY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2894.H43 1902 
 
 Shakespear 
 
 3 1924 013 148 154 
 
|| Cornell University 
 ^ Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924013148154 
 
SHAKESPEAR 
 
SHAKESPEAR 
 
 BY 
 
 W. CAREW HAZLITT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 BERNARD QUARITCH, 15, PICCADILLY 
 
 1902 
 
/\>GI5^^? 
 
 PRINTED BY R, FOLKARD AND SON, 
 
 22, DEVONSHIRE STREET, QUEEN SQUARE^ 
 
 BLOOMSBURY, W.C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pi^EFACE xi — xxxii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Position of a Butcher in the time of Elizabeth. Common error as to old 
 English commercial life. Parallel cases of Michael Drayton, Benjamin 
 Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Anthony Munday, Daniel Defoe. John 
 Shakespear and Gxiffin ap-Roberts. William Shakespear and Griffin's 
 son early acquaintances. Sources of information on Shakespear's 
 London. Utilization of youthful years in the country for the storage 
 of experience and observation of types of life. Material for the comic 
 and farcical elements in the Plays collected in Stratford and the 
 vicinity. Falstaff. Practice of rehearsing plays performed in barns or 
 the open air. Shakespear's marriage. The question of Haitdfasting 
 discussed. A new witness introduced. The poet's own look-back on 
 his marriage in later life. Sunday weddings. The early journeys on 
 horseback. Lameness. Visits to the metropolis. No fixed prospect. 
 
 The deer-stealing legend 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 The Burbages and Richard Tarlton. Shakespear the servant of James 
 Burbage. Shoreditch and Rochester. Robin Ostler presumed to have 
 been Shakespear's predecessor under Burbage. Richard Tarlton the 
 Vorick of Hamlet. The Poet's childish knowledge of him. Some 
 account of Tarlton. Shakespear's abode in Southwark. His com- 
 mencing career as an actor. His brother Gilbert's testimony. Richard 
 Burbage the actor. His intimacy with the Poet. Bishop Corbet's 
 anecdote about one of his impersonations. Ninian Burbage \J 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 Conjugal relations. No parallel case. Shakespear compared to Plautus. 
 Common want of sympathy between literary men and their domestic 
 circles. Montaigne. Shakespear's connection with Oxford and the 
 Davenants. His temptations. Supposed reference to himself in 
 Henry V. Considerations on the autobiographical texture of the 
 works. Some examples from Hamlet. The Poet's profound attach- 
 ment to his native place. Uncongenial character of his environments. 
 How his wife may be thought to have unconsciously promoted his 
 success. Conjectural reference to his rise in the Return from Par- 
 nassus ... ... ... ... ••• ••■ ••• ••• ••• 29 
 
VI. 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Sbakespear's success and its sources. His managerial and proprietary 
 functions lucrative. His lyrical publications probably of slight com- 
 mercial account. Domestic affairs. Death of his only son in 1596. 
 Suspected informal separation of husband and wife. Condition and 
 tenancy of New Place. The hope of founding a family shattered. 
 Mental harass. Death at or near Stratford (1616). Relations between 
 him and his wife. Testamentary dispositions. Friendly meetings in 
 later days at Stratford. Difference between the seventeenth century 
 inns and ours. Presumed motive for the visit of Jonson and Drayton 
 in 1615-16. Remarks about the destruction of New Place and the 
 Mulberry- tree. Political views of Shakespear. His strong repug- 
 nance to the Puritans. Allusion to his daughters' names. Conver- 
 sational fragments. His indifference to invasion of his rights as an 
 author. Speculation as to relations with the Lucys in later life. 
 John Shakespear and Falstaif. The poet's obligations to his father. 
 Resemblance of Susanna Shakespear (Mrs. Hall) to the poet in a 
 practical respect 4r 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Personal character of the poet. The proposed Grant of Arms. Manu- 
 script remains. The surviving autographs. The Bodleian Ovid and 
 the British Museum Montaigne. Absence of Letters. Possibility of 
 future discoveries. The single communication to the poet hitherto 
 found. Family likeness in the handwriting of the Snitterfield Shake- 
 spears. Probable cause of the disappearance of Shakespear MSS. 
 The Scriveners' Gild. Allusion by the poet to the scrivener. Defi- 
 ciency of annotated copies of the Poems and Plays. And of tangible 
 or valuable allusions to him in early books. Rise and Growth of 
 Puritanism antagonistic to the preservation of the more popular litera- 
 ture. A Mr. Shakespear in the United States in 1784. Relatives. 
 John Hall. Thomas Greene the Notary. His Poem on the Accession 
 of James I. Uncertainty of his exact connection with Shakespear. 
 Collected Edition of the Plays. Classification. Commendatory 
 matter by Jonson, Milton, and others. Discontinuance of a call for 
 the separate Plays after 1640. Rejection of the Poems as Part of the 
 Works. Periods of Neglect and Revival 67 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 More favourable conditions for dramatic writers about 1587. Two inde- 
 pendent schools of theatrical management. Henslowe and Alleyn. 
 The Burbages, Tarlton, and Shakespear. Thomas Coryat 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 
 arrangement, and prices of seats. Dramatic exhibitions in inn yards. 
 Sixpenny rooms at the theatre and their occupants. Elizabethan 
 play-bills altogether different from ours. Methods of advertising new 
 pieces. Contrast between the old and the modern presentation of 
 plays. Early theatrical headquarters. Suburban districts favoured by 
 managers and actors. Particular interest of Fulham, Parson's Green, 
 and other localities on the western side of the metropolis. John Florio. 
 Holofemes o,- 
 
vu. 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pnnciple 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 Burbage's Theatre, while 
 Shakespear was serving him as an Editor. Arden of Faversham, 
 Warning for Fair Women, Mucedorus, &'c. A Shakespearian Apoc- 
 rypha. 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. Rarity of the early quartos 
 incidentally explained. First known collector of them 109 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Self-Culture. Value and influence of verbal communication. Rabelais. 
 An ostensible source of error. Giulio Romano. Characters and 
 incidents drawn from life. Falstaff 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 hisiorical. Deliberate dis- 
 regard of the Unities. The poet to be estimated in the aggregate ... 124 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Proneness of Shakespear to Farce. Its Origin and Motives. Prominence 
 on title-pages of comic impersonations. The Clown on the old stage. 
 Tarlton, Kemp, and Armin. Free use of the names of real per- 
 sonages in Plays. Oldcastle and Fastolfe. Parsons the Jesuit as a 
 critic of Shakespear. The Boar's Head. Ariel and Puck. Illustra- 
 tions of critical indecorum. The snatches and fragments of ballads 
 introduced into the plays, and their frequent impropriety 140 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 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. Shakespear not 
 necessarily indebted to the English version. Parallel passages of 
 Shakespear and Montaigne. The Florio effort a singularly poor one. 
 Its value to English literature and sentiment. Common characteristics 
 and bearings of the two writers. Superiority of the Englishman ... 155 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Lyrics of 1593-4. Conditions, which favoured their successive appear- 
 ance. Venus and Adonis specmVy \icensed hy the Vrimate. Peculiar 
 feature about the two books. Significance of the motto on the title of 
 the Venus and 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 ascribable to Shakespear. The verses before 
 Florio's .S«fi'»rf i^rMjVj probably not Shakespear's 165 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 PAGE_ 
 
 Shaliespeai' 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. 
 One of the earliest appreciators of the Poet. A MS. of Middleton's 
 Game 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, &c. Source of the MSS. of Marlowe's Hero and Leander 
 and Lucan. Association of Thorpe and of Edward Blount with this 
 Kentish circle. Also of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, the 
 Diarist. Earliest known collector of first quartos of Shakespear in the 
 same neighbourhood. 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 some time. The version registered in 1595 not Florio's ... 178 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Sonnets continued. Absolute authenticity of the entire text canvassed. 
 Long interval, over which 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. Tempta- 
 tion to look into the Sonnets for biographical helps. Absence of real 
 editorship in them. Influence of Barnfield in some, and of other 
 sonneteers. The advocates for the secret history of these productions. 
 Pembroke and Southampton. The Essex plot. The passage or scene 
 frorn Richard II. publicly performed. No evidence of Shakespear's 
 participation ... •■• ... ... ... ... ... ... 199 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The biographical lesson of the Sonnets. The writer in London travels on 
 horseback to see a man-friend at a distance. On his return he broods 
 over the separation. Hint of a third party, a woman, in the same 
 direction. The writer is attached to the latter, but is aware of a rival, 
 the man-friend. Laments the marriage of the couple. But consoles 
 himself in a remarkable manner. The newly-wedded folks and the 
 writer dwell too far apart for frequent meetings. The marriage appears 
 to be unfortunate for both parties concerned. The wife is a dark lady. 
 The writer apprehends that she may shorten her husband's days. 
 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 
 suicide. ^ Parallel passages from Hamlet and Measure for Measure 
 illustrative of others in the Sonnets and in Montaigne on the subject 
 of Death. Autobiographical worth of the Sonnets. Two of the group 
 wisely separated placed side by side (Nos. 2 and 73). The writer 
 prematurely old at forty. The iiith Sonnet and Henry Chettle. 
 Shakespear's abstention from complimentary addresses. Critical Sum- 
 mary. Dr. Giles Fletcher, Shakespear's contemporary, on the nature 
 of this class of writing 210 
 
IX. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Baconian Heresy. 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 
 productions. 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 inti- 
 mate friends. Parallel calendar of the literary careers of the two men. 
 Vast difference in their antecedents and surroundings. Possibility, 
 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 pecuUar. The 
 style of Bacon academical and hard both in the Essays and in his 
 quasi-dramatic efforts for performances at the Inns of Court. Poverty 
 of his acknowledged verses. Bacon connected with representations at 
 the Inns from 1587 to 1613. Uniform un-Shakespearian character of 
 the entire body of these compositions. The cryptogram a not 
 uncommon vehicle for concealment in the days of Bacon. Its pre- 
 sumed origin. Dismissal of the theory ... ... ... ... ... 228 
 
 Notes 249 — Si 
 
PREFACE 
 
 T T has long seemed a work of supererogation to attempt any- 
 thing fresh in the way of illustrating the life of William 
 Shakespear, or of revising the text of his plays. Both have 
 constituted, during a long series of years, the earnest and affec- 
 tionate study of eminent scholars and antiquaries, and no effort 
 has been spared to supply lacunae in the biography by the recovery 
 of missing documents, and in the writings by the elucidation of 
 obscure or corrupt passages. 
 
 Yet it is a matter of absolute certainty that we are very far 
 indeed from being at the end of our co-operative labours on behalf 
 of the National Poet, no less than that all the editions hitherto 
 produced exhibit, in different measures and ways, misreadings and 
 errors. It is to the private and literary history of Shakespear, 
 however, rather than to the settlement of debateable textual 
 points, that I propose to address myself; and I equally aim at 
 seeking, above all, to avoid traversing ground which has been 
 already exhausted, so far at least as the ostensible possibility of 
 arriving at any practical result goes. 
 
 Shakespear stands alone in more than one sense — in his 
 unique literary power and in his singular personal character. 
 Charles Knight remarked of him that he is " a man who stands 
 above all other individual men, above all ranks of men ; in com- 
 
xu. 
 parison with whom, in his permanent influence upon mankind, 
 generations of nobles, fighting men, statesmen, princes, are but 
 as dust J " and Bulwer Lytton, referring to a man of letters of 
 his own time, declared that it was the property of genius to invest 
 with interest everything associated with it, making it an honour 
 even to have been the contemporaries of such persons, and an 
 hereditary rank to be their descendants. 
 
 It is extremely creditable to John Aubrey, who died in 1697, 
 that he should have thus early recognized the durability of the 
 fame of Shakespear, and should, moreover, have foreseen that it 
 would rest on his dramatic works. " His comedies will remain 
 wit," he says, " as long 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." * It will be my duty 
 to shew that in the very lifetime of Shakespear there was one 
 who already proclaimed him "our ever-living poet"; but this 
 was more especially in reference to his lyrics. 
 
 The Wiltshire antiquary and gossip spoke and wrote as an 
 amateur in these matters, and although he did little more than 
 echo the sentiments of Jonson, Davenant, Milton, and Dryden, 
 it is to be remembered that his period was later, when the 
 Elizabethan and Stuart writers had fallen out of vogue. He 
 flourished, however, within measurable distance of Rowe, the 
 poet's first critical editor (1709) ; and thenceforward we tread 
 on different and on surer and surer ground. Yet even Pope — 
 
 * This remark might be stereotyped, so continual and successive is its 
 applicability. 
 
Xlll. 
 
 while, according 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 Shake- 
 spearian model. In other words. Pope shewed far less discernment 
 than 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, 1 734, Voltaire is found qualifying his 
 admiration for the dramatist by impugning his taste and art. 
 
 I had set to myself the task of noting in the modern critical 
 editions readings which seemed to be susceptible of improvement, 
 and of measuring the resources likely to be at my disposal for a 
 new biographical essay. The material lay within reach; but 
 other employments interposed, and I scarcely entertained a serious 
 intention of proceeding farther in the task, till I casually read, in 
 the Dictionary of National Biography^ the account of Shakespear 
 by the Editor. I confess that I was disappointed. I saw that 
 Mr. Sidney Lee had profited by the life-long labours of Mr. 
 Halliwell Phillipps ; and it would have been surprizing indeed, had 
 he not thrown into a consecutive and readable shape, with occa- 
 sional additions, a large body of valuable and attractive matter. 
 I then turned to the Life, from the same pen, in book-form, 
 which had naturally enjoyed the benefit of revision and augmen- 
 tation ; and I still remained so imperfectly satisfied on grounds, 
 which I hope that I shall appear to justify, that I resumed the 
 consideration of my own half-abandoned design. 
 
 Mr. Lee unquestionably did well in basing his work on the 
 
last edition of the Outlines, which, regarded as a book, is little 
 better than raw material; but that gentleman has not only dealt 
 incompletely with some biographical points, from an imperfect 
 acquaintance, I presume, with the data, or an inadequate valua- 
 tion of their importance, but he has left numerous others abso- 
 lutely untouched. We are quite sufficiently ignorant of the 
 career of the great poet not to be able to afford to lose any 
 promising clue or miss any valid suggestion ; but it is far more 
 imperative that every circumstance entitled to rank even as a 
 highly probable fact should find its place in a biography such as 
 that of Mr. Lee, and that, if bibliographical details are admitted, 
 they should be scrupulously accurate. Bibliography in all its 
 bearings is, no doubt, dry and uninviting; but it happens that 
 it here and there rises to the dignity of literature, by helping us 
 to settle a tiresome problem, and the figure of a date or a word 
 may weightily tell. 
 
 Let me survey the field, as it stands, and try to satisfy others, 
 as well as myself, that this undertaking before me represents an 
 unworked corner, and one eminently deserving the process. 
 
 Of the biography of Shakespear, pure and simple — the 
 domestic Fasti, the indefatigable 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 indiiFerent 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 prejudices were unfavourable to the pre- 
 
XV. 
 
 servation of records of any kind. We have here, where such 
 information and light might have been superlatively important 
 and wrelcome, to face the disastrous consequences of the pheno- 
 menal apathy of the individual himself, succeeded and comple- 
 mented by the distaste of his family for the pursuit and the 
 monuments of it, which they were incapable of regarding with 
 more than tolerance while the poet lived, and which they almost 
 undoubtedly did their part in committing to oblivion when he 
 was no more. If the wife and the daughters, and the Halls, and 
 the Quineys, had been told that in the works of the butcher's 
 son of Stratford-on-Avon the world would learn to recognise an 
 ipso facto title to the first place among playwrights, among 
 literary men, among English-speaking folk everywhere, and that 
 from those pages the most religious might come away uncon- 
 taminated, these excellent provincial worthies would have been 
 totally incredulous. 
 
 The critical acumen of the best judges of poetry in 
 the course of a century and a half has exhausted itself in illus- 
 trating and emphasizing the intrinsic value and beauty of the 
 plays and the unique genius of the author; 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, leaving undone only what appears to defy 
 conjecture, or what has here and there been rather unaccountably 
 
overlooked ; and the outcome, considering the almost desperate 
 condition of numerous passages, is apt to strike us with astonish- 
 ment, while it impresses us with profound gratitude. Shakespear 
 was gravely 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 masters, who have demanded and obtained at our 
 hands a similar votive office. 
 
 But there is, beyond these points of view, another aspect of 
 this really national question, which has so far been lightly and 
 insufficiently handled • and one is the less surprized at such an 
 omission or shortcoming, when one perceives that so many literal 
 or textual emendations of the poet, not less vital than (when they 
 have been advanced) obvious, are of comparatively recent date, 
 while others remain in the background, awaiting introduction 
 and acceptance. 
 
 The world of letters and culture is under very weighty 
 obligations to the late Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who spared 
 neither labour nor expense in laying before us all, for our use 
 and enjoyment, the entire known corpus of documentary material 
 illustrative of the great writer, whom he made his life-study. 
 Had it not been for him, in combination 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 ; and it was to this 
 
XVll. 
 
 source that Mr, Lee was almost exclusively indebted for the 
 means of rendering his biography as complete and consecutive as 
 it is. Mr. Lee has, in fact, thrown into a readable form, with a 
 certain amount of collateral aid from other quarters, the text of 
 the Outlines in their fullest development (or seventh edition) ; 
 and, allowing that he has here and there obtained assistance from 
 independent authorities, it is not unjust to this gentleman to 
 affirm that, had it not been for the generous perseverance of Mr. 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, the Life of Shakespear by Mr. Lee could not 
 have been even what we see it. As it is, the work is imperfect 
 and inaccurate enough ; and even where Mr. Lee had the advan- 
 tage of his predecessor's volumes at his elbow, he has not always 
 translated their sense quite correctly or faithfully ; nor has he by 
 any means fully profited by the opportunity supplied by other 
 readily accessible stores of information. 
 
 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps was never quite true to himself, 
 partly from the necessity of printing his material as he accumu- 
 lated it, and partly from the absence of an aptitude or taste for 
 methodical arrangement ; and Mr. Lee is a distinct gainer by the 
 constant difficulty, even with the help of an index, in finding any 
 given information in the Outlines. 
 
 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, 
 
 will be shown by me to have exerted a large measure of influence 
 
 on his literary progress and history, and are, at any rate, nearly as 
 
 unique as himself. We know that during a certain time his 
 
 brother Edmund was an actor in London, where he died and was 
 
 b 
 
XVIU. 
 
 buried in 1607. We know that another brother, Gilbert, pursued 
 in some way and for some time the business of a haberdasher or 
 dealer in small wares in the metropolis, and returned home, 
 destined to survive all his immediate kindred. We also know 
 that Stratford friends periodically visited London, and saw the 
 poet there. We have a tradition that he went down into 
 Warwickshire once a year; and there may be said to be 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 ; 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. It must be 
 allowed that, if the present is a commonplace, it is an eminently 
 human aspect of the question. 
 
 There are perhaps more volumes by Shakespear, certainly 
 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, 
 has come down to us. In a literary respect it was a sterile soil 
 with a single exception — that a signal one. 
 
 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 
 
XIX. 
 
 the fewest possible exceptions we find Shakespear grouped 
 with other writers, between whom and himself the distance 
 has by this time 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, and Thorpe in 1609, are the 
 only two panegyrists falling within that category ; for Jonson, 
 Davenant, Milton, and Dryden did not give expression to their 
 sentiments till the poet was no more, and the two latter, till 
 the perspective began to lengthen, and his intellectual relation 
 to other authors could be more impartially discussed. The lines 
 by Jonson, which accompany the folio of 1623, are friendly — even 
 flattering ; but do they amount to a just appreciation ? They 
 hardly go farther than to permit us to presume that Jonson 
 placed Shakespear above Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe ; but even 
 then there is a pervading element of vague and disproportionate 
 eulogy. Lyly and Kyd stood at a much lower level than 
 Marlowe, and neither was well susceptible of being compared 
 with the other, while the collocation 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 11., that, had he been spared, he 
 would of all the Elizabethan poets have most nearly ap- 
 proached 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 
 
 b—2 
 
circumstances, take the lead among the writers of the Elizabethan 
 and Stuart eras. 
 
 The Allusion-Books easily and obviously divide themselves 
 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 we have to except very 
 emphatically the notices by Davenant in 1638, by Milton in 1645, 
 and by Dryden in 1668. The rest are eulogistic enough, but 
 trivial, sometimes to the point of neutrality. They have received! 
 attention — far more than they merit — from the universal and' 
 indiscreet ardour which seizes on every scrap of print or MS. 
 bearing the magical name. I need dwell on them no farther,, 
 since they are all reverentially preserved in a volume, which I 
 would rather not have. 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. 
 
 The posthumous mentions, as a rule, are assuredly of the 
 most subordinate moment. They 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. There is, however, a passage in the 
 dedication by Mrs. Behn to Lord Worcester of her Emperor of 
 the Moon, 1687, which may seem to look back regretfully at the 
 
XXI. 
 
 old Elizabethan 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-Shakespearian 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 Devll^ 1672, the writer of 
 the preface commends in succession Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, and then proceeds to speak of the right happy and 
 copious industry of Mr. Shakespear, Mr. Dekker, and Mr. Hey- 
 wood; and 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 so on. In short, our 
 poet merely forms one of a group, not the foremost figure ; and 
 such passages are susceptible, if it were worth while, of multi- 
 plication. 
 
 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 excited any curiosity or attention. 
 In short, with the fewest possible exceptions, and those confined 
 ±0 a period when the poet was living and in the full enjoyment 
 
xxu. 
 
 of his reputation, the references in printed books and MSS. 
 singularly coincide in their deplorable and irritating ineptitude. 
 It is probably hopeless to prevail on that excellent example of 
 mental obliquity, the mere collector, to take this view ; he is not 
 to be reasoned writh. 
 
 The extremely well-known publication, entitled Shaiespear\ 
 Library, which was re-edited in an improved and amplified form, 
 five-and-twenty years since, by the present writer, is usually 
 treated as a sort of repertory or magazine, whence the dramatist 
 derived in large measure his plots and incidents, if not his inspi- 
 ration and cues. The six volumes, of which the later and better 
 impression of this collection consists, are not uncommonly sup- 
 posed to place the reader and student in the track of the greater 
 part of Shakespear's prototypes and prima stamina, and to enable 
 them to judge his varying degrees of obligation and his unques- 
 tionable triumph over his originals. The function of the last 
 editor of this certainly interesting and instructive miscellany was 
 absolutely limited to the revival, in an enlarged and revised shape, 
 of a book produced in 1843 °'' ^^44 ^y the late Mr. John Payne 
 Collier, and it scarcely entered into his plan to challenge the 
 validity of the notion from a critical standpoint. Placing oneself, 
 however, between Shakespear's Library and Shakespear's PlaySy. 
 and exercising a not very arduous or lengthened amount of com- 
 parative analysis, one arrives at the fairly confident, and perhaps 
 not unwelcome, conclusion, that our national poet was to his 
 hypothetical shelf of works of reference, 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- 
 
XXIU. 
 
 tions, as well as of all the advantage which an existing outline 
 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 
 yew of Venice, have seemingly disappeared. 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 tantalizing side, 
 not to be altogether dislodged by arguing from the known to tne 
 unknown. 
 
 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 entertained during his lifetime an opinion not 
 very dissimilar. P'or if a person of the observant and experienced 
 mind of 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 the great master ? 
 Whatever eulogy w^e find bestowed on him, we find equally 
 bestowed on others ; and how newly is it, that even the more 
 discerning have readjusted old systems of precedence, 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 tion nostra. 
 Shalcespear 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, inseparable 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." 
 
 I notice that, long before Jonson pronounced his eulogium 
 on his great friend, Thomas Thorpe, the stationer, applied 
 to Shalcespear, in the dedication to the Sonnets, 1609, ^^^ proud 
 and far-sighted epithet of " Our Ever-Living Poet ;" and there 
 is something more to be said hereupon, inasmuch as the editio 
 prlnceps of Troilus and Cressida, not only printed in the same 
 year, but by the same typographer (George Eld), had, as an 
 apparent afterthought, a preface attached to it, in which there is 
 this significant passage : — " And believe this, that when he is gone, 
 and his Comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set 
 
XXV. 
 
 up a new English Inquisition." The address is superscribed : 
 " A Never Writer to an Ever Reader, News ; " and I affirm 
 that that " never writer " was no other than Thorpe. 
 
 There is the other side of the picture, 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 perpetuity of fame, or the unapproached pre- 
 eminence of intellect 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 would have challenged his supremacy, 
 had it been in their power : all this was realizable by the 
 individual who had 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. 
 
 When we take in our hands the complete dramatic com- 
 positions of Shakespear, and peruse them at our leisure, wc 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 and 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 
 
XXVI. 
 
 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 delivered. 
 
 The profound originality and individuality of the great poet 
 considered, there has perhaps never been in dramatic annals or 
 experience one who less depended on his own unassisted invention, 
 or who to a more complete extent laid under tribute the imper- 
 fect, yet suggestive and serviceable, labours of predecessors. 
 Shalcespear approached the sphere of literary activity, which he 
 was to make his career, at a juncture when several of his country- 
 men, whose education and culture 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. 
 
 More than sufficient, perhaps, has been elsewhere said of the 
 Sonnets and their history, as well as of the two lyrical poems 
 which had preceded them. Those writers who had anticipated 
 the author in the same species of 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. 
 Shalcespear did not scruple to appropriate material and to profit by 
 suggestion, whether it came to him by word of mouth or from 
 the book of a contemporary. Others acted by him with corre- 
 sponding freedom, not corresponding success. Plagiarism and 
 misascription 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, per- 
 mitted others to attach his name or his initials to plays with 
 
xxvu. 
 
 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 the rather 
 notorious printer Jaggard in the case of the Passionate Pilgrim. 
 But then Heywood had evidently broached the subject to him, 
 and we are not told that he resented Jaggard's equally improper 
 attribution to him in the first edition of that miscellany of poems 
 by Richard Barnfield and others. Not the least edifying feature 
 in this misappropriation is the side-light which it throws on the 
 apparent want of touch with current books, even his own, 
 evinced by the poet, for Heywood makes him observe that he 
 was much offended with Master Jaggard " that presumed to 
 make so bold with his name." 
 
 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 autobiographical, that we 
 are spared the pains of reading between the lines or being satisfied 
 with an hypothesis. Nothing could be more natural, where the 
 course of the drama afforded 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 prevailing impersonality of the plays, 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 Sir Thomas Lucy, which is even more direct, 
 being aimed at an individual instead of a sect, but which, while it 
 
XXVlll. 
 
 is less bitter, is more contemptuous. The generalization and 
 neutrality of the dramatist, as distinguished from the sonneteer, 
 are well maintained, however, although there is in so many places 
 liberty and power to draw conclusions. 
 
 With what feelings such a man must have contemplated the 
 enormous accumulation, even down to his day, of books and 
 objects in book-form : a deluge of dry goods garnered up in 
 receptacles called Libraries — Libraries of men and libraries of 
 bodies of men ! He was by no means, one judges, a collector.- 
 He utilized, adapted, transformed whatever printed or oral material 
 came to hand, but did not value the sources, where they were 
 books, as possessions, when all the points had been noted. The 
 Halls, who did not become actually extinct till the commencement 
 of the nineteenth century (1806) would have kept at least some 
 of his books. Even if the godly Mrs. Hall did not approve of Fenus 
 and Adonis^ Lucrece, and the Sonnets, there should have been a 
 family Bible. The first folio of the Plays was a volume apt to lie 
 without serious offence on an upper shelf. But, whether the 
 signature in the Florio's Montaigne be genuine or not, the 
 volume had found its way into the vicinity of Birmingham long 
 before 1806 ; and the presumption is, that whatever there may 
 have been in the nature of a book-closet at the poet's death in 
 16 16, was more or less speedily scattered. The widow of Dr. 
 Hall, in 1643, only offered to shew a visitor the MSS. of her 
 deceased husband. 
 
 In the almost daily publication of news-sheets and pamphlets 
 
 , relative to foreign affairs on the one hand, and, on the other, in 
 
 the continual chances of encountering in London perspns who 
 
XXIX. 
 
 had returned from the Continent and America, full of novel and 
 startling intelligence, the dramatist found even a surfeit of 
 channels for learning what was going on everywhere ; and the 
 incessant output of popular ephemerides, including those " ballads 
 in print, which I love even too well," proved helpful in their way. 
 Shalcespear, 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 imprimendum solum^ and, in another way, by his 
 pressure into service, as a comparison, of " the face of an old 
 Roman coin." 
 
 In a study of the private and literary life of Shalcespear so 
 much presents itself, which contradicts ordinary experience, 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 — a ballad in print, to wit — when 
 it had served its purpose, or he saw that it was incapable of 
 serving one. Here he offered a diametrical 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 iden- 
 tified 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. 
 
XXX. 
 
 Such an inventory would place him in the position of a collector 
 of a new and not the least wise type, and might assume larger 
 proportions than the so-called Shakespear's Library. 
 
 As the matter stands, there are only the first edition of 
 Florio's Montaigne in the Museum, and the Latin Ovid of 1502 
 at Oxford, to stand sponsors for the rest, if others ever existed ; 
 and, again, both these volumes are held to be open to question. 
 We have nothing to put in their room. Either the poet pos- 
 sessed no library, not even copies of his own works, or all has 
 vanished. Among the serious responsibilities of his illiterate 
 surroundings are the discouragement from the formation of a 
 closet of books, no less than the destruction of such few as 
 might have insensibly accumulated. 
 
 We possess in fee the inheritance, which he has left to us in 
 common with the remainder of humanity, to be a happiness 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 con- 
 ferred 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 half-a- 
 dozen or so of the dramatic series: Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth^ 
 Merchant of Venice, Othello, the Merry Wives, As You Like It, 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the Tempest. 
 
 The constitutional tendency to the humorous vein is men- 
 
XXXI. 
 
 tioned and illustrated hereafter. But the finest and noblest com- 
 positions are the Tragedies, partly because they lend themselves 
 to the higher flights of passion and sensibility ; and Shakespear 
 lived to divert into that channel the whole force of his intellect. 
 
 It cannot be too distinctly understood that the present 
 enterprize does not assume to be more than the title suggests : 
 an Essay, restricted to nevir points of view, which may or may 
 not be held in certain instances to amount to new facts. But 
 if some useful and interesting light is not shed by these pages 
 on the excessively attractive and almost inexhaustible topic with 
 which they deal, the error and blame are my own. 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 respon- 
 sible, on the contrary, for some hardihood in guesswork. It is 
 often one guesser against another. The chronic obscurity and 
 fragmentary survival of information may be exemplified by the 
 accidental occurrence of the name of Thomas Greene in 1608, 
 by the complete loss of trace of him till 16 14, his subsequent 
 disappearance, and our inability to determine what his precise 
 consanguinity with the poet was. At the same time the concen- 
 tration of scattered points and hints has already contributed to 
 amplify our resources in this direction, and I am far from being 
 without hope that such a process may, in the absence of more 
 direct help, accomplish in the future yet more. 
 
XXXll. 
 
 The Notes at the end are little more than samples. The 
 modern editions, including the Globe and Clarendon Press one- 
 volume issues, are disgracefully executed in an editorial sense. 
 
 The increased attention in America to everything tending 
 to elucidate the life and character of Shalcespear may tend to 
 invest the undertaking with a share of importance and value in 
 the eyes of Transatlantic students. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Position of a Butcher in the time of Elizabeth. Common error as to old English 
 commercial life. Parallel cases of Michael Drayton., Benjamin Jonson, 
 Christopher Marloive, Anthony Munday, Daniel Defoe. John Shakespear 
 and Griffin ap-Roberts. William Shakespear and Griffin's son, early 
 acquaiiitances. Sources of information on Shakespear' s London. Utilization 
 of youthful years in the country for the storage of experience and obser-vation 
 of types of life. Material for the comic and farcical elements in the Plays 
 collected in Stratford and the 'vicinity. Falstaff. Practice of rehearsing 
 plays performed in barns or the open air. Shakespear' s marriage. The 
 question of Handfasting discussed. A ne'W luitness introduced. The poet's 
 oiun look-back on his marriage in later life. Sunday ^weddings. The early 
 journeys on horseback. Lameness. P''isits to the metropolis. No fixed 
 prospect. The deer-stealing legend. 
 
 The circumstance that so many distinguished EngHshmen have 
 been described by their biographers as butchers or butchers' sons 
 in early times renders it necessary to consider the difference 
 between the professional, if not social, status of members of this 
 calling in the sixteenth or even seventeenth century and the 
 present day. Unfortunately far less ample information is forth- 
 coming in regard to the functions and rank of the butcher of 
 antecedent eras than we possess concerning those of many other 
 crafts and craft-gilds, and such a deficiency of material largely 
 proceeds 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 operative 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 
 
 B 
 
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 commodities 
 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 employments go, such articles were commonly manu- 
 factured 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. 
 
 John Shakespear may have been at once a grazier, a butcher, 
 a skinner, a tanner, a glover, a cordwainer, or, in other words, 
 he may have superintended the successive stages, and have taken 
 the profits of each and all. Whatever the precise range of his 
 occupation was, the result, as we hear, was not unattended by 
 vicissitudes. The father of the poet, whom we somewhat indis- 
 tinctly realize as a multifarious, and for a certain length of time 
 successful, trader, possibly tried to grasp too much, and toward 
 the date, when his son was just beginning to earn a name and an 
 income, he was under a rather dark cloud. 
 
 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 imrnediate environment of his birthplace, and we do not know 
 whether his father was a man of the same type as the elder 
 Shakespear, or a butcher in the sense that the father of Keats 
 was. 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 young Shakespear 
 
and the calf. Mrs. Jonson's second husband was doubtless of 
 the Bricklayers' Gild, not an artizan ; and Dyce perpetrates^ I 
 conceive, a similar error in referring to Anthony Munday as a 
 draper* But it was John Benson of Westminster, described as 
 a bricklayer, who drew the plan for Alleyn of Dulwich College, 
 and executed the brickwork, that is, superintended it,t as 
 Mr. Burridge did at Goldsmiths' Hall after the Fire of i666,t 
 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 Cordwainers' and Tanners' Gild there, and a 
 man occupying a good social position in the city. 
 
 Returning to Stratford, we encounter a piece of testimony 
 bearing by more than possibility on the experiments made by the 
 elder Shakespear in the direction of fixing his son in a calling. A 
 certain Griffin ap-Roberts resided at Stratford in those days, and 
 belonged to the same trade and commercial brotherhood as the 
 poet's father. Aubrey alleges that Nicholas ap-Roberts, son of 
 Griffin, was a youthful acquaintance of Shakespear. The 
 <]uestion 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 dark- 
 ness only exceeded by that which surrounds his transactions and 
 
 * Reprint of Kempe s Nine Dates Wonder, 1840, p. 32. The letter of 
 Henslowe to Alleyn, 26th September, 1598, referring to Jonson as a brick- 
 layer, is doubtless a forgery. 
 
 f Brayley and Britton's Surrey, iii., 220. 
 
 \ Hazlitt's Li'very Companies, 1892, p. 650. 
 
 B 2 
 
progress in London, when a local career had been relinquished, 
 and before any thoroughly distinct personal footprints in con- 
 nection with theatrical affairs can be identified. That he should 
 have yielded to the wishes of his father in the first instance, and 
 have taken articles under Roberts the butcher, arguably'another 
 member of a local gild, is therefore decidedly plausible enough,^ 
 and there is the farther likelihood that, whatever the precise facts 
 may have been in regard to the Lucy episode, and the measure 
 of the Knight's resentment at the time, that event constituted 
 the turning-point in what must be treated as in some respects the 
 most important of all English careers. 
 
 The ap-Roberts episode, bringing the father of Shakespear 
 and the elder ap-Roberts before us, as on a footing of special 
 friendhness, and the youthful Shakespear himself as an associate 
 of Nicholas ap-Roberts, lends force to the surmise, that of the 
 various employments assigned to John Shakespear that of a 
 butcher of the Elizabethan type was the central one, and the 
 others subsidiary. 
 
 An introduction to a more rational appreciation of Shake- 
 spear's life in London, when he finally relinquished Strat- 
 ford 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 learning is to be gathered from Stow, 
 Harrison's Description of England, and other works of reference. 
 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 throwa 
 away. He utilized his familiarity with horses in his first 
 published literary ^%szy-~Venus and Adonis ; but it was a class of 
 acquirement, which was mainly calculated for subsidiary purposes 
 or incidental illustration. Upon this young man of four and 
 
twenty was laid the function of proving that he had within him 
 a power to which all those hoards of provincial lore would stand 
 in the relation of humble accessories. 
 
 Having been born in 1564, Shakespear did not settle in 
 London till he was two or three and twenty. There was an 
 ample interval for much in the way of adventure and misadventure 
 for a youth in the fullest enjoyment of health and energy, dis- 
 charging commissions 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 a little, 
 that we are never to know. 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 
 comic parts of A Midsummer Night's 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 
 £xcipiendis. 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 overcoming present- 
 ment, 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. 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 cornucopics of wicked raillery, that whole calendar of vitu- 
 perative nomenclature. 
 
The rich comic scenes in some of the earlier plays, and the 
 presence of a low comic vein, almost descending to farce, 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 the childhood of the poet 
 and his search of a career in London (1574-86). From three 
 independent sources and quarters — Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire^ 
 and SuiFolk* — we gather that there was a practice, as early 
 as 1526, of performing stage plays in the country, either in 
 market-towns or elsewhere, and that these spectacles were of a 
 varied character — allegorical, moral, and humorous. Companies 
 from the metropolis sometimes exhibited them ; sometimes they 
 were arranged on the spot with appliances of a very rudimentary 
 kind. 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 really not too much to suppose 
 that he was an occasional spectator at these entertainments, and 
 that, while they tended to form his taste, they lingered in 
 a tenacious memory, till the unforeseen opportunity presented 
 itself of turning such recollections 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, as if it had been a perfectly recent occurrence, Shakespear 
 is far likelier to have treasured up these juvenile experiences. He 
 clang to thern only too fondly; as he said of a ballad in print, he 
 loved them only too well ; and forsooth there are cases, where 
 even in his ripe dramatic work this 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 
 
 * Manual of Old English Plays, 1893, v. Cradle of Security ; A C. Mery 
 Talys, 1526, repr. 1887, fol. I ; Rowe's Tragi-Comirdia, 1653. 
 
may have perchance now and again made one. 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. Here was a 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 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. 
 
 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 attention, and which has to be 
 distinguished from the more appreciable humour of Falstaff. In 
 his latest productions, 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 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 
 
8 
 
 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 on the one side, 
 and Kent and Sussex on the other. Within such limits, however, 
 what an abundance of types and models ! In the professional 
 tour undertaken in 1597, ^e may well have seen Gad's Hill, 
 Rochester, and the Cliffs of Dover, which have one and all 
 contributed to illustrate his dramas. It is quite pertinent to the 
 scene in Lear, 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. 
 
 The Warwickshire Shakespears — at all events those of 
 Snitterfield, from whom the dramatist is held to have sprung — 
 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 
 engrosser 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 poet's father, a Snitterfield man, transmitted 
 to that son, in whose absence such ancedotes 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. The fac- 
 similes supplied in the Outlines shew the family likeness in the 
 form of some of the letters of the name. We hear adverse 
 criticism on the caligraphy of the poet ; but his style strikes 
 us as an advance on that of his predecessors. It was, however, 
 a clear evolution from it ; and in his last efforts to transfer 
 
his name to paper we detect a relapse from physical weakness to 
 the paternal model. 
 
 Few, if any, Shakespearian students have probably taken 
 the trouble to turn over the leaves of a quarto legal treatise, 
 published in 1632 under the title of "The Laws' Resolution of 
 Women's Rights." The contents indeed are dry and technical 
 enough, although in one place the reader encounters a section, 
 shewing under what restrictions "the Baron [i.e. the Husband] 
 may beat his wife." But the sole interest of the book for my 
 immediate purpose centres in the sections on Sponsion or Hand- 
 fasting, namely, i. 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 matrimonial contract between the poet and his 
 future or destined wife. 
 
 The first section cited commences thus : " The first pro- 
 mising and inception of Marriage is in two parts, either it is plaine, 
 simple and naked, or confirmed and borne by 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 them on both parts, or on one part, to be married 
 hereafter." The writer 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 spon- 
 sion : — " Those Sponsals which are made when a man is without 
 witnesse, Solus cum sola, are called secret promising or despon- 
 sation, which though it be tolerated, when by liquid & plaine 
 probation it may appear to the Judge, and there is not any lawful! 
 impediment to hinder the Contract, yet it is so little esteemed of, 
 
10 
 
 (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 proposed 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. P'emales might not betroth themselves under seven years 
 of age ; at fourteen a woman was hors du garde for her body, not 
 for her hand. 
 
 This brief excursus may be of some value as contributing to 
 a knowledge of the ideas, which prevailed on the present point, 
 when Shakespear plighted his faith to Agnes or Anne Hathaway. 
 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 Antigonus vows, that he will not let 
 his daughters reach their fourteenth year, lest they should breed 
 bastards. 
 
 Altogether the present branch of the inquiry, dealing with 
 Shakespear's ante-nuptial proceedings, is of no mean relevance to 
 his personal history, as there can be slight hesitation in con- 
 cluding 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 some- 
 thing 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 had been drunk almost to the 
 dregs. 
 
 Sunday was, as it yet remains, from economical or other 
 
II 
 
 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 celebration of matrimony ; but 
 it is hardly so appropriate, where, in the Famous Victories of 
 Henry F., 1 59 8 (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. Were the poet and Anne Hathaway united 
 on a Sunday ? The ceremony did not take place, of course, at 
 Stratford, and no entry of the event has been discovered. 
 
 In the historical plays, which he revised with an unequal 
 measure of completeness and care, the incongruities similar to 
 that just noted in the Famous Victories are not unfrequent. In 
 the Second Part of Henry VI. , Act 2, Scene 3, for instance. 
 Queen Margaret is made to say to Gloucester : — " 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 parallel is so far admissible, that the writer has in either case 
 transferred to the highest life the manners of the lowest. 
 
 More immediately in relation to Sunday weddings, 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." 
 
 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 a few points, 
 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 tenant was a person of 
 some local eminence. There, however, we are to conclude that 
 
12 
 
 nearly twenty years of the poet's life were spent with his parents 
 and his brothers and sisters ; 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, he 
 visited London as a mere boy, and met with the Burbages and 
 Tarlton the actor. Nor do the biographers throw the least light on 
 his movements from 1582, when he was united to Anne Hathaway, 
 to i586, 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 separate premises in Strat- 
 ford ; but their whereabouts and the entire domiciliary question 
 from this time onward are irretrievably obscure ; and all that we 
 distinguish of the early married days is an uncertain glimpse in 
 the 143rd Sonnet, of a young mother setting down her babe to 
 run after a chicken belonging to the establishment. It may or 
 may not be a retrospection. 
 
 It is abundantly probable that the elder Shakespear enter- 
 tained, 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 representative and heir, in making a temporary 
 motive for leaving Stratford the turning-point of his life and of a 
 different career, was not guilty of a very rash and headstrong act. 
 The players, who occasionally visited the Warwickshire town in 
 their provincial tours, had exercised, it is extremely reasonable to 
 infer, a strong fascination on the mind of a youth so constituted ; 
 and when the deer-stealing trouble came, to London, not to a 
 neighbouring place where he might have found a friendly asylum 
 for a season, Shakespear at once proceeded, as to a centre, which, 
 if my view be correct, he already knew, which had the advantage 
 of being beyond the reach of country justices, and where even 
 then there was the amplest scope for energy and talent. Mr. 
 Sidney Lee places this momentous step in 1586, and states that 
 
13 
 
 the youth probably trudged on foot the entire distance. I gather 
 from casual, yet unmistakeable allusions, that he rode on horse- 
 back ; but he may have 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. 
 
 That he employed a horse appears — if we are justified in 
 drawing any definite conclusions 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,' 
 The beast that bears 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 laij'd 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. 
 
14 
 
 We might take a passage in As Tou Like It, where 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 to shew elder dramatists how their 
 work should have been done, and in future to do it himself — this 
 Johannes Factotum. 
 
 I have alluded above to the familiar deer-stealing case, to 
 which the desertion by the poet of his home and family has been 
 usually ascribed ; and I have already furnished some evidence, as 
 I take it to be, that that portion of the story, which treats this 
 incident as the first experience of London, is totally erroneous. 
 That some potent motive actuated the poet in leaving his native 
 town, where he had responsibilities on the one hand and the 
 means on the other of meeting them by carrying on his father's 
 business, is undeniable ; and it is not less likely that he may have 
 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 
 resentment of Sir Thomas Lucy is very far from a statement of 
 the real circumstances. 
 
 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. Sir Thomas spent part of the year 
 in Warwickshire at Charlcote — where, in his time, there was no 
 •deer park, only a chase and warren — and part in Gloucestershire. 
 When we first encounter him in the earlier drama, he is introduced 
 
IS 
 
 as in Gloucestershire. He lost his wife in 1595-6, and he himself 
 
 died in 1600. Fourteen years had elapsed between his death and 
 
 the generally received date of the removal of Shakespear to London 
 
 to evade the consequences of his reputed transgression. 
 
 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. 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 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 in 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 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 com- 
 panies 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 contrary, 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 a shape perhaps scarcely 
 anticipated by the adventurer. 
 
 The deer-stealing affair, whether it occurred or not, and 
 whether, being a fact, it came under the magisterial cognizance 
 of Lucy, could not have exerted a paramount influence over the 
 
i6 
 
 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 : — 
 
 " Shalloiu : Knight, you liave beaten my men, killed my deer, and 
 broken open my lodge. 
 
 " Falstaff : "But not kissed jour keeper's daughter." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Burbages and Richard Tarlton. Shake spear the sernjant of James Burbage. 
 Shoreditch and Rochester. Robin Ostler presumed to have been Shakesf ear's 
 predecessor under Burbage. Richard Tarlton the Torict of Hamlet. The 
 Poet's childish knonuledge of him. Some account of Tarlton. Shakespear's 
 abode in Southivark. His commencing career as an actor. His brother 
 Gilbert's testimony. Richard Burbage the actor. His intimacy luilh the 
 Poet. Bishop Corbet's anecdote about one of his impersonations. Ninian 
 Burbage. 
 
 I INSIST that he already in 1587 knew the Burbages and Tarlton. 
 James Burbage, who had originally been a joiner, as then under- 
 stood, was a tavern-keeper as well as a theatrical proprietor. In 
 other words, he was what was recognized as a hosteler. Anyone 
 wishful to learn the precise rank and functions of this large body 
 of traders can do so by reference to the account in print of the 
 Gilds of London.* The hosteler of the Elizabethan era was the 
 landlord, possibly the owner, of a place of public entertainment, 
 and parallel 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 a man such as Burbage, or than the 
 willingness of the latter to avail himself of the services of an 
 individual who was able to prove his practical efficiency for taking 
 over duties scarcely less onerous and responsible than those of the 
 
 * Hazlitt's Li'very Companies of London, 1892, pp. 117 — 20. 
 
 c 
 
master. On this ground, and in such an employment — a highly- 
 respectable one, demanding very special knowledge — the process 
 of mental incubation seriously 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 was 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. 
 He recollected the latter, when he penned the well-known dialogue 
 between FalstafF and Page in the second part of Henry IV. as to 
 the whereabouts of Bardolph. Robson, in his Choice of Change, 
 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 Burbage was 
 equal to most occasions. The early hosteler has, we very well 
 know, disappeared ; and his modern quasi-namesake signifies his 
 inferior status by the surrender of the aspirate. 
 
 The dual calling of James Burbage serves us rather mate- 
 rially 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 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 home even on foot, especially in the winter ; and the 
 boys who discharged this duty probably belonged to Shakespear'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 status of the hosteler, and of the relationship to him 
 
»9 
 
 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, on the clear 
 tradition that the latter discharged 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 thea- 
 trical proprietor. The very wide distance between the ancient 
 hosteler and the modern ostler seems to have demanded an extra- 
 ordinarily long time for its appreciation and (in this case) its 
 moral. 
 
 But 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 the least conception of 
 ulterior and after-realised contingencies. There were exceedingly 
 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 second 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 incidence 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 particular instance, however, the dramatist might have well 
 Iiad in his recent recollection the aspect of an inn at Rochester 
 itself, since he, in 1597, not so long before the play was written, 
 accompanied his fellows, as we have seen, in a professional tour 
 
 c — 2 
 
20 
 
 in Kent and Sussex, and probably took the city on the Medway 
 in his route. 
 
 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 Hall ask FalstafF 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 diiTerence in the status between the- 
 Shakespearian 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 
 management of the baiting is here described as having depended,, 
 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 Shakespearian biography. The ostler of the 
 play was a responsible officer, whose death had occasioned a dis- 
 turbance of the arrangements connected with the stables ; and the 
 poet stood on the ground, which it had once been his own fortune- 
 to occupy. 
 
 The identity of Richard Tarlton the actor with the Yorick 
 of Hamlet was surmised by the present writer very long since,, 
 and more than once mentioned by him incidentally in print. 
 Let me first transcribe the passage from the play : — 
 
 " I Clo. .• Here's a skull now ; this skull has lain in the earth three-and- 
 twenty years. 
 
 Ham. : Whose was it ? 
 
 I Clo. : A whoreson mad fellow's it was; whose do you think it was ? 
 
 Ham. : Nay, I know not. 
 
 I Clo. : A pestilence on him for a mad rogue ! a'poured a flagon cf 
 Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir— this same skull, sir, was- 
 Yorick's skull, the King's jester. 
 
 Ham. . This ? 
 
 I Clo. . 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 borne me on his back a 
 thousand times ; and now how abhorred my imagination is ! my gorge rises at 
 
21 
 
 It. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I kmm not hoiu oft. Wliere be your 
 Igibes now, jour gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont 
 to set the table on a roar ? — " 
 
 Now, it is not the perfect conformity of the characteristics of 
 If crick with those of Tarlton, which merits attention, the single 
 ■word table being read theatre ; but this valuable passage sheds, 
 unless I err, a most important light on the biography of Shake- 
 spear. Let us consider. Tarlton died in 1588 ; in that year the 
 ■dramatist was a lad of fifteen. He was of course young; but 
 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 Shakespear 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. If this piece of 
 testimony 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 employment was not much relished. 
 But in 1587 let us bear in mind, that Shakespear was already 
 three or four-and-twenty, and that Alarlowe 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. 
 
 It would be exceedingly interesting and important to ascer- 
 tain, if in the Hamlet, which is construably indicated by Nash in 
 1589 (Preface to Greene's Af^«(7/i/iff«) , 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. 
 
22 
 
 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 Shakespearian. Is it permissible to conclude, in 
 the absence of fuller proof, that the first Hamlet belongs to the 
 interval between September, 1588, and the publication of Mena- 
 phon? In 1588-9, Shakespear was about five-and-twenty. 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. 
 
 Tarlton had been born about 1520, and was of course an 
 elderly man, when Shakespear first met with him as a boy. 
 There is no valid reason to question his ability to have produced 
 the popular pieces coupled with his name during his lifetime, 
 among which his Tragical Treatises, 1578, seems the most 
 important ; and it is a volume of Shakespearian interest, into 
 which if they had had the opportunity of looking, the earlier 
 editors of the poet might have found a precedent for the use of 
 the curious phrase, "Thrasonical Claw back " which occurs in 
 Love's Labor's Lost, 1 598. 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 ex- 
 pression. 
 
 But there is in the same play a second trace of the influence 
 of the famous comedian, where Longueville and Katharine hold 
 thd 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. 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 ; 
 * HailiM's Shahspear Jesl-Boafs, 1864^ 2nd Series, p. 353, 363. 
 
23 
 
 in the Famous Victories, in which his old friend had acted some- 
 where about 1585 ; and the drama, as it was played by the 
 Queen's Majesty's Players, was committed to the press in 1598, 
 so as to be before the poet, when he was composing his own piece. 
 It is not perhaps material that* the Victories was licensed in 1 594, 
 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, 161 1, seems to suggest, rather than to state, the 
 "pleasant Willy" of the author of the Fairy ^een ; but I feel 
 that those who have urged such a proposition might have consi- 
 derably fortified their argument or theory, if they had mentioned 
 the circumstance that in 1578 Spenser gave or lent to Gabriel 
 Harvey, his intimate friend, Scoggin, Laxarillo de Tormes, Skelton's 
 Merry Tales, and The Jests of 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. 
 
 Having, as is generally believed and admitted, then, taken 
 employment of a provisional, yet by no means derogatory, class 
 in 158-, 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, or even in attendance at the theatre itself in some 
 subordinate capacity. As regards the latter, it was apt to be an 
 employment less desirable than the other, and would only be 
 
 *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, 159.1,. 
 the publication may have been stayed. See Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 
 6th ed. ii., 330. 
 
24 
 
 tolerated as a stepping-stone. Anyhow, in less than five years 
 from his arrival on horseback in Shoreditch, Shakespear had 
 manifestly 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 opposition 
 and detraction. 
 
 Edward Alleyn is our authority for believing that in 1596 
 Shakespear had quarters near the Bear Garden in Southwark. It 
 was in this year that his old friend Burbage built the Blackfriars 
 Theatre, and involved himself in financial embarrassments of long 
 duration, and the neighbourhood 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. But a person of the Poet's names 
 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, and if he did not personally execute 
 the joiners' work, he was in a position to direct it, not improbably 
 retaining his rnembership of the Joiners' Gild, and was perhaps 
 induced by his experience to embark in the new enterprize. He 
 even appears to have built certain houses adjacent to the play- 
 house — the Curtain or Theatre (so called par excellence as the 
 earliest edifice of the kind seen in London) ; and these and the 
 hostelry and stables, also contiguous, were presumably planned 
 under his eye. 
 
 The theatre in Shoreditch, where Shakespear undoubtedly 
 started on his great career, dated from 1576 ; that is to say, it had 
 been ten years or thereabout in existence when the Stratford 
 adventurer arrived in London to seek a livelihood, uncertain as to 
 anything ulterior. During his entire professional life he remained 
 steadfast to the Burbages, and when James Burbage died in 1597, 
 • Hazlltt's Livery Companies, 1892, p. 545. 
 
25 
 
 he associated himself with the sons, particularly Richard, the 
 foremost actor of his day ; and in 1598-9, as a climax to a dispute 
 respecting the lease of the Shoreditch property, part of the mate- 
 rials was transported 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; but when 
 the father is merely introduced to us as having been a joiner, we 
 do not immediately realize his position and attainments, and have 
 to discover the wide difference between an Elizabethan craftsman 
 of that denomination and his modern namesake. This is a rock 
 on which we are constantly apt to run aground. 
 
 Alone in London, a husband and a father, without the con- 
 solation 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 disqualified 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 
 
26 
 
 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. The twenty-third sonnet opens with 
 
 a simile borrowed, perhaps, from painful recollection : — 
 
 " As an imperfect actor on the stage. 
 
 Who with his fear is put beside his part — " 
 
 And the iioth is redolent of discontent at having derogated 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 experience 
 of the stage, which qualified success might render additionally 
 unacceptable. 
 
 'T'he two cardinal points, however, on which Shakespear 
 insisted, 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 status as an actor and part-proprietor ; and here 
 accordingly we find his name more than once in a list of memo- 
 rialists to the authorities for indulgence or redress. I hardly 
 know the full facts respecting the pretensions of the dramatist aS; 
 a performer. In 1603, Davies of Hereford, in his Microcosmus, 
 brackets him with the younger Burbage as one of the best at that 
 time ; and Davies does not name or indicate Alleyn. Recollect, 
 that it was in that very year that he almost certainly took a part 
 in Love's Labors Lost at Southampton House. Aubrey informs 
 us that one of Shakespear's brothers — Gilbert the haberdasher 
 — referred in later Hfe to having seen the dramatist play the part 
 of Adam in As You Like It. As the same authority states that 
 this gentleman often visited London, and that the anecdote was. 
 repeated by him, when he was an old man, the story can apply 
 only to Gilbert Shakespear, who survived all his immediate ' 
 
17 
 
 relatives — even his son, and might have been alive w^ithin the 
 memory of many, when Aubrey wrote. 
 
 Richard Burbage, who survived till 1619, dying on Saturday, 
 March 13, 1618-19, in Lent, was, no doubt, a greater actor than 
 the man, whose works he so importantly contributed to illustrate 
 by his histrionic gifts. He took the leading parts in Hamlet, Lear, 
 and Othello, and played Hieronimo in Kyd's piece of that name. 
 From the pen of a contemporary play-goer we obtain an almost 
 unique glimpse of him, as he trod the boards at the Globe. After 
 reciting some of the characters which he portrayed, as above 
 mentioned, the writer proceeds to say : — ■ 
 
 " Oft have I seen him leap into the grave, 
 Smiting the person vehich 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 but seemed to bleed, 
 Amaz'd, thought even then he died indeed — " 
 
 It seems to the present writer that a very peculiar interest is 
 attached to the Burbage family, and to this member of it in par- 
 ticular, inasmuch as he was during so long a course of years face 
 to face with Shakespear, and was his first great interpreter. The 
 author had possibly not seen him in Richard III., which is so 
 far remarkable, that it was one of his most striking studies — 
 one, with which he, according to the story, thoroughly imbued 
 himself. 
 
 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, 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 per- 
 sonally testing, that in one of his poems he tells us that an inn- 
 
28 
 
 keeper, referring to Richard in the play, spoke of him as Burbage. 
 The identification and illusion were so thorough. 
 
 One is permitted, on the one hand, to know next to nothing 
 of the antecedents of the elder Burbage, who first appears on the 
 scene in 1576 as a man in prosperous circumstances, and one 
 hesitates, on the contrary, to associate with this particular branch 
 any notice relative to persons of the same name and period, since 
 there appear to have been Burbages in several parts of England 
 about this time. But it is just worth mentioning that a very fine 
 copy of the Spider and the Fly^ by John Heywood, 1556, is before 
 me, bearing on the title, in a firm and well-formed hand, the 
 coeval autograph of Ninian Burbage; 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. The interest of the signature — a solitary record — 
 partly lies in its encouragement of a hope that such accidental 
 survivals may not yet be exhausted. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Conjugal relations. No parallel case. Shakesf ear compared to flautus. Common 
 ivant of sympathy betiueen literary men and their domestic circles. Montaigne. 
 Shakespear's connection •with Oxford and the Danjenants. His temptations. 
 Supposed reference to himself in Henry V. Considerations on the auto- 
 biographical texture of the 'works. Some examples from Hamlet. Thf 
 Poefs profound attachment to his nati've place. Uncongenial character of 
 his enijironments. Hoiv his ivife may be thought to hanie unconsciously 
 promoted his success. Conjectural reference to his rise in the Return from 
 Parnassus. 
 
 It Strikes us all as a most signally remarkable circumstance, that 
 a young couple with a family begiiming 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 elsewhere, but virtually for ever ; for,, 
 whatever the actual process and arrangements were, such was the 
 case. It is in the last degree questionable, whether Shakespear, 
 in his visits to Warwickshire at intervals between 1587 and 161 1 
 or thereabout, saw his wife or at all events slept under the same 
 roof. Constitutional incompatibility or a special unrecorded 
 occurrence produced the usual result ; and indeed we find the 
 Poet, even where important matters of business might have seemed 
 to call for his presence on the spot, delegating to one of his 
 brothers or to his cousin Greene 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 dividing his time after a 
 certain period of life between London and the country. The- 
 case of Samuel Daniel was essentially different. 
 
30 
 
 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 — worked in fact as an artizan ; and 
 it was that of Plautus, who unquestionably thus acquired, as 
 Shakespear did, a knowledge of 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. 
 
 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 wider 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 feehng that 
 those things had rendered thehi 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 domestic and confidential allusions which meet the eye 
 here and there. Yet had Mistress Shakespear been questioned as 
 to the Sonnets and their story, it is more than doubtful if that lady 
 would have had any information to offer. 
 
31 
 
 In strict truth the parallel with Montaigne is an imperfect 
 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 cor- 
 dially seconded the editorial labours of Mademoiselle de Gournay. 
 More even than that, for the widow deposited one of the anno- 
 tated copies of the edition of 1588 in the public library at Bor- 
 deaux, to be a lasting memorial of the departed. 
 
 It is greatly regrettable that there are no surer aids to 
 following the footprints of Shakespear in his journeys on horse- 
 back 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 pre- 
 ference to the Crown Inn, then in the Cornmarket, near Carfax, 
 as a stopping point. This house 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 
 acquaintance of these two personages, Shakespear and the elder 
 Davenant, was not improbably formed very shortly after the com- 
 mencement 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 Hamlet^ 
 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 private exhibition of Love's Labor's Lost at Southampton 
 House, after the earl's release in 1603. 
 
 There is, however, the rather weighty caveat to be entered 
 in respect to these obscure movements, while the Sonnets were in 
 gradual course of composition, 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 
 
32 
 
 matter is the more worthy of admittance, in illustration and proof, 
 that it lay at the root, one suspects, of the matrimonial trouble 
 which wrought such miserable consequences about 1596 to the 
 Shakespears, and was never healed. 
 
 In considering a man of the intellectual cahbre and tempera- 
 ment 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 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 
 garfon, 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 ? 
 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, with certain infirmities of our strange com- 
 posite nature. Greatness and its foil arise from one germ. But 
 vague tradition and tavern anecdotes do not assist us to any 
 extent in elucidating the secret history of Shakespear. We must 
 principally [ilean on internal clues and documentary witnesses. 
 
 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 emer- 
 gence from an adventurous and obscure career into all that was 
 
33 
 
 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 speculatively employed in verbal revision, of a literary 
 power superior (as it would then be judged) even to that of 
 Greene or Marlowe. 
 
 The experiment has been tried — one susceptible of abuse and 
 excess, I allow — of constructing an autobiography from detached 
 passages of the works; and it becomes from the straitened amount 
 of more direct and legitimate material a venture the more pardon- 
 able. But some of the most interesting and, I should like to add, 
 persuasive clues are the expressions of feeling put into the mouths 
 of such interchangeable characters as Hamlet and the melancholy 
 Jaques ; for, regarding the former as historically and biographi- 
 cally 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. 
 
 Let us listen to Hamlet, as he addresses Ophelia (Act iii., 
 scene i) : — 
 
 " I am myself indifferent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such 
 things, that it were better my mother had not borne me . . . 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 
 ivise men knonu nvell enough ivbat monsters you make of them'' 
 
 This is the sarcastic, self-disparaging vein. The question is, 
 is it not a personal touch ? There are other very similar allusions 
 scattered about, and the insistence is too frequent, too explicit, and 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 even too inconsequent, where it immediately offers itself, to 
 permit more than a single conclusion. 
 
 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 unsettled; it recalls the very similar story of Cowley 
 and Dean Sprat, which was attended by more serious consequences ; 
 and when we hear that Dryden latterly gave way, under the 
 encouragement of Addison, to intemperate habits, it is not un- 
 reasonable to trace them to a private source — to connubial discord. 
 The natural objection to the autobiographical theory is, that 
 the other dramatic writers of the age, save here and there in a 
 prefatory way, have not converted 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, mystery, and sor- 
 row ; and private references would have lacked the interest which 
 they possess in an enhanced measure here, from the terms in which 
 they are couched, and the adroit mode of introducing them. 
 
 The allodial affection, so to speak, must have been inextin- 
 guishably strong to preserve that loyalty to the Warwickshire 
 home in the face of such meagre inducements 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, the wife or the children, significant of 
 honour or pride ; not a hint on the part of the Halls, the Ouineys, 
 or the Barnards, that their kinsman was more than such another 
 as themselves. No audible notes of praise, nor ocular signs of 
 
35 
 
 admiration or gratitude in the place of birth, in stolid, drowsy 
 Stratford, muter than sphinx, through the centuries : 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 everlasting. 
 
 Where the scene of his triumphs lay, in even then cosmo- 
 politan London, it was that he mingled with those, who were 
 capable of appreciating his power and of reahzing the advent of a 
 new master and of a new epoch in dramatic literature. Greene 
 and Marlowe were no more ; he was facile princeps. But here 
 we approach a very important and notable suggestion as to the 
 unconquerable bent of our poet's 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 proud- 
 est 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 convenience and amenity 
 of the metropolis, sufficed 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 New Place and of what that purchase imported. 
 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 fore- 
 knowledge 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 the person of Osric in Hamlet 
 he ridicules a man " spacious in the possession of dirt," and what 
 became his own aims ? 
 
 D — 2 
 
36 
 
 An individual of universal intellect, of universal acceptance, 
 kept in his mind's eye year after year, as an abode in an old age, 
 wrhich 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 transplanted 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 villagers. If the 
 member of the family whom the world best knows had ever 
 dreamed of removing permanently, like so many other adven- 
 turers, 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, among which an innate affection for the spot, 
 with all its drawbacks, was not the least. 
 
 It is, of course, not difficult to trace the origin of the imper- 
 fect sympathy between Shakespear and connections by marriage 
 of an almost puritanical turn of thought, when we contemplate 
 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. 
 
 Judging from an account given by the parish clerk of Strat- 
 ford, in or about 1693, when all the immediate descendants 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 off on the strength of the reputation and 
 rank of the dramatist and poet, whom they did so little to 
 
37 
 
 encourage ? There seems at that time, when a renown so great 
 and so widely diffused should have yet survived in undiminished 
 strength, to have been a comparative forgetfulness 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. The two entries were possibly made by different hands. 
 
 It is deserving of hope at least that the said " one Mrs. 
 Shakespear " 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 have reached our 
 ears. Her husband has in no measured strains lamented his lot, 
 and it was, no doubt, in a matrimonial sense, an ill-starred one. 
 But 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 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 
 uttering an audible syllable — without letting us understand some- 
 thing of the real history of the dark woman of the Sonnets, and 
 where the rivalry lay. 
 
 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 far more potent motive for making London, not 
 Stratford, his centre, than the transient deer-stealing episode : if 
 there had not arisen some grave domestic friction by reason of the 
 discovery of an intrigue between Shakespear and another woman — 
 for son the dark figure of the Sonnets — a career more satisfactory 
 
38 
 
 in one sense, and far less so in another, might have been that of 
 our dramatist. He might have returned to his native tovsrn, and 
 have succeeded his father as a local trader and an alderman, and 
 that sacred spot on the Avon would have long since been buried 
 in silence and in oblivion. 
 
 1586-7 is commonly, 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. In 
 1597 New Place became his property. It was the most im- 
 portant 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 in- 
 habitants of the town periodically 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 surprizingly 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 constellation, which 
 threatened to eclipse all others, and to 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. 
 Was it not an unique record ? Was it not the happy union of 
 genius and professional aptitude, which accounted for such a 
 result ? One rather important point is to be duly weighed. In all 
 our affairs there is said to be compensation ; and the personal and 
 domestic exigencies of Shakespear, whatever their collateral bear- 
 
39 
 
 ing on his private relations may have been, conferred on him as a 
 writer the immense advantage of completing and extending 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 the opportunity, so to speak, forced upon him of 
 spending the best part of his career within reach of all that 
 the metropolis of England possessed of knowledge, learning, and 
 culture. 
 
 There is the obligation, so to put it, cast upon us by 
 
 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, of accepting 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. Yet he gave 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 ; perhaps Arden of 
 
 Faversham and Edward the Third, and more certainly Titus 
 
 Jndronicus, which, whatever may be the modern estimate, was a 
 
 most popular performance, and is stated by Edward Ravenscroft 
 
 in his altered version, 1686, to have been composed by another 
 
 author, and revised by Shakespear. The piece continued to hold 
 
 the stage down to the time of James I. Christopher 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. Lang- 
 
 baine, writing in 1691, states that there was a printed edition of 
 
 1594; but it is no longer known. Besides these efforts the pen 
 
 and mind of Shakespear must have been intent on a hundred 
 
 other kindred ventures, all converging to a single issue — the 
 
40 
 
 attainment of worldly independence, while each approached a 
 step nearer to those masterpieces, which have so dwarfed their 
 predecessors, and reduced them in our appreciation to speculative 
 material for filling up or explaining a biographical void. 
 
 In the Return from Parnassus, a drama ascribed to 1604 or 
 thereabout, when our poet had almost reached the height of his 
 professional and financial eminence, there is a reference by Studioso, 
 one of the characters, to adventurers, 
 
 " that carried erst their fardles on their backs, — " 
 
 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. The picture would certainly not 
 suit Shakespear. He is nowhere described as an esquire. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Shakesfear' s success and its sources. His managerial and proprietary functions 
 lucrati've. His lyrical publications probably of slight commercial account. 
 Domestic affairs. Death of his only son in 1596. Suspected informal 
 separation of husband and ivife. Condition and tenancy of Neiu Place, 
 the hope of founding a family shattered. Mental harass. Death at or 
 near Stratford (16 [6). Relations betnueen him and his ivife. Testa- 
 mentary dispositions. Friendly meetings in later days at Stratford. Differ- 
 ence betiveen the seventeenth century inns and ours. Presumed moti've for 
 the 'visit ofjonson and Drayton in 1615-16. Remarks about the destruction 
 of Neiv Place and the mulberry-tree. Political iiieius of Shakespear. His 
 strong repugnance to the Puritans. Allusion to his daughters'' names. 
 Conversational fragments. His indifference to invasion of his rights as an 
 author. Speculation as to relations ivith the Lucys in later life. John 
 Shakespear and Falstaff. The poet's obligations to his father. Resemblance 
 of Susanna Shakespear (Mrs. Hall) to the poet in a practical respect. 
 
 The worldly prosperity of Shakespear, we have to remember, 
 was attributable to his dual position as a playwright and a part- 
 owner of the house or houses, where his works were presented. 
 In 1592 he had become an object of envy and satire, which tell 
 their own tale, and at which he could afford to smile j in 1597 he 
 was the owner of New Place. Setting on one side the published 
 poems and the unpublished sonnets, which did not perhaps alto- 
 gether yield much, his editorial and professional labours during ten 
 years (1587-97) were not only lucrative, though involving con- 
 stant 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. 
 In estimating the conduct of our great poet, it is always to be 
 recollected, that he was primarily a maker of plays, secondly an 
 actor in them, thirdly (and concurrently) a profit-sharer, and, 
 
42 
 
 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. 
 
 Taking common sense and human nature — two fairly safe 
 guides — as conductors, we seem to be brought to a conclusion, 
 which is scarcely to be called a new one, yet which has never 
 hitherto been carried so far from the premises. The virtual 
 desertion of Stratford in 1586 or 1587 as the poet's headquarters 
 was dictated by commercial and professional exigencies; and that 
 he revisited his home at intervals down to a certain time is more 
 than probable. The purchase of a property and an important 
 one in his native place, not only in the shape of a residence, but 
 in land and tithes, marks his solicitude and expectation to become 
 the founder of a family, to which the expenditure of some con- 
 siderable time in negociating with Heralds' College for a grant of 
 arms to his father manifestly tended and appertained ; and although 
 in his admirable books there is no hint of the kind, we perceive 
 that in 1608-9 '" ^^^ Addenbroke suit* he is oiBcially and advi- 
 sedly described as generosus. In 1596 the first blow to his hopes 
 in such a direction arrived in the death of his only son, and it 
 must have been about the same time that, owing to a cause or 
 causes, which it is easier to guess than establish, there was an 
 informal separation, by which the wife became dependent on 
 some sort of alimony or some support from relatives, sufficiently 
 inadequate to render it necessary for her to borrow forty shillings 
 from a man who had formerly acted as her father's shepherd. 
 This uncomfortable view is not disproved by the later visits to 
 Stratford, and ultimate settlement of Shakespear there ; and, on 
 the contrary, there is the entry in the Diary of Thomas Greene, 
 the lawyer and Shakespear's relative, under date of November 17, 
 1614, where he mentions that "my cousin Shakespear, coming 
 yesterday to town, I went to see him, how he did." Greene plainly 
 * Halliwell-Phillipps, Outline], 6th ed., ii., -8-80. 
 
43 
 
 intended to convey, that the poet was staying somewhere in the 
 vicinity of Stratford, and that in one of his visits to town — Strat- 
 ford, not London — the cousin called upon him to inquire after his 
 health, which was already indifferent. 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." To have supposed that Greene meant London, is 
 simply preposterous. 
 
 New Place, or the Great House, must be taken to have 
 been more or less in the tenancy of the owner's family from 1602 
 to 1607, the date of the marriage of Susanna Shakespear. From 
 1608 to 1610 or 161 1, Thomas Greene was the lessee. At 
 Michaelmas, 1610, Greene was preparing to quit, and at Mid- 
 summer, l6ii, he was domesticated elsewhere; but in 1614 a 
 preacher, who was the guest of the corporation, was apparently 
 lodged here, and received at the public expense 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. 
 
 It has been thought that the premises were at the time of 
 acquisition in a bad state of repair; and we shall not be far from 
 the truth, perhaps, in surmising that no complete restoration took 
 place in the lifetime of the poet, even if the Halls, 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 unexpectedly revealed in him, 
 and who had hardened himself to rough and casual modes of sub- 
 sistence 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 circumstances which we seem to be obliged to admit. 
 
44 
 
 to have converted a dilapidated mansion into an abode suitable for 
 a gentleman of substance and position, nay, of some sort of lite- 
 rary repute among those of the Court and the great city. 
 
 Moreover, it is to be taken into account, I am afraid, that 
 the last days of that matchless career w^ere darkened and saddened 
 by domestic estrangement, nor can w^e be even assured that 
 Shakespear's death-bed was tended by the wife of his youth. In 
 what I believe to have been almost his latest dramatic effort, 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 circum- 
 stance does not seem per se answerable. 
 
 There seems to be too strong a ground for the , view that 
 Shakespear deferred his retirement too long, and that when he 
 ultimately arranged (in i6l2, as it seems) to spend at all events 
 the bulk of his time at home, having parted with his theatrical 
 interests, his health was seriously impaired. In addition to the 
 mental strain involved 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 and actor, 
 he had suffered much annoyance from local disputes, complica- 
 tions, and disasters,* which threatened to touch him nearly as a 
 land and tithe owner. Nor is it to be supposed that, as he was 
 situated in London, at a distance 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 
 
 * There had been fires at Stratford in 1594 and 159S, and one still more 
 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. „ _ 
 
45 
 
 nearly uninterrupted residence there from 1614 to 1616, in a state 
 of declining strength of body, if not of mind. 
 
 The postponement of the ultimate departure from London, 
 which I am disposed to place not earlier than 16 12, and concurrent 
 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 con- 
 summation which the greatest man in England, as we now think, 
 might have expected, and have been entitled to expect, nor do 
 the facts, so far as I collect them, bear out the bright picture 
 drawn of his last years by some of his biographers. 
 
 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 — " Was the writer 
 musing, when he set down these words about 1 60 1, on his own 
 affairs, and on the prospect of early oblivion ? 
 
 It is an inference as unavoidable indeed, as it is unwelcome, 
 that the relations between husband and wife remained at the close 
 unfriendly, if it is not even doubtful, whether the latter was pre- 
 sent to witness the last moments, and hear the last accents, of the 
 poet. In his will, as it was originally written, no mention of her 
 occurred, and the concession of a bed and its furniture arose, per- 
 haps, from the circumstance, that it was an article of use removed 
 to the place, where she was separately domiciled. The gift was an 
 interlineation and an afterthought. 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 
 
46 
 
 till February, 1616, is a beneficiary to some extent ; 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. For 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 financially 
 sound, and subsequently proved eminently unsatisfactory, Thomas 
 Quiney'himself thoroughly justifying the distrust of his illustrious 
 kinsman by absconding from Stratford, and deserting his family. 
 The devolution of the main property on the Halls became the 
 sole alternative. 
 
 Yet let us observe that when their son died in 1596, the 
 Shakespears were both in the prime of life, and might well have 
 renewed the male succession, had not an independent obstacle 
 existed, had not cohabitation previously determined. 
 
 The wife, as I say, was barely recollected, and this merely 
 in a manner, which tends to corroborate, not the affection of her 
 husband, but her retirement from coverture, and I take her 
 rupture with him to have been, as I state above, of many years' 
 duration, and to have been forcibly present to the poet, when he 
 effected the Blackfriars purchase in 16 13, and barred her title to 
 dower under that head. The lady was in fact left entirely 
 dependent on her daughters ; and it seems to belong to the pain- 
 ful story, that such an inconsiderable sum as 40J. advanced to her 
 by an acquaintance was not repaid without legal pressure. 
 
 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 
 
47 
 
 in leaving us some particulars of Shakespear, composed in her 
 honour a conventional and dull Latin epitaph, w^hich amounts 
 exactly to nothing. 
 
 It seems to belong to the anomalous relations, which sub- 
 sisted during so many years betw^een the poet and his native place, 
 and the more than to be suspected breach w^ith his wife, that 
 there is no hint of Shakespear having at any point of time filled 
 the position in the borough, to which his social, literary, and 
 financial pretensions so well entitled him. The extreme proba- 
 bility is, that, unHke his father, he entertained no taste for 
 municipal honours, and that, when he had about l6i2 per- 
 manently 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 con- 
 cerned him ; and then there was his cousin Greene to act for him. 
 
 Consequently the home life in and after 1612 down to the 
 close of the scene, was bound to prove irksome and injurious in 
 practical experience, whatever might have been hoped from it ; 
 and the withdrawal from the theatre of his labours and his noble 
 achievements, and the loss of nearly all congenial spirits, had an 
 inherent tendency to shorten that incomparable career. 
 
 When I doubt the likelihood that the poet ever made, or 
 aspired to make. New Place an abode such as it had been, and 
 such as it subsequently became in other hands, he may be pre- 
 sumed to have lost no time in executing repairs absolutely essential 
 to the maintenance of the premises, since he is reported as obtain- 
 ing stone for the purpose in 1598, while, in consequence of some 
 flaw in the conveyance, he was not yet in legal possession; and in 
 or about 1602, when the title deeds were perhaps 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. 
 
 We appear justified in tracing him to some provisional resi- 
 dence near Stratford in the winter of 1614, and in concluding his 
 
48 
 
 health at that juncture to have given w^ay. When he resumed 
 his occupation of New Place — not in the society of his wrife, but 
 at any rate within reach of his daughters, there is no precise 
 indication ; but he was there in the very beginning of 1616, and 
 there he drew, according to the accepted notion, his last breath. 
 
 What man, before or since, accomplished a great mission 
 with such vast gain to others, with so little in certain ways to 
 himself? The end may have been, and may yet be deemed, 
 premature, 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. 
 
 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. I augur that the tidings 
 of the impaired strength of their life-long friend had reached the 
 ears of his two eminent contemporaries and fellow-poets, not 
 improbably through a common friend at least of Drayton, Thomas 
 Greene, Shakespear's relative, and had inspired them with an 
 anxiety to meet him once more. The gratification at an inter- 
 view, for which he could scarcely have hoped, was apt to favour a 
 temporary rally, and to betray into an excess of indulgence the 
 owner of a debilitated constitution. Jonson and his companion 
 did not see the incident with our eyes, or we should have possessed 
 particulars of a pilgrimage so famous and so sad; and the excellent 
 Dr. Hall has thwarted us in a similar manner by omitting to 
 narrate his experiences, when he attended Shakespear in his fatal 
 illness. 
 
 The evidence that the poet expired at New Place appears 
 to be only presumptive. He had been, as I seek to establish, 
 quartered somewhere in the outskirts of Stratford not long, at all 
 events, prior to his last sickness, and was, judging from informa- 
 tion, which we derive from his cousin, in the habit of occasionally 
 coming into town (that is, into Stratford), when something 
 required his presence. Nor are the circumstances attending his 
 
49 
 
 immediate interment altogether free from obscurity; there is the 
 bare entry of his burial ; but we fail to meet with even such 
 a notice as accompanied that of his brother Edmund in 1607 at 
 St. Mary Overy's in Southwark. Our actual knowledge is nar- 
 rowed in fact to his eventual consignment to the grave in the 
 chancel, in which his ^yidow unsuccessfully solicited, that she 
 should rest with him. 
 
 Of the complaint, which proved fatal on the 23rd April, 
 1616 (O. S.), there are conflicting opinions. It is far likelier 
 that the fever was what we term a putrid fever, arising from the 
 surrounding insanitary conditions, and not impossibly aggravated 
 by secondary causes, and such a view is supported by the hasty 
 interment on the third day. When the youngest brother of the 
 poet, Edmund the playwright, a young man of seven-and-twenty, 
 was committed to the earth in 1607, the event was honoured, 
 doubtless through the instigation of Shakespear, then resident 
 close at hand, by a special peal of the great bell of St. Saviour's. 
 There is not even a record in the Stratford register of the death 
 of Shakespear himself, merely an entry in the briefest terms of the 
 funeral, which might have been under the suspected circum- 
 stances still more expeditious, had not the claim to a place in the 
 chancel for the remains occasioned some delay. 
 
 There must have been more or less frequent meetings in 
 later days both in London and Stratford, apart from the convivial 
 entertainments at the Mermaid and other London inns, where 
 there were agreeable retrospections of early scenes and expe- 
 riences, 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 considerable amount of attention, that he was, of 
 all those connected with the Elizabethan theatre, when he gained 
 eminence, almost the least 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 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 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 practical side. That there w^ere moments alike 
 in town and country, when even he relaxed, is less than doubtful ; 
 the great poet was apparently no Puritan in any sense. 
 
 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 
 metropolis at such establishments are intelligible enough ; there, 
 down to i6i2, he had no available 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 else- 
 where to sit with friends from London or with neighbours. It 
 was a widely diffused practice which he pursued, and one which 
 has not become obsolete, especially abroad, where at one time 
 political and municipal conferences 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 intercourse under such 
 circumstances was apt to be between man and man ; and the pro- 
 fessional acquaintances of the poet did not necessarily know the 
 other inmates of his household. We collect that he saw com- 
 paratively 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. 
 
51 
 
 Shakespear in 1607. The masterless establishment at Stratford 
 deserves closer attention at the hands of biographers than it has 
 hitherto received. I have tried to do my part. 
 
 The explicit declaration in the will, that in January, 16 16, 
 he vf3.s dwfelling at New Place, may be treated in more than one 
 sense, or is capable of more than one meaning. The theory, that 
 he had become provisionally or temporarily domiciled elsewhere 
 by no means supersedes the house at Stratford as his recognised 
 and legal headquarters ; it amounts to no more than the possi- 
 bility that for some unknown 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 in January of the year continued to be 
 so in the last week of March. Let me add, that in one of the 
 testamentary forms in West's Symboleography, 1590, there is the 
 expression and passage : " . . . the occupation of this house 
 and fermeholdes wherein I now dwell at H. with thappur- 
 tenances " — as if a person might at that time be understood to 
 dwell at an address, yet not be uninterruptedly resident there. 
 
 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. The poet, just about the time — in 16 14- 15 — 
 when his strength was evidently failing, and he was permanently 
 settled, if not at New Place or 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 '" ^^^ Addenbroke business. 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 
 
 E — 2 
 
52 
 
 1596; we observe that he declares toward the end of the testa- 
 ment, 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, as it is eminently character- 
 istic. The disappointment at the frustration of his prospect of 
 a direct heir not unnaturally 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. A yet more remarkable 
 afterthought and interlineation was the bequest of the second-best 
 bed to his wife ; this disposition has produced endless discussion 
 and speculation. I suggest that if the rest of the family was at 
 the Great House 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. This theory must be taken for what 
 it is worth ; my personal opinion is that it is worth something. 
 
 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 
 
53 
 
 arrival at Stratford only in time to indicate the legal desirability 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. A book of reference, assisting lay- 
 men to frame their own wills without professional assistance, had 
 come to an enlarged impression in 1605-6* and 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 specifically de- 
 signed 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's Symboleography 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 considering. 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 
 
 * The First Part of Symboleography, by William West, of tlie Inner 
 Temple, 4", 1590, 1592, 1594, 1605, 1610, 1632. 
 
54 
 
 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. 
 
 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: i. It alone gives the name in full; 2. It has the pre- 
 liminary 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 unusually 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; 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 i were added when the poet had 
 become bed-ridden, and was barely equal to the formation of the 
 letters of his name. The foregoing observations may be illus- 
 trated by facsimiles of the three entries in what I take to be 
 their true sequence : — 
 
 " ii^y^^ufMv 
 
 inpi^n- -S^^^^^v-J 
 
55 
 
 Beyond the enumeration of a few items of inconsiderable 
 importance there is no clue in the will to the nature and extent 
 of the household effects at New Place in 1616. But, if it can be 
 admitted as any sort of analogy, we have an inventory of the 
 goods of Richard Barnfield the poet, taken after his death in 
 1627, and amounting altogether to ;^66. 5^. iid., of which 
 wearing apparel is answerable for ^10, a gilt salt and spoon for 
 j^5, and books for ten shillings. The normal middle-class or 
 bourgeois library in these days appears, with the fewest exceptions, 
 to have been limited to the capacity of a shelf or two, or a 
 cupboard. Shakespear is reputed to have left, in strict per- 
 sonalty, about ;^400 ; he was consequently a richer man than 
 the author of the Affectionate Shepherd on that score alone, apart 
 from his real estate ; and New Place was a residence of excep- 
 tional requirements, even if it was not at all sumptuously fur- 
 nished. 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 purchaseable for such a sum was excessively small at a 
 groat each; and if Barnfield contented himself at a greater dis- 
 tance from London with such a handful, probably Shakespear, 
 considering 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 Shakespearian 
 bearing; but a few lots were subsequently recovered, and are 
 visible in situ. 
 
 Although these pages are not intended as a medium for 
 repeating what may be found stated elsewhere, it becomes almost 
 imperative to bring into one focus in succinct terms the facts con- 
 nected 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 arc 
 
56 
 
 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 was not so. The house of the poet had long 
 been superseded 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. 
 The lack of authentic information on this favourite subject renders 
 it all the more to be wished that such things as are ascertainable 
 should be accurately understood. 
 
 It is in such a philosophical poem as Hamlet that Shakespear 
 discovers and uses opportunities for shadowing, in the person of a 
 character regarded 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 reflection 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 itj 
 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 democratic 
 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. In the 107th 
 Sonnet we read : — 
 
 " And thou in this shalt find thy monument. 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent." 
 
 Shakespear was his own Hamlet. If he truly acted the 
 Ghost on the boards, he acted the philosophizing and speculative 
 Prince himself in the book and in the closet. }|'The dramatic 
 creation is a lay figure. 
 
57 
 
 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, not acclaimed her successor. Do we 
 blame him ? He had his own views of the Great in name, and con- 
 tented himself perforce with giving to them a guarded expression. 
 
 But I look upon the poet 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 artived. In the 
 Merchant of Venice^ Shakespear puts into the mouth of Shylock 
 a strong plea for human equality and general religious tolerance, 
 just as in the same drama he makes the dusky suitor of Portia, 
 the Prince of Morocco, vindicate himself from the common pre- 
 judice against his colour. The words of Shylock 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. 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 hu- 
 manity. 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 indul- 
 gence, while there had been no country, where they were in former 
 times more mercilessly persecuted, and they had to wait, till the 
 nineteenth ceutury was far advanced, before they acquired here 
 full political rights. 
 
58 
 
 The poet was in fact a subtle exponent in 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 con- 
 temporary Montaigne played in France. Both were political 
 champions and liberators without being conscious, 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. 
 
 The revolt against Episcopacy, which had commenced during 
 the youth of Shakespear, and which developed 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. The tenets, 
 language, and dress of the new party suggested material for ridi- 
 cule 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 atmo- 
 sphere 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 Shakespear 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 inci- 
 dentally interpolated. The passage is in Twelfth Night : — • 
 
 " Maria : Marry, sir. Sometimes he is a kind of Puritan. 
 
 " Sir Andrenx) : 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 Winter's Tale, that 
 the only Puritan in a company sings psalms to hornpipes, and 
 
59 
 
 other analogous utterances, must be taken to reflect the personal 
 sentiments of the author, naturally adverse to the movement, and 
 intensified by its already commencing interference with his lite- 
 rary and commercial interests. 
 
 The poet was averse from the new sectarianism as a spirit 
 and a movement hostile to him as a dramatist and theatrical pro- 
 prietor, 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 birth- 
 land, manifested an equal distaste for 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. 
 
 The pious disposition of his wife may be answerable for the 
 baptismal appellations of their two daughters. The theological 
 warp had set in long before godly but dull Dr. Hall appears on the 
 scene. 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. It was truly 
 unfortunate. 
 
 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 his dissatisfaction with Jaggard the publisher 
 for having in a reprint of the Passionate Pilgrim, i6i2, improperly 
 inserted pieces by Heywood as his work, and certain not very 
 lucid entries in the Diary of his cousin Thomas Greene of Strat- 
 ford relative to a proposed enclosure of some of the common fields 
 in 1614-15. It appears that the poet entertained a profound, if 
 mainly a sentimental objection to the step contemplated by the 
 municipal authorities; on the 17th November, 16 14, Greene 
 informs us that his cousin, when he went to see how he did, told 
 him what was thought to be the extent of the scheme, but that 
 
6o 
 
 both Mr. Hall and himself doubted if anything would be actually- 
 done. The matter was still in abeyance in September, 1615, 
 when Shakespear declared to Greene that " he was not able to 
 bear the enclosing of Welcombe," which seems to shew that this 
 affair was preying on his mind, and that his bodily health was 
 beginning to fail. There was the normal symptom of mental 
 over-taxation — the nervous irritability. The enclosure of common 
 fields was a source of trouble and dissension all over England ; it 
 was by no means specially a local grievance. We find it arousing 
 indignation and resistance in the fifteenth century. 
 
 This pair of utterances, transmitted at second-hand, but in 
 the latter case presumably as nearly as may be in the words 
 employed, if we decipher the MS. rightly, 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 exaltation of 
 Shakespear, within the last century, helps to shut 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. 
 
 As regards the remark to Heywood, if it was made in London, 
 it appears to be of this chronological and biographical value, that 
 it shews Shakespear to be still there, just about the time, when 
 the Tempest is now supposed to have been produced and performed ; 
 and the indifferent state of his health would scarcely allow him to 
 make frequent journeys to and from the country. 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 his health had then broken down, and that 
 the end was nearer. 
 
 As a matter of fact the title-page to the volume does not 
 
6i 
 
 explicibly state that the supplementary matter is by Shakespear ; 
 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 altogether. 
 
 The intimation to Greene has, owing to the obscurity of the 
 MS. Diary of the latter in one place, been variously interpreted, 
 and it is certainly more probable, on the whole, that Shakespear 
 sided with the party favourable to enclosure of the fields. That 
 view corresponds with the speaker's known solicitude to protect 
 his own worldly interests, and it does not much weaken the value 
 of the words spoken, where the leading point is the rescue of a 
 few syllables out of all those, which those lips pronounced, and 
 the presence of the business as a source of worry. 
 
 Heywood 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, 
 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. 
 
 The poet lived through the whole of that striking period, 
 which witnessed the acrimonious, foolish, and rather vulgar lite- 
 rary controversies of Greene, Harvey, and Nash, and of Jonson, 
 Marston, and Dekker, 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 lampooned by Greene, 
 he refrained even from any expression of feeling audible to us. 
 Where, again, his rights had been invaded by Jaggard, he broke 
 silence only when Heywood approached him, and then went 
 no farther than to intimate his displeasure at an injustice, in 
 
62 
 
 which another was involved. He offered a striicing contrast to 
 some of his contemporaries above-named. 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 reticence, to which the 
 world was at liberty to give its own interpretation. 
 
 Shakespear, 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 persona it was his 
 function to allot his part. But even the greatest artists have 
 their preferences, and throw into certain characters a prepon- 
 derant 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. 
 
 A regrettable lacuna (how many, alas ! there are) in the 
 biographical sequence is the by no means improbable relations in 
 later life between Shakespear and the family at Charlcote. That 
 any youthful escapade 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 affluent 
 in his circumstances, is singularly unlikely, more particularly 
 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 symptom 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 
 
63 
 
 player, which set in with the Stuarts. Yet the friendly patronage 
 of Southampton and the favourable sentiments of Southampton's 
 sovereign must have reached his ears. 
 
 John Shakespear died prior to September 8, 1601, on which 
 day his interment at Stratford is registered. How long he had 
 been ill, and the immediate cause of death, appear to be alike 
 undiscoverable, nor do we hear, whether his son was a witness tO' 
 his last moments. In the third scene of the second act of Henry 
 V. there is the excessively familiar 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 : 
 " and a' babbled of green fields." By whom the idea of the 
 Knight's deathbed was suggested, it is impossible to say; and it is 
 equally uncertain whether the wretched texts of the quartos were 
 revised and completed by the poet himself, or from some more 
 authentic transcript 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. 
 
 If any conclusion is to be drawn from the gross misreading 
 of the sentence in the folio of 1623, taken with the professed 
 solicitude of the poet's fellows to do his memory justice, it is that 
 the insertion was made in a very indistinct hand in the copy 
 employed for the collective edition; but whether that hand was 
 the author's or not, it would be fruitless to speculate. 
 
 The common voice of literary opinion dismisses 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 
 
64 
 
 generation betrayed any germ of the rich fruit to come to 
 subsequent maturity in an individual of the Steele, and then 
 disappear for ever. There wrould have been nothing strange 
 in the manifestation of abnormal qualities by the Shakespears, if 
 Thomas Becon be correct in describing the Warwickshire folk 
 in his Jewel of J oy^ printed in the time of Edward VI., as distin- 
 guished by their intellectual superiority. But, on the other hand, 
 in the mother, Mary Arden or Ardern, connected with the 
 Kentish Arderns of Wye and Faversham, we indistinctly recog- 
 nize 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 influence 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 Sir John Suckling the poet derived his vivacity and wit 
 similarly from his mother, and that " his father was but a dull 
 fellow." It is certainly deserving of a passing notice that Shake- 
 spear, in As Tou Like It, has followed Lodge in christening the 
 woodland scene the Forest of Arden, very slight traces of which 
 can have existed in that part of Warwickshire in his time. At 
 least the tradition, however, remained ; and the name was, 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 ! 
 
 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 strictness and even 
 hardness in money matters, which fructified in the case of the 
 poet better than in that of his predecessor, and which was instru- 
 mental in earning for him, at the hands of Robert Greene the 
 
65 
 
 trenchant sarcasm resident in the travestied sentence : " O tiger's 
 heart wrapped in a player'' s hide ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, John Shakespear, a sort of general factor and a 
 municipal notability, w^as the true father of his son in one or two 
 other less questionable respects. The latter was assuredly not 
 under much intellectual obligation to his parent ; but he 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. 
 
 Our seeing faculty in regard to this rather dim personage 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. Facsimiles of entries in the Stratford 
 books during his discharge of this trust are given by Mr. Lee ; 
 they are in the ordinary court hand of the period, and evidently 
 the work of a scrivener ; and Mr. Lee also presents us with 
 specimens of his signature, and of those of Susanna Hall and 
 Judith Shakespear, and Lady Barnard. The signature of the 
 poet's father on p. 3 of the Life appears, however, to read Signu 
 John Shakespere, and to be merely an attestation of the accom- 
 panying mark ; and the same comment applies to the inscription 
 of Judith at p. 226, even if the rudimentary characters Jhon 
 Shaksper on p. 5, which substantially vary from those on p. 3, 
 be authentic and not rather equally a voucher for the attendant 
 symbol. The signatures of Gilbert Shakespear (p. 163), Susanna 
 Hall (p. 227), and Lady Barnard (p. 229) are doubtless auto- 
 graphic. The educational standing of the family, so far as their 
 handswriting go, was not inferior to that of their neighbours — we 
 may surmise, in advance of it ; and when we look at the signature 
 of Michael Drayton from the same shire, and one of the very few, 
 who enjoyed the intimate acquaintance of his countryman, it is 
 not much more clerkly than that of Shakespear himself. The 
 diffusion of the power of tracing the name on paper was stimu- 
 
66 
 
 lated by the growing necessity, where property existed, of executing 
 or attesting deeds ; and before people aspired to engage in corres- 
 pondence, they gained sufficient dexterity with their pens to render 
 a document valid in the eye of the law. 
 
 The lawyers of Stratford found a client in godly Mrs. Hall, 
 to whom the humour had descended, and who in this respect 
 justified the record on her monument, that she had in her some- 
 thing of her father. For in the lifetime of the latter, though after 
 her marriage, we find this lady a party to an action for defamation 
 of character, of which all that is known is that the charge against 
 the plaintifF proved to be unfounded. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Pergonal character of the poet. The proposed Grant of Arms. Manuscript 
 remains. The sur'vi'ving autographs. The Bodleian Ovid and the British 
 Museum Montaigne. Absence of Letters. Possibility of future discoveries. 
 The single com7nunication to the Poet hitherto found. Family likeness in the 
 handiuriting of the Snitterfield Shakespears. Probable cause of the dis- 
 appearance of Shakespear MSS. The Scriveners'' Gild. Allusion by the 
 poet to the scrivener. Deficiency of annotated copies of the Poems and Plays. 
 And of tangible or valuable allusions to him in early books. Rise and Groiuth 
 of Puritanism antagonistic to the preservation of the more popular literature, 
 A Mr. Shakespear in the United States in 1784. Relatives. John Hall. 
 Thomas Greene the Notary. His Poem on the Accession of James I. Un- 
 certainty of his exact connection ivith Shakespear, Collected Edition of the 
 Plays. Classification. Commendatory matter by Jonson, Milton, and others. 
 Discontinuance of a call for the separate Plays after 1640. Rejection of the 
 Poems as part of the Works. Periods of Neglect and Revival, 
 
 Where biographers and critics treat of the personal and Hterary 
 character of Shakespear, he is almost invariably acclaimed as the 
 poet of general humanity, as the friend no less than the painter of 
 all men in all their fortunes and in all their moods. Nevertheless 
 I recognise, rather than the wrriter 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 con- 
 duct — 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 
 
 F — 2 
 
68 
 
 and marshals before us in turn an infinite diversity of characters 
 with the nice differentiation of a true master. He was empha- 
 tically the actor turned author ; and there is a passage in a book^ 
 apparently written by an Oxonian long after the poet's decease,* ia 
 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 Shakespear, 
 the literary with the practical or professional side. 
 
 In other words, we really seem to 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. But that, as a general proposition, we are to 
 interpret the text of the plays in a personal sense, I am far indeed 
 from believing or granting. 
 
 Nor am I a convert to the theory, or whatever it may be 
 called, that Shakespear was a philanthropist or a humanitarian. 
 We are accustomed to speak and think of him as the gentle 
 Shakespear in the same sort of way that we do of Isaak Walton 
 and Charles Lamb. But than such a parallel 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 ; 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 acquaintance, or a patron. A copy of 
 the Sonnets^ which once belonged to Dr^ Farmer, and is now 
 among the Althorp treasures at Manchester, bears an early in- 
 scription elsewhere given ; and one of the editions of Hamlet, 
 1611, has on the title: "For Mark Stapfer"; but neither of 
 these memoranda is of direct significance. 
 
 * O-vitHs Ghost, by Edwardus Fuscus, 12°, 1657. It seems to be entirely- 
 unknown. 
 
69 
 
 Such an unprecedented and barely credible 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 docu- 
 mentary 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. 
 
 Randolph, who was born in 1605, and within whose circle 
 
 there were many personal acquaintances of Shakespear, Jonson 
 
 inclusive, in his free paraphrase of the Plutus of Aristophanes, 
 
 apostrophizing the God of Wealth, says: — 
 
 " Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee, 
 And Shakespeare therefore write his comedy ? " 
 
 Which I do not adduce for any other reason than to fortify the 
 foregoing view on the authority of a contemporary, as it is per- 
 haps the first and only testimony of the kind. 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, in his Outlines, has more than once ad- 
 verted to the action of the Shakespears, just about the point of 
 time, when New Place was acquired, in applying for an official 
 coat of arms. The poet himself nowhere appears in the matter ; 
 he was arguably neutral on such a subject ; but in 1596 and 1599 
 the heralds (Dethick and Camden) drafted grants to his father, 
 and based their action on the reputed 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 pre- 
 tensions 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 cognisances for new aspi- 
 rants. My own feeling is that the father and mother — she a 
 
7° 
 
 woman of family and separate estate — took the initiative, and 
 perhaps prevailed on their son to defray the preliminary charges. 
 
 The Shakespears sprang from the yeomanry, and had had 
 originally among them at Snitterfield and the vicinity a good 
 estate in land ; and the Ardens were of similar standing. John 
 Shakespear not improbably carried with him to his new home at 
 Stratford certain gentilitious instincts, which, had his personal 
 fortunes continued to be prosperous, might have prompted him, 
 independently of his son, to solicit coat-armour. In one docu- 
 ment the poet either names himself, or is named by the scribe, 
 generosus ; in the Sonnets, written so long prior to publication, we 
 already meet with the actor, ashamed, if not weary, of his calling ; 
 and I admit it as a distinct possibility that the poet may have gone 
 so far as to acquiesce in the step in 1596, and to be willing to 
 pay for the honour, as Heralds' College deemed it to be — the 
 unmerited one, as worshipful Mr. York Herald accounted it. 
 But the loss of his son tended to render him even more indifferent 
 to the issue. 
 
 I must avow that I am intolerant of the endless repetition of 
 nonsensical stories about the poet in the direction of jests and 
 impromptus. The Combe epitaph, whatever its true history may 
 be, can have no Shakespearian relevance beyond the possibility 
 that the composition was mentioned or even shown to him. John 
 Combe died in 16 14, 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 composed at or near the time is proved by its insertion 
 in Richard Brathwaite's Remains after Death, printed in i6i8j 
 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. It is sincerely to be hoped 
 that such trash may cease to find a place in future biographies. 
 
71 
 
 Who less than Shakespeare would have taken up his pen for such 
 a purpose at any period, more particularly under the known cir- 
 cumstances and at such a date ? 
 
 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 of 1502 and in 
 the English Montaigne of 1603, and a putative one inserted in a 
 copy of the second folio of the Plays. Of the official examples, 
 five in number, the genuineness is unimpeachable. Of the 
 remaining three the history is more or less known, and the 
 character is a matter of opinion — even of doubt. The Ovid was 
 acquired for the Bodleian about thirty years since, under the 
 keepership of Dr. Coxe, at a London auction ; of its antecedents 
 nothing is recovered. If it be authentic, 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 ; and the writing 
 is, I judge, earlier than that in the Montaigne, and consequently 
 firmer. Its identification is certainly supported and strengthened 
 by the memorandum at the foot of the title-page, of which I annex 
 a facsimile. But I enter farther into this question a little else- 
 where. 
 
 The autograph on the flyleaf of a copy of the version of 
 Montaigne by'Florio, 1603, purchased for the British Museum in 
 1838, assuming it to be right, and made at the time of publication, 
 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 
 in its favour. The characters are traced with greater decision 
 than those of 16 12 and 16 16, 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. There is certainly no infor- 
 mation, how or when the book, already so enriched, came into 
 
OVfDlI MET AMORPHOJEQN 
 
 
 
73 
 
 the hands of the Rev. Edward Patteson of Smethwick, near 
 Birmingham; it seems to be certain that it was before 1780; the 
 representatives of the poet may have lost interest in the books 
 even before they became extinct about 1806; and there is a pro- 
 bability that any would drift to the nearest large centre. 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 near London, and fell under the 
 notice of experts. Ever since it has been the subject of fluctuating 
 opinion. But 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 ; and I think that, after a perusal of 
 Sir Frederic Madden's pamphlet, printed in 1838, many will con- 
 cur, that the burden of proof lies on the sceptic. 
 
 The relic first brought to light by Ward the actor,* 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, was 
 taken by me, on my original view of it in a photographic facsimile, 
 to be a very clumsy endeavour to copy the writing of the poet. 
 But a comparison with the second signature on p. 54 prompts me to 
 regard this as belonging to the same date and physical conditions. 
 
 It must be tolerably obvious that the Bodleian Ovid is differ- 
 ently situated. For, assuming, as we may, the certificate of 1682 
 at the foot of the page to be authentic, we appear to have a fair 
 warrant for concluding that the signature above is that of the only 
 Shakespear, with whom posterity is concerned, and the calligraphy 
 is near enough to the other extant specimens, considering the 
 likelihood that the book was an early purchase, and the lines 
 traced, when the hand of the writer was steadier, and under 
 circumstances, which left less room for fanciful flourishes. 
 • Ward died in 1 773. 
 
74 
 
 The Ward example, unless I am mistaken, speaks for itself. 
 The written characters accompanying the Museum copy of Florio's 
 Montaigne stand on other ground. They are either genuine, or 
 they are a deliberate and mischievous forgery. I give facsimiles 
 of the two in immediate juxtaposition for comparison : 
 
 p ' ■ — 
 
 / / / 
 
 — ^ 
 
 Signature belonging to Florio's Montaigne, 1603. 
 
 signature attached to the Ward second folio, 163^. 
 
 A certain correlation is traceable between the extant sig- 
 natures in documents and books, tending to some extent to sup- 
 port their common authenticity, and, which is not less important, 
 to identify them all with one and the same individual. I am 
 looking at the forms of a few of the letters, 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 the peculiar full point equally 
 present in the ^of the christian name in the Montaigne, written 
 
75 
 
 in presumed good health in or about 1603, and in that which 
 forms part of the signature at the end of the will, written in 
 sickness in 161 6. The scrawls on the first and second folios are 
 almost destitute of significance for the reasons already assigned. 
 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 peculiar hand to serve the 
 very limited and occasional purposes, to which she probably 
 applied the art. 
 
 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; it is contained in a scrap of paper, which 
 renders its survival marvellous. But of course he sent or received 
 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 sentiments toward one, whose creations 
 must have so often delighted him and his consort. The salient 
 point about this reputed communication is that, if it was in the 
 hands of Sir William Davenant, it almost certainly escaped the 
 vandalism of the Stratford representatives, and there is the faintest 
 hope in the world that some obscure repository may even un- 
 consciously hold the inestimable relic. Lintot, who republished 
 the Poems in 1 7 10 as an appendix to Rowe's edition of the Plays, 
 describes it, however, as then lost. I shall copy from Lintot's 
 advertisement what he has to tell us under this head : "I cannot," 
 he says, " omit inserting 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." Truly the most valu- 
 
76 
 
 able of all royal letters ever penned, and what an omitted oppor- 
 tunity for the Irelands, the Jordans, and the Colliers ! 
 
 When James Cooke the surgeon was at Stratford in 1643, 
 he saw Mrs. Hall, who shewed him MSS., not of her father, but 
 of that infinitely less egregious individual her husband, Master 
 Doctor Hall, " medicus peritissimus." Whether there were any 
 papers of Shakespear at New Place then, no one can say. The 
 original copies of the plays may not have survived their writer for 
 a reason elsewhere offered ; nor is it easy to tell, whether such 
 printed books as he possessed were kept in London or in the 
 country. 
 
 But such extraordinary discoveries have taken place within 
 an easily measurable period, and the response of owners of the 
 most precious relics of the past appears to be so casual and im- 
 perfect, that there is no actual limit to possibilities, at least, of an 
 eventual extension of our knowledge even in this immediate direc- 
 tion, which so many modern revelations have approached with 
 almost tiresome and irritating proximity without realizing the 
 object most at heart. In the face, however, of the perfectly 
 recent disinterment of a quarto manuscript, preserving early 
 copies of numerous hitherto unknown letters of Jonson and 
 Chapman, of which a full account was communicated to the 
 press, there is a sort of forlorn hope that some such biographical 
 clues and lights, necessarily differentiated by personal circum- 
 stances, may lurk in a similar manner a little below the surface, 
 awaiting the supreme moment when they are to be transformed 
 by alchemical eyes from inarticulate lumber in loft or charter- 
 chest into solid and proud documentary vouchers. 
 
 We have, however, to set against such a prospect the sin- 
 gular absence of self-assertion on the part of Shakespear, his con- 
 stitutional indifference to his work and his fame, and, so far as 
 gift-copies of his Poems or Plays are concerned, a diffidence of 
 the appreciation of his genius by his contemporaries, or an uncon- 
 sciousness by them of the supreme value to be set hereafter on 
 
n 
 
 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 failure to recover such now priceless treasures is so far 
 from being restricted to Shakespear that it is a general incidence, 
 and the occasional exceptions, such as Jonson, Drayton, and 
 Chapman, 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 ! 
 
 The ordinary student must have long become aware that 
 there were living, in and about the days of the poet, other William 
 Shakespears ; but of these scarcely any calligraphic examples appear 
 to have been produced. One of them, probably a Snitterfield 
 one, may be answerable for the signature in the Ward volume- 
 above mentioned. 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 unconsciousness of its ulterior 
 estimation. The solitary note written by Richard Quiney to 
 the dramatist has evidently had the narrowest escape from de- 
 struction; it is on the borderland of evanescence. Taking a 
 nearly contemporary case — that of Montaigne, a man of fortune 
 and political distinction, a high municipal officer, and the per- 
 sonal 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 epis- 
 tolary 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- 
 
78 
 
 father, also an eminent public character, we do not possess in a 
 literary sense a line. In the unique case of Edward Alleyn we 
 ^ee how the institution of his noble College in his lifetime favoured 
 the safeguard of his MSS. and printed books ; but as a general 
 rule all such remains have suffered the same destiny. 
 
 While we may find ourselves tolerably agreed in charac- 
 terizing the scanty autographic footprints of the elder Shakespear 
 .as unusually barbarous and illiterate, a collation of them with the 
 signatures of Henry Shakespear of Snitterfield (HaUiwell-Phillipps, 
 ii., 2ii), and (I may perhaps add) that of the William Shakespear in 
 the Ward folio, on the one hand, and that of William Shakespear 
 the poet on the other, establishes to my satisfaction a pedigree and 
 kindred. There was an ostensible forward movement even at 
 Stratford, among men of business and more or less culture, in the 
 present direction toward the latter part of the sixteenth century ; 
 but the other sex did not participate 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 
 launch a volume of verse. We are enabled to judge to some 
 €xtent 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 personal notice is dated 1591 ; 
 and some of its illustrations tempt us to suspect where a certain 
 Stratford scholar learned to form his hand. 
 
 The almost total disappearance of Shakespear MSS. of any 
 kind is traceable to several agencies, of which the foremost were 
 fires, accident, neglect. The Globe was consumed in 1613, when 
 a large accumulation of documents, correspondence, plays, and 
 other archives had had ample time to form. There were periodical 
 conflagrations at Stratford — of some of which we do not hear, 
 other sufficiently destructive and ruinous to attract official notice. 
 Accident and neglect are capable, where no importance is attached 
 
79 
 
 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. I observe that Mr. Sidney Lee 
 refers with almost equal disrespect to Thomas Thorpe, the pub- 
 lisher of the Sonnets^ and to the "scrivener's hireling," whom he 
 guesses to have handed over to the publisher the MSS. copies of 
 the works, which he published. This is a purely gratuitous asser- 
 tion, and more or less grossly improbable from the strict regulations, 
 by which the members of the calling were bound. The biographer 
 of Shakespear might surely have used the scrivener more advan- 
 tageously to illustrate our sad plight in regard to original autographs 
 of the poet. The sole apparent chance — and it is a very remote 
 one^of recovering any autograph manuscript of the plays is the 
 possible survival of a copy made for the actors with corrections or 
 even additions by the poet. 
 
 The deplorable 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 unintelligible 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 translation by a member of the Scriveners' 
 Gild into legible characters, of which the actors could make use. 
 
8o 
 
 It is extremely doubtful whether the original autographs of the 
 Poems and Sonnets produced in the decade 1593 — ^^°3 '^^'^^ 
 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 accumu- 
 lated from the long and systematic abode of the poet at a distance 
 from relations and neighbours. 
 
 Shakespear is presumed to have 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 had slight difficulty in 
 deciphering the holograph of the poet, and probably carried it from 
 the theatre or lodging to his office for treatment ; and it is toler- 
 ably 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 better acquainted than his most recent 
 biographer with the province and place of the scrivener and his 
 wide range of duties. 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 : 
 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 may have had hundreds of 
 foHos 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. 
 
8i 
 
 When we have concluded such a survey as is possible of the 
 private career of this great Englishman, and have observed how 
 in one leading respect he was singularly situated, it might be 
 unwise to pronounce his life an unhappy one without pausing to 
 consider his moral and intellectual temperament and his auto- 
 nomous faculty. Shakespear was by no means exempt from 
 the troubles, which wait on humanity. Amid his astonishing 
 worldly successes he lost in turn his only son, Hamnet (1596) — 
 a name, by the way, found among the Haringtons in the early 
 years of the sixteenth century* — 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 
 (161 3), both under thirty, and the former the sole relative, who 
 displayed any congenial talent ; and beyond this series of bereave- 
 ments 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 incidents without emotion ; yet his 
 mind was of a cast, which was eminently capable of fortifying 
 itself against personal sorrow by immersion in professional engage- 
 ments at a distance. 
 
 Of John Hall very little seems to be recoverable. He is 
 traced to Acton in Middlesex; but he must have settled at Strat- 
 ford very early in the seventeenth century. Acton was, at all 
 events, somewhat later a stronghold of puritanism; and Hall 
 carried with him to his Warwickshire 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, 
 all enumerated by the present writer. It is little more than a 
 suggestion on my part, in the absence of any sort of more distinct 
 clue, that the earlier Hall may have been the father of Shake- 
 
 * Plumpton Correspondence, p. 307. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 spear's son-in-law. He has been described as of Maidstone ; but 
 the local histories omit to mention his name. 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. 
 
 When one beholds this man in one's mind's eye, who saw 
 and knew so much, this dull professional expert and bigoted non- 
 conformist, who is explicitly stated to have been most famous at 
 Stratford, who kept a note-book of cases in Latin and stopped 
 short at entering his relative's, reducing his work thereby to the 
 vicinity of waste paper, one can only ejaculate : " O the irony 
 of fate ! " * 
 
 Hall, or at any rate his editor and translator Cooke of 
 Warwick, as we too well know, omits all mention of the precise 
 circumstances attending the last moments of Shakespear. 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. How or why should 
 he have done so ? Men, who were infinitely better qualified 
 to form an opinion on the subject, 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 con- 
 template the professional gibberish and jargon, with which he- 
 fills his volume — and Cooke did not give us the whole — that 
 
 * The Reverend John Ward, alias Dryasdust, Vicar of Stratford, wrote 
 in the second half of the seventeenth century a jejune and pointless Diary 
 (first printed, 8°, 1839), in which it can only be said, that we gain a trifle- 
 more than from Hall ; but his information is of slender value. 
 
83 
 
 he did not set down a few lines, which would have been worth 
 all the rest a million-fold ! 
 
 Apart from the Hall and Quiney families, and coming in 
 contact with the poet in a diiFerent manner, was that Thomas 
 Greene, whose name recurs in the present narrative more than 
 once, and who, no doubt correctly, claimed the illustrious poet as 
 a connexion. Greene was by inference a notary public, and col- 
 laterally or otherwise, according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillips, town- 
 clerk, whose services his so-called cousin sometimes secured, when 
 anything had to be done in his frequent and long absences from 
 Stratford, but whose cousinhood does not appear to have extended 
 to intellectual resemblance ; an individual of the same names buried 
 at Stratford, March 6, 1589-90, was probably his father. We 
 have all heard of the insuperable repugnance of Shakespear him- 
 self 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 
 hfted 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 Poet's Vision and a Prince s 
 Glory. The adventurous author was naturally led to place his 
 MS. in the hands of William Leake at the White Greyhound 
 in St. Paul's Churchyard ; he signalizes himself on the title as 
 Thomas Greene Gentleman, a pretension 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 ; 
 
 G — 2 
 
 1 
 
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 — " 
 
 What did cousin Shakespear think of this glorious effusion ? 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 ? 
 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, im- 
 bibed 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 lifelong 
 duration. He is the only individual, resident at Stratford, of whom 
 we hear as possessing qualifications for representing anyone in the 
 nature of a client. 
 
 The most remarkable, and in a way most serious, difficulty 
 in relation to Greene of Stratford seems to be that the exact way 
 in which he became the kinsman of the poet, has not so far tran- 
 spired. It was presumably on the maternal side; and a farther 
 point inviting elucidation, though not immediately touching the 
 present essay, is the by no means unlikely consanguinity between 
 Thomas Greene and John Greene the eminent actor, the latter 
 himself a playwright, an applauded performer in his own comedy 
 of Greene's Tu ^oque, and a clever epigrammatist. 
 
 The period of neglect — the long night preceding the break 
 of a new day — during which thousands of now priceless editiones 
 principes must have silently perished,* may be said to have set in, 
 when the circle or generation which beheld and welcomed the 
 
 * From indifference, rather than over-study; for even imperfect or 
 damaged copies of the majority have not survived. 
 
8s 
 
 first folio, had died away, and when the Civil .War paralysed all 
 theatrical operations, and discouraged literary enterprize. To a 
 limited extent, and in a narrow zone, the influence of Davenant, 
 Milton and his nephews, and Dryden tended to preserve the 
 Shakespearian 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 Augustan 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 portraits, does not include that of Shake- 
 spear, as if he had then ceased to be viewed as a master of 
 our language and an ornament of our literature. 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 1 
 
 In the Epistle before an abridgment by James Wright of 
 Dugdale's Monasticon, 1693, he alludes to two of the most famous 
 writers in England, Dugdale and Shakespear, " both Williams ; " 
 and he consistently puts the poet second in order. 
 
 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 compara- 
 tive 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 
 
86 
 
 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 life- 
 time to treat subjects already handled by himself, as, for instance, 
 Christopher Brooke's Ghost of Richard the Third, 1614, 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, printed in the same year. The means of resolving some 
 of these secrets may have perished, with the thousands of early 
 English books and papers, which have returned to dust unseen 
 and ungleaned. Yet, so long as we have under our eyes the copy 
 of Gascoigrie, which belonged to Gabriel Harvey, and the copy 
 of Spenser which belonged to Michael Drayton, with their 
 MSS. notes, need we despair? — more especially regarding such 
 unhoped-for recoveries as the Letters of Jonson and Chapman, 
 however in themselves insignificant, and of 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 ! 
 
 The rise and development of Puritanism was not the only 
 factor in achieving almost the nearest approach possible to the ex- 
 termination 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 in- 
 tolerance, lifted up their voices against profane and voluptuous 
 writings. Men and women began to acquire and cherish the 
 Practice of Piety, the Temple, the Synagogue, the Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress, the Holy ffar,znd thousands of other pious and enthusiastic 
 elFusions, which gradually effaced the works of the playwrights 
 and lyrists all over the country, and from the pulpit and in private 
 
8? 
 
 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 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 survived 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. 
 
 It has been stated, and it is indeed 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 
 Puritanism ; and when we perceive the ostensible tendency of the 
 poet himself to keep aloof from his contemporary environments, 
 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 Shakespeare," 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." * 
 
 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 
 
 * Tour Generations of a Literary Family, by W. C. Hazlitt, 1897, i., 32. 
 
whose antecedents it is to be regretted that we hear nothing. 
 Was he the representative of a pilgrim father ? Was he of the 
 Warwickshire stock ? Was this reserve, this reticence, a pre- 
 vailing trait ? 
 
 Collective editions of dramatists were little 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 life-time, 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 receive a similar 
 homage till 1647; and the Plays of Marlowe, 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 Jdonis and Lucrece. But the cost and risk of the h\\o 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 com- 
 mitted to type, and others required careful emendation. We 
 must not say that the volume, as we hold it in our hands to-day, 
 is not excessively creditable to those who made themselves respon- 
 sible for it, for we are 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 appreciated, that the precious and unique book, 
 
89 
 
 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. 
 
 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, Heming and Condell 
 say : " We 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 of the dramatist. For the relative 
 accuracy of the plays first published in 1623 the world may there- 
 fore be indebted to the care exercised by such as had the task of 
 converting Shakespear's possibly not too lucid characters into 
 something more intelligible to the compositors. The history of 
 the transition of the pieces previously printed in an imperfect 
 shape to their places in the folio, and of the peremptory need of 
 their co-operation in the process of forming an acceptable text, is 
 too obscure to make its discussion serviceable. It is a part of the 
 subject beset by inconsistencies 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. 
 
90 
 
 The measure of editorial attention and vigilance in the con- 
 duct of the folio of 1623 through the press was anyhow sensibly 
 governed and stimulated by the friendly and intelligent 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. 
 
 The panegyrical matter attached to the first and second folio 
 editions of the Plays, as well as that scattered among separate 
 publications, partakes of the same inadequate quality, from a 
 modern point of view, and from our comparative critical standard. 
 There were throughout these complimentary tributes, with a 
 willingness and desire to do justice to the departed writer, symp- 
 toms that 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 noticeable even 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 unforgettable senti- 
 ment, where Jonson pronounces his great friend " a Monument 
 without a Tomb." As poetry, they are forsooth indifferent 
 enough. 
 
 The familiar and often-quoted lines by Milton on Shakespear, 
 commencing : — 
 
91 
 
 " What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd bones 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? " 
 
 seem to be borrowed, so far as the opening and cue go, from a 
 passage in the play of Tancred and Gismunda, 159 1, 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 Lyctdas and Comus had perhaps fallen in with 
 the old drama, and had assimilated the image. But it was the 
 same all round. Everybody took what suited him from everybody 
 else, and made what he could of it. The result depended on the 
 dexterity or the power of the taker. 
 
 The cases are sufficiently rare, where, during the interval 
 between the closing of the theatres and the Restoration, the 
 dramas of Shakespear were demanded even in book-form. The 
 exceptions are the Merchant of Venice^ 1^52, Lear and Othello^ 
 1655, 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. 
 
 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 contem- 
 plates 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 Shakespearian knowledge, among such as ought 
 
 * Hazlitt's Dodsley, vii. 48. 
 
92 
 
 best to have known, was so low in or about 17 lO, that Lintot the 
 publisher, in editing the lyrics to accompany the then recent 
 edition of the plays by Rowe, informs us that "it is generally 
 agreed he dy'd about the year 1616," and he makes this circum- 
 stance a ground for holding that the Passionate Pilgrim^ having 
 been printed seventeen years before his death, was published by 
 himself. Extrinsically or bibliographically speaking, the lan- 
 guid 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 estimated — 
 so that the prophecy of Thorpe in 1609 as to the usurious rise 
 in the value of these productions was very far from being speedily 
 fulfilled. 
 
 I incidentally note elsewhere that 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 eighteeenth 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 the first folio of the Plays, 
 brought out in 1623 at 20^., had temporarily receded to i\s. 
 These are samples of the call for such books by generations not 
 unwilling to pay heavy amounts for volumes, which at present 
 command scarcely any amount whatever. 
 
 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 occasional 
 
93 
 
 references to him and them in such works and authors as I have 
 indicated. During the seventeenth century and the commencing 
 years of the eighteenth there existed a minority, w^hich 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 affectionate 
 regard. 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 1 761,* are certainly 
 far from important ; yet they are entitled to rank as the starting- 
 point in the process, scarcely even now 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. 
 
 The process of recovery and rehabilitation in this matter 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 accessions to Shakespearian biography has been to 
 shew, on the one hand, how incomplete our material yet remains, 
 and on the other, how close to the surface more or less important 
 evidences have lain during ages. Our earlier commentators or 
 editors would have been immeasurably surprized to learn that in 
 the Journal oi 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 recreation, the plays of Hamlet 
 
 * In the singularly uncommon edition of the Works, 8°, 1761. The 
 copy, which I used, has been sent across the water to Mr. Furness, who had 
 been unable to obtain one for his Variorum. 
 
94 
 
 and Richard II. were performed on board.* Such unlooked-for 
 information, of which the amount has insensibly accumulated till 
 it more than equals the extent of the original biographical data^ 
 obliges us all to feel that we are in a transitional state of know- 
 ledge, and that no one can guess what is to be the next surprize. 
 
 * Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 1865, p. cxi. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 More fa'vourable conditions for dramatic turiters about 1587. T'uio independent 
 schools of theatrical management. Henslowe and Alleyn. The Burbages, 
 Tarlton, and Skakespear. Thomas Cory at on the English and Continental 
 stages about 1610. Opinionof John Florio on the English drama of his day. 
 Gossan and other contemporary critics. Some particulars about the Eliza- 
 bethan theatres, internal arrangement, and prices of seats. Dramatic 
 exhihitions in inn yards. Sixpenny rooms at the theatre and their occu- 
 pants. Elizabethan play -bills altogether different from ours. Methods of 
 ad'vertizing neiv pieces. Contrast between the old and the modern pre- 
 sentation of plays. Early theatrical headquarters. Suburban districts 
 fa-voured by managers and actors. Particular interest of Fulham, Parson's 
 Green, and other localities on the nuestern side of the metropolis. John 
 Florio, Holofernes.. 
 
 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 effect 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 
 succession, so far from James I. bringing into fashion the bigotry 
 of Scotish life and thought, the passion of the aristocracy for play- 
 going 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 unimpeachable repute. Such were Shakespear, the 
 Burbages, Alleyn; such was Lawrence Fletcher, the son of a 
 bishop ; and such indeed were all the Fletchers, Dr. Giles Fletcher 
 
96 
 
 having written that remarkable dramatic poem on Richard III., 
 which preceded the Shakespearian play in the order of its appear- 
 ance. Such, once more, were Nathaniel Field, alike actor and 
 author,* and Augustine Phillips, of whom the latter left under his 
 will in 1605 a thirty-shilling piece in gold to his fellow Shake- 
 spear — almost the sole memorial of the kind. 
 
 The standing of Shakespear himself when he had occupied 
 some years in London as a dramatic recensor, and had given to 
 the world two original lyrical productions, mentioned soon after 
 their issue in 1593-4 by Clarke in his Polimanteia, 1595, and by 
 Meres in his JVifs Treasury^ 1598) 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 elevation 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 considerable proportion of the theatrical 
 performers mentioned in the first folio edition of Shakespear, 1623, 
 occur as communicants in the books of St. Mary Overy's, South- 
 wark, a church within easy reach of the Globe and other theatres, 
 and readily accessible to our poet himself during his residence in 
 the Borough, if he thought proper to take part in such obser- 
 vances. From the general tenor of his writings 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 invaHdate the 
 significant fact that the conventional estimate of the stage in the 
 Shakespearian era had sensibly risen, and that the more distin- 
 guished followers of the profession at least were desirous of being 
 recognized as reputable members of society. 
 
 * His brother Theophilus was nominated in 1609, on the special re- 
 commendation of the King, to the living of St. Peter's, Cornhill, and became 
 Bishop of Hereford. 
 
97 
 
 Two types or schools seem to offer themselves to our notice 
 in the theatrical annals of the Shakespear era: Henslowe and 
 Alleyn, and the needy clients whom Henslowe at all events 
 ungenerously remunerated; and, on the other side, the two Bur- 
 gages, father and son, Tarlton, and, above all, the man of genius 
 und 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, 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 neighbours in 
 Shoreditch. 
 
 Alleyn and Henslowe, related by marriage, and equally men 
 of practical character, did not confine their attention to 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 dis- 
 position, once baited a lion at the Tower, 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. The poet specifically alludes 
 to the famous bear Sackerson in the Merry Wives. 
 
 Theatrical management at the outset was not improbably 
 viewed as a more or less precarious speculation, only fit for per- 
 sons 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; but the 
 founder of Dulwich College does not seem to have followed the 
 calling. Nor was this plurality limited to managers, for Tarlton, 
 prince of the old school of low comedians, was concurrently the 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 keeper of a tavern, and evidently made one vocation play into the 
 other. 
 
 The ancients conducted their theatrical arrangements under 
 different 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 buffet^ 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 insti- 
 tutions as the Gaiety, the Criterion, and the Pavilion. The 
 fellowship between the playhouse and the bar was of very early 
 growth and uninterrupted in its continuance, and a 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 restaurants. 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 receiving 
 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 play- 
 house under the same roof and management. 
 
 The writers of the day appear to suggest that fruit was sold 
 in the Stuart, if not Elizabethan, theatre, and in one place 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. 
 
 Gosson, in his Plays Confuted in Five Actions^ printed about 
 1 58 1, 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 
 
99 
 
 wooing of gentlewomen, what are we taught r " * Sir William 
 CornwalliSjt more particularly speaking of Paris Gardue, writes ; 
 " There is another sort worse than these, that never utter any- 
 thing 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." Puttenham, however, in his Arte of English Poesie, 
 written some years before it was published in 1589, already 
 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. 
 
 In the tract entitled Martin'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 
 penny of Elizabeth, worth about sixpence of our reckoning. But 
 Lambarde, 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." 
 
 Going a little farther back, in a jest-book of 15673^ 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; 
 but in this case the performance was nothing more than an impu- 
 dent trick. 
 
 Some interesting and prizable particulars of contemporary 
 performances of Shakespear's plays are already before the general 
 
 * English Drama and Stage, 1869, p. 18 r. 
 
 f Essayes by Sir William Cornwallys the yonger, 1606, sign. H 3. 
 
 X Tales and Siuicke Ansiueres, 1567, No. 133. 
 
 H — 2 
 
lOO 
 
 reader. They are derived from the Diaries of John Manningham 
 and Dr. Forman, and from the scantiness of such information are 
 not well to be over-valued. But the mention in a printed book 
 of 1598* of the visit of Robert Tofte, whom I have signalized 
 below as a traveller and a probable acquaintance of the poet, to 
 the exhibition of Loves Labor's Lost, then a new play, 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. So it is in almost 
 every instance. 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. Yet is it a suggestive glimpse, and of 
 its kind unique. 
 
 In the English Drama and Stage, 1869, it was the object of 
 the present writer to draw as far as possible into one focus all the 
 available documents and treatises connected with the theatres 
 under the Tudors and Stuarts ; but the scheme remained incom- 
 plete. In the printed volume, however, 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. Running 
 through the contents, there are entries of obvious pertinence 
 almost innumerable : how ladies mistook the actors for the per- 
 sons whom they represented; 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 play- 
 
 * Alba. The Months Minde of a Melancholy Lo'ver, 12"., 1508. 
 
lOI 
 
 houses; 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 strewing 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 horseload. These are merely indications ; and for 
 the rest I must send the reader to the volume itself. 
 
 The dearth of personal testimony to the state of the theatres 
 of London in former times may make it warrantable to quote a 
 passage from a volume of Travels in England,t written by a 
 Frenchman (H. M. de V.), 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 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." 
 
 * Has this connection between the inns so called and theatrical exhibi- 
 tions any bearing on the notice in a Stuart broadside cited by me {English 
 Drama and Stage, ix.), that players are under the sign Taurus ? 
 
 \ Memoires et Observations Faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre ; A la 
 Haye, i6y8, 8°. 
 
102 
 
 At the commencement of the Civil War, and just before the 
 suppression of the theatres, the author of the Stage-Player's Com- 
 plaint^ 1641, specifies sixpenny rooms, occupied by women of bad 
 character in the hope of attracting prentices or lawyers' clerks, and 
 threepenny galleries ; so that prices seem to have risen in greater 
 proportion than the probably lower value of money. 
 
 But in 1677 the 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 currency. The taste for theatricals had since 
 1641, however, experienced a great revival. 
 
 Playbills, as we understand the term, were unknown in, and 
 indeed long after, the days of our poet. What are described in 
 more than one place as bills of the play were advertisements 
 attached to vvalls or other conspicuous places, announcing a forth- 
 coming performance. In Merry Tales and ^ulc1{^ Answers, ^S^li 
 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 
 isuch 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 Lin man in 1602,* shews, 
 if it were necessary, a similar use of the expression. In 1587, a 
 privilege was accorded to John Charlwood for the " onelye 
 ymprintinge of all maner of Billes for players"; and this right 
 appears to have been subsequently exercised by James Roberts, 
 whose place of business in Barbican had been previously that of 
 Charlwood, and was convenient for the East End theatres. 
 
 * Collier's "BibliograpMcal Catalogue, 1865, i. xliv., quoting a letter of John 
 Chamberlain, 19 Nov., 1602. 
 
103 
 
 The practice of " setting up bills," preparatorily to the exhi- 
 bition of a play, was equally usual in Germany, and Cohn 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 broadside of a precisely analogous descrip- 
 tion 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 proclamation. \ 
 
 A second mode of notifying forthcoming novelties was an 
 
 intimation of the project through the Epilogue or chorus at the 
 
 end of a play, as in the Second Part of Henry IF., 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 foregoing extracts are given, 
 
 are not in the foundation-plays. 
 
 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 indicates that the 
 lines were delivered in a kneeling posture. 
 
 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 161 1, 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 
 
 * Shakespeare in Germany, 1865, facsimiles at end. 
 
 f Le Cry et Proclamation Publicque pour iouer la Mistere lies Actes dtl 
 Apostres en la Ville de Paris, 1541. Reprinted in facsimile, 8vo, 1830. 
 
104 
 
 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. Nor would the Blurt, 
 Master Constable of Middleton, 1602, or the Venice Preserved of 
 Otway, 1682, have been regarded as truer to historical facts and 
 local colouring by an Italian spectator. 
 
 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 
 Shakespear and the actors who interpreted his text, rendered the 
 subject, so far as his local knowledge enabled him to judge. 
 
 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 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 per- 
 formances, as they were successively exhibited on the boards in 
 town and country, it argues much alike for the author and the 
 
105 
 
 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 sentiment, and their 
 refined humour to crowded houses, embracing 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 Marl- 
 borough was born, learned all their history at the Curtain, the 
 Blackfriars, and the Globe. 
 
 The anecdotes, which we have inherited, of the approach of 
 Shakespear to the Court in connection with the performance of 
 his own pieces or even those of others belonging to his theatre, 
 have, if we desire to estimate them at their true value, to be read 
 with a recollection, that all theatrical spectacles exhibited before 
 our earlier sovereigns took place, not at the ordinary playhouses, 
 but at the private one, long known as the Cockpit, in Whitehall. 
 This consideration 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 surrounding circumstances, are liable to 
 misconstruction. 
 
 Anyone tolerably conversant with the drama of the period 
 will probably assent to the comparative freedom of the Shakes- 
 pearian series from grossness. 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 appren- 
 ticeship to the profession as a corrector and performer, possibly 
 
io6 
 
 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. 
 
 The original theatrical headquarters, when Shakespear entered 
 on his career as a dramatist, were Shoreditch, Blackfriars, and the 
 Borough. 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 profession lived 
 and died; among the rest Edmund Shakespear the actor, brother 
 of the poet, is noted as interred at Southwark with special marks 
 of respect in 1607. Shoreditch and Southwark alike were in those 
 days by no means unpleasant places of abode ; they were still fairly 
 open, and beyond lay the unbroken view of the country ; and it 
 was here and hereabout that Shakespear spent much of his time in 
 labour so fruitful for him 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. 
 
 Far beyond the precincts of the theatres and the bills of 
 mortality a practice had arisen in the Elizabethan time of resorting 
 temporarily or otherwise to some of the western suburbs ; 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 residences for a 
 large number of literary and theatrical celebrities belonging to the 
 set, which Shakespear actually knew, or to their immediate suc- 
 cessors under the earlier Stuarts. There certainly appears to have 
 been a predilection for this 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 
 retirement in other directions. 
 
107 
 
 From the Elizabethan period onward literary men, actors, 
 managers are found choosing by preference these western and 
 southern suburbs of London as temporary or permanent places of 
 abode. We are able to trace them at Dulwich, Fulham, North- 
 End, Walham Green, Parson's Green, and Mortlake, and whereas 
 it is unhappily the case, that during his protracted and continuous 
 stay in the capital the private movements of Shakespear are 
 enveloped in almost impenetrable mystery, we are left to surmise, 
 how far he was in the habit of finding his way hither at intervals 
 of leisure or on emergencies. 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 the 
 men, whom he so well knew, 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 here- 
 after noticed. There was Robert Burbage at North End, where, 
 moreover, master William Plumbe, Esquire, must have received 
 his nephew Joshua Sylvester : 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 1596 offered 
 the additional interest of having at the Palace Dr. Richard Fletcher, 
 father of the better-recollected playwright and member of a family 
 remarkable for culture. Certain among these arrived at a point of 
 time too advanced 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 necessarily imper- 
 fect, and here we are clearly at any rate on classic ground. 
 
io8 
 
 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 subsequently 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. 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. Yet the great dramatist 
 undoubtedly knew both at an anterior period — Florio, when he 
 lived in Shoe Lane or in St. Clement's 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 performances in 
 his general censure of English plays as "perverted histories without 
 decorum;" if Holofernes sat for Florio, we can be at no loss to 
 guess which, the Italian or the Englishman, dealt the more telHng 
 stroke. So far as the name goes, it is found as a dramatis persona 
 and the title of a play, before Shakespear was born.* 
 
 * Manual of Old English Plays, 1892, v. Holofernes. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Principle of dramatic adaptation of great antiquity. Abundance of MSS. sub- 
 mitted to the theatres by outsiders as luell as professional dramatists. Pieces 
 luhich may ha've come in this ivay to Burbage's Theatre, luhile Shakespear 
 ivas serving him as an Editor. Arden of Faversham, Warning for Fair 
 Women, Mucedorus, 6fr. A Shakespearian Apocrypha. Absence of a lami 
 of copyright. Shakespear predisposed to treat all available material as his 
 oiun property. Sciography. Robert Greene and his friends — their attacks on 
 Shakespear. Greene's o-wn sins. Shakespear betvueeni^Hl and i^g2. His 
 earlier 'work solely adapted material. His method. His rapidity or quickness 
 of study, y^ast difference between the first sketch and the perfected nvork. 
 Great ad'vantage of elaboration of outlines. His probably inconsiderable 
 obligations to book-learning. Publications -within his reach, to •which he may 
 have resorted in unequal measure. Rarity of the early quartos incidentally 
 explained. First known collector of them. 
 
 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, 
 vvrhich were supplied by the writer himself, his friends, or his 
 successors. Of about an hundred and thirty plays ascribed to 
 Plautus, for instance, it is stated by Aulus Gellius that only 
 about a fifth was actually from his pen, the remainder being 
 works by anterior playwrights, and revised by him to render them 
 suitable for an improved, or at all events altered, taste. This 
 reference is worth notice, because to some extent it displays a 
 perfect analogy with the state of the theatre, when our Shakespear 
 first undertook to castigate and embellish certain manuscript efforts 
 of others, some already introduced on the boards, others deemed 
 impracticable without previous recension, before he commenced 
 his own independent career as a dramatic creator. 
 
 Of this kind of material it may be securely judged from 
 extant evidences, that there was never a failure. It came from all 
 
no 
 
 sorts of persons, who thought that they possessed the dramatic 
 gift, and of course much has totally disappeared. I should like to 
 be able to persuade myself that in one instance Shakespear, or at 
 all events the theatre, to which he was attached, was approached, 
 directly or otherwise, by a second comparatively young man, who 
 had written plays, and desired to see them performed, but not to 
 disclose his identity. 
 
 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 ; and the theory, that he accompanied the players, 
 who visited Stratford in the year just named, appears to be unsus- 
 tained either by evidence or likelihood. He was only four-and- 
 twenty, and had the task before him of shewing his quality, before 
 he could emerge, even with the help of well-wishers, from the 
 most subordinate rank among the staff at the playhouse, to which 
 he first attached himself. 
 
 There are several plays of the melodramatic class, such as 
 Arden of Faversham, A Warning for Fair Women, and others, 
 which have been thought by the earlier critics to be Shakespear's, 
 because his style was visible, perhaps, here and there ; and there is 
 before us a choice of two solutions of this literary puzzle. Either 
 an inferior writer more or less successfully imitated in a passage 
 or so the manner of his contemporary, or the poet himself was 
 commissioned in the earlier portion of his career to read manu- 
 scripts, and insert or revise sentences and portions of scenes at his 
 discretion. The comedy oi Mucedorus, 159^5 has been sometimes 
 held to contain a passage interpolated by Shakespear ; but this is 
 very doubtful. The piece was perhaps from the pen of H-eywood, 
 and, if so, it would be his earliest known printed production. A 
 play, which betrays far stronger marks of an editorial hand — that 
 hand Shakespear's — is the Reign of Edward the Third, pubHshed 
 in 1596 ; and a line in Sonnet 94 is incorporated verbatim with it. 
 His treatment of such a subject would be strictly in a line with 
 
Ill 
 
 his English historical series, just as Titus Andron'tcus, so far as he 
 is actually responsible for it (Ravenscroft in 1678 had heard that 
 he only retouched it), may have led the way to the Roman Plays 
 kngo intervallo. Many of the so-called Doubtful Plays are 
 misnamed, so far as their Shakespearian parentage goes ; they 
 constitute rather an Apocrypha, while, on the contrary, in reading 
 some of the strictly anonymous pieces produced and printed down 
 even to 1600 we can never be sure, that the eye and hand of 
 a master have not been there ; and in a drama, for instance, such 
 as Look about Tbu, 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. 
 
 In another way the presence of the poet behind the scenes, in 
 the earlier stages of his career at least, must be allowed to have 
 afforded him an excellent opportunity of hearing what manus- 
 cripts were in course of submission or under consideration at the 
 leading theatres ; and there is nothing improbable in an old note 
 on the title-page of the play of George A' Green, the Binder of 
 Wal{efield, 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 : " Ed. Juby saith that this play was made by Ro. Green." 
 Juby was part- writer of a drama on the subject of Samson, per- 
 formed in 1602. The two statements are not irreconcileable, as 
 Greene may have altered a production originally composed by 
 another pen, nor was he too scrupulous to have appropriated the 
 labour of the minister without acknowledgment. 
 
 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 
 
112 
 
 publicity, when no press existed, combined to favour a general 
 habit of plagiarism, especially as regarded 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 bor- 
 rowed, 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 demonstrated, was a prominent 
 disciple of this school, and he can scarcely be said to have drawn 
 any line. For from the dramas of others and from their lyrics he 
 drew whatever 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 over- 
 head. It was feuille morte. His immediate predecessors and 
 contemporaries unconsciously prepared material in book-form or 
 otherwise for one, who almost exclusively read with a single 
 object- — the transmutation of what they had written into what he 
 thought that they should, had they been of his turn of mind. 
 
 His readiness to shew toward his predecessors, wherever he 
 •deemed it worth while " the sincerest flattery," might be illus- 
 trated 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, 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 cue 
 of a passage in Hamlet. In act 2, scene 2, there is the place, 
 where the Prince expatiates on dreams : — 
 
"3 
 
 " Ham. O God ! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself 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 merely the shadow of a dream. 
 
 Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow." 
 
 More than half a century ago a contributor to the Shakespear 
 Society's Papers, Mr. H. G. Norton, of Liverpool, reprinted from 
 a fragment of five leaves in his possession " The Waking Man's 
 Dream," conjectured by him to be a portion of a reprint of the 
 Storyboolc by Richard Edwards described by Warton the his- 
 torian as having been seen by him at Chichester in the hands of 
 Collins the poet. This relic commences with what is called The 
 Fifth Event in these terms : "The Greeke proverbe 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 sciographical 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—" 
 
 The present feature in the poet's literary history has not 
 failed to receive attention from others ; and I therefore forbear to 
 pursue it beyond dwelling for a moment on the rather important 
 part which this phase of life and thought plays in the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream and its convenience for dramatic purposes. It 
 dates back to the Hebrew Scriptures and possibly farther. 
 
 Robert Greene, who was the foremost member of a small 
 literary clique, which attacked Shakespear, and who represented 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 the latter as "beautified with their feathers," did not hesitate to 
 press into his service a tract by Francis Thynne, when he was in 
 search of a topic for a fresh pot-boiler ; and his ^uip for an Upstart 
 Courtier^ ^592, where he so violently assails the Harveys, is little 
 more than a rechauffe of the Debate between Pride and Lowliness, 
 printed by Thynne about two decades before, and (as Greene 
 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-Conycatcher and a She- 
 Conycatcher, ^592, was served up by some one else as a new cate 
 of his own under the title of Thieves Falling Out, True Men come by 
 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 
 vulnerable, if Shakespear had cared to recriminate, which we 
 may rest satisfied that he did not publicly do, much less in 
 print. 
 
 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 esta- 
 blished 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 oi jealousy and dislike. We are surely to allow 
 
"5 
 
 the lapse of half-a-dozen years for such a measure of success on 
 the part of one, who had exchanged his provincial for a London 
 home, with a view to a livelihood, 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 nucleus or a 
 skeleton of some sort was forthcoming, was nearly incapable of 
 expiring, before "Johannes Factotum," as the angry Greene 
 christens him, had a notable record to shew. One of the most 
 interesting problems, with which the present small undertaking 
 deals, is immediately connected with this epoch and this phase of 
 the poet's career. 
 
 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 dislike of his finisher or 
 rather transformer, of which we hear from Greene. But the 
 advantage, which Shakespear derived from the employment of 
 the performances of his predecessors, however crude, was very 
 great — 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 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. 
 
 I — 2 
 
ii6 
 
 The dramatist 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 narrative written for the 
 closet into one suitable for the stage. Much more of other play-r 
 Wrights' 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 glorified beyond 
 identification. 
 
 The method of Shakespear seems to have been to procure or 
 adopt a groundwork in print or manuscript, to accumulate sugges- 
 tions 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, shown to him, 
 or submitted for his revision. It was of course no original practice, 
 but one, which the Roman dramatists had freely followed, both 
 as regarded the employment of existing material and its reproduc- 
 tion as their own work.* 
 
 The reputed solecisms of the dramatist in historical, geogra- 
 phical, 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 delineation. 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 to every phase of human sensi- 
 * Beloe's Aulus Gellius, i., 190. 
 
117 
 
 bility — to our everlasting sense of humour, of beauty, of terror, 
 of pathos. I 
 
 With his subtle and happy intuition, on which rests, perhaps 
 more than on anything else, his fame to-day, it stands differently ; 
 and it is conceivable that it was sparingly appreciated by con- 
 temporaries. 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 Andreiu 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 but 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. 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 among the moderns most resembles him. 
 
 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. com- 
 position ; yet there is evidence that plays written by such ex- 
 perienced 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 associated himself, secured him a control over 
 his papers and copy ; and there is little or no ground for the 
 apprehension, that, whatever may be the case with mere slight 
 r'lfaciment'i of other men's work, any production with a distin<;t 
 claim to his main authorship has failed to descend to us, > 
 
ii8 
 
 The loss of contributions or offerings to the theatres in 
 London, however great it may have been, was probably insigni- 
 ficant in comparison with that, which we have sustained from 
 the destruction of dramatic literature once extant in Greece and 
 Rome, if any conclusion is to be drawn from the references and 
 extracts in such works as the Deipnosophistoe of Athenaeus 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 appropriation of detached 
 incidents and expressions, which he very probably in some cases 
 husbanded against an opportunity for use, than to complete depen- 
 dence on any given original ; which goes some distance toward 
 repeating, that the set of volumes known as Shakespear' s Library 
 is in fact 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^ trans- 
 lated from the French by a fellow-playright, Anthony Munday. 
 Perhaps he did no more than carry away the terms of the title- 
 page. 
 
 From his dependence on cues and hints, 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 contemporaries; 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 from the printed book before him to the stage and 
 
119 
 
 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 conference 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 rather voluminous and imposing 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 Shakespeariana 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.* 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 com- 
 prehensive miscellanies as the Mirror for Magistrates^ the Palace 
 of Pleasure^ Fenton's Tragical Discourses, and Scot's Discovery of 
 Witchcraft ; but Holinshed's Chronicle, Fox's Martyrs, North's 
 Plutarch, and perhaps the English Froissart, were bulkier under- 
 takings, which he could hardly afford to ignore or neglect : the 
 Holinshed for the English historical 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 Ovid and the English version of the World 
 of Wonders by Henri Etienne, to the latter of which Mr. Caldecott 
 
 * Recently Done's Polydoron, 1631, fetched a high price at a sale in Lon- 
 don, because in an enumeration of family patronymics are instanced such names 
 as Shake-spear I 
 
120 
 
 attached no slight importance.* Two primers, the Sententite 
 Pueriks and Lily's Accidence are cited as having fallen under his 
 notice, and he expressly quotes the Mantuan Eclogues of Battista 
 •Spagnuoli, of which, however, 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, it is improper 
 to deny to Shakespear, above all, the credit of being sufficiently 
 conversant with these elementary manuals to select what suited 
 him; and if we could be sure that the Aldine Ovid in the Bodleian 
 really passed through his hands, and received the honour of his 
 mark of ownership, we should much more easily believe that he 
 was fully qualified to grasp the contents. 
 
 The unexpected usually occurs. At any moment, 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 obliga- 
 tion 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 those romantic productions, 
 such 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 performance on the stage, for beyond 
 
 * See Hunter's Neiu Illustrations of Shaltespeare, 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 Shakespearian era, and 
 while the poet enjoyed opportunities of meeting or hearing of them. The 
 name of Paul Hentzner is well known 5 but the Due d'^ Rohan was in EnglStid 
 in 1600, and there is a printed account of his travels, 12°, 1646. '^ 
 
121 
 
 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 representation, or 
 desired to refresh their memories at home, rather than as literary 
 productions deserving of shelf-room. The consequence is, that 
 exceedingly few collections of the quartos were probably formed 
 at or about the time; and the one hundred and twenty-two, 
 contained in six volumes, which Henry Oxinden of Barham, 
 near Canterbury, enumerates as being in his possession in 1647 
 (and they may very well have been at Barham long before), is an 
 isolated record. The Oxindens are elsewhere specified as being 
 among the Kentish gentry of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, who distinguished themselves by their taste for lite- 
 rature. This series of volumes, long since dispersed (it is to be 
 more than feared), included Udall's Ralph Roister Doister, The 
 Taming of a Shrew, 1594, and Shakespear's Hamlet, 1603. The 
 only other collector and holder of such literature known to me 
 was Griffith Williams, Bishop of Ossory, a contemporary of 
 Oxinden ; he had certainly one extremely valuable volume of 
 Elizabethan dramas, which occurred for sale at Manchester in 
 1 88 1, in a library consigned from North Wales. 
 
 I laboriously copied out for the Huth Catalogue the entire 
 list from the MS. Common-place book of Oxinden in that 
 library ; but the matter was suppressed (with a great deal more) 
 by Mr. F. S. Ellis, to whom Mr. Huth unluckily confided the 
 editorship. It is said that there is a similar series of volumes at 
 Mostyn. 
 
 Perhaps of all these sources of inspiration that which comes 
 nearest to the dramatic analogue in merit is the one {Pericles) 
 where Shakespear had only a partial share in the composition — the 
 Pattern of Painful Adventures, by Laurence Twyne, which is 
 
122 
 
 even now far more readable than Rosalynd or Pandosto, and 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, 1549, Fen ton's Guic- 
 ciardini, 1579, and Harington's Ariosto, 1591, as well as to the 
 Palace of Pleasure above named. 
 
 The volume of material, of which we have the nett matured 
 essence in the Plays, falls under two distinct and almost inde- 
 pendent categories: that, which the poet derived from more or 
 less attentive perusal of books and pamphlets within 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 modi- 
 fying the dramatis personce, and even of changing the consum- 
 mation. 
 
 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 1 manners 
 and ancient history ; and among his personal 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. Then, once more, there 
 were such within his cognizance as could make up for his own 
 
123 
 
 shortcomings in languages, as could explain to him the purport of 
 passages in foreign works not yet accessible in English, and cor- 
 rect sentences or phrases essential to a dialogue. When one looks 
 at the reasonable possibilities, the resources of the writer outside 
 his own observation and intuition were ample enough. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Self -Culture. Value and influence of 'verbal communication. Rabelais. An 
 ostensible source of error. Giulio Romano. Characters and incidents drawn 
 from life. Falstaff and the buck-basket. Vindication of the poet from 
 illiteracy and ignorance. The censure ofjonson. Superiority of Shakespear 
 in a knoiuledge of bis art. Curious slips in the Plays. Their prevailing 
 character historical. Deliberate disregard of the Unities. The poet to be 
 estimated in the aggregate. 
 
 The opportunities of Shakespear for self-culture, subsequently 
 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. Our 
 national poet, in the first place, quitted home, as it is taken, in 
 1586-7, fairly grounded at Stratford school, richly stocked writh 
 all the knowrledge of nature and human nature, which the country 
 was capable of yielding, with a fair insight into legal details and 
 terms, from the paternal necessity or humour for litigation and an 
 intercourse with his cousin Greene, and an at least superficial 
 acquaintance with theatrical matters derived from the companies, 
 which periodically visited Stratford and neighbouring places within 
 reach. 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 theatre in Shore- 
 ditch ; and the latter — the unprofessional section — -were possessors 
 by training or practical experience of the most widely varied 
 
125 
 
 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 educa- 
 tion more fruitful than book-lore and academical courses. Like 
 Hobbes of Malmesbury, the poet set little by reading, but on 
 different grounds. He preferred 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 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. 
 
 The taste for continental and even more distant excursions 
 had been created and fostered, just about the time when Shake- 
 spear began to seek material for his work, by the widely and 
 rapidly diffused spirit of maritime adventure and discovery. We 
 hear,, independently of practical explorers like Raleigh, of such 
 men as Thomas Lodge, Bartholomew Young, Lewes Lewkenor,* 
 Robert Tofte, and Nicholas Breton, all more or less well-known 
 names, acquiring in the Elizabethan period a familiarity with 
 foreign travel, and visiting France, Spain, and Italy ; and, on the 
 other hand, numberless were the persons of all European nation- 
 alities, who came to London, and with whom it is not particularly 
 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 Js Ton Like It, while Young 
 translated the Diana of Montemayor, where there is a hint of a 
 passage in the Winter's Tale. When one turns over the pages of 
 a volume such as the translation by Lewes Lewkenor of the 
 Spanish Mandevile of Miracles of Torquemada, 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. A remark in a book, as in 
 conversation, has often proved capable at the hands of a man of 
 * See Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany, 1865, p. xix. 
 
126 
 
 genius of an indirect or ulterior bearing unimaginable by the 
 writer or speaker. 
 
 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, supple- 
 mented by a moderate amount of desultory reading, which rapid 
 study turned to usurious profit. 
 
 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 to this country, at least from Tudor 
 times, and through the performance of plays by our theatrical 
 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 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 
 concerned, this aspect of the question is mainly confined to a 
 German version of portions of A Midsummer Night's 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 
 1 66 1 — 3, the latter separately printed at Amsterdam in i6i8. 
 
 * Did Prince Otto of Hesse obtain, when he was in London In i6i i, that 
 copy of Marlowe's Ednvard II., 1594, now preserved at Cassel ? 
 
127 
 
 The Gryphius volume also includes the play of Carden'to, licensed 
 for the press in 1653 ^s 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 und 
 Celinde^ Oder Ungliicklich 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 suffi- 
 ciently treated in readily accessible books. 
 
 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 Nighty 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 contents. Hunter* has gone into this matter 
 rather fully; and I see nothing to add to his account or view. 
 
 The theory that Shakespear, where he refers to the advan- 
 tages 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 appearance 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. 
 
 * Nenu Illustrations, i., 391 et seqq. 
 
128 
 
 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 ascertaining. 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 store- 
 house of every imaginable item which caught his eye or his ear 
 at home and in London. The most signal illustration of this 
 ubiquity, so to speak, is the late discovery, after much vain 
 research, that he had taken the phrase, " Aroint thee, witch," 
 from an entry in the borough records of Stratford. All was fish. 
 
 The poet passed through two successive stages of instruction : 
 the first during his rural career prior to 1586, while he was 
 mentally assimilating all the folk-lore of his own and the con- 
 tiguous 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 consider- 
 able, 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 with him, nothing could 
 be more natural than that he should seek their incidental aid, or 
 that they should communicate to him details, which might strike 
 them as serviceable. 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 undertaking, 
 
129 
 
 he would make the book a topic of conversation, and even place 
 portions of it in MSS. in the hands of those, v/hom 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 surprise 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. 
 
 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 difference and disparity are 
 of course ascribable 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 prototypes to the dramatic form, where there 
 existed peculiar facilities for selection and modification. Thus 
 our poet enjoyed, his marvellous faculties always granted, two 
 distinct points of vantage : the antecedent play, which yielded 
 at any rate a basis, and the prose or metrical story, which he was 
 at hberty to use at his discretion. Many groundworks, them- 
 selves in their entirety impracticable, had left the press, and were 
 ready to hand, when he began to write : Twyne's Pattern of 
 Painful Adventures^ 1576; Greene's Pandosto, 1588; Lodge's 
 Rosalynd, 159O; and Holinshed and Plutarcht were at his elbow, 
 
 * So we find Cotgrave the lexicographer communicating in an extant 
 letter of 1610 with some one deemed likely to be of service to him in his forth- 
 coming book. 
 
 f North's translation first appeared in i579- 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 whenever he chose to resort to them. 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 ; and beyond such aids as I have named there were 
 innumerable pamphlets and ballads multiplying themselves day by 
 day, and illustrating many phases of European history, not to 
 mention the English Froissart, which was apt to repay examination 
 for Henry V. 
 
 What has been more or less satisfactorily christened Shakes- 
 pear's Library by no means, then, exhausts the stores, which were 
 at the writer's command; and he had, as I have more than once 
 noted, a farther advantage in the enrichment of the conversation 
 of the time with the results of foreign travel and discovery. Apart 
 from the harvest of actual observation, let us remember that 
 the poet had been bred at one of the best of the old pro- 
 vincial grammar-schools, and that he found, on quitting it, an 
 actual surfeit of advanced books of instruction or reference even 
 outside those of a strictly historical complexion. For the market 
 began about 1560 to swarm with an endless assortment of small 
 manuals directly calculated for the use of teachers of languages and 
 their pupils, travellers, and continental visitors, but from Shakes- 
 pear's point of view full of suggestions for dialogue and character. 
 This family of literary aids the present writer has elsewhere* rather 
 fully described and exemplified ; with the compilers it is not extra- 
 vagant to suppose a personal intimacy. 
 
 Too emphatic stress can be scarcely laid on the weighty 
 share, which oral communication had on the writings of a man 
 who, if he glanced at accessible or current books, was intolerant 
 of their permanent ownership ; and I deem it as well to cite the 
 view of Francis Douce,t immediately relevant to the Tempest to 
 the effect that the conversation of the time might have furnished 
 
 * Hazlitt's Schools, Schoolbooks, and Schoolmasters, 1888. Unfortunately % 
 considerable proportion of the small edition was destroyed by fire. 
 •J- Illustrations of Shakespeare, \., 5. 
 
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, forcibly applies to such 
 a writer as Rabelais, who occurs in As You Like It^ pursuant, no 
 doubt, to more or less appreciative comments on him and his 
 work in London literary circles. 
 
 Instances indeed occurred, where verbal communications 
 miscarried 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. Reference 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 Shakespear'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 thev were oral 
 there is slight doubt ; and if one may argue from the known to 
 the unknown, an imperfect or inaccurate statement 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 distin- 
 guished from those borrowed from books or hearsay, have become,, 
 from the long lapse of time and the fundamental changes of sen- 
 timent and usage, sufficiently archaeological to demand editors 
 
 K — 2 
 
132 
 
 and scholiasts. But when these characters were originally depicted 
 on paper, and represented on the boards, they were such as spec- 
 tators of average opportunities and powers of observation had no 
 difficulty in recognizing 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 speculations. 
 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 exigencies ; 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 Shakespear 
 to divest of an air of antiquity, as far as possible, all his imper- 
 sonations, and hence sometimes sprang his anachronisms. 
 
 All evidences adding to the already immensely increased 
 knowledge, that Shakespear faithfully reflects in his admirable 
 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 buckbasket carries on the face of it an appearance of impro- 
 bability, looking at the physical dimensions of the excellent 
 knight, till we see that in those days baskets were not uncom- 
 monly employed by porters to convey home persons who were, 
 as we should say, drunk and incapable, and who did not wish to 
 come under the cognizance of the watch. There is an anecdote 
 of Sir Joceline Percy, who was born in 1578, was knighted in 
 
'133 
 
 1599) 2nd died in 1631, where a son of the Earl of Northumber- 
 land engages a porter to take him in his basket to the place where 
 the knight lodged, and where the fellow, on his arrival, cleverly 
 eludes observation, and deters spectators by giving out that his 
 freight has the falling sickness.* 
 
 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 rejoinder of Jonson, that it would have been 
 well if Shakespear, instead of never blotting a line, had blotted 
 a thousand, is in harmony with the persuasion of many, who 
 peruse the plays and poems (especially the Sonnets). Taking 
 the heavy aggregate, there is an abundance of passages, which 
 might have been revised, of lines, which might have been can- 
 celled, of phrases, which have the air of having been insufficiently 
 considered j 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, 
 nor in what way the additions to the first (posthumous) folio were 
 made. The weakness is particularly visible in the Sonnets, inso- 
 much that one is led, as I have stated, to entertain a doubt, 
 whether they are genuine as a whole ; and another respect is in 
 the rhymed tags and certain current allusions introduced on the 
 spur of the moment, like the mention of the loss of Marlowe in 
 jIs Tou Like It — a deplorable couplet, disfiguring that beautiful 
 drama. In fact, 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 
 * Thorns' Jlnecdotes and Traditions, 1839, p. 65-6. 
 
134 
 
 present is a fact too obvious for discussion. We have onFy 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 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. 
 
 Such unanimity has prevailed respecting the defective culture 
 of Shakespear, that we stand in danger of receiving the idea, as it 
 Jjas been transmitted down to us from his own age, and as it is 
 almost compassionately recorded in the writings of others. The 
 illiteracy of the poet, for which the evidence is far from clear, 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 been 
 sensible of its share of truth, and have applied himself, with the 
 aid, partly of books, partly of more learned friends, 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 bringing in unsuitable quotations. Gobbo, as 
 a Venetian or Italian, very naturally uses the term Via for Away ! 
 * Act II., Scene 2. 
 
'25 
 
 but in the same speech he betrays his ignorance by speaking of 
 " devil incarnation." 
 
 In yfs Tou 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 rejoins : " O know- 
 ledge 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 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. 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 vi^ay 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 difference 
 between the two writers. The former he perhaps knew chiefly, 
 if not solely, from the English version of the Menachmi, 1595, 
 on which he is held to have partly based the Comedy of Errors. 
 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, having been grounded in one of the 
 most celebrated provincial grammar-schools — that of his native 
 town — he devoted his utmost energy and attention to the supply 
 of his educational deficiencies by fruitful contact with classical 
 students, travellers, and linguists. Jonson, whose sentiments and 
 views were apt to fluctuate in obedience to passing impressions, 
 recorded his notions about Shakespear, when the latter was no 
 
136 
 
 more, in terms to some extent qualified, yet on the whole signi- 
 ficant of his sense of the possession by the departed poet of excep- 
 tionally high gifts. To that appreciation I shall revert ; but here 
 I desire to find room for the notice, which Mr. Lee prints in his 
 biography,* of the estimate by Jonson in his Poetaster, 1602, 
 just when his contemporary was lavishing on the world some of 
 his finest, most unapproachable, and most characteristic composi- 
 tions; where he, curiously enough, makes Shalcespear's natural 
 genius take precedence of all rules of art, and prognosticates his 
 immortality. This splendid homage may be taken to have been 
 committed to paper when Jonson had had the opportunity of 
 founding an opinion, not only on some of the historical plays, but 
 on the Merry Wives on the one hand and Hamlet on the other. 
 
 His 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 continental, which 
 may be thought to impugn the authorship of such pieces as Arden 
 of Faversham, A Yorkshire Tragedy,?inAx}s\z Puritan, beyond such 
 slight touches as he might have introduced in the capacity of an 
 Editor. With the Reign of Edward III., 1596, it may be- 
 thought to stand rather differently, and on more than a single- 
 ground; for this piece entered into the historical series, with 
 which the hand and name of the poet are so closely associated,, 
 and while certain passages are generally allowed to betray his; 
 presence, the last line of the 94th Sonnet is common to the 
 drama, as if, like Goldsmith, he liked to reiterate a phrase or a- 
 figure which had pleased him. 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 audacious disregard of all unities, and reliance for success 
 and approbation on a profound truth of insight and an amazing 
 
 * Life of Shakespear, 1899, P- I74' 
 
137 
 
 intellectual fecundity. He, in common, according to Florio, 
 with all our English playwrights, made havoc of all 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 prejudices 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, is not to be constrained by 
 scholastic and local technicalities. His dramatis persona were 
 drawn from all sides, and became naturalized subjects of the 
 British crown almost as much as the actors who filled the 
 parts. 
 
 We have to consider and weigh even such a writer in the 
 aggregate. It was at one time the fashion among some readers 
 to quote him as an irregular genius. But such a piece of criticism, 
 instead of being viewed in an unfavourable light and sense, ought 
 to be received as flattery, since all that it can signify is that in 
 certain places Shakespear approached a little more nearly to the 
 normal level, while by his higher flights, more frequent 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 occasion- 
 ally 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, offers 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 addition to his failure, to revise the 
 
138 
 
 manuscripts, there has come down to us all such a monument as 
 no other age, no other country, can shew. 
 
 The general estimate of Jonson, however, 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 inattentively 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 perspective, 
 and to exercise a judgment based on the modern canons of com- 
 parative criticism. Jonson was not so situated. 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 pre- 
 decessor 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 substitute another name. 
 
 The prodigious disparity 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 committing 
 to paper impressions, remarks, names, and other details, which he 
 might not require for immediate use, we are only able to guess 
 
»39 
 
 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 Hamlet t speak of them. They were issued in book-form 
 for the pocket, and although the majority of copies has perished, 
 at least six impressions are recorded between 1577 and 161 1. J 
 They were, of al^ephemerides, the least hkely to survive. Yet, is 
 it not perfectly natural and legitimate to apprehend that the poet 
 gave his character — his alter ego — what he himself was wont to 
 use? These tablets were part of the vast heritage of modern 
 Europe from the ancients. 
 
 * Book I., ch. 19. 
 
 f 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." 
 
 X Hunter's Nenu Illustrations of Shakespeare, ii. 225, where these aids to 
 remembrance are carried back to 1523, or thereabout. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Promness of Shakespear to Farce. Its Origin and Moti'ves. Prominence on 
 title-pages of comic impersonations. The Clo'wn on'the old stage. Tarlton, 
 Kemp, and Armin. Free use of the names of real personages in Plays. Old- 
 castle and Fastolfe. Parsons the Jesuit as a critic of Shakespear. The 
 Boars Head. 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 desultory training at home 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 diametrically opposite drift. This feature entered into 
 dramatic spectacles, when they ceased to be wholly religious or 
 allegorical, 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. 
 
 So we see that Shakespear, with his natural insight, wrote to 
 some extent down to the popular grasp and demand ; and I hold 
 that he did so not altogether without a certain share of genuine 
 relish and complacency, an inheritance from early rural associa- 
 tions. 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 impersonations of the poet carried 
 in his case, where he says in A Vindication of Poetry : — 
 
141 
 
 " 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 
 
 Tr'inarchodta^ ^650, witnessed the performance of those dramas in 
 
 which Sir John FalstafT 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 compensation ! 
 
 The mind of the poet could scarcely fail to have been power- 
 fully impressed and influenced by the succession of pieces apper- 
 taining 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 
 and Jac\ Ju-ggler^ Ralph Koister Doister and Gammer Gurtons 
 Needle^ and the rest of the dramatic library, which constituted the 
 earlier portion of what is known as Dodsley's Collection, were 
 doubly serviceable to Shakespear, inasmuch 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. 
 
 The attention of the dramatist was drawn to Plautus by the 
 English version of the Menoechml^ published in 1595 ; but at a 
 prior date an adaptation of the Amphitruo of the same Roman 
 author had appeared under the above-mentioned title of Jack 
 Juggler — a piece of dramatic humour, which must have com- 
 mended itself to Shakespear, whatever its literary or artistic short- 
 comings may have been in his eyes. 
 
 The gods have, from the most ancient times, jealously asserted 
 their rights. Seneca,* speaking of the Mimes of Publius Syrus, 
 * Beloe's Aulus Gellius, iii., 301. 
 
142 
 
 implies that they were calculated by their language for the upper 
 gallery. Shakespear here obeyed a traditional demand; and it 
 was, we may be sure, no reluctant compliance. 
 
 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 — arguably to both. 
 This is particularly evident from the prominence accorded to the 
 fat and ridiculous Knight in the Merry JVives, 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 
 Lovers Labor'' s Lost are termed "excellent 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 contem- 
 poraries 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 title-pages of the early quarto plays were, it is to be 
 more than suspected, the handiwork of the stationer, who issued 
 them ; and they are not, on the whole, immoderately pretentious. 
 Yet in that of the Merry JVives, 1602, it is deserving of attention, 
 how the humorous and laughable side is accentuated, and how 
 clearly intentional prominence is given to Falstaff, Sir Hugh 
 Evans, Shallow, Slender, Pistol, and Nym. The authorship of 
 the alluring forefront 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. 
 
 The discovery, which, as I take occasion to shew, 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 
 
143 
 
 plays altered to suit the requirements of showmen at fairs and 
 markets. All that the popular voice demanded in A Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, for instance, was an interlude called Bottom the 
 Weaver; and this, and others constructed on the same principle, 
 proved saleable in a printed shape. The clown usurped the first 
 place in the cast. 
 
 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 VI. was given on political grounds in several 
 parts of London, and equally so from the occasional practice of 
 curtailing a performance for exhibition at Court, as in the 
 abridged versions oi Much Ado in 1613 under the names of Bene- 
 dick and Beatrice and of Twelfth Night shown in the early part 
 of 1623 under the title of MalvoHo, 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 rudimentary 
 and transitional productions, which fill the opening volumes of 
 Dodsley's Collection in the last edition this personage, in his 
 capacity as the Vice, is seen to occupy a rank proportioned 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, such as Tarlton and Kemp, lent special 
 importance to this feature in theatrical exhibitions both before and 
 during the age of Shakespearj and their performances, although 
 from their nature and object eminently and primarily ludicrous, 
 were equally distinct from the later performance — almost in 
 dumb shew in the days of Grimaldi — and from the still more 
 contemporary and vulgar treatment, which reduced the clown to 
 a motley and garrulous bulfoon. 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 
 * See Notes under Henry nil. 
 
144 
 
 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 almost unquestionable contact of Shakespear as a youth 
 with Tarlton, that great master in the art, was an excellent 
 introduction 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. 
 
 Besides Tarlton and Kemp, a man highly distinguished as a 
 comic artist was Robert Armin, who also resembled them in his 
 contributions to literature. 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 of course Shakespear 
 and he were necessarily intimate. He perhaps helped to console 
 the poet for the loss of his old Shoreditch friend. 
 
 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 in- 
 voluntarily. 
 
 A line of distinction has certainly to be drawn, however, 
 between the humorous vein perceptible in Falstaff and other charac- 
 ters, where the author indulges with apparent gusto his own pro- 
 pensity for genuine wit and fun, and those rather tiresome and weak 
 tongue-combats, where he obeys the fashion of the day. The 
 comic and autobiographical elements are found in a thinner strain 
 in the later plays and the Roman series; and we feel the loss. 
 The sublime tragical and philosophical passages or scenes have 
 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 Sonnets he so fully and 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 clues ; and Shakespear might not be emptied of much of 
 his divinity, in Charles Lamb's phrase, if a few characters and 
 passages were cancelled. 
 
 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. 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 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 namesake, and the latter is not 
 impossibly a portrait of an eccentric medical man, who practised 
 at Windsor about the time, with the broken English added as an 
 attraction or a disguise. 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. 
 
 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 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 John Evans, whose burial is recorded under 1574, and of whom 
 the poet might have casually heard. Dramatic licence seems ta 
 have been almost unlimited. The play of Arden of Faversham^ 
 founded on a terrible murder, was played on the stage when 
 members of the family concerned were still living. 
 
 By his nomenclature he ostensibly set far less store than by 
 his portraiture. Where he has not bestowed appellations belong- 
 ing 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 Petrucchio, 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 
 foundation-piece of 1594 it does not occur. 
 
 Not only in the person of FalstafF and in the Merry Wives 
 and other productions, where he presents himself, do we discern 
 the relish of the author for low comedy — one occasionally perhaps 
 carried too far — but there is the appeal to the less educated specta- 
 tors 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 indispens- 
 able, as habits of travelling abroad became more general here and 
 on the Continent.* The Elizabethan 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 sixteenth century as America or Polynesia, and the average 
 play-goer had the vaguest idea of a Duke de Jarmany, and might 
 * Hazlitt''s Schools, Scboolbooks, and Schoolmasters, 1888, p. 255, et seqq. 
 
H7 
 
 very well imagine a cousin-german and a German cousin to be 
 one and the same. The prevailing ignorance is illustrated by the 
 successful impersonation by swindlers of representatives of some 
 German potentate, as commemorated in the Merry Wives. The 
 strange word Garmombles may have been an imperfect grasp of 
 Graf momppelgart 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 Old- 
 castle (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, had fought at Agincourt. 
 The enlistment of names in plays is so often fortuitous or obscure, 
 that there is a great difficulty 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 
 used his poetical licence by transferring it to the other side of the 
 river, where such a house stood in his own day, and converting 
 Fastolfe into FalstafF. There is a tradition that the emendation 
 by which Oldcastle was thus superseded, did not escape the notice 
 of the Fastolfes ; but if any direct objection was raised, it was not 
 pressed, or was not successful ; and Fahtaff remained. The 
 resentment of the Caistor family might have been aggravated by 
 the alleged circumstance that Sir John Fastolfe displayed certain 
 personal peculiarities not dissimilar from his dramatic counterpart. 
 
 But the surrender of the original name was intentionally 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 opportunity of 
 casting a stone at the Protestants and even at the Lollards, for in 
 
 L — 2 
 
148 
 
 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 the writer characteristically serves 
 his own immediate purpose 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, and (in As You Like It) the two Jaques, appears to be a 
 Shakespearian 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 resemblance to their name of that 
 of a disreputable character, aggravated by his association with an 
 inn, of which they were the owners. Shakespear gave way so far 
 as to suppress the name of Oldcastle ; religious sentiment was 
 here to be considered and propitiated, and the Cobhams had 
 influence at Court; but the Fastolfes were not successful in 
 obtaining a similar concession. There is no proof of official 
 interposition in the latter instance. 
 
 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." 
 
149 
 
 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 Lickpenny. The 
 Dagger, in Cheap, is mentioned in A C. Mery Talys, 1526, and 
 still survived in the days of the poet. But I merely adduce 
 such allusions to shewr that Shakespear had no lack of illustrative 
 material at his very elbows, w^hen he portrayed these festive and 
 popular scenes; and they serve as justifying documents. 
 
 The melodious appellation Rosalind was by no means new to 
 English literature, scarcely to Shakespear himself, when he adopted 
 it as one of the persona in As Tou Like It. For in the cast of 
 Loves Labor's Lost the slightly variant form Rosaline presents 
 itself. But Rosalind had been rendered tolerably familiar by 
 Spenser, first in his Shepherd's Calendar, 1579, and again in his 
 Faery ^ueen, 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 black letter 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 treat- 
 ment of the subject, which betray the influence of Lyly, as some 
 of his vocabulary does that of Spenser ; but the lyrical portions 
 ftxe excellent. His book continued to have a sale down to the 
 Civil War : but after 1 609 the stationer does not seem to have 
 discerned 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 
 
150 
 
 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 difference, and Ganymede, 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 Ccelia, which was just beginning to enjoy a fairly durable 
 acceptance ; but he remembered his original, when he made her 
 take the name of Aliena in their flight to the forest. 
 
 In christening other persona, 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 amusement of the occupiers of 
 penny seats. The name of Autolycus 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 ; 
 Chapman'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. Master Sly was doubtless a local 
 obligation. But the name was peculiar. There was in 1611 a 
 Clement Sly, who is described as a fencer and a gallant of London. 
 He closed his career at that date on the scaffold. 
 
 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 
 
151 
 
 offer it ; nor in a minor degree to do so in respect to Puck, who 
 is the corresponding character in A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 Both creations are spiritual and superhuman ; and it is here that 
 the inconsistency and contradiction lie, partly because in the 
 <ielineation of such properties there must always be a difficulty in 
 iixing a limit and a need to be perpetually on one's guard against 
 the incongruous. I suppose Puck to be a development 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. I, 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 I saw, hut thou couUTst not. 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth — " 
 
 Yet, just beneath, we have : — 
 
 "Puck : I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes." 
 
 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. Then Puck commits a 
 mistake by applying the juice to the wrong person. So throughout 
 this mythological feature in the piece. , 
 
 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 realises 
 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 submission; and the sole evidence of the 
 source of the latter's power consists of his possession of a book and 
 a staff. He is realised to us as a deposed Italian Prince, who has pre- 
 sumably studied in earlier life and during his tenure of authority 
 the magical art, which enables him to win the island from a 
 
152 
 
 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. 
 
 But the key to the control, first of Sycorax, and then of 
 Prospero, over Ariel can hardly be said to be fully forthcoming. 
 The power of this spirit is more conspicuous in some ways than 
 that of his master, yet he is successively betrayed into sei-vitude 
 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 freedom. In his conception of Ariel, Shakespear 
 recollected Puck ; and the mightier fairy combines, as we per- 
 ceive, some of the qualifications of Robin Goodfellow or Browiye. 
 Where all is imaginary, the license 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. 
 
 The presentation of Ariel in the song, which is so familiar 
 
 to us all : — 
 
 " Where the bee sucks, there lurk I." 
 
 is absolutely incompatible with the notion, which the poet else- 
 where gives us, of the nature either of Puck or of Ariel. A spirit 
 may have no dimensions; we have no warrant for defining its 
 aspect or compass; 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 fairy 
 
153 
 
 mythology does not appear to exceed the barest hints, and A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream^ so dependent on this feature, betrays slight 
 traces indeed of direct external assistance, although the influence of 
 Lyly has been put forward with some show of reason. The 
 burlesque performance, to which the interlude amounts, was per- 
 haps 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 erudite and interesting monograph of Mr. Chappell on 
 the Music of the Olden Time touches our subject at many points, 
 particularly in respect to the display of acquaintance with musical 
 terminology 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 Shakespear could work 
 ad vivum, and might have under his observation 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. 
 
 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 difficulty and obscurity may be 
 the natural fate of all such ephemerides, 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 with- 
 
154 
 
 out leaving a trace behind them. The same thing is happening 
 under our own eyes. 
 
 Shakespear, more especially when he had acquired a sub- 
 stantial 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 ; and in the Tempest^ composed even 
 later — about 1611-12 — there are vestiges of the same leaven ex- 
 plainable 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 captivating lyrics in the language, 
 melodious productions which we may be sure, charmed Eliza- 
 bethan 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 " Englands Helicon," 1600 — a volume of 
 the highest interest, in which I am disposed to recognise the poet 
 as more than a contributor; and in the structure of the dainty 
 little composition, with which Twelfth Night concludes, we are 
 reminded of one or two of the roundelays in the same fragrant 
 miscellany. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Shakespear and Montaigne. Strong intellectual affinity betixieen 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 Sbakespear and Montaigne. The 
 florio effort a singularly poor one. Its -value to English literature and 
 sentiment. Common characteristics and bearings of the tivo ivr iters. 
 Superiority of the Englishman. 
 
 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 promi- 
 nent publications in that language, and the appearance of the 
 posthumous edition of 1595 under the editorialcareofMlle.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 voluminous 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, intended 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. 
 
 Between 1595 and 1600, when another publisher, of whom I 
 shall have a good deal to say, Edward Blount, applied to the 
 
156 
 
 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 those 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 Strat- 
 ford, 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 
 persons of exceptional culture, and Thomas, who subsequently 
 espoused Judith Shalcespear, was a most lilcely 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 portions 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 repro- 
 duces 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. 
 
 In the presence of a copy of the Florio version once probably 
 or possibly belonging to him, 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 be futile to con- 
 tend, 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 ; and the worth 
 of that testimony would be enhanced, if it could be established 
 beyond controversy, that the signature in the Museum copy is 
 false. 
 
 When the English translation, after many delays, at last 
 appeared in 1603, ten years were requisite to exhaust it; and 
 
'57 
 
 between the second edition in 1613 and the third (1632) nineteen 
 years intervened. The Frenchman, in spite of all his variety, 
 humour, and naivete, 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 performer in 
 plays conferred on him. In his time, and very nearly down to the 
 present, the English readers of Montaigne were extremely few and 
 uncritical ; and that the poet had borrowed from him here and 
 there was almost unknown. Capell was partly aware of it. 
 
 It was natural enough that Shakespear should, with his prone- 
 ness to the impounding of all matter of a convertible character, 
 shew himself particularly alert, when his attention was directed by 
 some accident not absolutely known to us to this singular work, 
 in turning over the pages, perchance (as I have submitted) with 
 Richard Quiney, and earmarking anything which struck him. 
 
 The Englishman might well acquire a peculiar sympathy 
 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 philosophical of Shakespear's writings there 
 is the identical drift to a novel and almost paradoxical view of 
 men and things so conspicuous in the Essays. It is the cue of 
 Hamlet to turn commonplaces bottom upward, and Montaigne 
 does the same. 
 
 The leading circumstances of the life of John Florio, his 
 parentage, his acquaintances, and his pursuits as an author and 
 teacher, are sufficiently familiar. He was an Italian tutor in 
 London, as his father had been before him, and was employed in 
 many noble families, where a proficiency 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 
 
158 
 
 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 of Shakespear. 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's Danes, where the Churchwardens' accounts for the 
 year shew him, in common with John Fox the martyrologist, as a 
 defaulter.* 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 recourse 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 ; t and such a substantial piece of evidence has more than 
 
 * Folio MS. on parchment, 21 Eliz., formerly in the Phillipps collection, 
 and most obligingly placed at my disposal by Mr. Bernard Quaritch. A 
 JVilliam Marlowe was then residing in the parish. 
 
 f Essays, 1600, p. 92, quoted by Hunter, Ne^w Illustr, of Sh. \., 143-4. 
 See my new edition of Montaigne, 1901, i., xl.-xli. 
 
159 
 
 one kind of value and bearing, inasmuch as it not only creates the 
 possibility or more, that Shakespear may have equally had the 
 manuscript under his eyes, before it was published, but illustrates 
 the habit, even of a more 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 production 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 fecilities 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 the 
 reported of the people about the floor of heaven 
 
 cataracts of the Nile, and what phi- Is thick inlaid with patines of bright 
 losophers believe of the music of the gold. 
 
 spheres, that the bodies of those circles There's not the smallest orb which 
 being solid and smooth, and coming thou behold'st, 
 
 to touch and rub upon one another. But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 cannot fail of creating a marvellous Still quiring to the young. eyed 
 harmony, the changes and cadences chenibims : 
 
 of which cause the revolution and Such harmony is in immortal souls." 
 dances of the stars." 
 
 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 was no convert to- 
 
 * Montaigne's Works, by Hazlitt, 1901, i., 243-4, and iv., 17. 
 
i6o 
 
 Gonzalo's philosophy, which he merely enunciates on purpose 
 to laugh at its empiricisfn, although the dramatist has sensibly 
 paraphrased and retrenched the original language. 
 
 But well-known to excess as the passage and resemblance 
 may be, 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) 
 Ils[Lycurgusand Plato] 
 n'ont peu imaginer vne 
 naifuete si pure & simple, 
 <:oinme nous la voyons 
 par experience : ny n'ont 
 peu croire que nostre 
 societe se peust maintenir 
 auec si peu d'artifice, & 
 de fondeure humaine. 
 C'est vne nation, diroy-ie 
 a Platon,en laquelle il n'y 
 a aucune espece de tra- 
 fique ; nulle cognoissance 
 <le lettres ; nulle science 
 Ae nombres ; nul nom de 
 raagistrat, ny de superi- 
 orite politique ; nulvsage 
 de seruice, de richesse, ou 
 de pauvrete ; nuls con- 
 trats ; nulles successions j 
 nuls partages; nulles oc- 
 cupations qu'oysiues; nul 
 respect de parente, que 
 commun ; nuls veste- 
 mens; nulle agriculture; 
 nul metal ; nul vsage de 
 vin ou de bled. Les pa- 
 roles mesmes, qui signi- 
 fient la mensonge, la tra- 
 hison, la dissimulation, 
 I'auarice, I'enuie, la de- 
 
 Florio. 
 
 "They could not ima- 
 gine a genuitie so pure 
 and simple, as we see it 
 by experience, nor ever 
 beleeve our societie might 
 be maintained with so 
 little arte and humane 
 combination. It is a 
 nation, would I answere 
 Plato, that hath no kinde 
 of traffike, no knowledge 
 of letters, no intelligence 
 of numbers, no name of 
 magistrate, nor of politike 
 superioritie ; no vse of 
 service, of riches, or of 
 poverty ; no contracts, 
 no successions, no divi- 
 dences, no occupation but 
 idle ; no respect of kin- 
 red, but common ; no 
 apparrell but naturall, no 
 manuring of lands, no vse 
 of wine, come, or mettle. 
 The very words that 
 import lying, falsehood, 
 treason, dissimulation,co- 
 vetousness, envie, detrac- 
 tion, and pardon, were 
 never heard of amongst 
 them. How dissonant 
 would hee finde his imagi- 
 
 Shakesfear. 
 (Act ii. Sc. i) 
 
 Gon. 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, succession. 
 
 Bourn, bound of land, 
 tilth, vineyard, none; 
 
 No use of metal, corn, or 
 wine, or oil j 
 
 No occupation; all men 
 idle, all ; 
 
 And women too, but 
 innocent and pure ; 
 
 No sovereignty — . . . 
 
 All things in common 
 nature should produce 
 
 Without sweat or endea- 
 vour : treason, felony. 
 
 Sword, pike, knife, gun, 
 or need of any engine. 
 
 Would I not have; but na- 
 ture should bring forth, 
 Of its own kind, all 
 foison, all abundance. 
 
i6t 
 
 traction, le pardon, in- narycommonwealth from To feed my innocent 
 
 ouyes. Combien trou- this perfection ? people. 
 
 ueroit il la republique 
 
 qu'il a imaginee,esloignee Hosnatura modos primum 
 
 de cette perfection ? dedit. 
 
 Nature at first vprise, 
 Hos natura modos prima Thesemannersdiddevise. 
 dedit. Furtliermore, they live 
 
 Ou demeurant, ils viuent in a country of so exceed- 
 en vne contree de pal's ing pleasant and tempe- 
 tres-plaisante,&bientem- rate situation, that as my 
 peree : de fagon qu'a ce testimonies have tolde me 
 que m'ont dit raes tes- it is very rare to see a 
 moigns, il est rare d'y sicke body amongst them; 
 voir, vn homme malade ; and they have further as- 
 & m'ont asseure, n'en y sured me, they never saw 
 auoir veu aucun trem- any man there, shaking 
 blant, chassieux, edente, vcith the palsie, tooth- 
 ou courbe de vieillesse." lesse, with eyes drooping, 
 
 or crooked and stooping 
 
 through age." 
 
 The version by Florio was long the sole ordinary medium, 
 through which a conversance w^ith the book w^as 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 mis- 
 renderings, 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. DilFerent was the case, when it saw the light. It 
 tended to promote the moral and political influence of Montaigne 
 in England, and to enrich our Hterature with fresh ideas and 
 suggestions. Its literal fidelity or otherwise could not stand in 
 the way of that. 
 
 Montaigne differed from his English contemporary, inasmuch 
 as he delivered his views, where they were his own, or referred to 
 
 M 
 
'r62 
 
 himself, direct — without an intermediary; he was not only his 
 own analyst, but largely his own biographer. But our poet, except 
 in those passages 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 facta. All the figures, 
 which move on and off the stage in these dramas were as com- 
 pletely 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. i) and Measure 
 for Measure (iii. i) 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 re- 
 pugnance 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 circumstances of personal unhappiness, 
 to which the exact key is deficient, 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 Shakespearian inspiration. The least known one may be that 
 in the Apology of Raimond de Sebonde* where there is a striking 
 illustration ot the passage in Hamlet, iv., 3, where the prince is 
 interrogated as to Polonius : — 
 
 " King. — Now, Hamlet, where is Polonius ? — " 
 * Book II., c. xii. Hazlitt's ed. 1901, ii., 294. 
 
163 
 
 In the Essay we read: "lice are sufficient to vacate Sylla's dicta- 
 torship ; and the life and heart of a great and triumphant 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 twofold topic is handled 
 in the Sonnets ; and possibly the stanzas, where the writer touches 
 this painful theme, are referrible 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 secondary con- 
 sequence, 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 Southampton 
 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 have admitted to be surplusage. 
 Yet he pleads, rather for others perhaps than for himself, that such 
 titles of distinction, however numerous, having been acquired at con- 
 siderable 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 & inscription des liures, 
 que nous faisons imprimerj" which I apprehend to be exactly what 
 Shakespear felt. I may have occasion to touch this point again. 
 
 M — 2 
 
164 
 
 When one places two contemporary writers, such as Mon- 
 taigne and Shaicespear, before one in one's mind's eye, side by side, 
 one sees that in either case the main strength lay in the present- 
 ment 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 a genius emphatically original. Shakespear has made autobio- 
 graphical disclosures i 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 oppor- 
 tunity and advantage (if it was an advantage) of choosing spokes- 
 men 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, may-be, 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 paradoxical, inversions of ac- 
 cepted 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 
 Montaigne had under his eyes the English plays, especially those 
 of higher reach, he would have been the first to adopt any sugges- 
 tion, which happened to impress him. But he died a year before 
 Venus and Adonis appeared. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Tht Lyrics of 1593-4. Conditions, ixihich fa'voured their successive appearance, 
 Venus and Adonis specially licensed by the Primate. Peculiar feature about 
 the tivo booh. Significance of the motto on the title of the Venus and Adonis. 
 Was Lucrece ivritten in a London suburb ? The plague of 1593. Coe-vat 
 notices of the Poems. The Passionate Pilgrim. Shakespear's earliest critics. 
 Verses bejore the second issue of Florid' s Montaigne ascribable to Shakespear . 
 The 'Verses before Florio's Second Fruits probably not Shakespear'' s. 
 
 The Works are not only classifiable into dramatic and non- 
 dramatic, but the latter may be again divided into two almost dis- 
 tinct types and sections : i. 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 comparative 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 delightful and 
 matchless 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 immeasurably 
 surpass the Fenus 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, and have remained a passive - 
 and neutral spectator of the ambiguous proceeding of Thorpe in 
 1609. 
 
 I am personally in favour of the notion of Charles Knight, 
 whose Shakespearian researches were necessarily imperfect and 
 faulty from the dearth of information in his day, so far as the 
 commencement of the acquaintance between the poet and his first' 
 patron is concerned; and it occurs to me as highly probable and 
 reasonable that the introduction was, perhaps fortuitously, effected 
 through the alliance by marriage of the young Earl with Sir 
 
i66 
 
 Thomas Heneage, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, an official 
 bound in the ordinary exercise of his public duties to come into 
 contact with the theatres, and, as we now know from a recently- 
 discovered MS., himself g.:ppet, who would be apt to sympathize 
 with a young and new writer. Many things are far more fanciful 
 than that Shakespear made it known, when he saw an opportunity, 
 that he had by him the manuscript of Venus and Adonis, and that 
 his noble young friend was not displeased at the idea of being 
 conspicuously associated with the essay, when it assumed a printed 
 shape. 
 
 Whatever may have been the precise origin of the first 
 production of this poem, there is little doubt that a contributory 
 agency to the prompt succession of the Lucrece was the enforced 
 suspension of theatrical performances owing to the plague of 1593. 
 Venus and Adonis was licensed on the 1 8th April, 1593, and Lucrece 
 on the 9th May, 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 Archbishops 
 of Canterbury, the same Dr. Whitgift, 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, had something to do with the indul- 
 gence, and Field the publisher might well be reassured by the hand 
 of the Primate to the entry. ' 
 
 A point of view, which must not be neglected in endeavour- 
 ing to illustrate the personal character of the poet, is the taste and^ 
 self-command, which he shews in the introduction of his works, 
 where it is to be presumed, that he had the opportunity of exercis- 
 ing a direct control. Look at the two earliest products — the Venus 
 
167 
 
 and Adonis and Lucrece in the facsimiles by Ashbee or Griggs — at 
 the forefronts and the preliminary epistles, and note, 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 Sonnets 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 book- 
 seller's garnish as the noble epistle to Lord Southampton is exempt: 
 from cliental adulation and servility. The fashion was, it must 
 be said, not Elizabethan or Shakespearian in its origin, for we 
 occasionally meet throughout the sixteenth century, when regular 
 title-pages had come into general vogue, with similar frugality of - 
 taste or similar reticence ; and, rather curiously, in a book which 
 the poet almost certainly held in his hand — the Hundred Merry 
 Tales — this peculiarity is signally conspicuous. It meets the eye 
 again in the quarto edition of England's Helicon, 1600, a volume 
 probably superintended by Anthony Babington of Warrington, 
 and by the way, not without an equivocal preface of its own ; and 
 the Sonnets themselves, as I remark elsewhere, almost betray the 
 same influence. 
 
 The two addresses to Lord Southampton in two successive 
 years exhaust the recourse of the poet to such a kind of auxiliary 
 tribute and homage. How many farther opportunities he had of 
 linking noble and influential names with his own we know well 
 enough, and we equally know that he never did so. 
 
 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 ruHng 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 forefronts — quite^ 
 an epidemic in his early days, and extending to all classes oft 
 literature. t 
 
i68 
 
 Taken in connection with the complaint in the Sonnets that 
 the name of the writer had contracted a brand from occupation 
 forced on him, presumably that of an actor, the quotation on the 
 title-page of Venus and Adonis : — 
 
 " Vilia miretur vulgus ; mihi flavus Apollo 
 Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua — " 
 
 may appear to receive an unexpected illustration, as the Filia of 
 
 the couplet possibly implies unworthy employments for a season 
 
 discarded, while the despised and discredited performer on the 
 
 boards of other men's plays assumed his true rank among the 
 
 disciples of the Muses under the most auspicious patronage. 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 forefront and introduction to other Shakespearian 
 
 books ; but the most curious feature in it is the quotation on the 
 
 title-page : — 
 
 " Casta placent superis, " 
 
 Pura cum veste venite, 
 Et manibus puris 
 
 Sumite fontis aquam." 
 
 Which sends us back to the Filia miretur vulgus of 1593- "^^^ 
 poet was a contributor to the miscellany. Did he suggest the 
 motto ; albeit he had long resumed his theatrical operations, they 
 were not so irksome in 1600 as they might have been at the 
 anterior date. 
 
 Impartially speaking, it is fortunate for his reputation, that this 
 was no more than a temporary exigency and relief. 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 the description of -the horse in the 1593 volume, 
 regarding the nature of the details, we are probably bound to 
 
169 
 
 recognise, rather than early Shoreditch recollections, yet earlier 
 Stratford ones. 
 
 There is a slender quarto volume in the Bodleian Library, 
 which is entitled to an unique place in our early poetical records. 
 It preserves within its covers the sole surviving copy of the editio 
 princeps of Venus and Adonis, 1593, ^^^ ^ 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 interleaved copy is before me, with his MSS. notes, relative 
 to the buyers and prices. Although the items are said to be 
 purchaseable at the figures attached, no figures appear against 
 lots 395-6; and against the latter we find written by the owner: 
 "£25. o. o. Mr. Malone." The precious relic, which comes 
 second in order, is described as "original edition, elegantly bound 
 in Russia, gilt leaves, extraordinary 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 obtained;" and he properly adds that, as the Licia went 
 with it, the Shakespear really cost only about j^io.* Bindley the 
 collector, who evidently saw the book, recommended 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. 
 
 I have stated that Ford does not assist us in tracing back the 
 Fenus and Adonis to any anterior proprietor ; but a collateral cir- 
 
 * Yet at the Voigt Sale in 1806 Malone gave over ^40 for a tract by 
 George Whetstone. 
 
170 
 
 curhstance enables trie to offer an elucidation, which I regard as^ 
 extremely plausible. During the years 1 804-5, Mr. Thomas Lis- 
 ter Parker, of Browsh'olme Hall, West Riding 6f Yorkshire, 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 literature, 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 pre- 
 sumably more intent on rural employments 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 
 l8io four Caxtons were sold to Lord Spencer, Mr. Grenville, and 
 Mr. Towneley for 165 guineas. 
 
 It is distinctly asserted by Mr. Heber, in a note printed in the 
 Bibliotheca Heberiana,\ 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 
 ];8o4 or the following year under the category of unbound sun- 
 
 * See Account of Browsholme Hall, 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 Gascoigne's 
 Posies, 1575, now in the Bodleian. 
 
 f ConfesMons of a Collector, 1897, p. 25. 
 
171 
 
 dries, in which Mr. Parker, from his youth and inexperience, 
 recognised no importance. The Caxtons appear to hav^ been 
 purchased direct from the owner without an intermediary, the fame 
 of the library having been spread by the Manchester catalogue, 
 and the indifference of Mr. Parker rendering the negociation 
 perfectly feasible. At the later point of time, there is no vestige 
 or suggestion of Ford or of any operation outside the private dis- 
 posal 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 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 superlative moment ; 
 and it was perhaps the best haul, which Ford ever obtained. 
 Among the purchasers was Mr. Gifford, 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 
 carried off the spolia op'ima 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 to- 
 gether 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 provenance, is 
 that in 1805 Ford, apparently a man of no mean intelligence, andi 
 fully aware of the immense rarity of the Shakespear piece, either 
 found it bound up with the Lida, 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 and Adonis would leave 
 j^2000 behind it. Ninety-six years, since, not merely was it ■ 
 
172 
 
 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, and the distance 
 between the author and his contemporary — 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 j and in the same 
 catalogue Lodge's Phillis, 1593, '^ valued on a similar principle 
 at j^ro. los. 
 
 The extremely legitimate hypothesis that special conditions 
 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 ham- 
 lets, which were then separated even from the western side of the 
 town itself by wide stretches of open country, aiibrded 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 — -J'ulham and its environs. 
 
 The same visitation, which is credited with having afforded 
 Shakespear a respite from theatrical pursuits in the metropolis, 
 enabling him to carry out his literary work, and complete it for 
 the press, led Edward Alleyne 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 Southampton by the graceful and dutiful 
 tribute before Venus and Adonis, might be naturally anxious to 
 improve his standing with that popular and wealthy young noble- 
 man, and accordingly made Lucrece follow closely behind with a 
 second and somewhat more confident address to the same person- 
 
173 
 
 age. As a dramatist and actor, the poet could not tail to perceive 
 the valuable assistance calculated to accrue from friendly goodwill 
 in such a quarter under many possible contingencies. 
 
 The innumerable citations of Francis Meres as a witness to 
 the celebrity and appreciation of Shakespear in 1598, in his other- 
 wise not very readable volume called Wit's Treasury, printed in 
 that year, and the marginal reference of William Clarke, in his 
 Polimanteia, 1595, to the Poems, then newly published, have this 
 feature in common, that both were of academical origin ; and it 
 is perhaps not generally recognized, that in the first quarto of 
 Hamlet, 1603, that play is said to have been performed not only 
 in London, but at Oxford and Cambridge. Although, however. 
 Meres was a member of both universities, he seems to have been 
 resident in London in or about 1598; for he dates his God's 
 Arithmetic, IS97', froin his chamber in St. Mary Botolph Lane; 
 and he had relatives of good position in Lincolnshire and York- 
 shire. 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. 
 For he was evidently a student, who included all the most recent 
 publications in his range, and he specifies all the most eminent 
 verse-writers of the day. It 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." The author of Polimanteia describes [Fenus and] Adonis 
 as "Watson's heir," which is surely debateable. Whatever may 
 be the merit of Watson, his mind and that of Shakespear were cast 
 in different moulds. It is to be suspected that in his Sonnets 
 published between 1 581 and 1593' 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 
 
17+ 
 
 Some by other pens, in the Passionate Pilgrim, i599) by. the 
 unscrupulous stationer Jaggard, It was a small heterogeneous 
 miscellany formed somewhat at random, and two of the Shake- 
 spearian pieces had appeared the year before in the earliest known 
 impression of Lovers 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 Fenus and Adonis of 1593 and 1594, and to the 
 Lucrece of 1 594, and that when it reappeared in 1 61 2 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 otherwise. 
 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 himself furnished to the volume by 
 Chester, called Love's Martyr, or Kosalin^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 there are some lines attached to a volume, which was 
 printed (for the second time) in 1613, which have no actual signa- 
 ture, but impress me with the feeling that they can have proceeded 
 only from one pen. They are not in the first edition. I allude 
 to the tribute prefixed to Plorio's Montaigne. This panegyric, 
 which certainly far excels in merit the passage in the Merry Wives 
 elsewhere mentioned, is as follows : — 
 
 Concerning the honor of bookes. 
 
 Since Honor from the Honorer proceeds. 
 How well do they deserve that niemorie 
 And leave in bookes for all posterities 
 
175 
 
 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 oiFering, which was not necessarily the result of an 
 appeal from Florio and was possibly obtained by the energetic 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 
 peculiarity, may have something to do with the residence of the 
 poet at Stratford at this juncture; and the lines would be 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. 
 
 It has always seemed to me that 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 unmistakeable individuality absent from all other compositions 
 of a similar stamp within my acquaintance. They breathe the 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. 
 
 We all know that Shakespear has left in some of his plays 
 
176 
 
 explicit evidence of his perusal of Montaigne,* and that 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 1 59 1 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 acquaintance 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 
 159 1; nor is the superscription characteristic. The verses before 
 the Montaigne are pensive and concise, as they are headless and 
 tailless — in short, anonymous. They read like the written 
 thought of one, who was not in midcareer, in the heyday of life 
 and activity, but who had reached the summit, and had a large 
 retrospect. 
 
 On the contrary, a drama entitled Phaeton was written by 
 Thomas Decker, and acted by the Lord Admiral's men in 1597-8, 
 perhaps at the Rose theatre f; and I offer the suggestion 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 specified 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 unlikely 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 
 
 * Particularly in the Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, 
 and the Tempest. 
 
 f Hazlitt's Manual of Old Plays, 1892, p. 221. 
 
177 
 
 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. 
 
 The poet was not to be coaxed or shamed into joining the voci- 
 ferous phalanx, which wept over the last of the Tudors, and tendered 
 its congratulations to the incoming Stuart, even by the example of 
 his cousin Greene, who penned an ephemeral panegyric upon the 
 notable occasion, A Poet's Vision and a Prince's Glory, of which 
 we should have been entertained by Shakespear's private estimate 
 and valuation. 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 himself in town or country at that 
 particular juncture, he was apt to be equally twitted with his 
 disloyal indifference. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Shakespear's Sonnets considered. Their chronology. Their sequence. Crudity 
 of their style. The dedication to Mr. H^illiam Hammond, under his initials, 
 by Thorpe the finder and publisher. Impossibility of the Pembroke theory. 
 Points in e'vidence and disproof. Analogous inscriptions. Enigmas in fashion 
 in i6og. Vindication of Thorpe. One of the earliest appreciators of the 
 Poet. A MS. of Middletoris Game 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, !fc. Source of the MSS. of Marloiue's Hero and 
 Leander and Lucan. Association of Thorpe and of Edivard Blount luitk 
 this Kentish circle. Also of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, the 
 Diarist. Earliest knoivn collector of first quartos of Shakespear in the same 
 neighbourhood. Chapman and the Walfinghams 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 some time. The 
 'version registered in 1595 not Florio's. 
 
 The Sonnet and the Eclogue have ever been the tw^o 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. 
 The proverb says : " He that has been in the oven himself, knows 
 where to find the pasty," and practical conversance, even if it be 
 at a much humbler level, with the methods of preparation or 
 evolution is masterfully helpful in shedding light on such a body 
 of material as the Sonnets of Shakespear. Both the classes of 
 composition above specified peculiarly lend themselves to hyperbole 
 and fantastic or passionate extravagance. We peruse with interest 
 the Virgilian Bucolics, thoroughly aware of the prevailing vein, 
 and accepting with reserve the political and personal sentiments of 
 the bard, as they are conveyed to us through the interlocutors; 
 
179 
 
 and it was in the year immediately succeeding the publication of 
 Venus and Adonis here in England, that a young Staffordshire 
 man, Richard Barnfield, produced avowedly on the model of the 
 second eclogue of Virgil a very poor and unreadable poem entitled 
 the Affectionate Shepherd. The Latin original strikes us, even 
 with a knowledge of Roman manners, as preposterous enough ; its 
 English analogue is only not repugnant, because it is ridiculous. 
 But my allusion to these works was actuated by the desire and 
 necessity of shewing, how far they partake in common of the 
 structural characteristic and 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. 
 
 The Sonnets have constituted during the greater part of a 
 century backward from the existing time — not from the date of 
 their appearance — such a fruitful and favourite theme for specula- 
 tion and comment that, as the saying goes, to propound anything 
 fresh upon them and their character, would itself be a kind of art. 
 Yet it may prove by no means impossible to accomplish something 
 even in that direction. 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 playwright has united with the obs- 
 curity 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. 
 
 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 a manuscript form or rather 
 as 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. But as a line from one of them is 
 
 N — 2 
 
i8o 
 
 common to a play, which was printed in 1596 {Edward III-)-, it 
 might seem, that a portion of the series was then completed, nor 
 is there any proof that all were in existence in 1598, when in the 
 printed copy oi Love's Labor's Lost two, if not three, evidently part 
 of the gradual accumulation, made their appearance as part of the 
 text. On the contrary, they are precisely that kind of literary 
 composition, which a poet would commit to paper from time to 
 time, as the humour took him, or as he perceived the possibility of 
 strengthening a passage or pursuing an imagery ; and the acquain- 
 tance of Meres with them was ostensibly slight. He refers to 
 them as sugared. A worse epithet could hardly have been chosen. 
 They are certainly impassioned and amatory; but they are also 
 philosophical, misanthropic, bitter, sad, and weak. 
 
 A perusal of the dull and tedious poetical effusions 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 homo- 
 geneous truth of the narrative. A large allowance 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. 
 
 Inferentially the loose papers, of which Meres speaks in 1598 
 as distributed among Shakespear's friends, were collected together 
 by or for Thomas Thorpe, who was a person of superior in- 
 telligence 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 
 
i8i 
 
 hands, in a very intelligible state, and that he found it necessary 
 to supply lacuna arising from damage to the slips of paper, on 
 which the series of stanzas was written, before he delivered the 
 matter to the typographer George Eld or the publisher John 
 Wright. 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 
 Shakespearian utterances, even supposing them to be anterior to 
 the issue of Palladis Tamia. The man, who could have set 
 Thorpe right, was at that juncture, if, as is usually held, Shake- 
 spear was in London in 1609, within easy reach; but — and here 
 is a farther noteworthy point — it was assuredly familiar enough to 
 " the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth," that, had he 
 approached the person most directly interested, he would have 
 found him wholly indifferent to the matter, if not absolutely 
 indisposed to assent to the measure. 
 
 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 material evolving from 
 an intellect of a more than usually sound and practical order, and, 
 if they do not fundamentally reflect the personal and private senti- 
 ments 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 pervades 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 selec- 
 tion are the result of training and self-constraint ; and that even a 
 
I82 
 
 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 and hearing, as it were, they were 
 penned. 
 
 When we come to the Dedication to one individual — that 
 individual a man — we see that there was, first, the Virgilian and, 
 secondly and perhaps immediately, the Barnfield, precedent — 
 Barnfield, a provincial contemporary of Shakespear, a graduate of 
 Oxford, and a youth of twenty. The Sonnets of the Warwick- 
 shire poet were doubtless composed at intervals, under different 
 impulses, at various levels of mood and temperament. There are 
 a few notes of time and neighbourhood; here and there are 
 touches, which bespeak happier inspiration or later workmanship ; 
 while of the literary history of the Affectionate Shepherd we know 
 nothing more than is vouchsafed on the face of the pamphlet, 
 which contains it. Yet this superficial material so far helps us, 
 that it corroborates the widely different notions of those days, when 
 a young poet takes up an equivocal theme, and inscribes it in 
 familiar terms to a noble lady. But there is this vital difference, 
 that, whereas in the case of Barnfield, the treatment is a mere 
 vague and pointless youthful imitation of a classical prototype, the 
 Sonnets embody a direct appeal from the immediate writer to 
 another person of the same sex, impersonating a woman, making 
 way for a woman to speak, and even referring to a marriage 
 consummated by the suitor with someone else. 
 
 It is almost due to Shakespear to accentuate the fact, that he 
 had no proved hand in sending his Sonnets to the press. 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 1609 he was, so far as we know, 
 in the metropolis, and within access of the publisher Thorpe : the 
 
i83 
 
 latter 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. He was at this time a man of about thirty, the 
 son of an innholder of Barnet. 
 
 I have ventured just above on the statement, that no duplicate 
 texts of any of the series is known, or has been cited as formerly 
 existing. But it is obviously not the case, that no duplicates were 
 ever made ; and 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 the editio princeps of Love's Labor's Lost in 1598, and recur in 
 the Passionate Pilgrim, 1599) with textual differences suiEciently 
 material to justify the assumption of two independent sources of 
 supply. Regarding the normal irregularity attendant on the pub- 
 lication of the plays, it would be rash to conclude that the version 
 in this particular drama, although it purports to have received 
 touches from the hand of the author, is the genuine one, yet prima 
 facie the readings of the 4" of Love's Labor's Lost are apt to strike 
 one as more 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 indisputable coexistence of two texts of two sonnets 
 concurrent with the rest, and by the not unreasonable inference, 
 that this book, as it was put into type in 1609, was not only 
 imperfectly arranged, but failed to represent all that Shakespear 
 
1 84 
 
 had written of this nature. For if the recovery of the actual 
 contents of the 1609 volume was fortuitous, the preservation 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 1 609 — 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, 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 others, and, according to a very usual practice 
 among early dramatists, brought in 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 gentle- 
 man was exclusively instrumental in inducing the poet to write 
 them; for the difference between the forms beget 3.nd. get is intrin- 
 sically unimportant, and neither bore or will bear in this case the 
 forced meaning of mere acquisition. When we have persuaded 
 ourselves, that such must be the explanation, we, or some of us, 
 are swayed by an irresistible feeling, that we are no nearer to the 
 truth or the facts; and we are almost compelled to speculate, 
 whether Thorpe was actually ignorant, when he obtained the MS. 
 or MSS., of the circumstances, under which it or they had been 
 composed. Although he lived so near to the publication of the 
 Palladis Tamia of Meres in 1598, and received into his hands the 
 unprinted Sonnets from a person inferentially 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. For 
 
i85 
 
 there is every indication, that his eye had not fallen on the 
 re-impression of the Passionate Pilgrim some time after its appear- 
 ance. Whether Thorpe printed the book exactly as it came to 
 his hands, plus 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 gatherer 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 appa- 
 rently new and a rather strong piece of evidence to demonstrate 
 the 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 161 6, ex- 
 hibiting 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." 
 
 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 personage 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." 
 
 * Prefaces, Dedications, Epistles, 1874, pp. 226-9. 
 
i86 
 
 Yet in i6og — 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. W. H.," and 
 precisely in the kind of strain, which in 16 10 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 Fitton, who, as well as her younger sister Mary, 
 was one of Queen Elizabeth's maids of honour. In the first place, 
 I reply that 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 addresses himself " To 
 the true Ennobled Lady, and his most bountifuU Mistris," and 
 concludes with "Your worthy Ladiships most vnworthy servant." 
 He gives her her maiden name ; but she was at this time Lady 
 Newdegate. The Fitton sisters were what would be now desig- 
 nated free and easy people ; and Lady Penelope Rich, whose name 
 Barnfield associated with his Affectionate Shepherd, was a personage 
 of the same type. The youthful poet superscribes a couple of dedi- 
 catory stanzas "To the Right Excellent and most beautifull Lady, 
 the Ladie Penelope Ritch," and below we read: "Your Honour's 
 most affectionate and perpetually deuoted Shepheard, Daphnis." 
 Barnfield, a mere lad of twenty, was more familiar in his tone 
 toward Lady Penelope than Kemp toward Lady Newdegate. Enig- 
 matical and, as we should perhaps judge, eccentric addresses, as I 
 shall hereafter shew, if it were needful, were about the earlier 
 Stuart time not unfrequent. The theatre itself had contributed to 
 level social distinctions in certain ways. But the fashion and license 
 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 JVoman's Worth; it is perhaps obser- 
 
i87 
 
 vable that it is dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess of Southampton ; 
 but the two auxiliary points about the book are that, (i.) on the 
 title-page it is said to be "written [? translated] by one that hath 
 heard much, scene much, but knowes a great deale more," which 
 occult declaration is succeeded by Munday's familiar motto : Pater e 
 aut abstine; and (2.) that of the four introductory sonnets by 
 Gibson, one is addressed to Mary Fitton, who thus seems to have 
 still maintained her ground in the world of fashion and letters and 
 her situation at Court. A reference to my Bibliographical Collections 
 will shew that other members of the family were long more or 
 less mixed up with public matters, and that in 1595 a certain E.C. 
 inscribed his volume of Sonnets to Edward Fitton, Esquire. 
 
 It strikes me, nevertheless, as out of keeping with what we 
 know of the relation of literary men of any class, especially of 
 dramatists and poets, to the aristocracy at this time to assume, that 
 Shakespear would venture to control directly or otherwise the 
 marriage of Lord Herbert ; 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 1 60 1. The champions of the 
 Herbert theory have gone so far as to cite the passage in Much 
 Ado about Nothing: — 
 
 "Beat. . . . By my troth, I am exceeding ill, heigho ! 
 
 Marg. 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. It is the most gratuitous of assump- 
 tions. Charles Knight in a note on the place adduces an epigram 
 of John Heywood, which the poet may have had under his eyes, 
 and which supplies a more sensible gloss. The epigrams of Hey- 
 wood were still popular in his day. 
 
i88 
 
 One clear ground of preference for the piratical origin of the 
 volume may be thought to be the readiness of Shakespear, ever so 
 apathetic in the unfair treatment by printers and publishers of his 
 literary property, to tolerate the transaction of Thorpe, carried out 
 under his eyes, as it were, during his residence at a stone's throw, 
 so long as it was confined to the familiar disregard of copyright, 
 by which Shakespear was of course only a common suiFerer ; 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. 
 
 It is a mere collateral point, yet I just again note that to 
 some — most — of the few known copies of Troylus and Cressida, 
 published in the same year as the Sonnets, is prefixed an epistle 
 headed : " A neuer writer to an euer reader — News," which 
 I have already ascribed to the pen of Thorpe, and which is a 
 second example of the taste at this time for the fantastic and 
 mysterious. Again, a preface to a historical tract of 1607 
 connected with the Netherlands (B. M. Cat. 1077. d. 59) is 
 somewhat similarly superscribed : " Newes to the Reader, or to 
 whom the Buyer desires to send Newes," and the signature at 
 end is: "Thine, W. BB." These are sidelights, for what they 
 are worth. 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. 
 
 The most recent edition which I have seen of the most 
 recent Life of Shakespear seems to deal in a somewhat cavalier, if 
 not indeed flippant way with Thorpe, who was a publisher of a 
 rather wide range of books, and scarcely merits the depreciatory 
 tone, in which Mr. Lee treats and dismisses him. A glance at 
 the General Index to my Collections would have saved the writer 
 
189 
 
 from this apparent misapprehension ; and it is essential for a literary 
 inquirer even of the exalted pretensions of Mr. Lee, if he intro- 
 duces such particulars, to study accuracy and truth. He fails to 
 do so here ; and I shall have occasion to shew that it is an habitual 
 fault. Dates and titles often operate influentially in deciding 
 doubtful questions; but the contemptuous mention of Thorpe is 
 particularly unfortunate, since it is an unjust aspersion, by which 
 nothing tangible is gained. In coming across the manuscript of 
 the Sonnets, the stationer, or whatever he was, 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, without admitting on his behalf the 
 speculative premises, that he had a confederate in the background, 
 to wit the author. 
 
 The possibly unintentional injustice done to Thorpe may be 
 thought to acquire additional gravity from an omission on the part 
 of Mr. Lee 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-hiving Poet; and he so terms him in 
 1609. Shakespear had at earlier dates been warmly commended 
 by many admirers, but merely in the same sense and measure, that 
 others received general or specific encomiums on their perfor- 
 mances. The 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 advanced judges of the poet's own day. 
 The literary speculator, of whom Mr. Lee does not impress me 
 with the notion of knowing much, was immensely before his time, 
 and in four words defined the permanent station of Shakespear 
 more accurately even than Milton's Epitaph, or Dryden in that 
 very perspicacious notice, which forms part of his Essay on Dra- 
 matic Poetry^ 1668, 
 
 I anticipate the objection that Thorpe applied this form of 
 
igo 
 
 lofty eulogy to the writer, not of the Plays, but of the Sonnets. 
 Surely the word Poet could not be employed in reference to Shake- 
 spear without contemplating his dramatic achievements, which, in 
 1609, comprised nearly all his greatest contributions to the theatres; 
 and the inference rather is, that the publisher of the Sonnets 
 founded his hope of their favourable acceptance on the fame 
 already won by their composer in another and greater field. 
 
 The humble bibliographer farther intervenes to suggest that 
 there are two points in the title-page of the Sonnets inviting some 
 attention. The first is the laconic structure of their introductory 
 leaf, almost recalling the succinct terms of the forefronts of Venus 
 and Adonis and Lucrece, and the variation in copies, where some- 
 times the book is said to be on sale by William Aspley, and some- 
 times by John Wright, at different addresses. Thorpe, in factj 
 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 entirely out of 
 accord with his own practice and feeling in 1 61 6 and with the 
 usage of the time. Failing the acceptance of W. H. as the initials 
 of William Herbert, who succeeded to the earldom in i6oi, critics 
 and biographers have proposed other solutions of what was plain 
 enough, when it was done, and is a riddle only to us. Yet of all 
 the alternatives, which have come under my notice none is so 
 plausible as that suggested by an entry in one of the sale-catalogues 
 of Mr. C.J. Stewart, the eminent bookseller, where a MS. of 
 one of Thomas Middleton's plays (the Gime at Chess) is foun I 
 dedicated to Mr. William Hammond. Who this gentlciTian wn, 
 remains uncertain; but William Hammond of St. Alban's Cou/r, 
 Nonnington, Kent, a kinsman of Thomas Stanley, and a nep.ie./ 
 
igi 
 
 of George Sandys, published a volume of poems in 1655, and may- 
 have had a father of the same names, who had literary tastes and 
 sympathies. This is a bold conjecture ; and one merely advances 
 it, because it is at least on a likelier track than the Pembroke one. 
 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 Mr. William Hammond was of their stock (the elegiac 
 writer, James Hammond, was a descendant) might have told us 
 the whole story; and gratified — or disappointed — us by solving 
 the problem. 
 
 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. Be- 
 sides the Hammonds of Nonnington, there were the Walsinghams 
 of Chislehurst, their relatives by marriage the Manwoods of St. 
 Stephens, Canterbury, the Chewtes and Derings of Surrenden, 
 the Manninghams of East Mailing, the Chapmans of God- 
 mersham, the Lambardes of Westcombe and Sevenoaks, the 
 Goldwells of Godington, and the Oxindens of Dene or Barham, 
 near Canterbury — 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 atheistical opinions. He eluded the holder of the warrant, and 
 died miserably at Deptford in the June of 1593, leaving behind 
 him certain unpublished MSS. 
 
 Five years later, Edward Blount the stationer, having 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 LeandeVy 
 hastily published it — the First Sestyad — while the interest and 
 curiosity in the unhappy case of the translator was yet fresh. But 
 
192 
 
 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 impression, he inscribing 
 the first Sestyad (Marlowe's) to Sir Thomas Walsingham and 
 Chapman the remainder to Lady Walsingham. Chapman ex- 
 presses himself in terms of gratitude to her ladyship; and in 1605 
 he prefixed to his All Fools a dedicatory sonnet to her husband not 
 found in all copies. All Fools was published by 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 intro- 
 ducing 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 Hertford- 
 shire. Of the Manninghams the representative at this time was 
 John Manningham, from an entry in whose Diary Mr. Hunter 
 first discovered the fact, of course unknown to the illiterate Inn 
 itself, that Twelfth Night had been performed in the Middle 
 Temple Hall in 1601-2. So we gradually repeople the Kent of 
 Shakespear's day with a circle distinguished by its literary sympathy 
 and its friendly contact with such men as Marlowe, Chapman, and 
 — why not others? And the reader may be farther reminded, 
 that one of these notable centres in the county, as the poet knew 
 it, was the home of the Oxindens, where the first ascertained 
 attempt to form a collection of the early quartos is proved to have 
 been made ; and that the Manwoods possessed a library of con- 
 
I9J 
 
 temporary literature, the occasional occurrence of books With theif 
 autographs and arms sufficiently establishes. Kent thus appeats to 
 gain an inedited literary and even Shakespearian interest cognate 
 to that already claimed for some of the southern and western out' 
 skirts of London, and for one or two points in the Midlands, 
 Coventry and Warrington, 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 frag-i 
 mentary, 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 issued the poem separately in 1600 with an intro- 
 ductory epistle to Blount, 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 1 600 ; and it is actually specified on the title-page of 
 that volume as part of the contents. All this tends to exemplify 
 the relations between Blount and Thorpe, Blount still retaining 
 his interest in the Musaeus, 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 
 Phillip II. in 1580; but he preferred to associate the undertaking 
 
 o 
 
J 94 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly 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 for retailing purposes. 
 
 The preliminary inscription to Chapman's Byron offers the 
 auxiliary interest of being likewise addressed to Sir Thomas Wal- 
 singham and his son and namesake jointly ; and here the dramatist 
 signalizes Sir Thomas as his honourable 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 diflferent 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 
 
195 
 
 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 ! 
 
 The deduction, which arises from this preamble is, that the 
 Musa;us and Lucan, either one or both, were found at Chislehurst 
 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 instru- 
 mental in "begetting" the collection, 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 approxima- 
 tion to the begetter or collector of the Sonnets, in the same range 
 of country (as I dare to 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 Sonnets, 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. 
 
 o — 2 
 
196 
 
 Independently of the Marlowe and Shakespear, and the two 
 issues of Healey's Epictetus merely interesting to us from their 
 ■Shakespearian 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. A more complete acquaintance with 
 his personal fortunes might have revealed something unexpectedly 
 useful ; we recognise in him a small literary benefactor and some- 
 thing of the humourist; but his footprints are indistinct, and he 
 vanishes into eternal darkness with no farther sign. 
 
 The career of Edward Blount terminated about the same date 
 as that of Thorpe. But it was distinguished by two literary events, 
 to which I have now to advert, because both have a clear and 
 direct bearing on Shakespear at a time anterior, not to the com- 
 pletion, but to the issue, of the Sonnets. In 1601 appeared a 
 ■strange composite volume, now of extraordinary rarity, principally 
 made up of a translation by Robert Chester of an Italian poem, to 
 w^hich he gave the title of Lovers Martyr or Rosalin's Complaint, 
 and of a second composition on the legend of Arthur. At the 
 end, however, occurs an appendix or supplement, virhich forms the 
 teal value and interest of the book in the shape of original verses 
 by Shakespear, Marston, Chapman, and Jonson, those by Shake- 
 spear extending to eighteen stanzas. A peculiarity of this book, 
 apart from the circumstance that it was a more ambitious under- 
 taking than the Musasus, running in fact nearly to two hundred 
 pages, was the absence of any place of sale and indeed of any 
 vendor, for at the foot of the title-page we meet only with: 
 London Imprinted for E. B. 1 60 1. 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; Chapman Blount already knew; and the Arthurian 
 subject-matter of the main portion by Chester recommended it to 
 adoption rather than Chester's name. The stanzas by Shakespear 
 must be taken to have belonged to the same body of floating 
 
197 
 
 material as the Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint, and the fragments in 
 Vhe 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 hq 
 secured the MS. of Pericles ; and could have authoritatively told 
 us, whence he derived it, and how far Shakespear was concerned. 
 He was by possibility uncertain, whether 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 th^ 
 copyright to another stationer, who brought out two impressions 
 in the following year. Blount seems scarcely to have possessed 
 that sort of literary sensibility evinced by Thorpe. 
 
 His most eminent, though by no means his latest, achieve- 
 ment was one of far greater magnitude and of a wholly differen , 
 nature. It was the English version of Montaigne, of which 
 enough has already been heard, and which might never hav^ 
 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. 
 
 The discoveries of these two nugget-winners, Thorpe and 
 Blount, are represented by a small group of books, bearing date 
 between 1598 and 1625, without which our national literature 
 would have been forsooth poorer; the Lucan and Musaeus, the 
 Shakespear's Sonnets, and the Florio's Montaigne, ran a consider- 
 able risk of perishing, had they not stepped forward; and so let 
 them not want their due ! 
 
 Edward Alleyn registers the purchase in 1609 under house- 
 hold 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 contemporary memorandum on the last 
 
198 
 
 page: " Commendacions to my very kind and approued iFrind, 
 B.M." — seeming to bespeak the acquisition by some one, who 
 subsequently gave it to an acquaintance. With this inestimable 
 salvage the Malone copy of Venus and Adonis, 1593, ^^^Yi ^ 
 already explained, possibly make up a triad ; and they are happily, 
 one and all, in English custody. The Oxinden dramatic library, 
 elsewhere noticed, was of early, but I cannot quite affirm, of 
 coeval formation. 
 
 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 pro- 
 longed neglect almost amounting to oblivion. The sole positive 
 evidence of any contemporary of note having manifested sufficient 
 interest in the work to induce him to bestow a few pence on the 
 purchase 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 literature,' which remained intact at 
 Dulwich, I believe, till it was mercilessly and dishonestly pillaged 
 by Garrick and Malone. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Sonnets continued. Absolute authenticity of the entire text can'vassed. Long 
 inter'val, o-ver luhich the Sonnets extended {? 1592-1603). A line in Sonnet 
 94 common to the play of Edward III., 1596. Support for the 'vienu that 
 there is no inner or occult sense in the series. Temptation to look into the 
 Sonnets for biographical helps. Absence of real editorship in them. In- 
 fluence of Barnfield in soTtie, and of other sonneteers. The ad'vocates for the 
 secret history of these productions. Pembroke and Southampton. The Essex 
 plot. The passage or scene from Richard II. publicly performed. No 
 e'vidence of Shakespear's participation. 
 
 Where obscurity and uncertainty so largely enter, as they do 
 
 here, into a topic, the natural consequence is that conjecture and 
 
 deduction have to occupy a- more conspicuous place than in the 
 
 treatment of one, the illustration of which is mainly dependent on 
 
 absolute facts and statements ; and hence arises the danger, lest a 
 
 writer or editor, in avoiding too strong a tendency to guesswork, 
 
 tecomes too sceptical, or the reverse. Now, 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 in 1598, 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 
 
 ■superficial assertion, that the book contains only Shakespear's work, 
 
 goes for nothing ; Jaggard had said the same thing about the 
 
 Passionate Pilgrim in 1599. The circumstances, it is true, are 
 
 ■sensibly different ; the earlier collection embraces matter palpably 
 
 not Shakespearian ; but there is quite sufficient probability, if some 
 
 of the Sonnets should raise a suspicion of a different parentage, to 
 
200 
 
 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 succession of the housp of Stuart, or, in other 
 words, here is a sonnet, which could not have formed part of the 
 ^eries, one of the loose papers, particularized by Meres as in 
 circulation', in 1598. Let me transcribe it : — 
 
 " 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 j 
 Incertainties now crowii themselves assur'd. 
 And peace proclaims olives 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 eighth is neither 
 sense nor metre,* we are told, that there are means of tracing the 
 death of Elizabeth and the advent of James I., which may be so j 
 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 1 598 ; 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 
 
 ( I . ■» I return to this elsewhere. J 
 
2M 
 
 ^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 tw^o sonnets long since printed, and authenticated by 
 their connection with others, as well as by their presence in Love's 
 Labor's Lost; and he may by possibiHty have been misled as to 
 the authorship of some, which he inserts. 
 
 The presence of Shakespear in London, when the Sonnets 
 were printed, and his seeming lack of interest, and even denial of 
 a voice, in the business, only represented what had occurred again 
 and again, when his plays were openly pirated by adventurous and 
 careless stationers, when Hamlet itself was given to the press in a 
 deformed state in 1603, and a second time in 1604; 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 
 somewhat different position from that of actual and popular dramas. 
 Save in this case, Thorpe does not appear to have had any 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. They, or at least Thorpe, made 
 what was clear excessively dark, and we are now trying to undo 
 the mischief. Of conjectures there is a surfeit ; of proof there is 
 absolutely not a tittle. Nevertheless the suggestion that Shake- 
 spear had been unwilling to make the Sonnets public property in 
 the usual manner, and offered no opposition to their appearance 
 with the strange credentials appended to them by a third party, 
 thus absolving him from densure, is may-be not undeserving of 
 
5-02 
 
 attention. If he did not trouble himself to castigate the text and 
 determine the sequence, he -merely followed what we gather to 
 have been his habitual practice. 
 
 One reason for the readiness of the author 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, and try to realize even 
 the utmost possibility of the case, that down to 1597 very little of 
 his acknowledged work had passed the press. The bulk was 
 retained by the theatres, and every elFort used to preclude its 
 publication. 
 
 The average reader of the Plays skips the Sonnets as dull and 
 unintelligible with some tincture of licentiousness. The attentive 
 and intelligent one rises from the perusal (in reviewers* parlance) 
 with an impression, that they present numerous inconsistencies 
 and contradictions. The laborious and scientific student does not 
 actually progress much farther, or 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, arid to have, as it were, a dramatis persona of 
 their own. Some of us have crossed over from one extreme 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 compare 
 unfavourably with their lyrics, where they were, on the whole, so 
 supreme, and which are anyhow their speciality. It is unfortn-t 
 nate, when a waterman undertakes to drive a mail cpach, 
 
 Robin Goodfellow, in his most tricksy irtood, never used his 
 victims worse than Shakespear and Thorpe between them have 
 
203 
 
 ■used us in this matter. We wade through the more than a 
 <;entury 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 w^orlc is areXo?, a literary torso^ loose papers verily ! Small, 
 very small loss to the world and to the fame of the writer had it 
 teen, if the MS. had perished. But then the passage in Meres 
 "would have survived to lead us to imagine its contents so different, 
 and make us miserable for ever. 
 
 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 arrangement 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 literary 
 acquaintances, and that he placed all such trifles together without 
 distinction; nor would any attempt at a new arrangement 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. 
 
 The play of the Reign of Edward III. had been printed in 
 1596, and is probably as well entitled to a place among those 
 which are inserted in the folios as the rest; but the immediate 
 point is that a line in this drama 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 progress of occasional formation, as some idea 
 
2G^ 
 
 stTHck Shakespcar amid hh ordinary work, and was laid aaiAe^ ~-- 
 tfae btilk amounted to the contents of the Thoqje find. 
 
 The opinion, if such a word may be allowed, zhsz there ia ai> 
 inner sense in the Sonnets, on which we can safely i.i-jenii, 
 receives a confirmation, if a feeble one, from -r.e darii-iri of i-jc 
 sequence of i6og in the collectire volume of i6a-j, -sr-.tiri vn* 
 arrangement is entirely different, and the quatorzaira prisena: 
 themselves in the shape of detached aentimens — uides;! "larh _^ 
 that, in which I apprehend that thev -Kirt. ptrcccj^jr inm-r.sei. 
 The edition of 1640 had tqji3.lW no crizics.! v---cerKmor.ig i.-ji -W3» 
 little more than a bookseller's yeriture, ootnorsna', _:k.i "le ~:^" 
 edition of the PtlgrtTrc, 16 12, pxeiss -ct :" :i!aiC.esnear t ttis 
 the last chance of separanm- ~orji zr^e scnuers tt— rran i" rie zr.i^. 
 any not from 1115 pen, L;ci.n-i' 1: "e .-rercnn' smi. fia. "li 
 incongruity or some ot t.ie series i-'d rie iuscuncus rrcunasaicss, 
 under which the book 'wss usr-trt-.; _-— i-'usrsaca aiu. n -wes j. 
 chance of course not uc_izcc, wiiji^ in Tsris TtTr ne rue ic "iit 
 bookseller to regard. 
 
 The quality, no less than t!-e r-^e arLZ"-- :f zie £iinm=s ii5 
 
 long been a debated point, sinre 1 .irri -e--., ;^-iu.-i zijt 
 
 majority, of admirers of the plays r.^sri rrcni tnese i^i; .lo^ttiii r^cii 
 all the lyrical productions of the same pen •sr^n -; — .-g- ncr± ~;;ri 
 indifference. As for the Sonnets, thev are cernunly opea rz zLin'?- 
 Strictures. They strike one as an inconsequent rza^scc-r - n« 
 sentiment is often thin and weak, the d:ct:;r- poor, inc. ^:e — etr; 
 faulty. Yet the case stands with them, as :z does with "■; 
 remaining poems, differently from the dramatic seres. Xhe^ 
 may be in places insertions of words and even porr_ons of dncs, 
 made necessary by the defective state of the pnnter's ccpyj •?« 
 substantially we hold in our hands to-day the zpsissima veroa for 
 better or for worse. 
 
 If the Sonnets were arranged by an editor, ir must have surely 
 been one, who was ignorant of any covert allusion or any necessity 
 far consecutiveness ; but the presumption is, that the printer receiv ic 
 
205 
 
 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 
 ^pect of having been the product of those years, when the writer 
 ■was engaged in London in revising other men's labours, and 
 possibly in talcing parts in the performances. Had he written 
 them in or near the year of issue, I apprehend that they would 
 have been very different ; and, again, had a sensible proportion been 
 -the fruit of maturer thought, the contrast would have been unmis- 
 takably 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 
 Tvhich 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 composition and in the imitation of the Italian 
 •school. 
 
 In 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 1587, when 
 Shakespear was four and twenty, to 1603, when he was forty, and 
 to the consequent growth of taste and experience. Yet few will 
 be probably found to contend that, had the poet written nothing 
 ■ 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 some — 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, 1587-1600, when Shakespear passed 
 
206 
 
 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 more lucrative returns from 
 the theatres, yet also partly from the consciousness of a less marked 
 bent in the other direction. 
 
 There is, in two or three of the series, a vein of self-glori- 
 fication, 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 im- 
 posing mundane things — is, in fact, to be are perennius. This- 
 perilous form of conceit Shakespear outgrew, and it is scarcely 
 discernible even by inference in the plays, where there would not 
 be, of course, the same licence for that sort of personal allusion,, 
 and where the few examples of the kind in relation to others might 
 have been profitably omitted. 
 
 Whatever judgment may be passed on these effusions as- 
 poetical efforts, they are not inferior in that respect to Venus and' 
 Adonis and Lucrece, 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. 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 poor.. 
 Yet, had they been of a finer yarn, they might — probably would. 
 — have been less fruitful in co-operative suggestion. 
 
 The antecedent comparison with Barnfield extends beyond 
 the style and cast of thought : for it is plain that, when he com- 
 posed his Sonnets, Shakespear, who in the Fenus and Adonis and 
 
207 
 
 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 traceable back to Greek and even 
 Oriental sentiment, where the relationship was less fanciful and 
 more gross. Let us recollect, however, that he was the senior of 
 Barnfield by a decade, and that we are entitled to look for some- 
 thing better from a man of one-and-thirty, Shakespear's age in 
 1598, than from one of twenty, Barnfield's age in 1594. 
 
 The extreme youth of Barnfield excuses the blemishes of 
 style, costume, and matter readily discoverable in his maiden effort. 
 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 despotic nature on the English sentimental 
 writers. Barnfield, 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 device in the sonnets appended to his Cynthia, 
 
 1595- 
 
 I believe that the models furnished by Watson and other 
 
 earlier masters in this school of writing were also of service to 
 
 Shakespear ; but this point has been treated by other inquirers. 
 
 The irresponsible and despotic 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 w^hich compose the Shakespear 
 
 series, the theories, hypotheses, and guesses advanced in regard to 
 
 the meaning or aim of much that is found there establish the 
 
 acknowledged existence of ambiguity ; and this feature has been 
 
 deepened and aggravated by our 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 
 
2o£ 
 
 ■piiriosity ; and the dearth of particulars is perhaps the rhore sufr 
 prizing when it is taken into accoimt that, the poet 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 
 l)eheld — only three or four signatures to documents, one accom- 
 panied by two monosyllables in his hand. He wrote his own 
 plays, and corrected plays by other men ; no trace of either species 
 ■of record has come down to us. 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 that the conduct of Jaggard the printer in inserting" 
 the work of another man (Hey wood) as his in a reprint , of the 
 Passionate Pilgrim, i6i2, had offended him, have been preserved. 
 Yet how little has been transmitted about such important persons, 
 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, notwith- 
 standing, that in the case of Shakespear, whose avocatiohs were so 
 constant and so manifold during nearly thirty years, and who was 
 a personage of such exceptional eminence, a mass of precious docu- 
 mentary 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. 
 
 Yet it is to be taken into account that only a single manu- 
 script of Jonson is known — that of the Metamorphosed Gypsies — and 
 that we hold no original letters. We are indebted to Drummond's 
 Notes of his conversations with the poet for a few particulars, and 
 something is to be gleaned from the internal testimony of the 
 Works. Of Marlowe, Greene, Nash, and other contemporaries 
 the information is even scantier, although they wrote so much, 
 and, except Marlowe, were before the world so long. 
 
 During four and twenty years, with occasional intermissions, 
 of a by no means prolonged career, Shakespear was at work in 
 
209 
 
 London day by day, mingling with friends, reading, writing, con- 
 cluding agreements, and filling parts at the theatre ; and when 
 every available source has been exhausted, we contemplate 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 of the most vital problems. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Ihe biographical lesson of the Sonnets. The 'writer in London tra'vels on horse- 
 back to see a man-friend at a distance. On his return he broods onjer the 
 separation. Hint of a third party, a nxioman, in the same direction. The 
 •writer is attached to the latter, but is a^ware of a ri'val, the man friend. 
 Laments the marriage of the couple. 'But consoles himself in a remarkable 
 manner. The nenaly 'wedded folks and the 'writer d'well too far apart for 
 frequent meetings. The marriage appears to be unfortunate for both parties 
 concerned. The 'wife is a dark lady. The 'writer apprehends that she may 
 shorten her husband's days. Obser'vations 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 
 e'ven suicide. Parallel passages from Hamlet and Measure for Measure 
 illustrati've of others in the Sonnets and in Montaigne on the subject of Death. 
 Autobiographical 'worth of the Sonnets. T'wo of the group 'widsly separated 
 placed side by side (Nos. 2 and 73). The 'writer prematurely old at forty. 
 The with Sonnet and Henry Chettle. Shakespear' s abstention from compli- 
 mentary addresses. Critical summary. Dr. Giles Fletcher, Shakespear''s 
 contemporary, on the nature of this class of 'writing. 
 
 If we borrow the eyes of the latter-day seer to enable us to read 
 the Sonnets aright, and blindly surrender our private judgment, 
 we realize and credit many strange things, which we did not 
 previously know, of which we had hardly dreamed as possible. 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 recol- 
 lections of bygone years, a certain type of modern scholarship 
 discloses to us unsuspected material for the biography of the writer 
 and, yet more surprizing, for the secret annals of the court of 
 Elizabeth. We are assisted, if we follow a guide, who has imbibed 
 these views, in distinguishing passages in the lives of Lord Herbert 
 
211 
 
 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 and the dark lady of the book, the discontent of Shake- 
 spear with his lot as a player, and his gratification at the return of 
 Southampton to liberty and favour on the accession of James I. 
 There remains, over 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 original complaint, as if the order, 
 in which we have received 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 
 seduces Mary Fitton, and refuses to marry her, and the other 
 seduces Elizabeth Vernon, and makes her that imperfect repara- 
 tion. 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. Cecil saved him from the scaffold ; but he was 
 imprisoned during the remainder of Elizabeth's reign. The 107th 
 Sonnet is pronounced by some to commemorate his release. 
 
 The wild political scheme, which cost the Earl of Essex his 
 life, is associated with an irregular performance in more than one 
 place, even in the public street, prior to the day fixed for the 
 execution of the coup d'etat, of a theatrical spectacle representing 
 the deposition of Richard II., but not construably connected with 
 the drama by Shakespear. The actors were kept in ignorance, it 
 is said, of the drift of the show, and Augustine Phillips, one of 
 them, received forty shillings for the business — probably it was 
 intrusted to his superintendence. There is no hint of the inter- 
 position of Shakespear; yet there is a powerful probability, that 
 a rumour of the intention came to his ears, and that he had 
 advisedly kept out of the way. Was he at Stratford ? His father 
 died there in the same autumn, and may have been previously ill. 
 
 P — 2 
 
212 
 
 Phillips was examined before the Council ; but neither he nor the- 
 company suffered any penal consequences. Essex alone fell, and, 
 according to the story, even he might have saved himself by a 
 humble submission. 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, assured him that the piece was shown 
 with seditious intent "forty times in open streets and houses."* 
 Southampton was scarcely less guilty than Essex; but his youth 
 pleaded for him, and he celebrated his discharge from confinement, 
 when James I. came to the throne, by a splendid performance at 
 his own residence of " Love's Labor's Lost," at which Anne of 
 Denmark was present, and in which it is hardly too much to 
 assume that Shakespear 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 
 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 Parliament 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. 
 
 The batch of Sonnets has been held to embrace within it a 
 veritable host of covert allusions and clues merely awaiting pursuit, 
 and thus to constitute an unique biographical thesaurus. If we 
 decline to accept this view, and treat these productions 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 
 * Sidney Lee, Life, 1899, p. 138. 
 
213 
 
 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 literary life rewritten, 
 ■saving only those instances, where the author has left a disclaimer. 
 But such an exceptional course tempts us to summon to our assis- 
 tance the well-worn maxim : Ex uno disce omnes. Perhaps to steer 
 a middle course may be the safest and wisest plan ; let us see, to 
 how much that will amount. 
 
 In Sonnet 27 there are these lines: — 
 
 " Weary with toil I hasten to my bed. 
 The dear repose for limbs with travel tii'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 ivhere I abide') 
 Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee — " 
 
 What are we to infer hence, if it is not that the author had paid a 
 A'isit to a friend at a distance, and on his return brooded over the 
 severance ? But in No. 41 comes a disclosure 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 ivooj, iMhat nn'oman's son 
 Will sourly leave her, till she have prevailed ? 
 Ah me ! but yet thou mightst my suit forbear. 
 And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth. 
 Who lead thee in their riot even there 
 Where thou art forcd 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 pro- 
 ceeds : — 
 
214 
 
 " 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 — " 
 
 Wretched Jines, which can import only that the man, by marriage, 
 has 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 indifferent, was scarcely likely to acknow- 
 ledge. 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 panegyrizing the lady. 
 So many bards celebrated so many obdurate or inconstant damsels 
 at this time, that identification 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 1 
 But since your worth (wide as the ocean is) 
 The humble as the proudest sail doth bear. 
 My saucy bark, inferior far to hi';. 
 On your broad main doth wilfully appear — " 
 
215 
 
 In 1596 Bartholomew Griffin 'published Fidessa^ more 
 Chaste than Kind, in which he borrowed passages from Fenus 
 and Adonis and elsewhere. But his sonnets, like those of Shake- 
 spear, may have been in existence before they were printed, 
 and the more famous writer, who here poses as the humbler 
 one poeticd licentia, may have been unaware that Griffin was his 
 debtor. 
 
 I submit for consideration these points in default of any 
 better solution: (i.) Griffin was not only a Warwickshire man, 
 but appears to have belonged to a place so near to Stratford as 
 Coventry ; (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 Fenus and Adonis under his eyes; (4.) Shake- 
 spear's 80th Sonnet suggests his acquaintance with the literary gifts 
 of a contemporary, 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? Jf she relented, and 
 married Griffin, his nuptial state was of brief duration, for his 
 wife (whoever she was — her name was Katharine) became a 
 widow in 1602. 
 
 No. 107, which is elsewhere quoted at length, has not 
 exhausted the strangely elaborate picture of devotion, discontent, 
 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 
 itolerably straightforward and distinct reference to the change of 
 dynasty in 1603. 
 
 The 127th and 144th of the series present the aspect of being 
 •readable side by side : — 
 
2l6 
 
 "In the old age black was not counted "Two loves I have of comfort and 
 
 fair, 
 Or if it were, it bore not beauty's 
 
 name; 
 But now is black beauty's successive 
 
 heir, 
 And beauty slander'd with a bastard 
 
 shame : 
 For since each hand hath put on 
 
 nature's power, 
 Fairing the foul with art's false 
 
 borrow'd face. 
 Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy 
 
 hour. 
 But is profan'd, if not lives in dis- 
 grace. 
 Therefore my mistress' eyes are 
 
 raven black. 
 Her eyes so suited; and they But being both from me, both to 
 
 mourners seem each friend. 
 
 At such who, not born fair, no I guess one angel in another's hell. 
 
 beauty lack. Yet this shall I ne'er know, but 
 
 Slandering creation with a false live in doubt. 
 
 despair. 
 Which like two spirits do suggest 
 
 me still ; 
 The better angel is a man right fair. 
 The worser spirit a woman colour'd 
 
 ill. 
 To win me soon to hell my female 
 
 evil 
 Tempteth my better angel from my 
 
 side. 
 And would corrupt my saint to be a 
 
 devil. 
 Wounding his purity with her foul 
 
 pride. 
 And whether that my angel be turn'd 
 
 fiend. 
 Suspect I may, yet not directly tell : 
 
 Till my bad angel fire my good 
 one out." 
 
 esteem : 
 
 Yet so they mourn, becoming of 
 
 their woe, 
 That every tongue says, beauty 
 
 should look so " 
 
 So far as any sense is capable of being extracted from such 
 wild and vague utterances, which bespeak early composition 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. 
 
 It is known that 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 
 
217 
 
 about its history beyond the hypothesis that it was identical with a 
 piece published in 1657 under the title of Lust's Dominion, Or, 
 The Lascivious ^een, 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,* 
 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 dame's beauties, in their firm hues draws 
 Signs of his fervent'st love; and thereby shows 
 That in their black the perfect' st beauty groivs — " 
 
 The speaker appears, so far as the context allows any clear 
 interpretation, to say that a prejudice against blackness arose, but 
 was eventually overcome. But the whole composition is barely 
 intelligible ; 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. Blackness, however, before the con- 
 clusion of the masque, cedes the first place to Beauty ; and in 
 1607 — 8 Jonson prepared as a sequel his Masque of Beauty. In 
 Othello Shakespear, some time after, reversed the picture, and 
 portrayed the supposed Moor as in love with Desdemona. It is 
 immaterial to the argument that Othello was probably not a man 
 of colour, 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 
 
 * ? rather, "form'd of dame earth." 
 
2l8 
 
 in marriage. The antithesis is the poet's, and upon it — the sym- 
 pathy 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."* 
 
 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 together 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 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 purported 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 was put into type. 
 
 Shakespear was certainly not frugal in his use of poetical 
 license. 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 
 
 * Webster may have derived the title of his White Dewl, 161 2, 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 v?ith an alabaster skin. 
 
219 
 
 in pleading for the equal quality of the blood beneath the sable- 
 skin, the poet went farther than the praise or defence of dark 
 women of his own nationality, and rather evinced that generosity 
 of sentiment, which expressed itself through Hamlet, Shylock, and 
 other characters, in reproof of certain narrow insular prejudices. 
 At the same time the virtue of contraries 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 
 Ethiop's ear. In the Winter's Tale^ Act ii., scene i, 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 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 life : — 
 
 " 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 us. 
 
 And play the mother's dart, kiss me, be kind : 
 
 So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will, 
 If thou turn back, and my loud crying still." 
 
 An extract from No. 152, and a word upon the lines, bring 
 my commentary, so far as any recognizable biographical value in 
 the Sonnets goes, nearly to an end '.^ 
 
 " In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn 
 But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing ; 
 In act thy bed-vonu broken, and new faith torn. 
 In vowing new hate after new love bearing — " 
 
220 
 
 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, while 
 the previous stanzas w^ear the aspect of applying to the man friend. 
 
 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 rectification by any 
 editor, owing to the piecemeal fashion in which the contents of 
 the printed volume accumulated during many long years. 
 
 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 disconsolate 
 life, was surely not an absolute invention. Was it not prompted 
 and justified by unhappy domestic conditions and an enforced 
 severance from all, who should have been nearest and dearest ? 
 In Montaigne, Shalcespear might have met, as I have shown, 
 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 1 602-4 O'' thereabout. The 
 French writer regarded the closing scene more philosophically 
 than his English follower; and a careful 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 : — 
 
 Hamlet (1602) Act iii., Sc. i. Measure for Measure (1604), Act iii. 
 
 " Ham. To be, or not to be, that S^^- I- 
 
 is the question ; " Claud. Ay ! but to die, and go 
 
 Whether 't is nobler in the mind to we know not where ; 
 
 suffer To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; 
 
221 
 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous This sensible warm motion to be- 
 
 fortune, come 
 
 Or to take arms against a sea of A kneaded clod, and the delighted 
 
 troubles. 
 
 spirit 
 
 And by opposing end them ?— to die. To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 
 — to sleep In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed 
 No more .... ice : 
 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams To be imprison'd in the viewless 
 
 may come, winds. 
 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal And blown with restless violence 
 
 coil, round about 
 
 Must give us pause ; there's the respect, The pendent world, or to be worse 
 That makes calamity of so long life : than worst 
 
 For who would bear the whips and Of those, that lawless and incertaire 
 
 scorns of time, thoughts 
 
 When he himself might his quietus Imagine howling — 't is too horrible. 
 
 make The weariest and most loathed worldly 
 With a bare bodkin . . . ? life, 
 
 But that the dread of something after That age, ache, penury, andimprison- 
 
 death, ment, 
 
 The undiscovefd country, from whose Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 
 bourn To what we fear of death." 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will ; 
 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 — " 
 
 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 license, 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. Treat- 
 ing the Sonnets as a group of stanzas printed without critical 
 decorum, and perhaps even left in a state not admitting lucid and 
 consecutive arrangement, there seems to be warrant for turning 
 the material there discoverable and select passages in the Plays to 
 a biographical account for the purpose of shedding light on that 
 
222 
 
 -portion of the life of Shakespear, which intervened between his 
 departure from Stratford about 1587 and his comparative emerg- 
 ence from obscurity in his private relations about 1609 — a period 
 of two and twenty years, during which the domestic annals are 
 almost a blank. 
 
 Two of the number, which lie far apart in the received and 
 indeed sole text, which is not an authorized one to the extent that 
 the first quartos of the plays are so, as of the precise circumstances, 
 under which it found its way to the press we know absolutely 
 nothing, deal with a cognate subject — a contrast between the man 
 of middle age and one his junior, whom he apparently employs as 
 a foil. There are those, who identify with the latter the young 
 Earl of Pembroke, a licentious young man about town, and detect 
 an exhortation to induce him to marry, in order to transmit his 
 type to posterity. I lack such penetrating force, looking at all 
 the circumstances, nor would the Earl of Southampton answer the 
 postulates of the case much better. Below are the two sonnets 
 side by side, the few words in italics being departures from the 
 usual readings on grounds stated elsewhere* : — 
 
 II. LXXIII. 
 
 "When forty winters ha've iw/Vj'W "That time of year thou may'st in me 
 
 thy brow, behold, 
 
 And dug deep trenches in thy beau- When yellow leaves, or none, or few, 
 
 ty's field, do hang 
 
 Thy youth's proud livery, 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 such 
 
 beauty lies, day 
 
 Where all the treasure of thy lusty As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
 
 days, Which by and by black night doth 
 
 To say, within thy own deep-sunken take away 
 
 eyes, Death's second self, that seals up all 
 
 Were an all-eating shame and thrift- in rest. 
 
 less praise. In me thou see'st the glowing of such 
 
 [fire, 
 * See Notes. 
 
223 
 
 How much more praise deserv'd thy That on the ashes of his youth doth 
 
 beauty's ease, lie, 
 
 If thou could'st answer — "This fair As the deathbed, whereon it must 
 
 child of mine, expire. 
 
 Shall sum my count, and make my Consum'd with that which it was 
 
 eld excuse — " nourish'd by. 
 
 Proving his beauty by succession This thou perceiv'st which makes 
 
 thine. thy love more strong, 
 
 This were to be new-made. To love that well, which thou 
 
 when thou art old, must leave ere long. 
 And see thy blood warm, when 
 thou feel'st it cold." 
 
 The canon in pastoral poetry of all ages and countries, 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 beyond 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; 
 in 1594 he was thirty; some of the sonnets — 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 un- 
 trustworthy — 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 average havoc on a system, worn by 
 incessant intellectual labour — " sicklied over with the pale cast of 
 thought." * The aspect of the Droeshout portrait conveys the 
 impression of a man, who had grown prematurely old. 
 
 Henry Chettle, son of Robert Chettle, of the London Dyers' 
 Gild, was an eminent and successful dramatist and poet, and 
 at one period of his life — about 1590 — a printer. He was one of 
 
 * Napoleon, whose career was almost exactly 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 education, they had risen to the height of power and 
 fame. So it was with our poet and, save the mark ! in a greater degree. 
 
224 
 
 those, who spoke kindly and fairly of Shakespear at the outset of his 
 literary career, and vindicated him from the attack of Greene. It 
 may be a perfectly fanciful notion ; but I am inclined to associate 
 with a highly probable acquaintance between Shakespear and 
 Chettle the following passa,ge in the I nth Sonnet : — 
 
 "Thence comes it that my name receives a brand. 
 And ahiiost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand — " 
 
 Henslowe the manager was also by original calling a dyer; and 
 it is scarcely possible that Shakespear and he were not well known 
 to each other, though not immediately associated in business. 
 Chettle ranged himself, it seems, on the side of the greater poet's 
 supporters and admirers, and if he 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. I do not even believe that the 
 lines in the Merry TVives, 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 ^een. They are not in the 4" of 1602. 
 
 On the whole, I have won myself with facility over to 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, there is no precise 
 or intentional personality from beginning to end, if we except the 
 apparent allusion to the death of Elizabeth and the Stuart succes- 
 sion in No. 107. The stanzas are nothing more than a trophy of 
 luxuriant and- wayward fancy and a reflex of slight prima stamina 
 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 
 
225 
 
 made part of the series ; they are equally incoherent and generic ; 
 and in the Pilgrim there is a stanza, which might have dropped 
 out of Venus and Adonis. 
 
 The method pursued by Shakespear in the structure and cos- 
 tume 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 empirical affectation of personality, the same 
 studied minuteness of description, the same pathetic or engaging 
 story of perjured 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 groundwork 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 fluctuating 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 cate- 
 gory. 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) • " ^ na^ii 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 cha- 
 racter of his book of sonnets in another and more direct wayj 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 15935 and as his personal friendship, 
 
l2& 
 
 ^ith the greater poet is a matter of record, his volume may be 
 thought to deserve a high place among those, which, if they did 
 not exactly serve as models, at least suggested an experiment in 
 that style of composition — one serviceable enough within rational 
 limits, especially in the absence of more explicit witnesses. We 
 may use the material ; but we should not strain too far its import. 
 - Without going so far back, however, as the sixteenth century, 
 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 Lovis Martyr, the constituent parts of Maud are 
 susceptible of rearrangement or redistribution at pleasure. In fact, 
 the modern poet imported bodily into a reprint a copy of verses 
 which he had originally written for a different purpose, and they 
 do not strike one as more heterogeneous and discursive than much 
 of the rest. 
 
 I adduce this recent and familiar example to illustrate the 
 prevailing infidelity of the entire amatory and sentimental school 
 ef 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 re- 
 semble the prose novel, which delineates 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. 
 
 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 
 
227 
 
 Fitton theory. But there may have been some temporary amour 
 belonging to the dark 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 super- 
 structure. 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. The latter is independent of the Sonnets, for the poet did 
 not know the family till 1604 or 1605, nor was their intercourse, 
 I should judge, ever tainted by any irregularity. On the contrary, 
 the character, which has been transmitted to us of John Davenant 
 and his wife, and the touching anecdote, which Aubrey preserves 
 of the boyish attachment of their other son Robert to Shakespear, 
 unite in my judgment to justify us in placing the relations on a 
 footing of the purest and most cordial friendship. The Davenants 
 maintained and improved their social position, and were connected 
 (including Aubrey's personal acquaintance in later life, "Parson 
 Robert") with the university and the Church. That which helps 
 to make against the story is the circumstance, that William was 
 the eldest, born in February, 1 605-6, within two years of the poet's 
 first introduction, that there were several other children, and that 
 the father and mother remained to the last on affectionate terms. 
 So we have to dismiss the persons of the play — those, whose 
 proceedings and fortunes illumine the Sonnets, when we have 
 "light vouchsafed to us to perceive the truth. Seriously speaking, 
 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 unfulfilled 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 rebellion broached on his sword, 
 How many would this peaceful city quit 
 To welcome him ! — " 
 
 Q— 2 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Baconian Heresy. Shakespear's Plays {not his Poems) the reputed ivork of 
 Francis Bacon, taiuyer, philosopher, and essayist ? Absence of any contemn 
 porary or early testimony in support of the claim of Bacon as a playwright^ 
 Indefeasible title of Shake spear to his o'wn productions. In-uoluntary e'vidence 
 of Robert Greene in 1592 to the eminence of Shake spear at that time as a 
 dramatist. The likenesses of the poet and the tributes to his genius by con- 
 temporaries and intimate friends. Parallel calendar of the literary careers 
 of the tiuo men. Vast difference in their antecedents and surroundings. 
 Possibility, 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 performances at the Inns of Court, Po'verty of his acknowledged 
 i-erses. Bacon connected nxiith representations at the Inns from 1587 to 
 1613. Uniform un-Shakespearian character of the entire body of these com- 
 positions. The cryptogram a not uncommon 'vehicle for concealment in the 
 days of Bacon. Its presumed origin. Dismissal of the theory. 
 
 A FEW 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, connecting him with one or 
 more distinguished personages, he was simply incapable of com- 
 posing the dramas, which had so far passed under his name 
 
229 
 
 without doubt or challenge. On the contrary, this new schoo} 
 contended that more than one indication contributed to identify 
 with these dramatic productions — if not, fof^Qoth, with a moiety 
 of all those written about the same time — no less a personage 
 than Francis Bacon, who had left, it w^as asserted and even actually 
 demonstrated, in a then not unfrequent form, in a cryptogram^ 
 the absolute prqpf.qf his responsibility for the plays,. or at any rate, 
 certain of them, ascribed to Shakespear, and habitually cited as 
 his by his own contemporaries, by foreign adapters or admirers at 
 or near the age itself, and by each succeeding one. 
 
 This unparalleled heresy, which proposes to deprive the coun^- 
 try 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 Shakespear's Plays — not, let us remember, his Lyrics 
 . — became at all events a debateable theme at home and across the 
 Atlantic, a more or less diffused creed, on which I understand that 
 hundreds of 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 attempt 
 to shew that (i) Bacon could not have written the Plays, or any 
 of the Plays, as Shakespear left them; (2) that Shakespear did 
 write them, as we at present possess them; and (3) that the 
 Baconian theory may nevertheless have some measure of veri-r 
 similitude, yet in a very different way. If my contention or 
 hypothesis should be correct, its value ought to be considerable. 
 ; The knowledge by report that Bacon had written some kind 
 
 * How singular it appears that in one era three such profound thinkers 
 as lUontaigne, Bacon, and Shakespear should have lived side by side, as it 
 were, each so supreme in his way, and each so different in his origin and 
 surrounding influences. 
 
230 
 
 of poetry is more than two centuries of age. John Aubrey, about 
 
 sixty years after the death of Bacon, says* : His Lordship was i 
 
 good Poet, hut conceaFd [the italics are the present writer's], as 
 
 appeared by his Letters. See excellent verses of his Lordship's 
 
 which Mr. Farnaby translated into Greeke, and printed both in his 
 
 Av^oXoyta, &c. 
 
 " The world's a bubble, and the life of man, 
 Less than a span, &c." 
 
 Aubrey was most assuredly unaware, that the subject of his notice 
 had done more than indulge his fancy, like other serious writers, 
 in occasional efforts of a lighter and different character. He does 
 not, I submit, offer the least suggestion, that there was a current 
 belief at that time as to Bacon having penned any important 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 — possibly not so good. At any occult key to dramatic 
 labours of any kind Aubrey does^ not remotely hint. 
 
 Not only in Shakespear's life-tiipe were the Plays and Poems 
 equally published as his; but when he was no more, and while 
 Bacon yet survived, they similarly continued to be so ; and the First 
 Folio almost ostentatiously sets forth the authorship of Shakespear, 
 as the Lear of 1608 and the Sonnets of 1609 had previously done; 
 All these appropriations were made, not by Shakespear, but by the 
 booksellers under the influence of common knowledge ; and in the 
 collective editions of the Plays men, who had been personally 
 intimate with the poet, who had acted in these compositions, when 
 they were brought on the stage, who enjoyed the opportunity fat 
 better than we do of hearing reports and rumours about the pieces 
 and their origin, who might even have beheld their friend with his 
 peii in his hand, with the unfinished n^anuscript before hjm, 
 attested his eJfclusJve.claim, \vithifl thgir inforpi^^^pn.to, the work.Y 
 * Aubrey's Letters, &c., ed. Bliss, ii.;'i24:' ..jn ,!;< 
 
231 
 
 There is at least no dispute that a William SHakespear— 'Only 
 one out of two or three of similiar name — lived between certain 
 ^ates, published certain approved poems, was on friendly terms not 
 only with other literary men, but with persons of rank and distinc- 
 tion, 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 dis- 
 honestly misappropriated their material, or, in the precise language 
 X)f the complainants, of "having beautified himself with their 
 feathers." 
 
 The charge became public property in 1592 by the issue of 
 Robert Greene's Groat' sworth 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, 
 -which were to , eclipse the existing system; and if it be the fact 
 that Gabriel Harvey^ in i his Four Letters and Certain Sonnets^ 
 apparently published a.little before, the Gr«tf^'jiV«r^/( of Wit,meaivt 
 Shakespear, where he alludes, among, 'f springing wits," ^'singularly, 
 to_ one, whom I salute with a hundred blessings," the irritation 
 was naturally aggravated.. To be,,ass^ailed by Greene: was an ipso 
 facto title to the goodwill of Harvey. For the immediate purpose, 
 ithe hostility of .Greene is valuable,' -because) 1 it seems to intimate 
 (that he had no. justification whatever jforalleging^. that Shakespear 
 .was guilty of a graver offence, thaa, carrying the authorized revision 
 of other men's work, farther thdn had.^been customaty^so far 
 perhaps now and then.as to overlay ,amd pbliteritetjhe.Eirst Sketch); 
 
232 
 
 nor would Shakespear have incurred the animosity of his fellow- 
 playwrights, 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 conclu- 
 sion ; but the author of the Groaf sworth of Wit performed, as it 
 has happened, yeoman service in satisfying us for ever that in 
 1592 William Shakespear was already by the acknowledgement 
 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. 
 
 The portrait accompanying the First Folio, of which a 
 reduced copy occurs in the Poems of 1640, was apparently derived, 
 not from the bust, but from a painting, now in the Memorial 
 Gallery at Stratford. But the main and solid point is this; that 
 the William Shakespear interred at Stratford, and lying beneath 
 the monument in the chancel there, and the William Shakespear 
 whose name is so conspicuous on the title of the 1623 volume, 
 were then, and until lately by nearly all, accepted by common 
 assent as one and the same. 
 
 Gerard Johnson or Jansen the Dutch sculptor, to whom the 
 bust is ascribed, lived in the vicinity of the Globe theatre in South- 
 wark ; but the dates are not given. If he had opportunities of 
 meeting the poet, while the latter was a resident in the same 
 neighbourhood, the reliance on the fidelity of the likeness and the 
 identity of the original should be more implicit, and the artist 
 might be more confidently called as a witness in the suit of 
 Shakespear v. Bacon. 
 
 The bust, in the sophisticated condition, to which it has been 
 reduced by successive restorers in the past, is not easily traced to 
 any individual source. It had been already placed in the church, 
 when the first folio edition of the Plays, with the portrait by 
 f)roeshout was published ; and as the widow of the poet survived 
 
^33 
 
 till August, 1623, she may have had an opportunity of beholding 
 that monument in its pristine freshness. Of all the likenesses, 
 which have descended to us, or have been laid before us, the 
 Cornelius Jansen and Chandos paintings appear to be the only ones 
 in keeping with the time ; but they, with the coarse Droeshout 
 efEgy and the yet more unsatisfying bust, potently combine to 
 relieve Francis Bacon from the uncomfortable position of having 
 written productions so foreign to his genius. 
 
 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 some of these adventurers, if 
 they were to settle down for a season at Stratford and purchase 
 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines or even (which is much the same 
 thing— not quite so good) Mr. Lee's Llfe^ and digest the contents, 
 they 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 rewritten 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 substantially 
 affect the central argument, that the Plays of _ Shakespear are by 
 Shakespear. 
 
 As the countrymen of the Warwickshire bard have such A 
 serried phalanx of resolute enthusiasts ranged in battle-array against 
 them on this issue, 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 jnust 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-poinj: 
 to close: — ., ,," , 
 
?34 
 
 CALENDAR OF BIOGRAPHICAL PARALLELISMS. 
 
 Bacon (1561-1626). 
 
 1. Born in Londoir, Jan. 22, 1561, 
 -son of Sir Nicholas Bacon,Lord Keeper, 
 and of the learned Anne Cooke. 
 
 2. Sent to thfi University of Cam- 
 bridge, on Oct. 13, 1574. 
 
 3. Leaves Cambridge to go to Paris, 
 1577, dissatisfied with academical 
 methods, studies statistics and diplo- 
 macy, and writes a piece On the State 
 of Europe. 
 
 4. Recalled to England by the 
 sudden death of his father, 1580. 
 
 5. Engages in legal studies, tries to 
 obtain official employment, writes 
 pamphlets on current affairsi A Very 
 flbscure epoch, 1580-5. 
 
 6. Becomes Counsel Extraordinary 
 to the Queen, 1590. Forms a friend- 
 ship with the Earl of Essex, who makes 
 him a present of Twickenham Park, 
 
 1594- 
 
 7. Becomes member of Parliament 
 for Middlesex, 1595. Continues 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 afterwards trans- 
 lates them into English and pubjishes 
 them, 1597. 
 
 8. Writes by royal command the 
 justification of the death of ' Essex, 
 ifioL. Marries the tdaTighter of a. 
 
 Shakespear (1564-1616). 
 
 1. Born at Stratford, April 22-3, 
 1564, son of John Shakespear and 
 his wife, daughter of Robert Arden, 
 persons of yeoman rank. 
 
 2. Educated at Stratford Grammar 
 School, one of the best in England. 
 
 3. Pursues employment under his 
 father, acquires a knowledge of rural 
 
 life, probably witnesses exhibitions of 
 travelling actors. 
 
 4. Visits London as a boy, and 
 meets the Burbages, Tarlton, &c., 
 1575-80. 
 
 5 Leaves Stratford, and comes up 
 to London, assists Burbage at his 
 hostelry in Shoreditch. Enjoysoppor- 
 tunities, of seeing the performances at 
 his theatre, 1586-8. 
 
 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 £arr^f? (1593-4). 
 
 7. Frodaces Romeo and Juliet, Rich- 
 ard II -yRiciiird III., Sec, 1594-7. 
 Loses his only son, 1 596. Presumed 
 separation from, his wife.. 
 
 8. Purchases tiew Place, 1597. 
 Cohtiniaes to 'brirtg -bilt year by year 
 his great dramatic masterpreces. A 
 
 London^ Alderman.- Knighted by jSceije {lom Richard If., pejiformei'm 
 James I., 1603. Counsel to the the streets and other public places 
 Crown, 1604. ' without his '-avowed cognizance by 
 
 the partizans of Essex, l6crU ' ' '■ ' 
 
^35 
 
 g. Is still occupied, amid professional 
 work, in literary labours. Publishes 
 in 1605 his Advancement of Learning. 
 
 10. Pursues his philosophical re- 
 searches pari passu with his political 
 functions, 1605-09. Acquires habits 
 of increased extravagance. 
 
 11. Attorney-General, 1613. Pe- 
 riodical reprints of the Essays. His 
 expensive habits and love of splendour 
 impoverish and compromise him. The 
 man of genius and of the world, but 
 not of business. 
 
 12. Rises in estimation as a lawyer 
 and a philosophical and moral writer. 
 His Essays are translated into Italian, 
 1618. Becomes Lord Keeper (1617), 
 Regent during the absence of the King 
 in Scotland (1617), Lord Chancellor 
 and Baron Verulam (1619), and Vis- 
 count St. Alban (1620). The No-vum 
 Organon completed and printed (1620). 
 The History of Henry l^U. published, 
 1622. First ctwnplete edition of the 
 Essays appears, 1625, apparently ?een 
 through the press by the author. Dies 
 in embarrassed circumstances, 1626. 
 
 In the illustrious Philosopher and Essayist we conceive that 
 •we realize a man of a totally distinct type. His birth was distin- 
 guished ; 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 advantages, which rank, influence, 
 and wealth are capable of conferring; he gradually developed to 
 the, view of.the world a commanding intellect, boundless ambition, 
 an .inMctinguishable thirst foreknowledge, and a literary aptitude ait 
 
 9. Writes at short notice, for pre*- 
 sentment before the Queen, the Merry 
 Wfves of tVindsor, 1602. Hamkt 
 produced, 1602. Shakespear receives 
 a magnificent eulogy from Jonson in 
 the Poetaster, 1602. 
 
 10. Shakespear's Sonnets, written 
 at intervals during many years, are 
 published by the finder of the MS. or 
 papers, 1609. The dramatic series 
 proceeds. Shakespear accumulates 
 property. New Place let to T. Greene. 
 
 1 1 . Shakespear retiresfrom London 
 and parts with his theatrical interests, 
 1611-12. Buys a house and appurte- 
 nances in Blackfriars as an investment, 
 16 13, barring dower to his wife. 
 The man of genius and business. 
 
 12. At or near Stratford. Health 
 fails. Makes his will, bequeathing 
 most part of his estate to the Halls, 
 His wife receives practically nothing. 
 Dies, April — May, 1616, leaving a 
 considerable estate in land, tithes, and 
 money- 
 
236 
 
 once of the profoundest and of the most multifarious reach. His 
 versatility was almost a conceit. He seemed to aim at becoming 
 the second Universal Doctor. 
 
 When one regards the chronological sequence or succession 
 even of those vsrorks, which he lived to publish, their lofty aim, 
 their varied character, and their laborious execution, 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. We become aware that he employed 
 secretaries and amanuenses, and even that he maintained at one 
 time 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 Intricate 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 Italian, 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 ; Ijut it is impossible to 
 be assured that we have all. Rawley appears tb have made him- 
 self well acquainted with the literary labours of his employer. He 
 does not allude to his poetical efforts, nor did he deem the transla- 
 tion 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, according to 
 Edward Ravenscroft the dramatist, that Titus Atidronicus was 
 
237' 
 
 brought to the theatre "by a private author," and improved by. 
 Shakespear, before it was put on the stage, where it enjoyed a 
 wide and long popularity. My personal view is that the play waS 
 an unfinished one of Marlowe, and that the holder was a middle- 
 man, who had obtained possession of it after the death of the poet. 
 But the alleged process by which it fell into the hands of its reviser 
 points a certain moral, which is, that if this was a regular and 
 periodical experience, other " private authors " may have taken the 
 same course with their 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 — an empirical and diffident 
 one, I allow — that, not such a piece as Titus Andronicus, but such 
 as the first drafts of Henry IV., Henry F., 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 
 even without a clue to the authorship, in a scrivener^s transcript. 
 
 This is obviously nothing more than a suggestion, which 
 defers to the dark and 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, and not to the unsound, 
 and indeed puerile, dogma, that he concealed them under the 
 nom-de-plume of William Shakespear, and even compiled a book 
 called the Anatomy of Melancholy., and used the alias of Robert 
 Burton. The advocates of such a wild notion made a few con- 
 verts at first, but ruined their cause — never a strong one — by 
 seeking to prove too much. Aubrey, let us observe, 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 the History 
 of Henry VII.., not published till 1622, was in its inception or 
 
23S 
 
 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 conjecturally 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 
 prima stamina of Bacon's Henry VII. was one of the two ante- 
 Shakesperian dramas on the subject. We do not know, that 
 Bacon even wrote such a piece, nor was it, perhaps, too late for 
 Marlowe, or the latter might have left it behind him, as he did 
 other works, in MS, 
 
 The group of Histories, in their original rough-hewn state, 
 and in the shape which they assumed under the hand of Shake- 
 spear, extends from Richard II. to Richard III., the two Richards 
 beginning and closing the sequence. We must all feel that we are 
 treading on debateable 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, that the first author is not very 
 distinctly 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 drama- 
 tization of English history consecutive from Edward I. ; and the 
 annals of the country in such a shape were calculated, perhaps, to 
 please and satisfy many, before the Duke of Marlborough pro- 
 nounced his celebrated dictum. 
 
 The rnore youthful transactions of Bacon are less obscure 
 
239 
 
 than those of his contemporary, mainly because he was led by his- 
 professional and political connections into a fairly plentiful corre- 
 spondence 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 presenting " a certain affectation and rhetorical cadence." 
 
 There was a protracted term, even down nearly to the close- 
 of the sixteenth century, however, before regular preferment 
 arrived, when the Essayist and Philosopher was without settled 
 occupation, and in pecuniary straits; 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 
 desultory 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 indi- 
 cations that the composition of the historical series, commencing 
 with Henry IF., had already started in 1587, before Shakespear 
 entered on the scene.* 
 
 What Bacon may have written of this nature we are quite 
 authorized to conclude unfit for theatrical use ; but the first drafts 
 of Henry IF., F., FI. were possibly his, yet not even as they were 
 originally exhibited and published, but submitted to a revising pen. 
 If that pen was Shakespear'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 Groat' sworth of Wit appeared, the entire his- 
 torical series, however, had reached the First Sketch stage, and 
 had made Greene violently indignant and angry. 
 * Hunter's Ne'W Illustrations, ii., 63. 
 
240 
 
 That Bacon, situated as he was in constant and anxious expec- 
 tation of legal advancement, did not venture to associate himself pub- 
 licly vifith such performances, had they eve^n been capable of utiliza- 
 tion 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 oddly subscribes himself 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, in illustration of the present 
 aspect of the matter, where a school of specialists has exhausted 
 its ingenuity in constructing so much out of so little, 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, supplied 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. 
 
 There was nothing very unusual in the wide range of the 
 studies of Bacon. English scholars before his time had signalized 
 themselves, as we are enabled to judge from the extant lists of 
 their works, 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 contemporary of Bacon's father, and a 
 fresh tradition in Bacon's own day, comes into our thoughts. If 
 we take into ovs hands his Collected Works, 1557, a rather 
 ponderous folio of 1 600 or 1700 pages, we perceive that between 
 its covers it embraces nearly every sort of polite learning and 
 literary thesis, and that the drama and poetry are not overlooked. 
 
241 
 
 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 v/ith the plots of some 
 ■of his comic interludes. Versatility vifas 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 v/e take the Novum 
 Organon 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 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 VH. ever rose to higher 
 flights in metre and fancy; and I emphasize the work just men- 
 tioned 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 cha- 
 racter 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 culture ; and our " concealed 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 poet " may have been, under strict promise of secrecy or indeed" 
 without the knowledge of those to whom he transmitted the MS.^ 
 or MSS., the author of one or more of these imperfect historical 
 dramas, first supplied with occasional touches, and eventually 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. 
 
 The conjecture may be, more than possibly is, baseless. But 
 it is circumscribed in its application and bearing, and I have 
 individually a very indifferent opinion of its value. For I cannot 
 help seeing how, in the Essays^ whose sententious structure would 
 bring them nearest to the dramatic form and feeling, there is an. 
 almost total absence of consanguinity. These productions are in 
 fact the Sermones Fideles, 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 in 
 philosophical, what Shakespear was in dramatic, literature, and 
 the French master in ethics. 
 
 Some time before the entrance of Bacon at Gray's Inn — in 
 fact, when he w^as still in his infancy, the English versions of the 
 Phcenisscs of Euripides and the Supposlti of Ariosto had been 
 presented there, no doubt under the superintendence of their trans- 
 lators or paraphrasts, Francis Kinwelmersh and George Gascoigne, 
 These productions, if they were seen by Shakespear, were pre- 
 sumably 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 Kinwelmersh himself, then an elderly person, 
 and others, and performed before the Court at Greenwich. This- 
 
243 
 
 was the piece usually known as The Misfortunes of Arthur; and 
 Bacon was no farther concerned in it than in the preparation 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 mutilated state at Northum- 
 berland House, that Bacon, some years subsequently, addressed 
 himself to the task of executing 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 Northumberland House in 1780. Judging, however, from the 
 salvage, these essays 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 emplo)'ment 
 belonged to a stage of his career, when he was still enjoying a 
 certain amount of leisure, and when his official rank and engage- 
 ments had not rendered his direct and public attention to such 
 minor unprofessional matters inexpedient on more than one 
 account. 
 
 In 1594, appeared the Grafs-Inn Masque^ by Francis 
 Davison, son of a Secretary of State, yet, like Bacon, distinguished 
 by a keen relish 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 
 shownt that both these personages were in touch with the 
 Sydneys of Wilton and other families, remarkable for their culture. 
 
 * A Conference of Pleasure, &c., 8°, 1870. 
 
 f Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1826, prolegomena. 
 
 R— 2 
 
244 
 
 Francis Davison, not long after his admission to Gray's-Inn, how- 
 ever, travelled abroad, and during some time we hear of him only- 
 through his correspondence with Anthony Bacon, brother of 
 Francis; but this circumstance is immaterial, inasmuch as what- 
 ever 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 some, nay, of considerable, importance to become 
 aware that Bacon did not abandon his propensity for the more 
 academical side of dramatic composition, even when he had 
 attained a conspicuous position as a legal adviser and officer of the 
 Crown. For in 161 3 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 ostensible 
 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 more regular type were 
 good only as pegs or skeletons for another and more capable artist. 
 The employment of cyphers, which is traced from the Con- 
 tinent, and was an early diplomatic and political precaution at 
 Venice, came into vogue in England, and was habitual during the 
 Civil Troubles, and even in private communications of a delicate 
 * Hazlitt's Manual of Old English Plays, 1892, p. igo. 
 
245 
 
 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 correspon- 
 dence 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 disguising familiar expressions of sentiment on the 
 part of an author to a noble friend in such a manner as to be 
 intelligible 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 concealing confidential or clandes- 
 tine intimacies from the public eye and ear ; and we owe to such 
 a condition of aff^airs toward the close of the Elizabethan era the 
 modern hypothesis touching undercurrents of significant meaning 
 in the Sonnets, as printed in 1609. 
 
 I am capable of crediting any kind or degree of whimsicality 
 and even 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 enigmatical sub- 
 scription Lydde^ where there is nothing, so far as the sense can be 
 
246 
 
 made out, which might not have appeared above the real name of 
 the wrriter ; but in a tract of 1576 immediately relative to the affairs 
 of the Netherlands* vv^e meet w^ith a strange account hovsf " by an 
 other Embassadour lew^de and vncomely letters haue bin vs^ritten 
 vnder fancy signes of the names of Oriana, Amadis, and such 
 vnprincely toyes . . . and howre the same rashe personage hath 
 not bin misliked there for his so doing " — w^hich appears equally to 
 point to a confidential correspondence with her majesty. 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 
 preceding one. 
 
 I have not dwelt very much on the Cryptogram itself, 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 treat- 
 ment 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, 
 
 * Certain Letters Wherein is set forth a Discourse of the Peace, &c. 8°, 
 1576. Only two copies known. 
 
247 
 
 ty what agency it has been spread, I should be disposed 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 reach or beyond at 
 least 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 
 persona^ and that, living at a point of time, when the commenda- 
 tory 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 Loves 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. 
 
 Secondly, I should plead, and with some amount of confidence, 
 that the coeval existence in England of two individuals, more 
 lavishly endowed with intellectual qualifications than any others 
 of English or indeed any origin before or since, is so eminently 
 calculated to impress observers or critics as an incredible phenome- 
 non, 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 extra- 
 ordinary, and almost as a problem to be explained, how the two 
 greatest Englishmen belonged to one era, nearly to the same exact 
 interval of years, how they lived, as it were, side by side, face to 
 face, yet, so far as we could learn, were strangers to each other : 
 one a poetical philosopher, the other a philosophical poet ; 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. 
 
NOTES. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 P. io8. Euphem'ia Carril of Warrington. This is the lady, 
 to whom Tofte inscribes his Laura^ '^S'^1- At that 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 1596, 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. 
 
 P. 102. Charge for seats at theatres. The price of admission 
 to Davenant's First Days Entertainment at Rutland House., iS^J, 
 was also five shillings, and 150 persons attended; as it was a sort 
 of private performance, there was probably only one tariff. 
 
 Titus Andronicus. 
 
 If it be true, as I suspect, that this was one of the MSS. left 
 behind him by Marlowe in the hands of the Walsinghams in 1593, 
 it may have required sufficient emendation to induce the super- 
 intendents of the 1623 folio to regard it as mainly or wholly Shake- 
 spear's ; and it is not much worse than the First Sketches of Henry 
 IV. — V. — VI. It would be highly satisfactory to ascertain, if the 
 4° of 1600 was really preceded by one of 1594, and whether the 
 two corresponded. If so, this drama would stand in the same 
 category as the First Sketches. Meres mentions the piece in 1598 
 as Shakespear's ; but his testimony is not conclusive ; he was a 
 University man, although he occasionally resided in London, and 
 was there indeed in 1597. -^^ ^^* ^ student of divinity, but does 
 not refer to any clerical employment. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 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 
 minuties. 
 
 Fr. Mignon is used here for dear in the form minion, which 
 subsequently acquired a very different sense. 
 
252 
 
 As regards the obligation of the poet to the Diana of Monte- 
 mayor for the Felismena story, Shakespear may have gleaned, 
 through his acquaintance with Lord Southampton, some know- 
 ledge of the Wilson version, yet not in time to be of use for this 
 play. 
 
 Comedy of Errors. 
 
 Plot. Numerous analogues and prototypes have been from 
 time to time pointed out. Of course it is an ancient idea. But 
 see my Warton, 1871, i., 275. 
 
 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 "Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary." 1604, &c. Comp. 
 Alexander iff Lodwick in Manual, 1892, in v. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 Hazlitt, in his Characters of Shakespear'' s Plays, 181 7, 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 
 arrive at maturity earlier than among ourselves, and where, besides, 
 it would have been treated as contrary to etiquette for the lovers to 
 meet privately prior to the nuptials. Such interviews as thus took 
 place were therefore apt to be clandestine. 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost. 
 
 This play was, no doubt, written almost immediately prior to 
 its performance before the queen, and according to the terms of 
 the first 4° it was, subsequently to presentation, corrected and 
 augmented by the author — how and to what extent we cannot 
 tell. He 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 Richard 
 Mulcaster, who deemed that he had a dramatic gift, and superin- 
 tended the theatrical exhibitions of the St. Paul's boys, who were 
 known as Mulcaster's Children. 
 
 If it be so, that Shakespear revised and enlarged the drama 
 himself, before it was handed to the printer, the circumstance is a 
 very unusual one, since the ordinary course observed was to let 
 the printer follow his own pleasure, and to reserve the fuller text 
 
253 
 
 for a fitter opportunity, which, so far as Shakespear was concerned, 
 did not arise in his lifetime. Love s Labor s Lost was acted by the 
 King's Company in or before January, 1605. 
 
 The chai^acter of Don Adriano de Armado may have received 
 a touch or so from an unique pamphlet of the time called the 
 Rodomontades of Captain Viques, 1 59 1, which was not, I believe, 
 known to exist, till I met with a copy in the library of Peter- 
 borough Cathedral. 
 
 In the list of Dramatis PersoncE^ the names of Biron and 
 Holofernes suggest the remarks (i) that, if the poet intended the 
 Due de Biron of the time, the portrait is a strange caricature, and 
 if he did not, the adoption of the name of a prominent French 
 statesman strikes one as injudicious. It is worse than the Old- 
 castle and Fastolfe case, for there at all events the individuals were 
 not living; (2) that Holofernes is a name found in two earlier 
 dramatic productions, 1556 and 1572. See my Manual of Old 
 Plays, 1892, in v. 
 
 There is no mention of any visit of the Due de Biron of 
 history to London prior to 1 60 1, not long before his execution, and 
 too late to have suggested the. name to the dramatist. He was of 
 course a conspicuous public character long before, yet hardly in 
 the way, which the play portrays. The inconsistency culminates 
 here in the line where the French duke is made to allude figu- 
 ratively to " Love's Tyburn," as to a London locality, with which 
 he was familiar. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. The dancing horse. 
 
 The celebrity of this famous animal long survived him ; for 
 he is referred to in a French version of Apuleius, printed at 
 Antwerp, 8°, 1633. 
 
 Longaville. 
 
 Why should this form be adopted ? The proper and only 
 one is Longueville. There is much need of improvement under 
 this head in many places. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. '■'■Biron. Lady, I will commend you to mine 
 own heart." 
 
 A Gallicism. Own is not required, and destroys the rhythm. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. I. " Thou canst not hit it." 
 
 This is imitated in Wily Beguiled, 1606, where we also meet 
 with recollections of the Shakespearian incidents of the Jew robbed 
 by his daughter, of the moonlight scene, where Lorenzo and Jessica 
 converse, and of the lover, who carves the name of his mistress 
 
254 
 
 on the bark of 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. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. " faq. God give you good morrow, master 
 person." 
 
 Person for Parson is usual enough. In Luke Shepherd's- 
 Dialogue, printed about 1548, the form is Mast Person. The 
 older spelling is the more correct, as the parson was and is the 
 representative of the congregation before the Almighty. 
 
 Ibid. '■'Hoi. Good old Mantuan—" 
 
 The Eclogues of Baptista 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. 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 Shakespearian sense in the English version of Bloome's 
 Architecture, 1 608. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 Dramatis Persona. Beatrice. The certainly fascinating and 
 piquant character of this lady 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 heart, the anecdota of Sir Nicholas 
 Lestrange of Hunstanton furnish repeated proofs. These stories 
 are merely such as Lestrange noted down from hearsay or other- 
 wise; but they carry their moral and their value as parallels: — • 
 
 "Sir Henry Yelverton's lady us'd to say of anyone that was 
 a widower, and had a son to inherit his estate, and desir'd a second 
 wife, that nobody would have him he was so sun-burnt." 
 
 "Mrs. RatclifF, an old courtier in Queen Elizabeth's time,, 
 told a Lord, whose conversation and discourse she did not like, 
 that his wit was like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and 
 when that was eaten, you might throw away the rest." 
 
 "Sir John Heydon and the Lady Gary had good wits, and 
 lov'd to be breaking of staves one upon another. Sir John comes 
 in one day very brisk, in a pair of printed velvet breeches (which 
 was then the fashion), but some way defective, so as she had a 
 
255 
 
 flurt at them presently. 'Hold you contented, good madam,' says. 
 he ; 'for if it were not for printing and painting, your face and my 
 breech would soon be out of fashion.'" 
 
 "The Lady Gary us'd to tell Sir John Heydon (for their two- 
 wits were ever clashing) that, when he was poor, and never a 
 penny in his purse, he was as good company as any was in England, 
 but that if he was but forty-shilling strong, there was no dealing 
 with him on any terms." 
 
 This class of repartee belongs to the same school and period 
 as that attributed to the sprightly and superbly incorrigible Beatrice,, 
 with the notable difference, that in the latter case we enjoy the 
 advantage of the superior taste and delicacy of the dramatic artist 
 as well as his superior wit. 
 
 The effervescent vivacity, mad merry vein of Beatrice, and 
 her robust animal spirits, present a foil to the gentler and more 
 softly feminine Hero. Portia in the Merchant of Venice is invested 
 with something of the same exuberant, almost hysterical, gaiety 
 and ingenuous frankness. 
 
 Act i., Sc. I. Messenger. 
 
 The messenger here introduced must be understood from the 
 part assigned to him to be a diplomatic personage. The laying 
 the scene in a street is unusual, and is not to be reconciled with 
 the open air life of Sicily. 
 
 Sigh away Sundays. 
 
 An apparent reference to the practice of Sunday weddings,, 
 which, as I mention above, the poet incongruously made applicable 
 to all ranks of society. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. '■'■ Bened.^'' Ho! now you strike like the blind 
 man — " 
 
 A direct allusion to the story in Merry Tales and ^ick^ 
 Answers. See my Old English Jest Boo\s, i., 142. In the same 
 act and scene Beatrice is made to say that it was imputed to her 
 that she was disdainful, and had her good wit out of the Hundred 
 Merry Tales. The lady's obligation to the latter, of which two 
 editions are known, but of which others not known probably once 
 existed, is not immediately conspicuous, although the poet could 
 hardly fail to be acquainted with both works at least by repute. 
 
 " 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, but 1 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 
 
256 
 
 of the Nobility, 1622, the Address to York Herald (Brooke) has 
 near the opening the following sentence: — "I acknowledge, he 
 that walkes fiftie yeeres in the Sunne, cannot choose but bee Sun- 
 burnt" — where the expression is evidently used to signify the 
 acquisition of experience. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. '■'■Dogh. Five shillings to one on't, with any 
 man that knows the statues — " 
 
 The two forms statute and statue appear to have been long 
 xised interchangeably. Here statue is misapplied as a trait of 
 ignorance. But see Gesta Romanorum, ed. Madden, p. 25, where 
 the same thing is found. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. '■'■Bened. ... I can find out no rhyme 
 to lady but baby. 
 
 This is a skit at Peele's song in the Arraignment of Paris, 
 1584. But see also Chappell's Popular Music, 92, 179, 187. 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
 The German version of the interlude in the Gryphius volume, 
 1663, was, as usual, adapted to suit local taste. It seems strange 
 that Shakespear 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 
 Induction to the Taming of a Shrew, were not originally prepared 
 for some rural entertainment in Warwickshire. There is nothing 
 in either, which Shakespear might not have written, before he left 
 the country in 1586-7. 
 
 In his fames the Fourth, 1598, 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 Huon 
 of Bordeaux. 
 
 In 1623 Sir Henry Herbert licensed, as by Ford and Decker, 
 "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 ffaery Knight Or Oberon the Second." 
 In it Politico, a foolish politician, is the pretended king of Fairies, 
 and Loswello is the fairy knight. 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 This is sometimes quoted as the Venetian Comedy. It is 
 fairly well known, that there was an anterior drama on the 
 subject. The ballad was probably founded on the play, as usual. 
 
257 
 
 The story of the Bond is common to excess; one of the earliest 
 places where it occurs is in the Gesta Romanorum (edit. Madden, 
 No. 40) ; and much the same may be predicated of the ring in 
 Act V. Rings have figured in romance since the production of the 
 Seven Wise Masters'. 
 
 Dramatis Persones. Shylock. See what is said in my Venetian 
 Republic, 1900, ii. 749, as to the probable origin of the name and 
 as to the mode, in which the character should be attired. 
 
 Portia. This name seems to be borrowed from the lost 
 drama by Thomas Kyd, mentioned by himself in 1594. The 
 idea of a lady disguised in male equipments conducting a cause in 
 a Venetian court is chimerical — a sheer impossibility. 
 
 Portia is an impersonation as historically outrageous under 
 the actual circumstances as the episodes in the Bravo of Venice. 
 Such a stratagem would have been simply out of the question, 
 where the scene is laid. Yet, take the character as a whole, we 
 would rather not be without her. 
 
 Act i., Sc. I. "Gr(7. 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 
 represented, as the Venetian ducat was = 9/5 of English money, so 
 that 3000 d. would be = about ^1400 or ;^9000 of our present 
 money. The gold piece had no mark of value and no name ; the 
 silver one was termed Ducatus Venetus not Venetorum, as Hunter 
 gives it. 
 
 " Shy. Water-thieves and land-thieves — " 
 
 See Gesta Romanorum, ed. Madden, p. 246. Shylock, just 
 below, adopts what is still a favourite device, in disclaiming the 
 personal possession of so large a sum as Antonio requires — but he 
 has a friend ! 
 
 Sc. 9. "Even in tht force and road of casuality." 
 Force should he. face. Road is equivalent to path. 
 Act iii., Sc. I. "Shy. Out upon her! — " 
 Note the fine conflict of feeling. 
 "Meet me at our synagogue — " 
 What a remorseless satire ! 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 2. ^^Shy. Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimen- 
 sions ? " 
 
 The use of the word dimensions, which Shakespear here in- 
 troduces, may be perhaps illustrated from a passage in Montaigne 
 (Essais, var. ed. 1 8 74, ii. 2ii), 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 apperceuoient quelque estranger arriuer: cet 
 estranger que leur ame void, c'est vn homme spirituel, & imper- 
 ceptible, 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. I. Venice. A Court ofjustice. 
 
 Historically this scene is a misconception, as the Duke or 
 Doge at this time never presided in person over the Courts. The 
 poet should have known, that the same was the case at home. 
 The scene, where the 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 diiBculty in substantiating this 
 statement. ' 
 
 '■'■Bass. . . . 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 easily replaced than the kindred, and more to be cherished 
 or ilamented. Shakespear seems to have immediately borrowed 
 the idea from Montaigne. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. I. " Fort. ... It is enacted in the laws of 
 Venice — " 
 
 A pure poetical invention. 
 
 Sc. 2 " Port. . . . we shall have old swearing." 
 
 Observe the peculiar sense of the word. It is still in use ; 
 but this is an early example. 
 
 Act v., Sc. I. "Lor. There's not the smallest orb which 
 thou'beholds't, 
 
259 
 
 But in his motion like an angel sings." 
 
 In this passage Shakespear has been thought to be under 
 obligations 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's 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 companion 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 
 hypercriticism to speak of the dialogue between the lovers just 
 above as rather too redolent of the inkhorn — as misappropriated 
 learning. 
 
 Act v., Sc. I. " Port. If you had known the virtue of the 
 Xing ..." 
 
 Observe the unique iteration for emphasis. 
 
 For the Rialto scene the prolegomena to Robert Tofte's 
 translation from Nicole de Montreux of Honour s Academy^ 161 o, 
 may be worth a glance. See my Dodsley, ix., 220. 
 
 Is this not rather a melodrama than anything else ? A tragical 
 climax is in a manner threatened, but only threatened. Its citation 
 as the Venetian Comedy is not altogether improper. 
 
 Perhaps it has not hitherto received sufficient attention that 
 Shakespear 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 inaccurate, 
 -since it was derived either from apocryphal publications or travel- 
 lers' hearsay. The older piece, called the Jew of Venice, is no 
 longer known ; Shakespear puts the Merchant in the forefront ; 
 but Antonio does not contribute to make the production what it is 
 ■so much as Shylock and one or two other dramatic persons. The 
 main point, however, is that certain political circumstances, set 
 forth in my new History of Venice, rendered the place and name 
 just about the time objects of peculiar public interest, and con- 
 ferred, as I say, on the Republic the unique distinction of being 
 twice identified with this series of masterpieces. The most sub- 
 stantial testimony of this fact may be the appearance in 1612 of a 
 translation by W. Shute from the French of M. de Fougasses 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 
 
 s — 2 
 
26o 
 
 a considerable sum to produce ; and it is not quite irrelevant tc 
 mention that it was dedicated to the Earls of Pembroke and' 
 Montgomery. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor. 
 This drama is stated to have been produced in an unusually 
 short time for performance before the Queen. The date of its^ 
 composition has been variously given. But in the text, as printed 
 in 1602, there is an incorrect quotation from England's Helicon^ 
 1 600, 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. 
 
 Dramatis persona — Sir Hugh Evans. 
 
 Shakespear made early acquaintance with the Welsh and 
 their peculiarities, as there were settlers in his boyhood at Stratford 
 from the Principality. See my Shakespear s Library^ iii., part 2, 
 p. 108. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. T^hese 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 contemporary ballad. 
 
 Sc. 2. " Shal. ... I hear the parson is no jester." 
 For jester we should probably read juster or jouster = fighter, 
 Comp. Act iii., Sc. i. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. 3. " Mrs. Ford. How now, my eyas musket ! "^ 
 Comp. Merie Tales of Skelton., 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^ unless it 
 is a misprint. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 5. " Fal. Divide me like a bribe-buck." 
 
 This sentence and notion are perhaps derived from a tract by 
 John Lacy, called IVyl Buck his Testament, printed about 1560, 
 for in As You Like It., Act ii., Sc. i, 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 
 
26l 
 
 Mombeliard. But the Dukes of Wiirtemberg were also by 
 marriage Counts of Montbeliard^ in Burgundy, a title which they 
 retained down to the French Revolution. 
 
 The present play is said to have been presented at the Cockpit 
 as late as November 15, 1638. 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 Act iii. Sc. I. " Claud. Ky, but to die, and go we know 
 not where." 
 
 This passage, and the one in Hamlet^ may be compared with 
 Montaigne, 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. 
 
 All's Well That Ends Well. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 3. '■'■Lapeu. . . . Good Tom Drum, lend me 
 a handkerchief." 
 
 The "Historie of Tom Drum" forms part of Deloney's 
 Gentle Craft, 4°, 1 598. He was the ancestor of Jack Drum, the 
 jiero of a play ascribed to Marston, and printed in 1 60 1. 
 
 Taming of a Shrew. 
 
 The writer of the foundation-play, 1594-96-1607, was in- 
 debted to Marlowe's Tamhurlaine and Faustus. The plot, a very 
 common one, is found in El Conde Lucanor^ by Juan Manuel, 
 4°, 1575, ch. 45. The name Tamhurlaine itself is a barbarous 
 corruption of Timourlenk or Timour the Lame. 
 
 Induction. The story of the Induction may have something 
 to do with the reputed adventure of the poet himself, when he 
 spent the night under a hedge or in a barn, after a merry-making 
 at a neighbouring village. 
 
 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 ? — " The story is an Oriental one — Haroon- 
 El-Reschid and the Caliph of a Day. 
 
 Enter Players. 
 
 This seems to be the prototype of the far finer and more 
 thoughtful passage in Hamlet, 
 
 Act i., Sc. I. '■'■Luc. . . . I am arrived for fruitful 
 Lombardy." 
 
262 
 
 Surely/tfr should he from. 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. 
 
 ''Luc. Basta." 
 
 This word should be printed in Italics. 
 
 As You Like It. 
 Some remarks on the dramatis persona and the obligations of 
 Shakespear to Lodge's Rosalynd, 1 590, will be found in the text. 
 One minor incident, the inscription on the tree-bark, is directly 
 borrowed from the novel ; and the Author of Wily Beguiled, i bob, 
 again, has adopted it from one or the other — more probably from 
 Shakespear, whom he seems to have studied. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. '■'■ 1st Lord. . . . 'Poor dear,' quoth he^ 
 'thou mak'st a testament.'" 
 
 Compare note on Merry Wives of Windsor, v., 5. 
 
 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, 1882, pp. 144, 146, and Mon- 
 taigne, Essays, 1902, iv., 48. Jaques alludes to the common adage : 
 " Fools have fortune." 
 
 Act iii., Sc. I. '"-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 VL, Part IL, Act i., Sc. 3 : "Duch. Though in this place 
 most master wear no breeches" — i.e., she, who is most master,, 
 wears no breeches. 
 
 Sc. 3. There are allusions to the Gargantua of Rabelais and 
 to Ovid's Ex Ponto, which must have been derived from the 
 French or from oral communication. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. The worWs a stage. 
 
 This idea occurred to Pythagoras and to Palladas the gram- 
 marian, 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 tlirough, and make a farce of all. 
 Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part." * 
 
 * Hazlitt's Studies in Jocular Literature, 1890, p. 62. 
 
263 
 
 In an old English play, written about 1566, Damon and Pithias, 
 the comparison of Pythagoras is cited * in these terms : — 
 
 " Pythagoras said, that this world was like a stage. 
 Whereon miny play their parts." 
 
 and in his Essays Montaigne introduces the same sentiment from 
 Petronius Arbiter : " Mundus universus exercet h'lstrionem" 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 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 : venisii, vidisti, 
 abiisti." It is the identical conceit. But our poet, perhaps feeling 
 that the thing was decies repetita, improved on the old saw by 
 making it a peg whereon to hang the Seven Ages of Man. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 7. " yaq. 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 17th century, which had belonged to a plough- 
 man employed on Worksop Manor, was lately advertized 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 oi 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. 
 
 A Winter's Tale. 
 
 This play was also originally known as A Winter Night'' s Tale 
 — a sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream. 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.t 
 
 * Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, iv., 31-2. 
 
 f It is worthy of remark that George Steevens, on the back of a letter 
 addressed to him by Garrick about 1770, cites this play as a tVinter Night's 
 Pastime, and assigns to it the improbable date 1594 as that of the original 
 completion or performance. 
 
264 
 
 Dramatis Personie. — Autolycus. 
 
 This character is apparently indebted to Newbery's Dives 
 Pragmaticus, 1563, reprinted from the only known copy in my 
 Fugitive Tracts, 1875. 
 
 Acti, Sc. 2. ^^ Leon. . . . Or else be impudently negative — " 
 
 Should we not read impotently ? 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. " Shep. . . . Who loves another best. 
 
 Read the other. 
 
 '■'■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 aifect theatrical success. Jonson, 
 in his Masques, almost overwhelms us by his shew of erudition ; 
 but then they were for the Court. There is a vague mention of 
 the Land of Be aim in the ballad-romance of Roswall and Lillian. 
 
 Shakespear even treats it as a port. 
 
 King John. 
 Act i., Sc. 2. " Fal. Sirrah, you giant . . ." 
 
 FalstafF addresses his diminutive page, and speaks ironically. 
 I suggest young giant. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 7. " P. Hen. ... his pure brain 
 (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling house)." 
 
 This 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 hypothesis, 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. 
 
 Henry IV., Part I. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. "2 Carrier. . . . this house is turned 
 upside down, since Robin Ostler died." 
 
 " I Car. Poor fellow ! never joyed, since the price of oats 
 rose J it was the death of him." 
 
265 
 
 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 
 experience 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. 
 
 "2 Car. 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 Y rtnch fair e I'eau; and the French do 
 not employ the latter in such a sense, while we say to make 
 water = to leak. 
 
 Sc. 3. '■'■Poins. How the 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 Poins's speech: "How the fat rogue 
 roar'd ! " Yet the Clarendon Press recent one-volume impression 
 omits this word. I have had elsewhere to call attention to the 
 indifferent execution of this and the cognate Cambridge book. 
 They are alike untrustworthy. Nevertheless, they are both 
 beautiful — ly printed. 
 
 Sc. 4. "P. Hen. What manner of man, an' it like your 
 majesty ? " 
 
 Too high a praise cannot be given to this subtly humorous 
 impersonation by Falstaff of the King and his reference to himself 
 as the sole eligible associate of the prince. The passage is a master- 
 piece of invention and wit. 
 
 " P. Hen. Hark, how hard he fetches breath : search his 
 pockets." 
 
 This is where discovery is made of Falstaff's 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. 
 
 Henry IV., Part II. 
 Dramatis Per some. Lord Bardolph. 
 
 It strikes me as a breach of propriety in a dramatic series, 
 where there was the opportunity for revision, to give the same 
 
266 
 
 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 You Like It. The form Bardolph seems to be 
 derived from the Fr. Bardoulf. 
 
 Induction. "The blunt monster with uncounted heads." 
 See Warton's H.E.P., 1871, iii., 172, where he refers to this 
 passage, but speaks of Shakespear describing Rumour with many 
 tongues. 
 
 Act v., Sc. I. '■'■Davy. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith's 
 note." 
 
 Note = invoice, which is still the sense in French and other 
 languages. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. 4. Where Pistol is made to say (Globe edit. 
 1895): " Si fortune me tormente, sperato me contente" which is 
 absolute nonsense, he may be meant to blunder. Anyhow, the 
 poet found the quotation in Copley's Wits, Fits, 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 [Bibl. Cat. 1865, i., 156) has not accurately tran- 
 scribed the passage from the ed. of 16 14, which he employed. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 4. "Poll. Come, you thin thing; come, you 
 rascal ! " 
 
 The sense of rascal in this passage is probably well under- 
 stood ; 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. 
 
 Henry V. 
 
 The French contained here may have been within the poet's 
 competence, or it may have been revised for him by friends- — 
 perhaps by Richard Quiney. 
 
 Dramatis Persona — Bardolph. 
 
 See Note to K. Henry IV., Part 2, supra. 
 
 Act i., Sc. 2. Sumless treasuries. 
 
 Should we not read sunless treasuries ? The sense appears to 
 require property withdrawn from the light of the sun rather than 
 wealth of measureless extent. It is a peculiarly Shakespearian 
 turn of expression. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. " Nym. ... I will do as I may." 
 
 Should not we read die ? 
 
267 
 
 Sc. 3. " ^ick. . . . 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. 
 
 " 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." 
 
 " ^uick. . . . but then he was rheumatic." 
 
 A malapropism for romantic. 
 
 Henry VI. 
 
 See Hunter's New Illustrations, ii., 63, where the original 
 drama, which Shakespear altered, is supposed to have been written 
 in 1587. 
 
 In 1602 Thomas Pavier the stationer entered the first and 
 second parts of the Contention as the first 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. 
 
 Henry VI., Part II. 
 Act i., Sc. 3. '-'■Duch. . . . Though in this place most 
 master wear no breeches." 
 
 Compare note on jis Tou Li\e It, iii., 1. 
 
 Richard II. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. '■'■ 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, 
 entitled : " The English Ape, the Italian Imitation, the Foote- 
 Steppes of Fraunce," &c., 4°, 1588. And 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 
 Republic, 1900, ii., 583. 
 
268 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 Actv., Sc. 3. '■' Ratcliff': My lord ; 'tis I. The early village 
 cock 
 
 Hath twice done salutation to the morn." 
 
 Read Clod. In Chaucer {^Nonne Prestes Tale) we have: 
 
 " Wei sikerer was his crowyng !n 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 time- 
 piece, 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 through- 
 out, 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 remarkable document printed by Robert Davies [Extracts 
 from the Municipal Records of Tor k^ i"43» P- 220) and the explan- 
 atory note, which embodies the evidence of a contemporary of the 
 king. This presumed eyewitness does not specify a humped back, 
 but a disparity in the height of the shoulders, the left one being 
 lower than the right. 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 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 
 performed 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 by their Schoolmaster not 
 many yeares since appointed to Act the play of King Henry the 
 eighty 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 h^ 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." 
 
269 
 
 This passage shews that the Hoh ! key was regarded as proper 
 and essential to the part. 
 
 Act v., Sc. I. '■'■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 dra- 
 matic than the scene from the play itself. 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 This drama, performed at the Middle Temple in February,. 
 1601-2, concludes, as we know, with the Clown's song, " When 
 that I was and a tiny little boy;" and the refrain, " With hey, ho, 
 the wind and the rain," is strictly in unison with the structure of 
 several Elizabethan madrigals. But, moreover, the composition 
 seems to have given rise to a popular ballad ; for in a volume 
 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 the 
 tenor of the ditty put into the mouth of the clown. Shakespear 
 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, nameljr, the Tempest. 
 
 In the song above mentioned, where the clown doubtless 
 accompanied the words with 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 belove — " 
 
 Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 The piece on this subject cited by Anthony Wood was^ 
 almost certainly in Latin. 
 
 It is very remarkable that on February 7, 1 602-3, ^ P^^Y '^^^ 
 registered as " The Booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted 
 by my Lo. Chamberlains men," and as the work of Chettle and 
 Decker. 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. 
 
 The latter 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 
 
270 
 
 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 disclosed, 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. 
 
 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 pro- 
 ceeding to reflect on the fickleness of general taste. Even taking 
 the familiar sentence in our present way of interpreting it, it does 
 not exactly import the -signification attached to it, but rather that 
 a natural touch everywhere draws man and man together. 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 The Rev. Joseph Hunter [New Illustrations of Shakespear, 
 ii., 203) gives 1598 as the date of the earlier play, either by Shake- 
 spear or another dramatist. He should have said 1588, and this 
 was apparently the piece licensed for performance by the Lord 
 Admiral's and Lord Chamberlain's men at the Newington theatre, 
 June 9, 1594. Now, a difficulty arises, if it be one, that on July 7, 
 1602, Henslowe paid Henry Chettle, in earnest of "The Danish 
 Tragedy," 7.0s., that is, of a new production so entitled ; 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 Hamlet, 1588, 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 VL 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 Cressida, 
 supra. 
 
 The Hamlet quoted by Lodge in his Wit\ Miserie, 1596, 
 was doubtless the one shown at the Newington playhouse in 1594. 
 
 In a very uncommon volume by John Clarke, entitled Parce- 
 miologia, being a collection of proverbs, published in 1639, there is 
 the saying : " A trout with four legs hamlet." There is no such 
 passage in the Shakespear play; and it may be a sentence sup- 
 posed 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, 
 
271 
 
 which reached the proverb-gatherer by hearsay ? The introduc- 
 tion of the adage into plays was, equally with the ballad, an ante- 
 Shakespearian device, and constituted part of the scheme in the 
 elder playwrights of popularizing their performances, and catching 
 the popular taste. 
 
 I conclude that for theatrical accuracy the Dane ought to be 
 represented with flaxen hair ; but we have Hamlets of all com- 
 plexions as well as statures. The real one is said to grow pursier, 
 as the dramatist may have done in middle life. It is a play for 
 the closet. The imagination can paint best the stage effects and 
 accessories. 
 
 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 Tou Like 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 ingratitude, yet, again, ingratitude of a 
 totally different 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 
 w^himsicality. We seem to recognize the personal idiosyncrasies 
 of Shakespear himself behind Hamlet in a far greater and truer 
 measure than in the other cases. This would be the piece of 
 autobiography, which I should be most unwilling to discredit and 
 surrender. 
 
 Act i., Sc. I. "It faded on the crowing of the cock." 
 
 Comp. History of Tom Thumbe, 1630 (Hazlitt's Popular 
 Poetry, ii.,1191): — 
 
 " And so -with peace and quietnesse 
 he left this earth below ; 
 And vp into the Fayry Land 
 his ghost d\A fading goe." 
 
 Act i. Sc. 5. " Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks." 
 
 An expression borrowed by Henry Parrot for his volume of 
 Epigrams, 161 3. He adopted another title from this play, the 
 Mouse Trap. 
 
 Act ii. Sc. 2. '■'■Ham. . . . for there is nothing either 
 good or bad but thinking makes it so : " 
 
 Comp. Montaigne, I., 19, ".%^ le goust des hiens et des 
 maux, yc.' 
 
 " -were iti not that I have had dreams." 
 
272 
 
 Comp. Jonson's Masque of Blackness: — 
 
 "For sure they saw't, for ^thiops never dream." 
 
 Coleridge once said to W. Hazlitt, when the latter told him 
 that he did not dream, "Then you have no imagination." 
 
 " Ham. Ay, sir, to be honest, as this wrorld goes, is to be one 
 man picked out of ten thousand." 
 
 This, strangely enough, appears to be an exact inversion of 
 the author's sense. Should we not read : " Ay, sir, as this world 
 goes, to be honest, &c." 
 
 " Ros. . . . we coted them on the way." 
 
 Coted = accosted. We keep the old French form accoster. 
 
 '■'■ Ham. Look, where my abridgments come" — i.e., the 
 actors. 
 
 Act iii., Sc. I. " Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the ques- 
 tion." 
 
 This passage, and one in Measure for Measure, are compared 
 supra with one in Montaigne. 
 
 "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. 
 I suggest pie-0, the O being a pleonasm. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 2. Where the Prince of Denmark speaks of a 
 player wearing two Provencal roses in his slashed shoes, it is more 
 or less material here to mention that for Provence we ought to read 
 Provins. 
 
 " 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 in the time of Elizabeth, enjoyed a bad name as regraters and 
 extortioners ; and the unreasonably high price of fish is a matter of 
 particular remark in the Fishmongers' pageant of 1590, recovered 
 a few years since by me. 
 
 It was the same at Rome and Athens. See St. John's Man- 
 ners and Customs of Ancient Greece, 1842, iii., 99. 
 
 Act v., Sc. I. '■'■Ham. Let me see. Alas! Poor Yorick ! " 
 
273 
 
 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." 
 
 Where Hamlet says: "Here hung those lips that I have 
 kissed I know not how oft," we are reminded of what the Rev. 
 Robert Davenant, son of John Davenant of Oxford, was heard by 
 Aubrey to have said of Shakespear in relation to himself: "I have 
 heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a 
 hundred kisses." Kissing was more habitual between men at that 
 time than at present. 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 him. The passage in the play had of course been 
 written some time, before Shakespear and the Davenants became 
 acquainted. 
 
 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 VIH. — "The enquirie and 
 verdite of the quest panneld of the death of Richard Hune," of 
 which the only known perfect copy is now before me, Thomas 
 Barnewell is described at the end as "Crowner of the Citie of 
 London." 
 
 "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 succeed- 
 ing may be thought to corroborate such an etymology. But the 
 definition oi nice or spruce is also admissible as a secondary meaning 
 or acceptation. 
 
 Just above, where Hamlet takes up the skull of a lawyer, we 
 gain the benefit of his conversance with professional technicalities 
 through his kinsman Greene or a glance at West's Symboleographyy 
 or both. 
 
 Chappell {Popular Music of the Olden Time, i., 54) refers 
 to the air down, a-down as to be sung to the movement of the 
 spinning-wheel. The poet transferred to the play a piece of his 
 own personal observation at home. 
 
 Othello. 
 
 This play is not true to history. No Moor was ever em- 
 ployed by Venice, and the facts of the campaign in Cyprus are 
 altogether different. In 1604, when Othello is said to have been 
 composed, the Cypriot episode was well within memory j the 
 Battle of Lepanto, which followed it, occurred in the autumn of 
 
274 
 
 1 57 1- 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 
 mistake. Note here the contrast between Black and White, the 
 sexual sympathy of opposite colours, carried on from the Sonnets. 
 
 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 ^Ethio- 
 pian 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 original designation is interesting, because it shews the 
 conception of what the hero should appear. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. '•'■ lago. Come on, come on; you are pictures 
 out of doors." 
 
 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. 
 
 Act iv., Sc. 3. jill the green willow. 
 
 Such a ballad, possibly the same, is cited in Laugh and lie down, 
 or the WorWs Folly, 1605, by C. T., as sung to the famous tune 
 of Dingdong. This is so far important, that it was almost con- 
 current with the first presentation of Othello. 
 
 Anthony and Cleopatra. 
 
 Act v., Sc. 2. "Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus here.?" 
 
 In Churchyard's verses before Gascoigne's Posies, 1575, he 
 says : — 
 
 "The kinde and loving worme that woulde his ladie please." 
 
 In Germany I am informed that a mother will call her child 
 "a little worm." 
 
 t I have elsewhere noted that this drama was separately regis- 
 tered, 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. 
 
 Lear. 
 
 See Madden's Gesta Romanorum, p. 450. And also Stories 15 
 and 33. 
 
275 
 
 Act i., Sc. 4- '■'Fool. . . . That such a king should play 
 bopeep. 
 
 And go the /ool among." 
 
 Perhaps there was the intention to play on the similarity 
 "between fool znd /oule, Fr. for crowd or throng. 
 
 The character of Cordelia may have been indebted to the 
 Phcenissa of Euripides, translated by G. Gascoigne, and publicly 
 exhibited in 1566. See the impersonation of Antigone in the 
 latter. 
 
 Pericles. 
 
 The Pattern of Painful Adventures^ licensed in 1576, to 
 which the author was perhaps indebted, is a Novel of great 
 interest and conspicuous excellence, from which a dramatist would 
 come away with many valuable suggestions. The Adventures of 
 Pericles, by George Wilkins the younger, i6o8, is principally 
 •serviceable for a few good readings, the author having compiled 
 his book from notes taken at the theatre. 
 
 Randolph, who died in 1635, alludes to Pericles in his Cam- 
 bridge "Oratio Prevaricatoria," 1632 : 
 
 ^ Insignis Pericles non audet tarn celehres 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 cer- 
 tainly saw on the boards. 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 composi- 
 tion — a criticism, which has received later support. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 A play with this title was apparently performed within the 
 knowledge 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 Macsome- 
 what," by a penny poet. It scarcely seems probable that this is 
 the same composition, which is noticed by Wake in his Rex 
 
'\2']b 
 
 Platonicus, 1607, as a lusiuncula exhibited before James I. in .1605 
 at St. John's College, Oxford, and which was not necessarily in 
 Latin, although Wake confers on it a Latin name. See Buchanan,. 
 Rerum Scot tear um Historia, 1582, folios 73-4. 
 
 The Merry fFives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The- 
 Tempest became the receptacles for the result of the poet's reading 
 and observation 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 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 commen- 
 tators enumerate other literary productions within his reach, while 
 he composed the play, where in the Dramatis Persona 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 pronounced ; the low comedy is almost absent ; and the ne- 
 cromantic 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 sentiments and mental reach of Macbeth are utterly 
 beyond probability — far more so than those of the Prince of Den- 
 mark. 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 play- 
 wright to make his personality transparent through one of his 
 characters ; and where the result is in a literary and poetical respect 
 so excellent, we have to reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice of some 
 of the unities. 
 
 The arguable presence of Shakespear at Oxford in 1 605, 
 when theatrical performances were prepared in honour of James L 
 and his court, suggests his elaboration of the subject of the 
 lusiuncula, which with the Vertumnus of Matthew Gwinne was 
 exhibited at Oxford on that occasion. Both these pieces were pro- 
 bably in Latin, and combined to send his majesty to sleep. The 
 Scotish plot of the Macbeth naturally recommended itself to the 
 poet, whether he actually witnessed the performance or not, as a 
 
277 
 
 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 incongruities. There 
 are passages here in which Shakespear almost surpasses 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 
 production, and may be held to exhaust Shakespear's fancy in this 
 direction. 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 oi Macbeth somewhere about 1608. 
 
 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'dhim) and 
 therefore I resolved to take mine from authority. And to that 
 €nd, there is not one action in the play, nay scarce a word 
 concerning it, but it is borrow'd from some antient or modern 
 Witchmonger which you will find in the notes." 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. « I Witch. . . . 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., i : — 
 
 "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 with the ring — " 
 
 Act i., Sc. 3. '■'■Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the water 
 
 Notice the similarity of touch or treatment to Hamlet. 
 
 Sc. 5. '■'•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 immoder- 
 ately and too abruptly, as it is her first entrance on the scene. 
 Such dark and bloody purposes require more leisurely and gradual 
 evolution. 
 
 has, 
 
2/8 
 
 Sc. 7. '■'■Mach. If it were done, when 't is done ..." 
 All this is good and very good ; but the language and philo- 
 sophy 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 interlocution 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 camerd. 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. 
 
 Act ii., Sc. I. '■'■Mach 
 
 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. 
 
 In the dialogue between the Thane and Lady Macbeth we 
 seem 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. I. '■'■Mach. . . . my genius is rebuk'd, as 
 t'is said, 
 
 Mark Antony's was by Cassar . . . " 
 
 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.. Scene 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 commission of a second murder 
 without the need of instigation. The scene between Macbeth 
 
279 
 
 and the proposed assassins of Banquo is far 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., Scene i, 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. 
 
 Act v., So. 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 
 invulnerability, and is slain by MacdufF. 
 
 Roman Plays. 
 
 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 Venus and Adonis two years prior ; it is im- 
 possible 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 a 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 commercial dealings of 
 the poet with Field do not seem to have extended beyond 1596. 
 The point is, after all, of the slightest possible consequence ; but 
 undue stress has been laid on it by one or two Shakespearian 
 students; and I must go so far as to plead (i.) that the use by 
 Shakespear of an edition of the Lives printed in 1 6 12 is barred by 
 the generally admitted circumstance that at that date the poet had 
 completed 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 the Most Lamentable Roman* Tragedy of 
 
 * In the later edition of 161 1 this word is suppressed. 
 
28o 
 
 Thus Andronicus was licensed for the press, if not actually com- 
 mitted to type; and (iii.) that early in 1608 Antony and Cleopatra 
 was entered at Stationers' Hall. 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 Dramatis Personis. Prospero. 
 
 Prospero = in sense Fausius, and the character follows at a 
 distance that of the German magician, whose story in prose 
 was published in English in 1592. The delightful creation of 
 Miranda^the maiden who had never beheld a man, except her 
 father, is an inversion of the mediasval fable "de Jilio regis qui 
 nunquam viderat mulieres." 
 
 Ariel. 
 
 I offer some remarks on this conception suprd. 
 
 For the extreme date 1 6 12-13 there is some support in the 
 windy weather of that winter, commemorated by two or three 
 contemporary tracts. But to this assignation it may be validly 
 objected that in 1611-12 Shakespear seems to have resumed pos- 
 session of New Place, or at all events to have left London ; while 
 of stormy periods and consequent shipwrecks there were precedents 
 within the earlier year 161 1. 
 
 The disputed reading in the song : " where the bee sucks, 
 
 , , t I" — would be terminated by me by a judgment for 
 
 luri; for Ariel, as 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 moth could bear such a burden as Ariel is here represented, 
 although elsewhere in the play he offers himself to our view as a 
 mighty instrument of the will of another. 
 
 Poems. 
 
 Lucrece. Shakespear in the edition of this poem published by 
 himself in 1594, entitles it simply Lucrece. Why do the Editors 
 presume to call it the Rape of Lucrece ? 
 
 Sonnets. I. "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 Barnfield as a youth eleven years his junior. 
 
28l 
 
 Comp. the cognate sentiment in Sonnet 41 : 
 "Beautous 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 be- 
 come at liberty to ascribe all three productions to one period and 
 one bias. 
 
 II. "When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, — 
 And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field." 
 For shall besiege read have besieged^ i.e., shall have besieged, 
 and for dig read dug. The action is progressive, not simultaneous. 
 
 " Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse." 
 Read eld = age. 
 
 V. "Those hours that with gentle work did frame." 
 
 Hours is a dissyllable — houres. 
 
 XXIX. Comp. the line: 
 
 " Desiring this man's art and that man's scope " — 
 
 with what I say about the poetical rival at p. 215. And, 
 again, the serenade in Cymbeline, 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. 
 
 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. In the 
 Cambridge verses on Cromwell, 4°, 1654, the Protector is des- 
 cribed as Oliva Pads. 
 
 CXXVII. "In the old age," &c. 
 
 This stanza is characterized by undisciplined and immature 
 power and taste, which may bespeak it anterior to the Pembroke 
 and Fitton date. 
 
 CXLIII. "Lo, as a careful housewife rur.s to catch." 
 Here we seem to have an early domestic reminiscence of 
 Stratford in the first years of married life. Comp. p. 2ig. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Actes des Apostres, 1541, 103 
 
 Acton, Middlesex, 81 
 
 Addenbroke suit, 42, 51 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 34, 44 
 
 Aggas, Edward, 155, 197 
 
 Agincourt, 147 
 
 Alleyne, Edward, 24, 40, 50, 95, 97, 
 
 172, 197-8, 208 
 America, xxix., xxxii., 57, 87, 229, 233, 
 
 246 
 Ames, Joseph, 87 ^ 
 
 Anne of Denmark, 59, 212 
 
 Great Britain, 85 
 
 Ap-Roberts, Griffin, 3-4 
 
 Nicholas, 3-4 
 
 Apuleius, 253 
 
 Arden of Favcrsham, 39, 64, 1 10, 136, 
 
 146 
 Arden, Forest of, 64 
 Aritl, 150- 1-2 
 
 Ariosto, 122, 242. See Cascoigne, 
 Aristophanes, 69 
 Armin, Robert, 144 
 Aspley, Wdliam, 190 
 Athenaeus, 118, 151 
 Athenian Alercury, xxi. 
 Aubrey, John, xii., xiii., 2-3, 26-7, 64, 
 
 227, 230, 236, 237, 241 
 Austin, Henry, 61 
 
 B. 
 
 Babington, Anthony, 167, 251 
 Bacon, Anthony, 344 
 
 Krancis, 2, 1 10, 22S et seqq. 
 
 Sir N., 234 
 
 Bagford, John, 87 
 
 Ballads, 153 
 
 Barber-Surgeons, 81 
 
 Bardolph, 18, 265 
 
 Barnards, The, 34 65 
 
 Bamewell, Thomas, 273 
 
 Barnfield, Richard, xxvii., 55, 166, 179, 
 
 186, 205-6, 207, 280 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, xxi. 
 Bear Garden, 24, 97, 100 
 
 Becon, Thomas, 64 
 
 Behn, Aphra, xx. 
 
 Benson, John, 3 
 
 Birmingham, xxxiii. 
 
 Biron, Due de, 253 
 
 Blackfriars Theatre, 24, 105 
 
 Blount, Edward, 155, 158, 191, 193, 
 
 196-7, 201 
 Boar's Head in Cheap, 147 
 
 Southwark, 147 
 
 Boccaccio, 30 
 Bodley, Sir T., 107 
 Bohemia, 264 
 Bond, Mrs., 64 
 Bordeaux, 64, 156 
 Bowland Forest, 1 71 
 Breton, Nicholas, 125 
 Bricklayers' Gild, 3 
 Brooke, Ralph, 69, 255-6 
 
 Christopher, 86 
 
 Browne, W., 268 
 
 Buccleuch, Duke of, 170 
 
 Buchanan, George, 276 
 
 Bull Inn, 107 
 
 Burbage, Cuthbert, 12, 25, 95 
 
 James, 13, 17, 23-5, 95, 97, 
 
 208, 263 
 
 Ninian, 28 
 
 Richard, 12,25-7, 32, 95, 97, 
 
 124, 208 
 
 Robert, 107 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, xii. 
 Burridge, Mr., 3 
 Burton, Robert, 88, 237 
 Butchers' Gild, 1-2 
 Byron, 223 
 
 C. 
 Caistor, 147 
 Caius, Dr., 145 
 Cambridge, 173, 275, 281 
 Camden, W., 69, 
 Capel, Edward, 157 
 Cardenio, 127 
 Carill, Euphemia, 100, 251 
 Caxtons, 170 
 Cecil, W., 211 
 
284 
 
 Chapman, George, xxi., 767, 86, 150, 
 
 191, 194, 196 
 Chapmans, The, 191-2 
 Chaucer, G., 268 
 Cheltenham, 145 
 Chester, Robert, 174, 196 
 Chettle, Henry, 57, 223-4, 269 70 
 Chewtes of Surrenden, 191 j 
 Chislehurst, 195 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 274 
 Clarke's Paramiologia, 270 
 Cobhams, The, 147 
 Cockpit, 105, 261 
 Coleridge, S. T., 272 
 •Collier, J. P., xxii. 
 Collins, Francis, 52-3 
 
 William, 113 
 
 Combe, John, 70 
 
 Condell, Henry, 107 
 
 Conestagio, 193 
 
 Constable, Henry, 205 
 
 Cooke, James, of Warwick, xxviii., 76, 
 
 82 
 Copley, Anthony, 266 
 Copy-books, Elizabethan, 136 
 Corbet, Richard, 27 
 Cordwainers' and Tanners' Gild, 3 
 Cornwallis, Sir William, 99, 158-9 
 Corombona, Vittoria, 218 
 Coryat, Thomas, 103, 194 
 Cotgrave, Randle, 129 
 Coventry, 193, 215 
 Cowley, Abraham, 34 
 Coxe, Rev. Dr., 71 
 Cradle of Security, 6 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 281 
 Cross-Keys Inn, loi 
 Crown Inn at Oxford, 31 
 Crowner's Quest Law, 273 
 Curtain Theatre, 24, 105, 144 
 Cyphers, 244 6 
 
 Dagger in Cheap, 149 
 Dallington, Sir Robert, 195 
 Daniel, George, 140-1 
 
 Samuel, 29, 42, II3, 157, 174 
 
 Danish Tragedy, 270 
 Davenant, John, 31, 227, 273 
 
 Robert, 227, 273 
 
 Sir W., xii., xx., 75, 85, 227, 
 
 25 « 
 
 Davies of Hereford,. John, 26 
 
 Davison, Francis, 2434 
 
 Defence of Contraries, n8 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, xxii., 61, 99, 176, 
 
 269 
 Deloney, Thomas, 261 
 Deptford, 191 
 
 Derings, The, 191 
 
 Dingdong, a tune, 274 
 
 Diocletian, 176 
 
 Dons' s Polyiloron, 119 
 
 Douce, Francis, 130 
 
 Dover, 8 
 
 Dramatists, Elizabethan, 88 
 
 Drayton, Michael, xviii., 2, 42, 48, 65, 
 
 84, 86, 135, 141, 177, 225 
 Droeshout, Martin, 223, 233 
 Drolls, 142 
 Drummond, W., 208 
 Dryden, John, xii., xix.-xx., 34, 85, 189, 
 
 27s 
 Dugdale, Sir W., 85 
 Dulwich, 107 
 
 Dulwich College, 97, 198, 208 
 Dyce, A., 3 
 Dyers' Gild, 223 
 
 East Cheap, 148-9 
 
 East-End Theatres, 102 
 
 Edward the Third, 39, no, 136, 203 
 
 Edwards, Richard, 113 
 
 Eld, George, xxv., 181 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 83, 245-6 
 
 Elizabeth, Countess of Southampton, 
 
 187 
 Ellis, F. S., 121 
 
 England's Helicon, 154, 167-8, 260 
 Epictetus, 185, 196 
 Essex family of Lambourn, 215 
 Essex, Earl of, 211, 237 
 Etienne, Henri, 119-20 
 Euripides, 242, 275 
 Evans, Sir Hugh, 142, 145 
 
 F. 
 Falstaff, 5, 7, 16, 18, 20, 63, 132-3, 144, 
 
 147-8. 265 
 Famous Victories of Henry V., 23 
 Fastolfes, The, 147, 253 
 Fenn, Sir John, 87 
 Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 119; 
 
 Guicciardini, 122 
 Field, Nathaniel, 96 
 
 Richard, 166, 174, 182, 279 
 
 Theophilus, 96 
 
 Fishmongers, Pageant of, 1590, 272 
 Fitton, Anne and Mary, 186, 21 1, 227 
 Edward, 187 
 
 Flaubert, xxvii. 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, 95, 169, 225 
 
 John, xxi., 107, 127 
 
 Lawrence, 95 
 
 ■ Richard, Bishop of London, 
 
 107 
 
285 
 
 Florio, John, xxviii., xxx., 71, 74, 107-8, 
 13s, 156 et siqq., 175-6, 185, 
 252 
 
 Rose, 157 
 
 Foe or Defoe, Daniel, I 
 
 Ford, William, 169 
 
 Fougasses, 259 
 
 Fox, John, 119, 158 
 
 Fragmenta Aulica, 268 
 
 Frederic V. , Elector Palatine, 244 
 
 Froissart, 119, 130 
 
 Fulham, 107 
 
 Jmscus, Edwardus, 68 
 
 Gad's Hill, 8 
 
 Gadshill, an Ostler, 19 
 
 Gale, Dunstan, 153 
 
 Gammer Gurion's Needle, 14I 
 
 Garmombles, 147 
 
 Garrick, David, 198, 263 
 
 Gascoigne, G., 86, 146, 170, 242, 274-5 
 
 Germany, 103, 125-6, 146,256,274,280 
 
 Gesta Romanoruni, 257 
 
 Gibson, Anthony, 186 
 
 Globe Theatre, 25, 78, 80, 96, 105, 144 
 
 Gloucester, 6 
 
 Golden Lion at Fulham, 108 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 136 
 
 Goldsmiths' Hall, 3 
 
 Goldwells, The, 191 
 
 Gosson, Stephen, 98 
 
 Goumay, Madlle. de, 31, 155 
 
 Gray's Inn, 237, 242-3 
 
 Greek sentiment, 207 
 
 Greene, John, 184 
 
 Robert, 14, 21, 23, 33, 61, 88, 
 
 III, 113-15, 117. '20, 129, 
 208, 231-2, 239, 256, 280 
 
 Thomas, xxxi., 29, 42-3, 48, 52, 
 
 59-61,78,83-4,124, 177.273 
 Greenwich, 243 
 Griffin, B., 215 
 Grimaldi, Joseph, 143 
 Gryphius, Andreas, 126, 256 
 Gwinne, Matthew, 276 
 
 H. 
 
 Hall, John, 34, 59, 76, 8 1 
 
 Halls, The, xiii., xvii., xxviu., 43, 4S-d-7i 
 
 65-6, 75, 82 ... 
 
 Halliwell-Phillipps, J. C, xui , 54 
 Hamlet, the old, 21 
 Hammond, William, 190 1, 199 
 Hammonds, The, 190-1, 195, 199 
 Handwriting, 8, 65, 78-So, 236 
 Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 93 
 
 Haroon-el-Reschid, 261 
 Harrison's Description of England, 4 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 23, 6l, 86, 170, 231 
 Hastings, Warren, 35 
 Hathaway, Anne, 10-12 
 
 Richard, 10 
 
 Hatton, Sir Chribtopher, 245 
 Hazlitt, W., 252, 272 
 Hazlitts in America, 87 
 Healey, John, 185, 196 
 Heber, Richard, 169-70 
 Heming and Condell, 89 
 Heneage, Sir Thomas, 165 
 Henslowe, Philip, 3, 50, 97 
 Hentzner, Paul, 120 
 Herbert, George, 241 
 Heydon, Sir John, 254-5 
 Heywood, John, 28, 187, 241 
 
 Thomas. xxi.,xxvii., 59-60-1,. 
 
 88, 208 
 Hobbes, T., of Malmesbury, 125 
 Holcrofts at Fulham, 108 
 Hohnshed, 119, 129 
 Holofernes, 108 
 Homer, 137, 150 
 Hosteler, Elizabethan, 17 
 Nowleglas, 23 
 Hune, Richard, 273 
 Huon of Bordeaux, 256 
 
 I. 
 
 Inirondti, 127 
 
 Italian School, 205, 207 
 
 Italy, 122, 251, 259, 267 
 
 J- 
 Jack Drum, 261 
 Jack Juggler, 141 
 Jaggard, W., xxvii., 61, 75, 83, 86, 95, 
 
 208 
 James I., 199 
 Jansen, Cornelius, 233 
 Jarmany, Duke de, I45-6, 260-I 
 Jew of Venice, xxiii. 
 Jews, 57 
 
 Johannes Factotum, 14, 115 
 Johnson or Jansen, Gerard, 232 
 Joiners' Gild, 24 
 Jonson,Benjamin,xii., xviii.-ix., xxni.-iv., 
 
 2, 7, 48, 6r, 69, 86, 901, 125, 133,. 
 
 135-6, 138, 196, 208, 217 
 Juby, Edward, 11 1 
 
 K. 
 
 Keats, John, 2 
 Kemble, Roger, 73 
 Kempe, W., 143-4. 186, 275 
 
286 
 
 Kent, 8 
 
 Kentish literary set, 191-3 
 
 Kersey, John, 85 
 
 Kinwelmersh, Francis, 242 
 
 Kissing, 21, 273 
 
 Knight, C, xi., 165, 187 
 
 Kyd, Thomas, xix., 27, 39, 257 
 
 L. 
 
 Lacy, John, 260 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 68, 145 
 
 Lambard, William, 99, 191, 212 
 
 Laugh and Lie Downe (1605), 269, 274 
 
 Lazarillo i/e Tonnes, 23 
 
 Leake, William, 83 
 
 Lee, Mr. Sidney, xiii., xvi.-vii., 12-13, 
 
 188-9 
 Lestrange, Sir Nicholas, 254-5 
 Lewkenor, Lewes, 125 
 Lily's Accidence, 120 
 Lintott, Bernard, 74 
 Lodge, Thomas, 64, 120, 125, 129, 
 
 149-50, 172, 262, 267, 270 
 Look about you. III 
 Lucan, 193, 195, 197 
 Lucys of Charlcote, xviii., xxvii., 4, 
 
 14-16, 62 
 Luttrell, Narcissus, 92 
 Luxemburg, 64 
 Lydgate, John, 149 
 Lyly, John, xix. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macbeth, a lusiuncula, 276 
 
 Maidstone, 82 
 
 Malone, Edmond, 169 
 
 Manningham, John, 192 
 
 Manninghams, The, 191-2 
 
 Manuel, Juan, 261 
 
 Manwoods, The, 191, 195 
 
 Market-Bosworth, 268 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 105, 238 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, xix., 3, 21, 33, 
 39, 126, 133, 166, 191, 193, 
 195, 208, 217, 237, 251 
 
 . William, 158 
 
 Marston, John, 61-2, 196, 261 
 
 Maupassant, xxvii. 
 
 Meres, Francis, xix., 173, 179-81, 
 199-200, 203, 251 
 
 Mermaid, The, 49 
 
 Middle Temple, 192, 269 
 
 Middleton, T., 88, 104 
 
 Milton, John, xii., xix.-xx., xxi., 85, 
 90-1, 189, 275 
 
 Miranda, 280 
 
 Mirror for Magistrate!, 119 
 
 Montaigne, xxviii., 30-1, 54, 58, 71, 74, 
 77, 118, 137, 139, 155 etseqq., 174-6, 
 197, 229, 242, 247, 258-9, 262-3, 271 
 
 Montbeliard. 147. 260-1 
 
 Montemayor, 125, 252 
 
 Montreux, Nicole de, 259 
 
 More, Sir Tiiomas, 240-1 
 
 Moro, Venetian family of, 274 
 
 Mortlake, 107 
 
 Mostyn, 121 
 
 Mowbray, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, 
 267 
 
 Mucedorus, 7, no 
 
 Mulcaster, Richard, 252 
 
 Munday, A., 3, 118, 173, 186-7 
 
 Musseus, 193-5 
 
 N. 
 Napolfon, 223 
 Nash, Thomas, 21, 6r, 208 
 New Place, 35, 38, 41, 43, 47, 50-1-2, 
 
 55, 69, 76, 82, 280 
 Newington Theatre, 270 
 Newton, Thomas, 149 
 Nonnington, Kent, 195 
 Norden, John, 107 
 North End, 107 
 Northumberland House, 243 
 
 O. 
 
 Oberon, 151, 256 
 
 Oratio Pmvaricatoria, 275 
 
 Oldcastle, 147-8 
 
 Oriental fiction, 152, 207, 261 
 
 Otto of Hesse, Prince, 126 
 
 Otway, Thomas, 104 
 
 Ovid, XXX., 54, 61, 71-3 4, 119.20, 135, 
 
 166, 262 
 Oxford, 7, 31 105, 173, ,82, 273, 276 
 Oxfordshire, 6-7 
 Oxindens, The, 121, 191-2, 198 
 
 Page, Master, 18, 62 
 Vsinlex's Palace of Pleasure, iiq. 122 
 Palladas, 262 ^' 
 
 Paris Garden, 99 
 Parkers of Browsholme, 170-1 
 Parrot, Henry, 271 
 Parsons, Robert, 147-8 
 Parson's Green, 107 
 Patteson, Rev. Edward, 73 
 Peele, George, 117, 256 
 Pembroke, Earl of, 157, 185, 187-8. 
 211-12, 222 ' ' 
 
 Penri, John, 99 
 Percy, Sir Joceline, 132-3 
 
287 
 
 Petrarch, 30, 207 
 
 Petronius Arbiter, 263 
 
 Petrucchio, Ludovico, 146 
 
 Phaeton, 176 
 
 Philips, Edward and John, 85 
 
 Phillips, Augustine, 96, 107 
 
 Photius, 118 
 
 Finder of Wakefield, 1 1 1 
 
 Plautus, 30, 135, 141 
 
 Play -bills, 102-3 
 
 Plumbe, William, 107 
 
 Plutarch's Lives, 1 19, 129, 279 
 
 Poetaster, 138 
 
 Pope, Alexander, xii. 
 
 Portia, 57 
 
 Prices of admission to theatres, 99-102, 
 
 251 
 Prospero, 151, 162 
 Provenfal roses, 272 
 Puck, 150-1-2 
 Puritan, The, 136 
 Puritanism, 37, 57-9, 81, 86-7 
 Puttenham, George, 99 
 Pye near Bishopsgate, 97 
 Pythagoras, 262 
 
 Q- 
 
 Quarto Shakespears, 121 
 
 Quickly, Mrs., 63 
 
 Quiney, Richard, 75, 77, 156, 266 
 
 Thomas, 52, 156 
 
 Quineys, The, xiii., 34, 46, 156 
 
 R. 
 
 Rabelais, 30, 131, 262 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 125 
 
 Randolph, Thomas, xix., 69, 275 
 
 Ravenscroft, E., Ill, 236 
 
 Return from Parnassus, 40 
 
 Richard III., 268 
 
 Rich, Lady Penelope, 186 
 
 Rings, 257, 277 
 
 Robin Goodfellow, 151, 202 
 
 Robin Ostler, 20, 264 
 
 Rochester. 8, 19 
 
 Earl of, 93 
 
 Rohan, Due de, 120 
 
 Roman Dramatists, n6, 1 18, 13S, 141 
 
 Plays, 119, 144 
 
 Romano, Giulio, 131, 264 
 
 Rosalind, 149 
 
 Roswal and Lillian, Ida, 
 
 Rowe, Nicholas, xii. -xiii., 75, 92 
 
 Sackerson, a bear, 97 
 Saint Clement's Danes, 108 
 
 Saint Helen's, Bishopsgate, 24 
 
 Saint Mary Overy's, Southwark, 96 
 
 Saint Paul's School, 253 
 
 Sciography, 113 
 
 Scogin's Jests, 23 
 
 Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, 1 1 9, 276 
 
 Scrivener, the Elizabethan, 79 
 
 Sebonde, Raimond de, 162 
 
 Selden, John, 135 
 
 SententicB Pueriles, 120 
 
 Seven Wise Masters, 257 
 
 Shadwell, Thomas, 277 
 
 Shakespear, Anne, 12, 2<) et segq., 81 
 
 Edmund, xvii., 49, 81, 106 
 
 Gilbert, xviii., 26, 65. 
 
 Hamnet, 42, 52, 81 
 
 Henry, 78 
 
 John, 2, 4, 12, 36, 63-5, 81 
 
 Judith, 52, 59, 65, 156 
 
 Richard, 81 
 
 Susanna, 43, 59, 65-6, 75, 82 
 
 Thomas, 8 
 
 Mr., 87-8 
 
 Shakespear^ s Cliff, 8 
 
 Library, xxii., 116, 118, 
 
 130, 269 
 Shallow, Justice, 16, 62 
 Shoe Lane, 108 
 Shoreditch, 18, 24-5, 97, 106 
 Shute, W., 259 
 Skelton's Merry Tales, 23 
 Slaughter, Martin, 126 
 Smithfield, 18-19 
 Snitterfield, 8, 70 
 Southampton, Earl of, 157, 165, 167, 
 
 172, 194, 211-12 
 Southampton House, 31, 212 
 Southwark, 106 
 Spagnuoli, B., 120, 254 
 Spenser, Edmund, 23, 149, 173 
 Spence, Joseph, xiii. 
 Sponsion, Secret, 9-10 
 Sprat, Dean, 34 
 Stapfer, Mark, 68 
 Stanton-Harcourt, 7 
 Steevens, George, 263 
 Stratford-on Avon, xiii., xviii., 2-4, 
 
 12-13, 35. 38-9. 44- 51, 55. 82-3, 
 
 120, 124, 202, 212, 215 
 Stuarts, The, 106, 114, 186, 244 
 Suburbs of London, literary, 106-8 
 Suckling, Sir John, 64 
 Suffolk, 6 
 Summers, Will, 69 
 Sunday Marriages, II 
 Sun-dial, 263 
 Sussex, 8 
 Swinburne, C. A., 202 
 
288 
 
 Sydneys of Wilton, 243 
 Sylla, 163 
 
 Sylvester, Joshua, 107 
 Syrus, Publius, 141 
 
 T. 
 Tables, writing, 139 
 Tarlton, Richard, 12, 17, 20, 22-3, 97, 
 
 143-4 
 Tales and Quick Answers, 99, 255 
 
 Hundred Merry, 167, 241, 255 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 117, 202, 220 
 Theatre, Early English, 95 et seqq. 
 
 London, in 1698, loi 
 
 Analogy between early and 
 
 modern, 98 
 Theobald, Lewis, 63 
 Tkersites, 141 
 
 Thomas's History of Italy, 122 
 Thorpe, Thomas, xix., xxiv., 79, 180 
 
 et seqq., 188 et seqq., I92-3, 195-6, 
 
 199, 201 et seqq. 
 Throckmorton, Job, 99 
 Thynne, Francis, 114 
 Titus Andronicus, 39, 1 1 1, 236-7, 279-80 
 Tofte, Robert, 100, 125, 259 
 Tom Drum, 261 
 Tom Thumb, 271 
 Torquemada, 125 
 Tower of London, 97 
 Travelling, Elizabethan, 13, 18 
 Twyne, Lawrence, 121, 129 
 
 U. 
 
 Ubaldini, Petrucchio, 146 
 Udall, Nicholas, 121, 141 
 Ulysses, 270 
 
 Vasari, 131 
 Venetian ducat, 257 
 Venice, 103-4, 244, 257-9 
 
 Vernon, Elizabeth, 211 
 Vincent, Augustine, 255 
 Virgil, 178, 207 
 Voltaire, xiii. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wake's Hex Platonieus, 275 
 "Waking Man's Dream," 113 
 Walham Green, 107 
 Walsinghams, The, 191, 201, 251 
 Walton, Isaak, 68 
 Ward, John, 73 
 
 Rev. John, 82 
 
 Warning for Fair Women, no 
 Warrington, 100, 167, 193, 251 
 Warton, Thomas, 1 13 
 Warwickshire folk, 64 
 Watson, Thomas, 173, 205, 207 
 Webster, John, xxi., 218 
 Welcombe enclosure, 44, 60 
 Welsh colony at Stratford, 260 
 West's Symboleography, 53, 273 
 Wilkins, George, the younger, 86, 275 
 Williams, Griffith, Bp. of Ossory, 121 
 Willis, R., 6 
 
 Wilson version of Montemayor, 251 
 Wily Beguiled, 253 
 Windsor, 8, 145 
 Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, Duke of, 
 
 260- 1 
 Witchcraft, 276 
 Witney, 7 
 
 Worksop Manor, 263 
 World and Child (1^22), 148 
 Wright, James, 85 
 
 John, 181 
 
 Wyl Buck his Testament, 260 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yorick, 20 I 
 Yorkshire Tragedy, 136 
 Young, Bartholomew, 125, 251 
 

 
 
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